Better Dead (11 page)

“Who graduated to card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA?”

“Well, we haven't carried cards for a long time. That would be kind of a stupid thing to do, don't you think, Nate? In this country right now?”

“Right.” I drained the daiquiri. “So. The Greenglasses were active in the Party, too? David and Ruth—true believers, were they?”

Natalie nodded. Finished her drink. We ordered another round. While we waited, she got some cigarettes from her purse, Fatimas, and offered me one.

“No thanks.”

“No bad habits, Nathan?” she asked cheerfully, lighting up.

“Not that one. I smoked during the war. Haven't since.”

The new round arrived.

She dragged her cherry around in her cocktail, then said, “And that's what it's all about, I think. Where it really started.”

“Where what started?”

She leaned in conspiratorially. “Julie recruited Davey into the Party. I think Ethel encouraged Davey too …
and
Ruth. You know, it's like any enthusiasm. If you have a stamp-collecting club, and you have a friend who's interested in stamps … what do you do?”

“Invite them to join.”

She nodded a bunch of times. She was getting looped. And of course that was fine with me, as long as I could keep pace with her without getting as looped as she was.

“So from Davey's vantage point,” she said, slurring just a little, “
all
of this is Julie's fault.”

“How so?”

“If Julie hadn't invited him into the CP—the Party—then Davey wouldn't have gone down this road.”

“What road?”

She gestured with the Fatima. “The road to Los Alamos and so many other things. Word among those who know … who
know
 … is that Davey was willing to do just about
anything
for the Soviets.”

“Because he was a true believer?”

“He talked like one. But also they paid him. He was in it for the money as much as the cause. I don't believe Julie had any part of it, but I can tell you this much—there's no way Julie would've taken money for doing what he thought was right. No damn way at all.”

“So somebody other than Julie enlisted Davey to steal secrets at Los Alamos.”

More nods. “You bet. Probably that Gold guy. He's a creep.”

“You know him?”

“No. I was in court that day. Gave me the willies just looking at the slob. See, I was in court for a lot of it. Lots of Julie's friends from the Party were there.”

“Show of support?”

“Subpoenas. Unfriendly witnesses, half a dozen of us. Those jerks Saypol and Cohn didn't have the nerve to call any of us. Not one.”

Well, they hadn't needed to, had they?

Another round.

“You're saying that Davey was the atom spy,” I said. “That when he got cornered, he pinned it on Julie, who he blamed for getting him into this mess in the first place.”

“That's what I'm saying.” Then she leaned in again, smoke drifting between us. “And here's how I know—Davey quit the Party right about when he would've started playing spy. But Julie stayed in—a member of the CP to the end. Right up till they hauled him away.”

“I don't catch the significance.”

She let smoke out her mouth. “Well, what people in the Party were saying back then—this was, what, eight, ten years ago—was that whenever some good comrade suddenly dropped out, it meant Russian agents were recruiting American Party members.”

“To do what?”

“What do you think?” She put the cigarette out in an Oasis tray. “Their bidding. And the first thing those recruits had to do was quit the Party.”

“To keep a low profile.”

“Keep a low profile.”

We needed another drink. We got one.

“Listen,” she said, overenunciating a little, “what's your plan? How are you going about this?”

“Hoping to gather new evidence. Start by trying to track down that famous console table.”

“The spy table! From Macy's! What a laugh.”

A Tony Sarg elephant danced on the wall nearby.

“Other witnesses would be helpful, too,” I said. “If any of those friends you mentioned who got dragged to court knew anything…”

“No. No, they won't get involved.… Anyway, three or four have flown the coop. Parts unknown.”

“But some are still around?”

“Sure. But first, they may not know anything, which is likely why they haven't skipped. Second, they don't want to be asked on the stand if they are or ever were…” She raised a shush finger to her lips, then mouthed: R-E-D-S.

“So I'm out of luck then?”

“Not necessarily,” she said, hitting all five syllables of that last word. “What you need is civilians who maybe saw something. Saw Davey putting the pressure on Julie for that money. Neighbors at Knickerbocker, maybe.”

“I was thinking the same thing. You used to live there. You know people at Knickerbocker Village.”

“I do. I could help you. Knock on doors with you.”

“Would you do that, Natalie?”

“Nathan! You're the private eye to the stars. You were in
Life
magazine. What
wouldn't
I do for you?”

I grinned at her. “I'd like to know.” Okay, maybe I was getting high, too.

I paid the check and we walked out, having to work at it some.

She leaned on me in the lobby. “Look. Honey. Can I come upstairs a while? That's where your room is, right?”

“It's not in the basement,” I said.

We both had a good old laugh over that one.

She said, “I just need to lay down a while … lie down a while … is it ‘lie'? Or ‘lay'?”

“I'm going with ‘lay,'” I said.

“Don't get cocky.”

We held each other up as we laughed at how funny we were.

The uniformed elevator boy, who was about sixty, took us up on a surprisingly unsteady elevator. We made it down the hall to the white door I was currently living behind and I somehow got the door key in and turned it and opened up and showed her inside.

On seeing my marble-floored digs, she whistled, or tried to. “You
are
a capitalist, baby! Wow. So this is how the other half lives!”

“How the other half when he's on an expense account,” I said, “lives.”

“You have anything to drink?”

“Do you think we need it?”

“Need? What's that?”

There was liquor in the kitchen, but I said, “No. We've had enough.”

“Spoilsport.”

I walked her to the couch. There was only one light on, a floor lamp across the room. We sat.

She said, “I was glad you could get that key in that lock.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to fuck me.”

I thought about that.

“Okay,” I said.

She stood. She was a little wobbly but she made it. She pulled off the big loose sweater and tossed it dramatically. It went about a foot and half. She had a black bra on and it took her a while to undo it. I was just about to offer my help when she got it unhooked and dropped it to the floor.

It was a surprise that breasts like that had been hiding under that big sweater on this slender girl. They would have kept her from making it as fashion model, that was for sure—large and conical and dark-tipped with erect nipples that scolded me for what I was thinking.

She had to do a little dance that was more funny than sexy, getting out of the slacks, but I was so hard by now it didn't matter. Her panties were semi-sheer and the bush beneath wasn't kidding. When she climbed out of them, the dark thicket, unhampered by fabric, sprang out a little.

“Help me,” she said, kicking off her oxfords. She wanted to move the coffee table off the throw rug.

I helped her. We set the thing aside and we smiled at each other in our accomplishment. It occurred to me that I should take my clothes off, too. So I did, tossing them here and there. Meanwhile, she was getting something out of her little purse—a Trojan in its wrapper. Maybe she'd been a Girl Scout, assuming they also were prepared. This saved me a trip into the bedroom where I had some in the nightstand. Trojans, I mean. What a woman.

I sat on the couch and then she was on her knees sucking me for the longest time. When I felt like she was about to get more than she bargained for, I said, “Floor,” and went down there. I took a throw pillow from the couch and put it under her. She smiled at me. Impossibly long legs parted wide, knees pointing in opposite directions yet beckoning me between them. Pink smiled sideways through the thicket. I knelt and reciprocated for a while, then got the Trojan wrapper off somehow, but she took it from me and slipped it over me, like she wasn't drunk at all. Nimble as hell.

Then I climbed on top of the little Commie and drilled her like a bad tooth.

 

CHAPTER

7

In my dream it was a rainstorm, but when I crawled up into cotton-mouthed wakefulness, I realized it was the sound of the shower in the nearby bathroom. I was naked under sweaty sheets and consumed with a tiredness that seemed to say I needed sleep when I'd already had something like nine hours. A headache, not blazing or anything, was the only other evidence of a hangover.

I had to piss like a racehorse, so there was no question of niceties when I invaded the bathroom during my guest's shower. Her form behind the textured translucent glass, moving gracefully in the downpour only made my condition more desperate.

That condition was acerbated—and there's no delicate way to put this—by what uncouth males refer to as a piss hard-on. If there's a medical term for it—like erectile urination syndrome—I haven't heard it, though down South I understand such stiff dicks are referred to as “morning glories.” Nothing glorious about having to pee with one. It's like trying to paint a picture with a fire hose.

The upshot was, just after I'd finished and used Kleenex to mop up the mess, she stepped dripping from the shower, and after I handed her a towel, she got her face dry enough to see me standing there at naked attention.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” she said.

“Sorry.” I shrugged. “When you gotta go…”

“Well, let's not waste it.”

Still dripping, she grabbed me by it and led me into the other room. She shoved me onto the bed, then stood there in all that pearled skin toweling off her hair, leaving damp gypsy tendrils, the tips of the full breasts perked with cold. I did my part, getting a Trojan out of the nightstand. Soon she was on top of me, moving slow and rhythmic, head back and forward and back and forward, pelting me pleasantly with moisture. It was slow and sweet, until it got hot and heavy, and when she collapsed into my arms, I whispered, “Good morning. What was your name again?”

That made her laugh, and then she got off of me and jiggled into the bathroom. This time I let her have her privacy for a while. When she exited in a terry-cloth hotel robe, I took my turn—shower, shave, and so on. She had her gray slacks on and was getting back into the oversize black turtleneck when I came out like Tarzan in a towel.

“You want breakfast?” I asked. “We can call for room service or there's the coffee shop.”

She shuddered. “It's all I can do to keep last night's goulash at bay. How hungover are you?”

“Not bad. I did have a dull headache but you got rid of it better than Bayer.”

She paused and assessed herself. “Other than a little nausea, I seem to be okay.”

“All women get nauseous after screwing me. Nothing to worry about.”

She laughed some more. “I
could
use coffee.”

“Well, I have a kitchen for that kind of thing.” I gestured in that direction.

“A kitchen in your hotel room?”

“Sure. Doesn't everybody?”

“You are a true enemy of the people, aren't you, Nate?”

“Right. A capitalist dog. Or is that pig? But we've established we're both decadent, so we have that common ground. Shall I put the coffee on?”

Before long we were sitting at the little kitchen table in the little kitchen like an old married couple or maybe a young one. The coffee tasted swell and the company was fine. With no lipstick and not a hint of makeup, her hair a mass of unattended curls, she was just lovely.

“So what do you do?” I asked, peering over a coffee cup brim.

“Apparently I pick up older men and have my way with them.” She arched an eyebrow to go with her arch tone. “I still need that cab fare, by the way. Don't be generous or I'll feel cheap.”

“You're embarrassing me. I don't usually kiss on the first date, either. I meant—what do you
do
? Last night when I called, you said you just got home from work.”

She shrugged, coffee cup at half-mast. “I manage an art gallery in the Village. A group of artists got together and rented space that used to be an antique shop, and hired me to run it.”

“Modern art?”

She nodded, sipped the coffee. “Some top talent in the New York School—Reinhardt, Motherwell, Mitchell, Hartigan, Leslie.”

These names had been rattled off with obvious pride. I'd heard of none of them.

“Pollock was invited,” she said, with a smirky shrug, “but he's too famous now. He's like you.”

“What? How?”

“
Life
did a piece on him and made him rich and famous. He isn't paying off grocery bills with paintings anymore.” She gave me a pixie smile that was very winning from such a worldly girl. “You'll have to come down and check out my gallery.”

“Now that you've seen my etchings, you mean?” I set my cup down. “Listen, Natalie—do you remember offering to help me out at Knickerbocker Village?”

“To look for new witnesses to help Julie and Ethel? Sure. Just say when. I have help that can cover for me at the gallery.”