The Prodigal Spy (56 page)

“Would you trust them? Every embassy has informers. If the Russians had found out—”

“Well, they did, didn’t they?” A shot in the dark.

“If they did, Mr Hoover, then they got it from you. Only the Bureau knew. Is that what you think happened, a leak in the Bureau?”

“No, I do not,” he said, steel again. “We don’t have leaks.”

“You must have had one once. My father had his file.”

Hoover frowned. “Lapierre said you’d seen that,” he said, diverted now to the office mystery. Another witch-hunt, irresistible.

“But he might have got it a while ago. Actually, I never thought the Russians did know. But if they did, that means—”

“I know what it means. And that never occurred to you.”

“No. I thought he committed suicide.”

“With you there? He makes you go to Czechoslovakia so he can kill himself while you’re around.”

“People who commit suicide don’t always make a lot of sense.”

Hoover looked at him, then turned to the window, pretending to be disappointed. “I don’t think you do either,” he said, looking down at Pennsylvania Avenue. “Don’t have too much fun at our expense–it’s not worth it. I’ve been here a long, long time. And I knew your father. I
studied
your father. You want me to think it was just a pipe dream. Our man didn’t think so. Some pipe dream. Your father knew how things worked. If he wanted to come back, he knew he’d have to buy his way back. But what was he going to buy it
with
? You’d need a lot of currency to do that.” He turned back and stared at Nick. “And somebody to make the deal. Close, like family.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nick said, holding his gaze.

“I hate to see good information go to waste, get in the wrong hands. Hate it.” He paused. “Most people find that it makes sense to be a friend to the Bureau.”

“I can’t afford it. It’s too expensive.”

Hoover nodded and moved toward the table behind the desk. “There’s all kinds of information,” he said, and pressed a button on a tape recorder. Nick heard a scratch, then his voice, Molly’s.

“Here’s an idea. Let’s smoke a joint and make love. All night. No microphones.”

“I liked the microphones. Where’d you get the stuff?”

“Well, I did see Richie.”

Hoover clicked it off and looked at him for a reaction.

Not the Alcron, looking up at ceilings. The Plaza, where they were safe.

“Where was the bug?” Nick said, stalling.

“The phone.”

“You can’t use it.”

“No? For two cents I’d set you up, you and your hippie girlfriend. I can do it. For two cents.”

Nick stared at him, the bantam chest and dyed hair, his eyes shining, about to win. The way it worked. “But you won’t,” he said finally. “You can’t afford it either. Larry Warren’s a friend to the Bureau.”

Nick saw the tic, the flesh of Hoover’s cheek quivering as if he’d been slapped.

“Two cents,” Hoover said, machine gun speed again, trying to recover. But the air had gone out of it, his skin now slack with age.

Nick turned away. “Keep it with the lighter, just in case. Can I go now?”

“Think about what I said. Hard. Maybe something will come back to you.”

Nick walked toward the door.

“Don’t push your luck,” Hoover said, wanting the last word. “Not with me. I hear you had a rough time over there. You might learn something from that. How things are.”

Nick turned from the knob and looked at Hoover. “I did learn something. You know, when I walked in here I was afraid of you. The Boss. You want some history? That was Stalin’s nickname too. Just like you. But you’re not that scary. You’re just a guy who likes to go through people’s wastebaskets.” Hoover’s face went blank, amazed. “You know what I learned? Nothing is forever. You think you are. You’re going to be disappointed.”

For a moment Hoover just stood there, seeming paralyzed by the impertinence, then his eyes narrowed. “You’ll change your mind. They always do. It’s better to be a friend.” He walked back toward his desk, pulling himself together. “So I’ll give you something free. As a friend. The Bureau isn’t following you. Maybe we should be, but we’re not. And maybe you’re not as smart as you think you are. Just a little paranoid.”

“Maybe.”

“You see how it works. Now you give me one. I know he talked to you. How else would you know about the lighter?”

Nick smiled and opened the door. “An anonymous tip.”

He walked over to the Mall and sat on a bench watching them build the scaffolding for the rally. Kids in T-shirts and Jesus hair with hammers. Portable toilets. In a few days the buses would pour in. Speeches and peace balloons. All of it happening somewhere else, in the present, while he waited to find someone in the past. Hoover hadn’t dyed his hair then. He’d been a real monster, not a creaky vaudeville turn, hanging on. He’d made Welles, McCarthy, Nixon, all of them. Passing out his currency. Now some were dead and one was in the White House and everyone had moved on to the next thing. Except Nick.

He noticed some men in suits loitering by the construction site. The Bureau, getting ready? He should get up and go home. Which was where? A hotel with a piano player in the lobby. A room in London he couldn’t even remember. He looked up toward Capitol Hill. That wasn’t home either. But he was still living there, on 2nd Street, trying to find his way out. The trouble with history, his father had said, is that you have to live through it. A crime story where everyone did it, without even thinking, as careless as an anonymous tip. And then went on. But what if it stopped, a freeze frame? What if you were the one caught in the picture? Stuck–unless you found the one with his finger on the shutter. Who had told Hoover?

Molly was already at the hotel when he got back. “They said no?” Nick said.

“No. Half-day. Orientation. They jumped at it once I said temp–no health plan.”

“Her department?”

“Well, they rotate. But I told them that’s where I’d done it before, so it should be okay. I start with ties–no sizes, even I can do it. She was doing hats today. I mean, who wears hats anymore? Everybody switches around except for the men selling suits. I suppose you really have to know about suits.”

“What was she like?”

“Nice, but not too nice. She probably thinks I’m going to be a pain. You know, who needs a trainee? But the point is, I can see her no matter where they put me. It’s all open except for the fitting rooms. So.”

“So now we wait.”

“You do.” She grinned. “I’ll be on my feet. And they’re already killing me.” She took her shoes off and lay back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “I wonder if she’s in love with him too.”

“He’d be a little long in the tooth now, don’t you think?”

“Oh, men just keep going.” She smiled at him. “At least I hope they do.”

He sat on the bed and began rubbing her feet.

“Mm. What every working girl needs. Brown’s still not back, by the way.”

“You went out there?” Nick said.

“Well, I had the time. Just a drive-by. I was curious. There’s something going on–it doesn’t make sense.”

Nick shook his head. “We should leave the others alone. What if they spot us? We don’t want to complicate things now.”

“I don’t think anyone followed me.”

“No. Hoover said they’re not tailing us.”

“Really? What about the man outside the hotel? He wasn’t just waiting for a cab. I know he wasn’t.”

“That’s what he said. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time he lied.”

The real waiting began in the morning. Nick stayed at the hotel, afraid he’d miss Molly’s call if he left, unable to read or think about anything else. So close. He played a game with the United Charities list, checking it against the phone book to see who was still alive, still in Washington. The others he could run through the
Post
obituary files, finally winnowing it down. Some names he could deal with by sight–politicians gone after failed elections, senators old even then, his parents, still together on the list. But there were too many. He might as well be doing crossword puzzles, just passing time. His father had said the reports were irregular. How was it done? Was there a prearranged signal, a call, or did he just stroll into the store, a man shopping on his lunch hour? Nick’s worst fear was that he might appear without their even knowing it, the waiting all for nothing.

The next day, too restless to stay inside, he walked over to 14th Street and circled the building to fix the likely exits in his mind. When he walked into the men’s department, Molly looked up in surprise, then cocked her head toward the blond girl folding sweaters. There were only a few customers. Nick moved slowly past the counters, browsing, familiarizing himself with the floor layout. You could see everything from the fitting rooms. He made his way to the shirt counter, where Molly was waiting, glancing at him nervously.

“Fifteen and a half, thirty-three,” he said, then stopped. Not even his size. When she reached behind her and handed him the shirt, he felt, eerily, that he had crossed some invisible line into his father’s life. Exactly the way it must have been, no one noticing. He fingered the shirt wrapped in plastic. You could slip an envelope underneath. Rosemary could take it, hand you another, ring up the sale, and carry the shirt back to the stockroom. A crime so easy no one would ever see. He realized then that Molly was staring at him, disconcerted.

“I’ll come back,” he said, embarrassed, and walked away.

After that he stayed with the list, not trusting himself to go out. He reread Rosemary’s letter, trying to imagine what her voice had been like. Throaty, maybe, like Molly’s. The hotel room was claustrophobic, so he sat for hours gazing out the window, going over everything that had happened in Prague, some clue he might have missed. He wondered what had happened to Zimmerman, what Anna Masaryk had done with the exit visas. He could see them both vividly and realized that this is what people in prison did–floated out of their cells into some imaginative other life. She had been putting lipstick on when the bellboy brought the setup. Two glasses. Happy to see him.

The phone rang twice before Nick came back to his own room.

“She asked to switch with me Friday. Tomorrow. To do the shirts,” Molly said. “I don’t know if it means anything or not. But why switch? Nick?”

“I’m here.”

“So what do you think?”

He paused, not sure.

“Well, it might be, don’t you think?” Molly said eagerly. “Why don’t you buy yourself a suit tomorrow?”

He tried on several, lingering in front of the mirror with one eye fixed on the shirt counter. Finally, when the salesman became impatient, he picked a blue pinstripe and stood on a raised platform while the tailor measured for alterations. But how long could he string it out? A few men, all of them too young, bought shirts. The blond girl, Barbara, kept looking around as if she were expecting someone, but nothing happened.

When the floor manager told her to go to lunch, Nick followed. A sandwich in a coffee shop, eaten quickly. When she went back to Garfinkel’s, Nick stopped himself at the door, his excuses to go inside exhausted. He went across the street and kept watch from a doorway. Smoking, waiting to meet a friend. Then another corner, a newspaper. The afternoon dragged on. How much longer?

He went back into the store and caught Molly’s eye. A quick shake of her head. He crossed the floor, positioning himself next to ladies’ scarves, then bought some perfume, all the while keeping the men’s department in sight. Almost closing time. Barbara looked at her watch and then toward the door. A missed connection, or just a salesgirl eager to go home?

When the bell rang, Nick’s heart sank. He’d made himself conspicuous and no one had showed. He watched her close the register with Molly, chatting, then had no choice but to follow the other customers out. He waited across the street again and then, on the chance that she was meeting him after work, moved toward the employee entrance. A group of women, talking. He picked out the blond hair easily and began to track it back toward Dupont Circle. Maybe a drink after work? But Barbara, the reliable tenant, went straight home, and when he saw her go through Mrs Baylor’s door he knew the day, with all its nervous expectations, was gone.

“But she asked to switch again,” Molly said later. “Maybe he couldn’t make it for some reason.”

“And maybe she just likes shirts,” Nick said, depressed.

“No, she never asked before. It has to be. Anyway, you could use the clothes.”

The next morning was like the first: sleepwalking past the sales tables, picking through the suits, the clerk puzzled at his being there again but still wanting to make a sale. Nick said he’d try a few on, hoping the salesman would go away, and went into one of the changing rooms. The door was louvered, so that if you bent a little you could see between the slats. Barbara at the shirt counter. But he couldn’t stay here forever, peering out. The clerk had someone else now and was leading him toward the tailor, but he’d knock in a minute, wanting to know if everything was all right. Nick thought suddenly of the station men’s room, the sick feeling as the footsteps came closer.

He was about to give up and open the door when he saw Barbara’s head rise, relieved, recognizing someone. She turned and pulled two shirts off the shelf, ready, then glanced to either side of her to see if the coast was clear as the man’s back came into view. For a second Nick didn’t breathe. The man was picking up a shirt, handing the other back to her, turning slightly as she went to the register. Nick grabbed the slats with his fingers, lightheaded, steadying himself as his stomach heaved. He’d seen the face. A shouting in his head. He opened the door.

“Ah, and how did we like the gray?” the salesman said, but Nick walked by him, one foot in front of the other, as if he were underwater. Moving toward the shirts, a hundred pictures flashing by him, rearranging themselves in place. The same face through the cubicle slats, in a slice, just like the crack at the study door. Molly watching him, her mouth open. And then he was there, behind the familiar shoulders.

“Hello, Larry,” he said.