To Catch a Spy, page 19
“I must talk to you,” said Gunther. “I have made a discovery.”
“I’ll be right out,” I said. “I’ll get dressed and come to your room.”
“You are sure you are …?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “If you like I’ll sing you a chorus of ‘I’ve Got Rhythm.’”
“That will not be necessary,” said Gunther on the other side of the door. “I will see you in my room.”
I put on my robe, grabbed the lethal bottle to keep it from falling into innocent hands, and went back to my room, where I put on a pair of blue slacks that could have used a little pressing and maybe even a cleaning. In the back of the closet, I found a blue shirt that I thought I had lost and got a fresh pair of socks from my drawer. After slipping into my shoes, I decided that my shoulder where I had tried Olivia’s liniment actually felt a lot better.
Dash leapt through the window and onto the table. He looked at me.
“Hungry?” I asked.
He just kept looking at me. I had two cans of tuna fish left. I opened one, spooned half of it onto a small plate, and put it on the floor. Dash went for it, and I finished off what was left, rinsed the can, and threw it in the waste-basket. Then I went to Gunther’s room.
“Come in,” he called when I knocked.
He was standing near the window, hands clasped behind his back, neat brown suit and tie, looking at me and bouncing on his heels.
“I have found your man,” he said.
“My man?”
“The leader of the Nazi cell at Caroll College,” he said.
“Who is it?”
“We will know in …” He looked at his pocket watch. “Ten minutes.”
I sat in the chair I always sat in, the one that wasn’t too small for me, and leaned back.
“What happens in ten minutes?” I asked.
“A visitor,” he said. “You have suffered more injury.”
He looked concerned.
“It’s a long story,” I said. “Well, a medium-length story.”
I told him what had happened. Gunther listened, speaking only once to say, “This Joe. He is the leader.”
I agreed and finished my tale.
“May I speak?” he asked, still standing.
I nodded.
“You should consider another profession.”
“Anita said the same thing.”
“The human body is a miracle,” he said. “Remarkable but not infinite in its ability to restore itself.”
“I know.”
“But you will do nothing different?”
“It’s what I do,” I said. “What would you do if you lost all your clients?”
Gunther thought for a moment and said, “I would live on my savings and investments and write a book on the Kurdish struggle for independence.”
“Sounds like best-seller material,” I said.
“It would be a labor of scholarship, a much needed treatise and one that would afford me great satisfaction, though my audience would be admittedly limited to scholars.”
There was a knock at the door, which opened before Gunther could speak. Mrs. Plaut stood there. I could see someone behind her.
“There’s someone here has an appointment with you,” she said to Gunther.
“Yes, yes,” said Gunther.
“Did you use Olivia’s liniment?” she said to me.
“Worked fine,” I said.
“You may keep it for future needs. I have fourteen bottles.”
“You use it?” I asked.
“Olivia had a gift for curing,” she said, “but she also had a belief that cure could not come without pain. I would prefer to suffer than let that liniment touch my body.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You are welcome.”
Mrs. Plaut went back in the hall, and Gunther’s visitor entered. Mrs. Plaut closed the door and I found myself looking up at a familiar face.
“Miss Wright,” Gunther said. “Please have a seat.”
He gestured toward his desk chair, a chair in which I had never seen anyone but Gunther.
Jacklyn Wright looked at me without expression and sat in the chair. She was wearing a dark green dress and a light green sweater. Her hair was brushed back and her skin looked pink and clean. An all-American look.
She looked at Gunther and said something in German. Gunther answered. They went on for a little while. She started to talk faster, and Gunther was about to say something when I cut him off with, “Hold it. What’s going on?”
“Miss Wright wishes some reassurances,” Gunther said.
“Reassurances?”
“She is concerned about whether you have sufficient influence to keep her from prison if she agrees to reveal what we need to know.”
I thought about Cantwell and D’Argentero, the FBI men, and about Phil.
“Odds are good,” I said. “But no guarantees.”
“I’ll settle, if necessary,” she said, “for an opportunity to leave the city if you agree to get rid of the FBI agents who are following me. Within a day, I can be in Canada and have a new identity.”
“And start another cell,” I said.
“No. We’ve lost the war. There are only the fanatics, who still believe Hitler can come up with a miracle, and the schemers, who are looking for ways to profit from defeat. Our little cell is a pitiful group waiting for orders that are never going to come.”
“We help you and you turn over the guy you report to,” I said. “Something’s missing.”
She looked at me and then turned away.
“He’s planning to leave the city sometime late tonight,” she said. “He’s planning to leave me, all of us for the FBI. He doesn’t know that I know, but I do. He tells me he and I will get out together, that he has a plan. He’s told me one lie too many.”
“Something’s still missing,” I said.
She sighed.
“We have been lovers,” she said. “He plans to simply walk away from me, leave me for the FBI while he takes off with …”
“Someone else?” I said.
I had an idea who the someone else was—one or both of the women who had shot at me a few hours earlier.
Her silence answered my question.
“Miss Wright contacted me,” Gunther said. “I told her I would hear her offer and relay it to you, but you came here in time and so …”
“Did she call you here?” I asked.
“No,” said Gunther. “She handed me a note at Freed’s Bookstore early this morning.”
“I’d been following him,” she said. “I follow him. The FBI follows me. I am tired of this war. I am tired of this hiding and intriguing and accomplishing nothing.”
“Okay,” I said. “Give us what you’ve got. If it’s true, I’ll buy you the time to get out. If you’re setting us up, I’ll go right to the FBI. Why didn’t you just set up this deal with them in the first place?”
“I don’t trust them,” she said. “They would tell me they would make a deal, and then they would not honor it. They’ve done it before, often. It is the way they work, the way they should work.”
We were there now.
“Who are we looking for and where do I find him?”
“He is Lawrence Toddhunter, and he lives on the cliffs overlooking the reservoir over Laurel Canyon,” she said.
“Toddhunter?” I asked.
“The dean of the School of Performance at Caroll,” Gunther said.
“Yes. He recruited me when I came to apply for a job. He knew my parents were German. I could claim that he seduced me, tricked me, but that would not be true. He convinced me. I am not a fool. Now he plans to run with some information that he hopes to negotiate with if he gets caught.”
What I did now was get Toddhunter’s address and decide to go find a phone and tell the FBI I didn’t want any more of this—and if I messed up again I could find myself with some creative and colorful federal charges against me. After I told the FBI, I’d find a phone that wasn’t tapped, as was Mrs. Plaut’s, and tell Cary Grant what I had done. It wasn’t the way he wanted it, but I’d try to make him see I had no choice.
I got a phone number where I could reach Jacklyn Wright or leave a message. She got up and looked at Gunther and then at me.
“I have your word,” she said.
“Yes,” Gunther and I said together, and she walked out, almost bumping into Mrs. Plaut, who was on her way in.
“Mr. Peelers,” she said. “You have a telephone call.”
I followed her into the hall and went to the phone on the landing, watching Jacklyn Wright hurry down the stairs and through the front door.
“Peters,” I said, picking up the phone on the landing.
“You just had a visitor,” the familiar voice said.
“Did I?”
“You did,” said Joe, who I now knew was Lawrence Toddhunter. “I believe other ears may be listening to us, so I strongly suggest you use no names.”
“Go on.”
“I have a riddle for you,” he said.
“I can’t wait to hear it.”
“What is short, round, bald, nearsighted, fond of very cheap cigars, and is sitting five feet away from me? Don’t give a name. Just answer “yes” if you know the answer.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “And what is pretty, young, dark, and remarkably calm when faced with terrible danger.”
“Yes,” I said.
He had Shelly and Violet.
“Excellent,” he said. “You will see both of these prizes alive, well fed, and only slightly disheveled sometime tomorrow. They will call you. I have no reason to harm them unless you give me one. All you need do is nothing. Provide no information to individuals or agencies. You understand?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Fine, now I expect you will be busy answering the questions of those who are surely listening to our conversation.”
“I’ve got some questions,” I said.
“And I probably have answers,” he said. “But I have no intention of giving them.”
He hung up.
Okay, Peters, I said to myself. In about five or ten minutes the FBI is going to come through the front door, sit you down, and want to know what that telephone conversation was about.
There was a good chance Toddhunter was telling the truth, that he would let Violet and Shelly go. But there was also a better chance that he wouldn’t.
Gunther was in the hall now. I told him quickly about the phone call, and he told me that he would reveal none of our conversation with Jacklyn Wright to the FBI.
There was a knock at the front door. I was wrong about how long it would take the FBI to show up. I ran to my room, closed the door, and went to the window. Dash had finished his tuna and gone back outside. I followed him.
I’d gone out this way once before and almost broken my neck. I had to sit on the window ledge, lean over to the branch of a tree, get a good grip, and swing my legs around the thick branch. Then I had to shimmy down toward the trunk and make my way to the ground, finding branches that would hold my weight.
It was harder this time than it had been the one before. The last time I had been three years younger and not suffering from a sore shoulder, a stitched scalp, and assorted bruises afforded temporary relief by Olivia’s liniment. I didn’t look down. It wasn’t the height that worried me. It was the possibility of seeing a couple of well-dressed men patiently waiting.
I got to the trunk of the tree. Dash was sitting on a branch, watching me with interest. He got more interested when my hand slipped and I almost fell. I grabbed for anything, got a handful of leaves, and pulled myself back to safety. Dash was no longer interested. He dropped to a lower branch and then to the ground.
I made it to the ground, too, and looked up expecting to see someone at my window, but there was no one there. I ran past the big garage in the yard and went over a low fence into the neighbor’s yard. I stepped into a victory garden with a patch of tomatoes. I managed to keep from stepping on the tomatoes and made my way around the house to the street.
There was a big dark car parked in front of Mrs. Plaut’s, but there was no driver. The FBI was still inside looking for me. The Crosley was parked half a block away. I dashed for it, got in, and made a tight U-turn. Even if the agents had been in their car, they couldn’t have made the turn without some skillful maneuvering.
I was gone and I kept driving. My Crosley was too easy to spot if the FBI at Mrs. Plaut’s came looking. I didn’t stop till I got to the Melrose Grotto at 5507 Melrose. I went in, ordered a grilled cheese and a beer, got change for a dollar, and went to the pay phone near the door.
The phone rang a dozen times before Grant picked up the phone. I didn’t know if his phone was tapped, but it probably was.
“It’s Peters,” I said.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“A lot,” I said. “Can you meet me at the same place we met the first night? Don’t mention the name.”
“When?”
“When can you get there?” I asked.
“I’ve got to be at the studio for a meeting,” he said.
“Will seven be all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “But someone might want to keep you company.”
“I’ll come alone,” he said. “Seven.”
“Seven,” I confirmed and hung up.
If Grant was being tailed and couldn’t manage to shake it, I would need a different game plan. I wasn’t sure what it would be.
I was pretty certain the second call I made wouldn’t be tapped. It was to my brother at the Wilshire station. I talked to a desk sergeant whose voice I didn’t recognize and got put through to Phil, who said quietly, “Where are you?”
“I’m about to have a grilled cheese and a beer.”
“The FBI wants to talk to you.”
“I know,” I said. “I promised to call you if I found my friend Joe. I found him.”
Silence from my brother, so I went on.
“There’s a problem. He’s got Shelly and Violet. He says he’ll let them go if I don’t tell the FBI or police where he is.”
“Where is he?”
“Phil, I …”
“He threatened to kill my wife and kids,” Phil said. “He’ll pay for that. It’s not a cop thing, it’s a personal one. Besides he’s a goddamn Nazi. The FBI gets him and they lock him up, treat him nice, let him give information for favors, and when the war is over, they let him walk. I don’t want him walking, Tobias.”
“I’m going there to get Shelly and Violet out,” I said. “When they’re safe, do what you want. I’ll give you the address if you promise not to go there till eleven tonight. If I don’t have them out by then, I won’t be getting them out.”
“You have my word,” Phil said.
“Good enough.”
I gave him the address.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“No, you?”
“Ruth’s going back in the hospital Monday,” he said angrily. “I don’t think she’ll be coming out this time.”
“What can I do?” I asked.
“Come over this weekend. Bring Anita.”
“Sunday,” I said. “We’ll bring the food if I’m not in a federal prison.”
“Sunday’ll be fine.”
I hung up, and moved to the bar, where I ate my sandwich, drank my beer, and listened to Woody Herman on the jukebox. There weren’t many customers at the Grotto this early. It was kind of odd to feel the dark room swinging to the music with no one jitterbugging or even listening, except me and maybe the bartender, who looked as if what he was whistling was not necessarily what the Woodchoppers were playing.
There were a lot of things I could do now. I could go take a look at Toddhunter’s place and see if I could get in. However, he would be looking for visitors and I’d probably be pretty easy to spot on this sunny day.
I could take in an afternoon movie, but there was nothing I really wanted to see. So I headed for Riverside Drive, took it to Griffith Park Drive, and parked in the zoo parking lot. Griffith Park is a 3,761-acre slice of hilly land on the easternmost part of the Santa Monica mountains. The park had originally been part of Rancho Los Feliz. It had been donated to the city in 1898 by its last owner, Colonel Griffith J. Griffith.
I walked up one of the low hills on the zoo grounds and went for my favorite spot, the large primate cages. Two gorillas were having their lunch when I reached them. Both were seated, delicately selecting vegetables from a pile on the floor of the cage.
The larger gorilla looked up at me, half a head of lettuce sticking out of his mouth. His eyes met mine. We were kindred spirits. At least, that’s what I thought.
When there were no other visitors around, I talked to the gorillas or the chimps. The gorillas paid more attention. I leaned on the railing and looked through the bars.
“I’ve had a hell of a day,” I told the big gorilla.
He kept eating, but he looked at me intelligently. I took it as a sign that he didn’t mind if I continued.
“Someone tried to kill me,” I said. “Someone is threatening to kill a couple of my friends. A Nazi. I mean the guy holding them who tried to kill me is a Nazi.”
“That’s how you got all scratched up?” came a raspy voice at my side.
“Yeah.”
The gorilla found a banana and delicately peeled it, still looking at me.
“You think you had a bad day,” came a raspy voice again.
A thin woman in a cloth coat too warm for the afternoon had moved up to the railing without my seeing her. Her hair was white and wild. She had clear light blue eyes and a smooth face. I couldn’t tell how old she was. She clutched a big blue purse to her chest.
“I slept in the park, a little shed behind the Greek Theater,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just nodded and went back to looking at the gorilla. He was now staring at the thin woman.
“Look at them,” she said. “Place to sleep every night. Someone feeds ’em. Don’t have to work, worry about where the next meal is coming, where to bed down.”
“They give up their freedom for that,” I said.
She cackled.
“Put me in a cage with a place to sleep and three squares and you can come and talk to me whenever you like about Nazis trying to kill you.”
