December '41, page 25
Barty said, “How do you want to play this?”
“I go in alone … like I’m lost. You get out and stretch your legs, take a walk, check out that barn back there. Look for the green Dodge, plate number 76 B 2344.”
“Bartholomew in a barn?” Barty tugged at his bow tie. “The things I do.”
“If you see it, come in and say you’ve figured out how to get there. I’ll ask for the Richfield Beacon Tavern. It’s the big landmark around here.”
“Why not ask for Sam Holly? That might get a rise out of them.”
“Just act casual … and be smart.”
“My dear, a man can’t be casual and smart.” Barty adjusted his pocket square. “He’s either one or the other.”
Stella stepped into the store. Two aisles divided by shelves … a wall of tools hung for display … a woodstove puffing away … a glass counter … an American flag, photos, long guns for sale.
Ma Gobel sat behind the counter, reading a magazine. The radio was tuned to some Western twang-and-wail station. A pint bottle was open on the counter. She said, “Afternoon, pretty lady. What can I do you for?”
“I’m a little lost.”
“Ain’t we all?” Ma put a cap on the bottle and put the bottle in her pocket.
Stella approached the counter. “Could you direct me to the Beacon Tavern?”
Ma raised the shade on the window behind her and pointed to the Richfield tower. “Just head thataway.”
“Ah, yes, I see it now. Thanks.”
“Nobody knows Barstow better than ol’ Ma.”
Stella turned, fumbled with a cigarette to buy time, then decided that getting a rise out of this old lady might be a good idea after all. So she asked, “Could you tell me where to find the office of Samuel Holly?”
“Sam Holly?” Ma’s eyes narrowed down. “Just who exactly is askin’?”
Yes, thought Stella. They knew him. He’d been here. And not to buy a hammer.
The bell jangled, and Barty stuck his head in. “Oh, Stella darling—”
Ma gave Barty a scowl.
Barty came down the aisle on the right. “I figured out where we’re going, dear.” He jerked his head toward the side window. Take a look at that.
Stella saw the green Dodge coupe swing by the building, leaving a trail of dust. She tracked it right into the barn.
Ma Gobel followed Stella’s gaze and said, “Lost, are you? Lookin’ for Sam Holly, are you? Lookin’ for my green Dodge coupe, too?”
Stella said, “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll be going now.”
Outside, Gobel’s pickup truck was stopping, a door was slamming, a big guy in overalls was getting out.
Barty said, “Yes, honey. It’s time for us to go.”
“Yes, honey,” said Ma, aping Barty. “What do you two think? I’m some kind of goddamn old drunk you can come in here and pump for information?”
Stella backed down the aisle.
“You better get goin’, goddamn you,” said Ma.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Stella, as if talking to an angry watchdog.
And her tone set off the old hag, whose hands dropped behind the counter and came up with a shotgun. “Thank you, my ass.”
At the sight of the ugly double barrels, Barty cried, “Watch out!”
Stella hit the floor.
Barty came from the other side, clearing his Beretta at the same time.
Ma swung the gun toward him, and a double-barreled blast shook the shingles of Gobel’s Guns and Hardware. A spray of buckshot smeared the room from one wall to the other. It tore Barty’s chest open and knocked him back against a barrel of nails. It struck the tools hanging above Stella’s head and sent pellets pinging everywhere.
A few even hit the big guy in overalls, who was bursting through the front door. He staggered, then lurched toward Stella.
She began to crawl backward. But she could hear Ma behind her, reloading and mumbling, “You lyin’ bitch, you think you can come in here and spy on us? What are you? Some kind of Jew?” The spent shells hit the floor. “Lyin’ and lookin’ and askin’ if we know the biggest snoop in Barstow. And gawkin’ at our new car like we stole it or somethin’…” One shell clicked into the gun, then the other.
The big guy shouted, “What the hell is this, Ma?”
“This bitch is lookin’ for Sam Holly, like we killed him.”
The son grabbed a ball-peen hammer from the wall display.
The mother snapped the shotgun shut.
Stella wondered which would get her—buckshot or ball-peen? She rolled into a sitting position, looked up the aisle and down. To her right: son brandishing hammer. To her left: mother aiming shotgun.
The son said, “Don’t shoot, Ma. You already hit me once.”
Ma hesitated.
That gave Stella time to dig into her pocket and snap the pistol off her thigh.
The son raised his hammer.
He didn’t see the gun, but Stella had an angle on him. So she shot him through the fabric of her skirt. Then she waited for Ma to blast her.
But a pistol shot cracked from the other aisle. A small-caliber hole appeared in the middle of Ma’s forehead and she dropped like a sack of feed.
The son, staggered from the first shot, said “What the—” and looked toward the other aisle, toward Barty, who was bleeding into the floorboards but just alive enough to hit his target. This gave Stella the chance to pull her pistol clear, point, and fire again, right into the son’s belly. He took the shot like a slap in the face, stumbled a bit, scowled, then lurched toward her.
She crab-walked backward, pushing frantically with her feet and hands, back and back, away from the hammer, back toward the glass counter. When she bumped against it and could go no farther, she raised the pistol and fired again and hit the big guy in the belly again, but he kept coming.
So she fired again, and the fourth shot stopped him. He raised the hammer but wobbled where he stood, as if the hammer suddenly was so heavy it was pulling him over backward. She put another shot into him, and he finally fell.
Then it was silent in Gobel’s Guns and Hardware.
From the corner of her eye, Stella saw Barty, propped against the nail barrel, his hand holding his pistol, his head flopped to one side. Blood was seeping out of a dozen holes in his chest. The light was going out of his eyes.
Then a pair of two-tone shoes appeared beside her.
Sam Holly? She looked up … and saw another stranger. Another son?
This one was holding a tommy gun. He said, “Who the fuck are you?”
And that was all he said.
Barty had one more shot in him.… right between the eyes.
* * *
KEVIN CUSACK COUNTED HIS money. With the hundred that Dilly had given him, he had over three hundred dollars. So he picked the Mayflower Hotel on Connecticut, near Dupont Circle. Nobody would be expecting the Hollywood Nazi in that high-toned D.C. palace. But first, he went to Garfinckel’s and bought some things—underwear, clean shirts, a shoulder bag to hold his new stuff and his dirty stuff, too.
He’d never shown identification in a hotel, but two weeks after Pearl Harbor, the deskmen were likely to be asking. Would they be looking for a guy named Kevin Cusack? He signed the register as Kevin Carroll, Boston, Massachusetts, scrawling the last name the way he usually scrawled his own.
The desk clerk looked at the register. “Very good, Mr. Ca … Ca…”
“Carroll.” Like a lot of Boston Irish sons, Kevin had done construction work, so he had a union card. He flashed it to show the scrawled signature and the oversized “C” that he always wrote. Then he made up a story about coming for a special meeting of the International Laborers’ and General Construction Workers’ Union.
The clerk gave the card a quick look. “Mr. Carroll, yes. Room 812.” Then he explained that Mr. Carroll shouldn’t be surprised by the wartime measures in the hotel. There were air-raid sirens on every floor, lookouts on the roof, and the barbershop had been turned into a first-aid station, “So I’m afraid you’ll have to shave in your room.”
Kevin didn’t care. He was happy to step into a quiet space that wasn’t starting and stopping and jerking with every terrain change and gear shift.
First, he called the front desk and asked how long it would take to get a tweed sport coat and wool trousers sponged and pressed. Overnight? That would be fine.
Then he showered. For fifteen minutes, he let the hot water steam him and clean him and renew him.
Then he put on a hotel bathrobe and flopped onto the bed. He realized he was starving. A room-service burger and beer would be just the thing. So he reached for the phone, but after almost a week of sleeping upright in trucks and buses, he was as tired as a man could get. Before his hand reached the phone, it dropped and he fell dead asleep.
* * *
IN THE WILLARD, VIVIAN pulled back the sheer and looked out at Pennsylvania Avenue. Martin checked his watch: four twenty. The sun would set in half an hour. When it did, he wanted to be standing where he could study the light and see the terrain.
But Vivian said, “Let’s order room service.”
“Mrs. Milton, you are growing too fond of your luxuries.”
She dropped onto the sofa and kicked off her shoes. It was a big hotel room, maybe the biggest she’d ever been in. “You’ve spoiled me.”
He watched her lay back, tempting him, but he wanted her upright. So he handed her the waitress flats. “I need to stretch my legs after all that driving. A nice walk, then dinner in your favorite Washington restaurant. You name it.”
She slipped on the flats and said, “Do you see these shoes? Women who wear shoes like this don’t eat in fancy restaurants. So … you name it.”
“I’ve heard of the Old Ebbitt Grill. We’ll go there. But let’s go … now.”
Out of the hotel, they took a right on Pennsylvania, which ran into Fifteenth at the eastern edge of the Executive Area. Directly in front of them was the Treasury Building, columned and corniced like a Greek temple.
He turned her south on Fifteenth. At Treasury Place, a pair of soldiers stood in front of a little house that guarded the entrance to the president’s grounds. Probably new since December 7, thought Martin. They kept walking with the evening traffic, down to E Street, which separated the South Lawn from the Ellipse, the fifty-acre open field between the White House and the Washington Monument.
He hoped to get onto the South Lawn on Christmas Eve. But for now, he’d settle for a look through the fence. When he heard the boom of the evening gun from Fort Myer, just across the river, he picked up his pace.
Vivian scrambled to keep up. “Say, what’s the big hurry?”
“I’ve never seen the White House at dusk,” he said. “I’ve heard it … it’s—”
And there it was, tinted rose in the glow of the setting sun.
“—beautiful. Just beautiful.”
The famous view reached across the South Lawn, past the fountain, all the way to the White House Portico. A small group had gathered on the sidewalk with cameras and appropriate awe. Even in wartime, or especially in wartime, this vision of American stability and continuity had a powerful resonance.
“So … so beautiful,” he repeated.
She saw a strange look in his eye, as if he were seeing a majestic mountain. And there was something in his voice, too, an almost erotic excitement. She’d heard it the night before in the big double bed in the Gettysburg Hotel, when she’d rolled a leg over his waist and slid down onto him.
“How far away do you think it is?” she asked.
“Six hundred and seventy-five feet. Two hundred and twenty-five yards. Two hundred and five meters.”
“You know exactly?”
“I could tell you in inches, I have dreamed of this sight so often.”
Sometimes, she thought, he said strange things. She hooked her arm into his. “Well, we’ve seen it, and I’m starving. Let’s go.”
He told her he wanted to wait a while longer to watch the dark come down. So they did, another fifteen minutes, until the dusk was gone and the lights were twinkling in the mansion. Then the lights disappeared. Someone inside was pulling blackout curtains.
And Martin Browning knew he could make the shot.
Franklin Roosevelt was a dead man.
* * *
CHIEF AGENT DICK HOOD didn’t argue. He even authorized a private flight from Burbank to Barstow. Around 4:00 P.M. Pacific, a local patrol car brought Frank Carter to Gobel’s. The wind was still blowing. The dust was still swirling. The sign was still squeaking.
And Stella Madden was sitting in her car, staring into space.
At Carter’s approach, she shook her head, as if to say, Not yet. No talk yet.
So Carter went inside. The bodies lay where they’d fallen. Highway Patrol detectives were working the scene. A camera flashed above the body of Ma Gobel.
The police chief—fifties, red-faced, shaken—glanced at Carter’s FBI badge and shook his head. “I knew the Gobels were America Firsters, but Nazis?”
“The Nazi we’re after was driving a green Dodge coupe,” said Carter.
“It’s in the barn. We ran the VIN.” The chief looked at his notepad. “Registered to a Harold King of Glendale, California, legally signed over to the Gobels, who legally registered it this afternoon. Brought the car back from the DMV while Miss Madden and her assistant were here. I don’t know what started the shootin’, but—”
“They were looking for Sam Holly,” said Carter.
“The High Desert Houndstooth.” The chief motioned to Barty. “That poor bastard might still be alive if he knew we found Holly’s car up in the hills … burned right down to the rims, with a blackened body behind the wheel, a shoeless blackened body.”
“Shoeless?” asked Carter.
The chief pointed to the two-toned wingtips on the feet of Richard Gobel.
“What was Holly doing up in the hills?” asked Carter.
“Snooping at the Gobel target range, it looks like.”
“Did you pick up any cartridges?”
“Nah. Folks been shootin’ up there for so long, there’s thousands of cartridges. But we did pick up some funny pottery.” The captain took a piece from his pocket and handed it to Carter. “Looks like a Christmas angel with its head shot off.”
“A Hummel,” said Carter, almost to himself. “It’s him.”
“He made this shot from two hundred yards. Uphill.”
“Jesus,” said Carter.
“He got Jesus, too.” The chief pulled another shard from his pocket, the face of a smiling baby, the smiling baby.
Another cop came from the inner office with a pile of papers. Carter flipped through them. The usual Bund stuff: mimeographed Nazi speeches, flyers, posters. Hooray for Hitler. America First. Guys in hoods marching beneath crosses and flags.
Carter asked, “Did you go through that Dodge coupe yet?”
“Nothing special. An owner’s manual. A receipt for an oil change. An old road map with the edges singed, like somebody threw it into a fire or somethin’, then thought better of it.” The chief laid them out on the countertop.
Carter opened the map. One side showed the state of California with an insert of L.A. Pencil routes traced from Glendale to Deutsches Haus, to downtown Burbank, to the Murphy Ranch, and all the way to the Long Beach docks.
On the other side: a map of the entire country, and a pencil line traced along Route 66 through Barstow, Kingman, Amarillo, Winona, Flagstaff, then Gallup, New Mexico, Oklahoma City, and St. Louis, where the line broke off and followed Route 50 right into Washington.
So there it was. The Nazi bastard was going to Washington, and he forgot his map, or he tried to burn it, but somebody rescued it from the fire because maps cost money. Kevin Cusack’s instinct had been true. Carter’s hunch had been a winner.
Then Carter sensed Stella beside him.
She’d come in quietly and stood staring at Barty. Her eyes were empty, her voice flat. She said, “I want one thing, Frank. If you go after him, I go with you. If that Nazi bastard didn’t stop here, Barty would be alive.”
Carter showed her the map. “He drew us a picture. Washington, D.C.”
“We can fly,” she said. “Eighteen hours, three stops, three hundred bucks a person if you can get seats. If your boss won’t pay, I will.”
SATURDAY,
DECEMBER 20
JUST BEFORE 8:00 A.M., the Stauers stepped from a taxicab in front of Penn Station, in New York.
Helen gazed up at the neoclassical majesty of the columned façade, then turned to admire the Empire State Building.
Her husband said, “I know what you’re thinking. If we had transatlantic bombers, they could use that tower as their aiming point.”
“We will do more damage on Christmas Eve than the whole Luftwaffe.”
He leaned in for a kiss.
She put a finger up. “My lipstick.”
“But you look ravishing in your Prussian-blue outfit, and—”
She tapped his lips with her fingertip. “After we kill him.”
“Anticipation is half the pleasure.”
They looked like holiday weekenders heading for the Congressional Limited. But Helen had packed a Mauser Karabiner 98k and a 4× Zeiss telescopic sight, model ZF39. The gun was forty-one inches long and barely fit in her oversized suitcase. In her purse, she carried a weapon that was just as lethal in her hands—a hypodermic syringe. Wilhelm wore his Walther P38 under his arm and a stiletto in a sheath at his wrist.
* * *
KEVIN CUSACK OPENED THE inner panel of his door in the Mayflower. His clothes were hanging, cleaned and covered in protective paper. Even in wartime, small services continued, small luxuries comforted, and small conveniences made life a little more civilized. He put on his wool trousers and starched white shirt and felt like himself.
He ordered room-service eggs and bacon with grits. Washington was a Southern city, so you always got grits. Then he went to work on the Washington phone book. The room didn’t have a Maryland book, so Stanley Smith was his first target. But in a population of 650,000, there were a lot of Smiths. And what if the phone was in his mother’s name? Did they even have a phone?
