December '41, page 26
Beyond that, what could Stanley Smith offer that might lead Kevin toward Vivian Kellogg? Would she even want his help? Or did she already know that her husband was a murderer? And what else did she know?
Kevin counted five Stanley Smiths. After breakfast, he called them all. Two “not homes” and three who were definitely not Pullman porters.
Up next? His morning call to Los Angeles. But he wasn’t giving away his refuge to phone-tapping feds just yet. He’d find a pay phone. And maybe, somewhere in his memory, he’d find the name of that market where Stanley took his mother on Saturdays.
* * *
MARTIN BROWNING AWOKE WHEN Vivian rolled out of bed. He watched her walk to the window and pull back the drape, letting the sunshine frame her blond hair and the curve of her hips. She was a vision, whether clothed and lipsticked at the Old Ebbitt Grill, or naked and innocent in the bright morning light.
The sight of her transported him, as he’d been transported on the day after Pearl Harbor, when Koppel’s Lincoln-Zephyr reached the Pacific Coast Highway. And his thoughts were much the same: Who could know a moment like this and not believe that all man’s troubles might be soothed, or even solved, by the sight of a beautiful ocean or a naked woman limned in sunshine? Who could hope for more in life, after all the wars were fought and all the battles won, than to awaken to this?
He didn’t know if this was love, but it was more than lust, because his thoughts weren’t purely sexual. Then she leaned forward, as if to look at something down in the street, and those thoughts spiraled quickly toward lust.
She looked over her shoulder. “You like what you see, don’t you?”
The sheet across his midsection was rising.
She gave her bottom a twitch and said, “Do I look like an imposter?”
“An imposter?”
She turned and leaned against the sill. “An imposter interfering with your operation?” She asked it playfully, but she wasn’t playing. And she’d broken the mood.
The sheet settled back. He could surrender to his anger or try to recover his lust. He swung his legs out of bed and went toward her, took her by the shoulders and kissed her and pressed against her. And in this, he wasn’t lying.
She stood on her toes. He dropped his hands to her bottom and lifted. She gripped his neck. He carried her back to the bed, where he planted his feet and drove himself into her, hiding his anger beneath his lust, burying his anger inside her, but she felt only the lust and answered with her own.
After their breathing had settled, she said, “So the operation will go forward?”
He’d had many women, but never had he allowed himself to feel like this about any of them, nor allowed any of them to talk to him like this. “My operation will bring me back to you on Christmas Eve, Vivian. That’s all you need to know.”
“So there is an operation? And the Diebolds?”
He rolled off her. “I’m a broker for seed producers, including the Diebolds.”
She knew nothing about brokering, nothing about the government’s interest in seed production, but she knew what she’d felt when she got into that car in Chicago. “Why was Diebold angry to see me?”
“He’s always angry. Angry when he nearly lost his business in the Depression. Angry that he had to work for bootleggers to keep it. Angry that he had to drive to Chicago to get us.” Martin jumped up and went to the bathroom. “It’s wartime, Vivian. People are angry. And you’re making me angry. I have business with the secretary of agriculture. That is the ‘operation.’”
“On a weekend?” she said.
“In wartime, there is no weekend.” He turned on the shower. Then he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist and came back into the bedroom.
She was sitting up with the covers pulled to her neck.
He sat on the edge of the bed. “I’ve brought you this far, haven’t I?”
“It’s been a bumpy ride, but yeah.”
He gave her leg a squeeze. “So trust me awhile longer.”
* * *
THE ATT OPERATOR ASKED if Agent Carter would accept charges from Sam Spade. A voice that wasn’t Carter’s said, “Yes.”
“Go ahead, please,” said the operator.
“This is Agent McDonald. Mr. Cusack?”
“Yes.” Kevin was hunched in a phone booth in Union Station.
“Agent Carter’s on his way to Washington. American Airlines. He’ll be there at six o’clock tomorrow morning. He’s booked into the Willard Hotel.” McDonald’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He says you’re to lie low until he arrives.”
Kevin remembered McDonald. He’d been on the raid at Deutsches Haus. But could he be trusted? Could Carter? Could anybody?
He said, “So the feds aren’t looking for me? Are the D.C. police?”
“We’ve planted a few stories to throw them off. We’ll try to protect you. I can’t make any promises.”
Kevin had seen the morning papers. They’d all run articles about the “Hollywood Nazi.” None of them were on the front page. But they kept the story alive, quoting Carter: “We think he’s heading for Boston. Train stations and bus stations from Providence to Portland are under surveillance.” If Carter was orchestrating this, thought Kevin, what was he after?
But that wasn’t what he asked. Instead, he said, “The Willard? On a government expense account?”
“Carter has a new girlfriend. She’s paying.”
“He’s bringing his girlfriend?”
“Some guys get all the luck.”
As soon as Kevin hung up, he thought of more questions: If Carter was coming with his girlfriend, was it an official FBI visit, or had he been canned? And if Carter was operating on his own hook, what did that mean for Kevin?
He peered through the door at the crowd of travelers. No one needed a telephone just then, so he stayed in the booth with the D.C. phone book and, more important, the books for Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties. He searched the name “Kellogg.” But after twenty minutes of calling and coming up empty, he realized he could dig all day and find nothing. Instead, he had to find that Negro porter.
He stepped out of the booth just as a pair of police approached. Act casual. Lean against the wall. Take the newspaper out of your pocket. Pretend to read. Hope they don’t ask you why you’re loitering.
Of all the Union Stations he’d seen, Washington’s was the most magnificent, a fitting crossroad of democracy, with an enormous barrel-vaulted ceiling and a mighty undercurrent of echoing sound. But even here, the cops were always on the lookout for shady characters around the phone banks … bookies, pimps, truck hijackers, and in this town, Republicans, too … or maybe Democrats.
But the cops went by with no more than a glance.
Kevin kept his nose in the paper a few minutes longer, just to be safe. He’d opened to the food advertisements. On one page was a logo: DGS, for District Grocery Stores, with the motto “The Owner Is Your Neighbor,” and specials on Corby Cake, “Pure as Mother Made It,” 59 cents, or Carnation Evaporated Milk, 10 cents. Then his eye tracked to the words “Shop the Eastern Market.”
That was it. That was where Stanley Smith had said he shopped on Saturdays with Mom.
Ten minutes later, Kevin walked down Seventh Street to the huge redbrick market building that had served Washingtonians since 1873.
Not even Japan’s march across the Pacific could dampen the spirits here on the weekend before Christmas. At one outdoor stall, they were selling wreaths and trees, at others handmade trinkets and toys. Salvation Army bells were ringing, and the shoppers, all coated and muffled in the chilly morning, pushed from one stall to the next.
Kevin “no, thanks”ed his way past hard-selling vendors, went by a bunch of guys warming their hands over a smoky barrel fire, and entered the main hall. The din rose with voices hawking oysters from the Chesapeake and home-cured bacon from Virginia and oranges and tangerines straight off the overnight train from Florida, male voices and female voices, and a choir singing Christmas carols, too.
It would be harder to find Stanley here than in the phone book, he thought, because half the shoppers were Negroes. A D.C. melting pot, it was. Still, Kevin walked the length of the hall, beneath shafts of sunshine slanting through the skylights, bought a cup of coffee, and took a seat at a table in the middle of the floor, from which he could view the whole concourse.
He’d wait an hour, then go for a walk, then come back for another hour. He had all day and didn’t have a better idea. So he waited and wondered at how far he—and the country—had traveled from the blissfully ignorant world of Saturday, December 6. Back then, he still had hopes of writing a movie for Errol Flynn, of bedding Sally Drake, of living the high life in the California sun. Now, the nation was at war and he was a fugitive from justice. And that was just how fast life could change.
It was enough to make a guy feel sorry for himself, make him want to roll over and give up, which he was thinking of doing until he noticed an older Negro woman, heavyset, in an ankle-length overcoat, and a man who looked like her son, weighted down with shopping bags.…
They worked their way from one stall to the next. And by the time they got close, Kevin was certain. He’d found his Pullman porter. And he liked the solicitous way that Stanley helped his mother and pulled cash from his pocket whenever she asked. A man who treated his mother so well was a man to trust.
Then he heard the mother say, “How about a shrimp and oyster gumbo for supper?”
“That be just fine, Mama.”
So Mama went to the seafood stall while her son stood in the middle of the floor and studied the chalkboard above the cheese vendor.
And Kevin said to Stanley’s back, “I’d love some of that broiled Lake Superior whitefish they serve on the Super Chief.”
Stanley’s head whipped around.
Kevin peered from under the scally cap. “I had the whitefish last Saturday.”
“You.” Stanley lowered his voice. “I don’t want nothin’ to do with you.”
Mrs. Smith came up behind her son. “Stanley, who you talkin’ to?”
“Nobody, Mama.”
Kevin popped up and removed his cap. “I’ve had the honor to ride in one of your son’s cars. Just complimenting him on the fine job he does, ma’am.”
“You’re so right, sir,” said Mama. “And ain’t it nice? They like what he done so much, they give him the whole Christmas season off, right on up to New Year’s.”
Stanley looked at Kevin and his eyes said, No, don’t tell my mama anything.
Mrs. Smith said, “Stanley, if we havin’ gumbo, we need okra.”
“Go buy it, Mama. I’ll be right along.” Then Stanley turned on Kevin. “There’s eyes everywhere. People watchin’ to see who I see. You the last person I want to see.”
“I didn’t kill her, Stanley.”
“I don’t care.”
“When you saw me in the observation car on Sunday morning, I’d been there all night, drunk as a skunk. Drunk and stupid.”
“Well, I ain’t stupid, and that’s what they been callin’ me in the papers, sayin’ how stupid I was to let that Kellogg off the train. I don’t like it one bit. That wife said she was pregnant and had to get home to her dyin’ mama on the Lake Shore Limited. Played me for a damn sucker.”
“I don’t think they ever took the Lake Shore, Stanley. I think they’re in Maryland. And I need to find them. I think it was Kellogg who killed Sally Drake.”
“Ain’t no proof of that.”
“Not yet, but ask yourself, would a decent man smack his wife hard enough to give her a shiner, especially if she was pregnant?”
“Men hittin’ women all the time. Men screwin’ women who ain’t their wives all the time. Men screwin’ women on trains all the time. If I worried about all of them, I couldn’t do my job.” Stanley looked over at the vegetable stand, where his mother was finishing up. “So get lost, mister.”
Kevin wrote his name and hotel phone number on a corner of the newspaper and gave it to Stanley. “Help me find them, so we can both clear our names.”
Stanley took the piece of paper. “I could be arrested just for talkin’ to you.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Like I told you, I don’t care.” Stanley pivoted away.
Kevin stood with the crowd bustling around him like a stream swirling over his rock. And he wished again that it was December 6.
* * *
IF MARTIN BROWNING COULD have chosen a place not to escape to after shooting the president, it would’ve been Annapolis. Here in the nursery of the U.S. Navy, thirty-five miles east of Washington, the war felt very close. Young men were finishing their studies early. Security around the Academy was tight. Armed guards were everywhere. But for a man who did things against the grain, this might be the best place to hide.
Vivian directed Martin down Duke of Gloucester Street, across the little bridge that spanned Spa Creek and over to Eastport, a workingman’s neighborhood of neat bungalows, close-built and modest. In one of them, on the corner of Chesapeake and Second, a cardboard Santa stood on a porch, waving: Come on in.…
Vivian said, “That’s it. Pull over.”
The weather had settled to a chilly gray, the kind of day that she always hated. And she hated being back, too. After three thousand miles of giving the performance of her life, her show was over, and she hated the empty feeling in her belly. She said, “I’ll take it from here.”
He said, “I’d like to meet your parents.” He wanted them to know what a nice guy he was, so that when he showed up on Christmas Eve, an hour after Roosevelt was dead, they wouldn’t suspect a thing.
They both got out, and Martin pulled her bags from the trunk.
The front door opened. A woman in her sixties stepped onto the porch, lit a cigarette, glanced at them, then looked more closely and said, “Kathy?”
“Hello, Mama.”
Mary Schortmann stepped off the porch. She was tall like her daughter but wore a bib apron and another thirty pounds around her midsection. Her hairnet didn’t quite hold her bun in place, and the holes on the sides of her shoes didn’t hold her bunions. She came over to the fence and studied them, as if convincing herself that she wasn’t seeing ghosts. Then she said, “Well, isn’t this a nice surprise?”
“Merry Christmas, Mama.”
“Oh, your dad’ll be so happy.” Mary Schortmann pushed open the little gate and after a moment, embraced her daughter.
For Vivian, the smell of her mother came rushing back, not the surface odors of food and Lucky Strikes and maybe a little afternoon nip, but something deeper, a sense more than a smell, of a small life lived in a small house with the shades pulled and the hopes dim, of a past wasted and a future invested in a pretty daughter whose beauty, like all beauty, was sure to flee. It took Vivian a moment to reach through all that and remember that no matter how happy she’d been to leave home, there really was comfort in coming back.
Then Mary Schortmann looked at Martin. “So Kathy, who’s your friend?”
“Call me Vivian, Ma. It’s my movie name. And this is Harold. He’s come to Washington to see the secretary of agriculture.”
“Is that a fact? My, my.”
Then a leathery little guy in a flannel shirt and stretched blue cardigan poked his head out the door. “Mary, who’s that?”
“Your daughter.”
Les Schortmann all but leaped across the lawn and threw his arms around her. “I always knew you’d come back, baby.”
“For Christmas, Dad. Just for Christmas.”
“And a happy Christmas it’ll be.” Her father beamed at her, then offered his hand to the man behind her. “Who’s your good-lookin’ friend?”
She introduced him. “He has business in Washington. But he’ll be back on Christmas Eve. Can he stay?”
“We’d be flattered,” said Les, “flattered right out of our shoes.”
Martin gave a big Harold Kellogg smile.
Vivian said, “Maybe you’ll take him for a Christmas boat ride, Pa.”
“Always gassed up and ready to go,” said Les. “I still do a bit of crabbin’ on the Kathy S.—that’s her name—” The father shot a loving look at his daughter.
Martin kissed Vivian on the cheek—a gentleman would not kiss a girl on the lips in front of her parents—and he got back in the car.
They watched him drive off, and Les Schortmann said, “Seems like a fine young man, even if I don’t see a wedding ring on your finger.”
“Now, Pa—”
“Don’t know what Johnny Beevers’ll say, but”—the father made a wave with a pipe—“your ma and me, we wasn’t married when I went off in ’17, and … well…”
She hooked her arm into his and said, “It’s great to be home.”
* * *
BACK IN WASHINGTON, MARTIN Browning changed hotels and identities. The Hay-Adams was perfectly sited, with a view across Lafayette Square to the White House. The new identity was pulled from his collection of fake IDs. He was now Nigel Hawkins, of Hawkins Imports, London and New York. He put on his blue suit, then the overcoat with the special lining and the gun in place, so he could practice moving with a fully assembled Mauser C96 under his coat. Then he headed out to meet his team.
Nobody was waiting where Nineteenth and Connecticut came together like spokes in a wheel. So he took the crosswalk onto Dupont Circle. A curving bench surrounded the fountain in the center. Shoppers were hurrying with packages and bundles. Others sat in the fading afternoon light. And a street-corner choir sang Christmas carols. Martin recognized “Joy to the World.” It sounded ironic and hopeful at the same time.
Then he noticed a woman sitting alone. She wore a Prussian-blue overcoat, matching hat, shoes. He said, in a British accent, “Merry Christmas.”
She said, “Merry in Connecticut, too.”
He came over and sat down. “Connecticut and Nineteenth.”
