Better Dead (21 page)

She shook her head, the dark golden hair bouncing off her shoulders. “No. Never.”

“But if I deliver new evidence and witnesses for Julius and Ethel, and they get a new trial—”

“The investigation starts all over again.”

The Fatima was fuming; me, too.

“You know,” I said, “I can be a little dim sometimes. And I have an Achilles' heel, which can be accessed by somebody like you through my fly. You weren't Nora to my Nick, honey—you were Mata to my very stupid Harry. A spy all the way.”

She shook her head again, something like embarrassment coloring her expression. “Just keeping an eye on you, that's all.”

“No, it was more than that. You were sending me on wild-goose chases. You knew those Knickerbocker Village interviews were a waste of time. You knew that poor nice illiterate lady who gave birth to Julius Rosenberg didn't know a goddamn fucking thing. We'd just sit there eating macaroons, keeping me occupied. Boy, you must have soiled your panties when that console table turned up.”

“Stop it.”

“What did you have lined up for me next? Grant's Tomb? A day trip to the Statue of Liberty? And what, shove me out a hole in Lady Liberty's crown like in a Hitchcock picture?”

“We can give you ten thousand dollars.”

“Try fifty thousand.”

She drew in smoke slowly, let it out the same way. “I'll have to talk to some people, but I think that can be arranged.”

“So then you're tied to the Soviets,” I said, thinking out loud. “You're not just the American Communist Party, you're out of the Russian branch office. Doing Moscow's bidding. It's a cinch you and the other small-time spies couldn't raise fifty grand. Not when fucking David Greenglass sells atomic secrets for five hundred bucks!”

She stayed in business mode. “Do you accept the offer, assuming I can—”

“You and your comrades, here and abroad, want the Rosenbergs dead, all right,” I said, talking as quickly as it was coming together in my head. “But not just to protect the rest of his espionage ring, no. You and your comrades, and Moscow, too, need to keep secret the direct ties between the American Communist Party and the Soviets. Think of the red meat you'd be throwing McCarthy and the other Commie hunters and haters if they learned that for
years
the Russians have recruited their U.S. spies from
your
ranks. That's called treason, honey. And all they got the Rosenbergs on was conspiracy. And look where they sit. And where they're
going
to sit.”

Her expression was cold but the dark eyes had hurt in them. “Do you care, Nathan? Really care? About anything but money?”

“I care about my son. Yes, I have a son, and an ex-wife, and fifty grand would cover a lot of alimony. But if I were Julius Rosenberg, I would have sold out all of you well-meaning idiots for my kid. A long time ago.”

Her eyebrows went up. “I believe fifty thousand
is
possible. That's of course tax-free. You would make a report to the Hammett committee on anything you like … with the exception of tonight's discovery.”

I stabbed out the cigarette and grinned at her through the smoke. “That's what brought you out from behind your mask, isn't it, Natalie? That little table could change everything. Including lead to a new trial and the investigation that would come with it. But tell me, honey—why arrange a meeting for me with Ruth Greenglass?”

She said nothing.

“Maybe you figured I'd find my way to Ruth on my own,” I said, thinking out loud again, “and you preferred being there when I talked to her, sitting right between us, reminding her with your presence that there are other comrades around who wouldn't want her cooperating with me in any fashion.”

One eyebrow went up. “So your answer is ‘no,' then?”

“Hell. The kicker just came to me.”

“Really.”

I got to my feet. “Two brave martyrs, one a helpless housewife—what mileage international Communism could get out of that! The movement is better off with the Rosenbergs dead.”

“Don't go!”
she said. Louder than seemed necessary.

I heard the door open and I was backing away from the table as they came out from the storeroom.

Three of them, skinny, scrawny, bearded, in dark sweaters and dungarees and sandals, and maybe that was to fit in with the Bohemian crowd or possibly they really were part of that bunch. They were positioned side by side like a modest firing squad, tallest at left, shortest at right, a stair-step effect that was almost funny.

But there in that underlit part of the gallery they also displayed something decidedly unfunny—the kind of glittery glowing eyes that come out of the dark at you when you walk down the wrong alley. Little eyes that go with gnashing teeth and claws.

The short one said, “You come with us now. Not gonna be any trouble.”

Why was the smaller one always the spokesman?

All three stair-step comrades were pointing guns at me. Dark compact automatics. Wouldn't you know it? Makarovs. Russian pistols in American hands.

Now I knew why Natalie had taken me to see Ruth. At Sophie Rosenberg's, she'd called for backup to meet us at the gallery. To wait in the storeroom till she'd made her pitch to my baser instincts.

My head was spinning now.
Had the bitch put something in the beer?
But I'd only had a sip or two. Not poison—she wouldn't want me to die here; just sedate me, so I could be more easily moved.

“Go on and take him,” she said softly, unhappily. “He doesn't carry a gun.”

So it surprised her and them when I dove into a patch of darkness between spotlighted paintings and got the nine-millimeter out from under my arm and orange and blue blossomed in an abstract image but in a very concrete way put a bullet in the short one's forehead. The guy in the middle, getting more than he bargained for, turned and went running toward the door in back and I shot him the same way. In the back. He arched as if someone were throwing him roses from a box seat, then fell forward with a floor-rattling thud.

The tall one was already running at me, charging and yelling his wordless war cry, shooting as he came; how many future masterpieces he ruined, I won't hazard a guess, but I rolled across the aisle and into another strip of darkness and when he adjusted his footing, slowing to face me, two bullets punched him in the face, sending a splattery spontaneous spray of red and white and gray and green dripping onto the wall.

“There's your Pollock,” I said to her.

I must have sounded a little crazy because she went running toward the back, then sudden-stopped at the fallen man, dead from his own doomed break for it, and she was down there snatching the gun out of his hand when I said, “
Don't,
Natalie!”

But she had the gun now and thrust its nose my way, her eyes big and wild in a face white with only that splash of red across her mouth and she fucking made me do it, crouched as she was I couldn't go for a leg and I was no damn trick shot, anyway. The two slugs caught her in the chest, shook her like the naughty child she was, and she fell over her comrade, draped there like a flag dropped in battle.

 

CHAPTER

12

The men in dark suits and dark hats came in quickly, three of them, with guns in one hand and identification wallets open in the other.

“Mr. Heller, put your weapon down! Government agents!”

This came from the one in front, a blandly handsome man about thirty, his cheeks flushed.

Their guns appeared to be nine-millimeters, similar to my own, which I lowered. The odds were against me and anyway I knew feds when I saw them.

He continued coming quickly my way, as if following his gun and ID, while the other two were at the door, one talking to the other, a Negro, issuing him instructions I couldn't hear, then getting a nod in return as the colored agent slipped outside, I guessed to stand guard. Then the fed walked toward us, I thought to join us, but instead began checking the bodies.

“Are you all right, Mr. Heller?” the man in charge asked. For a change he was the tallest of three. His eyes were blue and his rosy cheeks enlivened a very Caucasian complexion. He looked like he'd be as comfortable on a surfboard as in a business suit. When did feds get so young?

My ears were ringing from the close-quarters gunfire and my nose rebelled at the smell of cordite mixed with the sewer stench of bodies voiding their bladders and bowels at death. I was dizzy and the abstract paintings were moving, coming to life, swimming in their spotlights.

“I'm fine,” I said unconvincingly. “They gave me a drugged beer, but I only had a few sips. Some kind of sedative, but the adrenaline's fighting it off.”

“I don't need you to tell me what happened here. Just wait a moment.”

“Okay.”

He called to the one who'd been checking the bodies. “Fatalities?”

“All four, sir,” he called, kneeling over Natalie's remains. He was even younger, though his features had a sharpness his bland-faced superior's didn't.

I said to the man in charge, “Could I have a better look at that ID of yours?”

“Certainly.”

He held it up but didn't hand it to me.

I don't think I could recover his name under hypnosis, because my eyes went directly to the bold “CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY” over the curving “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” superimposed under the agency's bald-eagle seal. The face on the ID matched that of the agent patiently dealing with me.

“All right?” he asked pleasantly.

“Fine,” I said.

He took my gun from a hand that was barely hanging on to it. “You'll get this back. We need it for matching up bullets and various forensics concerns. Do you know where the Waldorf is?”

“I'm … I'm staying there.”

“Not the hotel. The restaurant.”

I said I'd been there but I was a little turned around. He reminded me that it was just off the intersection of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. It would be a short cab ride or half an hour if I felt like walking it. I was to take a table in a corner if possible, and wait.

“For what?”

“My superior,” he said. “Listen, you need to go. We have to deal with this scene and do some cleanup.”

Maybe you think you would have asked why they were helping me like this. Trust me—you wouldn't have.

“Fine. What about the cops?”

“In this situation, we are the cops. You're clear, just do as I say.”

As he said. Not as he asked.

He said, “My superior is Agent Edward Shepherd. Got that?”

“Edward Shepherd. How I will know him?”

“He won't be a Bohemian. You may have to wait an hour or even more. Understood?”

“Yeah.”

As I went out into the cool night, I passed the Negro agent who was dealing with two irritated uniformed cops, one quite a bit older than the other. The cops weren't happy when I ignored them and walked away from the gallery, but the agent held them back and, as promised, dealt with them.

*   *   *

No one knew why, some years ago, a respectable chain of cafeterias decided to set up shop in the Bohemian heart of Greenwich Village. And for almost as long, the Waldorf had been better known as the Waxworks, thanks to fluorescent lighting that cast a yellow pall on its patrons, echoed by peeling yellow wallpaper. The darker yellow tile floors, ironically enough, had not seen wax in memory.

The clientele this time of night was mostly drinking coffee, and a good number were drunk, some extravagantly so as artists and poets and musicians sang their own praises and bemoaned the shortcomings of their lessers. These were self-defined outcasts, their attire at once striking and shabby, drab and outlandish. The clatter of dishes and the ding of the cash register tried unsuccessfully to make music of it all, but the effect was that any private conversation here could stay that way.

Like everybody else, I had coffee, which entitled me to my own little piece of real estate for as long as I could make it last—refills were a nickel, a tactic designed to encourage customer turnover that didn't seem to be working.

Perhaps I looked more respectable than other potential table hogs because the cashier, a pleasant if hard-looking fortyish brunette in a hairnet, let me in on a secret: If I needed the restroom, I should ignore the “Out of Order” sign. That was just there to keep bums and drunks from wandering in and using the facilities. The way to tell the bums and drunks from the rest of the clientele, apparently, was that they weren't drinking coffee.

The tables were small square slabs of something pretending to be wood. I found one in a corner, as directed. I had walked here. Or more like sleepwalked, a numb shell-shocked soldier who had paused at an all-night drugstore to buy some smokes, having left the Fatimas behind with Natalie.

I was halfway through my third Lucky Strike when the taste turned foul and I lost the impulse. The combat mood had faded, replaced by a sick feeling that made even the coffee hard to take. I had killed four people tonight. Three men whose names I didn't even know. A beautiful young woman I'd taken to bed and for whom I had a certain affection. I began to weep.

Apparently this was typical behavior at the Waldorf Cafeteria, because no one seemed to notice, much less care. And I got hold of myself quickly before the rough paper napkins sanded my face off.

He came in like an apparition of normalcy, someone who'd wandered off Wall Street and stumbled into Cairo. His suit was gray sharkskin, his tie a darker gray, his hat darker yet with a jaunty green feather. He was one of those medium men—medium height, build, weight—but he lacked the anonymity of features that so many CIA and FBI agents wore like camouflage. Boyish with a twinkle in his dark blue eyes, he smiled a dimpled gap-toothed greeting as if this were a reunion of two fraternity brothers.