A Despicable Profession (21 page)

“You think I can do such thing?”

“I don't want to think so Anna. But I don't know you very well.”

Anna gave me a defiant look and turned around and pulled her painter's smock up to her shoulders to reveal a pale naked back pocked with deep purple bruises and a semi-circular abrasion at the base of her neck. Leonid had pressed her face to the floor while he worked her over.

I had seen a lot worse, but it got to me. The methodic nature of it, like he'd been following one of those Arthur Murray dance floor diagrams. How miserably sick did you have to be to do that to your wife?

Anna lowered her painting smock to its proper place and turned to face me. I had an unforgivable, burn-in-hell-for-all-eternity pang of regret when she did that - shook her smock back in place before turning around. Anna wasn't wearing a brassiere. And I so wanted to see her breasts.

Yeah, I know. When did I say different? And now I was going to ask Anna to betray her husband and put herself in the crosshairs.

I couldn't do it. Not yet.

“Anna you must leave here. You must go away, you can't live like this. You must leave.” Anna hugged herself and looked at me, her eyes filled with tears and resignation. “I can help you. I can, I have money. I am rich
Amerikanski
!”

Anna didn't smile. She did pucker her lips a bit, as if considering.

“Do you have somewhere you can go? Someone who will shelter you, take you in?”

She scraped a tear from her cheek with her fist. When she spoke she was barely audible.

“I haf cousin, Sasha, who will take me.”

“Great, that's great. Where does Sasha live?” Anna inclined her head. “Where does she live, reside?” She frowned. I used the only Russian noun I knew. “Where is her
dacha
?”

This brought a fleeting smile and a starry gaze and three words, whispered, as if in prayer.

“New York City.”

I fought to keep my encouraging smile in place. New York. How in hell was I going to pull that off?

Anna noted my frozen smile and started in on her fingers again, strangling them. I don't know why that bothered me so much, but I would have moved mountains to keep Anna from strangling her pale delicately-tapered fingers purple.

“Yes Anna.
Da.
I will arrange for you to travel to New York City.”

Anna's muffled sobs and hiccupping thank you's were gratifying, but she had ceased her violent hand wringing, that was the main thing. I approached and took those glorious digits in mine and squeezed them, gently. She squeezed back, with a ferocity that shot bolts of pain up to my shoulders.

We were face to face now, blood pumping, untoward things begging to happen. I told myself not to misbehave and meant it and forgot it a second later. I bent down to kiss her. She backed away. I tasted why. Salty blood was streaming down my face.

I pressed the compress to my nose. Anna guided me to a chair, took hold of the compress and clamped down. I had to brace my feet to keep from sliding off the chair. Not a hundred pounds dripping wet yet strong as a stevedore. God only knew what horrors she had survived in wartime Russia. She was a woman to be reckoned with.

I sat still and waited for my blood to clot. The silence between us was easy, companionable. Ivan the cat slinked over and jumped on my lap. My eyelids drooped. Time to speak up.

“Anna I need your help now,” I said, my words echoing through the foggy chambers of my head. I stifled a yawn. “I need your help to...bring Leonid to justice, to show, to
beweisen
to my boss that Leonid is a
schlecht Mann.
Do you understand?”

Anna shook her head, then nodded just as quickly. “I know what you say, not what you ask.”

“What do you mean?”

“Leonid tells me nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I do not, even, to meet his family.”

Family? “I thought that Leonid's only living relative, his only family, was his
Mutter.”

Anna looked down at me with a curious intensity, then crossed to a dresser drawer and dug deep. She returned with a framed photograph, a professional portrait of two young children dressed in their Sunday best. A young boy with fine features holding his lace-swaddled kid sister on his lap. Their love for each other was unmistakable.

“Leonid's sister?
Schwester
?”

Anna nodded. Leonid had told me he was an only child, doubtless told the CO the same. Not a big lie but one I could prove.

“Is she still alive?”

“Yes, yes. She is living closely.”

“Do you know where? Her address?
Ansprache
?”

Anna pouted, sorry to disappoint me. “But she is not so far. They meet on some evening.”

“Leonid tells you this?”

“No. But he is happy after. And he is never happy.”

Well. Here we all were again. Hal, Anna and Ivan the Terrible. I had done well, the pieces had fallen nicely into place. Which made me nervous. Was there any possible way in hell I was being played here? Could Leonid have somehow anticipated my intent to pay a second visit to Anna and ordered his beaten submissive wife to play along with whatever I proposed? Could Leonid be that good?

There was the slightest glimmer of half a chance he could be. And it didn't matter. If Leonid was that good I may as well turn Commie because the Soviets would overrun all of Continental Europe while we poor dumb Yanks took a victory lap.

I'm not sure if I thought this or dreamed it.

I woke to the sound of a shrill scream. I was on my feet before my eyes opened, digging for my gun, stumbling forward, ready to do battle. Anna laughed at me. And took the whistling tea kettle off the stove.

I slumped back in the chair and tried to wake up. The cup of black tea helped. I had no idea how long I'd been asleep. Fast asleep in the apartment of my mortal enemy.

Anna had been busy. A big leather-strapped suitcase sat by the front door next to a wicker basket. I was wondering what was in the basket when a trapped angry mewl answered my question.

I stood up. “We can't leave the building together.”

Anna nodded her understanding. Now what? My good intentions had outraced my planning once again. I had no safe house to send her to. But Anna was a step ahead. She wrote down an address in Kopenick, southeast of the Central City, in the Soviet Sector.

“Tattia, she is my friend,
gut
friend.”

“Does Leonid know her?”

“No, no.”

Which didn't mean he didn't know about her or where she lived. What the hell. I didn't have any better ideas.

“How will you get there, to Kopenick?”

“der Straffenbahn,”
she said. The streetcar.

“Okay. But you might be followed. Be careful, keep watch. Do you understand?”

Anna gave me a droll look. “I am wife of spy.”

“Right, of course,” I said and pointed toward the door. “But you can't take the suitcase.” Anna pretended not to understand.
“Der Kaffen is verboten.”

“Aber ich werde es brauchen
!” she replied. But I will need it!

“Nein, es ist zu gefährlich
!” No, it is too dangerous!

Anna glared at me. I glared back. We hadn't set foot out the door and we were already spatting like an old married couple. An old German couple!

I stepped forward and stood close. “Take the damn cat if you must, take Ivan, but the suitcase stays put! Stays here. Does-not-leave.”

Anna's stark glacial face remained that way. Mulish to a fault, just like Jeannie. Why are all the best gals the world over so goddamn stubborn?

“Okay,” I sighed, “I will smuggle your suitcase out of here somehow. Take your damn cat in a basket and go.”

Anna smiled up at me, then wrapped me up in a steaming hug that squeezed every ounce of air from my lungs. It felt good. I looked about the room, at Anna's vivid watercolors on the walls, surprised she hadn't crated them up too.

Anna caught my look and answered with a shrug. “I will make more.”

“Attagirl!”

“I am sorry?”

I told Anna I would see her in Kopenick tomorrow morning and pushed her out the door.

They had separate bedrooms, Leonid and Anna. His the spacious master with French windows that opened onto the street. Hers a small windowless maid's quarters, walls cluttered with watercolors, pencil sketches and oil portraits in that modern style where the heads look like they'd been chopped to pieces with a meat cleaver then wedged back together.

I tossed the joint. I searched behind the wall hangings for a wall safe and inside them for documents stashed in the matting. I did this in each room. I pulled up rugs and looked for a floor safe or a trap door or a loose floorboard. I checked the furniture for hollow legs and secret panels and docs taped to seat bottoms. I looked in the bathroom and kitchen cabinets. I yanked the cushions from the couch and flipped it over and dumped out every bureau and kitchen and desk drawer I could find.

This netted me nothing of interest. Okay. Due diligence done. Now the fun part.

I went to Leonid's clothes closet and pulled open the folding doors. Dozens of custom-tailored suits hung in a precise seasonal progression from black and navy blue wool, to brown and tan tweed, to pale linen. Silk ties hung light to dark on a yard-long tie rack. The shirts, starched and cardboard-collared, were tucked away in the drawers of a built-in cedar cabinet at the end of the closet. Heckuva wardrobe for a selfless champion of the proletariat.

I didn't bother the shirts. But Leonid's suits would need a thorough going over. I waded back down the long closet, through the forest of topcoats and sports jackets and the hanging vines of silk until I came to the summer linen. I flicked open my folding knife and did to Leonid's pretty suits what I wanted to
do to him. Sliced them up one side and down the other. Methodically.

I took hold of a blood red cashmere blazer. It had a gold monogram on the breast pocket, LAV. I sliced it off and stuck it in my pocket for future reference. Then I tore the coat off the hangar and stepped on it and grabbed the back vent and pulled with all my might. The suit coat split all the way to the collar.

Good, Schroeder. Well done and executed. You've shown Leonid's wardrobe who's boss. Now, how do you exit the building in a stealthy manner while carrying a suitcase the size of a hay bale? The Blue Caps would have their tails down and their ears up. You'll be scooped up the moment you step outside.

I told my brain to shut its yap. I knew what to do next. Start a fire. One with a lot of smoke. A swank joint like this had to have a fire alarm. Yank it and race down the fire stairs and out the back door with the rest of the tenants, their hastily-packed suitcases in hand.

But I needed a hat, a snap brim I could pull low across my brow. Just like the one I had recently purchased and left in the truck. Leonid had hats on the top shelf, plus a little step stool to reach them. I selected a gray felt number. It perched atop my melon like a Girl Scout beanie. I sliced a vent in the back of the hat band and tried again. It would have to do.

What to torch? Something dense, something that would burn a long time and throw off a lot of smoke. A red cashmere blazer for instance. I snatched up the coat from the floor of the closet, went to the kitchen, grabbed the largest pot I could find and took a bottle of Drambuie from the liquor locker. I crammed the blazer into the pot, doused it with booze and lit it with a kitchen match.

Drambuie's good for something. The coat caught fire.

I waited until the kitchen filled with smoke, threw open the front door and fanned smoke into the hallway with a kitchen
towel. I pounded on doors and yelled
Feuer
as I hauled Anna's two-ton grip down the hallway.

The fire alarm was halfway down the corridor. I busted the glass with the little hammer on a chain and yanked the handle. A great clanging commenced.

The neighbor lady threw open her door. She had changed into a housedress since our last meeting. She had Fido clutched to her bosom and wet panic in her eyes.

I offered to escort her down the stairs. The neighbor lady accepted. We fled down the carpeted fire stairs, our ranks swelling at every landing until we spilled out the back door, a tumbling cascade of terrified refugees.

That's the way it was supposed to work anyway. Unfortunately the back door didn't open. I kicked it and slammed a shoulder against it and it didn't budge. The door had been barred or shimmed shut, a bad sign. It meant the Blue Caps would be waiting as we funneled out the front. I could join the panicked tenants streaming out the entryway and take my chances on getting lost in the crush. Or I could try to blast my way out the back door with my Walther.

I surprised myself. For once in my life I didn't blunder forth. I slunk back down to the basement instead, closed the door behind me, found my overturned crate and sat down and considered the possibilities. Harry Houdini couldn't wriggle his way up a folded coal chute while hauling a suitcase but there were two windows up at ground level. Transom windows that vented in, at an angle too narrow to climb through. I would have to use my burglar skills. Provided I could get up there.

I looked around for a ladder. Every basement has a ladder somewhere. Every basement except this one.

I scavenged up crates and storage boxes and laddered them against the wall and climbed up to the window that faced the alley. I placed my coat against a window corner and tapped at it with the butt of my Walther, creating a small spider web of cracks. I did this all the way around the window frame. Then I
took my knife and sliced through the perforated glass. This was the tricky part. You have to start at the bottom and tease the pane inward as you unzip the window from its frame.

I wrapped the glass in my coat and climbed down my makeshift ladder. I shed the glass, shook out my coat, donned it, grabbed the heavy suitcase and climbed back up. Slowly, cursing Anna with every step. I gathered my strength and shoved the suitcase through the window frame. Which caused my jumbled staircase to collapse.