Davidian Report (10 page)

The woman laughed. But she would not speak again.

Steve gave up. “If you find her first, tell her I’m waiting for her.” He didn’t slam the door behind him out of respect for the ancient craftsman.

He let off steam clattering down the flights of steps, banging out on the porch. And he saw her. She was on the sidewalk coming towards the house, her arms wrapped around a large brown paper sack. She wasn’t dressed for company, a yellow scarf imprinted with crimson cabbage roses was tied over her hair; she wore dark slacks and sweater, flat-heeled slippers. She didn’t see him until she lifted her eyes before climbing the final flight of steps. He waited there at the top, leaning against the grimy white pillar.

She gave him no greeting. Not until she stood beside him did she speak. “What do you want now?”

“Where have you been?”

“It is perhaps your business?”

She would have walked by him but he stepped in her path. “Did you see Davidian?”

He followed the droop of her eyelids to the green fronds of carrots, the dirt-purple of beets, the dark loaf of bread.

“Oh yes,” she said loftily, “I have been driving around in my Cadillac convertible calling upon all my gentlemen friends.” She shifted the grocery sack in her arms.

He said, “Let me take it,” automatically. She started to pass it into his hands and then with the suddenness of thunder, both were motionless, like children playing statues.

They stood too long, their eyes meeting, before she broke by him. “Go away. I don’t want to see you again.” She was in the house and the touch of her slippers on the staircase blurred back to his ears before he came alive. He walked on down the steps to the street, got in Mr. Oriole’s old car and drove away.

It couldn’t be that she had remembered with him, the same moment, the identical, unimportant moment. It had been dusk then and he had been framed in a doorway more shabby than the one on Bunker Hill. Behind him there had been a murky hallway and a staircase as steep and multiodored as the one she was climbing now. She had come through the blue evening carrying a sack in the same way, her arms wrapped about it in the same way, as if it were a baby she carried. It hadn’t been a clean brown paper sack; it was dirty burlap, used over and again. That night she had come laughing and the laughter hadn’t left her eyes when she saw him waiting for her. When he said, “Let me take it,” she’d passed it over to him, whispering, “Oh, so many good things, Stefan,” and she’d followed close on his heels, up, up, up the rotten staircase to the mean little room …

His fist clenched until it ached and he beat it on Oriole’s steering wheel until pain cut away the ache. He kept his mind on driving then. He watched his speed and the side streets and the confusion of traffic signals. He couldn’t afford to be picked up. Not without a driver’s license. Not with his reasons for being in the city.

He reached Hollywood Boulevard and slowed further for its traffic. There were new signs from Vine Street north, “Temporary No Parking”; there were service trucks stringing lights overhead, among the bright tinsel decorations. On either side of the boulevard, men were roping off areas halfway to the trolley lines. Some kind of big doings must be on for tonight.

He made a right turn because it was easier than trying to make it on the left, circled a block and drove past his hotel to a parking lot in the rear. He’d be better off on foot for the next trip. There wasn’t going to be any spare parking space on the side streets with the main stem blocked off.

He headed for Highland; he found the address of Albion’s shop easily enough, not more than a half dozen doors around the corner from the boulevard. The layout was just what he’d expected. It was always the same, the Thomas Jefferson or the Thomas Paine bookshop; never any imagination. Never the Benedict Arnold or the Lenin.

This one looked the same as any and all, a small plateglass front window with books in formula display, popular books of the day in slick jackets, capitalistic books. No lousy propaganda items such as
I Escaped from a Soviet Concentration Camp
or
I Used to Be a Communist Spy,
but no lives of Little Father Stalin either. Good, honest, safe books for the window. Inside you could buy another kind.

Within, the place was neat and small and quiet. There weren’t any customers, which could have been the reason the eyes of all three clerks converged on Steve when he entered. He’d seen them all before, in one city after another. A young fellow, tall, dark, intense, horn-rimmed, neat as the shop in his dark suit, his conservative tie; two young women, one blond, one brown-haired; one a little too plump, the other a little too thin; neither pretty, but neither homely; both horn-rimmed, both wearing sweaters and skirts. Both would be hopelessly in love with the young man but he’d have a girl who modeled or did bits on the television screen and who hankered after a director if she couldn’t land a producer. She wouldn’t give a damn about a brave new world except for herself. And the three would know all these items about each other, whether or not they’d admit such minor matters to be important. They didn’t have to worry about frustrations because they had the great bulbous-breasted cause to rest their emotions on.

Steve didn’t fool around with any table browsing. He moved back into the store. The young man came towards him. “May I help you?” His voice was almost as good as Haig Armour’s, not as flamboyant but with the same upper-class modulations.

“I’m looking for Frederick Grasse.”

The girls might have popped side glances at each other, their fingers may have tightened, but the young man was contained. “He isn’t here. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I’ll wait.” Maybe he could figure a way to get into the office if he hung around. And then he realized he wasn’t first with the idea. There was someone coming out of the cubbyhole hidden back there in the gloom.

The three clerks relaxed just a little. You wouldn’t know the young fellow needed to relax until he did. He said, “Mr. Grasse won’t be in today.” And Mr. Schmidt was with them. He hadn’t expected Steve.

Steve said, “You’re ahead of me.” The clerks were surprised that he knew Mr. Schmidt.

“I wished to check personally,” Schmidt said.

“Mind if I have a look?”

“Not at all.” The reply was too prompt; there’d be nothing left for Steve in the cubbyhole. Schmidt pointed his hand at the young man. “Llewellyn, this is Mr. Wintress from New York. A friend of Frederick’s.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man was alert.

“Llewellyn Meadows,” Mr. Schmidt identified him. “Assistant manager to Grasse.” To the young fellow he said, “You will give Mr. Wintress your co-operation.”

“Yes, sir.” A well-trained assistant. If Schmidt had said, “You will bump off Frederick Grasse on Wednesday night,” would Llewellyn have had no response but, “Yes, sir”? In his nice, polite voice?

Schmidt turned to the girls, making a frosty attempt at a smile. For some reason they brightened under it. “Miss Batts and Miss Zahner.” Steve never did find out which was which. “Mr. Wintress.” All of them went through how-de-dos as if this were a silver tea.

Steve said, “See you later,” to dismiss Schmidt. But he had to idle over a book while either Miss Batts or Miss Zahner fluttered at the important man—“Your review of that new picture was simply devastating”—while the other one smirked assent.

Mr. Schmidt deprecated, “Thank you.” But his shoulders were almost jaunty as he walked out of the store.

The blond shared her admiration. “There isn’t anyone with Jo’s touch, is there?”

“What kind of touch?”

She withdrew her comradeship. She was hurt if not suspicious. “He reviews motion pictures. He is the only honest reviewer in the city.”

Steve didn’t care where Schmidt peddled his propaganda or how. “Where’s Grasse’s office?”

Llewellyn said, “This way, Mr. Wintress.”

Steve let him lead into the gloom. He kept his distance until Llewellyn had reached into the cubbyhole and pulled an overhead light. It sprayed on a work-laden desk, old wooden filing cabinets, stacks of books and magazines and a morass of loose papers. Llewellyn flattened himself against the files to admit Steve. He wasn’t needed but he lingered. He had something on his mind. “It was you he was meeting at the airport.”

“Yes.”

“He had the heart attack before you arrived?”

“Yes.”

Llewellyn knew better than to ask why Steve had come inquiring for a dead man. You don’t ask foolish questions if you are ambitious.

Steve asked, “Had he been sick?”

The youth was startled to a quick answer, “Oh, no!” and then he wasn’t sure. “I mean, I don’t know—”

“No heart attacks before?”

“Not that I know.”

“Have the police been around?”

Llewellyn was cautious. “The police?”

“Asking questions.”

He showed his confusion. “Why should—” It caught up on him and he looked a little sick He hadn’t been told. But he understood. “No.” And then he wondered if it were a true answer. There’d always be a few strange customers dropping in, actually interested in books. The police didn’t necessarily wear uniforms. He went back to, “Not that I know.”

“Don’t tell them anything.”

The gratuitous advice put Llewellyn back on his feet. The sneer on his nicely shaped mouth was a well-bred one. “Tell the police?” And then the sickness seeped back under his skin. He wanted to comment but he’d been conditioned to accept gospel, not question it. He faltered, “Mr. Grasse was a good man.”

Steve said shortly, “He was a friend of mine.” Because the anger came up in him when he thought of Albie dying alone, without cause, in the fog, he added, “Someone didn’t want us to get together.” He didn’t give a damn if Llewellyn did pass on the thought to Mr. Schmidt.

He went to the desk and twitched a segment of the papers. It would take a team of men long hours to plow through this mess, longer to make a detailed report. There simply wasn’t that much time. The top layer had been disturbed by Mr. Oriole’s men, Schmidt had been second. He too must have known discouragement. If embedded in the junk there was a morsel leading to Davidian, the man must be found more quickly than the clue could be.

In the doorway, Llewellyn waited like a flunky. Steve posed a question, “Did he ever come here.”

“Who, sir?” Easier to lose your faith than your breeding.

“Mr. Grasse was to put me in touch with an old friend of mine from Berlin.” Steve had no way of knowing how much Llewellyn had heard; the young fellow was as poker-faced as Schmidt. “I flew out from New York for that meeting.” The clerk would recognize the importance of such a move; the New York office didn’t fly specialists out every day.

“If this man came here, I know nothing of it. Mr. Grasse said nothing.”

Albion would say nothing. And certainly Davidian could be expected to have more discretion than to walk boldly into a center. Yet he had called upon Mr. Oriole looking for Steve. The risk would appeal to his sly humor.

“Perhaps he came when Mr. Grasse was out. A small man, small hands and feet—” He went on describing the Davidian he had known and the Davidian who had appeared on Mr. Oriole’s porch Monday night.

Uncertainty came to the young man’s face. “I don’t know. There was a customer—” He broke off. “You should talk to Pam.” He walked quickly away.

Disregarding fire hazard, Steve lit a cigarette. He rested himself on the papers which covered the desk.

Pam was the dark-haired one. “It was the funniest thing—odd, I mean. This man came in one afternoon—”

“When?”

“When?” she echoed. “About two weeks, ago, I think. Wasn’t it about two weeks ago, Lyn? Mr. Grasse had gone to the bank, I remember.”

Together, they figured. Two weeks stood, possibly, a little more, a little less. Steve didn’t care that close but he didn’t interrupt. He’d asked the question. Two weeks was about right. Steve had still been in Berlin. Waiting for word from Albion.

Pam went on with her event, “He wasn’t anyone you’d notice. Lyn and Portia were busy so I took him. We don’t bother anyone who just comes in to browse,” she explained, “but he didn’t. You know, like you this afternoon, you were waiting to be asked and Lyn asked. And I asked him, this funny little man. You could hardly understand him, his accent I mean, and what he wanted was a book of Russian poetry, in Russian, you know, a very obscure book. We didn’t even have it listed.”

More of Davidian’s humor; he’d invent author and title.

“He didn’t look as if he could afford to buy a book,” Pam continued sympathetically, “but he was very nice and polite. It’s the system,” she declaimed loyally, “that makes a man hunger for books and not have the money to buy them.” With that off her chest, she proceeded. “As he started to leave he said he wanted to give me something for my trouble and do you know what he gave me?”

Steve didn’t have the slightest idea and said so. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d said a map of the Kremlin. Hand-lettered and signed by Joseph Stalin.

“A Russian ruble!”

“Counterfeit.” Steve smiled the word.

“How did you know?” Both pairs of horn-rims grew anxious.

He said, “It was a hunch.” Davidian up to his old tricks, passing out his calling card. A Davidian ruble. Made by Europe’s finest engraver; he’d tell you so himself. Steve was sorry he’d spoiled the girl’s story. “Go on, then what?”

She wasn’t as glib now. As if she were afraid he was still ahead of her. She spoke defensively, “Well, I’d never seen one before and it was a queer thing for a man to hand you, like a tip, just as if you were in Russia, only tipping is capitalistic and in Russia—”

“I know all about that. Get on with it.”

“Well, I showed it to Lyn and Portia and we were all excited about it. Or interested,” she defended. “When Mr. Grasse returned from the bank, naturally I showed to him.” She let her bright eyes blame Steve; this was the part he’d spoiled. “At first he was interested too, and then he looked at it more closely and said it was counterfeit.”

She could get back to normal now, it was again her story. “He got terribly excited, I mean for Mr. Grasse, because he was always quiet, you know, and wanted to know all about who gave it to me and had me describe the man. He even went out and looked in all the shops around here although I told him the man had been gone, oh, for at least forty-five minutes.”