Louise's Blunder (15 page)

‘OK,’ I said. ‘So he had a girlfriend. What does that have to do with his death?’

‘I don’t know. But this hotel is just a few blocks away from Mrs Nighy’s.’

He pulled out an Esso map of Washington to show me. I knew the neighborhood fairly well myself. It was just a few blocks from Rose’s and Peggy’s apartments. The area was teeming with government employees lodged in private homes, apartments and hotels.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘this hotel is not that far from Mrs Nighy’s, way to the northwest of the Tidal Basin. If he was taken ill there he wouldn’t be traveling by way of the Tidal Basin to get home. He must have been coming from somewhere else.’

‘And the Tidal Basin is across the street from the streetcar terminus at the Bureau of Engraving,’ Royal said. ‘And the Western Union office and the return address of the phoney telegram are within walking distance.’

God, I thought, how could anyone solve a puzzle like this with so many pieces missing?

‘So Hughes could have been coming from anywhere,’ I said.

‘Just about,’ Royal said. He folded up the map and tucked it into his pocket.

‘Remind me why you want to find the girlfriend?’

‘The more we know about Hughes’ life the more likely it is we can find his murderer. She might know what he was doing over the weekend and where he was.’

‘How are you going to find her?’ I asked.

‘This is where you come in,’ he said.

I didn’t even object. But I did check my watch.

‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go soon.’

‘Go over to that hotel,’ he said. ‘Snoop around. First make sure that Anderson was Hughes. I’ve got a copy of his government ID picture. Don’t ask me how I got it, I can’t tell you. Ask questions if you can. People don’t suspect women much.’

‘I’ll go when I can,’ I said. ‘Maybe at lunch tomorrow.’

I stood up and brushed the wrinkles out of my dress. Royal handed me the passport-sized photo of Hughes. He stood, but his bad leg buckled and he had to brace himself against the wall of the alley.

‘I hope the war ends soon,’ he said. ‘I can’t do this much longer.’

I just barely made it to my desk by nine o’clock, the last possible minute I could arrive at work without being reported for tardiness to my boss. In fact, Mr Shera found me shortly after I sat down to organize my day.

‘Louise,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir,’ I answered, ready for him to assign me some mundane dusty task amongst the files.

‘You’re wanted by Mr Lewis again,’ he said. Shera looked annoyed that I had been drawn away from my work yet again.

So I found myself hustling across ‘E’ Street and up the three flights of steps in the main OSS building. Lewis’s disapproving secretary was not at her desk. I knocked on Lewis’s door. Major Wicker answered.

Major Wicker showed me to one of the club chairs.

‘Mrs Pearlie,’ Wicker said. ‘I have one more little job for you. Take your lunch hour so as not to arouse suspicion.’ He handed me a scrap of paper with an address on it. The address of the residential hotel where Paul Hughes lived under his other identity!

So OSS had been following the same line of inquiry as Sergeant Royal. And this must mean that they too were suspicious of Hughes’ ‘accidental’ death, even though OSS had accepted and disseminated the story inside the agency. Interesting. Did OSS agree with Royal? Did Wicker believe too that Paul Hughes had been murdered?

‘It seems,’ Wicker said, ‘that Paul Hughes lived another life. He rented a room as a Mr Anderson. I want to know why. Poke around. Find out what you can. People are less reserved with a girl than they are with a man.’

‘All right,’ I said, pretending to memorize an address I already knew. I handed the scrap of paper back to Wicker. He lit it with his cigarette lighter and let it burn to cinders in the ashtray on the table.

‘Report back to me when you’re done,’ Wicker said. ‘Then Mr Shera can have you back. He’s quite annoyed with me.’

Wicker gave me money for the taxi and I signed the receipt, which read ‘reimbursement for office supplies’.

As I hurried back across the street the absurdity of all this crashed down upon me. I felt like a double agent. What if Wicker found out that I was working for Sergeant Royal too? It wouldn’t impress him that I was keeping as much from Royal as I could. My career, such as it was, would be over. No matter how fascinating Hughes’ death investigation was, after I reported to Wicker I would hide myself in the Registry for the rest of the war. And after I fed the same information to Royal I would refuse any more contact with him.

At lunchtime I wrapped myself in an old raincoat I kept at the office in case I was surprised by the weather. I pulled a straw fedora over my eyes. Too bad I didn’t have my sunglasses, I thought, then my transformation into spy and snitch would be complete!

The taxi let me off on the corner across the street from my destination on New Hampshire. Paul Hughes’ secret life took place in a nondescript four-story building with the words ‘Worth’s Residential Hotel’ stenciled in black on a window on the ground floor. I circled the building, noting two doors and a fire escape – three entrances or exits for spies or lovers.

An ugly clanging signaled my entry into the building. The hall was clean but needed painting and the carpet was worn. A long sofa slipcovered in a fake tapestry print was the only furniture in the hall. The impressions of many pairs of buttocks showed on the cushions.

A window in the wall near me slid open, startling me.

A woman in a blue denim coverall and a grubby do-rag leaned out of it.

‘What can I do for you, missy?’ she said. ‘We just rent to men here and we’re full.’

‘I’m not looking for a room,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for my brother.’

‘Sure you are,’ she said. ‘You can tell me the truth. You got a boyfriend lives here?’

‘No, really,’ I said. ‘I’m Mary Anderson. I’m looking for my brother. I haven’t heard from him in ages. I was in town and thought I’d come by. Is he here?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, unfolding a rectangle of chewing gum and popping it into her mouth. ‘It’s not my job to keep track of all these men. But Mr Anderson, he’s not here much. Mostly on the weekends.’

‘He lives in Fredericksburg,’ I said. ‘He rented this room to use when he’s in town on business. The hotels are always full.’

‘Well,’ she said, chewing vigorously on her gum, ‘I don’t know if he’s here, but you’re welcome to go on up and see. Second floor at the end of the hall, room Two G.’

The second-floor hallway was much like the lobby. Clean, but in need of paint and new carpeting. I knocked on the door of room 2G, expecting no answer and getting none. I peered through the keyhole but saw nothing but the footboard of an iron bed and a tattered chenille bedspread.

I jiggled the doorknob and knocked again, just for appearances’ sake.

Back downstairs I approached the custodian again.

I leaned into her window.

‘Ma’am,’ I said.

She was curled up in an armchair listening to the radio. ‘What?’ she said, without rising.

‘Could I ask you just one more question?’

Sighing, she uncoiled herself and approached the window.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

I leaned over until our heads were close together.

‘You see, my best friend Claire is engaged to my brother. She’s heard so little from him recently that, well, she wondered if he’s seeing someone here? Have you seen him with a girl?’

‘Now, you know, the men here aren’t supposed to bring in girls. But if they’re quiet, and slip me a dollar, I don’t mind. What they do is none of my business.’

I took the hint, found one of Wicker’s dollars in my pocketbook and handed it over to her. She stuck it in her coverall pocket.

‘You tell your friend that Mr Anderson has a girlfriend.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Course, I ain’t blind. When he’s here she comes over. All covered up in a trench coat and an ugly black scarf with yellow flowers, no matter what the weather is.’

‘What does she look like?’

‘Can’t tell. I told you, she wears a scarf. She’s got a nice figure.’

‘Poor Claire!’

‘Mr Anderson has other friends who visit him, too.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, couple men, couple women. But they don’t come as often as the girlfriend.’

‘Is there anything else you can tell me? Would you recognize the friends if you saw them?’

‘Nah,’ she said. ‘All the men who live here got friends who drop by. I don’t pay no attention to them. Like I said, if they’re quiet so my boss doesn’t hear about it I don’t care.’

Major Wicker had arranged for us to meet outside of OSS at a drug store fountain across the street from George Washington University. It was a student hang-out, but students these days were older and often wearing military uniforms.

Stopping inside the door I removed my scarf and tucked it in my raincoat pocket. Then I spotted Wicker at the last booth. He was wearing civilian clothes, a double-breasted suit that disguised his girth. As I walked toward him I was sure the bulge under his armpit was his sidearm. The man must sleep with it.

Wicker stood up as I slid into the booth opposite him.

‘How did it go?’ he asked, before he even finished sitting down again.

‘That depends on what you expected,’ I said.

The soda jerk, who must have been at least sixty, appeared at our table with his pad and pencil.

‘What would you two like for lunch today?’ he asked.

‘Got hamburgers?’ Wicker asked.

‘No sir.’

‘OK,’ Wicker said. ‘Two hot dogs with mustard, catsup and onions. French fries. And coffee, black.’

‘I’ll have a bowl of chilli with saltines and a glass of milk,’ I said.

‘Bowl of red,’ the jerk said to himself as he wrote down my order.

‘Tell me what happened,’ Wicker said once the waiter had left the table.

‘The custodian said that Anderson, or rather Hughes, did have a girlfriend. A woman who visited him alone and often.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘She was always bundled up, hair under a scarf, dark glasses,’ I answered. ‘The custodian said that Hughes had other visitors too, men and women, but that they came less frequently than the woman she figured was his girlfriend.’

The soda jerk arrived with our food. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until he set down the bowl of steaming chilli. There wasn’t much meat in it but it tasted delicious to me, full of red beans and onions.

‘You must want to know what is going on,’ Wicker said.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘In no way did Hughes’ job at OSS require him to acquire another identity and rent a room,’ Wicker said. ‘So he either wanted to conduct a romantic affair secretly …’ Wicker didn’t finish the sentence. But I knew what had to follow. Hughes could have been spying for another country. That’s why Wicker had me find out what files Hughes was reading in the Reading Room. And why his personnel file had been moved to the restricted ‘L’ room.

The soda jerk cleared our table and we both ordered coffee. When he brought our cups to us he gave me one lump of sugar, one less than I would have liked to have, but I was grateful for it.

Wicker leaned over the cracked Formica and pursed his lips, looking at me as though he wanted to confide in me. And I wanted him to. At this point in time I was so desperately curious about Hughes I’d almost have been willing to lose my job to find out what the hell was going on. I took a chance and asked him a question.

‘Do you think Paul Hughes was compromising OSS security?’ I asked. ‘And that he was murdered because of it?’

‘I don’t know yet, Mrs Pearlie, but if I could find this girlfriend of his I believe she could answer many of our questions.’

As I waited in line for the bus an old Ford Woody drove up and stopped at the curb next to me.

‘Lady,’ the man at the wheel called out to me, ‘want a ride?’ It was common for drivers to pick up government employees at bus stops and offer rides, but I didn’t want to go with a stranger alone. I leaned over to look inside the narrow window. It was Sergeant Royal with his fedora pulled down low over his face.

I opened the car door.

‘I didn’t think you’d want me to pick you up here in a police vehicle, so I drove my old bucket. Have a seat.’

When I saw the stained upholstery I hesitated to sit down.

‘It’s as clean as I can get it,’ Royal said. ‘There’s a towel in back if you want to cover the seat with that.’ I did. After I retrieved the towel and spread it on the seat I sat down and closed the door. Rusty hinges made a scraping sound.

Royal pulled away from the curb and out into the usual traffic jam.

‘I bought this car in 1931,’ he said. ‘I was fixing to buy a new one a year ago but then the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor and all the car companies were switched over to military vehicles. I’m just hoping I can keep this bucket running a while longer.’

We crawled north on 21st Street toward my boarding house, driving through the middle of the George Washington University campus, which made me think of Joe. Teaching Slavic languages there had been his cover story.

‘Tell me,’ Royal said.

I told him exactly what I had told Wicker. The absurdity of briefing both men with the same information on the same day did not escape me. I couldn’t keep this up, despite my curiosity about Hughes. I was just asking for OSS to find out about my association with Royal and send me packing.

‘We need to find the girlfriend,’ Royal said, stopping at the intersection of ‘I’ Street to allow a gaggle of government workers to cross the street.

‘You need to find her,’ I said. ‘I’m done.’

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You want the answers to Hughes’ murder as badly as I do.’

‘I’ll just have to read about it in the papers,’ I said.

Royal turned down a side street and parked in front of a vacant lot.

‘What’s this?’ I said.

Royal turned to me. ‘You remember I said I’d share information with you, too?’

‘Yes,’ I said. What had he found?

Royal pulled something out of his pocket and dropped it in my lap. It was a man’s wallet. ‘This isn’t Hughes’ wallet!’ I said.

‘Look inside,’ he said.