Spyfall Page 19
She sighed. “We cannot have peace without sacrifice. Take care of Walter.”
Maybe she’d seen too many movies, too.
After I left her room, I made it a point to find Walter, who was sitting with Mr. P in the hospital’s waiting room. The sun here shone brightly through green curtains and bounced off the chrome arms of the room’s modern, awkward furniture. I would have liked to spend more time with the Old Man, but he was telling Walt that he had to get home to his wife, Carmen, who was ill.
“In a way,” he said, “I should never have come, but...”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Walt answered and then turned to me, asking, “How’d it go?”
“Fine.”
“She’s a brave woman,” Mr. P said.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“How long have you known her?” he asked Walt.
“Not as long as you have,” Walt responded, adjusting his back in the hard, stiff chair.
The Old Man looked at me. “Do you find that you think about her much?”
“What? I just met her, a couple of days ago.”
“Well, she had some reconstructive surgery after the crash, but...” Walt drawled.
“What are you saying?”
He paused and then went on. “She had amnesia for several years.”
“She’s kept undercover ever since.” Mr. P added. “She’s your mother, Stan.
I thought I must have misheard.
Even the Noir Man was speechless.
I rushed back to her room.
***
I tried to absorb it all, sitting there for a long moment beside her. The sunlight came through the high windows at a different angle now. I was as uncomfortable as those chrome waiting-room chairs.
She’d stayed away for years, because she was afraid that I’d be, of all things, drawn into danger.
“Abandonment doesn’t make a person feel safe,” I told her.
She waited before speaking, and I could tell that it was hard for her. “We’ve lost so much time,” she said, “that it’s almost as if we’re strangers.”
“We are,” I said. It sounded much colder than I’d meant it.
I had seen the results of the car crash back in 1949 and knew they were real. The Reds wanted to get a hold of my parents and their knowledge of aerial reconnaissance techniques that they’d been developing at the Lockheed Skunkworks.
Dad had died in the wreck, but--what I hadn’t known at the time--was that Mom survived. The Feds replaced her body with a corpse as a ploy to fool the commies and protect my mother from further assaults.
She’d been a long time recovering, and the crash had affected her memory. In some respects, she was a clean slate--a different or new person that she and the government found useful in getting back at the Reds for a variety of reasons. Her desire for revenge and her love of country fed into involvement in small undercover operations and, after a few years, she became part of larger and longer missions for agencies like the CIA.
She’d operated like this for over a decade, with some assignments requiring deep cover and lasting more than a year. During one mission, Walt had employed her as an extra while the filming Rob Roy in the UK. There, stunt-double had functioned as her “minder” or handler. Stuntmen can go everywhere and are almost invisible, while remaining quickly available for changing conditions.
Yes, she had met Mr. P back in the 1940s. When I leaned forward and told her that the Old Man was planning to fly back to Hawaii soon, she seemed bothered by the fact, but wouldn’t say why. I made a mental note to call and ask him about that, when we got back. Otherwise, I sat as still as a stone and listened to her go on.
“The agency kept me deep under cover,” she apologized through damp eyes. “We needed our enemies to think that they had succeeded in eliminating both me and your father. So we used my engraved wedding ring to confirm that I was dead and to convince people that the female corpse in the wreck was mine.”
“Convince people, including me,” I said.
“That’s the part I regret the most, Stanley,” she said. “I know that it’s been hard, but you’ve been in good hands all the time. They assured me of that and I like the way you’ve turned out.”
She leaned her shoulder into my arm, and it was almost enough.
“I still have the ring,” I said. “The police gave it to me with your other effects. It’s in a safety deposit box in Hollywood.”
“I’ve been watching you over the last few days, Stanley. Everyone thinks you’re a smart-alecky jokester, but you’re not. Those who really know you, know that you think things through.”
I had no immediate response, except to say, “Uh, I guess.”
Maybe, she did know me.
“When you were little, you used to listen to the Lone Ranger on the radio and run all around the house, shouting, ‘Hi-yo Silver, away.’ That’s partly why your father and I sent you to that dude ranch for the summers. He was a good man. Not particularly patriotic. He had a higher calling.”
I glanced around, attempting to get a handle on the subject. “I’m an adult now,” I said, still feeling a little dizzy.
“I know.” She sighed. “You and I are two different people now. We’re connected, but distant. Strangers from a different lifetime.”
I thought of Thomas Wolfe and decided he was right--you couldn’t go home again.
“Our generation won’t be around in twenty years,” she said, wistfully. “We may not even make it to the American Bicentennial in 1976. Generations to come will want peace, perhaps at any price.”
I realized that, in her own way, she was as dedicated to her cause as Nikkita Reed had been. But she was still my mom.
***
And, two days later, she left me--again.
When I went back to her room, I found it empty. It was almost too much to accept. Had she died, or...
A nurse told me in broken English that Mrs. Poole had been checked out. I rushed to find Walt, who explained that she had wanted desperately to go back to rescue her friend, Pyotr Popov, at the U-2 listening post behind enemy lines. It was urgent, since our intelligence service claimed that the double-agent there was about to be arrested by the Reds. “It’s a debt she needed to pay and she didn’t want anyone of us involved further,” Walt said. “But this time, she’ll have a full support team and should return in a few months.” Or so he claimed.
I wanted to go after her. I never got a chance to tell her about my upcoming wedding. But Ian, ever the voice of upper-class reason and tested experience, convinced me that it would be better for all, if I waited and didn’t interfere with the mission. “Lives are at stake,” he counseled. “Let the professionals handle it.”
Some profession. It reminded me of the way I typed my invoices--hunt and peck.
“You’ve been very lucky, so far,” Walt added, “but as you’ve stated repeatedly, you’re not cut out for this kind of work.”
“Let our governments manage the situation,” Ian said. “There can be no loose cannons or Wild West cowboys, now. This requires diplomacy.”
Molly, arm still in a sling, said, “You canna risk putin herr in jeopardy by barragin in with both feet,”
They had all ganged up on me. Especially the Noir Man who said, ‘Besides, it’s all a lot of horseshit. Go stand down.’
And in the end, I decided not to decide. Instead, I’d participate in the sorrows with grace, like an adult.
Ian and Molly soon left for England on more secret government business. They were needed there for an assignment involving the general election that would take place in a few days, on Thursday, Oct eighth. “So sorry. You understand. There’s a good chap.”
Molly blew me a kiss.
Before he left, Fleming gave me two more pieces of advice. “One, when you finally reach my age, Wade, try your hand at writing. You won’t regret it. And two, like the man said, eat your vegetables.”
Jeez.
CHAPTER 26
The main tourist season had just ended, so many of the city’s attractions were closed for repairs, or on limited hours. We saw some stunning stained glass right next door to the Paris police headquarters and way too many paintings and statues in the Louvre. We stumbled into some guy making a movie about a face without eyes or something, and that made me miss Hollywood all the more.
The following Monday, October twelfth, everything was cleared and we flew to NYC, where I drank my first Pepsi in weeks, proving Thomas Wolfe wrong, after all. Walt insisted on another train ride, so we arrived at Union Station in LA late the next day. Suzi met me there, all fresh-faced and smiling, in a thin white cotton dress that matched the color of her hair and a gorgeous tan that accentuated her blue eyes. I hugged her so hard, her back cracked, but she laughed with delight.
We rode to her apartment in her car and spent the night together. Very together.
“I kept busy, while you were gone,” she confessed, fluffing up her pillow. “Want to know what I worked on?”
“Sure.”
She set a thumbnail between her teeth. “I investigated a plagiarism suit for a man named Cussler, the creative director at a Denver advertising agency.”
“Sounds dull,” I said. “But it pays the bills, right? Let me look at you again.”
“I got your flowers,” she said. “Where were you?”
“Where I wished I weren’t. I missed you, hugely. Let me hold you again.”
She gave me a kiss that knotted my socks.
Nuzzling her behind an ear, I said, “Let me smell you--again.”
Somewhere the McGuire Sisters were singing “Sincerely.”
“Let me taste you,” I demanded softly.
“Hold on a minute, big boy,” she said, wriggling free. “We need to talk.”
I ran my tongue around my teeth. “About what?”
She got up and said that she was feeling much better now.
I looked at her carefully. She seemed to have lost weight, but otherwise I hadn’t a clue.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t go on the trip with you,” she said, looking away. “I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t say anything to you.”
I sat up. “About what?”
The words spilled out of her mouth. “I thought I was going to have a baby--but it turned out to be a false pregnancy.”
My thoughts suddenly started shooting all over the place.
“It’s okay, Standy. We’ll get it right. You’ll see.”
There weren’t any words to express my feeling then, or at least none that my dull brain could come up with. I was numb for several seconds and the floor seemed to slant as I got to my feet and came around to her.
“Are you okay?” she asked, clutching my arm and almost cutting off the blood flow. “You’re worried and breathing funny.”
“What, me?” I almost gasped. “I’m fine. Yeah, fine. How about you? I mean-- psychologically--”
“I’m fine, too. Now. Things don’t always work out the way we hope,” she said, easing back into my arms. “But hope is all we have, sometimes. Hope for the best. And, sometimes, not often, your hopes come true.”
I swallowed and studied the fascinating patterns in the carpet.
“Hey, are you listening?” She nudged me with a bare shoulder. “I love you.”
I stared at this achingly beautiful woman. “Me, too.”
Somewhere Connie Francis sang, “Lipstick on your Collar.”
“Were you a good boy over there? Did you behave yourself with all those French girls?”
So I told her about meeting my mom.
She listened like she always did. Calmly.
“I found her and then I lost her again,” I concluded.
“I know, baby,” she said and pulled me to her. We stayed that way for about a hundred breaths. “You’ll find her again. Or she’ll find you. When she’s ready.”
“Time wounds all heels,” I said and felt myself getting madder and madder all over again. “You know, I’m pretty fed up with Walt. He lies, hides the truth, and gets people into trouble.”
She agreed. “You could have been killed over there and never have come back.”
“I know. That’s part of the reason I’m so upset with him.”
She sat on the bed next to me and pulled her feet up under her tanned body. “You realize, of course, that he could have died there, too.”
Damned if she wasn’t right. Walt had risked it all. And for what? To rescue a valued agent? To defend the American way? To help me make contact with my mom?
“I guess, I still need to talk with him,” I said. “He had a lot more on the line, than I did.”
She shifted the subject to something more upbeat. Our wedding.
“I’ve decided I’ll be a June bride,” she announced, smiling in a way that always made my knees weaken. “I’ve done some planning and checking and it’s all coming together, except I don’t yet know how we’ll be able to pay for it all. That’s your job.”
“Mine?”
“You’re a great detective. You figure out how to pay for it all,” she challenged playfully.
I grinned back at her, and her expression shifted to one of mild concern.
“Did you read any of those Saint stories, where he robbed from the crooks?” I asked, reaching for my trousers.
“Uh...yeah?’
“Well, this is something like that,” I said and dribbled four nice-sized diamonds into her palm.
That earned me the kind of kiss that unknotted my socks.
***
Suzi drove us through Beverley Hills just for the sight of it all. I saw a guy standing on his Jag to wash the top of his Caddy. On the way to the Brown Derby, my fiancée hummed a tune that I didn’t know. “It’s the theme from a new Doris Day movie, Pillow Talk,” she said. “All the rage this week, and I like it.”
“Me, too.”
A colorful evening sky reflected the California orange sunset, as we pulled into the parking lot behind the restaurant. I scanned around and discovered that my Thunderbird convertible was missing from where I’d left it. Damn! Probably stolen. I loved this crummy town.
Lex and Sonny arrived seconds later in a ’56 Imperial with a flame job painted on the front bumpers and hood. It was good to see them join us for dinner, and I almost kissed the old battleaxe when I saw her, but Sonny’s scowl stopped me.
Among the two women, there was passing talk of a double wedding.
“Congratulations,” I told Sonny. “I’m not sure how we do it, but I’m all for it.”
The wise oriental barkeep grunted. “Reception at the Blue Phrog.”
“Just don’t invite Tony Bennett. Suzi hates him.”
“Wait fifty years,” he said sagely.
Inside the Derby, the thirtieth anniversary celebration was still in full swing. Crepe and balloons hung from the ceiling. Big band music played softly from hidden speakers. We saw Sandra Dee seated with Ed Wynn. A guy who looked like Audie Murphy stood with a girl who looked like Betty Page among some of the most valuable people in Hollywood--tourists.
Norman was there already, hanging around a buffet table. When he caught sight of us, he rushed over to say that Walt had offered him a job. “He thinks I have great potential,” my pal gushed, popping a cherry tomato into his mouth. “Holy socks!”
I let that exclamation go by the wayside without comment, because it sounded almost like something even I’d say.
Norman then asked, “You ever notice that in the movies or on TV, nobody ever watches television, unless they’re in a bar, or something.”
>
As normal with Norm, I wasn’t sure where this had come from or was going. But I caught sight of Edd Byrnes walking in from the sandwich shop and it gave me an idea for a great answer. “Don’t you ever watch George Burns’s show? He has a TV that lets him watch the other characters without them knowing.”
“Nice,” Suzi said. “Parents could use something like that to monitor their sleeping children.”
“Yeah?” Norm said and started stirring a celery stick into a bowl of cream cheese. “I’ll have to give that concept some heavy consideration.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the cameras in Dick Tracy’s cruisers.
Lex nudged my sore shoulder. “Sometimes, I think that kid’s so dumb, he’d stand forever in front of a stop sign, waiting for it to change.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose with a thumb and finger.
I realized that I was back in the smog, and my sinuses were back in full operation. But there was no place like home and, after all that had happened in the last few weeks, the world seemed a brighter place. Nothing had, as yet, been blown sky-high. The news headlines declared that the British elections were safely over and Prime Minister Macmillan’s Conservative Party had won a sweeping victory. So had our local ball team, the Dodgers, who were flying home in triumph from the World Series.
‘Yeah, but,’ the Noir Man said, ‘the Soviets hit the moon again with another rocket. That’s twice now. The game has changed, again.’
But I was back home with friends now. And I’d had enough of this dark thinking.
I told the Noir Man, “Well, ah, well that’s just swell, Harvey. Now go lay down, you old pooka. Stop being smart, and try being pleasant. I recommend it.”
Over the restaurant’s signature dessert of grapefruit cake, Suzi said that there had been a call for me while I was in the shower. Something about director John Ford, wanting me to investigate a murder on the set of The Alamo. As dinner ended, the gang planned to go over to Dorothy Lamour’s house to enjoy popcorn and out-take footage from The Road to Hollywood.