Death Is My Comrade (2 page)

Ilya, staring down at his shoes, said: “I will waive diplomatic immunity.”

There was a silence. Marianne gave me a warning look. I didn't know why. Speaking Russian, Laschenko said something angrily to Ilya.

“No,” Ilya insisted. “I will waive diplomatic immunity. I will give myself up to the police.”

“For what?” Laschenko asked sarcastically. “For frightening her? Enough. You're coming back to the Embassy with me now.”

One moment Ilya stood looking down at his shoes. The next he made a run for the door. Laschenko went after him. The screen door slammed behind Ilya and his running footsteps crunched on the shell path. I reached the door a stride before Laschenko. We performed an after-you-Alphonse routine. Finally Laschenko rushed outside. In a few minutes he was back, shaking his head. “Gone,” he said.

I thought Marianne smiled at me. Laschenko said he would drive Lucienne and Eugenie back to Chevy Chase, and we all went out to the cars. Leaning his head out the rolled-down window of Lucienne's Lincoln, Laschenko told me:

“Mr. Drum, we would appreciate it if what happened tonight goes no further. You understand? The touchy international situation?” His smile was not quite unctuous. “But you're a man of the world. I don't have to tell you.”

“That's up to Ilya, isn't it?” I said.

Laschenko shrugged and turned to Marianne, who stood beside me. “Mrs. Baker? After all, you
are
a reporter.”

“View
isn't a scandal sheet. Good night, Mr. Laschenko.”

Marianne and I got into my car. When I turned the headlights on, the Lincoln parked behind us pulled out and roared away.

“You did that on purpose, didn't you?” Marianne asked me.

“Did what on purpose?”

“That business in the doorway. You wanted the boy to get away.”

“He was scared blue. And he like hell tried to rape her.”

Marianne smiled. “My favorite tough guy—with a heart of gold.” I lit a cigarette. “What are you waiting for, Chet?”

“She made that rape business up on the spur of the moment. Which means Ilya was trying to tell her something or give her something. If it was give and not tell, she may have left it behind for safekeeping.”

“Curious?” Marianne said.

I shrugged. “Let's take a look inside.”

Marianne touched my arm. She was smiling like a canary that had done the incredible and swallowed a cat. “We don't have to, Chet. Ilya gave her something, all right. An envelope. While you and Laschenko were out on the beach, she gave it to me.”

“You mean you had it all the time?” I said stupidly.

Marianne patted her pocketbook. “Take me home, Chet.”

We tiptoed into Marianne's Georgetown apartment, but Mrs. Gower, the housekeeper, greeted us in a hearty voice. “That's all right, they're sleeping like a pair of angels. You don't have to walk on eggshells.”

“Did they sleep right through?” Marianne asked.

“They did, the little dolls. Have fun?”

“Why yes, thank you, we did,” Marianne said. “A very interesting evening.”

Mrs. Gower stretched, her starched uniform rustling. She was a large woman with a jaw like the business end of an ax and big, kind eyes. “Well, if there's nothing else you'll be wanting, it's about a week past my bedtime.”

“You didn't have to stay up,” Marianne said.

“You know something now, dear,” Mrs. Gower said, “I like those twin boys some myself.”

When she had excused herself and gone to bed, Marianne told me: “That old phony, she just wanted to see if I had a good time. You'd better watch yourself, Chester Drum. She's a matchmaker type, and you're her number-one candidate.”

“I'll remember that.”

“It's funny. When I first had to think about hiring a full-time housekeeper because Wally was dead and I had to go back to a full-time job, I thought she'd get in my hair ten times a day. But now I don't know what I'd do without Mrs. Gower. Drink?”

“Swell.”

“You make them. The matchmaker's pride and joy is leaving to look at the twins and to get comfortable.”

I got the Jack Daniels from the living-room bar and spilled a couple of ounces over ice for each of us. I always felt dangerously domesticated in Marianne's apartment. Maybe it's that kind of place, or maybe Marianne is that kind of girl. We'd been friends for years. It had started out as one of those skyrocketing affairs when I was on the rebound from my one and only marriage, which hadn't worked out. Marianne had recognized the rebound symptoms and had wisely broken things off. But we'd remained friends. Later, I was best man at her wedding to Wally Baker, then the
Time-Life
photo-bureau chief in Southeast Asia. And last year, when Wally had been murdered in the Brandvik case, I'd gone to Scandinavia to find his killer.
*

For a while after the twins were born, Marianne was a pretty sick girl. Borderline post-partum psychosis, the doctor had called it. Marianne had been in love with Wally Baker with every atom of her body and every compartment of her mind—the way Marianne would be in love. Time, and going back to work, and—I like to think—my friendship, had brought her out of it. But the doctor had had a warning.

“She's gone through a traumatic experience at the worst possible time in her life,” he'd told me. “Another such experience and.… But let's just say, Mr. Drum, that she is to lead a very sane and ordered and sheltered life for the next year or so.”

“Blue funk or brown study?” Marianne said, now, in her apartment in Georgetown.

I handed her her drink. She was wearing pajamas and a dark blue cotton robe with red piping.

“To blue funks or brown studies,” I said, and we drank.

“To curiosity.”

We hadn't looked at Ilya's envelope yet. I hadn't even seen it.

Marianne drained her drink and set it down on the night table. We were seated on the sofa, close together but not touching. Marianne's hair had a perfume and healthy-young-woman smell. At first, with the wedge of sorrow between us after Wally's death, I hadn't felt anything but pity for Marianne. But lately, alone with her, I'd felt uncomfortable and even a little irritable fighting the kind of urge you'd get with Marianne, who is all woman.

“Well,” she said, “I told you you'd like Eugenie.”

“Like her? I met her, but I don't know one darn thing about her.”

“Sure you do. Put it this way. Ilya came there with something for her, and they got caught red-handed. It looked like Ilya was going to get away, except his boat didn't start.” I'd told Marianne about that in the car. “So what does she do? She could have said it was a guy—maybe with a load on, Chet—banging at the wrong door. She could have said it was a prowler. That would have been dramatic enough. But she said someone had tried to rape her. Then when you and Laschenko brought Ilya back inside, she was stuck with her inspiration.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that's Eugenie all over. She takes excitement like other people take vitamins. She's spoiled to her ears, Chet. But she's charming too. She's always had everything she wanted, from money on down, and for years now she's chased around the boarding-school circuit in Europe, escapading her way in and out as fast as a footloose traveling salesman. Lucienne Duhamel, to put it mildly, is loaded with the folding green and—”

“Is there a Mr. Duhamel?”

Marianne shook her head. “Duhamel's the maiden name. Eugenie's father is Mike Rodin. Lucienne divorced him years ago.”

“That wouldn't be the financier?”

“Would and is. You know him?”

“By reputation. He's up to his wheeling-dealing ears in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Controls several corporations which haven't made the proper kind of shareholder reports, so S.E.G. is breathing down his neck, threatening to deport him.”

Marianne looked surprised. “Where to? Rodin's a real mystery man. He's not American by birth, but if anyone knows where he's from originally, they're keeping it a secret.”

“Search me,” I said. “But go ahead.”

Marianne shrugged as I filled our glasses again. “That's it, I guess. I just wanted to give you the background.” All of a sudden Marianne laughed. “We're a couple of good ones,” she said. “A private eye whose middle name is curiosity and a magazine staffer who makes her living that way, and we haven't even taken one tiny look at the envelope yet.” Marianne sipped her drink. “There's a story in it, too.”

“What kind of story?”

“When Eugenie gave me the envelope she said, ‘This is for my father. I trust you. I have to trust you.' Or something like that.”

“For Rodin?”

“For Mike Rodin, yes.”

“Want to take a look at the envelope?” I asked.

“What do you think Ilya's going to do?”

“Search me. He didn't want to go home with Laschenko.”

The ice rattled against Marianne's teeth as she drank. If you had to look for an overt sign of what Wally's death had done to her, that was it. There aren't many girls who will beat me twice running with two ounces of Jack Daniels on the rocks, and now Marianne was clinking her glass against the square bottle for another refill. I poured an ounce and she went right to work on it.

“Did you get the impression,” she asked, “that Eugenie wasn't wild about Laschenko?”

“Now that you mention it, yeah.”

“Lucienne's going to love that. She's marrying the guy next week.”

“Want to take a look at the envelope?” I said.

Marianne grinned. “The implacable Chester Drum. Me, I've been stalling because my conscience is bothering me. I gathered Eugenie just wanted me to deliver the envelope to her father.”

“Okay, then we won't take a look.”

“I didn't say that!” Marianne gave me an exasperated stare; then we both smiled. “You're supposed to coax me, darn it.”

“Want to take a look at the envelope?”

“Implacable. I knew it.”

Marianne got her pocketbook off the hall table, sat down again next to me and opened the purse on her lap. The envelope was white, legal-sized, sealed. There was no writing on it. Marianne held it up to the light. We could see a single sheet of paper inside.

“Gosh, Chet, I don't know,” Marianne said.

“Well, look. You have four choices. Make that five. You can just hold it here until Eugenie or someone comes for it. Or you can turn it over to Central Intelligence, figuring there'll be something in it for them. Or you can turn it over to the boys down at Foggy Bottom. I've got a friend in the State Department.”

“I know. Jack Morley. I've met him.”

“That's three. Or we can open it here, right now, and find out, maybe, you're getting all worked up over nothing.”

“That's four.”

“I know. The build-up's for number five. I'm trying to sell it.”

“I'm listening.”

“Let me have the envelope. I won't open it unless you say so. I'll put it in my office safe and we'll sleep on it.”

“Chet, you want to know something crazy? It—it scares me for some reason. Crazy, isn't it? I don't know why, but I'm afraid to open it.”

I took the envelope out of her hand. “Then it's settled. I'll hold onto it and call you tomorrow. All right?”

“I guess so. Why should I be scared of it, though?”

“Eugenie,” I said. “Maybe you got to wondering what a girl who'd holler rape because, of several possible ruses, it seems the most fun, would have in an envelope she gave to you for safekeeping.”

“You left out choices six and seven.”

“Did I? Shoot.”

“Six: we destroy the envelope, right here, right now.”

“But you wouldn't want to do that.”

“No. I wouldn't. Seven: I deliver it to Mike Rodin.”

I shook my head. “You don't want to mess with Rodin. If you do want it delivered, tell me in the morning. I'll be the messenger boy. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” Marianne said. She looked relieved.

“Look at the twins before I go home and crawl into the sack?”

“But of course,” Marianne said lightly, then squeezed my hand. “You're their godfather.”

We tiptoed into the nursery, past Mrs. Gower's door. Mrs. Gower was snoring serenely.

Twin white cribs for twin sleeping boys. I could never tell them apart. By the light of the dim night lamp I could see their plump rosy cheeks. I thought they looked like Wally, but they had Marianne's silver-blond hair.

“Which is which?” I said.

“You mean you still can't tell them apart?”

I shook my head.

“Chester's in the left-hand crib.” Marianne laughed softly. “I think.”

She walked me to the front door. I opened it. The air was cooler now, and a mist had drifted in off the river. I turned and kissed Marianne lightly on the lips. As I drew away, her hands tugged at my lapels. She drew my lips down to hers again, and her own lips were soft and moistly parted.

I felt a quickening in me as I slid my hands down to her waist. She was taut and firm-fleshed and I could feel the flat firmness of muscle move under my hands as she stood on tiptoe, her hips moving forward against me. Her hands laced behind my neck and I felt her teeth against my lips; then she broke a little away and turned her head, and my mouth was on the nape of her neck. She sighed and the moment of stiffness was gone. She nestled against me again, sideways now, and my hand touched the softness of her breast and caressed it.

We'd shared casual goodnight kisses once or twice before. This was different. This was the need in Marianne stirring after too long. I hadn't expected it. I probably would have tried to avoid it. It rocked me.

One of the twins cried out in his sleep.

We broke it up in a hurry. Marianne's eyes were shining. “That wasn't fair of me,” she said breathlessly. “It's … too soon. You're too nice a guy. What's the matter with me?”