Louise's Gamble (13 page)

‘Alessa and the private secretary, a man named Rossi, took the train to New York on Tuesday,’ he said.

‘I thought you weren’t going to follow her!’

‘I felt it was necessary, but he went no further than the Union Station. Another of our men picked up the tail in New York. Alessa caught a taxi and took it to a residential hotel. Rossi boarded the Staten Island Ferry. No one else followed either of them. Our man verified that their return tickets were for today. So Alessa will be back in town for your knitting circle tomorrow night.’

‘Do you think she retrieved the “take” from her asset in New York?’

‘I don’t want to speculate, but it seems very likely.’ Melinsky uncrossed his legs and pulled his chair up to the desk, leaning forward. ‘Tomorrow night you will have a babysitter, just in case,’ he said.

My mouth went dry, and my already rapid heartbeat began to race.

‘You’ll have a new addition to your knitting group. She is an experienced agent and will be armed. She’s a good knitter, too, I understand!’ He smiled, but when I didn’t seem amused, he continued. ‘Whether or not you receive anything from Alessa, you’ll leave with our agent, you know, chatting, two women getting to know each other and such. Instead of going to the filling station, the two of you will walk further down Twenty-First to the Western Market, which is open late on Friday night.’

And right next door to a police station, I thought. Just in case.

‘Our agent, whose cover name is Anne, by the way, will escort you out the back door of the market. Jack will be waiting there with a car to bring you to me. With what we expect, I hope. The name of our sleeper.’

I was hanging up my coat when Ada answered the telephone in the hall.

‘She just got home,’ Ada said into the receiver. ‘Here she is.’ She handed the telephone to me. It was Myrna.

‘Betty’s test was negative, and she’s here safe and sound,’ Myrna said. ‘Soaking in the bath. What did you say to her? She seems quite calm.’

‘I talked some sense into her,’ I said. ‘It’s up to you and Lil to make it stick. She has to come to work tomorrow and behave as if she’s returned from an illness. If she can keep herself together she can beat this.’

‘I’ll tie her up and deliver her myself if I have to,’ Myrna said.

‘OK. Tell her I haven’t said a word to anyone, even Ruth and Brenda. No one ever needs to know.’

‘I’ve told everyone here she was wronged by an old beau. All the girls sympathize with that. Hey, I’ve got someone waiting for the phone, so I have to ring off.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Not necessary.’

I replaced the receiver. I’d done all I could for Betty. Now it was up to her to behave like an adult woman, not a prisoner of her raising and the women’s magazines she pored over, and live her life the way she wanted to live it.

I was beat from my dealings with Betty and Melinsky and nervous about meeting Alessa, maybe for the last time, tomorrow evening. I needed a good dinner, maybe an hour of radio – no news, thank you – and one of Phoebe’s Nembutals so I could sleep tonight. I wished I could have one Martini! Tomorrow promised to be a nerve-wracking day.

As I went back to the kitchen for a glass of water I met Ada coming down the hall.

‘I wouldn’t go in there if I was you,’ she said and vanished into the lounge.

I soon wished I’d listened to her.

Dellaphine’s big Silvertone radio played gospel music softly as she finished arranging yeast rolls in a baking pan. The odor of roast chicken seasoned with onions and sage filled the room. Madeleine had arrived home from work. She was still dressed in office clothes, a neat green shirtwaist dress with a lace collar.

Phoebe stood next to the table, her arms crossed, while Joe was trapped between the Hoosier cabinet and Phoebe, with no way to leave the kitchen, though he sure looked like he wanted to.

Henry, who was clearly the source of whatever trouble was brewing, stood at the table with his laundry bag slumped on one of the kitchen chairs.

‘I don’t understand the problem,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve been to three laundries today, and not one of them is accepting any new customers! Have you ever heard of such a thing! One of those damn Chinks suggested I send my laundry home!’

‘Dellaphine doesn’t do any personal laundry,’ Phoebe said. ‘She has more than enough work to do: most of the cooking and cleaning, laundering the sheets and towels, queuing for groceries.’ Phoebe spoke firmly. She was clear-eyed, so she must not have dosed herself with laudanum today.

‘But I’d pay her extra!’

‘She’s not your laundress,’ Phoebe said. ‘You’re responsible for your own laundry.’

Dellaphine didn’t say a word, but kept neatly lining up doughy rolls in the baking pan.

Then, so help me, Henry looked right at Madeleine, and I waited for, I didn’t know what, some awful eruption. But Madeleine controlled her temper. She looked straight into Henry’s eyes.

‘I have a job, Mr Post,’ she said. ‘And it doesn’t include taking in laundry.’

‘So what am I supposed to do?’ Henry said, staring helplessly at his laundry bag.

The kitchen timer dinged, and Phoebe went over to the stove, opening a path for Joe’s escape, which he took with alacrity.

‘The rest of us do our own laundry,’ I said to Henry. ‘There’s a perfectly good new Bendix washing machine in the basement and plenty of drying lines.’

‘But you’re women,’ Henry said.

‘Henry,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what. Over the weekend I’ll teach you to use the washing machine. One lesson should do it.’

‘What are we coming to,’ Henry said, ‘when a man has to do his own laundry! And what about ironing?’

Dellaphine stood, the pan of rolls in her hand to set in the oven. ‘I been ironing since I was nine years old,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you how to iron. Once.’

‘You all get out of this kitchen,’ Phoebe said, ‘and let Dellaphine and me get dinner on the table.’

Henry and I joined Ada and Joe in the lounge.

To signal that disaster was averted, I said, ‘I’m going to show Henry how to use the washing machine, and Dellaphine is going to teach him how to iron.’

I should have known to keep my mouth shut. A hot red flush crawled up Henry’s neck and face, and we saw the ugliness of the anger he’d hidden in the kitchen.

‘These people, these Chink laundrymen, the Negroes, they’ll be begging to do our laundry again after the war, you wait and see!’

‘Shut up, Henry,’ Ada said as Joe turned up the volume on the radio to drown him out.

Joe and I spent a few minutes alone together in the lounge after dinner. Or what passed for alone in that house. Phoebe and Ada were in the kitchen, making tea I assumed, because I heard the rattle of cups and saucers.

Joe joined me on the sofa and I curled up in his arms.

‘So,’ I said, ‘who washes your clothes? Somehow you escaped telling us.’

Joe groaned. ‘One of my friends at work, his mother takes in laundry. I take my laundry to the office and pick it up two days later.’

‘Perhaps Henry could avoid the humiliation of women’s work if your woman would do his, too.’

‘I am not carrying Henry’s laundry bag anywhere. He deserves this lesson. Can we forget about washing and such for the few minutes we’ve been left in blessed solitude?’

We kissed, the longest kiss we’d been able to share in many days. His soft beard nuzzled my face while he caressed my bottom with one hand, the one that wasn’t holding me close. I didn’t feel the usual tingle, though, I suppose because I was preoccupied with my Friday evening meeting with Alessa.

‘Are you OK?’ Joe asked. ‘You’re trembling.’ He pulled Phoebe’s embroidered throw over my shoulders.

‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘Work has been difficult, with this special project and with making sure the usual office stuff gets done, and one of my girls is out sick.’

‘Let’s go out somewhere tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘Get a drink and have dinner. We’ll stay out of public parks.’

‘I’d love to,’ I said, ‘but I have to go to my knitting circle.’

‘Can’t you skip it once?’

‘I can’t.’ I tried to think of a good reason. ‘I’m supposed to get a coffee afterwards with one of the women.’

‘Saturday night, then?’

‘Yes, that would be wonderful.’ My first – and only – ‘espionage’ operation would be over, I hoped, and I could relax and enjoy myself.

We heard Ada and Phoebe coming down the hall to the lounge, so we scurried to opposite ends of the couch. In unison we picked up sections of the evening newspaper.

Ada went upstairs, but Phoebe brought her cup of tea into the lounge. Phoebe was a kind woman. She was worried sick about her sons, she’d brought strangers to live in her home, and she was considerate of Dellaphine and Madeleine. Would she really disapprove if Joe and I enjoyed a discreet affair in her house? Ada wouldn’t care, and to hell with Henry.

Phoebe stirred her tea with a silver teaspoon monogrammed with an elaborate H, the initial of her last name. Earl Grey tea swirled around the rim of one of her bone china teacups. We never used either in our daily meals.

I guessed Phoebe was near fifty, but she seemed older to me. She wore her pre-war styled skirts below her knees and crimped her hair like she was still living in the thirties. She complained about all the changes brought about by the war, everything from married women leaving their children in day nurseries and going out to work, to servicemen wearing uniforms in church. She wanted her world to return to the way it was before the war. Most of us did not.

No, Phoebe was not a modern woman. She would be horrified if Joe and I did anything more than hold hands under her roof. Most likely she’d evict us if she caught us. And then where would we go? Share an apartment? It would be impossible to find a decent one without producing a marriage certificate to a potential landlord. I doubted we could afford it, anyway. A two and a half room apartment ran to about ninety dollars a month. And I didn’t know any woman who survived the damage to her reputation if the word got out she was shacked up. Some women thrived despite a non-conventional lifestyle, like Dora Bertrand, a lesbian who lived openly with her lover, but they were rare exceptions. Dora was a brilliant anthropologist critical to OSS’s work in the Pacific. I wasn’t.

Betty was at her accustomed place at her typewriter when I arrived at the office Friday morning. She looked like her old self. She’d repaired and polished her fingernails their usual bright red, and her hair was shiny, clean, and styled. But a different woman inhabited her body, a somber one, with her eyes hooded, concealing her feelings.

Ruth and Brenda weren’t in the office yet.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. How do you feel?’

‘Tired,’ she said. ‘And a little scared. But I’m OK.’

‘You follow the plan, and everything will work out. Myrna and Lil will help you.’

‘Myrna’s moving out,’ she said, ‘getting her own apartment.’

I bet she was. And I wondered again what Myrna’s ‘job’ with OSS was.

‘And, listen, thanks,’ she said. ‘Thanks for everything. I was too upset to think. I’ll do my best to keep myself together.’ Resolutely, she inserted a dictation tape into her Dictaphone and settled the earphones over her head. She pulled paper, onion-skin, and carbon paper from her drawer and rolled it into her typewriter.

Don Murray appeared at my office door. ‘Could you come down to my office, please, Mrs Pearlie, and bring your notebook with you?’

‘Of course,’ I said, grabbing my stenographer’s pad and a pencil.

I knew the instant I walked into Don’s office that something terrible had happened. Melinsky, in uniform, Don, and Max Corso, the head of the Italian desk for Special Intelligence, were all waiting for me.

‘Sit down, please, Mrs Pearlie,’ Corso said. He pulled the only comfortable chair in the office out for me. Don handed me a cup of coffee, a first. I steeled myself.

‘Our operation has been cancelled, Mrs Pearlie,’ Melinsky said.

‘Why?’ I asked, knowing they didn’t have to tell me. I gripped the arms of my chair so hard that my knuckles turned white with the effort. I was determined to behave professionally, even though my mind churned and my stomach cramped into the size of a walnut.

‘Alessa Oneto is dead,’ Corso said.

TWENTY-THREE

I
struggled so hard to appear professional and controlled that I bit my tongue. I tasted the drop of blood in my mouth and pulled my handkerchief out of my sleeve to blot it quickly, so the men wouldn’t see.

‘What happened?’ I finally asked.

‘Here’s what we know,’ Melinsky said. ‘Our man at Union Station reported that Alessa and her husband’s secretary, Rossi, arrived from New York yesterday afternoon and took a taxi to the Mayflower. As we discussed earlier we kept our distance and didn’t tail them any further.’

‘Our agent in the DC Police called me this morning,’ Corso said, ‘to tell me that a Sicilian national killed herself at the Mayflower Hotel. It was Alessa Oneto.’

Impossible. Alessa would not kill herself, I thought, but I didn’t say so out loud. I didn’t want the men to think I was another hysterical woman.

‘How do they know it was suicide?’ I asked instead.

‘When Count Oneto woke up, Alessa was dead in their bed; had been for several hours, apparently,’ Don said. ‘The DC Police haven’t gotten much information out of the husband, he’s been distraught. But the mother-in-law said much of her laudanum and Nembutal was missing. The two women shared a bathroom, so Alessa could have taken a handful of pills as she was preparing for bed. And the secretary, Rossi, said that Alessa seemed depressed on the train ride home.’

I didn’t believe a word of it.

‘There will be an autopsy and an inquest, of course,’ Melinsky said. ‘The police have searched the crime scene and lifted fingerprints from the medicine bottles. We’ll find out the results from our agent.’

I framed my words so I’d seem unemotional about Alessa’s death. ‘Colonel Melinsky,’ I said, ‘it seems unlikely to me that Alessa Oneto killed herself. She was dedicated to this operation. If she came back from New York with the information promised by her asset, couldn’t that have had something to do with her death?’ I allowed myself to use the word I had been thinking all along. ‘Couldn’t she have been murdered? What about the FBI? Aren’t they involved in this, since Alessa was a refugee?’