Louise's Gamble (17 page)

My refuge, the ladies’ bathroom, was empty. I took my usual reflective position on a toilet, my legs drawn up, my feet resting on the seat, and my head on my knees. But I didn’t cry. Instead I beat on the wooden stall partition, with both hands, livid with anger. Who the hell did those three men think they were, to berate me, to suspend me, for taking a little initiative! What I reported to them this morning was valuable and important. Following up on it might save lives. I bet they’d figure out a way to get some of what I’d learned to the ONI, and guess who would get credit for it! Not me! What could you expect from someone like Melinsky, a man whose family owned serfs!

Damn Don! He wouldn’t have dared suspend me if our workload hadn’t slacked off!

I’d been suspended for insubordination! Even though I didn’t have to admit it to anyone, a black mark would stay on my record, harming my chances for promotion. I’d be sorting index cards for the rest of the war, however long it lasted.

I stalked down the hallway to my office, keeping my eyes averted so I didn’t have to acknowledge anyone, even Dora, who passed by me with a stack of books and papers and a pencil stuck behind her ear and one in her mouth.

Betty was the only one of my girls in the office.

‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘Ruth and Brenda have gone for coffee. They should be back soon. How was your weekend?’

Had I had a weekend? I almost didn’t remember; it seemed like a month ago.

‘Not so great,’ I said. ‘A woman I knew died. I went to a reception in her memory on Sunday.’

Betty turned to me, wiping the carbon from her hands with the damp cloth she kept on her desk.

‘I’m so sorry. Who was she? Someone I know?’

‘You probably read about her in the newspaper,’ I said. ‘She was the countess who died in her apartment in the Mayflower. I knew her from a knitting group we were in together. Except I didn’t know she was a countess. She didn’t tell us.’

Why was I telling Betty this? Why didn’t I say, sure, I had a swell time over the weekend, went out drinking and jitterbugging like a normal government girl? Then I remembered my social niceties.

‘And how was your weekend?’ I asked Betty.

She instantly brightened in that all too familiar way. ‘I had the nicest time,’ she said. ‘I went out with a swell guy.’

The one thing that could distract me from my pity party was the idea that Betty already had a new boyfriend. The girl was incorrigible.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said, reading my expression. ‘He’s not like the others.’

‘Does he wear a uniform? Is he about to be sent overseas? Is he lonely?’ That was unkind and cynical, but I couldn’t help myself in the mood I was in.

Betty flushed. ‘I don’t blame you for being annoyed, but Ralph is different. For one thing he’s a policeman, a lieutenant. He’s pretty old – over thirty. He’s not in the Army because he’s Four-F.’

‘Where did you meet him?’ Some bar, I assumed.

Betty’s flush spread down her neck and chest. ‘At the jail. He was so nice to me.’

This I could not believe. I rolled my eyes.

‘Don’t do that!’ she said. ‘His sister got in the same fix, so he understands! I’ve learned my lesson, I really have!’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘all right. I’m sorry.’ And I was. I should give the girl a chance to prove she’d grown up.

Ruth and Brenda arrived, refreshed by their cups of joe.

‘Is there any coffee left in the cafeteria?’ Betty asked.

‘Plenty,’ Ruth answered, pulling on her black sleeve protectors. ‘It’s the beginning of the week. You go on.’

‘Can I bring you some, Louise?’ Betty asked.

‘You look like you could use it,’ Ruth said, studying my face.

All the coffee in the world couldn’t make me feel better.

‘Wait for a minute, Betty,’ I said. ‘I need to talk to you all for a few minutes.’

‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Ruth said.

‘Nothing catastrophic,’ I said, ‘but I’ve been assigned to a new project. Another private library that needs sorting for useful material. It’s here in town, so I’ll be around. Ruth, you’ll be in charge. If you have any questions or problems, ask Joan Adams. General Donovan is still out of the country, so she has some free time.’

Ruth sighed. ‘Nobody in this building listens to me the way they do to you,’ she said. ‘Not Dr Murray, not Mr Austine, not anyone. They make a mess of the files and reports, and we have to clean up after them.’

I hadn’t realized I was such a martinet. I rather liked the idea. ‘Look at it this way,’ I said to Ruth, patting her on her arm, ‘you’ll have a chance to practice command.’

‘When will you be back?’ Betty asked.

‘Monday next,’ I said.

Then it struck me. I had a week off! I hadn’t had so much free time in, what, almost two years, since I first went to work at the Wilmington Shipbuilding Company.

And since I’d worked for OSS I’d had exactly one weekday free: the Fourth of July.

I would have preferred not to be disciplined, but now I could help Dellaphine cook Thanksgiving dinner. I could sit out on the porch, wrapped in a blanket, and read. I could make a war cake. I could catch up on my knitting . . . and then I remembered Alessa and the injustice of letting the judgment of suicide stand. Maybe she had killed herself, but I wasn’t convinced. She was in the midst of bringing OSS critical information about a sleeper, a
Mafioso
, based in the New York City docks. She’d returned from New York, and perhaps she’d already had the information she’d promised us! And she was alone in her apartment for several hours. Plenty of time for her to be overwhelmed by someone and forced to poison herself, and for the stage to be set to look like suicide.

By the time I got off my bus and walked into Dellaphine’s kitchen I’d made a dangerous decision. I was going to spend most of this week probing Alessa’s death on my own. I owed her that much. I would be very careful, and if I turned up anything suspicious, I’d take it straight to the DC Police, I vowed to myself.

If I stumbled upon evidence that OSS could use, like the name of our man, I would deal with that when it happened. I didn’t want to lose my job, but with a suspension for insubordination on my record, I wasn’t sure how secure my job was any more. I didn’t trust Don’s reassurances. When I got back on Monday I might find myself in the mimeograph room.

‘What are you doing home this early? Don’t you feel well?’ Dellaphine said, folding a basket of towels at the kitchen table. She’d pulled them off the line, and they smelled of laundry detergent and autumn.

I pulled a towel out of the laundry basket and shook it out. ‘I’ve been suspended, for a week, for insubordination.’

‘My Lord, Mrs Pearlie, what did you do?’

‘I argued with my bosses.’

‘They was mens?’

‘All three of them.’

I folded the towel the way Phoebe liked them, both edges toward the middle so it would hang neatly on a towel rod.

‘I’m sorry,’ Dellaphine said. ‘Will this hurt your future?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I might as well grit my teeth and go on. It’s wartime. Who knows what’s going to happen? I’ve decided not to worry about it and enjoy my week off.’ A week off without pay. I could get through the month all right though. I saved some of each paycheck, even though the government urged us to spend every extra penny on war bonds.

‘That’s right,’ Dellaphine said. ‘Enjoy yourself while you can. Get some rest.’

‘I’m going to help you cook Thanksgiving dinner,’ I said. ‘I know that much.’

I made a Spam and mayonnaise sandwich for myself and took it and a glass of milk up to my bedroom. I needed to collect my thoughts and plan the next few days. I hoped to do my investigating as unobtrusively as possible. My job with OSS might be shaky, but I wanted to keep it if I could.

As I thought of losing my job, a ripple of apprehension cascaded into pure fear. I felt it physically, frigid hands grasping my spine and shaking cold shivers through me. What if I did lose my job with a black mark on my record? Dear heaven, I’d have to go back home to Wilmington and live with my parents! I’d become again the widowed daughter with no prospects. I couldn’t bear it. My resolve ebbed away. Alessa was dead; nothing I could do would bring her back. If the police and the coroner’s office had declared her death a suicide, why shouldn’t I accept that? After all, I didn’t know her all that well. And if OSS had turned over the files on Alessa and her asset to the Office of Naval Intelligence, who was I to challenge that decision? My brief spell as a cut-out and a couple of days at ‘The Farm’ did not make me a real OSS agent. Melinsky was right: I wasn’t trained to deal with an operation this complex.

As I abandoned my plan I felt my panic slowly subside. I managed to eat my sandwich and drink my milk.

But my mind still churned with questions about Alessa’s death. It wouldn’t hurt to write down what I knew, would it? Organize my thoughts so I could put them behind me and move on? I got a notebook and pencil out of the top drawer of my dresser.

I began at the beginning.

I first went the knitting circle early in October. Alessa, dressed in her thrift shop clothing, was already a member.

This seemed important. She hadn’t joined the circle in search of a contact within the government; she’d approached me when she’d learned I was a government girl. Not only that, she hadn’t had the Mafia sleeper’s name yet. First she’d needed to assure herself, and her asset, that the information could be passed to a responsible person safely.

Had Alessa picked up this name on her last trip to New York, shortly before her death? If so, where was it now?

And what about Alessa’s illegitimate half brother? Was he her contact, or was he peripheral, someone she visited while in New York? Sebastian told me that they lived in a New York hotel for a time before moving to Washington. Alessa must have met dozens of people in the city, any one of whom could be her asset. I didn’t see how I could find out, and besides, I didn’t know her brother’s name.

Alessa died sometime between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Thursday night when she was alone in her apartment.

Had the DC Police verified Orazio, Sebastian, Lina, and Lucia’s alibis? Had Alessa allowed someone to enter the apartment, who subsequently killed her and set up the scene to look like a suicide? How easy was it, anyway, to get into the residential side of the Mayflower? Was a doorman on duty twenty-four hours a day? I’d never been required to sign in when I visited Joan Adams; did Hays wave everyone upstairs?

Where did Enzo fit in? What kind of ‘errands’ had he run for Alessa? Where had she changed into her ‘thrift shop disguise’? And, in a sudden burst of insight, I wondered if she’d disguised her identity with anyone other than our knitting group.

If Alessa had brought back the name of the sleeper from her contact in New York, where was it? If she was murdered, which I felt in my very bones she had been, had the murderer found it?

I went over my notes. I needed to talk to Enzo first; then I intended to verify alibis. As discreetly as possible, of course.

I wished I could get my hands on the police report. How much did Ralph the policeman like Betty?

I caught myself in mid-speculation. OK, so I hadn’t given up. I did not for one second believe Alessa killed herself. I intended to spend this week investigating her death. If I could solve her murder, perhaps that would lead me to the name of the sleeper before the next slow convoy left New York, or thousands of lives could be at risk.

‘What did you do?’ Ada asked.

‘Stopped shuffling index cards and took some initiative,’ I said, helping myself to a scoop of mashed potatoes and bacon before passing it down the table to Henry.

‘I’m sorry, dear,’ Phoebe said, to me, not Henry. ‘I’m surprised your office could do without you.’

‘It’s just for a week. And I’m allowed to lie about it. I can say I’m working on a special project so as not to lose my influence over my staff,’ I said.

Henry didn’t voice his opinion of my suspension. I’m sure I wouldn’t have appreciated it.

I’d already pulled Joe aside and told him.

‘I knew you’d get in hot water one of these days,’ he said, ‘you’re such a troublemaker.’ He kissed me quickly, before anyone could see him.

‘And I pride myself on keeping my mouth shut,’ I said. ‘Didn’t follow my own advice.’

‘You could visit your parents,’ Phoebe said.

I loved my parents, I did, but the thought of going home for any length of time made me feel sick. And here I was taking chances that could spoil my life in Washington. Well, if I lost my government job, I’d move someplace cheaper than ‘Two Trees’ and wait tables at Childs. I wasn’t going home to North Carolina, and I wasn’t leaving the questions I had about Alessa unanswered. I was stuck on this lonesome road, as I’d heard Sister Rosetta Thorpe sing many times on Dellaphine’s gospel radio station.

Before joining the others in the lounge, I sat on the worn needlepoint chair in the hall and took the telephone on my lap. First I called Betty. She sounded like her old self and was eager to help me after everything I’d done for her. She didn’t question why I wanted to meet Ralph, but eagerly agreed to introduce us. She and Ralph were having lunch together tomorrow at a soda fountain near work. Why didn’t I join them? Then I could ask him whatever I wanted.

I spent a few minutes plotting my strategy before calling the Mayflower Hotel and asking to be put through to the silver room. I’d never considered myself much of an actress, but the man who answered the phone fell for my story hook, line, and sinker.

‘Enzo Carini isn’t here,’ he said. ‘He works the day shift, eight to six.’

‘You see,’ I said, hoping I sounded like a young shop girl. I needed to stay as far under the radar as possible. ‘He lent me a dollar at the bus stop today, and I want to pay him back, but I don’t know his address or anything.’

‘If it’s not raining you’ll find Enzo outside the servants’ entrance around ten fifteen tomorrow smoking a cigarette,’ the man said. ‘That’s our morning break time.’

As I hung up the phone and replaced it on the telephone table, I wondered if I should write down all the lies I was telling in case I lost track of them.