A Woman of Intelligence Page 22
I didn’t respond, not trusting myself. My brain had words ready that I surely couldn’t say.
I peered at the boys in the stroller. They were falling asleep.
“Let’s sit a moment,” I said, and we sat next to each other on the part of the winding bench closest to the streetlights. I looked at him and then slowly reached into my bag. I handed him the envelope that Max had given me. He took it without touching my hand. Then he unfolded the sheet of paper, looked at it, and folded it again.
“I’m supposed to give it to Ava, and I’m supposed to forbid her from going to Russia.”
“I wish I could tell you who Max is,” Wells said after we sat together in silence a moment. “But I know Coldwell is looking into it.”
He turned to me and placed the envelope between us. He laid his hand on it, and I laid my hand on the other half.
“What should I do with this?” I whispered.
“We talked about taking it for further examination, but Max can easily get a message to Ava. He doesn’t need to encode anything for it to reach her.”
He opened the envelope, looked at what was written. “I think it’s just an address. Must be some address, though.”
I watched his hands as he put the letter back in. “I still don’t understand why he gave it to me.”
“Maybe he wasn’t going to until he met you. Maybe now it’s not just for Ava, it’s for you, too. A place to go, if you’re ever desperate for one.”
I nodded and he let the envelope go.
“I’m just fine right here,” I said quietly.
He leaned back on the bench and put his legs out straight in front of him. He was no longer wearing his party shoes.
I said as much.
“Can’t wear those when I’m not at a meeting,” he said, laughing. “Hoover wants us to be ‘models of the clean, manly life.’ To get into the FBI you have to pass a firearms test, keep your weight in check.”
“Even undercover?”
“I have a little more flexibility than most. But I’m a former military man. Dressing as a hobo all the time doesn’t make sense. At a meeting, it makes some sense.”
“Weight in check,” I said, smiling. “It’s a bit like prepping for Miss America.”
“Except that Hoover doesn’t let the misses past the secretarial pool. What you’re doing is as close as he’ll let women get. Especially when there isn’t a war.”
“I’m glad there’s no longer a war.”
“Only because we live in Manhattan. There’s a war about to ignite down south.”
“For good cause.”
“I hope so.”
The trees rustled from the slight breeze and we sat and listened to the peaceful quiet of the park after dark.
“Coldwell sent a girl named Sarah Beach to help me today, with my children,” I commented, thinking of all the competent girls who would study until their brains hurt only to become housewives instead of FBI special agents. “She was a bit of a miracle.”
“Joe Beach’s daughter. He used to be a Franciscan monk.”
“Did he? That explains it. I was pretty sure that she was hiding angel wings under her Brooks Brothers casualwear. She managed to tame my boys without threats, bribery, or handing over a bag of Domino sugar. Maybe she drugged them, but I’m not going to look into it.”
“For a person who nearly met her maker today, you’re pretty amusing,” said Turner, looking at me.
“The last two years, I’ve been telling jokes to babies who can’t respond. I’ve been saving them up.”
“You’re probably even more amusing when death does not knock on your door.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s nice,” he said, sitting back again. “Very. Not a lot of comics in the FBI.”
“No? Hoover seems like a barrel of laughs. Rubber chickens in his back pocket. Pulling quarters out of the agents’ ears.”
“Not so much,” Wells said, laughing, really laughing. It was the first time I’d ever seen him laugh like that and I immediately knew that I wanted to make him laugh like that again.
“Walk?” he said, standing up.
“Walk,” I repeated. I checked on the boys, who were still sleeping, and started pushing the stroller beside Turner.
“So, I give the envelope to Ava.”
“Definitely,” said Turner. “And soon.”
“But if she doesn’t go to Russia, do they, do you need me?”
“We need you,” he said quietly, keeping his eyes on the path in front of us.
We passed a man on a bench, playing the guitar and singing quietly. He was clearly playing for himself, not for money, as there were very few people out to give him a dime.
“‘Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor. He played a few chords then he sang some more,’” said Wells in his raspy voice.
“I like that,” I said, smiling up at him.
“I didn’t write it. Langston Hughes did. But I think it every time I pass a street musician. Or a park musician.” He paused. “Do you have my telephone number memorized?”
“I do,” I said.
He made me recite it back to him as we walked on, but there was no need. I would never forget anything about Turner Wells.
CHAPTER 23
“Just one minute,” I said to the cabdriver as I put the baby on my hip and gripped Gerrit by the hand while trying to pay the driver the fifty-cent fare. I was sweating along my hairline, down my temples, and the back of my neck was drenched. I didn’t know if it was because May in Manhattan had grown as humid as May in Mombasa, or because I was extremely nervous to hand Ava Max’s letter. “It feels like an opportunity, a lifeline,” Turner had said before I left the park. “If you can get it to her tomorrow, get it to her tomorrow.”
And here I was, in a position to most certainly give it to her. Except I was afraid that I had no idea what I was doing. That she didn’t know what she was doing, either. That none of us really did.
“Jump, baby!” said Gerrit, holding Peter’s feet, trying to push his legs up. “Fly airplane, baby!” he said, pushing so hard that Peter started crying.
“Enough, baby!” I shouted as I tried to get them into Ava’s building, a rectangular block with some art deco flourishes called the Eden. I hadn’t much noticed its architecture when I walked her home in the middle of the night. Now I could see that the building was handsome but run-down, like a girl who was overlooked at a dance, but if you caught her profile in the right light, you’d wonder why.
I pushed the boys through the portico entrance, embarrassed to be showing up at her door that way. But what other way could I show up? With my one free hand I pushed Gerrit into the elevator, and we exited on four. Ava’s door was painted dark green with gold numbers just like the others. There was no sign that America’s most striking communist lived in apartment 4B. “I’m sorry to bother you like this, I should have called, I should have just asked Jacob for your telephone number.” I had been rehearsing that line in the taxi.
“Definitely don’t ask Jacob for her telephone number,” Turner had said.
I ran my hand down the front of her door, brushing off a small flake of loose paint, and knocked again. After my fist hit the wood, both of Gerrit’s did too. No one came to the door. I knocked again, Gerrit kicked the door, and the baby started crying again. Still nothing. Gerrit looked up at me. “No, Mama.”
“You’re right, darling. No one is home. Silly Mama.” I crouched down, tried not to drop the baby, and slipped the envelope under her door. I hurried the boys back into the elevator and to the nearest pay phone.
“4B?” I asked Turner. “You’re quite sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“She wasn’t home,” I said, breathing heavily from the weight of carrying Peter. “I pushed the envelope under the door. Do you think that was…” The words “incredibly stupid” came to mind.
“I’ll see if we can have someone tail her home. I’m sure she will receive it.”
“I should have waited.”
“I think waiting would have been a very bad idea.”
“Thank you, Turner,” I said, trying to hold on to the sound of his voice, to his affirmation. Though he didn’t reply, I could almost hear him nodding. I imagined him in a kitchen, or perhaps a bedroom. I imagined him with a glass of water next to him, no alcohol or cigarettes in the house, the opposite of Lee Coldwell. I hung up the receiver, and then Gerrit pulled on my skirt so hard that it almost came off. A reminder that my pleasant imagining would always be cut short by my reality.
When the elevator opened into our apartment, I was shocked to see Tom standing in front of the couch looking very worried.
“Tom! You’re home. What’s the matter?” I asked, scooting the boys straight across our own Antonín Kybal carpet.
“Where were you?” he said, looking at me as Gerrit tried to escape. I let the boys out and Tom let Gerrit grab his legs. He tousled his hair without looking down at him as Gerrit screamed, “Dada!”
“On a walk, a brief walk. Very brief,” I said, watching their interaction. Something was off about Tom. He usually at least bent at the waist to greet his children, but he was patting Gerrit as if he were a very vocal cat. “We had some errands to run,” I said as he looked at my empty hands. “We dropped off the dry-cleaning.”
“Something has come up,” said Tom.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, wanting to sprint back to the elevator. He had caught on to one of my lies. Or he guessed something was different. There was no other reason he could be home.
I watched him finally reach for Gerrit, but his expression didn’t change. He still looked stunned.
“Tom,” I said, gathering my courage. “I can ex—”
“We’ll be going out this evening,” he said, interrupting me.
“What? What do you mean, ‘we’?”
“Just you and me.”
“Why?”
“We’ve been invited by the Maximillian Millses,” he said, his voice almost at a whisper, hoarse from reverence. “The Maximillian Millses,” he said again, in case I hadn’t understood which Millses. “Jilly and my mother are coming to watch the boys.”
“The Maximillian Millses,” I repeated, utterly shocked and completely relieved. “Jilly and your mother? Why not just your mother?”
“Because I’d like them to be alive and with ten fingers—each, not between them—when we return,” he said. “You know my mother can’t watch the boys on her own. She’ll forget to remove the bullets from one of those antique guns or just let Gerrit sail out the window to his death. It’s not safe.”
I nodded, basking in the pure relief that Tom hadn’t figured out the lies I’d been singing. “Are we to go to a party with them? A fund-raiser of sorts?”
“My entire existence is a fund-raiser of sorts these days, but no.” He took a step closer to me, and then in the same hoarse whisper said, “It’s a dinner at their house.” I took a step back and Tom nodded. “Now you understand my terror.”
I did, and now mine was escalating quickly, soon to overtake his.
“You should start getting ready immediately,” he said, giving me a once-over. “Please feel free to hire anyone you need to help you. Have them come to the house, please. I’m in no state to watch the boys without you near.”
“I’ll start making calls. I’ll telephone Jean-Pierre. I’ll telephone Bergdorf’s.”
“Good.” He put down Gerrit, leaned over, and took the baby. “Katharina,” he said, still staring at my dress. “I don’t think it needs to be said, but your look needs to be conservative, staid. Sophisticated is the better word, but appealing. A woman with gravitas, but who is an agreeable conversationalist. Pleasant. But memorable. You should perhaps—”
“Tom, I understand,” I replied, before kissing Peter. “I promise not to embarrass you.”
Tom nodded. “All right. But most importantly, please, don’t drink at all.”
I paused and looked at Tom, clutching the baby, Gerrit gripping his leg again. I pulled Gerrit away from him.
“Won’t that look odd, though? What shall I ask for, warm milk?”
“I think a drunk woman flapping about a six-story town house would look odder.”
I walked back to the bedroom with Gerrit. If Tom wasn’t instilling terror in me, this would have been something to look forward to. Now I was just scared that I’d come off like a nervous, unsophisticated housewife who couldn’t handle a drink. I wish I could just tell Tom, But I’m quite something else altogether, darling. I’m an FBI informant, don’t you know? Why just this morning I was slipping a note under a beautiful communist’s door in the hopes that she might go to Cuba to assist with some airplanes. What’s a revolution without airplanes, I always say. But no. Instead I would have to croon, Every day I fall in love with Tom Edgeworth all over again. By the way, might you want to write Lenox Hill a big fat check? The sick children don’t heal themselves, my dear.
I opened my closet and tried to breathe. The Maximillian Millses. No family inspired more intrigue in New York than the Maximillian Millses. Not European royals or movie stars, or the women on the many best-dressed lists with money falling out of their ears. They were shrouded in mystery because they had gobs and gobs of money, but kept extremely low profiles, eschewing almost all social events and often dressing terribly when they did appear. “They’re too posh to wash,” a woman, and a Rockefeller at that, had once whispered to me at the medical gala when a lesser Mills had been in attendance. She’d been wearing a dress two sizes too big and wrinkled from bust to hem. She looked so odd that she might have inspired pity if anyone in the room didn’t know who she was. But of course, everyone did. She was a Mills, and she could wear anything she wanted.
There were many Millses. There was Edward Mills and Chilton Mills and Humility Mills, whom everyone called Pretty Lity, but none of them were Maximillian. Never Max, certainly not Maxim, only Maximillian. He who broke off from the booming family business, frontier enterprises in Iowa, and started an asset management company in New York, giving the extremely rich family their first New York presence. The other Millses flitted in from the middle of the country for events in the spring and fall, but they didn’t stay for more than a couple days.
Maximillian had dared to make New York home, bought the most expensive one on the market, and then proceeded to invite no one. We had never been, even Tom’s parents had not entered. Now, for reasons unbeknownst to Tom, we were on our way.
When I hung up with the hair salon, Tom walked into my room. “Let me choose your dress, I’m too nervous to be useless.”
“Bergdorf’s is bringing five.”
“Which five?”
“A fencing costume, a hula skirt, a pair of pajamas, a negli—”
“Enough. Just call for me when they arrive.”
Tom chose a dark pink silk Jacques Fath evening dress with a cinched wasp waist that fell into architectural pleats rather than a full skirt.
“Sophisticated,” Tom said as I joined him in the elevator.
“Crippling,” I murmured as I tried to take a deep breath.
After two minutes in the taxi, Tom still looked like he’d seen a ghost. He was not ready to walk into that house.
“You look green in the face, Tom,” I said, taking his hand. I had never seen a person so committed to raising money for a good cause. He was going to have to be hospitalized for how much he cared about that hospital.
“Do I? I have to shake it before we arrive.”
“Shall I tickle you? Still got that quill pen your mother gave you?”
Tom laughed.
“I forgot how entertaining you can be.”
“You’ve forgotten a lot about me,” I said, stroking his hand.
When we arrived at Seventy-ninth Street, just a few minutes later, Tom was no longer the color of fungus. And when the doors were opened by a butler, he had turned back into sleek and sophisticated doctor and heir Tom Edgeworth.
There were twenty people in the cocktail lounge, under the painted stars, and not one of them was a Mills, but there, in the center, was Mrs. Morgan. I had to plant my feet and reach for a glass of water to keep myself from running to her.
“I see Jim Mellon,” said Tom, smiling. “At least they got the guest list right,” he murmured before heading to him. He turned back to me, remembering that he probably shouldn’t abandon his wife, but when he saw Mrs. Morgan approaching, he nodded.
“Oh thank God you’re here, dear,” she said, grabbing my hand. “Can you believe this house?” she said far too loudly. “In precisely two hours, I’m planning to pretend that I’m losing the plot, as in I’m utterly senile, just so I can wander about the place. Will you come with me? It’s twenty thousand square feet, and there’s even a saltwater swimming pool. These Iowans should host the next Olympic Games so that your niece doesn’t have to paddle to Australia. The dining room alone seats fifty, and then of course there’s the great room for dessert. They only have a dinner at their house once a year; the rest of the time they entertain at hotels and such, and that’s very seldom. Can you imagine? Having a house like this and not entertaining? What do they have here instead, solitary Bible study?”
“Only once a year? I thought it was a bit more frequent than that,” I said, trying to identify the other guests. “That’s rather dreary, only one dinner party a year, not that I’m beating their track record.”
“But here’s the thing,” Mrs. Morgan said, handing me her drink and putting my water glass down on a table with a bang. “If they hosted a dinner at home more than once a year, no one would call it the dinner.”