A President In Peril

Chapter Eighteen C₃ O₁ M₃ P₃ L₁ E₁ X₈ (adj) so complicated or intricate as to be hard to understand or deal with

It was just past seven-thirty when I got home to Oak Park. When I walked into the house, Catherine was standing in the living room wearing an apron and a questioning look.

“I’ve held dinner and can reheat it, Steve,” she said. “Unless you’ve already had something to eat.”

I shook my head.

“Is everything all right?”

I said it was, more or less, and when we sat down to eat spareribs and sauerkraut, I began the rundown on the day’s events.

“I heard about that horrible killing on the radio news earlier, but of course they don’t go into much detail,” she said after I’d told her about Goldman’s murder.

I gave her greater detail without describing what the corpse looked like. Then I told her about the meeting in the saloon on Van Buren Street.

“Why do you persist in getting so involved with all of this?” she asked. “It’s police business.”

“I know it is. But a president’s life could be at stake here. I feel like I’ve been thrown into the middle of it, whether I like it or not.”

“Again, Steve, it is still police business. Not to mention the FBI and the Secret Service.”

I conceded her point and shifted gears. “As the reigning Scrabble champion in this household, a title I grudgingly bestow upon you, do you have any thoughts about this apparent code word ogra, or maybe okra, or orca, or something like that?”

“You’re sure it wasn’t ogre, as in ‘a fairy tale monster or hideous beast’? That’s pretty much how the dictionary defines it.”

“Well, maybe. The way this Kravitz pronounced it, though, the word sounded more like it ended in an ‘a’. By chance, is there such a thing as a female ogre that’s called an ogra?”

“I don’t think so, Steve,” she said, trying without success to stifle a laugh at my expense. “Then there’s okra, which is a sort of vegetable pod that’s used in soups and stews. I don’t happen to like it myself. It’s too gluey and sappy for my taste.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it, seeing as how I’ve never had the stuff. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, especially given the way you describe it.”

Catherine wrinkled her normally smooth forehead, a sign that she was pondering. “Let’s see... an orca is a killer whale. There may be something to that. We’ve got the word killer. Does whale suggest anything to you?”

I shook my head. “No... I don’t know how a fish would figure into this.”

“A whale isn’t a fish, it’s a mammal, not that it makes any difference here,” she said.

“Okay, let’s go back to ogra,” I ventured. “For what it’s worth.”

“What if it’s an acronym for something?”

“Okay, you’ve got me,” I told her. “What, pray tell, is an acronym?”

“It’s a fairly new definition, meaning a word formed using the first letters of words that spell an organization, like, say, WAC for Women’s Army Corps.”

“So what would ORCA spell?”

Catherine shook her head. “For the moment, let’s go back to OGRA,” she said. “Maybe it’s something like, let’s see... Organization of Genetically Racial Aryans. That’s what the Nazis called themselves, Aryans.”

“I think you’re really reaching,” I told her.

“I agree, Steve. This could be some sort of complex code; but for the moment, let’s assume that it’s something much simpler. What if we just tried to spell the words backwards?”

“That would be ‘arko’,” I said. “What the hell could that mean?”

“No, I was thinking of the other one. It would come out as ‘argo’, which has some honest-to-goodness meanings. That’s the name of a star constellation, I think in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s also the name of the boat Jason sailed in his search for the Golden Fleece in Greek mythology. He and his men were called the Argonauts.”

“Where do you come up with all this stuff?” I asked in awe.

“As I’m sure I must have told you, several years ago I was assigned to the so-called answer desk at the library. It was my job to look up answers to all manner of questions from telephone callers, a lot of them students who were working on essays or term papers.”

“Well, count me in as one who is impressed. Let’s say for the moment that there’s something to this ‘argo’ idea. Got any thoughts?”

“It’s beyond me what significance a constellation would have in this particular context. Or a mythical Greek ship, for that matter. Isn’t there a town by that name somewhere fairly close by?”

“Argo? Yeah, there is, as a matter of fact, down along Harlem Avenue just a few miles south of here. It’s where they make Argo corn starch, which you very well may have in your kitchen cabinet for all I know. I think they also refer to the town as Summit. But what would its significance be? It’s just a little burg, for Pete’s sake, probably a couple of thousand people at the most. I can’t imagine Truman visiting the place for any reason. There aren’t enough voters to make the trip worthwhile.”

Catherine wrinkled her forehead again. “Why don’t we see if there are any businesses in Chicago that have that name?”

“I can’t say I’ve got a better idea,” I answered, going to the hall to get the fat Chicago phone directory, which I plopped down on the table and began flipping through. “Well... here’s an Argo Cleaners on North Pulaski Road Avenue, almost up to Evanston. And then there’s an Argo Women’s Fashions near 63rd and Halsted, which would put it right in the middle of that big Englewood business district. And an Argo Auto Wreckers way down on 115th Street. I wonder why any of these folks picked that name?”

“Probably because it’s near the beginning of the alphabet,” Catherine said with irrefutable logic. “That’s especially valuable in the Yellow Pages, where people look up businesses by category, and owners want their enterprise to be the first one you run across. That’s also why there are so many business names in the directory starting with AAA. I remember that at one time years ago, there was an AAA Bakery not far from here in Austin.”

“You’re just filled with good ideas and interesting facts tonight, aren’t you? But I can’t figure out how any of these Argo operations would fit into The New Reich’s plotting. Can you?”

Catherine shook her head. “I’m totally baffled, husband of mine. We’re probably just off on the wrong track, up a blind alley, as you like to say. It’s possible that fellow you talked to tonight just got the word wrong. After all, this was third-hand information — from those Nazis to the dead man and then to Kravitz. Like that telephone game we used to play at birthday parties, every time a word gets passed along, the next person hears it a little differently.”

“Meaning that we could end up driving ourselves crazy trying to come up with variations on what this Kravitz thought he heard?”

“I’m afraid that’s the way it looks,” she said, shaking her head in frustration. “I think you’re obsessing over this business, and for that matter, so am I now. How about getting the dishes out of the way and indulging in a good clean game of Scrabble?”

“Said like a woman who knows she’s got herself a patsy.”

“How can you say that? Just the other night, you beat me.”

“Well, that makes one win for me in the last three weeks or so. But hey, I’m always up for the challenge. Loser washes and dries the dishes tomorrow.”

Let the record show that, thanks to my coming up with zinc on my last turn, I will have no after-dinner kitchen chores tomorrow night.