The Spy in the Ointment

3

Over coffee, I told her the whole story. She listened, saying ooohh and wow and golly at the ends of all the sentences, and despite her, I struggled on until my tale was done. (I have shared my bed and board, such as they are, with bright girls and with rich girls over the years, but never simultaneously, and if there is a God I’d like to ask Him why that should be so. Why can’t I have a bright rich girl — or even a rich bright girl — for a change? If she were both rich and bright, I’d even give up good looks, despite my aesthetic nature.)

Well. When I was finished, Angela said one more golly, and then added, “What are you going to do, Gene?”

“Do? Why should I do anything?”

“Well, this Mr. Eustaly’s going to do something terrible, isn’t he? Maybe blow up the UN Building or something like that.”

“Maybe so,” I said.

“Well, that’s terrible!”

“Granted.”

“Then you ought to do something!”

I said, “What?”

She looked around the kitchen helplessly. “I don’t know, tell somebody, do something, stop him.”

“I told the FBI.” I said.

“You did?”

“I already told you that,” I said. “Remember?”

She looked a little glassy. “You did?”

“Those two guys. The cute ones. We were just talking about that.”

“Oh, them!”

“Them. I told them.”

She said, “Then, what are they going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe nothing.”

“Nothing! Good heavens, why?”

“Because I don’t think they believed me.”

At that, she got more excited than ever. “Well...well... well—” she sputtered, “—well... well... you’ve got to make them believe you!”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I have trouble enough with the FBI as it is. I’m not going to make them believe I have traffic with a lot of terrorist organizations. If they come around and ask me questions I’ll tell them the absolute truth, just the same as always. If they don’t believe me, that’s their tough luck, not mine.”

“Gene,” she said, “do you know what that is? Do you know what you’re saying, Gene? That’s non-involvement, Gene, do you realize that?”

(You must understand, being accused of non-involvement in my circle is just a little worse than an accusation of non-conformity uptown, or Uncle-Toming in Harlem, or child-molesting in the suburbs. Non-involvement is not necessarily the only sin we know, but it’s the only mortal sin. If a man had accused me of it, only my determined pacifism would have saved him from a punch on the nose.)

As it was, I blanched, I spilled coffee, I said loudly, “Now, just a damn minute here!”

But loud words wouldn’t stop her. “That’s exactly what it is, Gene,” she said, “and you know it. Don’t you?”

“I told the FBI,” I said sulkily.

“Well, that isn’t enough,” she said. “Gene? You know better, Gene.”

I did, damn it, I knew better. But doggone it, I had troubles enough as it was. The mimeograph, for instance. And the fact that Angela and I were the only members of the CIU who weren’t a minimum of two years behind in their dues, for a second instance. And the fact I’d made a clerical error and promised I’d have the group march in two totally different picket lines this coming Sunday, one at the UN Building and the other at an aircraft factory out on Long Island. And the fact—

Oh, the hell with it. The fact that Angela, of all people, should be the one to wake me up to my responsibilities, that’s what really galled, and I might as well admit it.

But I made one last attempt to save face. I said, “Sweetheart, what more can I do? I can’t convince the FBI, me of all people. The more I tell them about Eustaly, the less they’ll believe me.”

“You don’t know until you try,” she said.

Exasperated, I slammed down my coffee cup, got to my feet, waved my arms around, and said, “All right! So what do you want me to do, for God’s sake, run over to Foley Square and picket?”

“You don’t have to be a smart aleck,” she said, miffed.

I opened my mouth to tell her a thing or two, and the doorbell rang. “Now what,” I snarled, grateful for something besides Angela to take out my irritation on, and stormed into the living room to see who it was.

Murray Kesselberg, that’s who it was, standing there in his dark suit and tie, attaché case at his side, pipe in the corner of his mouth, eyes aglint behind his horn-rim spectacles, cheeks round and soft and clean-shaven. No one on earth looks more like a young Jewish New York attorney than Murray Kesselberg, so you know what he is? A young Jewish New York attorney.

“Hi, there, Gene,” he said, around the pipe. “You busy?”

That’s his idea of a joke. The way he looks at things, I’m always busy but on the other hand I’m never really busy. Not busy. Up there on 57th street off Park, in the offices where Murray is a bright young comer in the law firm of which his dad and uncle are partners, that’s where people are busy. Down here in the lunatic fringe we may wave our arms a lot, but that’s hardly busy.

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I was just going to call you. I’ve murdered Angela and buried her in the mimeograph machine. What do I do now?”

He came in, smiling indulgently, and I shut the door. “As long as she’s in there, anyway,” he said, “you might run off one or two Angelas for me.”

“I’ve tried running her off,” I said, “but she keeps coming back.”

He nodded. “Not bad,” he said. Angela came in then, looking distraught, and Murray said, “Ah, there you are! Angela, you’re a beautiful creature.” And he touched her hand and kissed her cheek.

Angela wriggles under Murray’s gallantries like a cat whose back is being scratched. She practically purrs. (I’ve never told Murray this, because of the implications, but she’s usually more responsive in the sofabed after having been around him awhile.) But this time she didn’t have a thought for flattery; her mind was elsewhere. “Oh, Murray,” she said, sounding as distraught as she looked, “we need help.”

“Well, of course you need help, dear,” he said, and smiled upon us both. “That’s what I’m here for.”

It’s sometimes a shock to realize that Murray and I are the same age, but whether he seems years older than me or years younger than me, I’ve never been able to decide. We met when we were both undergraduates at CCNY, even before the CIU was born. Murray never joined the CIU, of course — he was always too smart for that sort of thing — but he did sit in on some of our early sessions, gave advice, helped out behind the scenes, and got his father to represent us a couple of times when we were arrested for picketing without a permit, etc. Murray and I hit it off from the first, mostly I think because each of us is so fabulous to the other, and if opposites attract, it follows that absolute opposites must attract absolutely. Neither of us can begin to comprehend the other, and this total ignorance has been the firm foundation of a close and abiding friendship that has lasted now nearly fifteen years.

Over the years Murray has done a considerable amount of work for the CIU, all totally without fee. We are, in a way, his hobby, his laboratory, his continuing experiment. The FBI started its normal low-key harassment of him because of this association, but Murray’s far too good a lawyer and too tough-minded a bright young man to put up with that sort of nonsense, so one way and another he nipped it in the bud. His dad and uncle look upon Murray’s relationship with the CIU as a sort of youthful excess, a peccadillo, far less expensive and more sanitary than several others he might have chosen, and they are pleasantly indulgent of this last residual trace of the undergraduate in their finely honed young legal razor.

Now he said, “I came here to bring you the papers on that tax matter, Gene. You know, that business with the city, there’s one or two things for you to sign. But now there’s something new?”

“Not really,” I said. “It’s not a legal matter.”

Angela said, “Tell him, Gene. Murray’ll know what to do.”

“I don’t want to take up his time,” I said, meaning I didn’t want to talk about the problem in front of Murray, possibly because he would know what to do. (If anything does ever break up our friendship, it will be this idiot streak of envy I find in myself from time to time. I do try to keep it in check.)

Murray looked at his watch. “I have ten minutes,” he said. “Then I have to get crosstown. Can you tell me in ten minutes?”

“Forget it, Murray,” I said. “It’s a different thing entirely. What do you want me to sign?”

Angela said, “I’ll tell you, Murray. Somebody’s got to tell you.”

“No,” I said. “You’d never get it right. Go make Murray a cup of tea, I’ll tell him.”

“Very good,” said Murray. He sat down in the basket chair, set his briefcase on the floor beside him, put his pipe away in his jacket pocket, crossed his legs, folded his arms, and said, “Tell me.”

I told him. In detail, with gestures. When I was done, Murray sipped the tea Angela had brought him, gazed thoughtfully into the middle distance, and said, “Well.”

“Well?” I said. “Well what?”

“It seems to me,” he said slowly and calmly, “you’re missing one or two points here. For instance, what did Eustaly say when you suggested you might not attend the meeting tonight?”

“I said, ‘What if I don’t show up?’ and he said, ‘Then I’ll know you’ve made your decision’ So what?”

“That’s all he said?”

“Word for word. Or almost.”

“What was his expression when he said it? Did he look angry, stern, what?”

“He smiled,” I said, and thinking back to that Mediterranean smile of Eustaly’s, I began all at once to get an inkling of what Murray was driving at.

Murray said, “He smiled. Was it a cheery smile? What sort of smile, Gene?”

“More Sidney Greenstreet,” I said.

Murray did his own Peter Lorre smile, his yessss-Iy-ssseeee smile, and said, “Did that smile suggest nothing to you?”

“Not at the time,” I admitted. “But it’s beginning to.”

Angela said, “What? Gene? What?”

I told her, “Murray thinks Eustaly might try to kill me.”

“That’s one possibility,” said the lawyer.

Angela said, “Kill Gene? Why?”

Murray explained to her, “If he doesn’t attend tonight’s meeting, he will be an outsider with inside information. Eustaly and his groups being what they apparently are, they’ll assume Gene’s their enemy and dangerous to them. He knows. He might talk.”

Angela said, “He might talk right away, how do they know they won’t be killing him long after he’s already talked?”

Murray said, “It’s unlikely he’d be believed today. After Eustaly’s group starts destroying things, the authorities would be more likely to listen to Gene. Therefore, it would make sense to them to destroy Gene first.”

I said, “Pardon me for butting in, but Gene’s right here. I’m right in the room here. Don’t talk about me like that.”

They both smiled at me indulgently, and Angela said to Murray, “Well, what should he do?”

“Try again to convince the FBI.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll stop back later,” he said. “Say, at five-thirty.” He picked up his attaché case, stuck his pipe in his mouth — I never did see that thing lit, come to think of it — and got to his feet. “Call the FBI,” he told me. “Be at your most convincing, Gene, it’s to your advantage.”

“I know, I know.”

“Don’t lose your temper with them.”

“I never lose my temper,” I said.

He smiled indulgently, the bastard. “That’s right,” he said. “What was the name of the organization the FBI man mentioned? The one with the name like yours.”

“World Citizens’ Independence Union.”

“Right. I’ll look it up if I get the chance. See you about five-thirty.”

“Okay,” I said.

I walked him to the door, where he said, “Be sure and call the FBI.”

“I will, I will.”

“Fine. ’By, Angela.”

“’By, Murray.”

I shut the door and recrossed the living room to the phone. Angela asked me if I was going to call the FBI, and very patiently I said yes, I was. I picked up the phone, dialed one digit in order to get rid of the dial tone, and said, “You there. You in the basement. Can you hear me?”

There wasn’t any answer, but I hadn’t really expected one. In the first place, although I knew the man in the basement (call him C) could listen to every word I said on the phone, I wasn’t at all sure his equipment would let him add to the conversation himself. And even if he could (this is the second place, following the previously mentioned first place), it was doubtful he would, since it would surely be a breach of that security the FBI loves so much.

At any rate, I knew C was there and I knew he could hear me, so I didn’t let the lack of response dishearten me. “I want an FBI man,” I said. “I want to report a terrorist plot. You send one up here.”

C still didn’t answer me. I waited a few seconds, repeated, “Send one up,” and put the phone down. “There,” I said. “That ought to do it.”

Angela said, “Won’t it make them mad, you calling them that way?”

“He’s the handiest FBI man I know,” I said.

“Oh. Okay.” She smiled. “Now,” she said, rubbing her hands together, “about that machine.”

“Worry about it later,” I said. “Forget about it. Ignore it.”

Because, on top of everything else, I didn’t want to be reminded of the infuriating relationship between Angela, myself, and that abominable mimeograph. Angela, it seems, is a natural mechanic, a born fixer of every imaginable kind of machine. She’s forever tinkering under the hood of her Mercedes Benz, she takes radios apart and puts them back together again, and she is the only one on earth who can get my mimeograph to quit fooling around and go to work. How exasperating that can be!

And particularly now, when the whole world seemed to be conspiring to make me feel inadequate. So, in a desperate attempt to distract her, change the subject, I said, “Tell me about your day. What’s your old man been up to?”

But nothing would help. “Later,” she said. “Get my smock,” she said, and pulled her yellow sweater off over her head.

What a girl. Beneath that canary-yellow sweater she was wearing a Chinese-red bra. Now, it is impossible to stay irritated with a girl who, beneath her canary-yellow sweater, would wear a Chinese-red bra. Such a girl can’t be all bad.

I shrugged helplessly, said, “Whatever you say,” and went over to the closet by the front door to get her smock.

Actually, it wasn’t a smock at all. It had started life as a muu-muu, in an orange and pink flower pattern à la Gauguin, but was so spattered with various colors of ink by now that it looked like a pop-art reject. I brought this catastrophe back to Angela, who wriggled into it, which gave me ideas. “Listen,” I said. “Why don’t I open the bed?”

“Later,” she said. “Where’s the tools?”

“In with the machine. Why not do that later? Look, I’ll open the bed.”

“After the FBI man comes,” she said, and went into the bedroom.

“Come out of that bedroom!” I shouted. “I want sex!”

“Later later later,” she said coolly, and tools began to clatter.

Damn girl.