Angela Sloan (16 page)

I ate a plate dinner of sliced ham with canned corn and pinto beans. I sat at the window, watching. Marilyn wolfed down a salad, and then we took the two cars half a mile up U.S. 11 to the Crown Motor Court. The cover of the phone book said Kingsport, Tennessee.

Marilyn moved around the room, adjusting lights and the fan by the window. “I've seen worse,” she said of the room. I had, too, and recently. She saw me eyeing her big suitcase and flashed a smile.

She brought out a bottle of gin and poured herself a healthy shot in a paper cup.

I asked her, “Is this something all you people do?”

She twisted the cap down on the bottle using the side of her wrist, and I saw a whiff of anxiety rise off her.

“Never mind,” she said.

She fumbled to unzip her boots. The leather creaked when she slid them off. She settled on top of the bedspread, knees up, back against the headboard. She pointed. “Pitch me a pack of cigarettes and my lighter, would you?”

Her purse was quite full of objects, including pens, peppermints, blank index cards, an orange, and a box of raisins. The leather cigarette
case had a long brown hair hanging off of it. I pitched the case to her, hair and all. She pulled smoke from her cigarette as though she were climbing a rope.

I noticed a roaring in my ears. I sat on a chair.

I asked her how much trouble she would be in because I had made her. She rolled her head, stretching her neck. “It depends how things turn out. The career's in a funny place, you know.”

“No, I don't know.”

“Well, I'm assigned to follow the daughter of an American citizen inside the U.S. This is not considered a plum assignment. Ordinarily it
would
be a Bureau matter.”

“Why isn't it?”

“It soon will be, if I keep screwing up.”

“How long have you been with the Agency?” I asked.

“Couple years.”

“Have you been overseas yet?”

“Sure. Can't gab about it. They mostly kept me buried at my embassy job.”

“Run any agents?”

“A couple that I inherited.”

“Didn't you ever recruit one?”

No answer. She only looked at me.

“How do the men treat you?” I said.

“Mostly not so good. That's between you and me, please.”

“What, do they have you bring coffee?”

“I don't mind bringing coffee. That's not what I'm talking about.”

There was a TV set on the dresser. Someone had written
Maggie
with a fingertip in the dust on the picture tube.

“I got called back early,” Marilyn said.

“What happened?”

“I lost an asset.” She rubbed the heel of a palm against her forehead.

“What do you mean, lost?”

“Lost, lost. Not coming back.” She blinked and made her eyes gape. “I made a technical error. I had to move a person across a border. A simple job—that's why they gave it to me. She had a legitimate passport. I was merely serving as travel agent.

“I sent her to the consulate to have her passport stamped. She'd get the visa just before lunch, get straight on the train, and take the evening ferry. No standing around. I even visited the consulate first. It was closed weekends, so I put her there on a Monday. It was the Monday after Easter.”

She gave me a bleak look.

“And?”

“In this particular country,” Marilyn said, “they have these screwy things called ‘bank holidays.' I didn't know—I'd been there three weeks. These banks holidays, they pop up when you aren't looking for them. Monday night—the Monday after Easter—we get a call from my colleague in Calais, the one who was supposed to meet the person coming off the boat. The person hasn't showed. ‘Well, did she ever get on the boat?' my C.O.S. wants to know. ‘I didn't follow her onto the boat,' I said. ‘Was I supposed to?'

“The C.O.S. asked if her papers were in order. I told him about sending her to the consulate, and he jumped up out of his chair.”

“Couldn't you have arranged the visa yourself?” I said.

“Sure I could have,” Marilyn said. “I knew how to do that from spy college. But I didn't see the need, because I didn't know the consulate would be closed on the Monday after Easter. I'm not one of these foreign service brats who spent all her summers abroad. My father was a D.C. police officer.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, we tried to find her. I found out she'd been calling my apartment all afternoon. Then she'd called her uncle in Aix-en-Provence. Later we learned the other side had her.”

“Was she an important asset?”

“No. Her uncle was, and she was important to him. That's where she was going—to join his family. She had no idea what he was into, or who I was.”

“That's when you got sent home?”

“Right. Only it doesn't sound so bad when you say it that way, ‘sent home.' There's more to it—a lot of talking and waiting on cables. Then more talking. Here's the thing with the Agency: yes, everything's sneaky and secret, but it's also a government job.”

I asked her what had made her take up with the Agency to begin with.

“I don't know. The standard line is that there are two reasons why a woman goes into clandestine work. One is that she lost someone, like a father, husband, brother, or son, and she's grieving and seeks revenge. You know about this? They teach us this stuff.”

“I never heard it before.”

“And the other reason is a pathology which prevents her from enjoying a normal domestic life.”

“Does either one describe you?”

“They both describe me, but that doesn't mean the principle is correct.” She refilled her cup.

I asked her whether she had considered a different line of work.

“I have thought about becoming a park ranger,” she said. She went to the sink.

I wanted to sleep but felt so worried and addled, I didn't see how it could happen. The bottle was there on the nightstand, so I poured myself some.

“Hey, go easy, there,” Marilyn said around her toothbrush.

To me the gin smelled like something you'd clean a floor with. The first tiny sip was awful, so I drank the rest down swiftly. It burned and caused my mouth to fill up with saliva. I spit into the wastebasket.

“How can you drink this?” I said.

“I used to only drink it with chocolate cake,” she said. “Then one day, I found I didn't need the cake anymore.”

I asked her for some raisins. She brought them from her purse along with a key on a plastic tag. “Go next door and go to bed,” she said.

I
thought a stiff drink was supposed to help you sleep, but it only made everything worse for me. I think I slept an hour before I woke up sweating and sick. The mattress seemed to turn like a record on a turntable. The problem of where Betty had gone was like a skip in the record.

I got up and washed my face, then went back to bed and worried. I must have slept some more, too. I dreamed I cracked an egg and a chick was in there, alive. When the sun came past the curtain edge I got up and pounded on Marilyn's door.

She was already dressed, including the zipper boots and fresh makeup. She studied me awhile, then brought me some water in a cup. “Let's go find a pay phone,” she said.

I reminded her of the one at the truck stop.

“I'm not supposed to use the same one twice,” she said.

We took the Caprice. I went inside a Winn-Dixie grocery store while she made her call. When I came out she had pulled the car up to the Winn-Dixie entrance. She had her big sunglasses on.

“The Main Office isn't happy. We're to stay put while they contact Ray Sloan.”

“You told me you're already in contact with Ray,” I said.

“There's a protocol. He's still underground, so it'll take some time.”

We were waiting while an old man passed in front of us with a six-pack of empty returnable bottles. He was moving very slowly.

“I don't understand what's happening,” I said. “Why is Ray still hiding? Can't you just put him somewhere safe?”

“Do you have to understand?”

“Better than I do now, yes.”

She seemed to consider what to tell me. We drove. The air conditioner made a low noise. It was much quieter in this car than in the
Scamp, where we rode with the windows down and Betty smacked her gum and fussed with the radio.

“Why did you and Ray leave D.C.?” Marilyn asked.

“Something happened there. I don't know the details.”

“You left the morning after the Watergate arrests.”

I nodded.

“It's a problem, Angela. Agency people ought not to become involved in something like that. Even former Agency people. It creates an impression that the Agency itself was involved.”

“Wasn't it?”

“Of course not. We don't operate on U.S. soil.”

“Whose soil are you on right now?”

“What, this? This is not an
operation,
” she said. “We're just riding around. I changed your tire.”

“Is the Bureau looking for Ray?”

“That is what we're trying to prevent. They've got a full-on manhunt going for this other guy.” She mentioned
HORSEFLY'S
name.

“Thank you for helping us,” I said.

“You are quite welcome, my dear.”

“I'm surprised you gave me a room by myself last night.”

“I can't sleep with somebody else in the bed,” she said. “Don't tell me you read that rag.” She had noticed the new issue of
World News Digest
that I had bought at Winn-Dixie.

“It's for entertainment,” I said.

Back at the truck stop my eggs and bacon made me think of Betty again. Or was it something else that caused me to think of her? Through the window I observed a neglected flower bed with some white things in it resembling dirty boat fenders. A brown waif in a pink gingham dress squatted nearby, poking at one of the white things with her finger. Yes, it was Betty.

I ran from my seat, and Marilyn followed close behind.

“Ding!” I said. I threw my arms around her.

“Huh?” She pushed me away.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking at a fungus.”

“Ding, meet my Aunt Marilyn.” This was the cover story that Marilyn
and I had agreed to the previous night, before we had given up looking.

Betty gave Marilyn a look I knew well—the same one she had given me that first time I saw her at the Golden Monkey Restaurant. It was an expression of malign emptiness, dumb and shifty—a cigar-store Indian without the feathers. You couldn't read that look, but it certainly made you feel looked at. It was a treat seeing her give it to someone besides me.

“We waited up for you last night,” I said.

“Okay. Look at this big fungus,” Betty said.

Marilyn removed her sunglasses to inspect the thing in the flower bed. “What the heck is it, a mushroom?”

There were three the size of basketballs. Even up close they looked like discarded dirty vinyl, until you touched one and saw how easily the surface was scored or torn with a fingernail. I did not touch one myself, because I once had a bad reaction after handling a mushroom, but I watched Betty do it.

“I think these are puffballs,” Marilyn said.

“Hey, Ding, did you hear me say that Marilyn is my aunt? Where have you been?”

“Walk around, mostly.”

“We heard you went off with a trucker named Skeet.”

She wouldn't say. She stood there nudging a puffball with the toe of her white tennis shoe.

“Well, food is on the table,” Marilyn said. “Have you eaten?”

“No.”

We ordered more eggs, more bacon. I hoped Betty would use the spoon on her eggs again, so Marilyn could see it. But she used a fork this time.

Afterward Marilyn lit a cigarette. Betty tipped her head at the pack. “Maybe I will join you.”

Marilyn shook a long Marlboro out. Betty turned it in her fingers, examining. Would she accept it? Did it meet her high standard for free-bies? I had given her that hundred dollars, but I had yet to see her pay for anything. Even at Sears she had acted strangely in the checkout line, sending me off while she waited.

Finally she placed Marilyn's cigarette in her mouth. “I have start to like American cigarette,” she said.

For a follower of Chairman Mao she behaved awfully like a princess at times. And yet I was so relieved to have her back in hand, her bad qualities didn't bother me like they used to. I tolerated her pretty well now.

“Y
ou know this girl's father?” Betty asked Marilyn.

“I'm her aunt,” Marilyn said.

“What name do you call her?”

Marilyn took a long last draw on her cigarette before mashing it out. “
Pumpkin.
”

“Mm.” Betty tamped out her cigarette carefully and hid what remained of it (about half) somewhere on her person. Whatever Betty wore, it always seemed to have some hidden pockets in it, because she was constantly producing some item you didn't know she had or else making something disappear, and she didn't carry a bag of any kind.

“I could use a shower,” I said.

We went back to the Crown Motor Court, where I was able to have a go at Betty in private.

“What about this Skeet you left with?” I said.

She claimed she had gotten as far as the cab of his truck before he showed her some unwelcome attentions and she hopped back out.

“What did you think he was going to do, braid your hair?”

“I thought he will do what he did, probably. But I thought it will be worth a try. My friend has left me.”

“I came back! We waited half the night for you.”

She gave a dry sniff and drew her knees up to her chest. She was on my bed, looking at the television, which was off.