The Proxy Assassin (25 page)

“I have invited another guest to our late night stag party,” he said.

A door opened behind me. I heard soft murmurs and the rustle of clothing being removed. In another circumstance it might have sounded amorous. The office was carpeted so I didn't get to enjoy the perverse pleasure of hearing my
accuser's footfalls echoing up behind me. I didn't have to think very hard to figure out who it was. Hoover's aide pulled back the empty chair and Commander Frederick Seifert took a seat.

I had been determined to give J. Edgar as good as I got. If he gave me guff about the bank job I would say the press liked it well enough – two mobsters dead and most of the money recovered. If the Director had a problem with my performance he should have said so at the time.

But my bravado dried up and blew away when I saw the stooped figure to my left. Frederick Seifert looked an old man now though I doubt he was sixty. I had ruined his life by convincing him to open the door of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland to The Schooler and my smartass self.

We robbed the joint, the only successful heist of a Fed Bank in history. That mob thug Jimmy Streets met his maker and the Mooney boys escaped to Ireland with fifty gees somehow made the whole sordid adventure jake in my mind. Just a high school prank, putting the principal's car up on blocks.

Only the principal in this instance lost his job and reputation.

Seifert refused the Director's offer of a cocktail. The chairs in front of the desk were positioned so that Seifert and I faced each other at an angle. Seifert looked at the wall. Nobody spoke.

Now that he had aged so I realized who Seifert had first reminded me of. Grandpa Jake, my father's father, who migrated from the old country just before the war, after his wife passed away. He wouldn't talk about how she died but we all knew it was something awful.

Nice, Schroeder. Nothing classier than stabbing Grampa in the back.

“Commander Seifert, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to you for my…bad behavior in Cleveland…at your bank.”

This
was an extremely lame apology so I added, “I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

Seifert looked at me for the first time. “I am indebted to the Director for the privilege of this meeting.”

Seifert then turned to Hoover. “But forgiveness is not mine to give. That is between you and your God.”

Cut. Full stop. Back up a step.

I needed to pray for forgiveness, true. Why then had Seifert addressed his remark to J. Edgar Hoover?

The way the Bureau played the story in the press was that the Federal Reserve bank job was part of their sting operation to roll up the Fulton Street mob. They wanted to take credit for my gunning down mobsters. G-men greasing Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger had made Hoover a national hero.

But the bank job was The Schooler's idea, one I turned to my advantage. I looked over my shoulder to make sure Hoover's aide had left the room. He had. Probably recording our conversation from a nearby control room but never mind.

“Commander,
I
made the decision to rob your bank. The FBI had nothing to do with it. It was The Schooler's plan but I could have stopped it. And I did not.”

This was something less than a full confession. I left out the I-was-looking-for-a-fat-payday part. But I couldn't get a word in edgewise once the two old boys got into it.

“So I was forced to walk the plank for an FBI sting operation that did not exist?” snapped Seifert.

“You let this green Marine talk his way inside and rob your bank,” snarled the Director. “In fact he did us all a favor by exposing your incompetence.”

It went on like that for a few minutes. Apparently Hoover had some longstanding grudge against the Federal Reserve Police. Seifert knew this and took offense. No question Seifert got the short end. Would he keep his mouth shut now that he knew the full story? I wouldn't in his shoes.

The
Director leaned forward when Seifert put both hands on the armrests of his chair, ready to launch.

“I understand you got blindsided by all this, Frederick.”

Hoover looked to me, his steely glare trapped in the jowly face of a debauched aristocrat. “I did as well, thanks to young Mister Schroeder.”

Hoover returned his gaze to Seifert. “Which is why I made a personal appeal to the President, asking that you be permitted to retire honorably, and with a full pension.”

Commander Seifert visibly deflated in his chair. After a long silence he said, “I didn't know that, John.” He got up and shuffled off.

I felt forgiven by Seifert somehow. Or, more precisely, ignored. Which was fine by me. I braced myself for the second part of this potboiler, the Director's
quid pro quo
. Which, as I understand it, is Latin for ‘where's mine?'

Hoover looked up from his newspapers. “Thank you for coming Mr. Schroeder,” he said as his aide glided up behind me. “See that you get proper treatment for that lip.”

The aide pulled back my chair and escorted me briskly from the room.

I
left J. Edgar Hoover's office with a head fulla bees, I did. Special Agent Schram was waiting in an anteroom.

“How'd it go?”

“Okay. I guess.”

“Don't guess, Schroeder. Learn the facts.”

“Sure thing.”

Schram didn't care for my sarcasm. A long, angled look of sour appraisal was followed by a lean in and softly spoken words. “I have been to the top of the mountain, son. I believe you know that.”

“Yes sir.” I assumed he was referring to his role as commanding officer of the 21
^st
Infantry in the Philippines, during the gruesome battle of Breakneck Ridge.

“I didn't get to the crest until two days after we planted the flag. Had to get out and walk because we kept running over corpses. The walking was good. We found a Filipino who was still breathing and brought him around. You can't kill those goddamn Bikols with a stick.”

Schram reached out and laid his big-knuckled hand on my shoulder. “But you know what the hardest part was?”

“No sir.”

“The hardest part was climbing back down the other side, to level ground. That was…very difficult.”

I wasn't sure what Schram meant but, judging by how hard he was digging his thumb and forefinger into my trapezius muscle, he meant it plenty.

“Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“No sir,” I said, squirming, “not exactly.”

Schram's
face glazed over and his grip relaxed. I feared he had faded off like he used to do, but the old campaigner surfaced a moment later.

“You will, Schroeder, you're a smart kid.”

And with that he was gone. Guess it was my night for cryptic encounters with older men.

I was escorted out of the anteroom by Hoover's aide and down a hall. He opened a small door to what looked like a broom closet. Steep stairs stretched downward to a dimly-lit tunnel.

“It will take you to 9
^th
Street,” said the aide, “the Director thought it best.”

I climbed down to the musty tunnel, alone with my thoughts, and a few rats. Why hadn't Hoover asked me about the shooting incident on 28
^th
Street? And why hadn't he pressed me for dope about Wisner and Princess Stela? Too crude? Too soon?

The only thing I knew for certain was that I had been played, made to feel guilty then given absolution. ‘Hal did us a favor by exposing your incompetence,' said Hoover to Seifert. The Director had dumped me in a boiling pot, then promptly fished me out. I owed him now.

My first instinct was to find a cheap hotel and lay low. The newsies would be gee'd up this close to the election. They would want to ask me embarrassing questions about Miss Julia's embarrassing questions.

Tough shit. OPC Director Frank Wisner would be red flagging urgent cable traffic in London.
NKVD Major Leonid Litinov has gone missing
. Wisner might want to ask me a few questions about my old adversary. Something he would find difficult to do if I was holed up in the Fleabag Arms with a toilet on every floor.

I owed Frank Wisner. Frank Wisner was the one footing the bill. I would sneak into the Mayflower the way I sneaked out,
delivery dock and service elevator. The skies had cleared, a nickel-bright half moon was high. I walked north on 9
^th
Street.

Two blocks later a black Fleetwood glided up beside me. Bill Harvey leaned over and rolled down the passenger's side window.

“Hey there sailor, new in town?”

I got in, we motored off, American flag flapping from the radio antenna. Harvey turned right on G Street and parked the Caddy by the pitch-dark hulk of the National Museum of Something or Other. He killed the lights but kept the motor running. The purring heat felt good.

“The Director never works on Sunday. What gives?”

“Good question, Bill. I thought you and the Bulldog were on the outs. How'd you come to find me?”

“I'll give you a hint, smartass. Georgetown, not two hours ago. We're fleeing the scene but I wheeled into a dead end street. Why?”

I had wondered about Harvey's odd maneuver at the time so I shut my yap and thought it through.

“Okay, you spotted a car in the rear view mirror, you took evasive action but the car followed. You turned down a dead end street because you wanted to determine if the follow car was pursuit or a tail. An unmarked cop car in pursuit would follow you down the dead end street, an FBI tail car would peek a look and keep on going.”

Harvey nodded. “The tail car followed us to the girl's apartment but the feds lost interest in me once you two stepped out of the Caddy. I swung around and hung back. When I saw you climb into Schram's Buick half an hour later I knew where you were headed.”

It was interesting to hear an account of the pursuit from both the fox and hound. Hound Schram suggested that Harvey was a lumbering fox. Fox Harvey suggested that was part of the plan.

“That's a fascinating and informative account, Bill. I appreciate your taking time away from interrogating a senior
NKVD officer about all-important spy networks to bring me up to date.”

“Up yours, Schroeder.”

“And yours as well.”

Harvey pulled a cigarette from his pack of Pall Malls, rolled it between his fingers. “Yeah, I got bad news. I couldn't rouse Leonid, had to take him to Georgetown Hospital.”

“What?”

“He's a Soviet diplomat, fuckstick. He dies in the trunk of my car, my nine lives are up.”

“He was playing possum!”

“I bent his wrist back to the breaking point, he didn't wince.”

“Of course he didn't. What'd you tell the cops?”

“I pinched his passport, showed them his Beretta with the silencer and told them he was a Russian gunrunner posing as a diplomat. That should put him on ice till the election's over.”

“Ha. Ten bucks says he's already sweet-talked some nurse into calling the Soviet Embassy. The Ambassador will spring him by morning, giving Leonid Vitinov a full day to peddle his story.”

“That's not going to happen, Schroeder. We got a press officer now, knows every editor in town. He'll get the word out.”

I told Harvey I didn't know that. In point of fact, I didn't know squat.

I didn't know why Frank Wisner plucked me from obscurity. I didn't know why Miss Julia got me to endorse Dewey, then turned around and jumped me at the Dewey rally. I didn't know why I was hauled off to Hoover's office and made to feel like his pet poodle.

Harvey lit his Pall Mall and settled back in his leather seat. “Ask yourself question number one, Schroeder. Who gets happy?”

I
rolled down my window. Cold air helps me think. It took me a good long while to burrow my way through this steaming mound of manure but I came out the other end, smelling like a rose.

“Leonid Vitinov by way of J. Edgar Hoover,” I said. “By way of Miss Julia.”

“Explain.”

I took a drink of cold air. “Once I knew Julia's source was Leonid, I figured he got details of the bank job from my pal Ambrose, who was kidnapped in Berlin and worked over by the NKVD. But that tough Mick would never spill his guts. So then I figured Hoover used an intermediary to give Julia the story. But why would Hoover want to dredge up that Bureau embarrassment?”

Harvey tapped cigarette ash into his overflowing ashtray.

“And Hoover doesn't really give a crap who's President, he's been through three already.”

“Four,” said Harvey.

“Four. What he does give a crap about is his new rival for hard power, the one with the unlimited budget and carte blanche for covert ops. Frank Wisner of OPC. Frank Wisner makes the Bulldog un-happy.”

Harvey smoked his cigarette.

“I asked Julia who she was working for. She said ‘herself', which I believe is true. Doesn't mean she didn't have help from the Bureau.”

“You just said Hoover wouldn't dredge up the bank job fiasco.”

“Hear me out, dammit.”

Harvey leaned a fat cheek against an extended middle finger.

“Hoover knows everything. He knows I was responsible for the death of Leonid's wife in Berlin, knows the little prick would do anything to bring me down.”

“So the Director fed Leonid dirt about your felonious behavior in Cleveland with instructions to pass it along to the girl reporter?”

I nodded.

“Makes no sense.”

“Sure it does. Hoover needed a mouthpiece, Julia, who couldn't be traced back to him. Ditto the source. He needed someone with independent access to my lurid past.”

“To do what?” demanded Harvey.

“Julia got me to admit we were losing the Cold War, which embarrassed Frank Wisner and OPC. She hung me out to dry at the Dewey rally, which embarrassed Frank Wisner and OPC. And now, after my latest misadventure with Miss Julia, I'm called to a baptismal session with J. Edgar and anointed, best I can tell, his on-call spy targeting Frank Wisner and OPC.”