Red Rag Blues

by Derek Robinson

Genres: World War II; War & Military; Spy Thrillers; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

It's 1953, and Luis Cabrillo has burned through the small fortune he earned from both British and German Intelligence in WW2. Now he has only his wits, his confidence, and his dazzling skills at lying and cheating to rely on. Teaming up with Julie Conroy (a corker of a New Yorker), he follows his wartime instincts and goes where arrogance breeds wealth: to Washington D.C. and Senator Joe McCarthy, high priest of America's holy war on Red treachery. Joe's problem is a sudden shortage of treachery. Luis can help him out, but for dollars. Big dollars. And when the C.I.A. gets into the act, followed by the K.G.B., F.B.I., M.I.6. and the Mafia, it makes for an explosive mixture ripe for a spark. In Red Rag Blues Derek Robinson lends his signature wit to the hysteria and paranoia of the McCarthy years, toying with the notion that the world's most powerful nation is occasionally its most stupid.

Release date: March 1, 2012

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 288

Sample

In 1953, the average New York hoodlum took no interest in current affairs. Sammy Fantoni was different. He read the New York Herald Tribune from end to end, every day. “Improve your mind,” his uncle, who was also his employer, told him. “Feed your brain. Learn about the country you love. What you don’t understand, ask me.”

Sammy was surprised by how much he understood. Of course he took a professional interest in violent death, and 1953 had its fair share of bad blood between the other New York families: Gambino, Colombo, Bonanno, Genovese, Profaci. The Trib did an excellent job of reporting Mob killings. And one day he saw a piece in the national news about lynching. “Nobody in the US got lynched last year,” Sammy said. “First time that’s happened since they kept records. What’s up?”

“One is tempted to blame the sudden rise of television,” his uncle said. “Arkansas has ceased to make its own entertainment.”

Sammy gave it five seconds’ thought and moved on. “How about the Yankees? If they win the Series again, that’ll be the fifth straight year. Some sports writers say it’s gettin’ boring.”

“Americans have no concept of eternity,” his uncle said. “That’s why they invented baseball.”

Sammy didn’t understand that either. Probably a joke. The hell with it. Plenty other stuff in the Trib, good reassuring stuff.

Eisenhower got sworn in as President, in ’53, and the Trib told Sammy that Ike said the US Seventh Fleet would no longer prevent Nationalist China from attacking Communist China. Sammy looked at the map. The Nationalists had Taiwan. The Reds had all the rest. So it was like giving Puerto Rico permission to invade America. Sammy relaxed. He was thirty, he’d done his stint in the military, he didn’t want to go back into uniform. He’d voted for Ike to end the Korean War, not to start a new one. He liked Ike, an American through and through, a guy who wouldn’t take any subversive crap from anyone, like belonging to the Communist Party of America, which just got thirteen punks tossed in jail. He read about Loyalty Review Boards and the hard work they did, all across the country, making pinko people disprove that they were disloyal, or else they lost their jobs. Damn right! Why wait for tomorrow’s traitors to betray America when you could flush out the bastards today? You know it makes sense. The Trib said the dollar was strong, ’53 was looking good, the country was on the up.

Only thing Sammy disagreed with the Trib about was when it reported a smart-ass called Charles E. Wilson of Detroit, who said what was good for General Motors was good for America. Well, it sure as hell wasn’t good enough for this American. Sammy took his brown Pontiac convertible to a man who customised cars. “Beats me why I bought this heap,” he said. “No class. No tailfins. No difference.” And the guy agreed.

Now, on a sunny summer’s morning, he was driving west across Manhattan in his blood-red Pontiac, the top down, two hundred pounds of added chrome shouting class at the world, and sitting beside him was Julie Conroy, a piece of feminine beauty that turned his voice husky every time they met. He had picked her up at her apartment. She wore a tailored two-piece of cream linen that made the mailman drop a couple of letters. No hat. Black hair curled like a dark sea in a light breeze, a phrase he remembered from a movie review in the Trib. “You look like a million dollars,” he’d said.

“I feel like a buck and a quarter. Not enough sleep.”

He had held the car door for her and said, “You ever get your hands on a million, buy A.T.&T.” See, he read the business pages too.

Now he turned north on Riverside Drive. “Okay if we take the bridge?” he said. “Small piece a business I gotta do in Jersey.”

Traffic was light. Trees were in full leaf and the sunlight made them bright as new paint. Clouds were up high, quietly going about their business, which didn’t include blocking out the sun. She rested her head and closed her eyes. That felt good. This trip was probably a big mistake, so enjoy what you can.

Sammy stopped at the George Washington. She opened her eyes. He paid the toll and got a receipt. “Tax-deductible,” he told her.

“Huh.” She thought about that as they crossed the bridge, about making a tax return when your business was crime. Too complicated. She gave up. The bridge flexed and trembled. The Hudson was far below. She closed her eyes and imagined they were flying.

*

Hackensack looked like a nice place. Plenty of big old clapboard houses in wide streets. Sammy found the one he wanted. He parked and got out. “Five minutes,” he said. Julie watched him open the trunk. He was dressed for Wall Street except that the pants, the lapels and the tie were too narrow. He walked to the house, swinging a baseball bat. Now that was too corny to be true. All the same, it put a chill in the sunshine.

He was back in four minutes, tossed the bat in the trunk, got in the car, drove away, first using his indicators and checking his mirrors, considerate of his valuable passenger.

“You gonna tell me?” she said. “Or should I assume the worst?”

“I did my sister a favour. Her boy Jimmy ain’t gettin’ good enough grades at school. She’s upset. I discussed it with his headmaster.”

“Using a baseball bat?”

“Never touched the guy. He agreed, Jimmy’s been gettin’ a raw deal. It’s the school’s fault.”

“Or maybe the kid should work harder.”

Sammy left Hackensack behind, and put on speed. “Nah,” he said. “My way’s better.”

She wondered how much of it was true. None, maybe. Or maybe the truth was even worse.

She’d met Sammy at a party in the Village. He’d looked and sounded like someone from Guys and Dolls. They’d talked a little, danced a little, he’d been very attentive, and as he drove her home - for which she was grateful, the rain was bouncing knee-high off the pavement - he’d made a remark that he obviously thought was respectful. Complimentary, even. “Any time some guy annoys you and you want him whacked, or maybe semi-whacked,” he’d said, “you call me.” He was serious.

At the time, it had seemed almost touching, in a quaint, New Jersey way. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

The San Felipe was a medium-small passenger liner, not nearly big enough to qualify for one of the huge berths on the west side of Manhattan, where fireboats pumped great fountains and whooped triumphantly to welcome the likes of the Queen Mary. Instead the San Felipe docked on the Jersey shore, at Hoboken. No bands played at Hoboken, no flashbulbs popped.

Luis Cabrillo was in the saloon when the ship tied up. He was playing backgammon with a fellow-passenger, Dr John Barnes. Cabrillo had joined the San Felipe in Caracas, Venezuela. Barnes and his wife came aboard at Havana. They had been in Cuba for the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association. The San Felipe was not a fast ship, and the two men had played a lot of backgammon. They finished this game; and Cabrillo lost on the last throw. “Another?” he said. They re-set the board.

Barnes was in his sixties, built like a foreman carpenter, wore a corduroy suit. Cabrillo was half his age, and by contrast he looked slim, almost sleek. He wore a double-breasted blazer from a good tailor, charcoal-grey flannel trousers, suede shoes. His face was smooth as an olive. Mostly it was as expressionless as an olive too.

They played fast, slapping the pieces, flicking them into corners. Luis paused, as still as a statue, then doubled the stakes. “Well, sure, I need a new car,” Barnes said, and accepted. Luis threw the dice. “Not a pretty sight,” Barnes said, and promptly redoubled. Luis accepted. Later, he re-redoubled. Barnes accepted again and said, “If this goes wrong I may have to sell the old car.” But nothing went wrong for him.

“Thank you,” Luis said. “Jolly good sport. How much do I owe you?”

Barnes opened a notebook. “Seven hundred and three dollars. Please forget it. I’ve already forgotten it.” Luis was writing. “It’s of no importance,” Barnes said. “I’ve been flat broke, often. It’s a temporary inconvenience, nothing more.”

“You’re very kind. This is a charge on my bank in Caracas.”

Barnes took the cheque. It was signed Count de Zamora y Ciudad-Rodrigo. “I hope you won’t be offended.” He struck a match and set fire to a corner. “Here in the US it’s a criminal offence to bounce a cheque.” They watched it burn in an ashtray. “Tell me one thing, and then we’ll go our separate ways and I’ll sleep easy tonight. What plans have you got? In America?”

“I plan to join the Secret Service.”

“Uh-huh.” Barnes stirred the grey flakes with a pencil. “I expect their number’s in the phone book.”

Mrs Barnes came in. “Our bags are ashore, John.”

“Okay. Mr Cabrillo tells me he plans to join the US Secret Service. What d’you think of that?”

“Not in those shoes,” she said firmly.

“Why not?” Luis said. “Most comfortable shoes I’ve ever had.”

“Fine in Venezuela. Okay on this ship. But take it from an American, you won’t get anywhere here in suede.”

“What happened to the land of the free?”

“It’s available in every style and colour,” Barnes said, “except suede.”

*

The arrival hall on Hoboken dockside was unlovely when it was new, and that was long ago. Black ironwork was gaunt and skylights were grimy. Immigration officials sat at a row of metal desks. One of them studied Luis Cabrillo’s passport. “Is that a British name?” he said.

“From the Norman French. An ancestor was the bastard son of William the Conqueror. The family …” Luis stopped. The man was flicking through the pages of a thick ledger. He failed to find a Cabrillo. The book flopped shut. “What’s the purpose of your visit to the United States?”

“I wish to play backgammon.”

The man waved away a fly that was trying to sneak through immigration. “You mean tourism?”

“Do I? Jolly good. We’ll make it tourism, then.”

The man thought about that. He handed Luis a printed sheet of paper. “Read this. Tell me if you answer yes to any question.” He sat as motionless as a sack of coal.

Luis read, and smiled. “Surely only a lunatic would answer yes.”

“Sign at the bottom.”

“With pleasure.” Luis had a flamboyant signature. “Now, if I try to overthrow the government by force, you can charge me with perjury, and serve me right.”

The immigration official’s expression had never changed. “I don’t like you, Mr Cabrillo,” he said. “If it was up to me, I’d refuse you entry to this country. You’re a smart-ass. That’s un-American. I hope you get your smart-ass well and truly kicked. Now beat it.” He stamped the passport.

Nearly all the baggage had been claimed. Luis quickly found his suitcases, and a porter. “Got anything to declare?” a customs officer asked. “Nothing,” Luis said. “Thank Christ for that,” the man said. “Now I can go eat.” He chalked the bags, and Luis walked out of the echoing gloom and into the sunlight. He paused to look around, and a bum with a tin cup immediately stepped forward and said, “Spare a dime, buddy?” Luis searched all his pockets, and found a coin. “This is all I have.” He dropped it in the cup.

“Jeez,” the bum said. “I think you need it more than I do.” He fished it out, gave it back, and shuffled away. Luis looked at the porter. “This is America,” the porter said. “Even the bums got standards.”

A blood-red Pontiac pulled up to the kerb. “What kept you?” Julie Conroy said. “We’ve been here for hours.”

“I wonder if you could take care of the porter,” Luis said. “My small change seems to be unacceptable.”

“Sammy, pay the porter,” she said.

“Sure, sure.” The bags went into the trunk. The porter was amazed to get five dollars. By now Luis was sitting in the car.

Sammy got in, checked his mirrors and used his indicators, and eased into the traffic. “What d’you think of America, Mr Cabrillo?” he asked.

“I think somebody could make a fortune filling in the potholes,” Luis said.

“Land of opportunity,” Sammy said. “Everyone says so.”

*

The San Felipe was not an important ship, and Hoboken didn’t rate highly, so the FBI sent a new agent, Fisk, fresh from the Bureau’s Academy, to check the passenger manifest. He found little of interest, just a French film director with a Russian name, and a wheelchair case who had been acquitted on fraud charges involving a Canadian copper mine with no copper in it. That was long ago. But Fisk was young and keen. He chose a good viewpoint and used binoculars to watch the other arrivals go through customs and immigration. Luis Cabrillo’s body-English interested Fisk. Most arrivals were in a hurry to get their passports stamped and go. Cabrillo talked and talked. Gestured. Wore his blazer like a cape, loose over the shoulders. Fruity shoes, too.

When Cabrillo was at last admitted, Fisk went over to the immigration officer. The man showed him the name. “Smartass,” he said. “Comes into this country like he’s going to the Roxy. Like it’s a costume party. I hate a smart-ass.”

Fisk drove back to the FBI office on East 58th Street and reported to his supervisor, Prendergast.

“French film director,” Prendergast said. “No. It’s always raining in black-and-white on some pathetic chain-smoker. And forget the wheelchair. Two strokes and a kidney stone as big as the Ritz. That leaves this Cabrillo. No doubt about who met him?”

“I was only twenty feet away. Sammy Fantoni, with girl friend. I checked the plates on his Pontiac.”

“No uncle?”

Fisk shrugged. “Wouldn’t know him if I saw him. Isn’t he a recluse?”

“Sort of. Since his wife died, he don’t get around much any more … All right. Open a file on Cabrillo. Anything else?”

Fisk hesitated. “What’s the Bureau’s stance on Cuba? Dr. John Barnes, American citizen, just back from visiting there. He’s a psychiatrist.”

“Mr Hoover approves of Cuba. It’s stable, pro-American, good cigars. But psychiatrists, Mr Hoover disapproves of. They’re unstable, secretive, possibly anarchic, probably un-American. Don’t open a file on Barnes. I’m sure we have one.”

*

Sammy took the Holland tunnel into Manhattan, then Third Avenue uptown. Luis was in the back seat. He said little. Too much to see. At one point Sammy broke the silence. “My uncle’s dentist used to live down that street,” he said. They looked. It was just a street. “He moved to Denver,” Sammy said. “Nobody ever figured out why.” He swung into 84th Street.

He carried the bags into the apartment. It seemed crowded when three people were standing in it, trying not to look at each other. “I forgot to introduce you,” she said. “Luis, this is Sammy Fantoni.” They shook hands. “I don’t have a car,” she explained. “Sammy offered.”

“Awfully decent of you,” Luis said.

“My day off,” Sammy said.

“Yes? What business are you in?”

“Sammy’s in recreational equipment,” she said. “I could use a beer. There’s a deli on the corner.”

“I’ll go,” Luis offered. “That is, if they’ll let me charge it to your account.”

“My account. Now there’s two words I never thought to hear together … Sammy, you go. Get us some sandwiches too. Swiss cheese and ham on wholemeal for me. Luis wants a BLT on white toast. No pickle.” Sammy saluted and went out.

“I’ve never even heard of a BLT,” Luis said.

“Trust me. I know your taste. You’ve put on a pound or two. Suits you. You were kind of gaunt in those days.”

“It was that frightful wartime food the English gave us. Fish pie. Toad-in-the-hole. Porridge. Spam. You’re looking awfully well yourself. That’s a jolly pretty outfit.”

“Used to be my interview suit.”

There was a pause while they took a long look at each other and assessed the differences that eight years had made. “Spiffing,” he said. “Utterly delightful. Now why don’t you show me the rest of the apartment?”

“This is it, pal. Bathroom’s through that door. One walk-in closet. Bed. Convertible couch.”

“Dear me.” He strode slowly from end to end, counting the paces. “In Caracas, my bathroom alone was bigger than this.”

“So why leave?”

“All my money was spent.”

“All? Not even you could do that. Don’t lie to me. Not now.”

“I must admit, there were other reasons. But crucially it was a question of cash.” He bounced gently on the couch, testing the springs. “And in my hour of need, you were the only person I could think to turn to.”

“Well, think again. I’m broke. Worse than broke. I’m unemployable.” He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to know,” she said.

“Oh.” He stretched out on the couch. His feet overlapped the end. “Not what I expected. A desperate situation, isn’t it?”

“Cut the bullshit, Luis. Being broke in New York is no joke.”

“Madrid was nothing to laugh about. At least here we’re not surrounded by fascists and Nazis.”

“You reckon?” she said. “Stick around.”

*

Madrid was where they first met, in the summer of 1941. Hitler had conquered most of Europe and now he was carving large chunks out of Russia. Britain, he said, would have to wait her turn. The future looked very German. All the more reason to enjoy the present.

They had a few good weeks together, and then suddenly Luis left, went to England, on business. Well, he was Spanish, and Spain was neutral; but Julie felt sure his business was spying for Germany. She travelled to Portugal, hoping to catch a plane to the US, and hey! there was Luis, living in Lisbon. She’d been half-right. He’d been recruited by the Madrid office of the Abwehr, which was German military intelligence, and codenamed ‘Eldorado’. But while the Abwehr believed him to be spying in England, he had gone no further than Lisbon. All of the top-secret information he sent to Madrid came from his imagination. Luis sat in his room in Lisbon, asked himself what the Germans would like to know, and turned his answers into utterly convincing intelligence reports. He knew they convinced the Abwehr because the Abwehr kept paying him. They paid him a lot.

Julie cancelled her flight home. She moved into his apartment and became his business manager. They made a hell of a good team. His output was phenomenal - far more than one spy in England could have produced. But Luis had invented a network of sub-agents, fearless and prolific and reporting to him; and naturally Madrid Abwehr paid him for their efforts. The Eldorado Network was a spymaster’s dream. Then the British found out.

Their Secret Service, MI6, persuaded Luis to become a genuine double agent. He and Julie went to England and worked for the Allies until the end of the war. He was part of the Double-Cross System, which ‘turned’ enemy agents and created a steady flow of false information, lightly speckled with fragments of truth. The Allies’ best deception plans were reinforced by Luis’s lies. MI6 still called him Eldorado, although Madrid had changed his codename to ‘Arabel’. Whatever the label, the product never failed to please. Luis sent the Abwehr radio bulletins by the hundred, written reports by the thousand, all priceless intelligence, which was rapidly transmitted to the High Command in Berlin. To the very end, the Germans trusted him. They never stopped paying.

There was a price for illusion. Julie paid it. The strain of living with a professional liar was great. Sometimes Luis behaved as if his phantom sub-agents were real. When the Abwehr wasn’t sufficiently grateful for their reports, he became moody, sour, resentful. When the Abwehr sent warm congratulations, Luis became smug. He was more comfortable in his fake world than in the real world.

He and Julie were still in love, but it was a prickly, arms-length kind of love. And when the war ended, and suddenly nobody needed double agents any more, his brilliant bullshit had no market value. Thanks to the Abwehr, he had a fortune tucked away. On a grey and gloomy day, he and Julie took a long, sad look at each other and agreed they were incompatible. He caught a plane to South America. Big mistake. She still had a husband somewhere, left over from pre-war, a footloose newspaperman called Harry whom she hadn’t seen in four years. She went looking for him. Not a happy idea, either.

*

“Look, this is important, so don’t give me any of your bullshit,” Julie said. “Have you any funds? Investments? Property?”

“When did I ever give you any bullshit?” Luis asked.

“Eight years ago. You gave everyone bullshit, remember? You were in the bullshit business. You couldn’t tell the truth if it took its clothes off and sang Rule Britannia.”

“Dear me,” he said. “You Americans can be awfully Prussian. Sometimes I wonder whether you might have been happier fighting on the German side.”

“You wonder. All you ever did was wonder. That’s how you ended up working for both sides at once.”

“Well, if I did, then so did you.”

Sammy Fantoni had gone, and they were strolling in the park next to Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence. Dogs chased squirrels, contrary to city bylaws, and challenged His Honor to come out and stop them. The East River surged past, keeping Queens and Brooklyn at a decent distance from Manhattan. An old man was feeding gulls, tossing up bits of bread as the birds swooped and flailed and grabbed. “Look. He thinks they are his friends,” Luis said. “He is a fool.”

“Have you got any money?” she asked. “Anywhere?”

“None. No dollars here, no cruzeiros in Venezuela, no Swiss francs in Zurich. I’m totally broke.”

“Then you’re a bigger fool than he is. At least he can afford bread. Why the hell did you come here? New York is absolutely the worst place to be broke in.”

“Is it? I can think of worse places. Siberia is uncomfortable, and large parts of China are not at all attractive.” Julie groaned. He said: “When you want to make money, go where people have money. Right? New York is rich. Besides … I wanted to see you again.”

“After eight years?” They sat on a park bench. “We agreed, back in ’45, remember? End of story.”

She was hunched and tense. He was relaxed, sprawling, his arms hooked over the back of the bench. She kicked his ankle. “Hey!” he said. “That wasn’t a very kind thing to do.”

“Did I get your attention? Listen. This is not a kind city. New Yorkers murder each other for no reason at all, it happens every day. You, you’re not even American, you’re an alien. What makes you think anyone here is going to be nice to you?”

“Why are you so angry? And don’t hit me.” He raised an arm in defence. That annoyed her; she got up and walked away. “We only just sat down,” he called. “It’s all rush, rush. I’m an old man, I can’t stand this pace.” But he followed her.

“You’re thirty-four,” she said. “And you’re an idiot. You had at least a hundred thousand pounds when the war ended. A quarter of a million dollars, give or take a buck. That’s more than most Americans make in a lifetime. How could you possibly spend it all? Where did it go?”

“Oh … here and there. This and that. I had some bad luck at the track.” She looked at him as if he had said: there was a hole in my pocket. “All right,” he countered, “how come you’re broke?”

“I got fired.”

“There you are, then. You’ve been working, and look where it got you. I haven’t been working, but at least I enjoyed myself.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

They passed the old man, no longer throwing bread in the air. He was mopping a sleeve with his handkerchief. “Little bastard shat on me,” he said. Luis smiled, courteously. “That’s New York for you,” he said.

They were on 84th Street again before Julie spoke. “How did you know where I live?”

“Simple. MI6 has a man in Caracas, awfully nice chap, we played tennis. Anything I can do to help, he told me, just ask. So I did. He got in touch with Kim Philby, and Kim did the rest.” Luis leapfrogged a fire hydrant. “You liked old Kim, didn’t you? Best brain in MI6, and manners to match.”

“You’re telling me the British Secret Service knows where I live.”

“Evidently so.”

They stopped at York Avenue. The traffic thumped past, an unhurried tidal wave. Luis was puzzled by Julie’s attitude, her seriousness, the flickers of annoyance that flared into anger. At Hoboken he’d expected a kiss, even if it was just a brush of the lips on his cheek. But no kiss. No handshake. They hadn’t touched in any way. She kept coming back to money. During the war, money had never excited her. He had been the one always concerned about getting paid. Now their roles were switched. He could sense the tension in her body. The lights said WALK. They walked.

“Would it be insensitive of me to ask about your husband?” he said.

“Dead. Car crash in Belgium. Four years ago.”

“Oh dear. I never met him, of course, but -”

“Don’t let it bother you. Belgium, for God’s sake. What a dumb place to die.”

That seemed to dispose of Harry. Luis allowed a decent interval to pass, and asked: “Where does Sammy Fantoni figure in your life? He seemed very attentive, and …”

“We met at a party. He’s a hood. He thinks he’s in love with me.”

“A hood? A gangster? Such a cordial chap.”

“Yeah. If I asked him to, he’d cordially break your arms. As a demonstration of affection.”

For once, Luis was silenced. They went back to the apartment.

Luis had picked the best day to arrive. Once a week, Julie and three others ate supper at the cheapest pasta joint in Manhattan. It was called Vesuvius and it was far to the east of Greenwich Village, even beyond the Bowery, out where the rent was very low. The owner cooked the food, served it, washed the plates. Enrico was very old, face like a pickled walnut, had fought the Austrians when Italy was on the Allied side in the first war, later got slung in jail by Mussolini for his politics. Came to America, got his citizenship, did time for smuggling booze out of Canada during Prohibition, learned to cook in Sing-Sing. “No family,” Julie told Luis. “Enrico takes in waifs and strays like me and the rest of the supper club. All you can eat for a dollar, sometimes wine too. Enrico won’t take more than a dollar a head. Politics.”

“What politics?”

“Ours and his. Act polite, don’t talk smart, and he’ll feed you too.”

A taxi came to pick them up. She introduced the driver as Herb Kizsco. Fiftyish, bald as an ostrich egg except for a thick grey ruff, long face that would have suited an El Greco cardinal. “Herb knows more about Shakespeare than even Ann Hathaway did,” she said. “Unless, that is, he was really Francis Bacon, in which case I guess she married the wrong guy. Is that right?”

“No,” Herb said.

“Good. Shortest lecture you ever gave. Let’s go.”

He drove over to Park Avenue and turned south. The meter was not on. “I like Park,” he said. “I like cruising past these doormen, all blowing whistles and waving, busting a gut to get a cab for their rich tenants. Let ’em take the subway, I say.”

“Subway stinks,” Julie said.

“It wouldn’t stink for long if they had to ride it. The mayor himself would be down there, spraying Chanel Number Three.”

“I hate Chanel.”

“Comes the bloody revolution, you’ll get Chanel whether you like it or not.”

“Is there to be a revolution?” Luis asked.

“It was a joke,” she said. “I like Herb’s jokes. I always have.”

They turned west on 42nd Street. Beyond the cinemas and the soft-porn peepshows, the buildings became hulking, grimy, industrial. Herb stopped outside the steel-shuttered offices of a corsetry distributor and honked his horn. After a minute, a woman came out of a side door. She was a short and chunky redhead, hair in a scarf like Rosie the Riveter; keen, alert face, or maybe she was just hungry. No make-up; denim skirt and jacket; old sneakers. Age thirty-plus.

“Bonnie Scott, meet Luis Cabrillo,” Julie said. They shook hands. “Bonnie was the best fiction editor this side of Chicago.”

“I met Graham Greene once,” Luis said. “Awfully nice chap.”

“Huh.” Bonnie was impressed, but not much. “What did you talk about?”

“The war, and the dreadful damage it did to literature. Graham thought that Hemingway’s metaphors, in particular, had suffered horribly.”

“I’m so hungry, my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut,” Bonnie said. “Is. . .