Putting his light back on, Grimmelman unlocked and opened the door. “I’m busy. I refuse to buy anything.”
The man said, “I’m Raif Brown. From the FBI.” He flapped open a black leather identification folder. “I’d like to step in a moment and discuss a matter with you. If I may.”
“What’s this about?” He backed away as Mr. Brown entered.
“About a fellow you might know.” Brown glanced about the room. “Quite a place you’ve got here.” He strolled leisurely.
“Nut fellow?”
“Ever heard of an individual by the name of Kendelman? Leon Kendelman? We thought you might know him. Here’s his picture.” Mr. Brown, from the deep pocket of his topcoat, brought forth a packet; he opened the packet and handed Grimmelman a snapshot, blurred, indistinct. But nonetheless the snapshot was familiar. “Why?” Grimmelman demanded. “Draft evasion.”
Grimmelman returned the snapshot. “No, I never saw him. And anyhow your organization is infiltrated by Communists; It’s no use talking to you, it goes straight to MVD hatchet men in the Labor School and around the PW.”
“You never saw this individual?”
“No.”
“Positive?”
“No, I never saw him.” He was terrified, because the snapshot, taken from a distance with a telescopic lens, was of him.
Mr. Brown said, “May I see your draft card?”
The card was in a locked box under the table, along with other papers. Larsen, the printer whom Art worked for, had done it; at one time Larsen had been an organizer for a splinter Trotskyist organization of which Grimmelman had been a member.
Studying the card, Mr. Brown said, “You’re twenty-six?”
“Yes,” he said, “born in Warsaw, naturalized in 1932.”
“You’re 4-F,” Mr. Brown said, returning the card. “How’d you work that? You look all right to me.”
“Hernia,” Grimmelman said.
“And you’re positive you don’t know this Kendelman?”
Actually there was no Kendelman. He had registered under that name, and he used it now and then in covert political work, undercover work such as spying on Fascist student groups, Stalinist fronts, and for taking out library books he did not mean to return. “Positive,” he said.
He wished Mr. Brown the FBI man would leave. He wished it more than anything else on earth; the wish became a passion. In fact, if Mr. Brown did not leave, he would fall dead in his tracks; the sense of danger was too much. He could not bear it.
“Quite a place you got here,” Mr. Brown said, picking up some photostats of Pravda. “You’re interested in politics, Mr. Grimmelman?”
Mr. Brown showed no sign of leaving. On the contrary, the more he saw, the more interested he seemed to become.
Joe Mantila said, “He says—it’s time to get out the Horch. He says we’re supposed to go start it up and make sure the engine’s tuned.” He leaned from the window of his ‘39 Plymouth toward Art Emmanual, who stood at the curb. Behind the Plymouth other cars, the traffic along Fillmore, honked and flashed their headlights, and swung around. “I’ll go get Heinke; you can come now or we’ll pick you up on the way back—”
“Pick me up on the way back,” Art said.
“Okay, that’ll be in around fifteen minutes.” Mantila held his watch up to the light from the cars behind. “Ten-five.”
Art walked back up the path and down the steps to the apartment. Behind him the Plymouth, popping and sputtering, gunned off and was gone. The nighttime traffic resumed its regular flow.
Closing the front door, he said to Rachael, “We can’t go out tonight. I have to do something.”
She said, “Was that about Grimmelman?” She had put on a coat, and now, in the bathroom, she was combing her hair. They had been about to leave for the bowling alley; she liked to watch the players and be where there was noise and activity and kids her own age. Especially on Saturday night.
“It looks like we might be doing something,” Art said. He was uneasy; he knew how she felt about Grimmelman and the Organization.
“It’s up to you,” she said. “But he’s so—peculiar. I mean, he sits up there all day; he never goes out. Is that really what you want?”
“I got a lot invested in the Horch,” he said. It had been his job to supply parts for engine repair. “There’s something wrong with him,” she said, taking off her coat. “That’s what Nat says.”
“I think you go over there,” she said, “because you can’t find anything else to do. If you had something else, you’d do it instead.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he mumbled, standing first on one foot and then the other. “When will you be back tonight?”
“Probably late.” He did not really want to go. But he had to. “Will you be okay?” he asked hesitantly.
“I might go to a show.”
“I’d kind of feel better if you stayed home.”
“Okay,” she said, “I will. Could we sometime play poker again?” That was an eternal love of hers; she played a tight game, without talk or motion, straight or draw poker with no variations and no cards wild. Usually she won a dollar or two. She had frightened off most of Art’s high school friends, who liked to play goofy, extravagant games with a great deal of horseplay. Once she had slapped Ferde Heinke and knocked off his glasses because, in dealing, he had kiddingly turned over a card.
“They’re all scared to play cards with you,” he said. “You take it too seriously.”
“There’s no such thing,” she said.
“It isn’t a game when you play.”
“Poker isn’t a game,” she said. “What do you think it is? Do you think it’s like hearts or something? That’s the trouble with you, you can’t tell what’s important and what isn’t. You’re going out to fool around, and you don’t know if you’re playing a gameit would be playing revolutionary, I guess, Nazi or something, with that car. But you also think you really are a revolutionary and it isn’t a game. So which are you? You’re sort of between. Do you know what this is here, me and this apartment and, you? This isn’t a game either. And if you go out there and horse around with them and I don’t think you’re coming back here, not as soon as you should anyhow, then I’m going to bust you one.” She looked at him with that sharp, intent look that was so frightening; nobody stood up against that. She would demolish the apartment and everything in it. She would lay it waste. And she would not say a word; she would just go about it. And for weeks she would say nothing to him; she would go to work, fix the meals, shop, clean and sweep the apartment, and never speak to him.
The thing about her that was so awe-inspiring was that she never kidded. She never joked; she meant everything she said. It was not boast. It was prophecy.
Taking her in his arms, he kissed her. Her face was cold; her lips, always thin, were dry. He kissed her on the cheek, and he felt the bone close to the surface; he felt the hardness. “You’re pretty tough,” he said.
“I just want you to know.” She smiled up at him then.
He said, “What else can I do? I have to go.”
“You don’t have to go.”
“I’m supposed to.” He was helpless.
“You don’t have to do anything. Nobody can make you do anything. All these things they say, it’s just a lot of words. Grimmelman is as bad as the rest of them. Grimmelman is like a sign. Do you do what signs say? How about when you read something, do you do that? Do you believe it because it’s up there on the wall or somebody mails it to you in an envelope? You know it’s just words. Just talk.”