were, I’d probably look to try and connect the unusual, and to rob unusual things of their isolation, so to speak. Isn’t that the essence of detective work? The search for a sense of meaning? A truth concealed? A truth that exists behind the facade? The idea that something can be known?”
Flaherty looked at Crooks, uncomprehending.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir,” he said.
“Forgive me,” I shrugged. “It’s my job to think counternaturally, so to speak. To challenge various presuppositions and beliefs and to question certain assumptions and perceptions. You think you’re looking for answers, but the truth is that really you’re just looking for the right question. As I said before.”
Flaherty lit a cigarette and winced as tobacco smoke flooded his eye momentarily.
“Did he have any hobbies you know of?” asked the detective.
“Hobbies? I don’t know. No, wait. I seem to recollect he was very fond of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.” When the two cops looked blankly back at me, I added, “Sherlock Holmes?”
“Oh, right, Sherlock Holmes. I listened to it last night,” confessed Flaherty. “On WOL?” He smiled. “Solving a murder is easy when you’re Sherlock Holmes. But it’s not so easy when you’re just a Washington cop.”
“Yes,” I said. “I can believe that.”
Flaherty handed me his card.
“If you think of anything.”
I nodded, resisting the temptation to tell him that I was a philosopher and that I thought of things all the time. I only wished I could have thought of a way of persuading Diana to take me back.
XI
When I arrived at the White House that evening, I was again sent to wait in the Red Room. I was beginning to feel quite at home there, although blue might have suited my mood a little better. I tried not to look at the picture of the lady above the fireplace, the one who reminded me of Diana.
There was a matronly briskness about Mrs. Tully that surprised me, given the comparatively late hour, and even on the thick rugs and runners, the heels of her shoes sounded like a drumbeat. Smelling lightly of cologne and wearing a neat gray dress, she looked as if she had just started her day’s duties. I resisted the temptation to tease her again. A lot of the playfulness had gone out of me of late.
I found Roosevelt making cocktails, carefully stirring the martini jug with a long-handled spoon.
“I’ve been looking forward to this, Professor.”
“Me, too, sir.”
“I went to the airport today, to greet Mr. Hull on his return from Moscow. It’s a courtesy usually reserved only for visiting heads of state. Everyone is wondering why I did that. The fact is I wanted to make him feel and look important before I make him look and feel quite the opposite.”
Roosevelt handed me a martini and, holding the jug between his thighs, wheeled himself over to the sofa, where I was now seated. We toasted each other silently. I didn’t like the president’s way with a martini any more now than before, but it was full of alcohol and that was all that really mattered.
Encouraged by the president’s confidential manner, I felt bold enough to make an observation. “You sound like you’re planning to fire him, sir.”
“Not fire. Just neglect. Hurt his pride a little. That kind of thing. I expect you’ve heard of the coming Big Three summit. Stalin and Churchill will bring their two foreign ministers, of course. But not me. I’m taking Harry Hopkins. Mr. Hull is going to stay behind and clean up his own backyard. At least that’s what I’m going to tell him. Moscow was Hull’s big chance at real diplomacy, and he fucked it up. That joint four-power declaration about unconditional surrender and trials for war criminals? Window dressing. I didn’t send Hull all that way to state the obvious. I wanted a meeting with Stalin at Basra. Know where that is?”
I had an idea Basra was more likely to be in the Middle East than in Wyoming, but exactly where in the Middle East I couldn’t say. The geography of sand dunes and wadis was never my strongest subject.
“It’s in Iraq. The good thing about Basra is that I could have gotten to it by ship. There’s a constitutional requirement that the president should not be away from Washington for longer than ten days. Hull’s job was to try and make Uncle Joe understand that. But he screwed up. Welles could have done it. He was a real diplomat. But Hull.” Roosevelt shook his head. “He understands the Tennessee timber business and not much else. Born in a log cabin, you know. Nothing wrong with that, mind. In fact, I had hoped his being a kind of American peasant would help him find some common ground with Stalin, only it didn’t work out that way. Stalin may be a peasant, but he’s a fucking clever peasant and I needed someone clever to deal with him. So now I have to go somewhere else for the Big Three, and I’m pretty pissed about it, I can tell you. Now I’m going to have to go by ship and by air.”
Roosevelt sipped his martini, and then licked his lips with satisfaction.
“You heard about this fellow Thornton Cole and what happened to him, I suppose?” he asked.
“That he’d been murdered? Yes, sir.” I frowned as I failed to see what Roosevelt was driving at.
“I see you don’t know the whole story.”
“I guess not.”
“Know what a Florence test is?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s something the forensic boys do, to test for seminal fluid. It seems that Thornton Cole’s trousers were covered in semen.”
I suddenly realized what the Metro police had been driving at with their questions about me introducing Sumner Welles to Cole at the Metropolitan Club. They must have suspected me of being involved in some kind of ring of Washington sissies. I had known several homosexual men in my time, mostly in Berlin and Vienna, and even one or two in New York. I held nothing against them just as long as they didn’t try to hold anything against me. What a man did in the privacy of his own circle of hell was no business of mine. At the same time, I could hardly believe what I was hearing. It was true what I had told the Metro police. I hadn’t known Thornton Cole all that well. But I wouldn’t ever have guessed that he was a homosexual any more than I was one myself.
“I made sure I was the first one to tell Hull all about it,” said Roosevelt, gleefully. “In the car, on the way back from the airport. You should have seen his face. It was priceless, just priceless. That’s what I meant when I said he should stay home and clean up his own backyard.” Roosevelt laughed cruelly. “The son of a bitch.”
I tried not to look shocked, but I could not help but feel a little taken aback at this display of presidential vindictiveness.
Roosevelt lit a cigarette and finally came to the point of my presence. “I read your report,” he said. “It was refreshingly pragmatic. For a philosopher, you’re quite the Realpolitiker.”
“Isn’t that the proper job of the intelligence officer? To separate the politics of reality from a policy founded upon the principles of justice and morality? And philosophically speaking, Mr. President, I can’t see much at all that’s wrong with that.”
“You’ll make a logical positivist out of me yet, Professor.” Roosevelt grinned. “But only in private. Realpolitik is like homosexuality. Best when it’s practiced behind closed doors.” Roosevelt sipped his cocktail. “Tell me something. Have you got a girlfriend?”
I tried to contain my irritation.
“Are you asking me if I’m homosexual, Mr. President?” I said through gritted teeth. “Because if you are, the answer is no. I’m not. And as a matter of fact I don’t have a girlfriend. But I did, until quite recently.”
“I don’t care what a man does in private. But when it becomes public it’s a different matter. You see how sex becomes the purest kind of Realpolitik there is?”
I lit a cigarette. I had a strong sense that the president was leading me somewhere a long way from Katyn Forest.
“Professor Mayer? I want you to come to the Big Three with me. As I told you, I’m taking Harry Hopkins
