will.” He looked straight at Nick. “You’re the hardest thing I’ve ever done. So maybe I’m jealous when someone has you so easily. One call and you come.”
“And if you called, I wouldn’t?”
“Well, you like to be the only one. Maybe it’s wrong. I never thought I’d have to share you, but I do. So I’ll learn. Even with him. I thought Walter was a fool-I’m sorry, I did, I can’t pretend. But I don’t want you to think I am too.”
“I don’t think you’re a fool.”
“Well, you will if I go on like this. A little unexpected, isn’t it? Maybe I’m getting old, a little fuzzy. But a stunt like this. Christ, Nick. Wait till Hoover tells you your kid is locked up somewhere.” Larry paused and Nick saw the hint of a question in his eyes. “But it’s all over now.”
“Yes, it’s all over.”
Larry glanced at his watch. “I have to run, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to hear. Go see your mother, she’s expecting you. You might skip the body details-you know, after he fell. She’s been- It brings everything back. So maybe just the old jokes. And how you weren’t in jail.” He paused, a glint. “And his wife.”
He got up and started out, Nick following. “I shouldn’t leave her, but I’ll be back Friday. It’s like the shuttle, back and forth to Paris every week. They love face-to-face in Washington these days, I don’t know why. Maybe they don’t trust the phones. Well, they’re right. Remind me to tell you the latest about Nixon and old Edgar. The War of the Roses. To tell you the truth, I don’t mind the planes. No calls. You get to read the papers.” They were on the bright marble steps, traffic honking, the quiet formal rooms behind them like some misplaced dream of London. “By the way, what’s with the hotel? You’ve got a perfectly good room at home sitting there.”
“I’m with a girl.”
“Really?” Larry said, interested. “Serious?”
But Nick ignored it. “We’re only here for one night. To see you. We go to Washington tomorrow.”
“What’s in Washington?”
“Friends.”
“What friends?”
Nick smiled at him, the suspicious parent. “Hers. This must be your car.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s black and important. Big aerial. Isn’t it?”
“Wise guy,” Larry said fondly.
“By the way, did you get a call from Jack Kemper?”
Larry looked at him, suddenly alert. “No, why?”
“He’s with the CIA in London. I used his name. I told the embassy in Prague I was working for him. That’s why they got me out. Not the Bureau. You don’t owe Hoover anything.”
Larry blinked, taking this in. “How do you know he’s with the CIA?”
“You told me. At the Bruces’ party.”
Larry looked at him, then smiled, an insider’s laugh. “Who said my kid couldn’t think on his feet? They’d better watch you.”
“Well, they may. And you. I heard Kemper was upset. That’s why I thought you should know.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Larry said, taking his hand, but Nick leaned over and hugged him. Larry held him for a moment, surprised and pleased. “I’m glad you’re home,” he said, no longer joking, an apology for the lunch.
“Get us out of Vietnam,” Nick said as Larry got into the car.
“I’m trying, believe me,” he said, then rolled up the window and the car slid toward Fifth Avenue.
The photographer was in a rundown building on Delancey Street, near the bridge, two unlit flights up.
“You Nick, man?” he said, opening the door a crack. Long hair, a face corrugated with old acne scars. When Nick nodded, the door opened into a huge empty space with exposed pipes, littered with tripods, light cables, and back screens. The living quarters seemed to be a camp bed and a trestle table overflowing with Chinese takeout cartons. A young girl in a flimsy short dress sat on a stool, smoking a joint. “Molly’s in there,” he said, nodding toward a bare red bulb hanging over an enclosed space. “Your prints are still drying. What the fuck are they, anyway? I mean, they’re in fucking Russian.”
What had Molly told him? “ Samizdat,” Nick said.
“Samitz who?”
“Underground manuscripts. They have to smuggle them out. You know, like Solzhenitsyn.”
“Far out.”
“Want a hit?” the girl said dreamily, holding out the joint.
Nick shook his head.
“I’m not going to get in any trouble or anything, right?” the photographer said.
“No, nothing like that. I appreciate your help.”‘
“Hey, no problem. Old Molly. Samizyet,” he said, shaking his head.
“What kind of photography do you do?” Nick said, to make conversation.
“Fashion,” he said, grinning. The girl giggled.
Molly came out, stuffing an envelope into her bag. “Hey, thanks, Richie.” She went over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You do great work.”
“Fucking A. You got them all? Don’t leave nothing in there.”
“All here,” she said, patting the bag. “I’ll see you, okay?”
“Yeah. Say hi to your mom.”
As they were leaving, the girl with the joint began lifting the dress over her head, her body as thin as a child’s.
“The people you know,” Nick said when they hit the street, bright after the dark stairs.
“Richie? We went to high school together.” She laughed to herself. “In the glee club.”
They stopped at a bookstore on Fifth Avenue to buy a Russian-English dictionary.
“What’s the point?” Nick said. “We can’t translate this. It’d take months.”
“No, but we might get some idea what it is. What were you going to do, get one of the girls at the UN? Would you mind taking a look at these? Just a few espionage documents I happened to pick up. By the way, do you have a safe-deposit box or something? For the negatives.”
“No. I’ll put them somewhere at home. I have to see my mother anyway.”
“Alone?”
Nick nodded.
“A little too early to take me home to Mom, huh?”
“A little too early for Mom. She’s got other things on her mind.”
“Okay. Maybe I’ll run up to Bronxville and see mine. Since we’re being so good.”
“But you’ll be back tonight?”
“Hmm.” She looked at him. “I’m not that good. Besides, I always wanted to stay at the Plaza. How rich are you, anyway?”
He smiled. “Rich.”
“And Catholic. You are Catholic, aren’t you?”
“Baptized, anyway.”
“She’ll die. She’ll just die.”
The photographs, in impenetrable Cyrillic, seemed to be a series of reports, not a simple list.
“See how they’re dated up here? Like memos.”
“This is impossible, Molly. Even if we figure out the letters, we still have to translate the Russian.”
“Well, the numbers help. We can figure out the dates,” she said eagerly. “And see the words in block capitals? They all have them. It’s a format, if we can figure it out. They sign off that way too.”
But the dates, once deciphered, were all recent, none of them reaching back to his father’s time.
“They’re the active ones, that’s why,” Molly said. “These are the reports they’re getting now. I’ll bet the caps are names. Look, this one’s Otto. So who’s Otto?”
“A code name,” Nick said, then sighed. “We have to know the context, Molly. Look at the dates-they’re not consistent. It’s a selection. Maybe they’re the incriminating ones. Each one nails somebody, if you understand it.”
