The Secret Warriors Read online

  “It’s known only to the people in this car, plus, of course, Colonel Donovan and Miss Chenowith,” Captain Douglass said.

  “How did you find out?” Whittaker asked Canidy.

  “I was afraid you’d ask that,” Canidy said.

  “How did you?”

  “I’ve had several run-ins with Cynthia,” Canidy said. “It came out during one of them.”

  “What kind of run-ins?” Whittaker asked.

  “Does it matter?” Canidy asked.

  “You put the make on her?” Whittaker asked. “You sonofabitch!”

  “No,” Canidy said. “I didn’t put the make on her.”

  “Then what?” Whittaker asked angrily.

  “Your beloved, Jimmy, almost got me killed,” Canidy said.

  “How?”

  “Stop right there, Canidy!” Douglass said.

  “I want to know what the hell he’s talking about!” Whittaker said.

  “I’m sorry, that’s out of the question.”

  “I was somewhere,” Canidy said. “Doing something. And the end of the game was when they sent a submarine to pick us up.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “When we reached the submarine, the skipper said he was sorry as hell, but he had orders to keep us from coming aboard. ‘By force of arms if necessary’ is the way he put it.”

  “Who are ‘we’ and ‘us’?” Whittaker asked.

  “No, Canidy!” Douglass said. “Don’t even start into that.”

  Canidy raised his hand in a gesture meant to assure Captain Douglass that he wasn’t going to violate security, and then went on:

  “At the time, I thought somebody else was responsible for giving that order,” Canidy said. “I was going to feed him his balls the next time I saw him. So Captain Douglass decided he had better tell me who had really made the decision. It wasn’t who I thought it was, it was Cynthia.”

  “Cynthia? She’s involved in whatever it is you’re doing?”

  “Donovan was so impressed with the way she handled herself—when Chesly died, I mean—that he gave her a job,” Canidy said.

  “Doing what?” Whittaker asked.

  “No, Canidy,” Captain Douglass said again. “Be very careful.”

  “I was so goddamned mad, Jimmy, that I told Captain Douglass that Cynthia wasn’t the sweet maiden he apparently thought she was.”

  “That was a pretty shitty thing to do, Dick,” Whittaker said.

  “Under the circumstances, Captain, I think Dick’s reaction was understandable,” Douglass said.

  “What circumstances?” Whittaker asked. “Is she now fucking somebody else? Donovan, maybe?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Douglass said.

  “Is she, or isn’t she?”

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think so,” Canidy said. “Certainly not Donovan, and I don’t think anybody else. She’s too busy playing spymaster.”

  “That’s enough of that, Canidy!” Douglass snapped. In a moment, he went on: “Under the circumstances, Captain Whittaker, I thought it necessary to fill Canidy in on the circumstances surrounding your uncle’s death.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Whittaker said. And then he laughed.

  “Well,” he said. “At least Chesly went out happy. All’s well that ends well, they say.”

  Canidy looked at him curiously. That was not the reaction he had expected.

  “Tell me this, before the joyous reunion,” he said. “Will Cynthia know that I know she was fucking my uncle?”

  “No,” Canidy said. “And she doesn’t know that I know, either.”

  “Then let’s keep it that way,” Whittaker said. “Okay?”

  “So far as I’m concerned,” Douglass said, “there is no reason to bring up this subject ever again.”

  3

  When the Buick reached the house on Q Street, the drive-way gate was open and Ellis drove right in, stopping the car on the cobblestone drive in front of the garages.

  “Who’s the guy on the gate?” Whittaker asked. “He looks like a cop.”

  “There’s a security arrangement here,” Douglass said.

  “I feel like I’m in a Humphrey Bogart movie,” Whittaker said.

  “I’m going to have Ellis take me home,” Douglass announced. “I think it would be a good idea to put Captain Whittaker’s letter in the safe.”

  “I’ll put it in the safe, Captain,” Ellis said, “if it can wait until I get back.”

  “No, you won’t,” Whittaker said. “I’ve kept it this far, I’ll keep it the rest of the way.”

  Douglass thought that over.

  “Whatever you wish, Captain,” he said. “I’ll be back here around eight in the morning. We can arrange for you to deliver it then.”

  “Okay,” Whittaker said.

  Douglass got out of the car. He leaned in again and gave Whittaker his hand, but didn’t say anything more to him.

  Ellis tapped the Buick’s horn ring. The plainclothes security man started to open the gate again as Canidy and Whittaker got out of the car and walked toward the kitchen.

  There was a skinny black woman sitting at the kitchen table. She looked somewhat disapprovingly at them, Whittaker in particular.

  “Is Miss Chenowith here?” Whittaker asked.

  “No, but she should be soon,” the black woman said. And then, indicating Whittaker with a nod of her head: “He’s staying?”

  Canidy nodded.

  “She know?”

  Canidy shook his head no.

  “She told me that if anybody came in she didn’t know about, they was to be put in the second-left bedroom,” the black woman said. “She said she’d be back by now. I don’t know why she’s not.”

  “Who’s in the master bedroom?” Whittaker asked.

  The black woman looked at him curiously. “They save that for important people.”

  “Can you fix the captain something to eat?” Canidy asked, amused.

  “I suppose so. If he’s hungry.”

  “Steak and eggs?” Whittaker asked. “And french-fried potatoes?”

  “This time of night?”

  “Make him whatever he wants,” Canidy ordered flatly.

  The black woman shrugged.

  “Is there anything else we can get for you, Captain?” Canidy asked, as if Whittaker were a total stranger.

  “I need clean clothes. I need a razor, and a comb and brush. And underwear and socks. I have to see a dentist, and I think I caught the crabs,” Whittaker said. “Where would you like to start?”

  Canidy laughed. “You’re a real basket case, aren’t you, Jimmy?” he asked.

  “And you, on the other hand, are not only well fed but here, and not wearing a uniform. I’m going to have to find out how you did that, you clever son of a bitch.”

  “Cowardice. It works every time,” Canidy said.

  “Bullshit. I’m the biggest coward you ever met, and you won’t believe what those sons of bitches had me doing.”

  “You look like hell, and you smell like a barroom floor, but I’m glad to see you anyway.”

  “Fuck you, Dick,” Whittaker said fondly.

  “We can give him pajamas and a robe,” the black woman said practically, “and a comb and a razor and a toothbrush and that sort of thing—”

  “Pajamas and a robe? Christ, I’d forgotten there were such things,” Whittaker said.

  “—but I don’t know what to do about the crabs,” the black woman went on matter-of-factly. “Unless you go to that all-night drugstore on Massachusetts Avenue.”

  “I’ll send the chief when he comes back,” Canidy said.

  “I didn’t mention that I also don’t have any money,” Whittaker said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Canidy said. “I’ll trust you. You have an honest face.”

  Ellis returned as the black woman was frying a steak. Canidy told him what Whittaker needed, and handed him money. “Get him whatever else you think he needs,
” he added.

  “Right,” Ellis said. “It won’t take me long. You going to be all right?”

  “We’ll be fine,” Canidy said.

  “I only look this way, Chief,” Whittaker said. “I’m not really crazy.”

  “You really want eggs with this steak?” the skinny black woman asked.

  Whittaker nodded. “Four, sunny-side up. And toast.”

  She shrugged and went to the refrigerator.

  “And coffee,” he said. “And milk.”

  While Whittaker ate at the kitchen table, Canidy took a cup of coffee and sat down with him. The black woman went out of the kitchen and returned with pajamas and a robe.

  “I couldn’t find slippers,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She saw that all the food she had heaped on his plate was gone. “If that’s all you want to eat, I’ll show you your room,” she said.

  Whittaker was unsteady on his feet. It was entirely possible he couldn’t make it upstairs by himself.

  “I’ll show him,” Canidy said quickly, and went with him. He was glad he did. Whittaker had to haul himself upstairs on the banister railing.

  In the upstairs foyer, Whittaker stopped at the door to the master bedroom.

  “As I recall,” he said, “the shower in here has two heads. I’ll use this.”

  “The way it works around here,” Canidy said, “is that rooms are assigned by Miss Chenowith. Miss Chenowith goes into a snit when someone dares disobey her. Miss Chenowith, I think you should know, is very impressed with her role in the hierarchy around here.”

  “Fuck Miss Chenowith,” Whittaker said, laughing, “which seems to be a splendid idea, come to think of it.”

  “You going to be all right in there?” Canidy asked seriously. Whittaker looked terrible. His eyes were bloodshot and burning, he was thirty or forty pounds underweight, and he looked as if he was teetering over the edge of exhaustion.

  “I look that bad, huh?”

  “Yeah. You want me to wait?”

  “If you hear a loud crash, come after me,” Whittaker said. “But I’d rather do it myself, thank you.”

  “I’m really glad to see you, you bastard,” Canidy said.

  “And now that you’re here, I don’t want you cracking open your skull falling down in the shower.”

  “That’s not how I plan to die,” Whittaker said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Come on down when you’re clean,” Canidy said. “If you feel up to it. I’ve got a bottle of Scotch we can work on.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Whittaker said.

  Canidy, shamed, realized that drinking was the last thing the poor, beat-up sonofabitch wanted to do. He wanted to fall into bed, but his ego required that he accept the offer to booze.

  We’ll have one drink, Canidy decided, and then I will announce I’m beat, and head for bed.

  He went back down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  Cynthia Chenowith came into the kitchen fifteen minutes later. She was a tall, lithe, fair-skinned nearly beautiful woman who was in her late twenties, but looked younger. She was expensively dressed, and the purse hanging from her shoulder was alligator.

  She gave Canidy an impersonal nod by way of greeting. It was all he expected. He didn’t like Cynthia Chenowith, and she didn’t like him.

  She went to a wall telephone hanging by the door to the dining room and dialed a number from memory.

  “This is Miss Chenowith,” she announced. “I’m at the house and will be until further notice.”

  She was checking in with the duty officer at COI, Canidy thought. She loves it. It makes her feel important.

  What would be nice would be for her to go upstairs and screw that poor, beat-up, exhausted sonofabitch who thinks he’s in love with her. But that won’t happen.

  She sensed his eyes on her.

  “Something, Canidy?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

  “He brought a man in,” the black woman volunteered. “Him and Ellis.”

  “Who, Canidy?” Cynthia demanded. “I asked if there was anything.”

  Well, the hell with you, too.

  He said, “Donovan sent Douglass, Ellis, and me out to Bolling Field to pick him up and bring him here.”

  “What are you doing here anyway?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure you have the need to know, Miss Chenowith,” Canidy said, openly mocking her. “Suffice it to say that I, too, am on duty.”

  “You’re here in connection with our problem with the admiral,” she flared.

  He smiled, very broadly, very artificially, at her. He didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, except that “the admiral” was more than likely Vice Admiral d’Escadre Jean-Philippe de Verbey, French Navy, whom he had loaded aboard a submarine off Safi and sent to the States, but he was damned if he would let her know he didn’t know.

  “No comment,” he said. “I’m sure you understand.”

  White-faced, she tried to stare him down and failed.

  With a little bit of luck, he thought, she’ll take a swing at me with her purse.

  She did not. She turned to the black woman. “Is the man upstairs a French naval officer?”

  The black woman shook her head and told her that the new guest was an Air Corps captain; that he had arrived looking as if he hadn’t had a meal in a week and without luggage; that he had crabs; and that she had put him in the second room on the left, as ordered.

  Cynthia, Canidy saw, with pleasure, was annoyed. She turned to him. “Crabs?” she asked incredulously. “Body vermin?”

  “Crabs,” Canidy confirmed happily. “I sent Ellis for crab medicine.”

  “I’ll have to have the room fumigated!” she said.

  “They also serve who fumigate,” Canidy said.

  Ellis, as if on cue, came through the kitchen door carrying a large kraft paper bag.

  “He’s in the master bedroom, Ellis,” Canidy said. “Take it up to him.”

  “The master bedroom?” Cynthia demanded. She turned furiously on the black woman. “I told you to put anybody who came in unexpectedly in the second room, left.”

  “She told me,” Canidy said. “But I decided, what the hell, it wasn’t being used.”

  He thought for a moment that she was about to lose her temper. But then, as if she understood that was exactly what he wanted her to do, she gained control of herself and smiled at him just as warmly and patently artificially as he was smiling at her.

  “Well, we’ll just have to move him where he’s supposed to be,” Cynthia said, “won’t we?” She reached for Ellis’s package. “Give me that, please. What’s in it?”

  “Personal-comfort items,” Canidy said, winking at Ellis. “And crab killer.”

  She took the bag and stormed upstairs to the master bedroom, which was actually a suite. She had, as she always had when she went to its door, a mental picture of Ellis carrying Chesley Haywood Whittaker, naked, wrapped in a sheet, dead, into that bedroom.

  And now Canidy had taken it upon himself to put some vermin-infested character in Chesly’s room, to leave his filth in the shower where they had put Chesly.

  There was no answer to her knock on the master bedroom’s door, so she walked in. As she did, the sound of the shower died.

  “Hello in there,” she said. “I’m Miss Chenowith. I’d like a word with you.”

  “I was hoping it would be the guy with the stuff for my crabs,” he said.

  “I have it,” she said. “Open the door a crack.”

  It opened wide enough for a hand to pass. Steam billowed out. She offered the bag to a scarred hand with battered fingernails. She had a quick, steam-fogged glance at a face with gaunt and sunken and very bright eyes. Uncomfortable, she immediately averted her eyes.

  Whoever he is, she thought, he looks like the sort of person who would pick up body vermin.

  The door opened and he came out in a robe and pajamas.

 
She didn’t want to face him, so she pretended to fuss with the clock on the bedside table.

  “There seems to be some misunderstanding,” she said. “This room is reserved for VIPs.”

  “Not while I’m here it’s not,” he said.

  “I don’t know who you think you are!” she flared, and turned to face him, to glare at him.

  “I think I’m Jim Whittaker,” he said, in the moment recognition dawned on her, “and I own this house. How the hell are you, Cynthia?”

  “That sonofabitch!” Cynthia fumed.

  “Which sonofabitch is that?” Whittaker asked. “And when did you start using dirty words?”

  “Canidy!” she snapped. “He didn’t tell me it was you!”

  “Maybe he thought a surprise would be nice,” Whittaker said.

  Barely audibly, shocked both to see him and at his appearance, she said, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “How about ‘I’m glad you got out of the Philippines’?” he suggested. “Or better yet, how about ‘Hi, Jim, let’s screw!’”

  “Oh, Jimmy, for God’s sake! Please!” Cynthia Chenowith said, and with tears in her eyes turned and fled.

  She heard him laughing happily behind her. She had amused him. She remembered that when she used to amuse Chesly, he laughed almost exactly like that.

  She went into the kitchen. Canidy, obviously very pleased with himself, was sitting at the table with Chief Ellis. There was a bottle of Scotch between them.

  “That was a rotten thing to do, Canidy, you sonofabitch!”

  “What rotten thing was that, Cynthia?” he asked innocently.

  “You bastard!” she screamed, and then she fled.

  She would die, she thought, before she gave the sonofabitch the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

  4

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  APRIL 5, 1942

  The arrival of the radiogram turned out to be a disappointment for the doorman of the tall apartment building on Lakeshore Drive. It was his usual practice to relieve Western Union messengers of their yellow envelopes, hand them a dime, then turn the envelope over to the elevator operator. The elevator operator would then deliver it. With rare exceptions, every tenant in the building was worth a quarter, and some of them, like the Bitters, were worth more. The Bitters kept a supply of dollar bills in a vase just inside the door of their penthouse apartment, to be dispensed whenever a service was done for them.