September 2

Arthur Gold in person looks like a Dashiell Hammett private eye: white shirt, rolled-up sleeves, steel blue eyes, necktie five years out of date. He’s a regular white-haired Sam Spade, complete with the smoky little office up a narrow flight of stairs in the Woolworth’s building on Henry Street. The ever-burning cigarette, the epic slouch. If Violet Brown is the “do be” gal for posture, Mr. Gold is the “don’t be.” His narrow body describes the shape of an S in his chair, with a meridian running through the head, navel, and shins, with all else slumped to the fore or the aft. It was hard at first to reconcile the slumped posture with the astute voice on the telephone. But within minutes he established himself as the same Mr. Gold, planking out the long sentences that arrive unfailingly at their destination. He could be formidable in court. Except midway between his subject and object, you’d become distracted by the cigarette, wondering when that worm of ash will finally drop on his shirt.

“Congratulations on your distinguished career.” He unwound himself to stand, shake hands. “Please, call me Artie. Finally we meet, sit down, please. It’s a pleasure doing business with a man who has made so much of himself in a relatively short amount of time in this country, and if I may say so, on this earth. How old are you?”

“Thirty-one.”

He squinted, evaluating. “Yeah, okay. You look it.”

He studied the letter for only a few seconds before tossing it on his desk. “To make a long story short? You will have to answer this. If you don’t, they will send you another. It’s a form, they’ve got millions of them. Please, tell me, what is it about this particular request that worries you?”

“I’m not really worried. There’s nothing on that list that applies. Honestly, treason and sedition, violent overthrow. I’m all right until they add smoking in bed.”

Artie laughed, bobbing his head from the shoulders.

“I’m just wondering what’s behind it, before I answer. I make mistakes sometimes. I seem to be naive about certain things.”

“How so?”

“I grew up in Mexico, in the Revolution. Being a Communist was just an ordinary household thing. About like fish on Fridays.”

“I grew up in a country like that also. New York in the twenties. You ever hear of Eugene V. Debs?”

“I think so.”

“So. Grew up in Mexico, but you are a citizen of the United States, this much I know from working on your film contract. You were born here, moved to Mexico at the age of twelve as I recall, returning when exactly?”

“September of ’40. Before that, I was here two years to attend school.”

He was making notes. “Where and when?”

“Potomac Academy, Washington, D.C., ’32 and ’33.”

“District of Columbia in ’32. The summer of the Bonus Army riots.”

“I know. I was in them. I was sick a few weeks from the tear gas.”

He looked up. “You were in the Bonus Army riots?”

“By accident. I was trying to make a delivery from the A&P.”

“Holy smokes. I will not put this in your dossier.”

“I don’t think my dossier is going to be problematic.”

“Mr. Shepherd. Should I call you Harry?”

“No. Just Shepherd is fine. Without the Mr.”

“Shepherd. In seventy-five words or less, how would you describe your dossier?”

“Empty. That’s the whole truth. I spent almost all my life until now putting food on other people’s plates. Eating their leftovers, if any. So you could say my sentiments lodge in the proletarian quarter. The worker control of industry strikes me as a decent idea. But I’m not a member of anything. Is that seventy-five words?”

“Or less. You are concise.”

“I don’t even vote. My secretary needles me about that.”

“You believe in the class struggle, but you don’t vote?”

“This country is a puzzle. In Mexico even the conservatives grant the power of the syndicates. But here, during the strikes, the most liberal politicians called the Mine Workers president a coal-black son of Satan. The conservatives probably just thought he was Satan père. It’s a pretty watery broth. Republicans, Democrats.”

“This I will not deny.”

“In the war they were all friends with Stalin, but now he’s also joined the Satan family line. That one I agree with. This letter they’ve sent me, I only want to understand it. So I won’t step in something. I tend to do that, step in things.”

He sat staring, the ash end of his cigarette growing long and white. “I see. This letter worries you because you’re thinking you may get hit with somebody else’s gas on your way to the A&P.”

“This letter confounds me. I know what communism is. But a few weeks ago, my secretary was voted out of her Woman’s Club because she asked a girl from Russia to give a lecture. Just a schoolgirl.”

“Shepherd, my friend. This month, in certain quarters, people are burning the Graphic Survey magazine because it contains a picture story on life in Russia. Photographs of farms. Windmills, whatever they have on farms. Russian cows. This incites people to bonfires.”

“What do you think is frightening them?”

“Hearst news. If the paper says everyone this season will be wearing a Lilly Daché hat that resembles an armadillo, they will purchase the hat. If Hearst tells them to be afraid of Russia, they will buy that too.”

“If the hat is too ridiculous, not everyone buys it.”

Artie finally ashed his cigarette, then paused to light a new one from the old, which he left burning in the ashtray, presumably for ambiance. He reorganized his S-shaped body into a thoughtful pose against the desk. “Do you want to know my theory?”

“Of course.”

“I think it’s the bomb.”

“People are afraid of the bomb?”

“Yes, I believe that is the heart of the matter. When that bomb went off over Japan, when we saw that an entire city could be turned to fire and gas, it changed the psychology of this country. And when I say ‘psychology,’ I mean that very literally. It’s the radio, you see. The radio makes everyone feel the same thing at the same time. Instead of millions of various thoughts, one big psychological fixation. The radio commands our gut response. Are you following me?”

“Yes. I’ve seen that.”

“That bomb scared the holy Moses out of us. We became horrified in our hearts that we had used it. Okay, it ended the war, it saved American life and so on and so forth. But everyone feels guilty, deep inside. Little Japanese children turned into flaming gas, we know this. How could we not feel bad?”

“I’m sure we do.”

“Okay. We used the bomb. We convince ourselves we are very special people, to get to use this weapon. Ideal scenario, we would like to think it came to us from God, meant for our own use and no one else’s.” He leaned in, eyes and cigarette blazing. “You wrote a book about this topic, am I right?”

“You’ve read my books?”

“Of course I’ve read your books. You’re an important client, I’ve read your books. You of all people understand this. Suddenly we are God’s chosen, we have this bomb, and we better be pretty damn certain no one else is going to get this bomb. We must clean our house thoroughly. Can you imagine what would happen if England also had the bomb, France, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union all had this bomb? How could a person go to sleep at night?”

“Those countries hardly have standing armies now, they’re sacked. All but the Soviet Union.”

“Okay. The Soviet Union. You get it.”

“I thought we had nothing to fear but fear itself.”

“You see, this is what I’m saying. The radio. It creates for us a psychology. Here’s what happened to fear itself. Winston Churchill said, ‘iron curtain.’ Did you see how they all went crazy over that?”

“Of course.”

“Then Truman said, ‘Every nation must decide.’ You are standing on one side of that curtain, my friend, or else you are on the other. And John Edgar Hoover, my God, this man. John Edgar Hoover says this curtain is what separates us from Satan and perhaps also the disease of leprosy. Did you happen to hear his testimony to Congress?”

“I read some of it.”

“‘The mad march of Red fascism in America. Teaching our youth a way of life that will destroy the sanctity of the home and respect for authority. Communism is not a political party but an evil and malignant way of life’—these are his words. A disease condition. A quarantine is necessary to keep it from infecting the nation.”

“I read that. But newspapers exaggerate. I couldn’t quite believe he said all that.”

“You have a point. Maybe he did not. And yet in this case it happens that he did. I acquired a transcript of this testimony because it pertains to certain of my clients.”

“Why did he say it? I mean, what are his rational motives?”

“Rational motives are not the scope of this discussion. He is an excitable man. He heads a powerful agency. The newspapers love this kind of thing, as you say. It’s a moment of history, my friend. You wonder why you’ve received this letter. I am attempting to draw you a picture.”

“Is that really his signature?”

“No. They have a machine. I read Frank Sinatra has one also, for autographs. Maybe you need one. Okay, do you know anything at all about this Dies Committee?”

“I’ve heard of it. Years ago they contacted my boss to come and testify. This was in Mexico. The State Department arranged visas for us, but it never happened.”

“Your Mexican boss had something to say about un-American activities?”

“He wasn’t Mexican, he was in exile there, under threat of death from Stalin. So he had a lot to say about the man. This was before the war, when the U.S. was getting very friendly with Stalin. Trotsky felt the U.S. was being hoodwinked. They needed to know he was treacherous.”

“Trotsky.”

“Lev Trotsky. He was my boss.”

The cigarette ash fell to the floor. For a moment the lawyer himself seemed poised to follow it. He straightened, shook his head slowly, and reached for the letter on the desk. “I am going to give you a piece of advice. Don’t mention that you once were employed by the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution.”

“I was a cook. And this was Trotsky. He hated Stalin even more than J. Edgar Hoover does. He spent his whole life trying to overthrow the Soviet politburo. The American Communist Party vilified him.”

“Let me just say, these subtleties are lost on your secretary’s Woman’s Club, and they are lost on the Dies Committee. Most of them don’t know what communism is, could not pick it out of a lineup. They only know what anticommunism is. The two are practically unrelated.”

“You’re telling me anticommunism is unrelated to communism. That doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t make sense to you. You’re a man of words, so you think we’re speaking here of tuna fish and disliking tuna fish, but we are not. We’re talking tuna fish and the Spanish influenza.” He reached into the papers on his desk and drew out a pair of spectacles. “All former places of residence and former employers,” he read. “Schools and colleges attended, organizations in which you have been a member.”

“What should I write?”

“Tell them exactly what they already know. Mexico, they probably know very little. Military service record they know. What was your tour?”

“Civilian service. That’s how this came up. I helped move federal property for the Department of State during the war.”

“Civilian service, so you were 4F?”

“Something like that.”

He waited. The intensity of the man’s gaze is extraordinary.

“Blue slip,” I said.

“Okay. Disqualified from service on account of sexual indifference to the female of the species. This one I could never figure.”

“They offered to put me in a psychiatric hospital, to get me sorted out. But then suddenly my particular talents were needed elsewhere, moving art treasures out of Washington. Both coasts were under attack, so it looked very urgent.”

“This was when, ’42?”

“The end of summer, right after the Japanese deployed their floatplane bomber from that sub they sent up the Columbia River. It looked like a good time for the country to get our goods under cover.”

“You’re putting me on. If it weren’t for Tojo attacking Fort Stevens…”

“That’s right. I might be up at Highlands Hospital with Zelda Fitzgerald. Instead, I’m living down the street from there in a house I bought with Uncle Sam’s paycheck.”

“Shazam,” said Artie. “All’s fair in love and war.”

“Believe me, I know this. Better than most.”

“Well, for better or worse, all this they already know about you. What else? What employment history do they have in your file at the State Department?”

“I’m not sure. I think my name must have come to them through a gallery in New York where I delivered paintings from Mexico. Or the school where I taught Spanish.”

“Okay, mention those. And anything you recall listing in your employment records at those establishments. Church membership, this kind of thing, to pad out the résumé. Though you are not a joiner, you’ve said. So give them primary schools in Mexico, the one in D.C. The name of the painter who sent you to New York.”

“Will they really go and talk to instructors at the Potomac Academy?”

“So what, they’ll find out you were a schoolboy. I don’t want to worry you excessively, but schoolboy shenanigans are not now your biggest concern.”

September 3

Today Bull’s Eye departed, and all this he took with him: schoolboy shenanigans, promises broken, dormitories and secret assignations. An invisible boy made manifest, seen for once by another’s eyes, if only for a short while. A city of memories has gone up in fire and gas, and there can be no remorse.

Mrs. Brown wouldn’t tolerate having the notebook burned in the fireplace. But in the end she did the job herself, outside in the barrel where she burns scrap papers. “Potomac Academy 1933” has left the world.

She was opposed at first. “You need your notebooks,” she kept insisting. Without the notes she fears I’ll make a mess of things, like Tristram Shandy. She still refuses to believe the memoir will not be written. I met her gaze, and leveled.

“Look, Mrs. Brown. You’re a practical person. And you know me. So don’t ask for impossible things. I’m working on a different book now.”

“So you said.”

“It was a mistaken idea, the memoir. Dragging my own entrails out for the public. And not my idea to start with, you’ll recall. I told you I’d given it up when the little leather-bound diary turned up missing. Really I should get rid of all of them, just so you’ll quit nagging me about it. But I’m starting with this one.”

She had come a half hour early, today of all days, and caught me red-handed. The broad, canvas-bound notebook in my hand. I’d been wondering how to set that cotton duck to flame; the army tends to manufacture indestructible things. Stamped plainly across the front: “Potomac Academy.” She could probably see right through to the naked figures inside, as if catching me with an eight-pager. I may have blushed.

“If you won’t let me burn it now, I’ll just do it after you leave this evening.”

“Do as you please then. This evening.” Without another word she went to the dining room, slapped out the work on her table, and said little the whole day. But at five o’clock, crept upstairs to my study door. “Mr. Shepherd, be ye free for a word?”

“All right.”

“It’s something to grieve you, is it? In that notebook you now want burned.”

She has borne so much from her inconstant leader. The panics of the last month, for example. A better August than some, but still she takes the brunt.

“It’s nothing special, Mrs. Brown. I’m just ready to be done with school days.”

“Anybody would be queasy, with federal men nosing in your business.”

She acknowledged the deed would already be done, if she had not by chance caught the earlier bus this morning. “Mr. Shepherd, I’ve got no business depriving you of your own intents and purposes. Give it over and we’ll be done.”

She took it out to the backyard. I watched from the upstairs window, wondering if she would have a glance inside; it’s possible I was testing her. But she did not look. It was her choice to burn it in the barrel with the day’s used envelopes and botched letters, rather than in the living room. “Here now, it’s still the dog days,” she said. “What might the neighbors think, seeing smoke from your hearth on such a warm day of September?”

She is out there now. The week’s rubbish went into the tar barrel, the canvas-bound book flaring vividly in the center, its blackened leaves impossibly thin and intact, curling open before disintegrating. She stepped back from the heat of the barrel, but will remain at her post until everything is vapor. Viewed from above, she is framed by fences on both sides of the strange tableau: Mrs. Brown destroys the evidence. Her hat, a small blue plate, dampening in dark speckles as a light summer rain begins to fall.

Now the job is done.

September 8

Today the appeasement program begins. After a weekend spent drawing together a mess of notes into genuine prose, I have produced evidence of a new book. Not just some vague excuse for avoiding the memoir, but two draft chapters of the novel set in Yucatán, handed over to Mrs. Brown. The setting is giving me trouble, though, as I’ve never visited the Yucatán. I need to see Chichén Itzá, the stones of those temples.

Mrs. Brown’s eyebrows sailed, just to hear the names spoken aloud. You could see the childhood longing still in her. The girl, hiding in some chicken coop from sister Parthenia, dreamily turning pages of the Geographic.

I asked her to call the Asheville-Hendersonville air-port and find out how Pennsylvania Central Airlines might connect with Mérida. Mexico City will probably be the best bet. No, not passage for one. For two.

September 23

“No soap,” says Artie Gold. “You tell them that, your attorney says no soap, jump in a lake, bye-bye birdie. This letter you do not even have to answer.”

Artie had agreed to an emergency meeting on the condition we invite his twelve-year-old friend Grant. Ha-ha, as he would say. Grant is a blended scotch whisky. We met downtown on Patton Avenue, but en route to the bar he had to tramp through some errands. Coleman’s Man Store to pick up a shirt. (“Margaret says if I show up one more time looking like a hobo she will put me in a home. It’s the husband’s parents, they’re snobs.”) Next, Reiser’s Shoe Hospital, to fetch some resuscitated wing tips that should have gone to Reiser’s Crematorium, if there is one. Then Finkelstein’s Pawn.

“Is this how you generally impress new clients?”

Artie had handed his ticket through the iron grille, and we were waiting for the retrieval. “Ha! Don’t worry, I am not living on Skid Row just yet,” he said. “Although I wish the same could be said of all my clients. That ticket was given to me in lieu of payment, a very nice camel overcoat I’m told, to be had for only ten dollars.” Artie lowered his voice. “I’m going to give it back to the poor guy when cold weather hits.”

The bar was Leo’s, a little joint in the odd flatiron building that’s wedged into the acute corner of Battery and Wall. “This okay with you? Is it adequate to the purposes of impressing a new client?”

“It’s fine. I’m sorry, that was a joke.”

“Okay. Not very fancy, Leo’s. But a club I am allowed to join.” Carefully he folded and stacked his wardrobe on the stool beside him: camel coat, shirt, shoes. The girl at the bar had reached for the bottle of Grant’s when he came in the door, and came over with two little glasses hooked on her fingertips like thimbles. Artie seemed distracted, watching her fill the glasses, finishing his cigarette. “That club out at Bent Creek, you know it? I recently had a very high-profile client who moved here from Hollywood, prospective client I should say, I’m not naming names, he wanted to take me to his golf club for dinner, Bent Creek. To celebrate, get acquainted. Mr. Heston, I say to him, have you seen their promotional materials? ‘We cater to the better class of gentile clientele. We reserve the right to decline service to anyone we deem to be incompatible.’ Incompatible!”

“Charlton Heston is your client?”

“As it happens, he is not.”

The waitress retreated to the other end of the bar, wiping out glasses with a red chamois cloth, but kept glancing at us. Dark lashes, cheekbones, a red ribbon around her black hair, tied on top. A tall, long-waisted girl, but still there was something of Frida about her. The way she carried those glasses on her fingers. Probably a violation of some hygiene rule, but she gets away with it. Men want their lips on her fingertips.

“Hey, how about that Jackie Robinson?” Artie asked out of nowhere. His mind moves like a train, and he pitches things out its window at an astonishing clip. “Are you a baseball fan, Shepherd?”

“I should apologize now for all the things I don’t know about. You might find me as thick-skulled as Mr. Heston. Baseball is a yen one learns from a father, I gather.”

He tilted his head, nodded. Though quite a talker, Artie was also a listener.

“I wasn’t raised in this country. Wasn’t raised, really at all.”

Artie exhaled a short laugh, not unsympathetic, and tossed back the shot of Grant’s. “If a person is not raised, then what? He grows from a seed?”

The whisky was both stringent and soothing, like cigar smoke. Twelve years waiting for a moment, this gullet. “No. In the scullery kitchens and probably the salt mines of this world, many a child is not so much raised as hammered into shape, Artie. To be of use. Surviving by the grace of utility alone.”

“This I know to be true, you are correct. Very well said. In this case, the absence of a father notwithstanding, have you heard of Jackie Robinson?”

“I do read the news. The Negro player they’ve let in the white leagues.”

“I saw the man play at McCormick Field this summer. I was there.”

“How was that?”

“Sensational. His second or third game with the Dodgers, and they play him down here in Dixie. The Colored section was packed like the last bus out of Arnhem, and the rest of the stands, empty. Like someone had yelled they were passing out free polio germs to the white people that day. I had a good seat, let me tell you.”

“I’ll bet.”

He unfolded the letter and flattened it on the counter. The earlier one from J. Edgar Hoover he’d barely glanced at, but this one he studied with inordinate care. Nevertheless, his verdict: No soap.

“My secretary wanted to burn it with the trash.”

“Good girl. You should give her a raise.”

“Well. I’m taking her to Mexico.”

“Really.” A wise-guy smirk.

“As my assistant, Artie. She’s forty-seven, for one thing. And for another, not my type.”

“Ah, yes. I recall.”

“You’re only about the third or fourth person to know that about me, by the way. The Selective Service, God, and you. A few others. But certainly my mother never worked it out.”

“Please. Discretion is my business, and I mean that sincerely.”

“Mrs. Brown is my right hand. This is a research trip, and I’ll need to stay a couple of months. She called you about helping with the passport.”

“Right, I recall. Well, her opinion of this letter from quote-unquote Aware Incorporated was absolutely correct.”

“It’s not a form,” I pointed out. “These things are very specific. Charles Chaplin. My books being read by Communists in China. I have to say, I’m flabbergasted.”

“That is their intention, to flabbergast. Is this a verb, can I say that?”

“I suppose.”

“Their mode is the surprise attack: they flabbergast. You hand over five hundred clams.”

“And then the game ends?”

“Not exactly. These publications he mentions are real. They accumulate names of alleged Reds and publish them in directories.”

“Who reads them?”

“Executives. Radio producers, Hollywood studios, even grocery chains. It’s handy, no muss no fuss. They can assure their advertisers they are taking every available precaution against hiring a Red.”

“But before he puts me on the list, he’s offering the chance to clear my name, for a fee.”

Artie spread his hands wide. “God bless America.”

“That’s straight blackmail. The employers must know the lists are meaningless.”

“So you would think. But this guy Matus has acquired for himself a certain cachet. He used to be a member of the Communist Party. Twenty years ago, when everybody including your Aunt Frances was a member of the Communist Party. Now he comes to the FBI, offers to come clean. Before you know it they’ve got him in front of the HUAC, the whole works. So far he’s remembered hundreds of former associates who now work in government and the media, and for an additional fee he will remember more. Amazing, his memory. The New York Times is a major employer of Communists, he says. Time and Life also. This guy is a star.”

“And runs his own business on the side.”

“An entrepreneur.”

“Nobody could take this seriously.”

The girl was still watching us. Down at the opposite end, leaning backward against the bar, fiddling with the cameo on a ribbon around her neck.

Artie sighed. “I have a client. A former president of a prestigious southern college. Served on the War Labor Board. Currently president of the Southern Human Welfare Conference. A very celebrated guy, consulting fees and public speaking provide most of his income. Suddenly, he has no income. He has protestors. This antisegregation outfit over which he presides has turned up on the attorney general’s list, one of these ninety so-called Communist front organizations.”

“On whose authority? Loren Matus?”

“The HUAC in its infinite wisdom has devised what they call an acid test for revealing an organization’s true colors. You want to hear their criteria? Any one of the following is sufficient. Number one: it shows unswerving loyalty to the Soviet Union. Or, two: it has refused to condemn the Soviet Union. Or three: it has gained accolades from the Communist press. Or four: it has displayed an anti-American bias, despite professions of love for America.”

“So. If you love America, but you hate the segregation laws…”

“Yes. That could arguably be an anti-American bias. Let me ask a rhetorical question. Has the American Poodle Society explicitly condemned the Soviet Union?” He signaled to the waitress, and she came immediately, as if pulled on a string. Refilled our glasses, her eyes carefully down. Then the quick smile, a flash of strong teeth with a tiny center gap. Away she went, after that, unspooling the tether.

“Let me ask you something,” Artie said. “A personal question, if I may. When you look at a beautiful girl, do you see beauty?”

“A fair question. When you look at a great painting, do you see beauty? You see color and form, right? Loveliness, allure, magnificence. Maybe even arousal. So tell me, Artie. Do you want to have sex with the painting?”

“I’m sorry, my interest is not prurient. I’m just a curious man. Curiosity killed the cat, my wife used to tell me very often.”

“Anyway, this letter. You’re advising me to ignore it?”

“I am advising you,” he said slowly, “that you are being approached by a snake. You could attempt to reason with the snake, or you could offer it a cash contribution. Most likely the snake is still going to bite.”

Grant’s twelve-year-old whisky is a potent anesthetic. “Luckily enough, it doesn’t matter, because I’m not looking for a job right now. I have the only job I ever wanted.”

“Luckily enough. You are a writer, employed by the American imagination. Your publisher does not have to answer to any sponsors, only to your readers.”

“Employed by the American imagination. I like that very much.”

“Are they really reading you in China?”

“Goodness, no. Not even in France. Some reviewer said, ‘Don’t be surprised if this book shows up in China.’ Something like that. They also said I was Chaplinesque.”

“Well, many artists are not so lucky as yourself. Mr. Chaplin among them. Film stars, directors, television scriptwriters. They all have to be produced, they require sponsors. It’s becoming a lucrative industry for the likes of Aware Incorporated.”

Suddenly the girl was back, unsummoned. “You’re the writer, aren’t you? I’m crazy about your books.”

“What writer?”

“Harrison Shepherd?”

“That’s so strange. You’re the second person to ask me that.”

“Oh. Sorry, my mistake.” She floated away, an unmoored skiff, and disappeared through a door at the back.

Artie reorganized his sigmoidal curve against the bar, the better to stare at his dimwit companion. “What’s wrong with you? She’s a sugar pie.”

“I know it. I’m grateful. To all these girls, I really am.”

“So, you could sign a damn cocktail napkin. It would have made her day.”

“That’s what I can’t see, Artie. What thrilled her was a book—she wants a hero. Not some tin whistle double-gaiter on a barstool.”

“So. In a pinch, you stand in.”

“Do you know how that feels to me, to pass myself off as important? Exactly like passing counterfeit money. Look at her, she’s magnificent. My name, some ink on a napkin. How could that be worth the gold-brick standard of her day?”

Artie swiveled back to face the bar, fished a pack of Old Golds out of his pocket.

“So. Matus the snake has contacted me because a motion-picture option got his attention. That’s what you think?”

“You know what they say. God wants to punish you, he answers your prayers.”

“Artie, I didn’t pray for a motion picture. It makes me uneasy. I don’t like attention.”

“You have a funny way of choosing your profession, in that case.”

“People think that. If a person is famous, he must have wanted to be in the public eye. But to me, writing books is a way to earn a living in my pajamas.”

Artie nodded thoughtfully. “I take your point. People think lawyers are a cutthroat gang, and me, I couldn’t cut the throat of a fish. Margaret says I should take up fishing. And I think, an old softie like me? What would I do if I caught one? Apologize?”

October 3

Two airplane tickets purchased, air-coach to Mexico and back, at a cost of $191 each. A breathtaking sum, but all in the line of duty; Arthur Gold says it can be worked out for some reduction in the tax later on. He is helping Mrs. Brown with the passport applications. Apartment queries sent to Mérida, and fair warning to Frida, expect a visit, though Diego is sure to be out of the country. Romulus will feed the cats and mind the house, eight weeks, I will have to remember to bring back a smashing present.

Mrs. Brown stands at the ready, her suitcase already packed, though the trip is six weeks away. No price is too high for this joy. Her thrill for adventure is a thing I dearly wish I could learn by example. She makes me wish for the boy who once could swim miles underwater, looking for treasure.

Today I teased her, asking whether I needed to look out for any fellow who might be angry with me for taking her off this way. She blinked, taken aback.

“Well, it’s not out of the question,” I said. “I’m aware that you’re an attractive woman. And I’ve noticed you’re sprucing up, of late.”

She honestly blushed. No-nonsense Mrs. Brown. She said not to worry myself, if any man she cared for took an interest, I would be first to know it.

 

The New York Times, October 23, 1947

 

79 in Hollywood Found Subversive, Inquiry Head Says

 

Evidence of Communist Spying Will Be Offered Next Week, Thomas Declares

 

By Samuel A. Tower, special to the New York Times

October 31

I have learned from experience, make the cookies early. Children will come to the door dressed as hobgoblins. When the doorbell rang just after four o’clock, Mrs. Brown carried the plate to the door. But it was a man, clearly audible. I was in the kitchen mopping up after the afternoon’s baking. Flour covered everything like an early frost.

“No, he can’t,” she said, in a strained voice. “Mr. Shepherd is indisposed.” Her instincts for protecting her boss are unflappable.

“Are you the lady of the house?”

“I’m the stenographer.”

The badge startled her, and she can’t remember the name. FBI, that much she remembers. He’d come to ask Mr. Shepherd a few questions, but as he was unavailable, Mrs. Brown was duty-bound to answer them herself, insofar as she was able.

After it was all over and he left, she came in the dining room and put her head down on the table. I made a pot of coffee. Then, together, we remembered and wrote it down. To show Artie later.

“How long has he lived in this house?”

(She guessed about five years)

“No,” the man said. “Mr. Shepherd purchased this house October of 1943.”

“Then, my stars, why ask?”

“Has he got a mortgage?”

“If a person has a house he has got a mortgage. Evidently you have the details.”

“Where did he live before?”

“He let a room from Marian Bittle at her boarding house on the Black Mountain Highway. What they call the Tunnel Road.”

“And before he came to Asheville?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I don’t think I can answer any more questions.”

“Well, you’ll have to try. Executive Order 9835.”

“What’s that?”

“It means you have to try. If the FBI is asking, you answer. Where did he get that car? That’s a pretty pricey car. Or was, in its day.”

“I believe the car belonged to his deceased father.”

“I noticed an empty Remy bottle in the trash. Is Mr. Shepherd a drinker?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I think we’re finished. Mr. Shepherd’s lawyer might be the one to take this farther, if needs be.”

“Look, lady, don’t get sore. An investigation doesn’t necessarily mean he’s under suspicion. We’re conducting a field investigation.”

“Of what?”

“Just the usual.”

“You can’t tell me what it is you think Mr. Shepherd has done?”

“No, ma’am, we cannot.”

“But if he were here, you could tell him.”

“No, ma’am, we cannot tell the accused this kind of thing, for security considerations. Do you happen to know his income?”

“For goodness’ sake. He’s a writer. He couldn’t say himself what it’s going to be, month to month. Do you know what books people will buy next year?”

“Does he attend any meetings?”

“No.”

“Well, the neighbors said he does. They see him take the Haywood bus every Thursday. But on other days, only to the market or the newsstand.”

“Mr. Shepherd goes to the library on Thursdays.”

“Why so regular?”

“He finds it comforting to keep regular habits.”

“Ma’am, do you know what magazines he reads?”

“He buys about everything on the Haywood news stand. You could go down there and make a list, if you like.”

“Do you happen to know if he’s ever studied up on Karl Marx?”

“Go and see if they sell Karl Marx on the Haywood newsstand.”

“Do you know where Mr. Shepherd stands on Abstract Art?”

“Well, if he wanted a good look, I expect he’d stand in front of it.”

“Very funny. Can you tell me the name of his cat?”

“Are his cats also under suspicion?”

“The neighbors said they hear him using an obscene word to call the cat.”

“I’ve never heard Mr. Shepherd use obscene language against any person. Certainly not his cats.”

“Well, they say that he does. They say he uses a very vulgar word to call the cat. They’re concerned for the youngsters. They say the boy comes over here.”

“My stars. What do they think he calls his cat?”

“I apologize, ma’am, it’s a very vulgar word. They said Jism.”

“The cat’s name is Chisme. It means ‘gossip’.”