Joseph Kanon - The Prodigal Spy

“Are you all right now?” he said.

His father smiled, closing his eyes. “As snug as a bug in a rug.”

The drive back was long, slowed by patches of low-lying fog and wet mist that condensed on the windshield, forcing him to lean forward to make out the road. Occasionally tiny lights appeared in the darkness, like fireflies coming out of the woods, then joined the halting stream of cars inching toward Prague. He hadn’t expected traffic. In town, the streets had been almost empty, conduits for trams, but here in the country he saw that the cars had only been in hiding, parked in secret pockets of free weekend air.

Molly was restless, fiddling with the heater, then turning the radio knob to scratchy bursts of Czech that faded in and out until, fed up, she snapped it off and stared out the window. He could feel her next to him, bottled up, wanting to talk but not knowing how to start. He fixed his eyes on the road, where there were only red taillights, not old men with stories, a frail arm reaching up to him from the bed. Now she was rummaging through her bag, pulling things out as she dug deeper, crinkling paper, then finally extracting a thin, misshapen cigarette.

“Don’t say a word,” she said, lighting it. “Just don’t.” She drew on it deeply, and the smell of dope filled the car.

“I thought you left that in Austria.”

“I lied.” She rolled down the window, letting the smell escape into the air, shivering a little at the sudden chill. “Don’t worry. I just kept one. For a rainy day.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see police lights, but there was only the dark. He rolled down his window a little, creating a draft. “What report?” he said finally.

She sighed. “The D.C. police report, from the night she died. I asked to see it.”

Nick looked at her. “Just a reporter doing her job,” he said, still angry. “Is that the story you’re writing? You want to make him a killer too? Great.”

“He did kill her,” she said quickly, then looked away, her voice apologetic now. “I’m not writing anything. I just said that.”

“Then why-”

She took another drag, stalling, then exhaled slowly. “Okay. She was my aunt. Rosemary Cochrane. My mother’s sister. That’s how I knew who he was. You’re not the only one who-” She stopped, looking over at him. “I know. I should have told you. I was going to. And then, things changed, and I thought, let it go. What’s the good? She’s dead. Why upset everything? Let him take it with him. And all the time here he is, packing his bags.”

Nick said nothing, too stunned to reply.

“I’m not writing anything.” she said again. “It was personal, that’s all.” For a minute there was no sound but the swish of the tires. Then she reached over and handed him the joint, a peace offering.

“Want a hit?” she said, and suddenly he did, a piece of the world they’d left at the border. He extended his right hand, eyes still on the road, and felt her place the joint in the V of his fingers. He drew on it, aware of the quick glare at the tip, then held the smoke in his lungs. They passed it back and forth, still not saying anything, until he felt it grow hot in his fingers.

“Keep it,” he said. “I’m driving.” He saw her place the end between the tips of her fingers and finish it with sharp intakes of breath.

“There. Clean,” she said, flicking it out the window.

“Feel better?”

“No. But I will,” she said. “Give it a few minutes.” But he could feel it already, moving through him with his blood, relaxing and buoyant at the same time. He eased into it, letting his mind drift with the mist on the road.

“God,” Molly said, leaning back in her seat, “that dinner.” He said nothing, listening to another conversation inside his head.

“It’s interesting, the way he does it,” she said slowly.

“Does what?”

“Tells the story. It’s all there, isn’t it? All the way to Canada. Everything but the first stop.”

Nick let a minute pass, watching the road. “Were you close?”

“No, I never knew her. I mean, I must have known her, but I don’t remember. We never talked about it. You know, the one unforgivable sin.”

“But what was she like?”

“Well, let’s see. Also born Bronxville. She wanted to be a singer.”

“Really? An opera singer?”

“A band singer. You know, nightclubs and things. She had this picture-one of those professional pictures they put in delis? ”Best wishes to Mel.“ Like that. She’s got this big smile and a flower in her hair. All set, you know? I never heard that she actually sang anywhere, though. She probably just did it to freak out my grandparents. Nightclubs. I mean.”

“Pretty radical.”

“It was, in a way. She was always doing that. Of course, it wasn’t hard with them. My grandfather got on a train in the morning and walked through the door at six-twenty every day of his life. They wanted her to go to Manhattanville — where else? — and when she went to NYU there was this big fight, and the next thing you know she’s waiting tables for money and-do you really want to hear this?”

Nick nodded.

“Of course, I got most of this from my grandmother, so consider the source. She still blamed NYU, right to the end. All those ‘undesirable influences’-that was the phrase. Anyway, there was Aunt Rosemary, waiting tables and being influenced. Funny, isn’t it? In a way my grandmother was right. I mean, that must have been when she-became political.”

“Became a Communist, you mean,” Nick said, saying it.

“If she was. An actual Communist, in the party. They never said that.” She stopped. “Talk about splitting hairs.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then she dropped out of school and went to Washington. She was a secretary for a while, I think. During the war. And then-well, the rest you know.”

“Except we don’t.”

“No,” she said thoughtfully. “I used to think about it, the way kids do. We had this box in the attic, you know, with the Mel picture in it, and I’d go through it, making up stories about her. Then I put the picture up in my room and my mother had a fit. I suppose she thought I’d turn out the same way.”

“What, a Communist?”

“No, man-crazy. She always thought that was the start of all the trouble.”

“What made her think that?”

“Oh, there’s always a man.” She waved her hand. “She had to tell herself something. The more she didn’t talk about what happened, the more it was there. You know when she told me? When they sent the suitcase back. The one she had in the hotel. I guess the police took it as evidence and then, months later, out of the blue, they delivered it and my mother had to explain it to me. She just sat there crying, and I guess that must have upset me, her crying, because that’s when she told me.”

“What was in it?”

“Nothing. You know, just overnight stuff-cosmetics, a nightgown. Nothing. It was the fact of it. And because they’d torn it all up. The lining was sliced-I guess they were looking for secret messages or something-and they never even apologized. She just sat on the couch with this beat-up bag and that was her sister, what was left of her, and-”

A nightgown, Nick thought. Planning to spend the night. A bag packed to meet someone.

“Anyway, that was Rosemary,” Molly said. “Public Enemy. Part of the Communist conspiracy. Remember that, in school? I thought they were talking about her. And I used to think, I know one but you don’t have to worry about her. She turned herself in.”

“Except she didn’t.”

“According to him.”

“But why would she?” Nick said, brooding. The others who talked, they were all tied up in the politics of it.