To Catch a Spy by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page B

pocket.
    “How are you feeling?”
    “Truth?”
    “No,” he said. “Lie to me. I’m the doctor. It’s always best to lie to the doctor.”
    “I’ve felt better. Head still hurts. Shoulder’s sore. But I can walk pretty steadily.”
    “Go home,” he said, looking up at a nurse at his door. She might have been eighty or older. She motioned to him.
    “Got to go,” he said. “Busy tonight. Not like last night. New Year’s Eve is always busy, but tonight’s busy enough.”
    “Thanks, Doc,” I said.
    “Remain alive and I’ll immortalize you in the annals of medicine,” he said.
    “I’ll try.”
    He left shaking his head. I walked slowly to my car on legs that were willing to carry me but not too far. I got to Mrs. Plaut’s on Heliotrope Street a little after three-fifteen in the morning. Parking was tough, but my car doesn’t need much of an opening.
    I climbed the porch steps and opened the door, turning my key as quietly as possible. Inside, I closed the door slowly and headed for the stairs.
    Mrs. Plaut is nearly deaf but has a seventh or eighth sense. Even deep in sleep she knows when someone enters or leaves her boardinghouse. I had been lucky enough to escape her only five or six times when I’d come in very late at night or very early in the morning.
    This time I wasn’t lucky. She emerged from her apartment on my left, adjusting her white robe and her glasses at the same time.
    “Mr. Peelers,” she said. “Are you cognizant of the time?”
    “Cognizant?”
    “It’s a ‘Build Your Vocabulary’ word from the Reader’s Digest, ” she explained. “It means ‘aware.’”
    “I’m cognizant,” I said. “I’m tired, sore, confused, and cognizant.”
    “You were fired?” she asked. “From which company?”
    As I said, Mrs. Plaut thought I was a book editor who moonlighted as an exterminator. I had tried for over a year without success to straighten this out, or at least figure out how she had come to this conclusion, but I never got anywhere.
    “I wasn’t fired,” I said.
    “Good. You look terrible. Too much punch last night. Not enough sleep. It’s on your table. In your room.”
    “The new chapter?” I guessed.
    Mrs. Plaut was writing, in neat script on lined paper, the history of her family, and since I was an editor, it was my responsibility to read, approve, and respond to each chapter as she wrote it. Since criticism wasn’t what she was after, I never pointed out that her book was disjointed and rambling. No actual editing was expected, either. But I had to read the chapters because every once in a while she’d ask me a question about what she had written.
    “The new chapter,” she said, folding her hands across her thin chest. “About the Sorenson twins and the incident at the gumbo restaurant in New Orleans.”
    “I can’t wait to read it,” I said, inching toward the stairs.
    “The Sorensons were on my mother’s side.”
    I was moving slowly upward, holding the railing so I wouldn’t fall.
    “They lived in Louisiana just after the War between the States,” she said.
    “Gumbo,” I said.
    “I’m not mumbling,” she insisted.
    I turned and repeated loudly, “Gumbo.”
    “Tomorrow is Sunday,” she said.
    I could have said that today was already Sunday, but I like to think I’m not a fool.
    “Sunday brunch at ten,” she said. “As always. Peanut butter-and-jelly omelettes and breadcrumb-and-pecan biscuits. I’ll awaken you at seven-thirty so you’ll have plenty of time to wash up and shave and bathe.”
    I didn’t want to get up at seven-thirty. I didn’t want to get up all day. I wanted to lie on my mattress and feel sorry for myself. I had botched the job for Cary Grant. I was in pain. I didn’t want a peanut butter-and-jelly omelette.
    I smiled at Mrs. Plaut.
    She smiled, went back into her rooms, and closed the door. I made it to my room on the second floor. The door wasn’t locked. Locked doors weren’t permitted in Mrs. Plaut’s