Smart Moves Read online

  “Professor Einstein,” Walker said, “this is Toby Peters.”

  Einstein’s droopy face smiled and he held out a hand. I put my suitcase down next to the door and reached out to shake his hand, but he grabbed the orange juice.

  “I half a colt,” Einstein said, which struck me as gibberish. I must have looked puzzled. “A colt,” he repeated. “In my head.” He pointed to his head and I figured out that he had a cold in his head. The combination of German accent and stuffed nose kept me alert through the rest of the conversation till I got used to both.

  “Come in please,” he said, clutching the juice bottle and stepping back to let me in. “Mark, you can go to the Institute. I call you there later.”

  “I don’t have to …” he began.

  Einstein touched his arm and nodded his head. “You did fine,” he said. “Fine, perfect. Mr. Peters and I must talk, and there are things I might have to say that it would be better for you if you didn’t hear and didn’t have to tell people later or lie about. You understand?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Walker, reluctant to leave and giving me a last look of suspicion. Einstein ushered him gently out the front door and closed it.

  “A good boy,” he said, “but …”

  “… no imagination,” I finished for him.

  Einstein nodded in agreement and shuffled down the small hallway, his slippers clopping as he went. We passed a broad set of stairs and turned into a room in the back of the house.

  “Theoretical science is all imagination,” Einstein said, closing the door to his study. “All in the mind, not in the laboratory. I work on pieces of paper, in my head, and others look through microscopes and telescopes to see if there is anything to see that will prove or disprove what I imagine. But the proof is in the elimination of alternatives. If a thing must be, then it is. If there is order in the universe, then its actions can be discovered, though the meaning may never be.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said, looking around. “I’ve been a detective most of my life.”

  “So have I,” he said with a horselaugh. “You’d like some orange juice? Some coffee? I can have one cup of real coffee each morning. I have waited for you.”

  “Coffee is fine. No orange juice. I already had some.”

  He nodded again and clopped out of the room. There was one big window covering most of the back wall. Outside I could see a good-sized garden and some big trees. The room itself was cluttered. The side walls had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The books looked as if most of them were in German or French. I was standing in front of a big, solid dark wood table covered with pencils, pads, notes, letters, pipes, and books. A desk by the window looked a little neater, but not much.

  On the open wall behind me where the door was, I saw some photographs and went over to take a look. I recognized Gandhi but the other two greying guys in suits were a mystery. Einstein solved the mystery while I was trying to read a framed diploma next to one of the pictures.

  “That,” he said, handing me a white porcelain mug of coffee, “is my honorary membership in Berner Naturforschenden Gesellschaft.”

  “Right,” I said. “And these guys?”

  “The one with the collar is James Maxwell, a Scottish mathematician and physicist. And next to him,” Einstein said, pausing for a sip of coffee, “is Michael Faraday. You know, of course, who he is.”

  “No,” I admitted. “But I know who you are.”

  “Maybe,” he said, motioning me to a chair and taking a seat himself in a wooden chair with arms. We faced each other, politely drinking coffee.

  “Did Dr. Walker explain to you anything?”

  “Someone says you’re passing scientific secrets to the Russians,” I said, finishing my coffee and putting down the mug.

  “Small pleasures,” sighed Einstein, looking into his now empty cup. “We are tied to our fragile bodies. A simple cold takes away the sense of taste, the pleasure in a cup of coffee, a single morning cigar and with that pleasure gone one becomes irritable, thought is interrupted. I have a housekeeper every morning for an hour. My wife died six, seven years ago. Little things, needed things, are a sign of time. Food, which I enjoy, cleaning clothes, but that you understand. You are almost as indifferent to clothing as I am.”

  I nodded and said nothing. The great man was stalling. He looked up from his cup and smiled.

  “Yes,” he said. “You are right. We must get to the point. You were recommended to me by a friend who said you were reliable, determined, and discreet. This friend had a problem with a missing animal. You understand?”

  I understood. About a year earlier I had done a small job for Eleanor Roosevelt when the president’s dog looked like it might be dognapped.

  “There are things I can tell you,” he said softly. “Things I cannot tell. I am involved with a secret project for the United States Navy, that I can tell you. There are other things, things which have to do with winning this war, things perhaps too terrible to consider. I can see by your face that you do not understand.

  “I don’t have to understand,” I said. “I’m here. You know my fee.”

  “The Federal Bureau of Investigation is, I understand, conducting this investigation of …” He raised his arms, groping for the English word.

  “Allegations, charges,” I supplied.

  “Yes. I cannot supply the Federal Bureau of Investigation with complete information. My citizenship might be affected by things in my past and present, my connection to the cause of Zionism is not always popular and my German birth, in spite of my opposition since childhood to Nazism, is suspect.”

  “Nobody’s going to accuse Albert Einstein of …”

  “Ah, but they will, and they do,” he said sadly. “In these times one’s reputation loses importance. And I am considered by many to be a relic. Relativity has been questioned, attacked, refuted by those who would believe that the universe is a madhouse, but God’s universe is not a madhouse, only this planet. I’ve made great mistakes in my life. I’ve assumed that the order of the universe can be seen also in human politics but it cannot. There is no order or logic to politics and so I have committed to causes which alter, change, betray. Now I would like to be left alone to work. I will be sixty-three years old next week. My heart is weak. My fingers do not always obey my commands on the violin and my legs and arms too often betray me when I sail my small boat. I think I can help this country against the horror of Nazism and someone is trying to destroy my reputation to keep me from doing this. I would like you to find these people, expose them, stop them.”

  “If I can,” I said confidently.

  “There is more,” he added, watching me closely. “Fahre.”

  I thought he was saying something in English but his accent was getting in the way again so I repeated. “Fahre.”

  “A radical Nazi group which has put a price on my head,” Einstein explained. “I am a Jew. I am a Zionist. I am anti-Nazi and have some reputation. There are madmen who would like to collect the five thousand dollars my head would bring.”

  “The guys across the street are keeping an eye on you,” I said.

  Einstein rose and clasped his hands. He gave me a pleased smile.

  “I usually wait till after lunch for my single cigar, but …” he said and reached for a cigar box, which he opened. He removed a cigar, offered me one which I refused, and lit up, obviously enjoying it. “They named a cigar for me several years ago, a terrible cigar. I’m glad you noticed the men across the street. Dr. Walker has never noticed them.”

  “At least two there right now,” I said. “One was looking through the window. Light hit his binoculars. Another guy behind. Both well dressed.”

  “Unlike us,” Einstein said, pacing as he smoked, clopping as he paced.

  “If they were these Fahre people, they wouldn’t set up camp,” I said, “they’d come in firing. How long have they been there?”

  “Since Professor May suddenly had to accept a visiting professorship in Nort
h Carolina,” Einstein said. “That was a few weeks ago. However, they may be protecting me, or gathering evidence against me, or possibly both.”

  “So, you just stay around here while I try to find out who …”

  I stopped because he was nodding his head as he puffed away. “I have accepted an engagement in New York City, a charity event to raise money for refugees. This will be at the Waldorf Hotel on Sunday. I will play the violin and Mr. Paul Robeson will sing. It is, I understand, Easter Sunday.”

  “And someone might be around to stop you,” I said.

  He shrugged, stopped pacing, and looked at me. “The event has been publicized,” he said. “I cannot back out of it and do not want to. I do not want those Nazis to think they can make me a prisoner in my house.”

  “OK,” I sighed, standing up, “it’s easy enough. I find an assassination squad of lunatic Nazis, put them out of commission while I also figure out who is trying to set you up as a traitor and stop them. All of this without telling the FBI. Is that it?”

  Einstein was standing still now. He looked out the window, seemed to have forgotten I was there, and then turned. “Yes,” he said. “That is accurate.”

  “I’d better get started then,” I said, not knowing where to.

  Einstein, cigar still in hand, went to the desk, opened the middle drawer, found some papers, and brought then to me. “These,” he said, “are letters threatening me with exposure for aiding the Russians. The letters are postmarked New York City. The stationery is from the Taft Hotel.”

  It wasn’t much of a lead. I took the small stack of letters and noticed that there was a check on top of the pile made out to Toby Peters. I considered not cashing it and keeping it for the autograph but I had bills to pay and places to go.

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  “And I,” he said, looking out the window, his back to me, “will be here.”

  The breeze played the early spring leaves like glass chimes. The street smelled clean and the check felt good in my pocket. I crossed the sidewalk, suitcase in hand, and waited for a Chevy coupe to pass before I strode the street and went up to the porch where I had seen the guy with binoculars. He wasn’t there now, but someone was behind the curtain to the right of the front door as I climbed the stairs.

  2

  Before I could knock, the door opened. The guy in front of me didn’t look like the FBI. He looked like a grey stork wearing a dark, pressed suit. He was too skinny for FBI, too old. He was almost bald, but the hair that was there was rapidly going grey. There were dark sacks under his eyes.

  “Come in, Peters,” he said, pushing the door all the way and making a shoveling motion with his hand to hurry me along. The element of surprise was certainly not with me.

  “You want a cup of coffee, a beer? We’ve got Rheingold,” he said, leading me into the living room. He stopped and turned to me with a smile that crept up the right side of his face. “Pepsi, you like Pepsi, right?”

  “Right out of the bottle,” came a deep voice from a high-backed stuffed chair of faded yellow with big pink flowers embroidered on it. The guy in the chair stood up. He was about two inches shorter than I was and about the same age as the guy who opened the door. This one had more hair, all black, probably dyed.

  “You don’t look like FBI,” I said.

  “The gravy’s in the navy,” said the one who had answered the door. “We’re retreads, retirees brought back to do our duty. There’s a war on, Peters. The Japanese and Germans are trying to kill us and we’re trying to stop them. Simple enough?”

  “Pretty clear to me,” I said. “Can I sit?”

  “You may sit,” said the short one. “Whether you can or not depends on whether you have a sore ass or that bad back of yours is acting up.”

  I put down my suitcase and sat on the sofa, which was just as yellow and pink and flowered as the chair. The whole room was a washed-out vase of flower patterns and faded yellows.

  “Place belongs to an English professor named May,” said the stork who had let me in. “His wife went on vacation with him.”

  “At your request,” I said, smiling.

  “We politely asked him to leave or be considered a Nazi spy,” said the shorter one, turning his chair and sitting in it so he could face me. “It’s remarkable what you can accomplish during wartime by appealing to people’s sense of patriotism …”

  “… and fear,” his partner added.

  “You two had this act going quite a while,” I said.

  “Hey,” said the skinny one, “we go back to Alvin Karpis. Remember Alvin Karpis?”

  I was about to answer when I realized the question was part of the act.

  “G-men,” said the shorter guy. “He called us G-men, gave us the name. Better than a million dollars’ worth of publicity.”

  “Only Karpis never said it,” chirped the big guy. “Hoover made it up. A little bit of party chatter for you, Tobias. You’ll never get us to confirm it for you publicly though.”

  “Never,” agreed the shorter one with a shake of his head. “You want that Pepsi?”

  “Sure. Do you guys have names? Moran and Mack? Gallagher and Shean, Abbott and Costello?”

  “Just call us Spade and Archer,” said the shorter one. “I’ll be Spade. He’s Archer.”

  “He looks more like an arrow,” I said.

  “I’m on a diet,” said Archer. “Spade, you want coffee?”

  “I’ll have a Pepsi with Mr. Pevsner here,” answered Spade, folding his hands in his lap.

  “What …” I started, but Spade put a finger to his lips.

  “We wait for Mr. Archer before we begin,” he said. “We’re partners. A man honors his partner.”

  So we waited. I hummed a few bars of “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” while we waited.

  “Gershwin,” Spade said. “Can’t make up his mind whether he’s opera or Tin Pan Alley. Schizophrenic.”

  “Who is?” asked Archer suspiciously as he returned to the room with two twelve-ounce Pepsi bottles. He handed one to me and one to Spade.

  “George Gershwin,” said Spade.

  “Don’t talk about anything, not even George Gershwin, till I get back,” Archer warned as he left.

  Spade and I sat drinking Pepsi with only a slight belch from me to break the silence. Back with a cup of coffee in about thirty seconds, Archer found himself a seat to my right on a dark wooden chair with a padded flower-patterened seat and looked at me.

  “Are we ready now?” I asked.

  Spade took a deep gulp, examined the bottle, blew lightly on top to create a low hooting sound, and nodded. “Yes.”

  “You came to us,” Archer reminded me.

  “It didn’t seem to surprise you,” I said, wondering if it would be polite to ask the FBI for a second Pepsi.

  “Well within your profile,” Archer said. “Impetuous.”

  “Immature actions,” added Spade.

  “… unwilling or unable to always examine the consequences of your actions.”

  “Reckless.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” I got in before Archer could take his turn.

  “Why are you watching Einstein?” I asked.

  “He’s a national treasure,” said Spade.

  “A national treasure,” agreed Archer after a sip of coffee.

  “A national treasure that someone is saying nasty things about,” I tried. “A national treasure that someone might be planning to eliminate.”

  “Kill,” said Archer. “You can say ‘kill.’ We aren’t sensitive. Our job is to keep Professor Einstein alive and out of trouble, to protect him from outside threats and from himself. He had been known to say indiscreet things.”

  “Like me,” I volunteered.

  “Big discreet things,” said Spade. “About pacifism, and the need for a Palestinian homeland for Jews.”

  “Not wrong things,” Archer added, finishing off his Pepsi. “But indiscreet.”

  “You want another Pepsi?”
Archer asked.

  I said yes and Spade said no at the same time.

  “You know about the letters to Einstein.”

  “Is that a question? If it’s a question, the answer is, what letters? If it’s a statement, I sit back and examine you emotionally,” said Spade, sitting back. “You want me to get the drinks this time?”

  “I’ll get them,” said Archer.

  “So,” Spade continued. “We, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will sit back, watch, and, if necessary, lend a helping hand.”

  We waited for refills all around and for Archer to get back in his chair before we resumed. There was a small chip of glass missing from the rim of the Pepsi bottle. The FBI wasn’t the perfect host it pretended to be. I didn’t give a damn. I was living dangerously. I drank deeply and realized I needed a bathroom, but I wasn’t about to delay the answers any longer.

  “Einstein wants to hire a private detective, fly him in from Los Angeles, that’s fine with us,” said Archer. “Spade and I aren’t much for legwork. We’ll stay here and keep an eye on the Professor.”

  “You want to know where I’m going from here?” I asked.

  “We have a pretty good idea,” Spade said. “Don’t tell us. It makes us feel as if we’re doing our job.”

  I finished my second Pepsi and looked around for some place to put the empty. Seeing my dilemma, Archer got up with a grunt and took it from me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Maybe I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Maybe,” said Spade. “Maybe.”

  There were no handshakes. I picked up my suitcase, and Archer, Pepsi bottle in hand, led me to the door.

  I stopped before he opened it.

  “You had a tail on Walker,” I said. “Either you followed him or had someone pick him up in Los Angeles. He led you to me. Someone called you with my bio before I got off the plane.”

  “Tape,” whispered Archer. “We’ve got tape machines, the latest equipment. Have a good trip. There’s a cab stand two blocks right. Bus station’s about ten minutes away.”