Round Robin (8 page)

The kraut was out.

Kaput.

It might not be fair, but so-the-hell what? When had life ever been fair to her? She’d write him a check for fixing the furnace and tell him to hit the bricks. He didn’t have a lease. If he gave her any trouble, she’d call the cops. Tell them to bring a crane if Sluggo got balky.

Robin looked up and saw a guy angling toward the empty seat next to her, looking elsewhere to avoid the daggers she was staring at him, but definitely headed her way. Having no other choice, Robin,
oops,
accidentally cracked him a good one across the shin with her crutches.

“Oh, I am sorry,” she said.

The guy was hopping up and down on one leg, and Robin had a hard time not laughing.

“Yeah, well, watch out with those things,” he said harshly.

But he went to stand in the front half of the bus.

Now that she’d decided to evict Manfred, Robin couldn’t wait to get home.

Dan Phinney walked toward the rear of his daughter’s house with his toolbox in his hand. At first, he thought he heard the sound of someone taking a whiz against the back of Robin’s building. He was about to dig a wrench out of his box and apply it to the head of whatever lowlife thought he could pee on someone’s private property when he realized the volume of water he heard was far too great for human plumbing. He bent over and looked in a window at the side of Robin’s basement.

A pipe had burst.

Water was gushing everywhere.

And a giant was standing in the middle of the deluge looking like he was trying to squeeze two ends of a pipe shut with his bare hands, all the while cursing loudly in German.

Dan hustled around the corner of the building and ran down the stairs to the basement door. He took a monkey wrench out of his toolbox, brandishing it as a weapon just in case, and opened the door with his key. A wave flowed out that reached his calves. Then a hand grabbed the head of the wrench and jerked him into the basement as easily as he might have plucked a dandelion from his lawn.

Suddenly, Dan found himself standing next to the giant, who politely said,
“Bitte,”
and relieved him of his monkey wrench.

The man turned and was looking for something. Even with the door open the water was a good six inches deep. Then Dan realized what the giant wanted. He rushed over to help him.

“You’ve got to get the shut-off valve,” he said.

“Ja,
I tried. It broke off in my hand.”

Dan quickly showed him where it was, reaching under the water.

“Here, put the wrench here.”

He nimbly stepped aside, giving the German room to fit the wrench to the valve and with great strength and equal control turn it clockwise to shut off the water. The giant turned to look at Dan as he worked.

“Must be careful. These pipes are very old, very brittle.”

But, inch by careful inch, Dan watched the guy get the job done. The wrench turned, the water slowed and finally stopped. Dan couldn’t get over the size of this guy, the way he could see all those immense muscles at work right through his wet shirt. He stared at the ends of the pipe he’d seen the guy squeezing. They weren’t watertight, but they sure weren’t circular anymore either. They looked as slitted as a cat’s eyes in sunlight.

Dan felt a large finger tap his shoulder and he turned.

“Your wrench,
Mein Herr. Danke.”

Dan took the wrench, knowing it wouldn’t be a bit of help if things came to a fight, and asked, “Who the heck are you, anyway?”

Manfred gave a small bow and introduced himself.

“I live here now,” he added.

Dan Phinney scratched his head in wonder.

Manfred asked if he might have the pleasure of knowing who’d come to his assistance.

“I’m Robin’s father, Dan Phinney.”

Relieved of the torrent, the floor drain was disposing of the standing water.

Dan looked at the compressed piping again. Manfred followed his gaze and shrugged modestly.

“I had to do what I could. It needed to be replaced anyway.”

“I know a hardware store that can send over what we need,” Dan said. “In the meantime, why don’t you and I get acquainted?”

Robin sailed through the front door of her building under a full head of steam, moving as fast as she could crutch along. She had her checkbook with her. She didn’t even need to go upstairs. She’d just bang on Manfred’s door, pay him and tell him to vacate the premises immediately.

Just as she drew her fist back to deliver the first emphatic knock, however, she heard laughter coming from the basement apartment. Manfred. The guy even laughed with an accent. But there was someone else, too. Another man. A friend of Manfred’s? Someone just as big? Another weight-lifting hulk? The thought of two such specimens was daunting.

What if she made them angry? They could do her in, cut her into little-bitty pieces and she’d never be seen again. Robin sagged on her crutches. She’d had to be a fool to let this guy into her home in the first place. She was so angry and frustrated she wanted to cry.

Until she saw the cop car pull up directly across the street from her house. There was a fire hydrant over there, but in a neighborhood like this, where street parking was impossible at best, people routinely parked in front of the hydrant, and the cops routinely ticketed the offenders. If the car was still there an hour later it got towed. This little drama was good for at least one matinee and two evening performances daily.

So here they were right outside her door, Chicago’s Finest. No matter how big the brutes in her basement were, Robin was sure that she could get the cops attention with a bloodcurdling scream. Now was her opportunity to get Manfred and friend out of her house, out of her life.

Robin banged her fist on Manfred’s door, hit it three good shots.

She heard footsteps coming her way, but didn’t feel the ground shaking beneath her feet. That had to mean the friend was answering the door, and that he couldn’t be as big as Der Monster. Good. Maybe he’d be small enough that Robin could just yank him right out of there, make Manfred come to the door and give him the fast brush off, too. Bing, bang. She’d be done with it. Robin shifted her crutches to left hand and got ready to make her move.

The door opened and she grabbed ... her father?

Standing there in his underwear holding a bottle of beer?

“Robin, sweetie,” he said with a smile, seeming not to notice that she had a fistful of his undershirt. He gave her a peck on the cheek and she let him go. “Come on in, I’ll tell you about our adventure.”

Adventure?

Robin hobbled down the stairs after him and saw...

Manfred sitting on the sofa holding a beer ... also in his underwear.

And by the looks of him very surprised to see her.

He was far more covered than he’d been in his workout suit—his boxer shorts were so old-fashioned they seemed to come down to his knees—but both Manfred and Robin realized a serious line of propriety had been crossed here and both blushed furiously. Manfred quickly brought his knees together and put his beer bottle in his lap ... until he looked down and realized the unintended symbolism. So he crossed his arms. That hid the bottle but it made his enormous chest bulge even further. As if he were preening.

Robin stared, hypnotized.

Manfred stood up, taking care that his fly didn’t gape.

“Excuse, please,” he said to Robin. Turning to Dan, he added, “Herr Phinney, you will please let me know when my clothes are dry?”

Dan Phinney’s eyes filled with glee.

But all he said was, “You bet.”

Manfred marched off to his bedroom and firmly closed the door behind him. Then the bolt lock was thrown. Manfred was plainly taking no further chances with his privacy.

Robin turned to her father.

“Daddy, what in the world is going on here?”

Dan told her what had happened with her plumbing.

“So when we finally got the water shut off we were both soaked to the gills and the poor guy didn’t have any clothes clean, so we stripped down to our skivvies and threw our clothes in your laundry machines.”

Robin nodded as if it all made perfect sense.

“We had to throw some of your clothes in, too, since Manfred used a load you’d left down here to seal off the back door to the apartment. Did a real good job, too. Hardly got a drop in here, and there was plenty of water in back, believe me.”

Robin’s mind was suddenly elsewhere.

“Daddy, you’re washing everybody’s clothes together?”

“Sure, but don’t worry. I didn’t overload the machines. Everything should be dry in a few minutes. We can sort it all out and when the new pipe is delivered, Manfred and I can fix the plumbing. And don’t concern yourself about me, I’ll let him do the hard parts.”

Dan was worried that his daughter was going to ask him what he’d been doing over here in the first place or scold him for trying to help with the plumbing. But she didn’t say a word.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I paid him for that part he put in the furnace. I checked it. He did a real good job.”

Robin just nodded.

“We were just sitting around having a beer waiting until we could get back to work. That’s why you caught us with our pants down.”

“Uh-huh.”

Dan didn’t know what was going on with his daughter. She looked like she’d gone into a trance ever since he mentioned the thing about doing her laundry. He didn’t understand it.

“You okay, honey?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Good. Because I think this Manfred is a real find. Your furnace is fixed, and we’ll get your plumbing done. You keep him around, this place will be as good as new.” Dan Phinney laughed and held up his bottle. “He even serves German beer. You can’t beat that with a stick.”

“No, you sure can’t. I’m going up to my park now, Daddy.”

Her father said something in reply, but Robin didn’t catch it. She just kept gimping her way up the stairs. Manfred had saved the day. Again. Her father liked him. He was clearly here to stay.

That was hard enough to think about, but the thing that most unnerved her was the image of what was happening right now inside of her dryer. The load of laundry Robin had left in the basement had been full of her undies ... and all she could picture were her unmentionables locked in a heated, swirling, tumbling dance with those ... those humongous garments of Manfred’s.

Her father would never understand it in a hundred years, but Robin felt he had just sealed her fate.

Chapter 8

David Solomonovich thought Robin was a frog. Not in the sense that she was an amphibian. Or ugly as a toad. Rather, he saw her as the kind of frog who would turn into a princess when he kissed her. David had cast himself as Prince Charming.

Further testimony to the suppleness of his mind.

He sat at his drafting table in the offices of his father’s research laboratory and doodled sketches of Robin the way he imagined she had looked before she had fallen under whatever evil spell afflicted her — and he was sure there was one. His drawing showed a natural gift for draftsmanship and a fair amount of sensitivity for someone so young.

If he had allowed anyone to see his sketches of Robin — he hadn’t — he would have had to confess an adolescent crush on an older woman. No easy feat under any circumstances, especially hard when you were fourteen and working on your doctorate. He’d also have to concede that his mother, who’d seen other signs of his talents, had a point when she said he could be as great an artist — her preference — as a scientist — David and his father’s choice.

His mother had acquiesced, with one stipulation. She said she wanted David to paint her portrait while she was still young and beautiful. It was the idea of doing that painting — and how people could change over the course of their lives — that had made him take his first good look at Robin.

When his father had allowed David to start working in the lab, he’d made his son go to Screaming Mimi’s and pick up lunch for all the senior scientists and engineers. This was his father’s way of showing everyone that David wasn’t a privileged character. It was also a way to give David some sense of having to start at the bottom and work his way to the top. Not that anyone expected the climb to take very long.

As ever, though, the first step had been the hardest. Upon setting foot in Mimi’s, he’d felt a compelling urge to turn and run. The place had terrified him. The crowd, the jostling, the shouting, the insults — Robin presiding over it all like the chief demon of one of the lower circles of hell — had been just too much to take.

But take the step he had, despite having his toes stepped on, his ribs poked and even being knocked down once. David was small but he was not without grit. And after a while his footwork got better, his reflexes sharpened, his field of vision widened so he didn’t get blind-sided so often. He learned to anticipate where holes in the crowd would occur. And when his physical survival seemed assured, he started to listen to what was going on around him.

A lot of these people were funny. Which meant they were also smart. Wry, caustic, blunt or subtle, the put-downs and comebacks racketed around the room like machine gun fire. And the fastest gun of all was Robin.

She never even seemed to have to think of what she’d say next, like she had Oscar Wilde whispering in her ear. Except Oscar probably wouldn’t be that sharp if you made him serve sandwiches, too.

David had heard the word for such lightning-fast intellectual activity almost from birth. It was usually applied to him.

Genius.

In her own special way, in Mimi’s deli, it applied to Robin, too.

It made him want to get to know her, to test himself against her. Which would help him understand the boundaries of his own mind. So, after he’d proved himself a worthwhile addition to his father’s lab and been released from his errand-boy duties, David had started to take a later lunch when the crowd had thinned and he could pit himself against Robin one-on-one.

She clobbered him. Time and again.

That made for some frustrating moments. But it was also exhilarating because going up against Robin was one of the rare occasions in his life when he felt challenged. He was bound and determined that someday he would best her.

Besides that attraction, she made him laugh, even if it was usually at his own expense. That was okay, too. Everywhere he went, with precious few exceptions, people kowtowed to him. The boy wonder. The big brain. Nobody treated him like a person. Except Robin.

She whanged him just like everybody else — and he loved her for it.

Not that he expressed it. Not openly. Not in so many words. But one day when the lunch hour crush had run long for some reason David had been doodling sketches of his mother for the portrait he’d agreed to do. Looking up for a moment, he saw Robin. He wondered if anyone had ever done a portrait of her. He wondered if she’d ever been beautiful.

He tried to look past the excess weight and see who she was underneath.

While he observed her, his hand went to work on the sketchpad.

When he looked at what he’d drawn he gasped.

Robin had been beautiful. Or had he just drawn her that way? He looked back up to see if he was only kidding himself. No, he was sure the image he had drawn was an accurate representation of the way this woman had once looked.

To prove it to himself, he started adding lines and tone to the sketch he’d just drawn, additions that would make it look the way Robin did now. With each stroke that brought the image closer to the present reality, David felt pain and sorrow. He realized that something awful must have happened to this woman — to go from who she’d been to who she was now — and the pain he felt must have been nothing compared to hers.

David kept this insight strictly to himself. He felt sure Robin would throw him out on his ear and never let him return if he tried to talk to her about it. But from that day on he resolved to help her find the beautiful young woman she’d been and to become her once again.

Even so, David wasn’t going to go to jail and wreck his life for Robin.

There’d be no attempt on his part to crack the CIA’s computer system.

David locked his sketchpad into his filing cabinet and logged onto his computer. What was the point of trying to break into one closely guarded agency of the government, he asked himself, when another left its doors wide open. He accessed the Internet, a network of data bases originally conceived for the Defense Department but now, in 1990, used by a growing number of academic institutions. There was talk that in a few years, say the mid-90s, even the general public would be online, but David thought that he might possibly be the first person to use the Internet to do private investigation.

He accessed the Library of Congress and began looking for the name Manfred Welk.

Robin’s father tapped at the door to the park before he left. He called out that the plumbing repair had been made and that her laundry had been folded and left in a basket on top of her dryer. She thanked him, grateful that he hadn’t opened the door.

She watched him depart through the leaves of a ficus plant next to one of the park’s front windows. Dan Phinney waved to his daughter even though he couldn’t really see her. Robin had arranged the plantings so she could peer out but would be shielded by a canopy of greenery from anyone trying to see inside. Nevertheless, she gave her father a small, forlorn wave.

When he was gone, she watched her fish swim back and forth. She wondered if they ever got frustrated, if they ever felt insanity creeping up on them, being confined in such a small pool. She didn’t think so. They swam too smoothly. Their overall behavior was too fluid. There was no sense of desperation about them. They got along well with each other. And why shouldn’t they? Their water was clear and warm. They had all the food they needed. Their world was free from predators. Life was perfect.

Thanks to her, their keeper.

Maybe living things weren’t meant to be kept, though.

Robin felt she was coming to have a keeper of her own.

And just when she was about to cry, Robin heard a soundtrack for her tears. Someone started playing a blues harmonica. Manfred? At first, she thought he’d put on a record, but when no other instruments joined in, when no vocalist sang along, she realized it was just him down there playing the instrument. Playing it very well, too. The music made her feel sadder and better all at the same time.

Now, where would a guy like that have learned to play the blues? Then she thought: Where else? Prison. Maybe learning to play the blues was a correspondence course you could take wherever you were locked up in the world.

Maybe she should learn it herself.

She listened some more and lost herself in the healing melancholy of the music. After a while, she recognized the song. Billie Holliday.
God Bless the Child.
Was Manfred mocking her? No. The only way he could know about her demons was if her father had told him, and Daddy would never do that.

Robin sat there and hoped he’d play all night, but he didn’t.

Because a man strolled up the street and turned onto her walkway. She watched him as he approached her front door. The man was average height, just under six feet. He had a slim build, neatly cut brown hair, brown eyes, no eyeglasses, no facial hair. He wore a navy blue windbreaker, faded jeans and plain white sneakers. He had pleasant enough features, but Robin was sure that if he ever came into Mimi’s she’d forget what he looked like five minutes after serving him.

Just before he got to the front door, the man startled her by smiling — nice even teeth, but not the blinding white of someone who smiled for a living — and she thought for a moment he’d seen her and was smiling at her. But then she realized that the man was looking down. He was smiling at Manfred, looking at him through a basement window.

And the music stopped.

Robin heard the outer door open and then the door to Manfred’s apartment.

Then it all clicked for her. The guy who’d just come calling, he was the spy. The real thing. Someone who could blend into any crowd. Manfred’s contact … unless he was another musician come to play the blues. True, she didn’t see him bring an instrument, but one could be down there waiting for him. Or he could have a harmonica in his pocket. Maybe Manfred was out to reinvent the Harmonicats.

Robin listened.

She didn’t hear music. She heard voices. Indistinct voices.

Then, with the music gone and pulled from her self-absorption, she smelled sauerkraut. Industrial strength. Commie-prison sauerkraut, for God’s sake.

She hadn’t thought to ask old Manfred what kind of cooking he did, had she? Now she knew. Robin had wanted to stay in the park a while longer, maybe see if she could eavesdrop as long as she was there, but within minutes the smell of cooking, pickled cabbage drove her upstairs.

Warner Lisle was a CIA agent.

Blessed with pleasantly nondescript features, he could have been the recruiting poster boy for the Company, had it gone in for such things. The son of a fetching Berliner who’d married a GI serving in the Occupation Forces, Warner spoke perfect German. The recipient of a National Defense (i.e. CIA) Scholarship, he learned to speak perfect Russian.

Warner was bright enough to have had a double major in college. His other area of interest — besides Russian language and culture — was aeronautical engineering. But when his three-year hitch with the Agency was up and his college debt repaid, the aerospace industry was in one of its cyclical slumps. No jobs available. So he stayed a spook.

Not cold-blooded enough, by any means, to take on any of the really nasty jobs, he was nonetheless infiltrated into East Germany and told to see what he could see. Look for targets of opportunity. Soak up the gestalt of a front-line Communist state.

That vague assignment lasted until someone got tired of seeing the East Germans take home truckloads of Olympic gold medals. At that point, Warner was assigned to find out just how they did it. At minimum, exposing Commie cheaters would be good propaganda. And you never knew, maybe something useful would be uncovered. Say a chemical compound that could be quietly added to the seasoning of U.S. Army food to build up the troops.

So Warner was assigned to become the first CIA jock-sniffer and ordered to look for some disaffected Marxist mesomorph who would be willing to spill the beans on his comrades.

Warner found Manfred.

He felt personally responsible for Manfred’s imprisonment.

And he was determined to redeem himself before he left the Company in the not too distant future. Warner hadn’t found a job in aerospace at long last. Rather he would soon be making a number of very interesting models of flying machines for a special effects house in Hollywood.

But he had to pay Manfred back first.

Warner looked cautiously around the basement apartment before turning his attention to his expectant friend. He couldn’t imagine why anyone would bug this place, but old habits died hard.