"There! Comfy now?" she said to the frangipani, and felt herself blush. Talking to plants, the first sign. She put the frangipani firmly back on its shelf. On the other hand they didn't talk back, didn't look at you as if you were not quite up to it, didn't roll their eyes to heaven at one of your remarks and make you feel like a dunce. She took her apron off and hung it up and as she walked down the aisle to the door a blood-red mass of begonia caught her eye and she shivered slightly, recalling the bloodied face of the monte man and the smear on the window and the waving knife. There was that too, the problem of Marlene.
She left the conservatory and went to the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and tried to relax into the reassuring chatter and clatter of breakfast time. It was all very well to complain about being bored and to joke about the wife-of blues, but joking and complaining were one thing; actually leaving the comfortable middle-class bubble in which she had spent her entire life, and entering a world in which men carried knives and waved them in your face, spraying blood, in the company of a… a-Maggie Dobbs did not exactly know what Marlene was, but what it was frightened her. And yes, she was admirable, but Maggie was starting to realize that admiration and participation were quite different things.
And, of course, she had involved Marlene in the book project. She recalled Hank's reaction when she had first told him about what Marlene was doing. His face had flushed and his eyes had opened wide and his mouth had dropped open, and she had braced herself for a scolding, but somehow it hadn't happened. That was odd; as if Hank had wanted Marlene involved for some reason, and she thought she had seen in the moment, just before he would have started yelling at her, a calculation replace the anger in his eyes.
The phone rang. It was Marlene, calling to say she wouldn't be by today and maybe the next day too. Something had come up-a visitor from out of town. Maggie hung up the phone and felt a wave of relief. She was ashamed of it, but it was relief all the same.
Harry Bello stiffened when Lucy came into the living room, followed by Sweetie.
"A dog," he said flatly, meaning, "Unnatural mother, how can you let my precious goddaughter in the same house as this drooling monster?"
"Relax, Harry. He's a sweetheart," said Marlene, leaning over, grabbing the dog by its ears, and swinging the huge, jowly head from side to side. "Aren't you a sweetheart? Aren't you? Aren't you a lily-livered candy-ass?"
The dog licked her face ecstatically and thrashed its whiplike tail.
"See, he's harmless," said Marlene.
But Harry wasn't looking at the dog or at her; he was staring at Lucy, who was ignoring him.
"Aren't you going to say hello to Uncle Harry?" Marlene asked. "Come on, Lucy, give him a hug and a kiss."
Lucy endured an embrace and then scampered up the stairs to her own room, followed by Sweetie. Marlene took in the stricken expression on Harry's usually blank face and said, "Oh, Harry, they're like that at this age. She'll come around."
"She forgot me already," said Harry, a faint whiff of accusation in his tone.
"No, she hasn't, Harry. You'll spend some time, she'll see you, she'll get used to you again-don't worry about it." What Marlene did not voice was her understanding that Lucy didn't have to make nice to Harry because Harry was so obviously enslaved. She loved him in exactly the same way that she was coming to love Sweetie. Now she had two dogs.
Marlene made coffee and they sat at the kitchen table while Marlene spread out her notes and files on Reltzin and Gaiilov, and laid out the Dobbs project, what she had learned and what she wanted Harry to do.
"How long do you think?" she asked after Harry had sat silently shuffling bits of paper for a while.
He shrugged. Tapping a yellowed magazine photograph of Reltzin, he said, "Him? A couple of days. He goes to concerts, he's a citizen, he's got a job or a pension, a phone, electric. There's ways. The other one, the spy? Who knows? We don't have a picture? No? Then it depends. The guy wants to stay lost and he's got experts to help him, then probably never, with just me working. If he don't give a damn somebody finds him? It depends on the breaks. Maybe this Reltzin sends him a birthday card every year. We find him, we'll know better."
In fact, it took Harry Bello somewhat under forty-eight hours to find Viktor Reltzin. Marlene had made a bed for Harry on the couch, which he occupied only intermittently and for short periods. Otherwise he worked the streets and the phones. Through liberal and illegal use of his NYPD detective's shield, Harry got into the Kennedy Center's concert subscription records, and there he was. Harry then confirmed that indeed a man named Reltzin, with the right stats and face, lived in an apartment on Connecticut Avenue near Kalorama. He had an unlisted phone number, which did not prevent Harry from finding out what it was. Marlene called it.
A mild voice with a faint Slavic accent answered. Marlene had decided not to dissemble at all. If Reltzin hung up she'd figure out something else, but she thought that someone who had dwelt long in the tangled world of espionage, and who retained the grace to nod to the widow of an accused spy in public, might not be averse to some plain dealing.
And so it proved. Reltzin agreed at once to see her. Would this afternoon be convenient? It would.
Marlene dressed in a dark pink De La Renta suit and a patterned black silk shirt she had rescued from Maggie's discard pile and altered to fit. She had to run out to the mall on Route 50 to get fresh hose and a pair of black heels. Thus attired, she left Lucy with Bello and the other dog and drove into town.
Reltzin's building was one of the noble brownish piles that line the upper reaches of Connecticut Avenue south of the zoo. The man who opened the door for her was neatly dressed in a dark blue suit, the jacket buttoned over a quiet tie. The face was neat as well, the expression controlled and formally attentive. He gestured her inside. Marlene was glad she had thought to dress up; this man would not have been pleased to entertain Marlene in her usual gypsy rags.
"I have prepared tea," he said, and led her through a dark green-painted, dimly lit foyer to a large room not much less dim.
He motioned, and she sat on a heavy gray brocade sofa in front of a low mahogany table upon which tea things were laid. The windows of the room were obscured with thick maroon velvet drapes. Yellow light came from two standard lamps with fringed shades. Marlene glanced at the coffee table. There was a plate of petit fours and one of little sandwiches, made of white bread with the crusts cut off. Reltzin had gone through some trouble. She peeked at a sandwich: egg salad. It occurred to Marlene that perhaps he did not have many visitors.
She watched him as he fussed with something at a sideboard: a samovar, a tall brass one with a blue flame under it. He was not a large man, but he held himself erect. Marlene judged him to be about seventy. He had an egg-shaped head downed with sparse cropped grayish hair of the type blonds grow when old, and a blunt Russian nose. When he turned toward her, bearing a lacquered tray with two tall glasses on it, his eyes, the color of ancient blue jeans, gazed intermittently at her between the flashes from round wire spectacles.
The tea glasses were fitted with brass holders. Marlene sipped: blazing hot, bitter, smoky, strong.
"Do you like it?" asked Reltzin.
"It's fine, Mr. Reltzin," said Marlene. She took a cube of sugar from a small brass bowl and popped it into her mouth, slurping the tea past the sweet lump until it was dissolved. Reltzin smiled at her, showing a glimpse of bad Soviet dentistry, and did the same.
"So," said Reltzin when they had slurped sufficiently and eaten a sandwich and talked a bit about beverage-drinking customs in various parts of the world, "you are writing a book about Richard Dobbs."