Baltimore, Maryland
April 20th, 1951
"Here, put these in storage," I grunted as I handed Cromwell the big ugly cardboard box with my wings and things in it. We were back at his hotel room, one downtown that had seen much better days. "I'll need them again, someday. That was a good set-up."
He looked at me incredulously. "Jesus, the angel thing actually worked?" he asked, gape jawed. Not a pretty look for him.
I shrugged dismissively. "You just gotta know how to turn 'em, It was pathetically easy. One in the mouth, two down the middle. And now I'm just a pleasant dream . . . "
"I'm so happy for you," he said, sourly.
"You know, you really need to get laid," I pointed out, recognizing a condition I rarely suffered from. "It would improve your mood tremendously. What the hell do you do with yourself during the day?"
"I sit in a hotel room and wait for the goddamn phone to ring," he said, gruffly. "I read the local paper and laugh, and listen to the radio, and wait for you to fuck other men's wives. And I take care of your laundry, apparently," he said, looking at the box distastefully.
"Just make sure that doesn't get lost," I reminded him. "If we're going to the Bible Belt, I'll definitely want to use that in Tampa."
"You're the boss," he shrugged, which was only a little bit true. "I'll send it to your storage room on the Island. You ready for the next one?"
"Ready and willing. Shoot."
"Okay," he said, pulling a new file out of his briefcase. Like mine, it did all sorts of unlikely things for this era. Just not the same unlikely things mine did. It contained a very subtle and very sophisticated computer and communication set-up. You had to know how to access it, but in Cromwell's capable hands he could access virtually limitless amounts of data, and have it printed in date-appropriate format on the spot. Handy, when you want to forge some credentials. I knew Cromwell spent most of his day staring at it, receiving news from the remote transmission that the Project broadcast from some secret location. That's where our orders came from, and things like aphrodisiacs and angel wings.
"We have one Mrs. Patricia Ann Ryan, age 24, married to one Mr. Albert Ryan, who owns and runs the Chelsea Theater east of town. Mr. Ryan is carrying on an affair with one of his ushers, a fact that will be a big scandal and close down the theater in five years."
"Why? Seems innocuous enough. This isn't the Twenties," I pointed out.
"The usher's name is Tom."
"Ouch," I winced. Being gay was not OK in the 1950s. It would be more than a decade before the Stonewall Riots. Here-and-now it was "the love that dare not speak its name", no hope of acceptance. At best, it was mental illness. Hell, they even put you in jail if you got caught. Barbarians.
"Yeah, well, denial is never pretty. Seems as if Mrs. Ryan ain't gettin' the sausage she was promised at the altar. So she spends all her time at her garden club at Easterwood Park. She lives over on North Pulaski, one of those row houses. Here's the address. And a picture."
I took the latter, first. A flawless facsimile copy of an old Polaroid of a sad-looking brunette, not particularly bad looking, in a floral print dress that should have been outlawed under a faded sweater. She dangled a burning cigarette in one hand, casually.
"Easy. One day," I figured. "Go ahead and give me the other one, too. Maybe I can pull a double."
"Showoff. Just because you're undefeated . . . Okay, we have Lisa No-Middle-Name Horcek. Elementary school teacher, engaged. Long engagement. But she gets married sometime next year."
"I bet she does," I said, taking her picture. She was a thin, almost frail little thing, with a pretty face but no shape to speak of. She had tiny tits, only barely discernable under her dress, and a waist that existed only by virtue of the fashion of the period. But she looked smart, assertive, well-put-together. I pegged her for a 'sudden romance' sort of thing.
Ryan? She might be a little harder. Some of those married-to-gay-guys women actually preferred it that way, either because they didn't like sex much or because they were closeted lesbians themselves. Or they just plain liked it better that way.
But then there were those other women who had no idea about what Hubby did when he went 'fishing', and told off their husbands' queer behavior as mere quirk or eccentricity. Or internalized it to batter their self-esteem on a daily basis. It could go either way.
I had ways to get around all of those obstacles. Regardless of which type of gay wife she was, I could find my way into her panties. I didn't even need to look at her psych profile -- I preferred to be surprised.
"And here's some re-fills for your kit," Cromwell added, tossing five little packs on the bed. Pheromones, date-rape drugs, aphrodisiacs, mood enhancers, sedatives, amnesiacs, a hand-selected twenty-second century pharmacopoeia that was guaranteed to charm the panties off of any mortal woman no matter which brand of hair crème you used. I gathered them up and noticed Cromwell shaking his head.
"What?" I demanded.
"Just wondered if you get tired of doing it all the time."
"What, fucking for a living?" I shrugged. "I'm sexually obsessed. That's why I got the job. You should try it some time."
"I'm married," he pointed out. "And they won't let us go back downstream until our mission term is up.
"You won't be married for almost a century, yet," I countered. "Go out and get yourself a piece. Slip one of the blue ones into some slut's beer. See how far you can go," I encouraged, teasingly.
He actually considered it. I could hear his wheels turning. He had been in the field for over a year, and hadn't seen his wife in at least that long. When he was done they could pop him back into the stream so close to when he left that, apart for some superficial aging, his missus wouldn't know he'd gone. "I don't know . . . it ain't my gene pool that's supposed to be playing back here in the olden days."
"Quit worrying! You don't have anything nasty or they wouldn't let you in the program. And I think you know how babies are made. Go out, have yourself some fun."
Cromwell took the tab. "You're a bad influence, Tom. Maybe I will," he said with a shrug. "Beats staying in here. Ain't even got TV yet. Or radio. I got to watch on that tiny little screen I brought."
"My heart bleeds for you. Get laid. Try 1950s pussy -- it's the real thing. And it will take away all of these moods you've been having."
"Asshole," he grunted.
Mrs. Patricia Ryan was actually a lot prettier than her picture (which wouldn't be taken for another few years) showed. I scouted out her house over on North Pulaski Street, a quaint and cozy little row-house. I walked back and forth in front of it a few times wearing a non-descript business suit, a hat, and carrying a briefcase. Every now and then I looked at a card I was holding. No one bothered me.
The house was cute, in a tacky sort of way, but it had had some construction done recently. On my third trip by I saw what it was: a bomb shelter.
You've got to love Fifties Paranoia, almost as much as Fifties Pussy. The shelter gave me my game plan.
Patricia was, indeed, at her garden club at the park, and I walked by there a few times, too, just to see her out of the house. She and four other women were planting petunias or some damn thing in a flowerbed and gossiping. Patricia looked content with the work, but generally unhappy. I circled the park without her noticing and headed back to her house to wait for her. While I waited I painted up my back-story and printed out the documents I needed from the sophisticated computer hidden in the lining of my briefcase. Real solid spy stuff.
She came home just before lunch, and I was waiting for her on her stoop.
"Yes, can I help you?"
"Are you Mrs. Ryan?" I asked gruffly.
"Why . . . yes, I'm Pat Ryan. Can I help you?" she repeated.
"Civil Defense, ma'am," I said, pushing a fake badge at her. It's actually an interchangeable Federal badge, completely authentic, along with a card that showed that I was David Meyers, Inspector of Civil Defense Projects. "You've recently had a shelter installed?"
"Why, yes, yes we did. Last week. My husband worries so much about those . . . horrible bombs."
"We all do, Ma'am," I agreed. "If only more people thought like your husband. I'm here to inspect and rate your shelter as a part of Baltimore's Civil Defense effort. We are, as I'm sure you know, high on the list of Russki targets," I said, confidently. Of course I knew nothing of the sort, but people always want to believe that they're important enough for their enemies to strike them. Human nature.
"I, I didn't know about any inspection!" she said, nervously.
"It's a new policy," I said, soothingly. "Started at the beginning of the month. Yours is only the fifth one I've done. We check for construction, supplies, ventilation, occupancy, all of that. So we can compile an accurate count and estimate survivors in case of attack. You can never plan too much for that sort of thing."
"Well, sure," she agreed. "It's right back in the back yard. Please come in," she said, unlocking the thick wooden door.
The house was comfortable and decorated with heirlooms, hardwood floors, lots of antiques. Someone from the Old South had died and left the Ryan's an assload of heirlooms. She led me back through the kitchen and out of the back door. The entrance to the shelter was a manhole-like cover at the back of the yard. I nodded and opened it, revealing a dark hole with a ladder running down one side.
"Is there light?"
"Battery lantern, just at the bottom of the ladder. Or at least it's supposed to be there, according to Al."
