Irma, of course, knew everyone's name. She was like that. She was in, and of, the neighborhood. Her flower garden had won first prize in the neighborhood gardening contest for fourteen years in a row, until she had decided that delphiniums weren't worth the effort.
But each June, until then, a bright blue ribbon had hung proudly from the Smiths' door. Most years, it was the only acknowledgment Irma made that she had won, and Smith realized that he had never told her that the garden looked nice.
As he walked up the drive, he could see Irma, through the bay window, tearing off her apron and patting her hair in place in preparation for his arrival. It made him smile one of his infrequent smiles. His plump wife, her hair now a bluish ghastly silver, always treated him like a beau coming to call on their first date. If she was awake. Most nights, he would come home too late and she would already be asleep. But a plate of food, always awful, always covered with some kind of tomato-soup goo, would be waiting for him. But there were never any accusations, never any reciminations for keeping the hours he did. As far as Irma was concerned, anything was an improvement over the old days when Smith worked in the wartime OSS and then the CIA and was gone without a word for months at a time. During the whole of World War II, she had seen Smith twice. During the five tensest years of the Cold War, she had seen him only once, and had received two telegrams from him, each exactly ten words in length.
"You're just in time for supper," she said, pretending as she always did, not to be excited about seeing him.
"I'm not hungry. Please sit down."
"Oh, dear." She sat, her forehead wrinkled. "Is it very bad?" She picked up her knitting.
"No. Nothing of the sort." There was a long, awkward silence.
"Will you take off your jacket, dear?" Irma asked.
"No. I have to be going."
"Busy at the office, I expect."
"No. Everything's fine. I have to go out of town. Maybe for some time."
Mrs. Smith nodded and managed a smile. She had always smiled. Even when Smith had left for Europe at the start of the war, after they had been married only three weeks, she hadn't cried. She had only smiled. Smith looked at her and wondered: How do you tell a woman like that that you may have to commit suicide very soon?
She clasped his hands. "Go do what you have to do, dear," she said gently.
He stared at her for a moment. It had never occurred to him that Irma might know that he did secret work, that he had more of a job than just head of Folcroft Sanitarium. But maybe she did. No. She couldn't know. He had never discussed his work with her. Really, he thought with some shame, he had never discussed much of anything with her. And yet she had always made things easy for him. Even now, she was making it easy for him to leave, as if she sensed that it was somehow very important.
"Right." He cleared his throat, nodded, and left the table. Halfway out the door, he turned around. "Irma, I have to tell you something."
"Yes, dear?"
"I ... er, you ... that is, I . . ." He exhaled noisily. "The garden is lovely."
She smiled. "Thank you, dear."
A. H. Baynes's home was in a suburb of Denver where there were more trees, more schools, more parks, and more money than anywhere else in the area. All the houses were on large tracts of manicured lawn, with garages the size of most single-family dwellings in the city.
There was no answer at the home of Baynes or at the home of the late Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Palmer. The neighbors on the other side of Baynes's house were named Cunningham, and when Smith rang the bell, a stylish middle-aged woman in expensive tweeds answered.
"Mrs. Cunningham?"
She shook her head. "I'm the housekeeper. May I help you?"
"I'd rather speak with Mrs. Cunningham, if you don't mind." He took a Treasury Department ID card from his wallet. "It's rather urgent," he said.
"Mrs. Cunningham's in her studio. I'll announce you."
She led him through a house furnished with all the latest trends, from mauve furniture in the living room to a green-and-white kitchen adorned with butcherblock floor tiles, to a sparkling chrome gym in the rear of the house. Puffing on an exercise bicycle was a short woman, agonizingly underweight, wearing a trendy V-neck leotard and trendier, high-cut green sneakers.
"Mr. Harold Smith from the Treasury Department, ma'am," the housekeeper announced.
"Oh, all right. Bring in my breakfast, Hilary." She turned her attention to Smith, obviously appraising his unstylish suit. "You'll have to forgive me, but I won't be able to talk with you until I've eaten."
Hilary brought in an old Worcester china plate that held a single slab of raw tuna fish. Mrs. Cunningham picked it up with her fingers and popped it in her mouth. Smith closed his eyes and thought of the flag.
"There," she said with satisfaction. "Oh, I'm sorry. Would you care for some sushi?"
"No, thank you," said Smith, swallowing hard.
"Very low in calories."
"I'm sure," he said.
"Hilary won't work for anyone who eats meat."
"The housekeeper?"
"Isn't she a dream?" Mrs. Cunningham rhapsodized. "So Waspy. Nothing ethnic about her at all. Of course, she doesn't do much work. It would ruin her clothes."
"Mrs. Cunningham, I'm looking for A. H. Baynes," Smith said.
She rolled her eyes. "Please don't mention that name around here."
"Why not?"
"As acting chairperson of the Neighborhood Betterment Committee, I have forbidden it."
"You mean, because Mrs. Baynes is deceased?" Smith asked.
"Gawd, no. Dying was the first decent thing Evelyn's done in months. Too bad she had to take the Palmers with her. They were a good element."
"What about Mrs. Baynes?" Smith persisted.
"Dead in Paris."
"Before Paris," Smith said.
"Well, there was that awful business that ruined them in the neighborhood," she said.
"What was that? It's for the good of the country."
"In that case . . ." she said. She leaned forward. "They went to live in some religious commune." She stood back, eyes gleaming, hands on hips. "Can you believe it? I mean, it's not like throwing a party for revolutionaries. That's a statement. What sort of statement can religion make? They're not even doing that in Southern California."
"Was this commune in the neighborhood?" Smith asked.
"I should hope not. Episcopalians don't have communes. My church doesn't even have services. But that's what it was all about. The Bayneses were talking about communes in the neighborhood. Well, the last thing we wanted was some hairy old thing from China or someplace having religious sex orgies on our lawn. So we told the Bayneses we didn't approve."