Crooked by Austin Grossman Read Free Book Online

earliest childhood I have been susceptible to morbid tendencies of the mind… Was he a psychiatric case? That would explain a lot. The documents provided proved susceptible to the cryptographic methods of the ancients but the phrases I laboriously revealed created in me a nameless discomfort, a foreboding of …Jesus, this guy and his discomforts. Was he a spy or wasn’t he? I skipped ahead.
    My newfound partners supplied me with promising information, but could they be trusted? The Smiling Woman in particular seemed capable of any violence or subterfuge in pursuit of her own interests, whatever they were. I had embarked down a dark and dangerous path in search of the truth but I couldn’t stop. All thought of a socialist future had ceased to concern me. I did my errands as usual but the abominable truth hinted at in that gentleman farmer’s writings were a more pressing concern. Could the two letters truly be in the same hand, a century and a half apart? What strange materials had arrived under cover of darkness on a Burmese sloop? And why had the Department of Defense issued a quarantine order?
    Better! But it wasn’t a smoking gun. And his weird obsession with old letters didn’t add to the picture of a master conspirator.
    I proceeded to the central building of which the letters had spoken, this one stone rather than wood or metal. I crept inside in search of the source of those awful cries, still feebly hoping Whittaker had been wrong. I don’t mind saying my hand trembled as it held the flashlight. The door seemed to have been damaged by an indescribable…
    Enough already! I turned over more pages. Photographs of State Department documents. Cargo manifests coming through Boston Harbor. Aerial surveillance photographs showing a row of long white buildings in desert terrain, time-stamped a few months ago. Numerous documents in Cyrillic characters, meaningless to me. I picked up the last few pages.
    I was stunned. I now must question everything that has gone before. Did the Soviets even care about the information I supplied them with? Did Moscow orchestrate this hideous journey? Or has [a name here was crossed out] forced me to risk my reputation and perhaps my fucking sanity for her own…
    Finally. I had no idea what the rest of it meant, but crazy Alger Hiss was a damned Communist. I glanced around, unwilling to leave the treasure-house just yet. I copied down a phone number I saw written on a scrap of paper. I searched for a few more minutes until I discovered a spare key to the office in the back of a drawer.
    As long as he didn’t know I’d broken in, he’d leave everything where it was and ready for my return. The important thing was, there would be an absolute triumph in the press. I didn’t even need to feel bad about it because Alger Hiss was a dirty Commie spy. Dick Nixon was a hero.

 
Chapter Six
    I told Pat I was feeling confident, that it was only a matter of time, and that I’d be working late again that night. In a few days, she’d see me win a clean victory.
    I daydreamed through the next day’s hearing while the rest of the committee questioned Hiss and he countered masterfully, the perfect image of an honest man beset and outraged at a baseless campaign of persecution. I doodled on my notepad and looked at the crowd. The members of the press were turning against me. Let them. If my case looked weak now, it would make the truth that much more shocking.
    When Hiss left at the end of the day, I trailed him far enough downtown to satisfy myself he was going home for the evening. A thought struck me—what if the Commies were following me? I circled a downtown block, looked in shop windows. What else does one do? I had a drink in a bar and left by a back way. It was close to eleven at night when I returned to the building on Seventy-First Street and climbed the stairs.
    My footsteps sounded too loud in the silence of the fifth floor, and I forced myself not to hurry. I was carrying a camera