Free To Catch a Spy by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Bulgarian.”
    It was my turn.
    “I resolve,” I said, “to do my damnedest not to get hit on the head or neck or any other part of my anatomy.”
    “Amen,” said Mrs. Plaut. And we all said, “Amen.”
    “My chapter on the Sorenson twins,” she said, rising and looking at me.
    “I’ll read it today.”
    “I am growing no younger,” she said, reaching for Gunther’s empty plate.
    “I’m cognizant of that,” I said.
    Before she turned and headed for the kitchen, I think she allowed herself a small smile.

CHAPTER
    6
     
    Bruno Volkman’s apartment was at 778 Hauser. The name “Volkman” was on his mailbox. The building was a two-story white adobe. His apartment was on the second floor. There was another apartment next to his.
    I didn’t bother to knock. I remembered Ted Lewis in some movie tipping his top hat to the side and singing, “We never knock ’cause nobody’s there.”
    I hummed “Me and My Shadow” as I examined the lock. Simple spring model. I was reaching into my pocket for my knife when I turned the doorknob. It was open. I went in.
    The Sunday sun was bright, but all the lights were on in the combination living and dining room where I stood. I closed the door behind me, my hand on my .38.
    Bruno Volkman kept a neat apartment. The kind of furniture that looked like the set of an Astaire—Rogers movie. Lots of white and black and chrome steel. Two paintings on the wall, one all squares and cubes in black on white and the other a super-streamlined train, racing from left to right, leaving a trail of smoke behind it.
    I moved to the kitchen, also neat, and opened the door to what I assumed was the bedroom. It was. The blinds were closed. I turned on the light. Double bed made with a light blue cover with matching blue pillows. A dresser. A night table next to the bed, with a telephone and a radio. There was a single picture on the wall, a big one, a painting of Katharine Hepburn cradling white flowers in her arms. On the dresser were two framed photographs. One was of a skinny little boy in short pants being hugged by a woman wearing a distinctly turn-of-the-century dress and hat. The other photograph was a recent one of Bruno Volkman and another man, somber, shoulder-to-shoulder, looking straight at the camera.
    There was one more door. I opened it. It was a closet with clothes neatly hung and evenly spaced, shoes lined up on the low shelf over the clothes. That was it except for the body of Bruno Volkman sitting behind the clothes when I parted them. His mouth was open and he was looking at my knees.
    I closed the closet door and started to look through the dresser, which was just as neat as the rest of Volkman’s apartment. Even his underpants were folded flat.
    In the bottom drawer I found a box, took it out, and put it on the bed. The box was filled with pro–Nazi and Bund literature. Almost all of it was in English. I checked for photographs, maybe notes. Nothing but the literature. I was scanning a pamphlet to see if he had marked anything when I heard the front door of the apartment open.
    I stuffed the pamphlet back in the box, put the box back in the drawer, closed the drawer, and walked through the door, past the small kitchen, and into the living room, where I stood facing two men, both in their late forties or early fifties, both wearing hats, both on the hefty side.
    “I didn’t hear you knock,” I said, my hand in my pocket grasping my gun.
    “We didn’t knock,” one man said. “Door was open. Who are you?”
    “Conrad Bishop,” I said.
    “We’re Kelso and O’Boylan, Los Angeles police. Name by the bell says Volkman. Where is he and what are you doing here?”
    “Visiting,” I said. “Bruno left the door open for me. He should be back any minute.”
    “Identification,” said the cop who I guessed was Kelso.
    I fished out my wallet and handed it to him. He flipped it open.
    “Tobias Leo Pevsner,” he read from my driver’s license. “And you’ve got a