The Blackbirder

Dorothy B. Hughes

• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781558617742
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A classic World War II-era noir with a page-turning plot, a cast of colorfully sinister characters and a protagonist who is thrust into the heart of political intrigue, this captivating 1943 novel parallels the spy novels of Grahame Greene, Eric Ambler, and the films of Hitchcock and Lang. But in -signature Hughes fashion, The Blackbirder has a genre-bending twist: its hardboiled protagonist is a woman.

Born of American expatriate parents, Julie Guilles was a pretty, sheltered rich girl growing up in Paris, a favorite of the "Ritz Bar” set. But everything changed when the Nazis rolled into the City of Lights. After three years of life underground, Julie is hiding out in New York; but she knows trouble is coming when the corpse of an acquaintance appears on her doorstep. With a host of possible dangers on her tail—the Gestapo, the FBI and the New York cops—she embarks on a desperate journey to Santa Fe in search of her last, best hope. "The Blackbirder”is a legend among refugees, a trafficker in human souls who flies under the radar to bring people to safety across the Mexican border—for a price.

With no resources at her disposal but a smuggled diamond necklace and her own razor-sharp wits, Julie must navigate a tangle of dangers—and take a stand in the worldwide struggle that has shattered the lives of millions. In contrast to the typical representations of wartime women as "Mrs. Minivers” guarding home and hearth, Dorothy B. Hughes gives her intrepid heroine a place at the heart of the action

Dorothy B. Hughes (1904–1993) is the author of numerous hardboiled mystery novels. Three of her books became successful films: The Fallen Sparrow (1943), Ride the Pink Horse (1947), and In a Lonely Place (1950), reprinted by the Feminist Press in 2003. In 1978 she was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-20th century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era. Enjoy the series: Bedelia; The Blackbirder; Bunny Lake Is Missing; By Cecile; The G-String Murders; The Girls in 3-B; In a Lonely Place; Laura; Mother Finds a Body; Now, Voyager; Skyscraper; Stranger on Lesbos; Women's Barracks.

1

GIRL IN FLIGHT

The waiter was looking at her. Not just looking. He was watching. Under black caterpillar eyebrows, his cold little black eyes were crawling on her face.

She whispered, “That waiter is looking at me.” For a moment she thought she had said it out loud, that Maxl had heard her. Her lips had moved but she hadn’t spoken, only to herself. She mustn’t let Maxl guess that she had noticed the waiter. Maxl might have ordered the man to watch.

She smiled now across the red-checkered tablecloth, across the stone mugs of beer, at the boy opposite her. He had black eyes too, but not like the waiter’s horny ones. Maxl’s were bright and guileless under his rimmed spectacles. He had black curly hair and a narrow face, small bones under his blue serge shoulders. He was a German, one of the Aryans, the pure Nordics. He boasted that. He looked like a Serb, a Croat, an Armenian. He looked like a great many pure Aryan, pure Nordic, pure nonsense Germans. Like too many of the leaders. Once she had thought Maxl a good-looking young man. That was in Paris.

She smiled at him. Her smile looked real. She had learned to form it that way. She said, “I’m sorry, Maxl. I didn’t notice what you were saying. My mind was somewhere else.”

Those who had escaped quite often found their minds wandering elsewhere. Even when they were in New York, in an old-time New York rathskeller, their minds often wandered. She had got out of Paris. So had Maxl.

He repeated it eagerly. “How did you get into the States?” When he remembered, his accents were as clipped, as British, as London’s own. He’d been educated at Eton, at Heidelberg, at the Sorbonne.

She didn’t know if he was a Nazi. He’d been an acquaintance in Paris before the Germans marched in three years ago. She hadn’t discussed ideologies with him during the witless, halcyon days that preceded the march. But she hadn’t sought his aid when she was trying to get out of Paris. She hadn’t been sure. If he were on their side, he might have thwarted her. If he were not, she might have been concentrated along with him.

She said, “It was difficult, yes.”

“But how?”

The waiter’s eyes were unwavering. Perhaps his big red ears could hear across the room. Perhaps her meeting with Maxl tonight hadn’t been accidental. He had been standing there in the thronging lobby of Carnegie Hall while she came pushing slowly down the stairs after the Russian Relief concert. She had seen him before he saw her, before he seemed to see her. She had seen him and something had lurched inside of her. For a moment she had stood motionless, but the surging phalanx behind her pushed her on relentlessly, down into the lobby. After that one moment, she hadn’t been frightened. He wouldn’t notice her, even if he did he wouldn’t recognize Julie Guille in this small and shabby, faded girl. Automatically she had pushed her hair across her cheek. One step farther and she could turn her shoulder, shuffle with the crowd out into night, safe.

One step more. And he saw her, called out a sharp, surprised, “Julie!” She had known it would be that way. She had known when she saw his motionless, dark head there below that he would recognize her, that she would not be allowed to creep into the night unseen. Her luck had held steadfast for too many months now.

She hadn’t answered that first call. She’d turned the shoulder, pressed hard against the overcoat of the unknown dawdling in front of her. But the dark coat was too sluggish, those ahead of him too lethargic, the currents too twisted. The door was only a few paces ahead but it was blocked by too many coats.

Maxl had cut slantwise through the crowd, he was beside her, surprise and pleasure on his narrow face, “Julie! Imagine our meeting here. Like this.”

She was caught. And the smile on her face was as guileless as the one on his. She prattled, “Maxl! You in New York? Should I mention a small world?” The door was there now but she didn’t step through it.

Maxl’s yellow pigskin glove restrained her arm. “You must have a drink with me. Talk over other days—the good days . . .”

The walk on this side of Fifty-Seventh Street was crowded. Buses and cabs blocked the street. The pigskin glove swerved her to the corner. Unbelievably, there was an empty cab. She didn’t know if the meeting were accidental. If it were, it would direct suspicion if she refused. No one was suspicious of her in New York. No known person.

And that simply, she came to be sitting across from him in a Yorkville rathskeller. And now he was asking questions.

She folded her hands in front of her, looked at them, not back there at the burly man in the white apron. She said, “I managed to get to Lisbon.” She wouldn’t say any more of those dragging months. “There was a refugee ship. Finally it docked at Havana.” How many ports had it put in and been refused? The glaring sun of Africa. The spiced South American docks. Finally haven. “I waited there. A friend of mine”—her very blue blue eyes faced his defiantly—“a Cuban gentleman helped me.”

Maxl was grieved for her. “If I’d only known. I could have helped you, Julie. It is so easy. If you had only come to me.” He drank his beer tenderly. “But I thought you’d have no trouble.”

“Why?” Her voice was sharp and she hushed it at once. She wanted to warn Maxl to speak softly too, but she was afraid to let him know she had noticed the listening, watching waiter. Because it might not be chance that he had brought her to this place. He might know why the waiter kept his eyes unblinking on her.

Maxl’s shoulders moved. “You are an American.”

“Perhaps technically. Not actually. My father accepted French citizenship long before his death. I was reared in France. I have no citizenship. And I came from occupied France. No one to vouch for me.”

“Your aunt—”

She spoke on top of him. Her voice was too quiet. “Don’t speak of her.”

Maxl looked a little surprised. He broke off at once.

She waited until she could control her voice. She asked curiously then, “You say it is simple. But you are a German.”

“A refugee,” he said smugly.

She pressed it. “A German would not be admitted. How did you come into this country?”

He looked sharply at her, and her eyes were wide innocence. He laughed irrepressibly, bumped his mug on the table. Her glance jumped to the waiter in fear but he didn’t move. Another one came, another one brought the fresh mug of beer. She refused. She wanted to get out of here.

Maxl did lower his voice just a bit now. “If you can pay for it, it is easy. There are planes every week from Old Mexico into New Mexico.” His laugh was contagious. “A regular tram line. You pay for your seat, in you go!” He shrugged. “Or if you like—out you go. So simple.” He winked.

She touched her tongue to her upper lip. “Who runs this? Not—not the Gestapo?”

“Oh, no!” Now he looked over his shoulder as if he sensed a listener. Now he did drop his voice. “It is not run for governments—not for any governments, nor by any governments. It is a business venture, in Mexico and New Mexico. I ask no questions. A passenger does not question the carrier that transports him. Certainly not.” The line of his mouth was greedy. “It is a good business, this blackbirding. A big business.” Again he winked. His thumb and forefinger made a round. “I wouldn’t mind having a little slice of it.” His eyes were slits of obsidian. “It is like the American prohibition. No taxes to pay. You pay no tax when there is no business, no registered business. Certainly not! The receipts—some are very large—are all for you.”

She said quietly, “You learned a lot, Maxl.”

His thin chest swelled. “Maxl isn’t stupid, Julie. Reckless perhaps. Not stupid. I stayed about Santa Fe—”

“That is their headquarters?”

She had spoken too quickly. Wariness was a thin film over his spectacles.

“Did I say that? Santa Fe is the capital city of this New Mexico. In the records is there listed: plane service across the border, north and south? I think not.” There was a little suspicion. “You have heard nothing of this?”

“Nothing.” Nothing as definite as this. Only the whispers where refugees gathered. Only a name: The Blackbirder. She let a small sigh blow from her lips. “If I should have to leave this country quickly—”

He looked up, his nose pointed like a pin.

It wasn’t taking much of a chance; he had come in the wrong way too. He couldn’t betray her; they checkmated. It was worth the risk to learn more.

“If it should be learned that I entered illegally”—carefully she said it—“I don’t want to be locked up.” She took a moment to stifle her beating heart.

He smiled blandly, tapped the red swirls on his dark green tie. “You come to Maxl. I will fix you right.”

But his eyes retained suspicion. That was all for now. She knew. It would do no good to push further at this moment. Another time. She said, “You’re a good friend, Maxl.”

She reached for her worn brown handbag and the waiter’s white apron quivered. He brought his hands like great thick red paws to the front of it. She knew then she must get away, quickly.

She said, “I must go home. I have to be at work early.” Deliberately she spoke out, not trying to keep her voice down now. “I work at the Free French offices mornings, until I can find a better paying job.” A warning. The Free French would miss her.

Maxl said, “You are not afraid?”

“Afraid?” She couldn’t help but make the word quiver.

He paid their waiter, not rising until the man crabbed away. “That it is discovered how you came into the country?”

She spoke slowly, “Yes, I am afraid. But I must risk it. I am all alone here. If anything should happen to me”—her words rushed—“I mean if I were taken sick, or run over, you know—there would be someone to inquire for me. I take the risk that I will not be so alone.” She swallowed. “They are kind people, my own people. I don’t believe they’d ever give me away, even if they found out. They wouldn’t, Maxl. They’d help me.” Only she could never ask their help. She could never involve them. They had too large a burden. She must walk alone.

Maxl needn’t know that. If he and the waiter were—She realized then. She realized and her hands in their brown coat pockets were like snow. The watching waiter was no longer in the room.

THEY STOOD ON the sidewalk and the air of a too-early spring night was cold as her hands and her heart. She said, “Goodbye, Maxl. I’ll see you again soon.”

She would have to try to find a new place to live. He’d written her address in his little black morocco notebook there at the table, before she noticed the waiter. He’d written her own name, Juliet Marlebone, not Julie Guille, and under it her address and the telephone number.

He said, “I’ll see you home, Julie.” The shoulders of his fuzzy black greatcoat clicked back. He was recalling the Parisian gentleman. He hadn’t been a Parisian gentleman. He’d been a shabby German scholar, studying at the Sorbonne. He might have been a refugee from the Reich. He might have been the vanguard of the Reich.

She tinkled lightly, “Gentlemen don’t see ladies home in New York, Maxl. The distances are too great.” She hoped he wouldn’t notice that her teeth were chattering, or that he would think it was because the night was cold. Her worn brown coat wasn’t as comfortable as his heavy dark one. “I’ve learned that in my seven months here.”

He took her arm. “I will see you home in a taxicab.”

She couldn’t jerk away and run toward Lexington. It wouldn’t do any good if there were a reason for his determination. And if there were none, it would be foolish to arouse suspicions in a harmless Maxl. She let him help her into a cab, sit beside her. She spoke the address, an apartment off the Drive on West Seventy-Eighth Street. She didn’t like the wide back of the taxi driver. His ears squared out from under a greasy cap. She didn’t remember the ears of the watching waiter. She’d been too occupied with the caterpillar eyebrows, the skinned head with a stubble of black bristling on it.

She didn’t try to answer Maxl’s exuberances on the cross-town drive. Murmurs were enough. He wasn’t telling her how a shabby student who had fled a Nazi-ized continent became a lordly bourgeois with cab money and an expensive greatcoat.

The cab didn’t maneuver. It went swiftly through the quiet side streets to Fifth, down to the Seventy-Ninth Street transverse, across, down again, and across. It stopped at the dark worn brick front of her apartment.

She said, “Thank you, Maxl,” holding out her brown-fabricked hand, but he walked with her, up the four worn steps to the front entrance door. She had her key in hand and her teeth together. She didn’t know yet if there had been a purpose in this meeting.

He said, “Allow me.” She stood tensed as he took the key from her, opened the vestibule door. But he returned the key and stepped back. He removed his hat, bowed. He said, “I will telephone you and we will have dinner soon, Julie? Perhaps Sunday night?”

She said, “Yes, telephone me.” Perhaps she could move tomorrow, Saturday, be lost to him again. Perhaps there was a reason for this fear of him. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed the waiter. Perhaps he had been genuinely pleased to see her at Carnegie, lonely in a strange land, proud to show his new prosperity to one who had known him poor.

She softened. She smiled and took his outstretched hand. “I’d be delighted, Maxl. Telephone me.”

She stepped into the dim smell of old tiles, closed the door. She looked through the half-lighted pane, watched Maxl descend the steps and walk toward the cab. He stopped and his hand went into his pocket. She smiled. He wasn’t as prosperous as his pret...