Malice: An Alex Bell Mystery

By Susan Thistlethwaite

Malice is an historical mystery novel set in a few momentous weeks in the spring of 1961. As the Kennedy administration is barely underway, congressional aide Alexandra Bell works to stop a CIA catastrophe in the making, the botched invasion of Cuba. Meanwhile, her roommate, Gwen Gray, joins the Freedom Rides, the bold civil rights initiative that challenged southern segregationists on their own home territory. The language of freedom is everywhere in the beginning of the 1960s, but both Alex and Gwen soon realize it is often hypocritical and the real agenda is violence and suppression. These two young women will not surrender their hopes for a more just America, but they are up against enormous forces that threaten to crush each of them without hesitation. The events of those weeks and the outcomes defined the opposing American approaches to power for well into the twenty-first century. Indeed, the events of those weeks set in motion the forces that are today tearing the fabric of American democracy apart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jun 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666773316

Susan Thistlethwaite

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is President Emerita and Professor Emerita at Chicago Theological Seminary. She is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ. Upon her retirement from CTS, she became a fiction writer and has two fiction series to date. She has an M.Div. and Ph.D. from Duke University and a BA from Smith College. She has authored an edited numerous academic works.

Book preview

1

Alex

March 1961

Miss Bea sneezed. Little bits of flowers were blowing around, falling from the long line of trees around the water, trees bending from having too many blossoms. And when they swayed in the strong breeze off the water, the small, pink pieces fell all over. They were even getting up her beagle nose and their sweet smell was so annoying. She sneezed again.

Why are we even running here? the little dog grumbled to herself. Their usual run was in the other direction.

She sneezed again and then dared to sniff. A powerful smell was overcoming the flowery scent.

Blood!

Miss Bea, quivering, recognized the scent right away. She knew the smell of human blood. There was blood and it was close. Those bushes over there, she thought excitedly, and she left the path and ran straight into the dense undergrowth along the adjacent river.

Bea, come back, Alex Bell called out, stopping a moment to catch sight of the little dog. Alex, whose real name was Alexandra Sophia Bel, was a tall young woman with a whip-thin runner’s body and a mass of dyed blonde hair now hidden under a dark watch-cap.

To get her job as a senator’s senior aide, Alex had adopted the more British spelling of her last name, going by Bell and not the Hungarian immigrant Bel of her birth name. She hid a lot about her background in her new life in Washington, DC, and she ran long distances to escape all the tensions and contradictions she lived with, at least temporarily.

Dawn was still an hour away, but her eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness. Moonlight glinted off the water of the broad Potomac River running swiftly as it passed the Tidal Basin and the cherry trees springing into bloom around it. The pearly light revealed the droplets of her warm exhale in the cool air that rose from the river. Alex and her dog, a beagle, Jack Russell mix, ran most mornings along the Potomac River, but usually farther north. Today she had wanted to see the famous cherry trees about which she’d heard so much without the enormous crowds that would follow in a few hours.

She waited for a moment, listening, but the little dog did not return, and Alex sighed. She entered the maze of bushes and trees and was jolted by a piercing whine.

Bea! It’s okay. I’m coming, Alex called. Was Bea hurt? She crashed forward toward the continuing cries.

She spotted Bea who was standing over something, her snout in the air, her open muzzle giving off repeated cries.

Alex ran up and then stopped like she had been jerked back on a chain.

Oh, no, Bea. Not again, Alex gasped. Miss Bea had discovered a dead body on another one of their runs, and it had been horrible.

Next to the dog was a man lying flat and still on the slightly frozen ground. Had Bea nosed up another corpse?

Then the little dog started to lick the man’s face, and there was a groan.

This person was alive.

Okay, okay, Bea. I’m here now. Stop that, Alex said as she knelt in the leaves and dirt next to the prone man. She couldn’t help noticing he was well dressed in a grey wool and silk blend suit. It was beautifully cut, but the blood seeping through a large slash in the fabric had ruined it. She realized the well-cut suit had soothed her. From her Hungarian immigrant family and their work in tailoring, she had learned to recognize quality in clothes. Then her natural caution reasserted itself. Mobsters wore well-cut suits too, she thought as she looked at the man on the ground.

He groaned again and opened his eyes. His ice-blue gaze gradually focused on her.

Help me, he breathed.

Stop the bleeding, Alex thought. The man’s face was dangerously pale, likely from loss of blood.

She pulled his suit jacket apart. The jacket felt oddly heavy on one side. She unbuttoned his shirt. There was a large gash along his left rib cage, below and to the side of where his heart still beat. Blood seeped out and trickled down his side.

Alex had taken a mandatory first aid class in college and knew at least she had to bind up the wound and get the bleeding stopped.

She realized the man was watching her now. Miss Bea was sitting by his head, watching the man for any sign of threat to Alex.

She stood up and ran over behind a tree where she unzipped her nylon windcheater and shrugged it off. Underneath she wore a simple, white cotton, short-sleeved shirt. She quickly pulled the shirt off over her head and put the light jacket back on and zipped it all the way to her neck.

She went back to the prone man, folded her shirt, and kneeling next to him, pressed it to the wound. He groaned again.

She’d have to use his shirt to bind this makeshift bandage.

Go ahead, he said, his voice a little stronger.

Alex pulled on one sleeve of his suit and then the other. She unknotted his tie and pulled it off. Then she pulled on the sleeves of his white, cotton, broadcloth shirt.

Now to get the shirt wrapped around the bandage, she thought.

She reached down and pulled the shirt as gently as she could further down his back. It was not easy as his full weight was on it. Then she took the sleeves and tied the shirt around the pad she’d made over the wound. She tried to make it firm, but not too tight. He needed to breathe.

There, she said. That’s about all I can do unless I have my needle and thread. She looked up at him. He was staring at her.

Sit up, he said through gritted teeth.

I don’t think that’s a good idea, Alex said, looking at his milk-white face.

Up, he said, starting to struggle.

Okay, she said, and she got behind him and lifted his shoulders. He was a big man, but slim. She held out one sleeve of the jacket and helped him slide his hand through it. She noticed for the first time that the knuckles of his hands were cut and bleeding. There had been a fight, clearly. She held out the other sleeve, and he groaned deeply as he moved that side of his body to get the arm in the sleeve. That accomplished, he sat slumped over.

Alex noticed a small, leather folder on the ground a short distance away. It had been thick, but now it lay open, exposing the interior. She went over, picked it up and saw the leather covering had been slashed. Inside there was a gold-tinted shield with CIA stamped on it with US below and an eagle above. The opposite side held an identification card with a photo and the name Alan Bannerman below it. The photo matched the man on the ground.

She tucked the folder into the pocket of her windcheater and went behind where the man sat panting from his exertion. She grasped his shoulders and helped him move back two feet so he could lean against a tree trunk. Then she knelt by his side.

I’m Alexandra Bell, Mr. Bannerman. I am a senior legislative aide to Senator Madeleine Carpenter, and I believe this folder may have saved your life. She took it out of her pocket and placed it on his lap.

Card. Number, Bannerman said in a whisper.

Alex picked up the folder again and looked inside. There was indeed a card in a slot on the side behind his photo identification. She pulled it out. It had a phone number. Just a number.

Go. Now. Call and tell them where. No police. No police, you hear me? Then run away, Alexandra Bell. Far away. His voice got increasingly harsh, and Miss Bea growled low in her throat. She moved over next to Alex. She clicked her back teeth, ready to bite if necessary.

Do it! he hissed.

I will, Alex said, starting to think about where she could find the closest phone booth. Probably the parking area back toward Independence Avenue, she thought. It was not very far.

Go! Alan Bannerman groaned, clearly exhausted just from sitting up. He leaned his head back against the tree.

Alex turned and ran, Miss Bea running beside her.

They quickly reached the lot. There was only one car. It appeared to be empty. There was a phone booth. As she ran up to it, Alex hoped the phone had not been vandalized. She yanked open the door and saw the handset at least seemed attached. She shut the door, leaving Miss Bea outside. Bea liked the smells in phone booths and was offended Alex did not let her in.

Alex called the number on the card and deposited the required amount of change. She always carried some change and a few bills on a run for emergencies, or, more likely for a cup of coffee on the way back to her apartment.

The phone rang and rang, but no one picked up. Instead, finally there was a tone and a low-level hiss. She hesitated and then said quickly that an agent, Alan Bannerman, was hurt and gave as precise directions as she could. The tone and hissing stopped. Had she left a message? She didn’t know. She hung up and stood stock still, looking at the nearly empty parking lot.

Call the police or not? Bannerman had insisted she not call the police, and Alex had a deep-seated fear of any law enforcement, not only from her labor organizer family in New York City, but also from her own encounters with them here in the nation’s capital.

Despite Bannerman’s urgency that she get away, she decided to run back and see what he wanted her to do.

Come on, Bea. We must go back.

Bea shook her ears, the closest a dog comes to a shrug, and she followed Alex.

But when she got to the spot where she had left him, Bannerman was gone. It was the right place, she could tell. There was the blood on the ground. She looked around.

Where was he?

2

Gwen

March 1961

You see that sign, boy? White only? What you dumb? Can’t speak, prob’ly can’t read either!

Gwen Gray stiffened in her chair, trying not to show any emotion at what was going on right in front of her. Her face hurt from the effort to keep a neutral expression. And she wasn’t even one of the volunteers going through this nonviolence training right now.

You got a white shirt on. Maybe you figure you white, but you brown from the top to the bottom.

The white man playing one of the segregationists leaned his face forward almost touching the face of the Negro volunteer who was standing still, a fixed calm on his face. The white man’s brown, crew-cut hair stuck up from his head like little soldiers who knew their duty not to move even when the head they were on got right up into the volunteer’s face.

The white man walked over to where his white partner stood and then moved behind three people seated at the table that was supposed to be the lunch counter. He went behind the white woman sitting there and took a ribbon out of her hair. He looped it around her neck. Her pale face flushed, but she didn’t flinch.

Gwen tried to keep her breathing even, though the death threat was barely concealed. Her own brother had been murdered only months before, brutally beaten and left to freeze out in the snow. Gwen felt that cold all the time. Her brother had been killed for being who he was, a Negro man trying to protect others, protect the democracy he loved so much.

The two white men playing segregationists moved over to the white male volunteer sitting at the table.

It was so odd to Gwen that the group of trainees for what were called the Freedom Rides were both Negro and white. She’d only known a couple of white folks who would stand up for Negro rights. Her roommate, Alex Bell, was one. But Alex had her own struggles with being accepted as the child of immigrants from central Europe. She knew a little about prejudice, anyway, Gwen thought. But not all, not by half, and Alex tried to be oh, so white. Yet Gwen knew Alex was afraid all the time of being discovered for who she and her family really were.

Gwen flinched. One of the white men playing the segregationists was yelling.

White boy, what you doin’ sitting when your brother over there is standing? Southern boys, we stand up when there are ladies present. Stand up, stand up now.

The white trainer hauled the white male volunteer up to his feet and pushed him. His partner pushed him back. Back and forth they kept pushing him between them. The trainee kept his hands lightly together in front of him and his body relaxed as they shoved him around.

Hey, did he hit you? the one white trainer exclaimed.

Yeah, yeah, he did, said the other, continuing the lie.

Together they shoved him down flat on his back on the table.

Then there was laughter and applause and the trainees and trainers all broke character.

Can I stay here, even to watch? Gwen wondered as she shakily took a handkerchief out of her purse. She had unconsciously hugged her purse to her chest as the session had begun, she realized now. The tension in her body eased a little. Her purse was just something to hold on to when the ground under her feet felt like it was shifting.

Should we do this? she wondered. She knew what her brother Stephen would say. Yes, change doesn’t come from wishing it so, Gwen. You must make change.

Suddenly the lead trainer, a Negro woman who seemed even younger than Gwen’s age of twenty-four, gathered the trainees and trainers together for the next phase. Gwen knew this woman had already spent time in jail for her nonviolence work in the south.

Things to do, she said matter-of-factly, looking at each one in turn.

The waitress comes up. You have to establish communication right away and for as long as possible. When she becomes hostile, stop. You’ve said you have a right to be served, but now say no more. Don’t look at each other. Look down. Pick a spot on the table and look at it. If you look into somebody’s else eyes, that’s going to be more frightening. Don’t move your hands. Keep your hands on the top of the table. If you made the mistake of wearing your glasses, take them off. Don’t wear your glasses. If you’re pushed to the floor, stay there. Don’t get up. Don’t talk to them or look them in the eye after any hostility. Just go limp. Don’t move your arms. They are looking for any excuse to say their actions were in self-defense. There will be one spokesman for each group.

And then, they played it out. After the trainees got up off the floor, the whole group broke up for water or coffee and to discuss how it felt.

One person in the observer group asked the lead trainer if she thought the actions of the two white males playing the segregationists were exaggerated in their aggression.

No, she said, taking the time to look at each person in the room.

If anything, it’s not harsh enough, but people here need to know what they’re getting into. These segregationists can be very, very vicious. At times they put lit cigarettes at the backs of girls’ necks or cut off their hair.

But if they know that, won’t it just scare people away? someone else asked.

Some, perhaps. But those who do go need to be committed.

Why are you going on the rides? an older white man in the audience asked of the white male trainee who had been shoved around. "This is clearly not your