Someday You Will

Spy Fiction by Tom Milani

In 1966, after nearly six years in Hamburg, Richter had gone back to what he did best. An intelligence agency provided him with housing in Virginia. His job was to photograph foreign assets in compromising positions, the agency’s penchant for irony apparently unlimited.

The work was sedentary in nature. To keep in shape, he liked to ride his bicycle just after sunrise. His exertions cut through the morning chill and gave his normally pale skin a golden sheen.

* * *

Richter didn’t see the bottle hit his shoulder, but he heard the laughter of a teenager as he called Richter a name. The blow caused the bike to wobble, but Richter didn’t go down. Instead, he braked hard and bent forward to loosen the toeclip on the right pedal. He freed his foot and rested it on the curb as he came to a stop. A boy with a broad back ran into the woods bordering the neighborhood.

The curse the boy had used worried Richter, who was unsure whether it had been uttered because of the cycling clothes he wore or for another, more personal reason entirely.

* * *

Maureen was the daughter of Richter’s next-door neighbor. Seventeen years old, she liked to talk with him over the chain-link fence that separated their backyards, complaining that her high school wouldn’t let her take shop class.

“I showed them,” she said, tossing Richter what looked like a small loaf of bread.

It had the density of stone. He held it below his nose and inhaled. “Did you bake this?”

“I left out the yeast,” she said, her lips, unlike the bread, rising at the corners.

Richter handed her the loaf. In one motion, she turned and threw it into the far corner of her yard.

“You have a good arm,” Richter said, thinking again of the bottle that had hit him.

“Could you give me a ride to Annandale? I dropped my car at the shop this morning for a new set of tires—it’s ready now—but my folks won’t be home until after they close, and I told Joanna I’d come over to her house to listen to Revolver.”

Her words spilled out in such a rush, it took Richter a moment to process them all. “I saw them many times,” he said.

“Saw who?” Maureen asked.

“The Beatles. In Hamburg. Ringo Starr wasn’t playing with the band yet.”

Maureen’s mouth fell open. “For real?” she finally said.

“Even then I could tell they were going to be stars.” Though he hadn’t imagined they’d be this big.

“About that ride?” Maureen asked, breaking the spell.

Richter had learned to drive, but not to drive well. Somehow, the quick-twitch reflexes that had served him so effectively in hand-to-hand combat were of no use when he tried to navigate rush-hour traffic. He changed lanes too slowly and merged into traffic too early. Being behind the wheel agitated him for an hour afterward.

Richter lobbed his keys over the fence. “Would you mind driving?”

* * *

Maureen cut the wheel hard as she blew through a stop sign, the car drifting to the left, the tires and engine making screaming noises he’d never heard. When she eased up on the gas, she said, “The three eighteen’s a good engine, but the car would be more fun with a three eighty-three and a four speed.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when I trade it in.”

“I really appreciate this. My mom never lets me drive.”

I wonder why, Richter thought. Near the spot where he’d been hit, the teenager who’d thrown the bottle stepped into the road. Maureen slammed on the brakes. The boy put both hands on the hood. He had blond hair, wide shoulders, and a dimpled chin. Maureen leaned her head out the window. “Jimmy, what the hell?”

He pushed off the hood and sauntered to the driver’s side, leaning forward to look at Richter.

“Giving a ride to your fairy godfather?” Jimmy’s lips formed a sneer, his voice tinged with disgust.

“What are you talking about? You’re making me late.”

Jimmy stepped back. “Ask him.” He made a kissing noise.

Richter hadn’t moved, but as Maureen gave the Plymouth gas, his thoughts, normally focused and orderly, caromed in his head like pinballs. Worse, Maureen looked at him differently, some combination of doubt and curiosity shifting her features.

* * *

Jimmy’s day was regimented into blocks consisting of school, practice, Friday night football games, and the parties afterward. Richter knew something about living in the shadows. If he was right, it was in the hours after those parties, before he went home, when Jimmy would be at his most vulnerable.

Richter put his bike and a backpack holding a camera and lenses in the trunk of the car, before driving to the high school. After the game, he followed Jimmy’s Mustang to a neighborhood not far from his own. With his window down, Richter heard the party from the end of the block, a handful of girls shouting the chorus of “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.”

Jimmy’s Mustang was parked before a cross street. Richter drove past it and turned, swinging a U-turn at the top of the hill and pulling over, the Mustang’s hood just in sight.

* * *

Two hours later, the Mustang headed onto an access road that led to an industrial park behind a shopping center. Instead of following, Richter parked in front of the grocery store and pulled his bike and backpack from the trunk. Instinct—and his own experience—guided him to a loading dock where the Mustang was parked. Richter listened until he heard voices. He rode to a low warehouse and pulled himself onto the roof. Lying prone, his camera lens aimed at Jimmy and another boy, Richter fired the shutter, the teenagers’ movements frozen in a tableau of light and shadow.

Back home, he clipped the drying photographs to a line strung above his bathtub, the images under the red light reminding him of the Reeperbahn.

* * *

The next day, he came come home late from an assignment in the city, momentarily careless, failing to see the boys flanking Jimmy at the edge of the carport. They had thick necks and sloping shoulders, the knuckles on their hands misshapen. Linemen, Richter guessed.

“My dad says perverts like you should be lined up and shot,” Jimmy said.

Jimmy and his friends had positioned themselves so that the car and house wall blocked Richter’s exit, not knowing that he preferred close-quarters fighting. He backed against the wall, narrowing the space through which they could attack him. The linemen rushed Richter. It was all over in fifteen or twenty seconds. Both boys lay on the ground, their bodies folded in on themselves. Jimmy swayed behind them, his expression a mix of confusion and fear.

Richter squatted in front of the linemen. “You,” he said, and both boys recoiled. “Get up. Now.” Jimmy stepped back as the boys pushed themselves upright. “Run,” Richter shouted. He held up one hand, signaling Jimmy to remain where he was. “Inside,” he said.

* * *

Jimmy sat at Richter’s kitchen table, drinking the Coke he’d given him. Richter’s hands ached from the blows he’d administered. He flexed his fingers before tossing an envelope onto the table.

“What’s this?” Jimmy asked.

“Open it.”

Jimmy held the envelope above the table, the color leaching from his face as the photographs fell.

“Souvenirs of your extracurricular activities,” Richter said.

“You can’t prove that’s me.”

Richter didn’t reply.

“What are you going to do with these?” Jimmy asked, the arrogance gone from his voice.

“They’re yours to keep. The negatives, too.”

Jimmy gathered the photos and negatives and shoved them back in the envelope. “I don’t understand,” he said, before running out the front door.

“Someday you will,” Richter said to himself, hoping it was true.

---

Bio: Tom Milani’s short fiction has appeared online in Black Cat Weekly, Urban Pigs Press, and Mr. Bull, as well as in several anthologies, including Janie’s Got a Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Aerosmith, In Too Deep: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Genesis, and Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Materialistic Eighties. Derringer finalist “Barracuda Backfire” was published in 2024 as Book 4 of Michael Bracken’s Chop Shop series of novellas. “Barstow,” originally published in Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir volume 5, was named an honorable mention in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2025. His first novel, Places That Are Gone, was published in May 2025. You can find him on Instagram @milanitom, on X/Twitter @tom_milani, on Facebook @Tom Milani, and on his website: www.tommilani.com.

Cover photo by the author

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