Back from the Dead

by Peter Leonard

  He opened the cash register behind the counter and took 150 Bahamian dollars. The manager’s office had a couch. He removed the hat and jacket, lay down, exhausted, and closed his eyes, listening to the sound of police sirens in the distance.

  In the morning he felt better. He scanned the street from the front window, unlocked the front door, walked out of the shop and down the street, hailed a passing taxi, and rode to Lucaya.

  Hess sat at an outdoor cafe overlooking the marina, sipping coffee, watching clouds drift in over the glistening turquoise water that turned a darker shade of blue further out. He watched Bahamian police in their distinctive uniforms patrolling around the docks, checking boats, talking to owners. When the police were gone he paid his check and walked down to the marina. There were half a dozen yachts with Florida registry. Two, he noticed, were from Palm Beach. He was admiring a big Hatteras from Fort Lauderdale named Knotty Buoy when a dark-haired guy in sunglasses walked out on the aft deck with a flute of champagne in his hand.

  “Just looking at your boat,” Hess said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “You a sailor?”

  “Once a sailor always a sailor,” Hess said, going back to his southern accent. “My last one was a ’68 Trojan.”

  The Hatteras owner smiled. “Last of the wooden boats. Nothing prettier than that polished teakwood deck and hull. All teak inside too. You have the thirty-eight or the forty-two?”

  “Forty-two. Twin diesels cranking out six hundred forty horsepower.”

  “Do twenty-four knots I’ll bet. Still own her?”

  “Sold it when I moved to Atlanta,” Hess said, total fabrication.

  “Why the hell’d you do that?”

  “It’s a long boring story,” Hess said.

  “Come aboard. I’ll show you around.”

  Hess went over the transom and climbed down the steps to the aft deck.

  The man came toward him, arm outstretched. “How you doing? Tony Brank at your service.”

  Brank was short and muscular, shirt unbuttoned to his navel, gold chain around his neck, longhair pulled back in a ponytail. Forty-five. “Emile Landau,” Hess said, shaking his hand. “Brank. That’s an unusual name. What nationality are you?” Wondering if he was a Jew.

  “Eye-talian. Brancaleone originally,” he said, pronouncing it with Italian flair. “I needed something shorter, snappier.”

  Hess could hear police sirens. “What’s going on?”

  “Some crazy bastard killed a nurse in the hospital last night. Police are looking for him. Searching every boat. You’re not the guy, are you?” Brank frowned, and then broke into a grin. “Just fucking with you, partner. Come on in.”

  Hess followed him into the cabin and through a salon that had a sectional couch on one side facing a built-in television. The couch was covered in zebra-skin fabric, the lampshades in leopard. The ersatz Serengeti decor puzzled him. At the opposite end of the salon was the pilot station, with a set of controls to steer the boat, compass, Loran. Brank led him down a couple of steps to the galley, the room done in teak with Formica countertops. He could see the neck of a champagne bottle sticking out of a silver ice bucket.

  “Champagne?” Tony Brank said. “It’s Taittinger’s.”

  “How can I refuse?” Hess said, smiling.

  Brank opened a cupboard door, reached in and brought out a flute, filled it halfway with champagne, bubbles rising to the rim of the glass, and handed it to him. He poured more in his own flute, held it up and said, “To salty dogs.”

  Hess toasted him and sipped the champagne, tasting the fruity chardonnay grapes.

  “What do you do, Emile?”

  “I’m a builder,” Hess said. “Homes. Office buildings. Whatever you need built. What about you?”

  “Erotic films,” Brank said, tracing the comb lines in his hair with his fingertips. “See Twat’s Up, Doc?

  “No, but it sounds familiar,” Hess said, no idea what he was talking about.

  “Christ, I hope so. Longest-running adult film of all time. Twelve million in domestic grosses, twenty worldwide. Orientals ate it up. No pun intended. Bought this boat with the proceeds.”

  A blonde in a nightgown walked into the galley behind Brank, yawning and rubbing her eyes. “Tony, will you keep it down? I’m trying to get some fucking sleep.” She paused, fixing puffy eyes on the Taittinger bottle. “You’re not drinking champagne, are you? What the hell time is it?”

  “Babe, say hello to Emile Landau.”

  She glanced at Hess and looked away. “I’m not saying hi to anyone the way I look.” She turned and walked out of the room, hips swaying, the looks and natural glamour of an actress or model.

  “Anything with tits or batteries,” Brank said, “eventually’s going to give you trouble. My wife, Denise. Recognize her?”

  Hess shrugged.

  Brank grinned. “Star of Deep Six.” He drank some champagne. “Helluva picture.” He scratched the hair on his chest like a caveman. “She was an auto-parts model posing in a two-piece, holding a suspended crankshaft like a big steel dick when I met her. Discovered her, really. High-school dropout from Bay City, Michigan with a body that wouldn’t quit. I’m looking at her bazooms and I go, ‘Kiddo, I’m going to make you a star.’ She looks at me, giggles and goes, ‘Okay.’ Rest is history.” Brank grinned thinking about it, finished his champagne, belched and went up the steps to the salon. Stopped, looked back and said, “I want to show you something.”

  Hess followed him outside and up a wide, slightly curved aluminum ladder with white plastic steps to the flying bridge, trying to hold the champagne glass without dropping it. There was a white plastic chair bolted to the deck behind a sleek control panel, steering wheel and throttles, windscreen that wrapped around the front, canvas Bimini top pulled taut above them. Behind them there was a dinghy on the overhang of the aft deck.

  “Got twin Detroit diesels pooling seven hundred fifty horses. Had them tweaked to do twenty-six knots.”

  “A boat this big? I’d have to see it to believe it,” Hess said, challenging him.

  Brank smiled now. “Oh, I get it. You’re from Missouri, huh? Okay,” he said, starting the engines. “Want to see for yourself, huh?”

  Hess could hear the rumble of the exhaust pipes stirring up the water.

  “Think you can release the dock lines?”

  From the captain’s chair on the flying bridge Brank steered the Hatteras, zigzagging through the marina, Hess sitting next to him on a built-in bench made of fiberglass, sipping champagne. Just past the seawall Brank gunned the throttle and they took off into open sea, picking up speed, hull rising, slicing through whitecaps, cruising in deep water within a few minutes, flat blue ocean stretching to the horizon.

  Brank, hands on the steering wheel, said, “Check this out.” Hess got to his feet and stood behind Brank, glancing at the speedometer. They were flying through the water at twenty-six knots.

  “What I tell you?” Brank said, grinning.

  They cruised until the land behind them had disappeared, Brank glancing at him, a bemused look on his face. “What do you think?” Yelling over the sound of the wind.

  “What’s that?” Hess said, pointing at the horizon.

  “An island.”

  “Which one is it?”

  “No idea. There are like seven hundred of them. I was going to pull over for a while, maybe take a swim. I’ve got suits, you want to join me.”

  Hess said, “I have to go below for a minute.”

  “Head’s on the other side of the galley, down the steps on the left,” Brank said. “You’re not getting seasick on me, are you?” Hess shook his head, although he did feel queasy, still not himself.

  “See Denise, tell her to make us some lunch.”

  Hess saw the ship-to-shore radio on the counter next to the cabin controls. He went down the steps into the galley, opening drawers and cabinets, found a flare gun, a Buck knife, a Smith & Wesson revolver. Broke the gun open, saw it
was loaded, and put it back.

  “What you looking for?” Denise said, walking in the room behind him.

  He glanced over his shoulder at her in a bright orange bikini, blonde shoulder-length hair combed straight and tucked behind her ears, face looking flawless under a fresh layer of makeup. He stared at her heavy breasts bursting out of the small bikini top.

  “A Band-Aid,” Hess said, thinking of an excuse. He closed the drawer.

  “Over here.” She came up next to him, opened a cabinet door and took out a box. “You have a boo-boo? Let’s see.” Earlier, Hess had nicked his index finger on the stairs, climbing to the flying bridge. There was a small mark where the skin had been cut. He showed it to her.

  “That’s it? You big baby.” She opened the box, took out a Band-Aid, removed the wrapper and rolled it around his finger. “How’s that? Big baby feel better?” she said. “Sorry about earlier. I was tired and crabby as if you couldn’t tell. I’m Denise.”

  She offered an elegant red-nail-painted, long-fingered hand. Hess took it and brought it to his mouth, kissed it delicately, and said, “Emile, and the pleasure is all mine.”

  “Well you’re just a gentleman’s gentleman, aren’t you?”

  “Tony said if I see you, ask you to make lunch.”

  “Aye, aye,” she said, saluting. “Better go talk to the captain, see what he’s got in mind.”

  He watched her hips on long tan legs sway up the stairs to the salon. Now he opened the drawer, picked up the revolver and slid it in his jacket pocket. He took the Buck knife, went up to the pilot station, cut the receiver cord on the radio, and went back on deck.

  Rausch had been killed in a bizarre shooting by Colette Rizik at her mother’s residence in Bergheim, Austria. Colette, the Der Spiegel journalist, claimed self-defense. Zeller found it difficult to believe that a woman, an amateur with no combat training, had out-gunned a former soldier and firearms expert.

  Arno Rausch had lived with his mother in a pre-war apartment building near the English Gardens until the old lady had a stroke and was moved to a nursing home in Hanover where she died in ’67. Herr Braun had said no one, to his knowledge, had set foot in the apartment since Rausch was killed, so whatever clues were to be found were evidently still there. The apartment was dark and stuffy, drapes closed, dim light shrouding heavy overstuffed furniture from the thirties. He opened the drapes and now it looked like someone’s grandmother lived there, not a fifty-year-old man, Zeller scanning bookshelves filled with Hummel figurines and antique plates. And a wall covered with cuckoo clocks that had all stopped working. Why on earth would Rausch have kept the apartment like this? Even the mother’s bedroom appeared untouched, clothes hanging in the closet, grey hair webbed in brushes and combs in the bathroom as if she had been grooming that very day.

  The apartment, cluttered with old-world bric-a-brac, was an odd contrast to the squared-away neatness of Rausch’s room with its framed military insignias and weapons: pistols, rifles, shotgun, sub-machine gun and assorted combat knives. Rausch, it appeared, was a big German momma’s boy, who, if provoked, might be able to single-handedly take out a platoon.

  Zeller had found cardboard boxes stacked in the closet. He carried them out, and set them on the floor in the salon. The boxes were filled with files on former Nazis, prominent citizens still living in Germany, police officers, politicians, judges. There were profiles and photographs in each of the folders, Zeller wondering why Rausch would have this information – until he dug a little deeper and discovered the boxes were the property of a Jewish organization known as the ZOB that helped German authorities find and prosecute war criminals.

  There was a file on Ernst Hess, profiling his life, Nazi party affiliation, SS number and alleged war crimes, including several photographs of Hess in an SS uniform, posing in front of a pit filled with dead Jews. Similar pictures had been featured in the article about Hess published in Der Spiegel.

  There was an audio cassette in the folder that said Cantor Interview on the label in black marker. He slid the tape in his pocket, took the ZOB file on Hess and walked out of the apartment. He went back to his car and drove to the autobahn.

  Zeller listened to the tape on the way to Wiesbaden. The interview was really a conversation between Lisa Martz of the ZOB and a Holocaust survivor named Joyce Cantor. Joyce, now an American citizen, was visiting Munich for the first time since the war, and bumped into a former Nazi in broad daylight on Maximilianstrasse. The Nazi had been responsible for murdering hundreds of Jews in the forest outside Dachau concentration camp in April, 1943.

  Her story was corroborated by a second survivor, Harry Levin, who had positively identified the Nazi as Ernst Hess. Although no names were mentioned, these eyewitness accounts were the basis of the article about Hess in Der Spiegel. The article appeared October 12th. But Hess had already disappeared a couple weeks earlier. He must have known he was going to be prosecuted.

  Zeller arrived in Wiesbaden at 5:17 p.m. Parked and got out at Kaiser-Friedrich-Platz, saw the neo-Gothic spires of the Marktkirche and made his way through the marketplace. Vendors were starting to close up for the day, breaking down their stalls, packing their goods in vans and trucks.

  He crossed the street, entered a building he hadn’t been to since his time with the Stasi, rode the elevator to the fourth floor and walked to the end of the hall. Zeller knocked on the door.

  “We’re closed,” a voice said from inside.

  He turned the handle, surprised it was unlocked, opened the door and went in. “That’s no way to talk to a former client.”

  Leon Halip, sitting in a leather swivel chair, was studying an image on an angled drafting table, high-beam gooseneck lamp providing illumination. He looked over the top of his eyeglasses at Zeller, massaging swollen fingers, one hand rubbing the other. Next to him a dark-haired teenager was trimming the border around a photograph with an X-Acto blade. Leon Halip at sixty-two looked like an old man, blinking and squinting, trying to focus on him.

  “Former client, uh? So former I do not recognize you.”

  “Friedrich Benz.” It was the name on the forged documents Leon had made for him years earlier when he left the Stasi.

  Leon smiled and nodded. “Ah, yes, Herr Benz. August 1963, if I’m not mistaken. Of course I remember you.”

  “I heard you were no longer in the trade,” Zeller said. “But you appear hard at work, and I see you have an apprentice.”

  “I still have an eye, is the hands that no longer function.” His arthritic knuckles looked like red grapes, swollen and painful. “My grandson is learning the profession.”

  The kid resumed his task, running the blade along the edge of a metal ruler.

  Leon Halip, with a heavy Hungarian accent, said, “You think I am out of the business, so why are you here?”

  “What name did you use on Ernst Hess’ passport?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The grandson glanced at Leon like he wanted to correct him, but didn’t say anything.

  “Interesting you can remember me from eight years ago, but not Ernst Hess from less than one month.”

  “It is impossible to remember something that did not happen, Herr Benz.”

  Zeller drew the Makarov from the side pocket of his leather jacket, aimed it at the kid. “Now you see I’m serious.”

  “You point a gun at my grandson. You don’t think I would tell you if I knew?”

  Zeller took the suppressor out of his coat pocket and screwed it on the end of the barrel.

  “Gerd Klaus,” the old man said.

  “You’re sure?”

  Leon Halip kept his eyes on Zeller and nodded.

  “When was he here?”

  “Twenty-eighth of September,” he said, pulling on the end of his mustache.

  “Where was he going?”

  “We don’t get involved beyond the papers. You should know that.”

  Zeller raised the Makarov and shot the boy fir
st and then turned the gun on Halip and squeezed the trigger.

  “Klaus flew Stuttgart-London-Detroit the twenty-ninth of September, arriving in the morning of the thirtieth,” customs agent Fuhrman said by phone. “Five days later he took a flight from Detroit to West Palm Beach, arriving the fifth of October.”

  “Anything else?” Zeller said.

  “From what I can see that was the last commercial flight Herr Klaus has taken.”

  Zeller was now convinced that Hess leaving the country had nothing to do with the Der Spiegel article. He was going after the Holocaust survivors. Taking out the witnesses would dilute the prosecution’s case. That’s why he had not withdrawn or transferred any large sums of money. He had been planning to come back, but something had happened.

  “We’ll stop here for lunch,” Brank said.

  The Hatteras was in turquoise water about five meters deep when they dropped anchor near a small deserted island with a white sand beach. Brank took off his shirt and folded it over the back of a chair on the aft deck. The blue shorts he was wearing were swim trunks. Brank raised bent arms, flexed his biceps and grinned. He was a hairy little ape wearing a gold chain with a gold horn on it, the mano cornuto, worn by superstitious Italians to ward off cuckoldry. And he was married to an erotic film star. It couldn’t have been more incongruous. Brank strode across the deck, climbed up on the transom, arced his arms and hands over his head, and dove into the ocean, swimming under water and then surfacing, floating on his back. “You’ve got to come in. It’s wonderful,” he said, kicking along the side of the yacht, grinning at Hess. Ernst was thinking he should fire up the engines and speed off with the erotic film star, leave Brank frolicking in the water.