“You needn’t worry about us. What was that thing you said we had, Margaret?”
“A dead man’s switch. If anything happens to us, the proof will automatically be sent to the Drug Enforcement Agency. We’ve got everything figured out, Dinah. All you have to do is put us on the right train. The subway map in our Frommer’s guide looks confusing as a basket of two-headed snakes. God’s sakes, how do people decide which direction to go?”
Chapter Six
Dinah stuffed the doll back in her purse and, feeling slightly nauseated, went downstairs to the toiletten. The conversation she’d just had was an object lesson in the anthropology of lying. She felt fated, born into a cult where the only certainty was the knowledge that everyone lied, but inconsistently. Occasionally they told the truth so you could never know for sure. Margaret didn’t give off any signals, but her mother transmitted a highly dubious vibe. The question was whether they were in imminent physical danger from this Hess character and, if so, what to do about it. The answer to all of her what-to-do’s lately had been to call Thor. Her queasiness passed and she sat down in a rickety wicker chair in front of the basin, took out her cell, and dialed his number.
“Ramberg.”
“Hey, Ramberg, I hope I didn’t catch you in the middle of dismantling a bomb or foiling a plot for world domination.”
He laughed. “I’m waiting for the Kenyan ambassador to get off the phone so I can take him to lunch.”
The reassuring sound of his voice lifted her spirits immediately. “I miss you, Thor. I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole and you’re my lifeline to reality.”
“You sound miserable. What’s wrong?”
“Me, my family, my whole life.”
“Tell me.”
And in that moment, she knew that she couldn’t. Not yet. Not over the phone. Not the whole truth. She would give him an abbreviated version—the critical facts now and fill in the non-urgent ones later. “The thing is…” she cast about for a way to present “the thing” without emptying the entire bucket of worms. “The thing is, someone may be trying to kill my mother.”
“Kristus! What happened?”
She described the hit-and-run and the mutilated Indian doll left outside the apartment door. “I’ve begged her to go home, but she has other…she says she won’t.”
“But you’re all right? She and your friend Margaret are all right? No injuries?”
“Just to the Golf. It’s drivable, but the left rear door is smushed and the right side is scratched and dented.” She wavered. She didn’t want him to overreact and fly home. “The driver of the other car fired a bullet into the Golf.”
“Sheisse!”
“It didn’t come close to anyone,” she lied.
“Does your mother know anyone in Berlin? An ex-husband or jilted lover?”
Before they moved in together, Dinah had confided her mother’s checkered marital history to Thor. She worried that she had inherited her mother’s inability to sustain a long-term commitment, and felt he deserved fair warning. “Mom has a Facebook friend whose hobby is playing cowboys and Indians, and another man who attends the powwows was a business partner of one of her ex-husbands.” The nature of Cleon’s business was one of the non-urgent details she’d rather omit for the time being.
“Where is the ex-husband now?” asked Thor.
“Dead. He died four years ago.”
“Was there a beef between the ex and this partner? Any reason why he’d try to take revenge on your mother?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so.”
“I want you to call Jens Lohendorf. He’s a detective working out of Directorate Three. I’ve worked with him once or twice. He knows Berlin, underbelly and all, and he’ll treat the situation seriously. Hold on. I’ll give you his number.” There was a pause.
Dinah fidgeted. How seriously did she want the situation treated?
“Here it is.” He read off the number. “You’re sure you’re all right? Say the word and I’ll come home this afternoon, kjære.”
“No. The police are already involved. They think the driver was a drunk and the doll was probably some harmless initiation rite, put there by one of the Facebook Indians.” Had she left the impression that she’d reported the doll? That the police thought it was harmless?
Thor wasn’t buying it. “Whoever’s responsible, the knife wasn’t harmless. Give it to Lohendorf. He may be able to lift fingerprints.”
“Yes, I will.” Another lie. She would toss that knife and forget about it if she could persuade her mother to abandon her scheme and go home. To sic the police on Hess would only stir up questions about his connection to Cleon and, by declension, Cleon’s connection to her. She said, “I think the safest thing is to get my mother and Margaret out of town pronto. I’ll put them on a train to Paris this afternoon and maybe ballistics can turn up a lead.”
“I thought you said they had refused to leave.”
“They don’t want me to feel slighted if they cut short their visit. They’ll leave.”
“Okay.” His tone was skeptical. “But in the meantime, promise me you’ll call Jens.”
“I promise.” She didn’t know what she had expected him to say other than “go to the police.” It was the only smart thing to do, for someone with nothing to hide.
He said, “The ambassador’s walking out of his office. I’ll call you later today.”
They swapped a few quick intimacies and said good-bye. She pondered her reflection in the mirror above the basin. How many lies could she tell before she wouldn’t be able to look at herself? Before she turned into a dyed-in-the-wool convert to the cult of Cleon Dobbs? She despised herself for not coming clean with Thor at the start of their affair, but the more she felt for him, the harder it became. The fear of losing him had paralyzed her. But she couldn’t carry this guilt any longer. She stood up and, in a determined voice, announced, “I will tell him about that damned dirty money the very next time we talk, so help me God.”
The toilet flushed behind the stall door and she nearly jumped out of her skin. The anger she’d been holding back spilled over. She said, “You should be ashamed of yourself,” and marched out of the room and up the stairs to have it out with her mother.
Margaret was alone at the table, dabbing at her eyes.
“Are you crying?”
“Damn cold makes my eyes water.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“She went back to the room. She wants to preen her feathers before we visit her friend, Florian.”
Dinah sat down and tore off a piece of Dinkelbrot. “It’s not like you to do something crazy like this, Margaret. You’ve always had more sense. More aplomb.”
“Aplomb?” She crimped her mouth. “What the hell is that?”
“You know perfectly well what it is. Balance and self-control and—”
She snorted. “Sangfroid? That’s what Cleon called it and he didn’t mean it in a good way. He meant it literally. Cold blood. As it turned out, I was more cold-blooded than he imagined.”
Dinah recalled every detail of that day. The glare of the sun, the roar of the gunshot, the smell of her own fear and Cleon’s blood. She said, “He tried to kill himself, but he didn’t have the cojones. You did him a favor, Margaret.”
“The prosecutor said I did it for revenge.”
“You had cause for revenge. But I think you did it to help him escape, to get away clean. I think you still loved him. I think you love him even now and that’s why you resent my mother.”
“Love. What a trap.” Margaret covered her face and erupted into a series of violent sneezes. When the fit passed, she said, “At the trial, you testified that he would have shot you if I hadn’t shot him first. I appreciated the lie, but you know he would never have hurt you. He loved Swan far too much to hurt one of her cygnets.”
Dinah could only marvel that Cleon’s sick obsession with Swan still galled Margaret. “I don’t know what he’d have done. They say murder gets easier after the first one or two.”
“Ya’ think?” One corner of her mouth quirked up like a grapefruit knife. “Life is strange. I never thought I’d join forces with your mother to shake down one of Cleon’s old gang.”
“Are you broke, Margaret? Are things so bad you have to resort to extortion?”
“Bad enough. The benefits from thirty years of teaching school in Echols County, Georgia, are strikingly slim.”
“If you’re so gung-ho to become an outlaw, you can take control of the Panama money. I’ll sign it over to you today. It’s a curse, but it’s yours if you’ll take it. I know you’d be fair to the children. Help me convince my mother to forget this crackbrained idea to blackmail Reiner Hess and it’s all yours. Is it a deal?”
“No. That money scares me more than Hess.” She pressed a handkerchief to her nose and mopped her eyes. “Swan and I talked this over for a long time before we made up our minds. For every con I thought of, she came up with two pros. If you ask my opinion, I think she has more in mind than Reiner’s money.”
“What do you mean?”
“She never speaks Bill’s name except in pity. Poor Bill this and poor Bill that. He’s had some setbacks. I don’t know anything about their finances or their marriage, but it wouldn’t surprise me if your mama is on the prowl for a new man.”
“Hess?” Dinah felt queasy all over again.
“Him, or maybe that Thunder Moon bird. Farber.”
Dinah bit her tongue. Swan’s track record with men might not comport with the Christian concept of family values, but she wasn’t the tramp Margaret made her out to be. In fact, Dinah would bet that her mother had never once had extramarital sex. She was a stickler for marriage, even if the marriages didn’t last. The only reason she’d given for divorcing Cleon was his habit of leaving her alone so often while he traveled on business. Dinah suspected there was more to it than that, but Swan had married Hart Pelerin soon after the divorce. He undoubtedly had a hand in wooing her away from Cleon.
Margaret must have sensed her annoyance. She said, “I shouldn’t dis Swan. She paid my way over here and she’s trying to help me get back on my feet with a cut of Reiner’s money. I’m sorry if I was out of line.”
“Forget it.” Dinah glanced at her watch. Swan ought to be finished with her primping by now. She dropped the ropes of uneaten Dinkelbrot onto her plate and wiped her hands. “Let’s go up to your room and discuss some more pros and cons.”
They took the elevator to the second floor. Margaret stuck the key card into the slot and opened the door. The curtains were open and the room dappled with splotches of tenuous sunlight. A vase of dahlias rested on the table between two queen beds and the hum of a hairdryer emanated from the bathroom.
“Come out and talk to us, Mom. You’re spiffy enough.”
She didn’t answer and Dinah tapped on the door. “Mom?”
Still no answer.
She turned the knob and peeped inside. The hairdryer lay humming on the side of the basin, but Swan was gone.
Chapter Seven
Dinah took out the number Thor had given her and opened her phone. She had no choice now. Her mother had been abducted. She said, “It must have been Hess. He had to have taken her out past the front desk. Go ask them, Margaret, while I talk to the police.”
“Wait. She left a note. Gone ahead to meet Florian at his art gallery and run some errands. Y’all don’t have to come if you don’t want to, but here’s the address.”
It didn’t sound like it was written under duress, and Swan was notoriously absentminded. Maybe she just set down the dryer and walked away, negligent as a child. The address she gave was on the Kurfürstenstrasse near Breitscheidplatz, one of the busiest squares in the city.
Dinah stopped off briefly at her apartment, with Margaret on her coattails like a stick-tight. She hid the Indian doll in her bureau and took out the Smith & Wesson snub-nosed revolver that Thor had given her. She stowed it in the center pocket of her shoulder bag and tried again to dissuade Margaret. “You’re sick. You should stay inside or you’ll catch pneumonia.”
“Bring it on. They don’t call it the old person’s friend for nothing.”
“Good grief, Margaret. You should be on Prozac.”
They walked to the U-bahn station at Hausvogteiplatz, around the corner from the apartment. At the station entrance, Dinah reviewed her subway map. She jogged down the stairs to the trains, hoping to lose Margaret in the crowd milling around the tracks, but the woman proved remarkably spry for an old boiler with a head cold. Dinah stuffed a few coins in the ticket dispenser and hopped aboard the train at the last minute. Margaret squeaked through the closing doors in the nick of time, ticketless.
They found seats across from a young couple in soccer-flag T-shirts and cutoffs. They had matching leg tattoos from ankles to knees, stretched earlobes with silver flesh tunnels, and a bottle of beer, which they passed back and forth between them.
“If I’d known you could drink on the train, I’d have brought a traveler,” muttered Margaret.
“You can’t want a drink at this hour. It’s not yet ten.”
“I’m still on Georgia time.”
As the train gusted through the tunnels beneath the city, Dinah worried the little piece of spray-painted concrete in her pocket, allegedly a chip off the Berlin Wall. Every souvenir shop in the city sold them by the gross. She knew it was fake, but it had a nice indentation for her thumb and she had rubbed it smooth. She rubbed it now and tried to assay how much of what Swan and Margaret had told her was true, and how much delusional nonsense. She thought about her mother striking out on her own in a huge foreign city where she didn’t speak the language, to meet a man she’d only met on Facebook—a German who styled himself as Thunder Moon. Was this Thunder Moon a separate manifestation of Swan’s insanity, or was he the go-between to Reiner Hess?
The train ground to a halt and the doors slid open. The couple with the beer got off and a platoon of Chinese tourists crammed inside. Margaret sneezed explosively and they covered their mouths and shrank away toward the rear of the car. The doors slid shut; the train gusted on and gathered speed.
Margaret said, “I’ve been watching how you are with Swan. You’re tense as a wire, like you’re afraid she’ll blurt out something terrible. Maybe something you can’t forgive.”
“Such as?”
Margaret declined to go out on that particular limb, but ventured onto another. “Do you love her?”
It was a snide question. Backhanded and presumptuous, but painfully on target. Dinah wished she could come back with a resounding yes. The fact that she couldn’t, made her feel like a traitor. How could she not love the woman who brought her into this world, who taught her to read and ride a bike, who played piano duets with her and filled her head with songs and Mother Goose rhymes and fairy tales? But there was a wall in her heart, love on one side, doubt and dread on the other. The doubts began with Cleon’s admission that he had killed her father. Did Swan know and, if she did, when did she know? Dinah couldn’t delete the question from her internal hard drive. She was afraid to hear the answer, yet she couldn’t come to terms with the past until and unless she did. But however conflicted she might be, her feelings about Swan were none of Margaret’s beeswax.
The train slowed as it approached the next station and she stood up. “She’s my mother, Margaret. With all the Sturm und Drang that implies. And this is our stop.”
The knot of Chinese passengers shoved their way out the door ahead of them. Dinah weaved her way through the mob onto the platform and followed the arrows to Kurfürstenstrasse. She heard Margaret huffing behind her, but she didn’t look back. She jogged up the stairs to street level and headed toward the central shopping district.
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There are almost no old buildings in Berlin. The Allies bombed the city to rubble during World War II and the new Berlin is a mosaic of uber-modern architecture and rampant development. Boom cranes sprout across the skyline like dandelions and the noise of construction is so constant that you cease to notice. One of the more curious sights is the jungle of gigantic pink, yellow, and blue pipes that parallel the streets, snake around corners, climb and loop overhead. At first, Dinah had thought it was some kind of art installation. In fact, it is plumbing. Berlin sits smack in the middle of a swamp and before a new building can be erected, water must be pumped from the foundation pit into the River Spree or one of the canals. Emerging onto Kurfürstenstrasse, they passed under and through a labyrinth of blue pipes.
Rows of shops selling everything from vinyl records and funky hats to designer fashions and elegant jewelry lined both sides of the street. The face of Chancellor Angela Merkel smiled serenely from a large political billboard. The country had trusted her to steer the ship of state for the last eight years and just this past weekend, voters reaffirmed that trust and re-elected her in a landslide. They called her Mutti, or mommy.
In the window of a second-hand bookshop, the lurid covers of pulp crime novels reminded Dinah of the gun inside her purse. She stopped and stared at the images of blood-drenched corpses, terrorists brandishing machine guns, and scantily clad babes with pouty lips and pistols. Feeling slightly absurd, she shifted the purse from one shoulder to the other. She ought to call that policeman Thor had mentioned, but there was no point until she knew whether her less-than-trustworthy Mutti had been snatched or gone off of her own volition.
“You won’t get rid of me so easily,” said Margaret, coming up alongside her. She wheezed and blew her nose. “Are we close?”
“It’s somewhere in the middle of the next block, I think.”
Where the Bones are Buried Page 4