by James Thayer
"Even the official German story is seamy. Goebbels' press said Hitler almost single-handedly stormed the hotel in Wiessee where Roehm and several other SA officials were staying. Hitler marched to Roehm's room, stood outside the door, and yelled, 'News from Berlin, Herr Roehm.' When Roehm shouted, 'Come in,' Hitler burst into the room, where he found Roehm in bed with a young boy. Hitler screamed at Roehm about the SA chief's treacherous acts and then had him arrested and sent to Stadelheim prison. Several days later, Roehm was given a pistol with one shell in it and told to do the honorable thing. He refused. Ten minutes later someone opened his cell door and shot him several times. Rudolf Hess has bragged he was Roehm's killer."
Heather involuntarily cringed at Hess's name. She asked in a low, tight voice, "And the others?"
"No one knows how many were killed. The SS used the supposed Roehm plot to get rid of their enemies all through Germany. It was the first mass murder under Hitler's command, and it was the night Hitler became the absolute dictator of Germany. He did it with the help of Rudolf Hess."
It was the low point of their afternoon. Telling her of Hess's infamy was not part of his grand design to flush out Miguel Maura's murderers. It was a foolish attempt to shake her loose from her employers, to put a chink in her loyalty, to make her think about what she was doing, as if he was in eighth grade telling a favorite girl nasty rumors about the boy she had a crush on. It didn't work then. It wouldn't work now. It was juvenile, but as Sackville-West had said, her time would come. She would soon leave his life, leave it violently and permanently. Crown was desperate. He wanted to be her first priority.
It was a confused, fumbling tactic, and he gave it up. Heather had committed herself to the perfidy and was probably being well paid for it. Matters of the heart rarely surfaced through sizable doses of money. Those who believed otherwise weren't familiar with a hard profession.
After dinner they walked through the lobbies of several hotels along Michigan Avenue. It was an enjoyable pastime Crown had picked up years before. He viewed lobbies of the prestigious hotels just as he viewed French impressionism—artwork that should be appreciated and preserved. It always pained him when the massive chandeliers came down to make way for more modern lighting or when the circular leather couches were replaced with sofas and easy chairs. There should be a museum of the great hotel lobbies.
They descended to the Illinois Central Randolf Street station and boarded the train for Hyde Park. As Crown knew it would be, the station and train were crowded with commuters en route to South Shore, Blue Ridge, and Rocky Island. Crown and Heather sat on the car's uncomfortable wicker seats as the heating vents along the floor pumped suffocating amounts of hot air into the packed car. His eyes watched commuters' hands.
An interminable age later, the conductor called the Fifty-ninth Street station, and they exited the car. Crown gulped the cool air as if he had been holding his breath since Randolf Street. He opened his coat wide and felt the wind chill his damp armpits. From the station ramp they saw the long row of cars winding their way through the midway. The headlights were suffused by smog and fog and were smeared together like a string of Christmas-tree bulbs seen through a frosted window. At the far end of the midway the headlights disappeared in the mist like an apparition.
They descended the ramp's steep steps to Fifty-ninth Street and walked south across the midway to Heather's hotel. Crown walked quickly to keep abreast of the five or six people walking his way. They were his shield to the hotel.
Crown paused at the hotel door, as he had on previous evenings. They put their arms loosely around each other and began the little ritual that marked the end of a day together.
"It was fun today, Heather. I'm not looking forward to you going back to London."
"I'm not either." She lightly nuzzled his neck.
Crown glanced quickly through the hotel doors to the lobby phone booth, where in a few minutes he would again confirm Heather's duplicity. That goddamn phone booth. With a suddenly tired voice he said, "Well, we've got another interview with Hess tomorrow. I'll see you then."
Once again it was a maladroit, blundering good-bye produced by the intermingling of his desire for her with his fear and disheartenment over what she was doing to him.
She clung to him longer than before, and he thought he felt her tremble slightly as she pressed into him. One of the pensioners who live in the hotel, a gray-haired old lady with a dilapidated mink stole wrapped twice around her throat, passed them on the steps and clucked appreciatively.
Heather released his neck and looked up at him for a long moment, until Crown dumbly asked, "What?"
"John," she whispered with a voice he had never heard before, "I don't want you to go tonight."
"What?" He had heard her. He needed time to think. Was he being set up? Were gunmen waiting in her room?
"I want to be with you tonight," she said softly as she gently pulled him into the hotel lobby toward the elevator.
Crown's mind raced. He was being seduced or murdered, and he didn't know which. With his hand concealed by his overcoat, he pulled the Smith and Wesson from his waistband, pulled back the hammer, and aimed it at Heather's side. She was unaware of it as she told the elevator operator her floor. It was an old rule in Crown's profession, a rule clearly understood and honored by all countries' agents. The one who leads you into an ambush is the first to die. It made the bait think twice before volunteering for the task. Crown's feelings for Heather caught up with his training as the elevator climbed. He lowered his gun, but only slightly. He would make the decision when forced to do so.
The elevator bounced to a halt on the fourth floor, and as the operator pulled the accordion door back, she looked at him and said in a low, reassuring voice, "My room's this way, John."
Crown waited until the elevator had disappeared, and then raised his pistol behind her. She clung to him as they approached her door, and didn't notice Crown's darting eyes or his halting breath. Heather disengaged herself from him in front of room 412 and fumbled in her purse for the key. She had stopped smiling, and her hands were shaking. The key scratched against the lock for several seconds before she calmed herself sufficiently to insert it.
She swung the door open, and as she turned to him, Crown put his arm around her back, once again concealing the weapon. She wrapped both arms around his neck and said, "John, help me. I'm not very good at this."
He increased tension on the trigger and said, "Sure, honey. You go in first, and I'll be right behind you."
She looked at him sharply. "That isn't what I meant. I'm nervous. I've just made a brazen, forward fool of myself, and you're not helping." She kissed his neck and ran her hand along the flat of his stomach.
"I'm nervous, too, Heather. More than you know. You just go on into your room."
She stepped back quickly, confused by his refusal to take charge of their awkward moment. Her wide eyes reflected her bewilderment, but before she could say more, Crown smiled as best he could and with his free hand turned her shoulders and prodded her into the hotel room. He positioned the gun alongside her head and bent into a crouch as she walked ahead of him. A stupid move. She was probably nothing more than bait. The murderers would shoot through her into him. But maybe her going first would make them pause for two seconds. That's all Crown wanted, two seconds.
They entered the dark room. Crown flicked the light switch and tensed. A bed, a chair, a nightstand and lamp, and her open suitcase on the floor. Nothing more. Crown thrust the revolver under his coat and crossed quickly to the bathroom. Nothing. He jerked open the closet door. A few hanging dresses, and nothing else. He exhaled for the first time since the elevator, and felt the adrenaline pump quickly fade.
Heather stood near the bed with her mouth open slightly. Crown felt brainless.
"Are you always this jittery when entering a lady's room?" she asked, her voice devoid of the mocking tone it deserved. "I thought I was the jumpy one."
"I'm sorry, Heather. I do that all
the time. I guess I've been in the business too long." He didn't think she had seen the gun, now back in his waistband.
She looked at him with her luminous green eyes, and the full meaning of the moment revealed itself to Crown. There was no danger tonight. She hadn't been setting him up for his death, at least this time. He was alone with her in her room because she wanted him like he wanted her. Now was the time to reach for her and hold her, but he was giddy and unsure of himself.
"John," she said with a seductive half-smile, "you're as clumsy as I am."
He could not respond, so he nervously cracked his elbow several times. His throat was dry and tight, and he could feel his temples pounding. He had the sensation of being outside his body watching this romantic melodrama. He was both a player and a spectator.
She crossed the room with the walk of a woman completely in control of her sensuality. Her arms circled his waist inside his coat and lifted the shirttail. Her arm brushed the Smith and Wesson but ignored it as she rubbed the skin of his back.
Crown felt like he was leaning over the observatory railing of a tall building, deathly afraid of the height, yet pulled by the lure of a beautiful, descending, silent death. Heather was leading him to his death, yet he was powerless to resist, powerless to protest.
They kissed fiercely and he pulled her tightly against him and heard her sharp inhalation. Her hands moved to his shirt buttons, and she said, "You know, there's historical precedent for this."
"Judas," Crown breathed.
"Sure," she whispered as she pulled at the belt. "All you Yankees have come to England to entertain defenseless British women whose boyfriends are away at war. So I've come to America to reciprocate. Fair's fair."
He didn't laugh. No more kidding. No danger. Only her. There was a rush of confused hands and burning desire. No time for exploration or communication. They grasped each other convulsively and made love violently and quickly, taking more than they gave. And after they shuddered to completion, they talked about a future together, and Crown knew there could be no future for them.
The second time was gentle and sweet, looking into the other's eyes all the while, communing with their bodies, reveling in their discoveries, loving each other. Crown's last thought before he drifted into sleep was whether she had been paid to do this, too.
XIII
PADDY FLANNERY WAS HUNG OVER before he was awake. An angry throb pulsed his temples and reached through layers of sleep to drag the Irishman to consciousness. He resisted, trying to sink back to anesthetized slumber. Through the film of half-sleep, Flannery knew this was not his current nemesis, the nitroglycerin headache. This was an old archenemy, the rye-whiskey hangover. It thundered Flannery into piercing wakefulness.
He creaked his eyes open. Even this simple movement echoed with pain. He stared at his room's ceiling and blinked several times to draw his eyes together. His nose was plugged. His mouth was plaster-dry. He dry-swallowed and worked his mouth in a futile attempt to generate saliva. His tongue was thick and uncooperative. Undulating pain worked in his eyeballs and ears and brain. There was no difference, he hazily decided, between a cheap-whiskey hangover and this expensive-whiskey hangover.
Not one of Flannery's limbs had moved since he had wrestled his shirt off, stumbled out of his shoes, and drunkenly fallen into his bed a few hours before. As he lay staring at the ceiling, he tried to recall where he had drunk his whiskey. Remembering was too painful, so he gave it up. He slowly flexed his left hand and moved it up the side of his pants to feel for his wallet. The familiar lump was there. He had not been rolled. Thank God. All his mailbox money was in his wallet.
Flannery rested his hand on his forehead, wondering whether he was sufficiently thirsty to brave the misery of moving to the sink for water. The foul yellow-brown taste in his mouth had about decided the issue when Flannery heard a sharp metal click from the other side of his room. His eyes twitched wide. It was not his radiator, which had a bass bang when filling with steam. Nor was it the draperies' pull string as it tapped against the window, bounced by the ever-present draft. This was a distinctly foreign sound. Flannery's face tightened with fright. Oblivious of the headache, he swiveled his head to the sound.
Willi Lange sat on the bedside chair with his submachine gun resting on his lap pointed at the Irishman's head. The small gunman was relaxed, and his face was devoid of expression, but his brown eyes surveyed Flannery with professional precision, searching for dangerous movement.
"Jesus," Flannery croaked with terror, "don't shoot."
He slowly rose to a sitting position on his bed, his eyes never leaving the little man's weapon. Lange did not move.
"Get up."
Flannery twisted to the terse command from the foot of his bed. Erich von Stihl stood with his hands crossed, dressed in his hobo's guise. Flannery saw the corded muscles of von Stihl's neck and his tight, curly hair and immediately knew he was not a hobo. Next to von Stihl loomed Hans Graf, a huge, dangerous-looking man a head taller than the speaker.
"Don't shoot," Flannery repeated, his voice quivering.
No one moved in the room. Seconds passed, and he was still alive. Encouraged that they weren't going to kill him outright, he added, "What do you want?"
"We want you to get up and get ready to leave. Now." Von Stihl's voice was level and in complete command.
"You guys can't come in here and boss me around, for Christ sake. I got—"
Hans Graf's arm pumped and thrust his SS dagger into the arch of Paddy Flannery's right foot. With a crunching tear, the blade sank to the hilt, and the bloody tip instantaneously popped through the top of the foot in full view of the incredulous Irishman.
In the second before his brain registered the pain, Paddy Flannery opened his mouth to scream. Graf leaned forward and stuck the stubby end of a Schmeisser almost inside the Irishman's mouth. The big hobo slowly shook his head, and Flannery knew a scream would be the end.
Graf whispered in a voice so menacing Flannery almost forgot the agony in his foot, "Next time I'll stick your throat."
Graf yanked the blade out, and Flannery spasmed with hot pain. Tears of anguish flowed down the Irishman's face as he held his violated foot. It bled over his hands onto the bed sheets. He curled his tongue to the back of his mouth to squelch a sob.
"Once again, get up and get ready to go," said von Stihl. "You have time to wrap your foot if you hurry."
Breathing laboriously through teeth clenched with pain, Flannery stripped the top sheet from the bed. Blood soaked through the sheet as he bunched it around the injury. With one hand on the sheet to keep it on the wound, he hopped painfully to the bathroom. Willi Lange followed and stood near the bathroom door as Flannery tore the sheet into fragments and used them as bandages. With the mustachioed hobo peering in at him, the Irishman knotted the strips and gingerly placed his injured foot on the bathroom tile. He winced as his foot squished and shot pain up his leg. He gripped the sink to straighten himself for a second step. His entire leg from the knee down seemed on fire as he stepped through the bathroom door. With each step, Graf's blade seemed to pierce Flannery's arch again. The gangster collapsed in the chair vacated by Lange. The first white tinges of shock flushed through Flannery's head. He breathed hard to shake it off. Failure to respond for any reason could be fatal.
"Nice work with the dynamite schedule, Flannery," said von Stihl as he sat on the mussed bed, avoiding the pool of blood. He took the black paper from his shirt pocket and tore a small end of it. He delicately peeled the paper, which Flannery saw was actually two gauze-thin pieces lightly glued together. When the sheets were separated, von Stihl discarded the carbon and with satisfaction held the white sheet in the window's early-morning light. Neatly printed on the sheet was a copy of the dynamite-delivery schedule Nancy Harter had typed the day before.
"Do you know where Addison Avenue is, Flannery? Addison Avenue at the intersection of Ridgeland?"
The Irishman nodded mutely.
"How long wil
l it take us to get there in a car?"
Flannery flinched with sudden knowledge. He had suspected his theft of the dynamite route was for a hijacking. Now he was certain that these men, these three men dressed as hobos but who talked and acted like no rail travelers Flannery had ever come across, were the hijackers. The pleasant and distant relationship with the mailbox had ended.
"How long, Flannery?"
"Uh, ten, fifteen minutes. No more."
"Do you have a car?"
"No."
"Can you steal another one for us?"
Still clutching his injured foot, Flannery replied, "Sure, easy." Maybe that's all they want today, a car. Flannery's hopes brightened at the thought of another quick two hundred dollars.
"Put your clothes on and let's go."
Flannery found that if he walked on his tiptoes, the gash through his foot hurt less. He struggled into a white shirt, which smelled of smoke and whiskey from the night before. He grabbed two socks from under the chair and shook dust from them. He carefully pulled one over the bandage. As he cautiously tried on his shoe over the wrap, he asked, "You guys interested in a particular make of car?"
"No," von Stihl answered, "just one that'll get us to the intersection."
"You know," Flannery ventured as he reached for the coat he had dropped on the floor the night before, "I ain't honkin' my own horn or nothing, but I'm a pretty fair car booster."
"So we understand," von Stihl said with a slight smile.
A compliment from one who has ultimate control over another's life is intoxicating with its implied promise of lifesaving indispensability. Flannery swelled with hope and continued, "Well, if you guys need more cars or know any people that do, I'm your man."
"We'll see," said von Stihl easily, "but right now we've more important work to do. You're an old gangland hand, aren't you?"
"I . . . I don't know what you mean."
Of course he was, but it was not a topic of open conversation with outsiders. This was his standard answer to police questions.