SERIOUSLY...?: A Lou Fleener Thriller

by Duane Lindsay

  “Anyway,” says Tucker, “The point is, the talker doesn’t know his voice is squeaky high.”

  That’s when the light bulb went off in Dick Sparks’ head and he bought three of them, netting Tucker Wapley a nice commission and Dick as a new best buddy.

  Now, sitting here in the squad room listening to the short guy— Lou— drone on about some old case, Tucker knows exactly what to do with it.

  He says, “Hold on, hold on, hold on,” which is what it takes to stop the guy guy— Lou— from talking until Thursday. “You got any more cards?”

  “Um, yeah,” says Lou, surprised. Going from nobody wants any to one guy wants a lot is a turn he didn’t see coming. He looks at the woman—half the squad room is looking at the woman—and asks for some cards. She pulls a short stack from her purse, hands them to the guy who hands them to Dick who says, “I know a lot of people are going to want to see these.” He’s nodding like somebody’s jerking his head and his eyes are glowing like a convert at a revival. “A lot,” he says again. “Of people.”

  “Hey!” He says, like it just occurred to him. “You got an address?”

  Lou says, “Well; yeah,” like, who doesn’t? He gives out his office number, explaining, “It’s the downstairs. Be sure to tell them that.”

  “Oh, I will,” says Dick, grinning like a jack o’ lantern that’s had a lobotomy.

  “Yeah?” Lou feels like he’s missing something here but doesn’t want to nix a good thing. He stands, goes to shake hands, remembers the joy buzzer trick and pulls back his hand. Dick laughs and says, “Not a second time?”

  “Well,” says Lou, “fool me once…”

  “Ha-ha,” says Dick.

  Once they’re gone he sits back in his chair with the happiest smile on his face, the one that makes everybody in precinct eleven walk a little nervous, inspect their cups and keys and cuffs and cars and smokes a lot more carefully than usual.

  He sits, thinking, for less than an hour, pondering the best way to play this new opportunity. Place the device right away? Set up some potential clients, then plant it? Deliver the chubby detective’s cards to important people with a setup so they’ll call him? So many possibilities for amusement. It doesn’t matter to Dick Sparks, as it wouldn’t to Tucker Wapley , that he won’t be there to hear the results. That isn’t the point. The best gags are the ones that have a life of their own.

  So he’s lost in the fog of creation known to all true artists when, for the second time in a single day, the desk sergeant yells out, “Yo Dick!”

  He looks up to see a very short, very old lady walking toward his desk, following the pointing arm of the sergeant.

  And when Sparks hears her story, he knows he isn’t going to need the Waldo nine-seven-zero telephone pitch modulator.

  Lou’s down in the garden level office. He’s got a small sign next to the stoop that goes up to the front door; Lou Fleener Private Eye, with an arrow pointing down next to the stairs.

  He’s saying to Cassidy, “He sure was an odd duck, wasn’t he?”

  “Who? The cop, Dick Smacks? He reminds me of some of the older guys in Rawlins, did the rodeo way too long and got kicked in the head maybe a few times too many. They hang around the bars telling stories and drinking about the good old days and now I think of it, that’s like the younger guys, too, so maybe it’s just all y’all.”

  She smiles at her own wit and kisses him on the cheek, taking his fedora and hanging it on the new coatrack she bought him at Sears.

  The place isn’t much for light, with exposed joists above and dim lamps below, but it has a full kitchen and Cassidy’s setting up the percolator for fresh coffee. Lou’s standing by his desk smoking a cigarette. When she comes over with a cup he says, “I dunno hon, it’s hard to imagine getting any clients here.”

  “They’ll come. I got a good feeling.”

  “Yeah, but when? It’s been two weeks.”

  “Jeez, Lou. How many clients did you have before? Let’s see.” She counts on her fingers. “There was the guy thinking his wife was cheating on him. There’s was the wife who thought her husband was cheating on her. There was the couple who wanted you to find them a swingers club so they could cheat on each other and let’s not forget this one; the gang lord who tried to get you killed.”

  “I had other clients.” Lou sounds exactly like Ralph Kramden on the Honeymooners show on television; Jackie Gleason at his funniest.

  “And you’ll have some here. Just give it time.”

  Lou sighs. “How long, do you suppose?”

  And the doorbell rings.

  The visitor is a middle-aged woman wearing a faded blue dress. She walks slowly after Cassidy lets her in and escorts her to the client chair in front of Lou’s desk. As she sits Cassidy is making eyes above her at Lou. See? A client!

  Lou mimes back, We don’t know that. She could be a neighbor.

  Cassidy shakes her head. She’s a client.

  Lou says, “How may I help you?”

  “You are a detective?” Her accent is European and very thick. Lou’s thinking Hungarian or Polish. She reminds him of several of Monk’s aunts, sisters of his mother who would all gang together to raise any child who happened to fall into their grasp.

  “Ma’am, I am. Yes.” Those aunts always made Lou nervous, with their gray hair and shining eyes, bony fingers that would catch an unwashed child and scrub cheeks until they glowed with spit and polish.

  “You are Mr. Fleener?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Mr. Lou Fleener?” The old woman’s eyes are sharp and suspicious, as if life is always trying to trick her. She’s leaning forward in the chair studying him.

  “Yes. Lou Fleener.” Lou manages to not point to himself.

  “And this,” says the woman, “Is your wife.”

  “Yes. Cassidy.” He does point to her. “And you are?”

  “I am Irina Podalack.” Her hair is the color and thickness of cobwebs, her dress is old but well cared for. Her shoes are the blocky brown things old women wear. Around her neck is a gold chain with a small star of David that she absently caresses from time to time, as if it’s a habit or a touchstone.

  “Pleased to meet you,” says Cassidy formally. She had aunts, too.

  “How may we help you?” asks Lou.

  “My neighbor,” says Mrs. Podalack and pauses.

  “Yes?”

  “He is a Nazi.”

  4 - You Mean Like a Nazi?

  Hell of an opener. Lou and Cassidy exchange glances and she asks, “You mean like a Nazi? Cold, mean? Angry?”

  “No. I mean, yes; he is all those things. But he is a real Nazi.” She raises a thin arm and pulls back the sleeve. On her arm is a faded blue tattoo of six numbers. “I was at Auschwitz, the concentration camp in Poland. He was a guard there.”

  More exchanged looks. “Um,” says Cassidy.

  “What,” says Lou, trying for words and not doing well. “Is he…bothering you?”

  “You mean, is he doing more than just being a Nazi?”

  “No. No. Well, yes.”

  “He doesn’t shoot guns at me or beat me or put me in a cell like he did before. But he is up to something.” She lets that trail off.

  “The war,” says Lou. “That was over fifteen years ago. There are no more Nazis.”

  “There are many, many Nazis, young man. Some escaped justice by hiding in the forests of Argentina. Some others found employment with other governments selling secrets or scientific knowledge. Many of them in your own country.”

  “No,” says Lou. “That’s not possible.”

  “It isn’t? Have you heard of Wernher Von Braun?”

  “I have,” says Cassidy. “The rocket guy, right?”

  “Yes. He was an engineer who built the V2 rockets that Germany rained down on England. After the war, many captured scientists went east or west to sell their expertise to anyone who wanted rockets.”

  “Like Kennedy’s space program,” says Cassidy.
She knows this because she adores the new president and his classy wife. She’s read every magazine article in Life and Look. Even the gossip mags that try to spread dirt.

  “Exactly,” says Mrs. Podalack. “The Americans are in a space war with the Russians. They will use anyone if it gives them an advantage.”

  “But your neighbor,” says Cassidy. “He’s not…?”

  “A scientist?” She coughs into a napkin and clears her throat. “Not him. He is a sadist. The worst sort of scum. He would make fun of us when we were prisoners, laughing when someone was too weak to get up from the forced labor. I remember he kicked one man to death when he couldn’t work any longer.”

  “Oh, my God.” Cassidy touches the old woman’s shoulder in sympathy. Her gesture is tentative, like, how do you comfort someone who says this?

  “What do you want us to do?” asks Lou.

  “I want you to follow him. Find out what he is doing. If he is the man I remember, he is up to no good.”

  “And?”

  “And when you find out, I will report him to the Israelis. They have not forgotten. They will never forget.”

  She gets up slowly from the chair, as if the act of rising is too much for her. “I am an old woman, Mr. Fleener. I lost my entire family to the death camps and for me it is not so long ago. I ask for your help.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” says Lou. “I’ll do what I can. I’ll come to your house tomorrow to get more information and get started.”

  Mrs. Podalack stares through pale blue eyes that have seen demons on Earth. Slowly she nods. “I believe you are the right man.”

  After she leaves, Lou lights up a smoke. He and Cassidy are silent for several minutes until Cassidy says, “Are you going to…?”

  “How can I not?”

  “That poor woman,” says Cassidy. “Do you think it’s true?”

  “Hard to believe in this day and age that there could be Nazis running around. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “Well,” says Cassidy, trying for a bright side. “At least you have a client now.”

  “I do. Swell. I’m going to hunt Nazis.”

  5 - Sure, Sure. The Neighbor is a Nazi

  “Nice house,” says Lou, as the door opens and he steps inside. He’s just making polite comments since he’s nervous being here and truthfully, he hasn’t seen enough of the place to make a judgement. Narrow, clapboard siding, red trim, single attic window looking down like it disapproves of the neighborhood. Some flowers, concrete walk, painted door with flowered curtains that swished closed as the door opens.

  Irina Podalack, in the same or similar dress, steps back to let him in, one hand on the door handle, the other on the gold chain on her neck. Lou takes a step into a cramped living room filled to overflowing with brightly polished maple furniture. There are floor lamps with tasseled shades and crocheted doilies covering every surface. There are a hundreds of pictures in frames covering the walls, all black and white, mostly faces, posed and unsmiling, men and women and children and a horse.

  Irina turns and leads the way through a formal dining room with a massive credenza and a table that cold seat twelve if there was any room left over for chairs, into a dark kitchen with a sink, a stove, a metal table with two vinyl chairs and a white Westinghouse cooler rumbling softly in the corner.

  She says, pointing at a cup on the table, “Coffee? Tea?”

  He says, “No, thank you; I’m fine.”

  She says, “Thank you for coming.” She seems smaller than Lou remembered, and sadder. The fiery resolve, the angry insistence that he come here have been replaced by a nervous chatter.

  “The house next door has been vacant for…oh, seven months?” She touches fingers, counting. “Yes. Seven months. Since the last tenants, an Italian family with nine noisy children moved away. And good riddance.”

  She goes to the sink and stretches to reach the curtains. Her back is toward Lou and her voice is spectral in the dim light.

  “I know I shouldn’t hold on to hatred…God says ‘Judge Not, lest ye be judged’…but the Germans…” The back of her head is swaying back and forth as she visits someplace Lou never wants to see. “The Germans are devils. But the Italians were their puppets and their allies.”

  Irina drops the curtain and spins around, the fierce old woman back in control.

  “It’s been fifteen years since the liberation, Mr. Fleener, since the Americans roared in with their jeeps and their trucks and saved the lives of the few people left alive in the camp after the Nazi were chased away. I was nearly fifty then, a skeleton only, my husband worked to death, my children scattered and, I later learned, dead.”

  Lou swallows, wishing he’d accepted the coffee, something to do with his hands as he listens.

  “The Americans brought medicine, food and, perhaps, a small measure of hope. I moved to the United States as a refugee, on a ship, through Elis Island beneath the shadow of your Statue of Liberty. Do you know it, Mr. Fleener?”

  Startled, like being in school when the teacher asks a question, Lou says, “Lady Liberty? Sure. Took the Staten Island ferry once, visiting some relatives in Brooklyn. I was maybe ten, maybe eleven…” He’s babbling, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

  “I lived at first in a tenement flat in New York City, walking up five flights every day. I did sewing and laundry and I learned English and I saved my money and one day I took another train…”

  Lou has a sudden image of the first train she’d been on, boxcars crammed with people on their way to hell. He lights a cigarette and Irina bustles to a counter and snaps an ashtray on the table.

  “The American Flier, it was called; two days to Chicago in such luxury as I have never imagined. I came here,” she gestures, maybe meaning America or Chicago or this tiny dark room filled with demons, “To find a distant relative, a cousin of my father. Saul Kaminsky.

  “Saul,” she says, “Was a good man. Quiet, but hard-working and faithful. He took me in.”

  “Was?” asks Lou.

  “Mmmm. I lived here with him for six years. Took care of him when his eyesight faded. That’s probably what caused him to lose his footing that day at the Adams street elevated platform.”

  Her tone changes from pensive to present and she sits across from Lou at the table. “I inherited this house and the furniture and all the pictures. My family, I suppose, though I really don’t know who many of them are. The horse is a complete mystery. Are you here to help me?”

  There’s that abrupt question thing again and Lou’s caught off-guard, again. He says, stalling, “Well…”

  Lou doesn’t really want to take the case but Cassidy’s been firm. “You don’t have anything else to do,” she reminded him as she poured coffee, setting it on the table by his smokes. She didn’t make him a sandwich when she sent him off but she did send him off.

  “You’ll do fine. See if she’s telling truth, see if the guy’s a monster, find out what he’s up to if he is.” She smiles widely. “Easy. I wish I could go with you.”

  “You can,” he says. “We can go together…”

  “Nope. Promised to help Monk set up his office. Can’t go hunting Nazis.” She was still shaking her head as she pushed him out the door.

  Now he’s here and more uncomfortable than he’s even been and Mrs. Podalack is watching him like she can read his thoughts; which are, pretty much, Nazis?

  She says, “Come.”

  “That’s him,” says Mrs. Podalack, pulling back the gauzy curtain in her kitchen. “Erich Klaussner. I will never forget him!”

  Her house is on the southwest side of the city, a small bungalow tucked in a twenty-five foot wide lot and the neighboring houses are only six feet apart. Lou can almost read the food labels in the cupboard.

  In the kitchen is a tall man with close cropped blond hair. Lou, seeing him bustle around, is thinking he’s central casting for the Nazi Colonel, the one who orders the death of the friendly old scientist who refuses to give up the top secret super-w
eapon. A lot of movies about the war have been running though Lou’s head since the old woman’s visit yesterday. He and Cassidy stayed up late watching Casablanca on their RCA television and Lou’s having trouble not falling into a Bogart accent.

  Though large, the man doesn’t look like a menace as he slices some bread and spreads mayonnaise for a sandwich. He looks like any other guy getting ready to go to work; in an office downtown maybe, or a blue-collar job as a supervisor on a construction site.

  Certainly not a Nazi.

  Now, Mrs. Podalack says, “He goes out somewhere every day at this time. He comes home every day at five. Regular, every day; he goes out, he comes back. What kind of place can he be going to?”

  “A job?” says Lou.

  But she ignores the obvious and shakes her head. “No. A regular job is not for a man like this. Look at him Mr. Fleener. Does he look like a man who could be content in a normal job?”

  Lou’s thinking, what does that kind of guy look like? But he says, “I don’t know. I still think he just has a job.”

  “There!” She says, excited. “He is leaving. You should go over there, search his house. Find out what he is doing.”

  “Mrs. Podalack; I can’t just break into his house. I got no grounds to do that.” Also, no legal right, although in other circumstances that wouldn’t be a problem. Lou, like any private investigator, takes a loose interpretation of the law, which is one of the reasons police don’t like them.

  But the old woman isn’t listening. She’s pushing him toward the front door, through the tiny living room overflowing with heavy oak furniture, too much for such a small space, all polished and stained to a bright shine.

  “You go,” she insists. “He won’t be back until five. He won’t know you’ve been there. You go!” With surprising strength she gives a final shove and slams the door behind him.

  Seems a lot of pushy women in his life lately. Lou’s on the front porch in the bright sunshine of a pleasant spring morning, wondering, now what the Hell am I supposed to do? He takes a few steps on the thin concrete sidewalk and looks back. Mrs. Podalack is at the front window holding back the curtain, making shooing motions with her free hand.