by Various
* * *
He half-awoke in the night to find the girl smoking a cigarette by the window. He saw her profile in silhouette. She reclined, nude, her long legs drawn up to her chest. There was a long cigarette holder between her lips. He stood up, naked also. The girl didn't turn her head. He went to the sink and filled a glass with lukewarm water, and downed it. He turned to the girl. From this angle he could see her face.
"She made us watch her in this old movie," the girl said. "Over and over again, to teach us how to walk and how to talk."
" Die Große Liebe ?"
The girl looked at him vaguely. "What's that?" she said.
"An old movie. It was very successful."
"This was Der blaue Mond . It was all right. She played a good-time girl in trouble with the law. There's a detective always chasing her. It was silly."
"I never saw it."
The girl shrugged. "No, well," she said. "Why would you."
"We were lovers, in Berlin."
"She had many lovers," the girl said. "I think the only one she really loved was herself."
"Why were you looking for Pirelli, earlier?"
"He's always been good to me. He's not, you know.…"
"I know."
"He liked to pay us for our time and then just listen to us talk." She laughed. "Most men just want us to shut up and get on our backs. One of the SS men likes me to spank him. He just doesn't want to, you know. Have a conversation about it."
"And Pirelli? You looked distraught."
"It was nothing, really. One of the other girls hasn't been in to work for a couple of days. I thought maybe he'd seen her."
"Does she owe you money?"
The girl laughed. "No, silly. She's my friend."
She got up and advanced on him. The cigarette in its holder was left to smolder by the window. "Why do you have a gun in your coat?" she said.
"In case I get into trouble," Gunther said.
"You look like the kind of man who's always in trouble."
"That's just a role I play. In real life I'm a sweetheart."
She melted into his arms. She was good at that sort of thing. "Shut up and kiss me," she whispered.
So he did.
When they parted for air some of the fire inside him had calmed. The girl reached for his coat draped on the chair and reached into the pocket and took out the pills. "Do you mind?" she said. He shook his head, mutely.
He wondered if the line she'd used was from Ulla's film, that the girl had memorized. He thought it was the sort of thing he would have written himself, a throwaway line in a B-movie script on a long afternoon.
The girl popped a pill.
Gunther decided it didn't really matter. He took her in his arms and lifted her and carried her to the bed and she was laughing.
She lay there looking up at him. "I'll be your Ulla," she whispered.
"No," he said. "This time, just be yourself."
The night faded into torn strips of time. For a while, he slept.
When he woke up the girl was in the corner putting her stockings on in a businesslike fashion, and sitting in the chair facing Gunther was a man with a gun in his hand.
9
"I THOUGHT I was gone for sure," Gunther said. He looked at me a little sadly, I thought. "But of course if they'd wanted me dead, I'd have been dead before I ever woke up."
"And the girl?"
"She got dressed and left. It wasn't her fault," he said, almost pleading. "What could she do?"
"Did she take your money?"
He smiled. "And the pills."
"You're a sap, Gunther."
"Yes," he said. "That's what people keep telling me."
* * *
There were two of them. One on the chair, facing Gunther, and the other at the door. Both had guns.
The girl got dressed. "Are you going to hurt him?" she said. She didn't look at Gunther once.
"What's it to you, girl?"
"It's nothing," she said. "It's nothing to me."
"Then get lost, would you?" the gunman on the door said. The girl gave him a stare, but that's all it was. She got lost.
"Get dressed," the man on the chair said. Gunther sat up in bed. "I can't," he said. "I'm shy in front of strangers."
"He thinks he's clever," the gunman on the chair complained. The gunman by the door looked over, slowly. "Everyone's a comedian these days," he said.
"He's a regular Karl Valentin," the other gunman said. "Come on, Sloam. Get dressed. You don't want to be late."
"He'd be late for his own funeral," the gunman by the door said, and they both laughed. Gunther didn't. He thought it was a cheap line. He got up and got dressed and he followed them outside.
A long black Mercedes was parked in the road. Gunther got in at the back. The gunmen sat on either side of him. A third man was driving.
"Where are we going?"
"To church."
He let it go. He didn't have a choice. They drove through the dark city streets. Few cars passed them, going the other way. London after the war wasn't a place where people dawdled after dark. It was warm inside the car. The men on either side of him smelled of wet wool and incense. It was a peculiarly English smell. Outside the city projected like the flickering images of a black and white film. Bomb damage everywhere. He'd seen newsreels of the Luftwaffe bombing over the city, waves of bombers flying over Big Ben and St. Paul's Cathedral, over the Thames. It was not uncommon for children to play in the ruins of a house and find an unexploded ordnance. People died of the bombs even now.
He thought about Hitler announcing the successful invasion of England. The ships at Dover and the submarine that made it up the Thames and blew up the House of Commons. It'd taken them six months to hunt down Churchill. He'd been hiding in a bunker all that time.
Swastikas waving over Buckingham Palace. No one knew where the royal family was. Or knew but wasn't saying. So many things you couldn't say anymore. His mind wandered.
How does every German joke start? he thought.
By looking over your shoulder.
In time, London would be rebuilt and there'd be no sign left of the war.
"Wake up," someone said. He was prodded awake. His heart was beating too fast and there was an acrid taste in his mouth. Beyond the car's headlights he saw the lit front of a small church.
"Oh," he said. "I thought you were kidding."
"Just move it, will you? Boss wants to see you."
Gunther got out of the car obligingly. There was a large electric red cross above the door. Its light spilled over the driveway and ran down the walls. It made everything look covered in blood. Gunther went inside the church. The two gunmen remained outside. The door shut behind Gunther.
There was an altar straight ahead. Stained-glass windows showed nativity scenes. The pews had been pushed aside and there were half-shut crates and boxes everywhere.
"Mr. Sloam. Thank you for coming. I understand you have been looking for me."
Gunther started. For a moment he couldn't locate the voice. Then a diminutive shadow detached itself from the chancel and approached him with the tread of soft feet. "Welcome to the mission, Mr. Sloam. We do God's work here."
Jurgen, the dwarf, wore horn-rimmed glasses and a crisp white shirt. The rolled-up sleeves showed muscled arms. His hair was reddish-brown and fine.
"With guns?" Gunther said.
Jurgen laughed softly. "These are dangerous times. One must take precautions."
"How did you find me?"
Jurgen shrugged. "It wasn't hard," he said. "I have the ear of the poor, the desperate, and the dispossessed. I understand Pirelli is dead."
"Pirelli, Blucher, Ulla Blau," Gunther said. He ticked them off one by one on his fingers. He watched Jurgen but Jurgen's face bore nothing but a polite expression.
"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil," Jurgen said.
"Did you kill them?" Gunther said.
"Why would I
do that, Mr. Sloam?"
"To protect your little racket," Gunther said. "I knew it couldn't be Ulla behind it all. Running drugs, suborning women. Those children who died in the hospital. It was all your doing, wasn't it. Wasn't it!"
He was shouting. Jurgen flinched. "Mr. Sloam," he said. "Please. This is unseemly."
"Just tell me," Gunther whispered. The fight wasn't in him anymore. "Tell me the truth."
Jurgen rubbed his eyes. "I came to London to help these people. The poor, the needy. The war had destroyed their homes along with their futures. We provide medical supplies, food, bibles." He shrugged. "The Führer won't challenge the church. This much we still have."
"You're a banker."
"I'm wealthy. My family is rich."
"Did you kill them? Did you kill Ulla?"
"You want me to confess?" Jurgen looked amused. "We are in church, after all."
"I don't know what I want," Gunther said.
"I believe in God, Mr. Sloam. I believe that the sins of the present age are but the prelude to the flood that is to come. This is Sodom and Gomorrah. The End of Days. Evil has won, Mr. Sloam. But evil cannot rule the world forever."
"My God," Gunther said. "You're an agitator. A…a subversive."
"Mr. Sloam, really," Jurgen said. "Don't be so melodramatic."
"How are you still allowed to operate? Why is the Gestapo not knocking on your door as we speak?"
"Someone has to fund this occupation," Jurgen said complacently. "Someone has to rebuild. Even Nazis need money, Mr. Sloam. I think you have the wrong impression of me. I did not kill Ulla. God knows I had reason to. You paint me so blackly, but Ulla Blau was exactly what you deny she was. She was a whoremonger and a poisoner. And a blackmailer, too, and many other things besides. I do not hold it against her. She did what she thought she must do. She had all the morals of an actress and all their brittle ruthlessness. I do not judge, Mr. Sloam. Only God does."
"What other things?" Gunther said; whispered.
Jurgen shrugged. "Lives," he said. "She sold lives."
"I don't understand."
"Don't you? Then perhaps it is better that way."
"Whom did she blackmail?" Then realization dawned. "You?"
"I have certain proclivities," Jurgen said. "I am not proud of them, but I have my needs. And Ulla had a knack for finding these things out."
"So you funded her?" Gunther said.
Jurgen shrugged again. "I paid her some money," he allowed. "What she mostly wanted from me was a way of putting that money somewhere safe. She had saved almost enough, she told me. She was looking forward to retiring. She wanted to go back to Germany, somewhere far from Berlin. She dreamed of opening her own theater. Can you believe it?" He gave a sudden, unexpected bark of a laugh. "She was never much of an actress," he said.
"That's not true."
"Oh, Sloam. I liked her, too, you know. But I never went to bed with her."
Gunther took a step toward him. Jurgen stood his ground. He smiled sardonically. "I'm sorry," he said, and he sounded almost genuine. "I don't know who killed her."
"But you're grateful," Gunther said. He loomed over the smaller man, who looked at him evenly, unafraid.
"What's one death," he said, "amongst so many?"
Footsteps sounded behind Gunther. He began to turn, only to see a dark shape rise in the air toward him. The butt of a gun connected with the back of his head. Pain flared, and he fell to his knees.
"Take him outside. Dump him somewhere with the garbage."
He tried to rise. They hit him again and, this time, he stayed down.
"I thought I was dead," he said. "Until I woke up covered in rotting cabbage with a rat nibbling on my shoe. They really did dump me in the garbage."
"Did they give you back your gun?"
"What gun?" he said. He looked at me blankly.
I sighed. "So who killed Ulla?" I said.
Gunther rubbed his eyes. "I don't know," he said. "And I don't care anymore. I've had it, Everly. I'm going home."
"You're lucky to be alive."
"Like you said, you can't just kill me—I'm a faithful citizen of the Reich."
I laughed. He looked hurt by that. "Who's going to miss you, Gunther? I have your file. You're a third-rate hack for pictures no one makes anymore. You have no wife, no friends, and not much of a future. Face it. You may as well be dead."
He shrugged. He must have heard worse. It's harder to break a man when he has nothing.
"If you're going to do it, just do it," he said.
"I would," I said, "only I like you. We do things a little differently here, in England."
I think it was true, too. He wasn't a bad guy. He just kept believing the wrong people.
"Then that's it? You're just going to let me go?"
"There's the door," I said. "There's a transport plane leaving in a couple of hours from Northolt. Why don't you do yourself a favor and be on it this time."
"I will," he said, fervently. "I'll be damned if I spend another minute in this town."
I watched him get up. He walked to the door. He hesitated with his hand on the handle. "You're a good sort, Everly," he said.
"We're a vanishing kind," I said.
10
WHEN WE picked him up he didn't have the gun on him. He must have stashed it somewhere in the trash. From us he should have gone straight to the airport. He didn't.
He made his way back to Dean Street. Back to the start. A car was parked in the street with the trunk open and packed suitcases on the ground. The old woman straightened when she saw him and said, dismissively, "Oh, it's you."
"Mrs. White. Going someplace?"
"The cold's no good for my bones," she said in her atrocious German. "I thought perhaps somewhere warm for the winter."
"Can I help you with your luggage?"
"I'd rather you didn't."
Gunther took his gun out and pointed it at her.
She squinted. "What's that for, then?" she said.
"Could you step away from the car?"
"You're not going to shoot me, Gunther."
He stared at her; but the gun never wavered. She straightened up, slowly. When she next spoke she seemed to shed forty years and her accent. "You came. I wasn't sure you would but you did."
"Just keep your hands where I can see them, Ulla."
She smiled. It was her old familiar smile. He wondered how he didn't see it before. "People keep telling me you're not much of an actress," he said, "but by God, you are!"
"You were always too kind to me," she said. Gunther could see now under her makeup and the wig: it was her eyes she couldn't truly mask. They were large and startled and innocent, like a wounded bird's. It was her eyes which dominated the last few seconds of screen at the end of Die Große Liebe, as the picture slowly faded to black. How could he have ever forgotten them?
"How did you know, Gunther?"
"I didn't, not for sure. It was just something this girl said."
"My, you've wasted no time getting over me."
He ignored her. "She was crying because one of her friends was missing. One of the other girls. And I thought how much she looked like you, how much all of them did. The Gestapo man said they all smiled like you."
"Chance would be a fine thing!" she said, with a flash of anger.
"And there was no face, of course."
"No," she said. "There was no face left, was there."
"How could you do it, Ulla? All of it? Not just the girls or the drugs, I can understand that, but those dead children, too?"
"They'd have died sooner or later, Gunther. This whole stinking country is a waiting room in a hospital's terminal wing. You can't pin that on me."
"But why?"
"Why, why," she said, aping him. Her voice was cruel. "Maybe because I couldn't get a role anymore. So I had to make one for myself." She shrugged. "Or maybe I just grew tired. It's over now, anyway. It was just something to do to pass the time at the end of the wo
rld."
"And the others?" he said. "Blucher, Pirelli?"
"I only did what I had to do."
"Why me, Ulla?"
"Do you mind if I light a cigarette?"
"Do it slowly."
"I do everything slowly, Gunther."
She reached into her pocket and came back with a silver case. She put a cigarette between her lips and lit it with a match. She blew out smoke and looked at him, unconcerned. "I always liked you," she said softly.
"Liked?"
"Maybe it was love. It was so long ago and who can remember anymore. You were just easy, Gunther. I don't know how you're still alive."
He just stared at her. The sunlight framed her head. It was just an ordinary day.
"Put the gun down, Gunther. You know you're not going to shoot me." She wiped makeup off her face and smiled at him. He thought she must still be beautiful, underneath. "Come with me," she said. "We'll go back to the Continent, away from this awful place. I have money. We'd never have to work again. Come with me."
"No."
"Then step away!" She began loading the cases into the car. Gunther stood and watched her, helplessly.
I watched them from across the road. Neither of them saw me. It was obvious he wasn't going to shoot. She knew it and I did. I think the only one who didn't was Gunther.
I crossed the road to them. I wasn't in a hurry. Gunther heard my footsteps first. He turned his head and looked at me in bewilderment.
"Give me the gun, Gunther."
"No," he said, "She's got to pay, she's got to pay for what she did."
"To them, or to you?" I said. "Give me the gun, Gunther."
I watched her all the while. She straightened up again, slowly, her eyes never leaving my own or blinking. She didn't say a word. She didn't have to.
"Give me the gun."
He gave it to me. Ulla watched us without expression. I couldn't see her hands.
I raised the gun and shot her.
A Luger makes a surprising amount of noise when it's fired. The gunshot echoed from the walls. She fell slowly.