Incinerator

by Timothy Hallinan

  I'd never been less hungry in my life. I shook my head.

  “We should have known better,” she said. “Fur burns.” She closed her eyes. “Scheiss,” she added. She wasn't Polish. She was German.

  “And your husband?”

  “He burned, too,” she said dispassionately. She opened her eyes and looked at nothing. For her it was an old story.

  “Where are your children now?”

  “East. New York. I told you already. The big hepple.” She waved the arm with the tattoo to indicate the walls, lined with photographs of heavy men with beards wearing dark suits. Assembled around them were impossibly large families, huge broods of smiling adults and children, now lost, scattered, annihilated, incinerated. “We had to sneak the pictures in their bags after the children slept,” she said. “Old pictures don't mean anything except to old people.”

  “So you sent them out with the children.”

  “If I hadn't,” she said, “I wouldn't have any past. Any happy past, I mean. Nothing left but the fires and the curses. What's my life, huh? These pictures.”

  “And the soup,” I said.

  She gave the idea of the soup a one-handed gesture that could have sent it all the way to Latvia. “I do it for the smell,” she said again. “It makes the pictures move.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That's the only reason you make the soup.”

  She tossed a bright, dry, sparrowlike glance at me. “So it's more than that,” she said. “That's a federal case? They're hungry, right? Like I said, I been hungry.”

  “How did your children let you escape from them?” I asked.

  “Oh, well,” she said, placing her hands in her lap. Her fingers folded over each other like the leaves of a prized manuscript, yellow and faded and hard to read. I thought of Hermione's palm. “I embarrassed them. I couldn't go nowhere. Anywhere, I mean. I couldn't sleep. I was cold all the time. I lost weight in Treblinka, you know? Thirty pounds, no less. I never got it back.”

  She held up a parchment arm. “Look at me, skin and bones. The New York winters drove spikes through my skin. I felt—what's the word?—impaled, like I was nailed to my bed by icicles. So I woke up in the mornings, on the nights I went to sleep I mean, and I made problems. When I slept, my dreams were all people dead or dying, so I stopped dreaming. Skinny, no English, crying in the middle of parties, scared by loud noises. My grandchildren laughed at me. I embarrassed everybody. It wasn't their fault.” She blinked, heavy as a tortoise. “It's a terrible thing to stop dreaming.”

  “So you came to California,” I said for lack of anything else.

  “I was brought here,” she said. “My children talked about it and brought me out here. I had friends here then. They're all gone now. I got here, it was clean, there were orange trees, you could smell the ocean. Not like now. And it was warm.”

  “They write you?”

  “Oh, sure. Letters every month. They come some, too. My son is very successful now, very busy. When they come, they stay in a hotel.”

  “No room here,” I suggested.

  “You,” she said, smiling, and I caught a glimpse of the girl she must have been. “More flies with sugar than with vinegar.” Unexpectedly, she laughed, a low, rhythmic chortle that summoned up the sound of a tropical lizard on the wall. “You look like my grandson, Eli. That's why you got in the door. You don't need all the sugar.”

  “You're not a fly,” I said.

  “No,” she said, tapping me on the knee. “But you're not Eli, either. And you didn't come here to pass time making spiel with some old lady. You want to know did I see something.”

  Without realizing what I was doing, I crossed my fingers. “Did you?”

  “Yes,” she said. She reached down and uncrossed my fingers, laughing again, and then sat back triumphantly and glowed at me.

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  “What, I'll tell you my whole life story and I wouldn't tell you that? This man, he burns people. I testified,” she said proudly. “I testified at Nuremburg. I did that, and I wouldn't testify for you?”

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “First was hearing. I was sitting here, right where I am now. I still don't sleep so good. First thing, I heard somebody laugh.” She rubbed one forearm as though she'd broken out in goose bumps. “I never heard a laugh like that, and I've heard every noise a human being can make. This laugh wasn't nothing—anything—human. Then the screaming started, and I went to the window.”

  The window was four good strides from the couch. “I had to get the shades out of the way,” she said. “The screaming kept up the whole time. When I had the shades up, I opened the window and leaned out and looked.”

  “And,” I said.

  “And he was on fire, the old man, and the little old lady—I seen her before, I gave her soup a couple of times—she was trying to get the blanket on him. And then I seen—saw—him.”

  “Saw him? Saw him where?”

  “Coming up the street toward me. The streetlights are good here. Not much else, but the streetlights. He had a bottle, some kind of bottle, in his hand, and he tilted to one side like he was broken. 'Hey,' I yelled, 'Schiesskopf.' And he looked up at me.”

  “He saw you?” I could barely breathe.

  “Saw me? He smiled at me. The old man was on fire, and he was still screaming, and this one smiled at me and waved with the hand that didn't have the bottle in it. It had something else in it, though.”

  “What?”

  “Something square, only not square, you know?”

  “Rectangular,” I said. “A box of wooden matches.”

  She nodded. “Could be. And then he said something to me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, 'Hey, Granny, got anything you want to cook?' And then he waved at me again and ran away. Except he didn't really run, it was like one foot weighed a lot more than the other one.”

  “Mrs. Gottfried,” I said, “what did he look like?”

  “Like a Nazi general,” she said as though she'd been waiting for the question.

  My stomach sank. I had the feeling that a lot of people looked like a Nazi general to Mrs. Gottfried.

  “In what way,” I asked, “did he look like a Nazi general?”

  She lifted her chin and regarded me with the black eyes. “You think I'm making it up,” she said accusingly.

  “No,” I said. “I already know he limps. I believe you saw him. I just want to get a good description.”

  “I gave you a good description,” she said stubbornly. “He looked like a Nazi general, but younger.”

  “Please, Mrs. Gottfried, I don't know what a Nazi general looked like.”

  “Blond,” she said.

  “Why a general?”

  “His coat,” she said. “How could you not know what a Nazi general looked like? You should know. How could people forget?”

  “Tell me about his coat.”

  “It was a, a what do you call it, what Humphrey Bogart always wore.”

  “A trench coat,” I said.

  “That's it,” she said, “a trench coat. It went all the way from his shoulders to his feet. And it was black.”

  “Was it canvas?” I asked. She shook her head. “Leather?”

  “No,” she said. She gave me the sparrow's glance again. “It squeaked.”

  I thought for a moment. It got me nowhere. It hadn't gotten me anywhere when Hermione said it, either.

  “Squeaked?” I asked at last.

  “Rubber,” Mrs. Gottfried said, sitting back again. She smoothed her skirt with her arthritic hands. “His coat was rubber.”

  “Mrs. Gottfried,” I said, “could I have some soup?”

  8

  The Radicchio Patrol

  “He's a tall, thin blond man with a clubfoot, and he drives a gray Mazda and wears a black rubber trench coat,” I said. “He can't be that hard to find.”

  Pasty beneath the humming fluorescents, Hammond and Dr. Schultz
regarded me skeptically. I'd insisted that I report to Hammond, partly to give him something to do and partly because it was nice to be in a position where I could insist on something, and I didn't want to waste it. As a trade, Captain Finch had insisted that Dr. Schultz be present whenever I did. Willick, who was apparently connected to Hammond by an invisible silken cord, sat fatly at the foot of the table, taking notes.

  “Who's your source?” Dr. Schultz asked through a cloud of smoke. He was leaning back, his chair tilted on its rear legs, the picture of manicured ease. The cigarette in his hand, his third in fifteen minutes, was a Dunhill. I might have known.

  “For what?”

  “Rubber,” he said to the cigarette. “The supposition that the trench coat is made of rubber. Hermione told you everything else.”

  Hammond fidgeted.

  “Skip it,” I said. “She doesn't want to talk to the police. And, by the way, Al,” I added nastily, “thanks.” I knew that Hermione hadn't told anyone but me about the limp. She'd been saving it to get out of the jug. Was Hammond my friend, or just another cop?

  “Procedure,” Hammond said automatically. He didn't meet my eyes, though.

  Dr. Schultz clenched his teeth together in a way that made his jaw muscles bulge. His eyes were smaller than caviar. I tried not to look too terrified. Hammond looked as reasonable as it was possible for Hammond to look. Willick made scratching noises. “This is a cooperative investigation,” Schultz said.

  “Who's cooperating with me?” I asked Hammond.

  “You've had everything we've got,” Dr. Schultz said. “There's no reason to be hostile.”

  “Then may I have your address and phone number?” I asked him.

  “For what?” he asked, streaming smoke, blue under the lights, through his nostrils.

  “For the next press conference.”

  He tilted back a little farther in his chair and then had to catch a foot under the table to keep from going over the rest of the way. The foot made a hollow thunk on the underside of the table, and Schultz had a coughing fit. He hunched over, hacking into his cupped hands. “Of course not,” he said when he'd finished. “Do you think I'm crazy?” He glanced at Willick as though to reassure himself that there was at least one person in the room who hadn't seen him lose his balance. Willick,was staring at him, his mouth open.

  “Then don't tell me there's no reason for me to be hostile,” I said. “He knows where I live, and I doubt very much that you're giving me everything you've got.”

  “Then how can we verify it?” He gave me the amber smile again. He saw me staring at the pack of Dunhills, positioned on the table like a Chinese household god, and picked it up and extended it to me with a generous confidence of a born skinflint who knows that his offer will be rejected. I reached out and took the pack.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I can't usually afford these.”

  He kept the smile in place. He was being very professional, very doctoral. Just one Ph.D. to another. “I ask you,” he said, “how can we verify it?”

  “You can verify it by your common sense,” I said. “It was rubber because rubber isn't permeable. Rubber keeps the gasoline from getting on his clothes. He gets home, he hoses off the coat, and he's as pure as the Madonna. The one in the paintings, not the one who sings songs in a girdle.”

  “That's no girdle,” Hammond said. “That dame don't need no girdle.” Willick looked surprised at the fact that Hammond had heard of Madonna. I was surprised, too: So much for my theory about cops and popular songs.

  “And who was the source?” Schultz asked again, putting out the filter of his cigarette and stealing another glance at the pack in my hand. He was sitting straight in his chair now. He only lounged when he was working on his emphysema.

  “No one you'll ever meet,” I said.

  “I'm not sure that's wise,” Schultz said, making a note.

  I got mad. Maybe it was the note. “So tell me how wise it was to sit there dreaming up elaborate theories about why the Incinerator was hitting people at the bottom of the social ladder. I believe that was your phrase?”

  “It was,” Schultz said. He tried the smile on me, without much success.

  “Have you ever burned anyone to death, Dr. Schultz?”

  As a man with credentials, he frowned. “Of course not.”

  “He chooses them because they hold still,” I said. “You're a psychologist. Why haven't you asked why he uses wooden matches? Why not switch to a Bic or something so he doesn't have to stand there breaking matches until one finally lights? He lights fire to the homeless because they're anesthetized, because they're dead to the world, because they give him time. He needs time partly because he's using wooden matches.”

  Hammond said something that sounded like “whuff.” Dr. Schultz, with the expertise that comes with years of being on the profitable end of psychoanalysis, said, “Interesting,” and changed the subject. “Have you figured out where he knows you from?”

  “No,” I said.

  “My guess,” Schultz said, closing his eyes to prove how hard he was thinking, “is college.”

  It sounded like a good guess, and it was one I'd already made myself, but I was still aggravated that Hammond had told him everything that happened in Hermoine's cell. “I was in college most of my adult life,” I said. “I'll work on that if you'll work on this: Why does he stick with wooden matches?” I twisted the cigarette pack into a crumpled spiral by way of emphasis. “Golly,” I said, dropping it. “Oops.”

  Dr. Schultz finally managed to display his awful teeth. “Maybe you'll eventually tell us,” he said. He smiled again, an expression with no more affection behind it than a misdirected Valentine, and reached out to take the crumpled pack. With small, precise gestures, he began to smooth it out. When it was almost rectangular, he opened it and tugged one into the light. It was broken. So was the next. He pulled out a third.

  “Willick,” Dr. Schultz said, “have you got any Scotch tape?”

  Eleanor and I had determined several days earlier that it was time to move Hammond into group therapy. Sitting there, I regretted the decision.

  “He didn't quit the case?” Eleanor asked Hammond, sounding disbelieving.

  “He couldn't,” Hammond said. His beefy growl undercut the silvery clink of silverware against fine china and the discreet Vivaldi piccolo concerto that recycled endlessly through the speakers mounted on the silk-covered walls. We were spending Baby's money in a Brentwood restaurant frequented by people whose faces you usually saw in only two dimensions and four-color printing.

  “And why not?” Eleanor asked. She was all in black, and she looked like the whitest woman in the world. She regarded her salad doubtfully, as though it were something that had sprouted on her plate.

  “Honey,” Hammond said, patting her wrist. He was the only man in the world who could have called Eleanor “honey” and lived. “He's stuck.”

  “Any word from Hazel, Al?” I asked to change the subject momentarily. I had a lot to say to him, but I wanted to wait for the right moment.

  “I heard from her lawyers,” he said. “Fifty percent of the world.” His tone turned that avenue of conversation into a dead end. He hadn't drunk enough for the therapy to begin. Anyway, I'd just decided there wasn't going to be any therapy tonight.

  “Lawyers are the utensils people use to eat each other with,” I said, poking through my own salad. “No bandanna tonight, Al?”

  “What's a bandanna?” Hammond asked, the picture of innocence.

  I skipped the idea of waiting for the right moment. “It's a hat worn by somebody who wants to prove he's stupid,” I said, leaning forward so quickly that my plate skidded away from me. Eleanor forgot she was mad and stared at me. “Like you, you bluecoated Kim Philby.”

  “Who's she?” Hammond asked, looking almost nervous. “Kim Novak I know.”

  The headwaiter, who had been hovering over us, cleared his throat and looked down at my plate, which was teetering on the edge of the ta
ble. “Something is wrong?”

  “Radicchio,” I said. “Major allergy. It could kill me.”

  He made a clucking sound. They must teach it at the Culinary Institute of America. I'd heard it all over the map. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “Something else, then?”

  “This,” I said, handing him the plate to get rid of him. “Just pick out the radicchio.”

  “Simeon,” Eleanor said, with a spot of color on each cheek. She hated scenes.

  “And chop-chop,” I said. The headwaiter gave me a ghastly smile and retreated toward the kitchen. I even had Hammond's attention.

  “We have ground rules to get straight,” I said. “I'm contagious, and you're not helping, Al.”

  “You're stuck,” Hammond said once more. “Ignore this boor, Eleanor. Eat your salad.”

  Eleanor looked speculatively at me, consulting her bullshit-detector.

  “No fooling,” I said to her. “You were the first one to spot it. This could be fatal. And not just for me.”

  Hammond sat there, his eyes very small, looking like the Hammond I'd first met, back when I was seeking a police contact. If there had been ground to paw, he would have pawed it.

  “Your impressive Dr. Schultz,” I said to Hammond, “thinks that the Incinerator knows me, remember? Thinks he' s fixated on me. Even if he's wrong, which I don't think he is, the nutcase knows where I live. He's delivered letters to me. How hard would it be for him to find out about Eleanor, too? How hard is it to believe that he's out there, right now, watching this restaurant because he followed me here?”