The Wind Chill Factor

by Thomas Gifford

“I asked him why he was so troubled and he said this man had asked questions about the past … about Perón and the Nazis and Alfried Kottmann.” She closed her eyes, forced the last bit.

  “Why should that have upset him?”

  “My father had been an adviser to Perón in the old days, one of the few intellectuals whom Perón trusted. My father was an economist and a German and Perón listened to what he had to say. He made a hash of his economic policies but my father at least could tell him what was going wrong and why. They were very close. Some”—she paused and turned to face me, her eyes searching my face—“some people used to say that my father slept with Eva Perón because Perón … failed her. I don’t know if my father did that or not, it doesn’t matter. But my father knew all those men intimately and having it all dragged up now out of the dark, by this unknown American made him afraid. When Perón fell it was not easy for my father. There were those who kept him from the university position he deserved on merit. Alfried Kottmann helped him. But my father grew weaker, sadder as the years went by. He was a sad man. …”

  There were tears streaming down her cheeks. She excused herself and I heard water running, a door closed, the toilet flushed. I was standing at the window with the drapery held back when she returned. The sun had reappeared.

  “If you want to talk more let’s leave this place. It smells of him. I cannot think of anything but him.” She looked at the cluttered desk. “I’m not ready to clean all this up. Let’s go to the park.”

  She drove an expensive sky blue Mercedes 280SE convertible. Apparently, whatever indignities Herr Professor Dolldorf had experienced, poverty had not been among them. She turned the radio on and moved with a certain panache through the late-afternoon traffic.

  Palermo Park stretched wetly green away toward the gray and glass towers of Buenos Aires rising up through the haze over the trees. She knew her way; she had taken her father there. We sat at a table with gin and tonics and watched the golfers strike the golf balls, watched them arc white coming toward us, then plummet to the greens. It was reminiscent of a country club, but we were sitting in the midst of a huge city. Yet it was cloistered, quiet. Finally she spoke.

  “My father was killed.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said your brother was killed by someone.” She was watching the golfers, speaking tonelessly. “So was my father. Three days ago—or was it four?—someone came to his flat, took him in his robe down the hallway to the service stairway in back, cracked his skull, and threw him down a flight of concrete stairs. A janitor found him half choked on his own vomit, his hands tied behind him with the belt of his robe. He never came back to consciousness. He died in the hospital.” She lit a cigarette from a black and gold packet. “Someone did that to an old man who was nearly blind and very weak. And terribly sad.”

  There was a decorous cheer from the green. Someone had holed a long one. Maria curled her lips around a lime and sucked it.

  “Detective Inspector Roca, please.”

  The telephone clicked several times, resulting in a pause and then the soft sibilant voice.

  “John Cooper,” I said.

  “Ah, Mr. Cooper. …”

  “I saw Hans Dolldorf’s daughter, Roca, I couldn’t see the professor because somebody dragged him out of his apartment the other day, beat him just about to death, and threw him down a stairway. He died without regaining consciousness. They buried him today.”

  There was a lengthy silence, then: “I see.”

  “Now you’re going to tell me you didn’t know a damn thing about it. You sent me to talk to a corpse, by coincidence. Is that right?” I was beginning to feel the way I did the night I shot the gaunt man: there was no reservoir of patience. The fuse kept getting shorter.

  “Please, Mr. Cooper. You’re upset. I assure you I did not know anything about Professor Dolldorf’s misfortune. I’ll look into it—are you free this evening?’

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “Quite free.”

  “There is a roof garden at the Plaza. Meet me there in two hours. At nine o’clock.”

  The sun was still shining but the shadows lengthened across the carefully manicured grass. In the distance I could see the sun glinting on the Mercedes-Benz rooftop symbol and the golden shimmering reflection of the Fiat building. Beneath us the city moved into the busy nighttime.

  “I looked into the matter of Professor Dolldorf,” Roca reported. “Your facts were quite correct, Mr. Cooper. He was beaten to death, in effect, by a person or persons unknown. There seem to be no clues, no leads, no witnesses. Whoever they were, they came, did their work, disappeared. No motive established yet … that is, no specific motive. He had enemies. He was an old-time Peronista, a key figure, a power behind the throne. He got out of it with a good deal of money judging from the way he lived. Or someone was paying him as he went.” He extracted a cigarette from a black leather case. He lit it slowly and exhaled. “We can check on all that.”

  “Are you interested?” I asked.

  “Of course, particularly interested because—how to put this?—murder seems to have followed you to Buenos Aires.”

  “He was killed before I got here.”

  “Yes. But he was visited by your brother. Before you could get to him, somebody killed him.”

  “You make a connection, then?”

  “The temptation is certainly present, Mr. Cooper.”

  We strolled around the garden. I told him how upset Dolldorf had been after my brother’s visit. He raised his eyebrows. Finally he said: “I did make some inquiries. Alfried Kottmann and Martin St. John attended the funeral today. Did Kottmann mention it this morning?”

  “No. He said he was going to ride with his son.”

  “I see. Well, Mr. Cooper, you must understand that this entire matter is very delicate.” He gestured economically with his hands. “These people are not normally interfered with—the Kottmanns, their friends. People like Dolldorf. We try to leave them alone. They very nearly belong to history at this point and if they are still acting out some destiny which is rooted in the past—well, we choose to let them. It is all among themselves, don’t you see?”

  “No, I don’t. Murdering Dolldorf is not an historical footnote. It happened now—it’s homicide.”

  “Try to see my point. And whether you can or not, I suggest you accept the conventions of my country.” His mood never seemed to change: behind his flat eyes, Roca was thinking, figuring the odds.

  “What are you saying? You’re speaking in code.”

  “I’m saying the past casts very long shadows, Mr. Cooper, and we must feel our way very carefully. We must not be imprudent or indiscreet. We are dealing with volatile men.” He dropped the cigarette on the grass. The rooftop was windy; the awnings flapped.

  “Tell me one thing,” I said.

  “If I can.”

  “Where does Perón fit into all this? After all, he’s gone. He’s been gone for a long time.”

  “But not forgotten, you see.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. It’s unrealistic. Everything seems to keep coming back to the Nazis and Perón. My God, this is 1972 and I don’t see how we can seriously be standing here gravely discussing the Nazis and Juan Perón.”

  “I agree.” Roca smiled faintly beneath the gray mustache. “It is a curious situation.”

  “All right.” I sighed. “Are they bringing Perón back?”

  “They? Who?” Anyone.

  “Ah, come now, Mr. Cooper, come, come. …” Roca’s grin was fading with the sun.

  I was in bed, half asleep when Maria Dolldorf called. I looked at the Rolex. It was nearly midnight.

  “Can you meet me? Tonight?” She sounded out of breath.

  “Well, I—”

  “I’ve found something,” she went on urgently. “I’ve been going through my father’s papers this evening and I found something. It is about your brother. I don’t know what it means but it frightens me.” Her voice was husky. I rememb
ered her full mouth and the remarkable eyes. I remembered Paula Smithies finding something among other papers, a very long time ago. And dying.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll meet you.”

  “Listen, then. Do you know Mitchell’s Bookstore?”

  “No.”

  “Get a cab, then. Tell him you want to go to Mitchell’s Bookstore. The address is 570 Calle Cangallo, which runs east and west. He won’t have any trouble. It’s the largest English-language bookstore in South America. Wait in front for me. I’ll pick you up. Be quick about it,” she said and hung up.

  The blue Mercedes convertible was waiting when I arrived and I made the switch without a word. She pulled away and we drove through a maze of side streets, turning again and then again.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where I live,” she said. The top was down and her hair was held in place by a headband. I turned to watch the houses, remembered she had buried her father that afternoon. She was still wearing the black dress.

  She pulled the Mercedes into a driveway. Well back from the street she pressed a button in a handset and the garage door slid open. The car rolled quietly in and the door slid down behind us with another push of the button. She lived in the carriage house over the garage. I followed her up the stairs. A wind had come up but it was still and warm.

  She pulled the windows open and pulled the curtains across; they swayed and rippled in the breeze. A dim lamp burned on a table and she told me to sit down, she had something to show me. I heard her filling glasses with ice. She came back with gin and tonics and sat down beside me. She placed a black book on the table.

  “My father’s diary. I found it this evening at his flat. Perhaps it was morbid, I don’t know, but I began to leaf through it, reading a bit here and there, nothing of any importance at all, then I was nearly at the end. And I came to the day your brother visited him. …” She had a slip of paper marking the place, ran a finger through the pages and opened it, showed it to me. I sipped at the drink and looked at the diary.

  “I don’t read German,” I said.

  She pursed her lips, slipped her tongue across them, and began to read a translation:

  “I am old and impotent and very tired and still there is no peace for me. Pains in my chest today were aggravated by a visitor and I have felt ill ever since he left. I had never seen him before. And of course, I could only see his shape today. Eyes are worse each day. A young North American who said he was the grandson of Austin Cooper. Was I to believe him? How could I know? He was full of questions about the past, about the old days. I cannot bear to think about it. But it came so soon after my meeting last week with Siegfried. P. haunts me but there is no escaping. And now Siegfried tells me the time has come for Operation Cataclysm. Cataclysm! I said it was a mistake. I told them I was a sick old man but it was no use. Siegfried said there was no turning back now. I told him that I could stop it. I should have said nothing. He said Barbarossa had told him the time was now. They are afraid to wait. I don’t know why—could it be this—”

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  “That’s all, no more references to it.” She looked at me inquisitively. “It ends in the middle of a sentence.”

  “What the hell does it mean?” I felt impatience bubbling in me again. “Who are these people he’s talking about? These names.” Was it as obvious as it seemed? But who was Siegfried? Barbarossa?

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I never heard him mention any of it, never a word.” She repeated the names in the diary: “Siegfried. Barbarossa. P.”

  “Code. Or he was rambling on without meaning. Does that seem—”

  “No,” she said emphatically. “No, he wasn’t one to ramble. He was very alert and quick. He wasn’t in good health but he was perfectly competent, as quick as ever.”

  “Well, then, it referred to someone in code. Christ.”

  “It frightens me. Your brother, the diary, they meet, they die … now you come.” She lit a cigarette. “It’s not difficult to wonder what comes next, is it?” Her hand was shaking and she clasped her bare knees.

  “No. I suppose not. It’s only difficult to know—”

  I paced the room for a time. There was only the sound of the wind outside. It was one o’clock.

  “May I take the diary?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to show it to a friend of mine, a captain of detectives here in Buenos Aires. There’s always the chance it might mean something to him. After all, he’s going to be involved in the investigation of your father’s death. It’s his job, Maria.”

  “The police!” she laughed, hollow, bitter. “The police don’t give a damn about my father. Just an old German Peronista out of the way. They’re not going to do anything about it. They’ll say, why not let all these old bastards kill each other? They’re afraid to poke around in this kind of thing, I assure you, Mr. Cooper.”

  “Let me take it anyway,” I said.

  “All right. It makes no difference.”

  She shrugged. Her fear seemed to be gone. Her face looked heavy and tired, her features smudged downward.

  “It makes no difference,” she repeated.

  In the morning I called Roca and told him the story of Professor Dolldorf’s diary. He calmly arranged for one of his men to pick it up from the Plaza’s security officer. He was hardly elated but he was curious.

  I called Martin St. John at the number he had given me. He suggested I meet him in his office within the hour. I asked him if he had the clipping my brother had left. He said he did.

  St. John’s office could have been worse. It could have been on fire. As it was, it simply sat there and reeked with cigar smoke and liquor and sweat and musty stacks of papers and books. There was an antique oscillating fan constructed of black wires forming a cage around huge blades; the result just blew the smell and papers around you like a lazy hurricane. St. John was sitting behind the desk. He wore the same white suit, with a tired yellow flower in the buttonhole. I recognized the stains. It was probably the same poor flower. The panama hat rested on top of a wooden filing cabinet. He struggled to his feet, took off the half-glasses perched on the end of his short, round nose, and motioned me toward a cracked leather chair.

  “Forgive the clutter, Mr. Cooper. I am a creature of clutter, a cluttered office and a bloody cluttered old noggin, but I remember it all, know right where I’ve stowed it, don’t you see? Sit down, sit down.”

  “I hope I’m not inconveniencing you,” I said. I moved a pile of bloated manila folders from the chair arm to the floor. The carpet was worn through. It was not a large office. The building itself had a look of shabby gentility long outdistanced by the skyscrapers of Buenos Aires, which were new, with-it places to be. St. John was not a with-it type at all. The fan massaged the hot air, St. John brushed the long white hair back from his forehead.

  “How bad was it here for Kottmann?” I asked. “Being a German, I mean.”

  “Ah, you mean the persecutions?” He chuckled, perspiration beading on his forehead. “They never reach men like Kottmann, do they? The wealthy Germans who came to Argentina by way of our little pipeline were not likely to suffer at all. Who would dare persecute them? The masses, the rabble might do a little gutter persecution but how would that affect people like Kottmann? After all, their whole class is basically opposed to the masses, to any land of democracy. And the mass never even knows who they are. They are unreachable, Mr. Cooper, and that is the way of the world.”

  It was very hot in the little office. The one window was apparently caked shut with the grime of decades. St. John wiped his face with a faded red handkerchief, stuffed it back in a pocket. An old alarm clock ticked on a bookcase.

  “Would it hold true, his being unreachable, for—let’s say—a German professor? A teacher?”

  “It is difficult to say, isn’t it?” His eyes narrowed and he stared at a gold pencil in his thick-fingered hand. “It would depend, one assumes, on the profess
or.”

  “But, hypothetically, could being a German, a Peronista, have cost an academic his job? His career?”

  “Anything is possible, old boy. Absolutely possible. Old St. John’s law.” He sighed and slowly let his eyes follow a fly around the little office.

  “Mr. Cooper, you’re growing wary now. You remind me of your brother.” He smiled, almost kindly. He was reading my mind. “I hardly knew Professor Dolldorf. But I had known him many years ago, and when I heard of his death … I could not resist paying my last respects. It’s that simple.” He stood up with a puffing noise, brushed the long white hair off his forehead again, and went to a bookcase. “And now that clipping.” He shuffled through folders and loose papers, fat fingers riffling. “Aha, where, where … I know it’s here … somewhere, somewhere. …”

  I sneezed with the dust. I was sweating, felt my shirt cling to my back.

  “Here it is,” he said, going back behind the desk, mopping his forehead with the red bandanna. The piece of newsprint hung limp from his fingers. He sat down again and stared at the picture.

  “I have no idea why he showed me this picture, no real idea. … Mr. and Mrs. Gunter Brendel, from a Glasgow paper, dated last October. Glasgow, of all places. He made no mention of how he’d come across it, only that he wanted to find Alfried Kottmann. He said—let’s see—he said that it had all begun with this picture—whatever ‘it’ may have been.” He shook his head and handed me the picture.

  A second later my entire life had changed.

  I stared at the picture and my hands were trembling, the paper fluttered. A man and a woman were standing in a receiving line, she much younger in appearance than he. It was a large picture; she was looking at someone not in the photograph, smiling distantly. The man was handsome, head inclined, smiling, as if listening to what an unseen man was saying.

  “Can I get you some water, old boy? You don’t look at all well. I say. …”

  “I’m all right.”

  “I took the liberty of showing this photograph to Herr Kottmann after your brother made his departure. Alfried told me he’d never seen the woman but he had known the Brendel family years ago. He said Gunter would be about fifty now. Gunter’s father had been tried as a war criminal and had died in prison. Gunter, a steadfast lad, had picked up the pieces and restored the family fortune with some business ventures.