Spoils of Victory

by John A. Connell

Mason held his glare a moment longer before complying.

  Densmore entered and closed the door. “That was not my idea.”

  “That’s a load of crap. You’re the supervising investigator. Gamin’s out of the picture, so that leaves you.”

  “The orders came from someone higher than my pay grade. Supposedly the wife refused permission for an autopsy to be performed here. She wanted the local ME in Schenectady to do it.”

  “A homicide investigation supersedes that.”

  “This isn’t a homicide investigation. For all intents and purposes, it was a suicide.”

  “So you rolled over on the request.”

  “This is the army, Mason. When the Third Army provost marshal issues an order, you snap to and do it.”

  “The only way the provost marshal could have gotten involved is through you.”

  “I had nothing to do with informing the PM. I don’t know where the orders originated or who told the wife it was suicide to begin with. I assumed you’d contacted Mrs. Winstone, since you knew her and were friends with Winstone.”

  Mason stopped. He’d intended to contact her so she could hear the news from someone she knew and not an impersonal telegram or a phone call from an army clerk. He’d let it slip his mind and got wrapped up in the investigation. It wasn’t the first time he’d let his fixation on a case blot out the rest of the world.

  “I didn’t call her,” Mason said.

  “Well, someone did. Maybe if you’d called her, you could have convinced her to let the autopsy take place.”

  Densmore had a point, but once Mason had something in his teeth it was hard to let it go. “Someone with authority is trying to cover his tracks.”

  “We could debate who all day, but there’s still Sergeant Olsen, abducted and possibly murdered, and whoever is muscling in on the black market.”

  “They’re all related, and Winstone’s the key. Which brings me to the Italian who put a gun to my head. Genovese. He was released last night, when I wasn’t here to object. What’s going on here?”

  “He’s an American citizen. You denied him treatment for the broken arm that you gave him. You didn’t get anything out of interrogating him. Either he or someone on his behalf alerted some heavy-hitting lawyers in New York, and they put pressure on the Judge Advocate’s office. Plus, the Italians had a warrant out on him for racketeering and suspicion of murder. It was a political hot potato for JAG and the brass, so they were more than happy to hand him over to the Italians. I got my ass chewed out by the Third Army provost marshal about that, too. Next time you want to hold a witness and deny him medical attention, make sure he’s not connected up the ass. Now get out of here, and don’t you ever come storming at me again or you won’t know what hit you.”

  Abrams followed Mason into his office and closed the door.

  “Okay, I want to know how to do that,” Abrams said.

  “Do what?”

  “Stick it to your commanding officer and not get busted down to private.”

  Mason couldn’t help cracking a smile. “I wouldn’t advise trying until you’re too valuable to get rid of.”

  “I think you’re close to spending all your currency in that regard. I’d like you to hang around long enough for me to learn something from you.”

  Mason walked over to the chalkboard. While he filled Abrams in on what Adelle told him, he wrote down Hilda’s name and drew lines to Winstone, Giessen, and Eddie Kantos. Then he added Abbott and CIC with a question mark off to one side. Next to that he added the Casa Carioca with Kessel’s and the general manager Schaeffer’s names. “We need to find out whatever we can on Kessel, Schaeffer, and Kantos.”

  “What about Abbott? We should check with the CIC to see if he works there or if they’ve got anything on the name.”

  Away from the other names, Mason added Adelle’s and Densmore’s names with question marks.

  “Densmore?” Abrams said. “You think he belongs on the list, or are you trying to piss him off?”

  “Could be a little bit of both.”

  Abrams handed Mason a file. “This just came in from the special services branch. It’s all they have on Major Schaeffer.”

  Mason glanced through the two-page document. Schaeffer, aged thirty-nine, had joined the army in 1926. It cited his two medals, a Silver Star and Legion of Merit, but not what he had done to earn them. He stood six feet, three inches and weighed 190 pounds. His official photo showed a lean, muscular man with a dark complexion, slicked-back black hair, and dark piercing eyes topped by thick eyebrows.

  Mason double-checked the thin dossier. “This doesn’t go into any detail further back than a year and a half ago, when he joined the Third Army as adjunct administrator to the general staff—which means nothing. Is this all they could give you?”

  “That’s all they had. The rest is classified.”

  “CIC?”

  “They didn’t, or wouldn’t, say. And the three other managers Kessel said run the Casa Carioca? The two from Army Corps of Engineers have been in Berlin since the beginning of the year. And the one from civil administration was mustered out of the army a month ago and is now stateside.”

  “You mean Kessel didn’t tell us the truth?” Mason asked sarcastically.

  “I can try to request Schaeffer’s classified file.”

  “Do it, but I don’t expect we’ll get anywhere.” Mason dropped the file on the desk.

  There was a knock on the door. A private opened the door and held out an envelope. “Sir, this came down from OMGB.”

  OMGB was the Office of Military Government, Bavaria.

  Mason thanked the private and opened the envelope. After reading the letter, he said to Abrams, “Come on. We’re going to the CIC to see if we can piss them off, too.”

  * * *

  The reception clerk at the CIC villa headquarters examined General Pritchard’s written orders as if great secrets might be revealed to anyone willing to stare at the piece of paper long enough. The grandfather clock and crackling fire were the only sounds in the place. Mason tapped his foot with impatience and looked at Abrams, who just shrugged. Finally the clerk went to Major Tavers’s office door and knocked. He opened the door a crack and spoke at length.

  Mason had had enough. He tapped Abrams on the arm for him to follow, and he marched down the hall, blowing past the clerk, snatching the letter out of the clerk’s hand, and stopping at Tavers’s desk. “Written orders from General Pritchard, granting me permission to search Agent Winstone’s office and safe.”

  Tavers stared at Mason for a moment, then took the letter and examined it with the same interminable scrutiny as his time-killing accomplice. Mason noticed Tavers had a partially completed crossword puzzle laid out in front of him. Tavers looked at Mason and, with a slight flush in his cheeks, laid Pritchard’s letter on top of the puzzle. He turned to a large safe behind his chair and made sure his body blocked Mason’s view as he turned the dial. Once he’d opened the safe, he pulled out a key and a sealed envelope. “Follow me.”

  As they exited the office, Tavers said, “I suppose you’ve finally concluded that Agent Winstone was murdered and didn’t commit suicide.”

  “That’s my conclusion.” And for emphasis, he added, “General Pritchard’s as well.”

  Tavers issued a noncommittal grunt as he unlocked Winstone’s office door.

  “Anyone been in here since Winstone’s death?” Mason asked.

  “We locked it up as soon as we heard.”

  “Which was when?”

  “When you two clowns showed up the first time.”

  “So at least eight hours from the time he was killed?”

  “If you say so,” Tavers said and escorted them into the office.

  Winstone’s office had probably been the villa’s morning room before the CIC took it over, as the set of window
s faced east and overlooked the southern end of the city that doglegged along the Loisach River. The original chairs, settee, and coffee table had been pushed to the windows to make room for the desk and two filing cabinets, one short and one tall. On the floor, along one wall, was a series of cases, and above that, a chalkboard with lists and charts. Mason felt a brief moment of melancholy for his dead friend.

  “Everything in this room stays in this room,” Tavers said.

  “If I find evidence—”

  “Your orders grant you permission for a search, not to remove official CIC documents.”

  Mason turned to Abrams. “Write down the names and draw out the charts on the chalkboard.” He said to Tavers, “If you’d open the safe for me, please.”

  Tavers led Mason over to a wall safe behind the desk. He broke the wax seal on the envelope and removed a piece of paper listing all the safe combinations in the building. Once again, he used his body to block Mason’s view as he turned the dial. He opened the safe door and stepped aside. Inside, a shelf divided the safe into two compartments. The upper part contained a Browning nine-millimeter pistol, along with a file folder containing a handful of photographs. The lower compartment contained a stack of file folders. Each folder had a handwritten label indicating dossiers on individuals. He laid the files on the desk and sifted through them.

  “Got everything,” Abrams declared from his spot at the chalkboard.

  Without looking up, Mason said, “Start with the cases on the floor, then the small file cabinet.”

  Mason returned his attention to the files and went through them again. The files only contained information on German gang members, and he already knew almost all the people and their particulars. Frustrated, he leaned on the desk. “They’re not here.”

  “What were you hoping to find?” Tavers asked.

  Mason ignored the question. “Are you the only one with the combination to this safe?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t go in there and take anything, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Anyone else have the combination to your safe?”

  “Nope.”

  Mason strode over to the tall file cabinet and rifled through the hanging files in each drawer.

  Abrams said, “One case contains a camera and lenses. The other ones have equipment for wiretaps, listening devices, and a few boxes of unopened tape stock.”

  “None of the tapes look like they’ve been used?”

  “None that I can tell.”

  “Even if they were, removing them is not part of your search parameters,” Tavers said.

  Mason slammed the final cabinet drawer closed. “It looks like someone has cleaned out everything of relevance.”

  “If you’ll just tell me what you’re looking for—”

  “Major, if you’re the only one who has the combination to both your safe and Winstone’s, then logically, you know what I’m looking for.”

  “No, I don’t. And I resent the implication.”

  Mason let him squirm as he studied the major’s expression and posture.

  Tavers spit out lamely, “Maybe someone cracked the combination.”

  “Are you telling me that your hotshot CIC agents would let someone wander into their headquarters, break into Winstone’s office, and crack his safe? All without being detected?”

  Tavers seemed flustered and at a loss for words. From what Mason could determine from Tavers’s reaction, the detachment commander truly had no answer.

  Mason said, “Then it had to be another one of your agents. What about Winstone’s two German assistants?”

  “All I know is, they came out of the CIC in Frankfurt. They were not under my command.”

  “But they could have access to this office and the combination of the safe.”

  “I haven’t seen them in the last couple of days. And to save you the trouble of asking, I don’t know where they are or where they’re billeted. Why don’t you ask your buddy General Pritchard?”

  “What about a Lester Abbott? Is he one of your agents?”

  “I’ve never heard of him. And if he was with this detachment, I’d know about him.”

  “Would it be possible for you to check with CIC central command and see if he is?”

  Tavers went to the door and called for his clerk. They talked a moment, then Tavers returned.

  “Sir,” Abrams said, “could you look at this, please?”

  Mason joined Abrams at the chalkboard, and this time Mason blocked Tavers’s view. With a subtle nod Abrams indicated a list of names written in chalk at the bottom of a chart. Yaakov Lubetkin was written at the top with two small arrows pointing to Giessen and Bachmann, then one to Kantos.

  “You think Yaakov was an informant for Winstone?” Abrams whispered.

  In the middle of the intersecting branches, Winstone had written Eddie Kantos’s name. The man seemed to be connected in one way or another to just about everyone on the board. Mason followed one branch that led from Kantos to Frieder Kessel, the assistant manager of the Casa Carioca. Winstone had written SS? beside Kessel’s name, and next to that, he had written Herr Z with a question mark and Gestapo Major, Intelligence, also with a question mark.

  The hairs on the back of Mason’s neck stood up. He could not have said why, but suddenly he felt certain that Herr Z was Volker, the Turkish-cigarette-smoking Gestapo interrogator who had tortured him. The one Mason would swear had also been at the Steinadler and who’d blown Mason’s cover.

  “You got all this down, right?” Mason asked.

  Abrams nodded and then pointed to two more entries. “Then you’ve got ‘Herr X’ and ‘Herr Y’ set off from the rest. No names, but Winstone connects them with everyone on this board, including our dead German gang bosses. Who do you think Winstone was referring to there?”

  “Whoever they are—”

  “What are you two doing, skulking over there?” Tavers said. “Are you about finished?”

  “Anxious to get back to your crossword puzzle?”

  “I don’t have to stand for this,” Tavers said and stormed out.

  The clerk appeared a moment later, and Mason asked, “Did you find anything on Abbott?”

  “Sir, that could take days,” the clerk said. “If he’s in special operations, they may not admit he’s one of theirs.”

  With the clerk now assigned to watch them, Mason and Abrams set to work: Abrams dusting for fingerprints, and Mason studying the documents from the safe. The files yielded little new information. The safe’s combination dial had obviously been wiped clean, as there was just one set of prints, and those could only have been Tavers’s. If Winstone had kept an agenda book or diary, it was gone. And no copies existed of the reports Winstone had sent to Pritchard.

  An hour later, they returned to their car and drove away from CIC headquarters.

  “Whoever cleaned out Winstone’s records knew what they were looking for,” Mason said.

  “If they wanted to cover their tracks, why did they leave all that stuff up on the chalkboard?”

  Mason shrugged. “Actually, they might have added stuff just to throw us off.”

  Abrams looked deflated. “That idea makes my head hurt.”

  “Did you check up on the address that Yaakov gave us from that first interview?”

  “Yep. Unless he lives under the Olympic skating rink parking lot, he gave us a bogus address.”

  Mason pulled out his cigarette lighter and flicked it open and closed as he thought. Finally he said, “All the lines on the chalkboard converged on Eddie Kantos. We’ll start with him.”

  FIFTEEN

  Eddie Kantos covered his tracks well. He had a clean police record, both American and German. In the public records he was listed as an upstanding citizen and sole proprietor of the Club Havana, which interestingly was his only known address. Ma
son and Abrams stopped by the Club Havana, a bar-nightclub-restaurant that catered to Americans and locals with enough money for the overpriced drinks. The lunch crowd filled the tables, most of whom seemed to prefer a liquid diet. The Latin music and a few ferns were the only indications that the place had anything to do with its namesake. Mason talked to the barman, who said Eddie never came in before ten P.M. After a considerable amount of coercion, the barman gave up Eddie’s home address.

  They found the house, an alpine-style affair of medium size and surrounded by a high row of shrubs, situated in an upscale part of town. That was the thing about Garmisch: Even the dangerous gangsters lived in charming gingerbread houses on Hansel-and-Gretel lanes. Another reminder that, in this town, nothing was as it appeared.

  Mason and Abrams entered the property via a gate in a white-picket fence painted with pink roses. Mason held the cowbell hung from the latch to keep it from clanging their presence. They had expected at least one guard to be watching from a discreet distance, but none appeared. Perhaps the guards were inside, as it had turned bitterly cold, with the sun hidden behind a thick cover of clouds. Their boots crunched in the hard-crusted snow, and Mason noticed a whole series of footprints climbing and descending the steps that led up to a high porch.

  “Even lace curtains on the front door windows,” Abrams said. “This guy’s thought of everything. Probably has doilies on the sofa arms.”

  Mason knocked, and they waited.

  “You think the bartender gave us a bogus address?” Abrams asked.

  Mason knocked harder.

  “Could be he’s not home,” Abrams said.

  “Do you plan to have a running commentary the rest of the afternoon?”

  “Jeez. Just thinking out loud. I figured you’d be in a better mood after getting laid.”

  Mason pointed to the corner of the house. “Check out the back. See if you can get a look inside from one of the rear windows. Stay alert. Someone could be in there with an itchy trigger finger.”

  They stepped off the porch and proceeded around the house in different directions. Mason tried to see in the front picture window, but the curtains were drawn closed. Then he noticed a brick red splatter stain on the lower edge of the curtain.