Spoils of Victory

by John A. Connell

  Mason and Abrams stepped through the MPs and stopped at the victim’s naked feet. Mason almost recoiled from the sight. Abrams cried out and turned away. Through the bloody and swollen face, beneath the cuts and bruises, the man was barely recognizable, but Mason, like Abrams, could still tell who it was. Yaakov.

  Mason felt his chest tighten from a wave of guilt and sorrow. He squatted near Yaakov’s face and mouthed a silent apology.

  “You two know this guy?” the MP asked.

  Mason nodded and turned to Abrams, whose face was twisted with the same emotions that Mason had internalized. Abrams walked away. Mason watched him for a moment, then turned back to Yaakov. There were rope burns on his wrists. A wire was still embedded in his neck. He’d been strangled with it so forcefully that it had cut deep into his throat. He was shirtless, which showed he’d suffered severe blows and cigarette burns all over his torso. Yaakov must have held out for quite a while, as he also had burn marks on his earlobes, where electrodes had been attached. Torture by electrocution, on top of the severe beating.

  One of the two medics asked if everyone was done, then they put Yaakov’s broken body onto a stretcher. Mason watched as the medics covered Yaakov with a blanket then lifted the stretcher. The jostling made Yaakov’s bare arm fall out from beneath the blanket. It was the first time Mason had seen Yaakov’s concentration camp tattoo. The tragedy of it all hit him like a blow, and he knew that image was now permanently burned into his mind.

  “A tattoo on his arm,” the MP sergeant said. “A Jewish DP, an ex–concentration camp inmate. Survived all that just to be killed in Garmisch.”

  Mason nodded and walked away. He scanned the area for Abrams and found him standing next to their sedan, with his face to the black sky.

  “Come on,” Mason said. “We’ve got work to do. There’ll be time to grieve later.”

  Abrams nodded and fell in line next to Mason as they entered the bookstore. Isaac stood in the middle of the wreckage, the broken glass, books, and shattered shelves. He looked up at Mason with a sad expression.

  “You’re a good man, Isaac,” Mason said. “You helped save an entire family. We’ll help you as much as we can.”

  As they walked to the back, Abrams said, “How are we going to get enough cash to do that?”

  “I’m going to persuade Schaeffer to pitch in . . . as soon as I wrench the cash from his dead hands.”

  Abrams slowed at the curtain, as if reluctant to gaze upon the man he had killed. Mason hesitated with him, then drew back the curtain. The back hallway was empty; the body had already been taken to the morgue.

  Densmore came down the stairs and met them. “Where have you two been?”

  “Working our case,” Abrams said.

  “Who’s the victim outside?”

  “A man named Yaakov Lubetkin.”

  “So where’s the family?”

  Apparently Isaac had broken down and told all. “Somewhere safe,” Mason said. “What about your search of Winstone’s villa? Did you find the documents?”

  Densmore shook his head. “We had the servants point out every square inch of Winstone’s renovations, and we spent hours tearing up every goddamned spot. Nothing.” He rubbed his head. “I’m tired, Mason. I really am. So why don’t you give me the rundown, and then we can all go home and get some sleep. Unless, of course, you have some other people you want to shoot tonight.”

  Mason motioned for Densmore and Abrams to follow him out the back door and away from the crime scene techs. “We didn’t want to tell you, because we don’t know who to trust.”

  “According to you, nobody.”

  “That’s right, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Yaakov Lubetkin was an informant for Winstone, reporting on Giessen and Kantos, while he worked for them. Yaakov and his family are Jewish survivors, and we had worked out a deal to help smuggle him and his family to Palestine in exchange for information.”

  “That didn’t work out so well, did it?” Densmore said.

  “You want to hear the rest or not?” When Densmore answered with silence, Mason told him about what Yaakov had discovered, that Kantos and Giessen had a partnership running everything on the black market from apples to zinc, and salt to heroin, by the truckload. About Hilda’s relationship with Giessen and Kantos, then her falling in love with Winstone. That Schaeffer and Volker, plus the unknown Abbott, were the ringleaders behind the violent takeover.

  As Mason went on, Densmore became so tight with stress that his body seemed to shrink. Finally he held out his hands to stop Mason. “I don’t want to hear any more—”

  “Patrick, the body you pulled out of here was one of the waiters from the Casa Carioca.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything. He could have been working as a hired gun on the side.”

  “I also wounded one of the assailants, and I heard his partner talking to him in American English.”

  Densmore shook his head as if warding off any more bad news. “I’m a cop, but I never claimed to be a hero. I advise you to let it all go. Put in for a transfer, and take Abrams with you. Nothing good will come out of this.”

  “You think this will all go away if I leave? And who’s going to step up and put these bastards down? You? Gamin? I’ve got a personal stake in this, and I’m already a target.”

  Densmore turned to Abrams. “I’m putting you in for a transfer. Whether you like it or not.”

  “That’s what I advise,” Mason said to Abrams.

  “Sirs, I’m not backing out of this. I could never live with myself if I didn’t help. Please don’t do that to me.”

  Densmore gave Abrams a stern look but said nothing.

  “I need for you to keep this quiet,” Mason said to Densmore. “I still don’t know who all is involved.”

  Densmore nodded. “I’ll run interference for you, but don’t ask me to get in any deeper than that.”

  “Whoever got to Yaakov got to Otto, too. We found him hung in a widow’s villa with a note nailed to his chest.”

  Densmore grimaced, more from the weight of bad news than any sympathy for Otto. “Write it all up tomorrow. I don’t want to hear any more. I’m getting out of here and see if I can get some sleep.” He turned on his heels and strode off.

  Mason said to Abrams, “I want you to check into a hotel tonight. Don’t go back to your billet. Just go straight to a hotel, and make it one run by Germans.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’ll do the same thing, but after I get Adelle out of there. I should have done that two nights ago.”

  “I’m going with you. I won’t sleep unless I know you and she are safe.”

  “You going to make sure I brush my teeth and tuck me in, too?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  * * *

  Abrams stopped the car down the street from Mason’s house, and as before, they surveyed the area. As it was past midnight, no lights shone in any of the houses, including Mason’s.

  “We go on foot from here,” Mason said as he drew out his .45. “You enter by the back, and I’ll take the front.”

  “This is getting to be an annoying habit. Have you always lived like this?”

  Mason ignored the remark and exited the car. Abrams did the same, and they wordlessly moved down the street. Abrams hopped the low fence of a neighbor’s yard to approach Mason’s house by the backyard. Mason tried moving quietly, but his footsteps crunched through the frozen crust of snow. On the front porch, he unlocked the door and gently pushed it open.

  The sound of a spring released under tension came first—a sound Mason knew too well, and one that made every nerve in his body fire at once. The next instant something heavy and solid hit the living room floor and rolled along the parquet.

  “Gil! Grenade!” Mason yelled toward the back of the house. He jumped off the front porch and di
ved behind the porch’s concrete riser.

  At that same instant the grenade exploded, lighting up the snow in a hellish orange. The two front windows blew out. Glass sprayed onto the porch and rained down on Mason. He rushed onto the porch, kicked open the door, and entered the living room still full of acrid smoke.

  “Gil!”

  “Here!” Abrams yelled and stepped out from the back hallway.

  Mason ran up to Abrams and checked for wounds. “Are you all right?”

  “I can’t hear too good,” Abrams said, a little stunned. He tried to wave away the lingering smoke. “Goddamn, these people! This is fucked up!”

  Mason rushed through the rest of the house looking for Adelle. She was gone, but so was the small bag of clothes she’d brought with her from her apartment. She must have figured out for herself that Mason’s billet was no longer safe. Mason hoped she’d left town, far away from Garmisch, long before the would-be assassins had arrived.

  Mason rejoined Abrams in the living room, and they both examined the area with their flashlights. The grenade had rolled to the center of the room and exploded, pushing the sofa toward the fireplace and turning two chairs to splinters. The grenade’s shrapnel had ripped into the upholstery, shredded the area rug, and disintegrated the floor lamp. Beyond the blast radius there were obvious signs that the intruders had torn the place apart: books pulled off the shelves, the contents of a cabinet emptied onto the floor, and the previous owner’s record collection strewn across the floor.

  Then Mason noticed a white piece of paper nailed to the inside of the front door. He walked up and aimed his flashlight on it. It was torn in places and blackened at the edges, but he could easily make out the message . . . BOOM!

  Abrams came up to Mason and growled when he read the message. “We have got to put these people down!”

  Mason felt proud of Abrams at that moment. The potent warning had not scared him, but made him more resolute. After this latest stunt, Mason might have considered giving up and moving on, as Densmore had suggested. The force they were up against seemed too powerful and too clever, but Abrams’s guileless remark had put it all in perspective.

  Mason retrieved Hilda’s note that he’d hidden behind the bathroom shelf, then quickly packed up a few clothes. Outside, a few neighbors had stepped out from their houses to see what had happened. An MP jeep and army ambulance pulled up a minute later. A medic cornered Abrams and insisted on examining him. Mason took the MP corporal inside and gave him a report of the incident. He kept the details vague, only heightening the corporal’s suspicion that Mason was involved in something nefarious. Obviously, the corporal was not on Schaeffer’s payroll, and Mason mentally added the man to his list of MPs he could trust.

  An hour later Mason and Abrams checked into a German-run bed-and-breakfast. Doing so violated army regulations for both parties, but with some extra money, the proprietor happily looked the other way. With only a few hours left before sunrise, Mason doubted he would get much sleep. Schaeffer and his cronies were determined to tie up all their loose ends, including Abrams and him. As he lay on the bed in the darkness, images of Yaakov’s torn body kept rolling around in his mind, the image of his tattoo so clear, as if projected in the dark room. That was when it hit him: Yaakov’s Birkenau tattoo on his forearm. The numbers.

  Mason jumped out of bed and searched through his pockets. He pulled out the piece of paper from Hilda’s suitcase. The numbers on the paper and Yaakov’s tattoo were the same.

  What possible connection could there be between Hilda’s note and a concentration camp number? There was no way it was just a coincidence. Then why would Winstone use Yaakov’s number? What did Yaakov have to do with any of it? If Yaakov knew where the documents were hidden, why hadn’t he told Mason or Abrams? The more likely scenario was that Winstone had simply used the tattoo without Yaakov knowing anything about it, as part of some code to finding their location. And since Laufs had said that a bounty was out for the location of the documents, it was remotely possible that Winstone had not divulged their location under torture. Perhaps he’d pointed to Yaakov instead, leading the killers to seek the information from Yaakov, and Yaakov had revealed their location under torture. “Perhaps” and “maybe”: still more questions than answers.

  One thing seemed obvious: Anyone connected with the location of the documents had been tortured and killed. The documents were in all likelihood in the killers’ hands, or lost for good. Now all Schaeffer had left to do was to clean up the loose ends. Present company included.

  Dark thoughts on a very dark night . . .

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Mason knew entering detachment headquarters came with a false sense of security. For all he knew, a good handful of the MPs and officers were on the Schaeffer gravy train. He and Abrams had eaten breakfast at the officers’ mess, then Abrams had gone to check that Wilson and Tandy were on the job watching the Casa, not sleeping.

  He entered an auxiliary building in the complex and descended to the basement. The two technicians monitoring the phone taps of the Casa Carioca were in a room not much bigger than a broom closet. One technician, Archer, sat at the console, half-awake with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He sat up straight when Mason entered.

  “Where’s Lefebvre?” Mason asked.

  “He’s tracking down the addresses on some of the phone numbers like you ordered. There are about five that aren’t officially listed. Could be numbers just lost in the system, but Lefebvre should be able to track them down.”

  “Anything come in?”

  Archer gathered a handful of papers and handed them to Mason. “Pretty much mundane stuff. Those are the transcripts in English and what we’ve been able to translate from German so far. Some of the phone calls were in Polish, so we should have those a little later now that we tracked down a translator.”

  “Why aren’t you listening right now?”

  “A light will blink if there’s an incoming or outgoing call. But the circuits went dead around ten last night.”

  “What do you mean dead?”

  “We started around noon yesterday, and the calls were sparse but regular. Then, boom, nothing. I thought something went wrong on our end, or with the Casa phones. But the main switchboard could no longer get a signal through. I had Lefebvre call the Casa reservations line on an office phone, and he got through. Somehow they’ve rerouted the phone lines through another relay center.”

  “I thought all local calls were routed through the main switchboard.”

  “No, sir. Most of them, but the outlying areas and the towns just north of here run through a series of others. The Casa used the main switchboard, but not anymore.”

  “Would there be a technical reason for them to change to another relay center?”

  “Not one I can think of.”

  “Unless they found out their phones were being tapped.” Mason thought a moment. “What about tapping directly into their phone lines at the club?”

  “Well, sure, that’s possible, but the club’s got guys there around the clock, so we’d have to dig up the line somewhere in the network and tap in that way. We can do it, but it’ll take some time . . . and probably another set of approval orders to give us permission to start digging around.”

  “I’ll get you those.”

  Mason leafed through the pages. Archer was right. So far, the calls all seemed pretty mundane: supply orders for food, drinks, and linen; costumes for a new show; a maintenance problem with the retracting floor; a call for a piano tuner.

  “Any one of these could be code for what they are really saying. Did you make up that list as I asked?”

  Archer handed him a piece of paper. “Phone numbers in and out, especially the numbers that come up most often. They start with the most frequent calls at the top.”

  Lefebvre came in with a full pot of coffee in one hand and a shee
t of paper in the other. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Mason and saluted.

  Mason pointed to the piece of paper. “Is that the list of unregistered numbers?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lefebvre said and handed Mason the paper. “Traced down four of the five. Two are private residences. One is to a supply company, and the other a construction company. Both companies are in the German registry office, so they look legit. These numbers could have just gotten lost in the system.”

  Mason looked over the list. “Good work. Get those other calls translated and transcribed as soon as you can. I’ll see about getting you orders to dig up the Casa lines.”

  Mason left the room and ran into Abrams coming from the other direction.

  “I was just coming to see you,” Abrams said.

  “Come on,” Mason said without stopping.

  Abrams did a U-turn. “Where are we going?”

  “Check out a few addresses the techs got from the phone taps.”

  They emerged from the basement and made a beeline for their car.

  “I found Wilson and Tandy at the Casa,” Abrams said.

  “They have anything new?”

  “Either they were spotted on one of their tails or someone tipped them off. Last night the driver took them on a joy ride all over the place, like he knew they were following him. Finally they ended up back at the Casa. Just to rub their faces in it, one of the Polish waiters came out with hot cocoa.”

  “Densmore’s got to give us more manpower.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Snow fell in big, wet flakes and had already covered the parked cars.

  “A couple weeks ’til spring,” Abrams said. “You wouldn’t know it around here.”

  They got in their assigned sedan. Mason stomped his feet in a fruitless attempt to get warm blood to his frostbite scars. “It’s going to get colder and snowier the way my dogs are barking.”

  Abrams started the engine and turned on the heat full blast. While they waited for the windshield to clear away the snow, Mason fished out his badge case and showed Abrams the piece of paper stashed behind his ID card.