“What are we going to do with the girl?” Abrams asked.
“We can’t let her go. She’ll run back to Schaeffer and tell all.”
“Do what you want to Volker, but no harm comes to the girl.”
“Apart from scaring her out of her wits, she’ll be fine. Might make her think twice about the gangster-moll lifestyle.” He noticed Abrams mooning over her. “Maybe she’ll swoon into your arms.”
A pair of car headlights appeared in the rearview mirror. The beams slashed across the asphalt. Margareta got to her feet and stepped to the curb.
“This is him,” Mason said. They readied their pistols and watched as the car passed them. Mason recognized the 1938 Horch. “That’s the car that was waiting outside Adelle’s apartment when we went to get her.”
Through the car windows, he saw a large-framed man driving, then Volker’s distinct profile in the backseat.
“He’s got his bodyguard driving him,” Abrams said. “What do we do with that guy?”
“Time to improvise.” Mason started the car and pulled ahead. When the Horch stopped next to Margareta, and she slid in, Mason hit the accelerator. The tires screeched as he raced up and stopped the car at an angle to block the Horch.
Mason and Abrams jumped out with guns up, aiming at the driver. It was Bolus, the muscle-bound bartender from the Casa Carioca.
“Hands up!” Mason shouted. “Don’t make a move.”
The driver did as he was told. Margareta screamed, jumped out of the car, and started to run into the park. Abrams chased after her and tackled her to the ground. At the same moment, Mason rushed up to the driver’s-side window. “Roll down the window. Slowly.” When Bolus did so, Mason aimed his pistol at Bolus’s head, reached in and searched inside the man’s overcoat. He pulled out a Luger pistol and put it in his pocket. “Now take the key out of the ignition and put it in my hand.” Bolus obeyed. Then Mason threw in his handcuffs. “Cuff yourself to the steering wheel.”
The driver did what he was told while Abrams wrestled Margareta back into the car. Mason went to Volker’s door and pulled it open. A glint of light reflected off metal. Mason ducked just as Volker fired a shot. The growl of the bullet zipped just past his ear.
Abrams put his pistol against Volker’s temple. “Put it down on the floor. Easy does it.”
Volker bent over to put the gun on the floorboard, but never made it all the way. Mason struck Volker across the temple with his gun butt, and Volker slumped in the seat.
Margareta screamed as she rolled herself into a ball. “Please don’t kill me.”
While Abrams tried to calm Margareta, Mason returned to Bolus and threw the handcuff key in his lap. “Take the handcuffs off and get out.”
It took Bolus a moment to release himself and step out of the car. Noticing the man had a pronounced limp, Mason pinned him against the car. He pulled out his switchblade and cut open the man’s pants leg. A fresh bandage was wrapped around his thigh.
“That’s the exact spot I shot someone coming after Yaakov’s family last night. What a coincidence.”
Bolus’s eyes popped wide with fear. Mason forced him to move around to the trunk. He fired two shots into the trunk lid.
“Wouldn’t want you to suffocate.” He gestured toward the trunk. “Get in.”
“I’ll freeze in there,” Bolus said.
“I’m giving you a better chance than you gave that family at the bookstore.” He aimed his pistol at Bolus’s head, and Bolus climbed into the trunk.
Mason slammed the trunk lid shut and returned to Volker, who still lay dazed across the backseat. He cuffed Volker’s hands behind his back. Volker moaned and started to come out of his stupor. His temple bled profusely. After applying a gag to Volker’s mouth, Mason removed a canvas sack he’d stashed in his coat pocket and pulled it over Volker’s head. As quickly as they could, he and Abrams forced Volker and Margareta into their car.
* * *
Mason finished knotting the ropes that bound Volker’s arms and legs to a heavy wooden chair. Volker sat quiet, stoic even, with the sack still pulled over his head. Only his heavy breathing betrayed his fear. Mason had prepared the villa’s furnace room in advance of the abduction: the chair and the tableful of props to be used in the coming performance. Behind Mason sat the massive coal-burning furnace like a cast-iron medusa with its tangle of vent pipes stretching out to various parts of the house. After double-checking the ropes, he crossed the room and exited through a door of wood and banded iron, securing the latch behind him.
Abrams stood next to Margareta in the neighboring room. Her hands were bound behind her, but not to the chair. She still wore the gag that they’d been forced to use when she tried to scream for help. Abrams looked pained to see her that way, and Margareta pleaded for mercy with her doleful eyes. She struggled with her bindings when she saw Mason approach.
“Did you explain that we’re not going to hurt her?” Mason asked.
“I tried, but I don’t think she believes me.”
Mason squatted next to Margareta. “What happens to you in the next hour or so is partly up to you. You’re in the basement of an isolated house, so no one can hear you. But, for the sake of my ears, if you promise to keep quiet, we’ll remove the gag. Okay?”
Margareta looked at Abrams then back to Mason. She nodded. Abrams stepped behind her and removed her gag. Margareta took in gulps of air, but she remained silent.
“Good,” Mason said. “Now, if you also promise not to try and run away, then we’ll untie your hands, too.”
Margareta nodded again, and Abrams untied her hands. Margareta rubbed her wrists and said, “What do you want from me?”
“We were only after Volker,” Abrams said, “but we couldn’t very well let you go.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Margareta said.
“Major Schaeffer is your lover, right?” Mason said more than asked.
Margareta looked at Mason as if she was unsure how to answer.
Mason continued, “Margareta, I’m afraid you have the worst taste in men I’ve seen since Eva Braun. Both Schaeffer and Volker have murdered about a dozen people. At least the ones we know about. Including Hilda Schmidt and Adelle Holtz.”
“That’s a lie!” Margareta said with little conviction in her eyes, like a child caught red-handed but denying it anyway. “I won’t tell anybody. I swear. Let me go. Please.”
As if on cue, she started to cry and covered her eyes with a trembling hand. Mason didn’t buy, but Abrams obviously did.
“Margareta,” Abrams said, “we won’t hold you any longer than we have to. Then you’ll be free to go.”
“I’m not sure about that, partner,” Mason said. “I suspect Margareta here knew Schaeffer’s and Volker’s activities. That’s aiding and abetting. She’ll do some prison time.”
Margareta suddenly recovered from weeping and gave Mason a fiery glare. “You’ve got nothing on me.”
Mason looked at Abrams. “This lady would be a real good actress if she wasn’t so obvious, changing her routines on a dime.”
“I am . . . was an actress.”
“There. You see, Mr. Abrams? She’s an actress. I knew it.”
Abrams looked puzzled by the direction Mason was heading.
“Not many jobs for German actresses these days, are there?” Mason said.
Margareta shook her head. “All I could find was that lousy skating job at the Casa.”
“Not as much glamour or money, I bet.” Margareta shook her head, and Mason said, “That’s why you shacked up with Schaeffer and squeezed Volker on the side.”
“A couple of cheap bastards,” Margareta said.
Abrams looked shocked then disappointed that the potential flower of his eye had turned out to be bitter and jaded.
“I’ve got a proposition for you,” Mason said.
“Miss,” Abrams said, “that is not what’s going to happen.”
“You two make me want to vomit.”
“But not your two scumbag boyfriends?” Mason said. “Now, before you let loose and ruin that obviously expensive dress of yours, listen to my proposition. You can make a wad of cash, plus you’ll come out of this looking like an innocent victim. No jail time. No suspicion that you ratted on anyone.”
Margareta couldn’t hide her interest as Mason pulled out his wallet and fished out two hundred dollars—all the money he had until the end of the month. “How much have you got?” he asked Abrams.
Abrams still looked baffled, and not too happy to surrender money for a mysterious cause. He fished the money out of his wallet and counted it. “Fifty-two bucks.”
Mason plucked the money from Abrams’s clutches and said to Margareta, “That’s two hundred fifty-two dollars. That’s a lot of dough for a German.”
Margareta looked him straight in the eye. “What do you want me to do?”
THIRTY-TWO
Mason entered the furnace room and left the heavy door open a crack. Volker lay facedown on the coal-stained floor. He’d obviously tried to free himself and had fallen forward with the chair now on top of him. He struggled with greater frenzy when Mason walked up to him.
“Now look what you did,” Mason said. He jerked the chair violently into the upright position. He then yanked off the canvas hood. When Volker became used to the harsh light, his eyes popped wide for just a moment when he saw near the chair a wooden table displaying an array of blunt instruments. He recovered quickly and looked straight ahead with a dispassionate expression. Mason picked up a billy club and whacked the table with it. Volker jumped and blinked, then, with greater effort, he regained his composure.
Mason leaned in close to Volker’s face. “I’m betting you’re one of those sadistic bastards who can’t take what he dishes out. I remember a similar basement and your instruments of torture. Now the world has turned. You know what comes next.” Mason put the hood back over Volker’s head. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
Volker breathed heavily, and his body became rigid, which triggered in Mason a primitive urge in him to do exactly what he promised, what he could have only dreamed of when Volker had tortured him so brutally. He could even smell the remnants of that sweet burned odor of the Turkish tobacco, the same musky cologne. That inner voice urged him to go ahead and return the favor. It took all of his will to keep from carrying out the punishment.
“You might be wondering why I’m keeping on the gag.” He leaned in to Volker’s ear. “There’s nothing I want from you. There’s nothing you could say that could make me stop.”
A bloodcurdling scream came from the utility room, and Volker recoiled at the sound.
“My partner is going over your mistress. From her, we expect information, but she’s trying to be brave and not talk. Braver than you, I think. That is, if we wanted any information from you.”
In fact, Margareta was acting once again on an impromptu stage. She had agreed to take Mason’s and Abrams’s money for a one-night performance. “Ernst,” she shrieked. “Please! Help me!”
Margareta screamed again, but if anything, it seemed to calm Volker. Apparently Volker was the kind of sadist who had little sympathy for the pain of others. Perhaps it even gratified him. It moved him only to the extent that it foretold what he would soon endure. Volker would react only to his own suffering.
Mason picked up a thick rubber hose, very much like the one Volker had used on him. He laid it on Volker’s shoulder and slowly pulled it across Volker’s neck. Volker shuddered involuntarily.
Mason brought the hose up high then swung it across the sensitive part of Volker’s shins. Volker jerked against his bonds, but only sputtered while trying to stifle cries of pain.
“Remember doing this to me?” Mason asked, and he did it again.
Volker couldn’t control himself this time and screamed into the gag.
The creak of strained hinges caused Mason to turn. Abrams stood in the doorway. He looked with shock and anger at the rubber hose, then at Mason.
Margareta screamed again. “Oh, God. No. Please stop!” Even though Abrams—her designated torturer—was nowhere near her.
Mason walked over.
“What the hell are you doing?” Abrams hissed near his ear. “This is not what we agreed. That’s why we’re having Margareta do it. To scare Volker into talking.”
With a lowered voice, Mason said, “He doesn’t care about Margareta. Let me worry about how to handle him.”
“No,” Abrams said a little too loudly. “You’re no better than him if you do this.”
“This asshole deserves more. You know what he did to those people. He’s the one who cut up Hilda. I’m sure of it.”
“This is about what he did to you.”
“To me, and countless others. My buddies. American soldiers.”
“Don’t do this, chief.”
Mason pushed Abrams ahead of him into the other room. He shut the door and spun back to Abrams. “Don’t question my methods.”
“If I don’t, who will? We’re here to get information.”
Margareta screamed, and Abrams said to her, “Hold off a second, would you?” Margareta shrugged, and Abrams turned back to Mason. “Give him a chance to talk.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Give it a try. Please.”
Mason knew Abrams was right, though in his early days as a police detective he’d been taught, and practiced, the unspoken rule that if a man was truly guilty, then a few judicious blows were warranted. But somehow, this was different. The sheer terror of torture was too inhumane. Even for Volker.
“Let me try one more trick,” Mason said. “It should push him over the edge. It won’t hurt him . . . much.” Off Abrams’s skeptical look, Mason said, “You can supervise.”
Abrams walked over to Margareta, and she did her best to seduce him with her eyes.
“You like my performance?” she asked.
Abrams pulled out his handcuffs. “Sorry, but I have to do this.”
Margareta extended pouty lips. “You don’t trust me?”
“Not even close,” Abrams said. He handcuffed her to a water pipe and shushed her with his finger. He then followed Mason back into the furnace room and slammed the door shut.
“Your girlfriend has passed out, Volker,” Mason said. “Looks like we can double-team you.”
Volker panted beneath the hood. Mason retrieved the electrical cord he’d prepared earlier, with alligator clips attached to the two bare ends. He then yanked off Volker’s hood. Volker’s ghostly pale face contrasted with the dried blood on his cheek and caked in his hair. He jerked his head back when Mason held out the electrical cord.
“This was your favorite torture method, as I recall. I still have the burn marks to prove it.”
Volker tried to distance himself from the cord. He turned away and contrived a defiant expression.
“Let’s try the earlobes first,” Mason said, thinking of Yaakov’s ruined corpse.
Volker swung his head wildly, but Abrams held him firm. Mason attached an alligator clip to each ear. He then stepped behind Volker, yanked his head back by his hair, and lifted the gag just high enough for Volker to speak.
“Last chance,” Mason yelled into Volker’s ear. “Schaeffer’s the one who ordered all the murders, isn’t he?”
“I know the law. You can’t do this. You’d better kill me, or run, because I’ll see that you suffer until your last, agonizing breath.”
“That’s not going to happen, because
you’re going to be a drooling vegetable once I get done with you. You’re not going to be able to remember your own name.” He jerked Volker’s head harder. “You and Schaeffer murdered Winstone and Hilda Schmidt. You carved up her face and stuffed the parts in Winstone’s mouth. Didn’t you?”
Volker tried to scream over Mason. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Mason shoved the gag back in place and pulled down the hood. “We’ll move on to other parts in a few minutes,” Mason said. “Don’t you worry about that.” He noticed Abrams looking squeamish, so Mason winked at him.
“Let’s get this over with,” Abrams said.
Mason said to Volker, “My partner didn’t get to experience what you put me through, so he’s a little anxious to cut your throat and be done with it. I say, not quite yet.”
Volker stiffened and huffed, trying to prepare for the worst. Mason walked the plug end of the cord over to a variable power supply with a large black dial that was plugged into an outlet. He plugged the cord into the power supply and threw the switch. It began a menacing hum. “Are you ready?”
Volker jerked against the ropes as if he already felt a searing jolt of electricity.
“Wait,” Abrams said. He leaned in to Volker and talked in a low voice as if conspiring against Mason. “My partner is crazy over what you did to him. I can’t stop him. He outranks me. You’ve got to give him something else to sink his teeth into. Something he needs more than torturing you.”
Mason slowly turned the dial, the buzz of electricity getting louder. Volker sputtered and moaned at first, but it quickly turned to muffled screams. Then he went completely rigid. Mason kept the voltage low enough to make it excruciatingly painful, but not enough to do permanent damage.
Abrams screamed at Mason, “Stop!” But Mason waited another moment, then dialed it down to zero. Volker slumped forward against his bindings. He made a wheezing sound as he struggled to take in oxygen through his nostrils.
Spoils of Victory Page 28