by Ross Thomas
“I’ll burn it later,” I said.
Burmser smiled faintly. Hatcher almost did. They got up and left.
I finished my coffee, lighted a cigarette to get rid of its cold taste, and tried to determine why two of the town’s top agents so suddenly had revealed their identities to me. In the years I had been operating the bar, none had given me the time of day. Now I was an insider, almost a fellow conspirator in their efforts to unravel the mystery of the vanished American agent. McCorkle, the seemingly innocuous barkeep, whose espionage tentacles reached from Antwerp to Istanbul.
There was also the equally discomforting knowledge that I was a prime patsy. To Maas I was the lazy, easygoing lout to be used as chauffeur and innkeeper. To Burmser and Hatcher I was a sometime convenience, useful in the past in a minor sort of way, an expatriate American who had to be fed just enough line to keep him on the hook. Give the story the ring of intrigue. Throw in the mysterious disappearance of his partner, who should have been bound for Berlin, a cyanide capsule tacked onto his back molar, a flexible stainless-steel throwing knife sewn into his fly.
I opened the desk and pulled out last month’s bank statement. There was a zero or two missing, so I put the statement back. Not enough to go back to the States, not enough to retire on. Enough, maybe, for a couple of years in Paris or New York or Miami, living in a good hotel, eating well, enough for the right clothes and too much liquor. Enough for that, but not enough for anything else that would count. I ground out my cigarette and went back into the bar before I started fondling my collection of pressed flowers.
CHAPTER 7
The luncheon crowd had drifted in. The press was monopolizing the bar, killing the morning’s hangover with beer, whiskey and pink gins. Most were British, with a sprinkling of Americans and Germans and French. For lunch they usually gathered at the American Embassy Club, where the prices were low, but occasionally they descended upon us. There were no certain dates that they dropped in, but by some sense of radar they all flocked together at noon, and if someone was missing, then he was tagged as the dirty kind of a son-of-a-bitch who was out digging up a story on his own.
None of them worked too hard. In the first place they were blanketed by the wire services. Secondly, an interesting trunk murder in Chicago—or Manchester, for that matter—could reduce a careful analysis of the SPD’s chances in the forthcoming election to three paragraphs in the “News Around the World” column. They were a knowledgeable lot, however, usually writing a bit more than they knew, and never tipping a story until it was safely filed.
I signaled Karl to let the house buy a round of drinks. I said hello to a few of them, answered some questions about yesterday’s shooting, and told them I didn’t know whether or not it was a political assassination. They asked about Padillo and I told them he was out of town on business.
I wandered away and checked on reservations with Horst, who served as the maître d’ and ran the waiters and the kitchen with rigid Teutonic discipline. The press crowd was good for another hour at the bar before they ate. Some of them would forget to. I continued to circulate, shook a few hands, counted the house, and moved back to the bar.
I spotted Fredl as she came through the door and walked over to meet her.
“Hello, Mac. Sorry I’m late.”
“You want to join your friends at the bar?”
She glanced over and shook her head. “Not today. Thanks.”
“I have a table for us in the corner.”
When we were seated and drinks and lunch were ordered, Fredl looked at me with a flat, cold stare.
“What have you been up to?” she demanded.
“Why?”
“Mike had someone call me this morning. From Berlin. A man named Weatherby.”
I took a sip of my drink and looked at the tip of my cigarette. “And?”
“He asked me to tell you that the deal has gone sour. That’s one. Secondly, he said that Mike needs some Christmas help and soon. And, thirdly, he told me to ask you to check into the Berlin Hilton. He’ll get in touch with you there. He also told me that you didn’t have to stay in your room. He’d try the bar.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all. He sounded as it he were in a hurry. Oh, yes, one more thing. He told me to tell you that you had better get this place swept. Also your apartment. He said Cook Baker would know whom you should call.”
I nodded. “I’ll get around to it after lunch. How about a brandy?” I signaled Horst for two. One thing about owning your own restaurant: the service is excellent.
“What’s it all about, damn you?” she said.
I shrugged. “It’s no secret, I suppose. Padillo and I have been thinking about opening up another place in Berlin. Good tourist town. Lot of military. When I was up there I made a tentative deal. It looks as if it might have fallen through. So Mike wants me to come up.”
“And the Christmas help? It’s April.”
“Padillo worries.”
“You’re lying.”
I smiled. “I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
“You’re going, of course.”
“Why the ‘of course’? Maybe I’ll call Mike, maybe I’ll write him a letter. I had the deal all set, and if he screwed it up in one day, then he can damn well unscrew it.”
“You’re still lying.”
“Look, one of us has to be here to run the place. Padillo likes to travel more than I do. I’m sedentary. Like Mycroft Holmes, I’m devoid of energy or ambition. That’s why I run a saloon. It’s a fairly easy way to keep on eating and drinking.”
Fredl rose. “You talk too much, Mac, and you don’t lie well. You’re a rotten liar.” She opened her purse and tossed an envelope on the table. “There’s your ticket. I’ll send you a bill when you get back. The plane leaves Düsseldorf at eighteen hours. You’ve plenty of time to catch it.” She learned over and patted my cheek. “Take care of yourself, liebchen honey. You can tell me some more lies when you get back.”
I stood up. “Thanks for not pressing.”
She looked up at me, her brown eyes wide and frank and tender. “I’ll find out sometime. It might be at three o'clock in the morning, when you’re relaxed and feel like talking. I’ll wait till then. I have time.” She turned and walked away. Horst darted over to open the door for her.
I sat down and took a sip of the brandy. Fredl hadn’t finished hers, so I poured it into mine. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without. Even with booze. On one of the rare occasions when Padillo had mentioned what he termed his “other calling,” he had said that one of the drawbacks was having to work with the Christmas help, which might be anything from the Army’s CID to tourists armed with two Canons and a Leica and a fascination for the photogenic qualities of Czechoslovakian armament factories. They always seemed to get caught, and they invariably listed their occupation as student.
Circumstances, not will, determine action. I could ignore the airline ticket and Padillo’s distress signal and sit there, cozy in my own little saloon, and get unpleasantly drunk. Or I could call Horst over, give him the keys to the cashbox, go home and pack, and then drive to Düsseldorf. I left the brandy and went over to the bar. The customers had gone and Karl was reading Time. He thought it was a funny magazine. I tended to agree.
“Where’s Horst?”
“Out back.”
“Call him.”
He stuck his head through the door and yelled for Horst. The thin, ascetic little man marched sharply around the bar and up to me. I thought he was going to click his heels. Our relationship during the five years he had worked for us continued on a completely formal basis.
“Yes, Herr McCorkle?”
“You’re going to have to take over for a few days. I’m going out of town.”
“Yes, Herr McCorkle.”
“How come?” Karl asked.
“None of your goddamned business,” I snapped. Horst shot him a look of disapproval. We had given Horst five percent of the net,
and he felt a certain proprietary regard toward the decisions of management.
“Anything else, Herr McCorkle?” Horst asked.
“Call up that firm that patches the carpet and see how much it will cost to get the cigarette burns out. If it’s not too much, tell them to go ahead. Use your own judgment.”
Horst beamed. “Yes, Herr McCorkle. May I ask how long you will be away?”
“A few days; maybe a week. Neither Mr. Padllio nor I will be here, so you’ll have to run the place.”
Horst almost saluted.
Karl said, “Christ, the way you guys run a business. What about the Continental, anyway?”
“When I get back.”
“Sure. Swell.”
I turned to Horst. “There will be a man, perhaps two who will be checking the telephones, probably tomorrow. Give them every cooperation.”
“Of course, Herr McCorkle.”
“Good. Auf wiedersehen.”
“Auf wiedersehen, Herr McCorkle,” Horst said.
“See you around,” Karl said.
I got in the car and drove six blocks to a twin of the apartment that Fredl lived in. I parked in an empty slot across the street and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. I knocked on 614, and after a few moments the door opened cautiously. An inch. A panel of a long lean pallid face peered at me.
“Come on in and have a drink.” The voice was deep and mellow.
The door opened wide and I went into the apartment of Cook G. Baker, Bonn correspondent for an international radio news service called Global Reports, Inc. Baker was the one and only professed member of Alcoholics Anonymous in Bonn, and he was a backslider.
“Hello, Cooky. How’s the booze barrier?”
“I just got up. Care to join me in an eye opener?”
“I think I’ll pass.”
The apartment was furnished in a haphazard manner. A rumpled day bed. A table or two and an enormous wingback chair that had a telephone built into one arm and a portable typewriter attached to a stand that swung like a gate. It was Cooky’s office.
Around the room were carefully placed bottles of Ballantine’s Scotch. Some were half full, others nearly so. It was Cooky’s theory that when he wanted a drink he should only have to reach out and there it would be.
“Sometimes when I’m on the floor it’s a hell of a long crawl to the kitchen,” he once explained to me.
Cooky was thirty-three years old that year, and according to Fredl he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. He was a couple of inches over six feet, lean as a whippet, with a high forehead, a perfect nose and a wide mouth that seemed continually to be fighting a smile over some private joke. And he was immaculate. He wore a dark-blue sport shirt, a blue and yellow Paisley ascot, a pair of gray flannels that must have cost sixty bucks, and black loafers.
“Sit down, Mac. Coffee?”
“That’ll do.”
“Sugar?”
“If you have it.”
He picked up one of the bottles of Scotch and disappeared into the kitchen. A couple of minutes later he handed me my coffee and then went back for his drink: a half-tumbler of Scotch with a milk chaser.
“Breakfast. Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
He took a long gulp of the Scotch and quickly washed it down with the milk.
“I fell off a week ago,” he said.
“You’ll make it.”
He shook his head sadly and smiled. “Maybe.”
“What do you hear from New York?” I asked.
“They’re billing more than thirty-seven million a year now and the money is still being banked for me.”
At twenty-six Cooky had been the boy wonder of Madison Avenue public-relations circles, a founder of Baker, Brickhill and Hillsman.
“I got on the flit and just couldn’t get off,” he had explained to me one gloomy night. “They wanted to buy out my interest, but in a moment of sobriety I listened to my lawyers and refused to sell. I’ve got a third of the stock. The more lushed I got, the more stubborn I became. Finally I made a deal. I would get out and they would bank my share of the profits for me. My attorneys handled the whole thing. I’m very rich and I’m very drunk and I know I’m never going to quit drinking and I know I’m never going to write a book.”
Cooky had been in Bonn for three years. Despite Berlitz and a series of private tutors, he could not learn German. “Mental block,” he had said. “I don’t like the goddamn language and I don’t want to learn it.”
His job was to fill one two-minute news spot a day and occasionally do a live show. His sources were the private secretaries of anyone in town who might have a story. In methodical fashion he had seduced those who were young enough and completely charmed those who were over the edge. I had once spent an afternoon with him while he had gathered his news. He had sat in the big chair, the private-joke smile fighting to break through. “Wait,” he had said. “In three minutes the phone will ring.”
It had. First there had been the girl from the Presse Dienst. Then it was one who worked as a stringer for the London Daily Express: when her boss had a story, she made sure that Cooky had it too. The phone had continued to ring. To all Cooky had been charming, grateful and sincere.
By eight o’clock the calls had ended and Cooky had gone over his notes. Between us we had managed to finish a fifth. Cooky had glanced around and found a fresh bottle conveniently placed by his chair on the floor. He had tossed it to me. “Mix us a couple more, Mac, while I write this crap.”
He had swung the typewriter toward him, inserted a sheet of paper, and talked the story as he typed. “Chancellor Ludwig Erhard said today that …” He had had two minutes that night, and it had taken him five to write it. “You want to go to the studio?” he had asked.
More than mellow, I had agreed. Cooky had stuck a fifth of Scotch into his mackintosh and we had made the dash to the Deutsche Rundfunk station. The engineer had been waiting at the door.
“You have ten minutes, Herr Baker. They have already called you from New York.”
“Plenty of time,” Cooky had said, producing the bottle. The engineer had had a drink, I had had a drink, and Cooky had had a drink. I had been getting drunk, but Cooky had seemed as warm and charming as ever. We had gone into the studio and he had gotten on the phone to his editor in New York. The editor had started to reel off the AP and UPI stories that had come over the wire from Bonn.
“I’ve got that … got that … got that. Yeah. That, too. And I’ve got one more on the Ambassador.… I don’t give a goddamn if AP doesn’t have it; they’ll move it after nine o'clock.”
We had all had another drink. Cooky had put the earphones on and had talked over the live mike to the engineer in New York. “How they hanging, Frank? That’s good. All right; here we go.”
And Cooky had begun to read. His voice had been excellent, a fifth of Scotch apparently having made no effect. There had been no slurs, no flubs. He had glanced at the clock once, slowed his delivery slightly, and finished in exactly two minutes.
We had had another drink and had then proceeded to the saloon, where Cooky and I were to meet two secretaries from the Ministry of Defense. “That,” he had said, on the way to Godesberg, “is how I keep going. If it weren’t for that deadline every afternoon and the fact that I don’t have to get up in the morning, I’d be chasing little men. You know, Mac, you should quit drinking. You’ve got all the earmarks of a lush.”
“My name is Mac and I’m an alcoholic,” I had said automatically.
“That’s the first step. The next time I dry up, we’ll have a long talk.”
“I’ll wait.”
Through what he termed his “little pigeons,” Cooky knew Bonn as few others did. He knew the servant problem at the Argentine Embassy as well as he knew the internal power struggle within the Christian Democratic Union. He never forgot anything. He had once said: “Sometimes I think that’s why I drink: to see if I can’t black out. I never have. I remember every Godawful t
hing that’s done and said.”
“You’re not shaking very much today,” I said.
“The good doctor is giving me daily vitamin injections. It’s sort of a crash program. He has a theory that I can drink as much as I want as long as I get sufficient vitamins. He was a little looped when he left today and insisted on giving himself a shot.”
I sipped my coffee. “Mike says our place should be swept. My apartment too. He says you know who can do it.”
“Where is Mike?”
“In Berlin.”
“How soon do you want it?”
“As soon as possible.”
Cooky picked up the phone and dialed ten numbers. “The guy’s in Düsseldorf.”
He waited while the phone rang. “This is Cooky, Konrad … Fine.… There are two spots in Bonn that need your talents … Mac’s Place in Godesberg—you know where it is? Good. And an apartment. The address is … ” He looked at me. I told him and he repeated it over the phone. “I don’t know. Phones and everything, I would think. Hold on.” He turned to me and asked: “What if they find something?”
I thought a moment. “Tell him to leave them in, but to tell you where they are.”
“Just leave them, Konrad. Don’t bother them. Call me when you’re through and give me a rundown. Now, how much?” He listened and then asked me: “You go for a thousand marks?” I nodded. “O.K. A thousand. You can pick it up from me. And the key to the apartment, too. Right. See you tomorrow.”
He hung up the phone and reached for a convenient bottle.
“He does my place once a week,” he said. “I got a little suspicious once because of some phone noise when one of the pigeons was calling.”
“Find anything?” I asked.
He nodded. “The pigeon lost her job. I had to find her another.”
He took a gulp of Scotch and chased it with another of milk. “Mike in a jam?”
“I don’t know.”
Cooky looked up at the ceiling. “Remember a little girl named Mary Lee Harper? Used to work downtown. She was from Nashville.”
“Vaguely.”
“She used to work for a guy named Burmser.”
“And?”