by Ross Thomas
The sight of Bodden when he came out of the Gasthaus with Eva Scheel had been almost a shock to Von Staden. He had to force himself to hang back. Only when the pair had reached the Rhine and turned right down a path did he allow himself to cross the dark street.
At the thick bushes, he hesitated. Then slowly he edged around them onto the path.
It was a rock that hit Von Staden in the temple, although he never knew it. Nor did he feel himself being dragged down the steep bank and shoved into the water. He drowned two minutes later. He didn’t feel that either.
After Bodden climbed back up the riverbank and rejoined Eva Scheel, he said, “A bad business.”
“He was the only one who could connect us.”
“You’re positive?”
“I’m positive.”
Eva Scheel was wrong about that, of course. Maj. Gilbert Baker-Bates could also connect her with the printer. But he wouldn’t do that for nearly ten hours, and by then it had all fallen apart.
28
When Jackson got back to his room on the third floor of the Bad Godesberg Hotel that night, it was 11:15 and thirteen persons had queued up outside the dwarf’s door. Seven were men; six were women. A few of them looked shamefaced. Several others seemed almost arrogant. All studiously ignored one another.
The dwarf’s door was unlocked. When he entered the room, Jackson discovered that the furniture had been rearranged. The table that Ploscaru had counted the marks on was now in the center of the room. On it was the money, neatly stacked. Next to the money was a student’s lamp, twisted so that its light would shine full into the face of whoever sat down in the single chair drawn up in front of the table. Behind the table were two straight chairs. Ploscaru was in one of them.
“Jesus, Nick, the only thing you’ve forgotten is the rubber hose.”
“Atmosphere, Minor. Atmosphere.”
“You’ve got it looking like the back room at Gestapo headquarters.”
“Do you think so? That was just the touch I tried for.”
Jackson nodded toward the door. “Are they all …” He didn’t finish his sentence because the dwarf started nodding happily.
“All. Each one has someone to inform against. Isn’t it delightful?”
“We’re going to be up all night.”
“Did you recognize any of them?”
Jackson ran the faces through his mind. “Two or three, I think.”
“How many places did you visit?”
“About twenty.”
“Good. I went to almost as many. Now, then, I think you should usher them in and out and sit here beside me and look grim and mysterious. I’ll do the interrogation—unless, of course, you’d like to.”
“No, I’ll just look grim and mysterious and frown a lot.”
“Shall we begin?”
“Sure.”
The first informer was a man of about forty-two. He had a pale, doughy face with eyes like wet raisins. The eyes lit upon the stacked money and never left it. Jackson waved the man into the chair with a silent gesture and then took his own chair behind the table, remembering to frown sternly.
“You have something to tell us, I believe,” the dwarf said.
“My name is—”
The dwarf interrupted. “We’re not interested in your name.”
The man blinked, but kept his eyes on the money and started again. “There is this man who should be arrested.”
“Why?” the dwarf asked.
“After the war he lied.”
“About what?”
“About me.”
“What lie did he tell about you?”
“He said I was a member of the Party.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“The truth. We will not pay for lies.”
“Well, I was a member, but only for a short while.”
“How long?”
“Five years. I lost my job. This man informed on me and I lost my job. He got it. The British gave it to him.”
“What job was it?”
“It was with the bursar’s office at the university. I was an accountant. He got my job by lying.”
“He was a member of the Party?”
“No, but he was more of a Nazi than I ever was. He hated the Jews. He used to go to Cologne with his Nazi pals and beat them up. I know. He told me about it.”
“And now he has your job?”
“Yes.”
“You seem to know him well.”
“I should,” the man said. “He’s my cousin.”
The dwarf sighed and turned to Jackson. “One hundred marks.”
Jackson counted out one hundred marks and handed them to the man.
“One hundred? I heard it was one hundred thousand.”
“Only for the right information.”
“Wait—I can tell you some other things about him.”
Jackson was around the table now. He took the man by the elbow and steered him to the door. “You’re an American, aren’t you?” the man said.
“That’s right.”
“Tell the other Americans about my cousin. The British don’t care. Tell the other Americans about him. Maybe they’ll put him in jail. That’s where he belongs.”
“Fine,” Jackson said. “I’ll tell them.”
The next man to sit at the table before the money had a neighbor whom he despised. After that it was a woman whose brother-in-law had bilked her out of some property. Another man claimed that his wife was cheating on him with someone who, he charged, was a war criminal. Further questioning revealed that the wife’s lover was actually the husband’s boyhood friend. They both were trolley motormen and had been for years.
It went on much like that until the twelfth person entered the room. She was younger than the rest had been, not much more than twenty-two or twenty-three. She was not especially pretty—her protruding teeth kept her from being that—but her body was well fed, almost voluptuous. She loosened her thin black coat and breathed deeply, either out of nervousness or so that the two men could admire her large breasts. Neither Ploscura nor Jackson recognized her as anyone he had talked to as they made their rounds of cafes and bars earlier that evening.
“Who sent you, Fräulein?” Ploscaru asked.
“A friend,” she said. “He told me you would not need to know my name.”
“That’s right.”
“He said you are looking for a man.”
Ploscaru nodded.
“A bad man—an evil man.”
Again, Ploscaru nodded.
“There is this man I worked for.” She dropped her head and stared into her lap.
“What did you do for him?”
“I was a maid.”
“He has a house?”
“Yes. It’s a large house almost on the Rhine.”
“Tell us about him—this man.”
“He never goes out. Sometimes, though, people will come to see him, but only very late at night. They talk until morning.”
“What about?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He had a cook for a while, but she quit and he made me do the cooking. After the cook left there was only me and the gardener, except the gardener came only three times a week.”
“You lived there with him—with the man?”
She nodded. “I had to take care of the whole house. Later, he made me cook and do the other things. ”
“What things?”
“The bad things.”
“What bad things?”
“He gave me money and made me go out and buy him dresses. Then he would make me watch him put them on. He would take off all his clothes and put on the dresses and make me watch. Then he would make me do other awful things. If I didn’t, he beat me. He liked to beat me.”
“What is his profession?”
She shook her head. “He said he was a teacher before the war—in Düsseldorf. But he said they came and got him and put him away in one of the camps—the one at Dauch
au. At first I believed him, but later I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“When the others came to see him, I could never hear what they talked about. But always when they thought I was not listening they called him Herr Doktor.”
“How long did you stay with him?”
“Almost a year.”
“Why did you stay with him so long?”
She raised her eyes from her lap then. They stared directly into Ploscaru’s. “Because he paid me,” she said. “He paid me very well.”
“And what made you decide to leave?”
“My mother became ill. I had to go and stay with her.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Last week.”
“Is your mother still sick?”
“No.”
“But you have not gone back to the man who says he was a teacher?”
“No. Not yet.”
“What does he call himself?”
“Gloth. Martin Gloth.”
“And his address?”
“Are you going to give me money?”
Ploscaru nodded. “We’ll give you money. Perhaps a lot of it.”
“The address is Fourteen Mirbachstrasse.”
The dwarf wrote it down and, after it, Martin Gloth.
“He is crazy,” the girl said.
“Yes. What else can you tell us about him?”
“One night when these men came to see him they stayed up all night and talked until dawn. Then the men left and he came to my room and made me do bad things. He had a new bandage on his arm right about here.” She indicated where the bandage had been. “He kept it on for almost a week. And then one night when he made me watch him take off his clothes and put on a dress the bandage was gone. There was no scar where the bandage had been. There was something else.”
“A tattoo,” Jackson said.
The girl looked disappointed. “How did you know?” she said. “He had numbers tattooed on his arm—right about here.”
“Pay her the money, Nick,” Jackson said.
29
After the girl had gone, her shabby briefcase almost stuffed with marks, Jackson paid off the last would-be informer in the corridor and came back into the room. The dwarf was standing near the table brushing his hands together. The smile on his face made him look almost ecstatic.
“Tell me how brilliant I am, Minor. I must hear it.”
“You’re brilliant.”
“More.”
“Shrewd, clever, cunning, smart, crafty, and a credit to your race. How’s that?”
“Better. Sometimes I need praise as others need drugs. It’s my one failing. Otherwise I’m quite perfect.”
“I know.”
“Now, then, you understand what we must do.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“When?”
“They used to lecture us that the wee hours of the morning were best.”
“The OSS, you mean.”
“Right.”
Ploscaru nodded thoughtfully. “Around four, I’d say.”
“Let’s make it three-thirty. Oppenheimer might have heard the same lecture.” Jackson looked at his watch. “It’s twelve-thirty now. That’ll give me time to wake up his sister and tell her what we’re up to.”
“I’m not sure that that’s terribly wise.”
Jackson stared down at the dwarf for several moments. All friendliness had deserted the gray-haired man’s face. In its stead was a cold, hard wariness.
“Up until now we’ve done it your way, Nick,” he said. “I’ve been Tommy Tagalong, not too bright, but loyal, plucky, and loads of fun. Now we’re going up against some guy who wears dresses at teatime, but who also just might know how to use a gun. And then there’s Oppenheimer, although I don’t have to tell you about him. And finally there’s you, Nick, and that double-cross you still think you’re going to pull off. That worries me too, so I’m going to tell you again just what I told you at the train station in Washington. Think twice.”
The dwarf nodded, almost sadly, and started brushing his hands together again. His gaze wandered around the room. “I’m sorry to learn that you still don’t trust me, Minor,” he murmured. “It comes as quite a blow. It really does.”
For a moment, Jackson almost believed him. Then he grinned and shook his head. “You’ll recover.”
“Yes, of course,” Ploscaru said. “But you’re quite right about Oppenheimer and the Gloth person. Caution shall be our watchword. Now, just what do you plan to tell Miss Oppenheimer?”
“That she’d better have her bag packed, because her brother and I might be heading from hither to yon very quickly.”
“In the roadster?”
“Uh-huh. In the roadster. That’s why we bought it, wasn’t it?”
“To be sure. Now, we all know where hither is. But where might yon be?”
Jackson shrugged. “Holland, maybe. It’s close. But she must have some safe spot in mind where she can stash him for a while until things calm down. I’ll ask her.”
The dwarf looked up at the ceiling. “You said, I believe, that you and Oppenheimer will be speeding off. Just what will I be doing in the meantime?”
“You?” Jackson said with a grin. “Why, you’ll be sitting on his lap, Nick.”
Eva Scheel sat up in bed in the room at the Gasthaus that had been established in 1634 and looked down at Bodden. It was chilly in the room, and she covered her bare breasts with her arms and hugged herself. Bodden watched the smoke rise from his cigarette.
“So, printer,” she said softly. “Killing does not excite you.”
He sighed and shook his head. “It was a bad business.”
“You have a conscience,” she said. “I’m glad.”
“And you?”
She shrugged. “He’s dead. Perhaps he deserved it. Perhaps not. But I feel nothing.”
He looked at her. “Are you really quite so hard, little one?”
“No, but I pretend to be. There will be time for remorse later—when we can afford it. It’s quite a luxury, you know.” She shivered again and wondered whether it was really the cold that made her do so.
Bodden sat up in bed and reached over to a small table for the bottle. “Here,” he said, pouring some clear Schnapps into a glass. “This will warm you up.”
She accepted the glass gratefully, drank, and shivered again as the harsh liquor went down. “We could, of course, just run with the money we have.”
He drank from the bottle. “They would find us. You know that. Your plan is better.”
“Yes, if it works.” She rose and turned. Only the cold made her conscious of her nakedness. He stared at her with interest, if not with desire.
“You still like what you see, printer?”
“Very much.”
“We must find something that will excite you.”
“Counting a great deal of money might do it.”
“Has it before?”
“I don’t know,” he said, smiling for the first time. “I’ve never tried it”
She set the glass down and started putting on her clothes. “Leah gave me the name of the hotel where the American said they’d be staying. It will be best to avoid him, so when I get there, I’ll send a note up.”
“To the dwarf?”
“Yes.”
Bodden reached down to rub his still-throbbing knee. “That one I owe a little something to.”
“Revenge, like remorse, is another luxury that we can’t yet afford.”
“Someday.”
“Someday,” she agreed, and slipped into her fur coat. From its deep pocket she brought out a pistol. She looked down at it curiously for a moment and then handed it to him.
“Well,” he said. “A Walther.”
“Satisfactory?”
“Perfectly.”
Her head tilted to one side a little as she stared down at him. “You may have to use it.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
&nb
sp; The whore awoke when Kurt Oppenheimer rose from the chair, causing its legs to scrape slightly.
“You did not sleep,” she said.
“A little, here in the chair.”
“You could have used the bed.”
“I know.”
He opened his briefcase and took out a carton of Chesterfields. “Your cigarettes.”
“Do you want to—”
He shook his head and smiled. “No, not tonight. Perhaps another time.”
She yawned. “What time is it?”
“A little past one.”
“You are leaving now?”
“I have a long walk to make.”
“At this time of night?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t it wait till morning?”
“No,” he said. “It can’t.”
Jackson watched as Leah Oppenheimer pulled on her stockings. She wet her finger and ran it along the seams, twisting her head around, looking back and down to make sure that they were straight.
“Why do women always do that?”
“What?”
“Wet their finger and then run it along the seams.”
“It keeps them straight.”
“The seams?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. It just does.”
She slipped the dark blue dress over her head, glanced at herself in the mirror, gave the dress a few tugs, and then turned to Jackson.
“All right. Now I am dressed. Where do we go?”
“Nowhere.”
“Then why—”
Jackson interrupted. “Sometime within the next few hours we may find your brother.”
She didn’t seem surprised at the announcement. Instead she nodded solemnly, waiting for Jackson to continue.
“If we do find him, we may have to leave Bonn in a hurry. The question is—where do we go? We need a place that’s safe and relatively close.”
“Cologne,” she said almost automatically.
“That’s not much better than Bonn.”
“I have certain friends there who are well organized. If you can get my brother to them, then your job will be done.” She moved over to her purse and took out pencil and paper. “Here—I will write their name and address.”