by John Smolens
When the church was empty, I knelt, with my arms resting on the balcony railing, and closed my eyes. I knew how to say the Hail Mary, the Our Father, the Act of Contrition, but recitation wasn’t what I needed. I thought of Claire. I thought about her voice coming through the static on the phone the night before when she said, I only pray you will return to me soon. I could pray for that.
When I opened my eyes, I stood up, blessed myself, and moved toward the narrow balcony stairs. Pausing at a stained-glass window above the landing, I looked down toward the street. There were many shades of brown in this window, the pieces of glass constituting the robe of St. Francis of Assisi. There was a car at the curb, and I kept moving my head, trying to look through a piece of glass that would offer a less distorted view. I found one pane of pale amber glass near the bottom of the window, and through it I could see a blind man being helped into the car. He wore a fedora, so I couldn’t see his face. But there was something in his shoulders, something rigid that reminded me of the man who stood in the woods of northern Michigan, and I was sure it was Vogel. Just as the door was about to be closed, he raised his head. It was his face, which always reminded me of a fist, but older, the lines deeper. He wore sunglasses, as so many blind did, and his hands expertly folded up the sections of his white cane, which he held in his lap. And then the door was closed. The man who assisted him also wore a fedora and a dark raincoat. He walked around the front of the car and got in behind the steering wheel. I could not see his face, but by the way he moved, it was clear that he was much younger. And something in his bearing, too, was familiar. I went down the balcony stairs quickly, but when I pushed open the front doors the car was gone.
Before the funeral Mass started, Elena’s butler had approached me as I entered the church. He whispered that the Mass would be followed by a private burial, and Mrs. Collins would appreciate it if I would come out to the cemetery and take Braun away after the graveside service was concluded. The cemetery was twenty minutes north of the church, and I waited by Tony’s car. There was a small crowd gathered beneath the canvas top that had been erected over the grave. Elena stood arm in arm with her husband, Larry Collins, one of these beefy Americans who insist on wearing dress shirts with a collar a half-inch too small. Braun stood next to her mother, splendidly erect in black high heels. And Klaus Stemple stood beside Braun, wearing sunglasses despite the overcast sky.
When the ceremony was finished, everyone walked slowly to the black limousines that were parked along the curb. Braun spoke briefly with her mother and then hugged her, a formality; Stemple took her by the arm and they came over to my car. The butler fell in beside them, carrying a small suitcase, which he handed to me as I opened the back door of Tony’s car. Braun and Stemple climbed in the back seat and I drove out of the cemetery.
“We have tried to convince Braun to reconsider,” Stemple said as he removed his sunglasses. I looked up at him in the rearview mirror, at his prominent cheekbones, at the scar that ran down into his eyebrow.
“I am not leaving Detroit,” Braun said as she continued to daub her eyes with a handkerchief. “I told you, I told Mother, I’m staying here.”
“Such youth, such bravery,” Stemple said to me, attempting a smile. “Where are you going to take her, Mr. Green?”
I turned left at a traffic light.
“You won’t tell me because you don’t trust me?” he asked. “Or perhaps it’s too dangerous for me to know, in case I encounter Herr Vogel.”
“Take your pick,” I said.
Stemple gazed out the side window. “I suppose, should I meet our friend the Bird, he might have the means to persuade me to talk. Certainly, I am no longer young, no longer brave—if, indeed, I ever really was.”
“Where would you like me to drop you?”
“As things are, I can’t go to my apartment, and I can’t go to the Black Forest. I too must go into hiding.”
Braun lowered her handkerchief. “You’re leaving Detroit?”
“I don’t know, my dear. No, not immediately. At least not until my nerve runs out. At this point we must all—as Americans like to say—make ourselves scarce.” Stemple leaned forward and laid a hand on the back of the front seat. “There’s a cab stand at this next corner. I’ll get off there.” When I pulled over to the curb, he asked, “Will I be able to contact her by phone?”
I shook my head.
“What about you, Mr. Green? Where might I reach you?”
I glanced up at him in the mirror. “You could always leave a message at my shop.”
“Yes, of course, you gave me your card,” he said vaguely. “Made in the Shade, was it? Something about ambient light, I believe. Mr. Green, this is not the new life we envisioned for ourselves, is it?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Right, it’s the one we’ve got.”
He turned and embraced Braun, kissing her on the forehead. It seemed a formality to be endured; she only glanced at him with a perfunctory smile. After he got out of the car and walked to the nearest cab, I pulled out into traffic.
“It feels odd sitting back here alone, like you’re my chauffeur,” she said. Leaning forward, she draped one arm over the back of my seat, her silver wrist bracelet chiming. “Well, you might at least give me a cigarette.”
We smoked as I drove, and the rain came on again, sweeping in gusts along the streets. Smoke filled the car, and she said, “Sometimes a cigarette is the only thing, though pretty soon I could use a drink.”
“There’ll be something where you’re staying.”
“With you?”
“You’ll be staying with two friends of mine, Tony and Ginger.”
“In Detroit.”
“Yes.” I stopped for a red light and turned to look at her. “You have to stay put. You can’t contact anyone, can’t call anyone. Anyone. Understand?”
“Okay, Dad.”
I faced the windshield and gazed out at the street. The rain was now backing up the drains, causing water to rise above the curbs. When the light turned green, I said, “What about your mother?” I spoke loudly because of the sound of the rain drumming on the roof, the slap of the wipers.
“For now, she’ll go downtown. Larry has this swanky apartment there, but I guess they won’t even stay there. If I know them, they’ll be sunbathing on some remote island in the Caribbean. We’re all going to just run and hide.” She rolled down her window and tossed her cigarette out into the rain. “What about you? Where will you hide, Frank?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “You won’t say, or you don’t know?”
After I dropped her at the apartment—Ginger was there and she treated Braun like a long-lost sister, while eyeing me with suspicion—I spent the rest of the afternoon at the shop. Leon and I took delivery of new stock and I called Giannopoulos, but he wasn’t in, so I left a message. After closing up for the day, I walked down to Tony’s and sat in a back booth. The scampi, one of Paolo’s better dishes, was on special.
I was sipping grappa and coffee when Giannopoulos walked in with Jack, who took up his usual station by the front door.
“You called, Frank?” Giannopoulos said, sitting down across from me.
“I did.”
He looked up at the waitress, Tony’s cousin Annette, and said, “Just water, lots of ice.” After she went back to the bar, he said, “You’ve got the girl tucked away?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Because I have more good news.”
“Let me guess: Hans Krantz.”
Giannopoulos nodded, and waited as Annette placed the glass of water on the table. He watched her walk back to the bar, and then said, “He was pulled out of the Detroit River a couple of hours ago.”
“Flayed?” I asked.
“How’d you know that?”
“Stemple called me last night,” I said. “Called me because Vogel called him. Vogel’s not going to stop until he’s got all of us.”
“That’s two down. Yesterday you wanted to leave Detroit. Might be wise, Frank.”
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br /> “I’m not helpful as bait anymore? You don’t want any more martyrs?”
Giannopoulos just looked at me as he sipped his water.
“Tell me something,” I said. “How did Krantz die?”
“How?”
“Was it something like a heart attack?”
“No, he drowned,” Giannopoulos said. “There was water in his lungs.”
“So he lived through it.”
“He did. Flayed alive.”
“I won’t run. There’s no point.”
“What about Stemple?”
“I can’t speak for him.”
“Yesterday you were ready to hit the road, Frank.”
“That was yesterday.”
“We can’t guarantee protection. I’m sorry.”
“Hide?” I said. “If Vogel can’t find us, he’ll wait. The war ended years ago. He’s a patient man.”
“We could at least put a man on you again.” When I shook my head, he lifted his hands off the table, palms up, suggesting that he was giving up on me. “You have a gun?”
“Think I need one?” He considered the glass of water between his hands as though he didn’t know how it got there.
“I take that as a yes.”
Giannopoulos leaned forward and whispered, “We’ve warned you. We can’t help you beyond that, until Vogel has been dealt with. What are you going to do, wait around till he nails you? You going to stay in your apartment, where it’s easy to find you? Do you have any idea what Vogel might do to you? I mean, in the eyes of the Third Reich, what is your crime?”
“That’s a very good question.” I took my cigarettes out and lit one. I thought about what Braun had said about a cigarette being the only thing. “I’m an Italian who saves American babies—making me a treasonous commie pinko. What kind of punishment would that warrant?”
“I were you, Frank, I’d at least check into a hotel.”
“I’m considering it.”
“The bit about saving the baby . . .”
“Maybe they’ll work it into my obituary?”
“Listen, Frank, there are things I’m not allowed to do.”
He glanced over at the bar, and then stared at me again.
“Murder,” I said.
“You think of another solution?”
I picked up my coffee cup and then put it down. “No.”
“Well, then I can’t help you, any of you.” Carefully, he placed his elbows on the table and pressed his hands together, just at the fingertips. It was an effort at calm, something to avoid exasperation. “Frank, I want you to understand this. I admire you. I admire what you’ve done. You’ve survived all these years, where so many others have . . .” He pulled his fingertips apart as though to suggest loss, oblivion. And then he laid them on the table, again wrapping his hands around his glass of water. “You’ve done so because you have this trait—it’s real independence, of thought and action. To tell you the truth, I’m a bit envious. I don’t have such independence. Everything I do is determined by someone else. I’m given my orders and I do them.”
“You’re a good soldier.”
“If I could, I would take out Vogel in a minute. But I can’t. There are restraints—there are always restraints.” He paused and inhaled slowly. “But you have no restraints.”
I shook my head.
“You can. And then you can continue to live as you have. Free, independent.”
“First bait. Now the hook.”
“I can make sure that no one will ever look for you again. I can pull a few files.”
“What files?”
“First time we met, I mentioned the thick folder we had on you? It contains all sorts of documents.” Giannopoulos took his hands off his glass of water. The condensation had moistened his fingertips and he rubbed them together for a moment. “One doc in particular is labeled ‘Grayling.’ Toward the end of the war, there was an agent up there who disappeared. Guy named Ferris, Roy Ferris. He wrote a report that mentions a POW who might be staying at a farm. This Ferris, he worked out of Grayling and he just vanished, not a trace.”
“You think I did that?”
“It doesn’t matter if you did. It’s what can be done with that file. It can be made to look like you did something, whether you did it or not. Or it can disappear. Forever.”
“You’ve got a great democracy here. Be careful it doesn’t slip away, because if it does you’ll have a hell of a time getting it back.”
“You’ll be doing your country a great service.” Giannopoulos pushed his glass toward the middle of the table as though it was the culminating move in a game of chess, and then he got out of the booth.
“My country,” I said. “I don’t know what my country is any more than I know who I really am. That’s as free and independent as you can get.”
He walked to the front door, which Jack held open for him.
21.
Giannopoulos was right about a number of things. One of them was that, like Braun and Stemple, I had to make myself scarce. I returned to my apartment and packed a small suitcase. My pistol was in the bedroom closet, tucked in the shoulder holster, which I strapped on. In the lobby, I checked the mailbox—a phone bill and a letter from Claire—and then, after watching the street for a few minutes, I went out the back door of the building and down the alley that led to the next block, where I took a cab downtown. Thirty minutes later I was checked into the Huron Hotel, a short walk from my shop and Tony’s Grill. When Giannopoulos said he admired me for my freedom and independence, he was really complimenting me on my ability to be nondescript. The Huron offered weekly rates for salesmen and was about as nondescript as they come.
Dear Frank,
There’s a gorgeous fog here again tonight. From my apartment above the Zampas’ garage I can see the lights along the locks, and the ore boats sound their horns down on the St. Mary’s River. Louisa and Carmen have been splendid. Louisa wants to fawn over me but I think after a couple of days Carmen has convinced her that I’m not their daughter and might not want to spend every waking moment in their loving embrace. I’m spending longer periods in the apartment without one of them ringing the bell and calling up the stairs to see if I need something. The garage has three bays, for their car, the truck and snowplow, and Carmen’s workshop. Upstairs there’s a living room, kitchenette, and two bedrooms—bigger than our apartment in Detroit but it seems empty without you. I wish we knew how long this “arrangement” will last.
I walk a great deal. Sault St. Marie is not a big place. Fortunately, along with the fog the weather’s been cool (slept with a sweater on last night). There’s a park nearby where I sit and read. Afternoons it’s filled with children and their mothers, who sit on benches gossiping. I’ve been away from the U.P. long enough to be keenly aware of the local accent. It’s not the same as over around Munising, but more Canadian. Today in the park I spoke with a woman who said she went for weeks without seeing her husband who worked on the “oor boots.” Her name is Gwenn and she has two little girls and she’s expecting her third. She broke away from the other mothers and sat with me a while (she as much as told me that she was sent to reconnoiter, and then report back to the loud, chatty one named Alice). Gwenn was quite nice and I think she welcomed sitting with someone new. She had a copy of Peyton Place, which she said was splendidly trashy, and when she saw that I was reading East of Eden (I already have a library card!) we started talking about members of the Trask family.
Before leaving me on the park bench she said something that kind of floored me. “When are you due?” I mean it’s only been how many days? Finally I managed to ask what made her think I was pregnant and she laughed, saying she had considerable experience in this area. So then I told her that I wasn’t sure but hoped that in fact I was pregnant, but it was still too early to be certain. And she said she could see it when I walked into the park. “See what?” I asked. She said something vague about my posture, though of course I’m months away from possibly showing
.
But then the thing that really got me was when she said, “You’ve tried before, but it hasn’t worked out.” When I asked her how she knew that, she simply said, “Your eyes.” Anyway, before she left the bench she jotted down the name of her doctor and tucked it in my library book, and I have an appointment next week.
The fact is, this time it feels different. Already. Little signs. It makes me a bit jumpy (I’m trying to lay off the coffee). One minute I want to scream out in a park that I’m pregnant, and the next minute I’m in the bread aisle of the A&P fighting back tears for no apparent reason. But it’s ok. There’s a joy to it that radiates from within. I just wish you were here to bask in the glow.
I’ll sign off now. It seems so strange writing a letter to you, when we were together only days ago, eating pesto fettuccini, never dreaming that we’d suddenly be apart indefinitely. It’s what I live for, being with you, Frank. You don’t have to write (I know you won’t), but I wait for your calls. Please call soon.
Love,
Chiara
(I’m back in the U.P. and I can’t help it—up north, I’m still Chiara.)
First thing in the morning I walked over to the shop, stopping at a newsstand to pick up a newspaper and a postcard of the city lights reflected in the Detroit River. I wrote on the back, “Ti amo. Ti amo. Ti amo. –Francesco” and dropped the card in a mailbox. There was no more hiding. If I wanted to say I love you to my wife in Italian, what’s to stop me?
Hans Krantz’s murder was on the front page of the Free Press. I was reading about it as I walked into the shop (the door was unlocked, though it was just past seven—early, even for Leon). I went back through the showroom and stopped in the workshop doorway. Leon was sprawled on the floor, unconscious. His stool was knocked over, lying across his short legs. I knelt down beside him and lifted the stool off of him. His jaw was swollen, and there was a nasty bruise next to his left eye.