“You’re saying someone maybe killed my Miss Renata?” Traudl asks again. The clock ticks loudly in the ensuing silence. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know,” Kramer says. “I’m trying to find out.”
“If that’s true, if somebody killed her, you let me know. You let me know and I’ll find the bastard. You let me know.”
Kramer gets up and moves around the table to her, putting his arm around her brittle, bent body. She is all bones and angles, and is trembling under his touch.
“Easy now, Traudl. I’m sorry I upset you. I don’t know. There were supposed to be memoirs and I can’t find them. But I don’t know. Okay? Maybe it was a suicide, after all. Maybe there were no memoirs. Maybe she was sick.”
It’s the first time this possibility has entered his mind. Smooth move, you idiot, he suddenly thinks. You haven’t checked that angle out yet. Haven’t even tracked down her doctor.
Traudl jerks away from his half-hearted embrace, squinting a rheumy eye at him again.
“Well, of course there were memoirs,” she says, treating him once again like a silly five-year-old. “That’s what she was doing when I visited. Working on the memoirs.”
Kramer feels his heart race. “You saw them? I mean she was working on them when you were there? She didn’t just tell you about them?”
“Yes, I saw them. A stack of paper this high.” She pinches thumb and forefinger together, then opens them a good inch and a half apart. “That big. I told her it was ridiculous for a young person like her to be doing her memoirs already. That was something for old age. But then she said a funny thing. It all comes back to me now that I think of the stack of papers. ‘Traudl,’ she said, ‘I feel old. Real old.’ She always was a silly girl. Just a puppy and talking about feeling old.”
Moisture builds up in her eyes again, but Kramer does not try the comforting embrace this time.
Before leaving her, he looks again at the clock.
“That was Reni’s?” he says.
She follows his eyes to the wall, and then lets out a little snort of amusement.
“Hardly. One of Herr Müller’s passions, collecting those stupid things. He has one room that does nothing but click and cuckoo nonstop, there are so many. Funny, though. I recall a matching one hanging there when I worked for the family. With a female hunter instead of male. I wonder what he did with it? Herr Müller was always so particular about his clocks, wouldn’t allow any of the help to dust them, but had to do it himself up on a step ladder, looking a right fool.”
Müller is still doing laps when they go below to the pool. The smell of chlorine is coming off the heated water. Kramer slides the glass door open, but Müller does not notice their presence for two more laps, catching a glimpse of them out of the corner of his eye as he dips his head underwater, his stroke smooth and strong, his body gliding through the water like it was made for that medium. He slows now that he knows he is no longer alone and, reaching the far end, he pulls himself partly up on the ledge, resting on his elbow. He isn’t even breathing hard, Kramer notices. There is not an ounce of fat on his tanned torso.
“Sam,” he says. “I was just thinking of you. Care for a swim?”
Kramer shakes his head.
“How about closing the door in back of you?” he says in English to Randall. “That’s a good fellow.”
Randall does so. It is warm inside, and the chlorine clears Kramer’s sinuses. White plastic chairs are grouped around a table at Müller’s end of the pool, and Kramer heads for these as Müller pulls himself out, water pouring off his back and thighs in thick rivulets. He sees what Traudl means about the bathing outfit: a bit of bikini that goes up the old man’s ass and bulges around his sagging balls in front. Kramer notices a puckered angry circle of flesh near the top of Müller’s right leg as the man dries off with a large white towel. Müller catches his gaze, looks down at the scar.
“My war memento,” he says, staying in English for the sake of Randall. He drapes the towel over his shoulders and joins Kramer and Randall at the table. As Müller brushes his wet hair back, Kramer notices what seems to be another scar under his left upper arm close to the armpit: a wrinkled bit of gray like a tiny sand dollar.
“Sorry to disturb your workout,” Kramer says, waiting for an invitation to sit. None is given; Randall sits anyway. Müller’s cold gray eyes glance at him momentarily. No recognition.
“This is an old friend of Renata’s,” Kramer says. “Randall, Mr. Müller.”
Randall rises and offers his hand; Müller takes it momentarily.
“She had so many,” he says. “Old friends, that is.”
“Like Pahlus?” Kramer says.
Müller finally sits, waving a hand at the other chairs in silent invitation.
“I know nothing about Herr Pahlus, but that he is now a somewhat richer man than he was yesterday.”
“Reni’s will?” Kramer says, and Müller nods.
“It was a stipulation,” Müller says. “Like you were.” A wry smile.
“He gave her an advance against her memoirs,” Kramer explains.
“It is no business of mine.”
Kramer persists, “But she did say in her will that he be left eighty thousand?”
Müller is busy drying between his toes and looks up. “Was that the figure? I don’t concern myself with such things. I merely followed the directions of my daughter’s will.”
“Didn’t it seem odd to you?” Kramer says.
Müller looks up at this. “Odd? Everything my daughter did for the past twenty-five years seemed damned odd to me. Should I be keeping track? No, Sam, what seems odd to me is that you’re coming around here asking questions. That you’re coming around lots of places asking questions. That seems odd to me. Damned odd and impertinent.”
Kramer finds the choice of words interesting. “I’m a journalist, Herr Müller. I think there’s a story here. I think the police have missed something.”
“And I’m her father, Sam, I’m asking you to keep your nose out of where it does not belong. Renata killed herself. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“There was no note.”
“To hell with the note.” He rises, the towel falling away from his shoulders. His body is one tightly wound coil of tendons; his fists curl and uncurl spasmodically.
“She is dead, Sam.” He makes a great effort to calm himself; it shows on his face as if he is smelling feces. “Let her rest in peace. She was tormented enough in life.”
“How tormented?”
But Müller is completely in control once again; the chink in his calm facade repaired.
“Her politics, her ruined career. Perhaps tormented is too strong a word. But she was not a happy person. She became too inward-looking. As a girl, she was so full of life, full of movement and activity. But then after that year in Vienna, she was no longer the Renata I knew. She changed.”
“It’s called growing up, Herr Müller,” Randall adds. “We all do it.”
Müller stays standing and ignores this comment as if it is a pesky mosquito in the periphery of his life. Goosebumps stand out on his tanned flesh; his body is completely hairless as if he shaves himself.
“What are you saying?” Kramer finally asks.
“To forget it. My daughter, your former friend, is beyond us all now. Nothing can bring her back. Your inquiries only sully her memory.”
“Bad for business, is it?” Randall says under his breath, and Kramer shoots him a sharp look.
The comment goes unnoticed, apparently. “I’m asking you as her father,” Müller says. “Leave it. She killed herself. There were no memoirs.”
Kramer waits a moment, then delivers the parting shot, “That’s not what Traudl says.”
Müller takes the information without a blink. “Traudl is an old woman of unreliable me
mory. Is that all you have managed to discover for your trouble?”
“Who told you we’ve been asking questions?”
But Müller does not field this one, staring at Kramer like a piece of meat at the butcher’s. “I don’t think we have anything further to discuss, Sam. I’m disappointed.”
“Yeah,” Kramer says as he and Randall get up and move toward the sliding glass door. “Life is a pretty disappointing place.”
They leave Müller standing alone on the white tiles surrounding the pool, the black strip of bikini at his groin like a soiled tourniquet.
“What’s he hiding?” Randall says as they shut the gate behind them.
Kramer looks back at the house and sees Traudl at a window. She waves a good-bye from the parlor upstairs, her hand moving like a broken bird. Kramer grins up at her, then turns to Randall.
“Maybe it’s like you said. Reni’s bad for business. He just wants her dead and gone so he can get on with life.”
“So why’s he going over her effects like an archaeologist in search of a Rosetta Stone?”
Kramer says nothing; something else is preying on his mind. They continue walking along the quiet residential street.
“Hello, Sam? Remember me? Randall? The guy who asks questions that you ignore?”
“Sorry,” Kramer says, stopping suddenly. “I need to get to a phone.”
Reaching a main intersection with shops and banks, Kramer finds a phone stall, a little half-bubble of plastic just big enough to cover the phone and a caller’s head. Once his head is stuck underneath the hood, it begins raining. Light at first, but steady, building up into rivulets on the plastic hood. His call is transferred and he’s put on hold, listening to canned Mozart for a time. Then a woman’s voice comes on and gives him information, and he hangs up.
Randall, meanwhile, has found cover in the doorway of a lingerie shop and is busy ogling the merchandise and the fashionable women coming and going.
“We’re in luck,” Kramer says. “She’s home sick today.”
Randall rubs his hands gleefully. “Oh, happy fucking day. She’s home, she’s home.” He stops rubbing his hands, drops the phony grin. “Who’s home, Sam? And why are we in luck?”
“I’ll explain in the taxi.” He waves one down by the pharmacy. By now, cars are sloshing through standing water on the wet pavement, umbrellas are bobbing along the streets. The sodium lamps flicker on, making the afternoon seem surreal and stage-lit.
They put up a last-minute fight for the cab with a blue-haired matron who’s been on a shopping spree, her hands filled with bags from boutiques. She wins, but a second taxi stops and they take it. Once inside, Kramer gives the address to the cab driver.
“We’re going back there?” Randall says, recognizing the address. “What’s up?”
“Time on our hands,” Kramer says, and sits back to enjoy the luxury of the taxi ride.
Twenty minutes later the cab drops them at the corner of the Prinz-Albert-Strasse and Königstrasse. The rain has not let up and is falling in fine lines of moisture, almost unbroken drops. No dawdling for them today. They head straight for number 43 and its house door is once again open. Up on the third floor, Kramer has to use the brass knocker several times before there is any sound from inside. The door finally opens a crack: the chain is latched today. Eva Martok peeks at them through the crack.
“Hello,” Kramer says. “I wonder if you have a minute. I forgot to ask you something the other day.”
Her eye encompasses Randall, but does not blink. The door shuts on them. Almost a minute elapses, and Kramer is about to use the knocker again when finally it reopens, unlatched. She looks flustered today, fiddling with the chain. Unable to insert the bolt end into its holder, she finally lets it drop, dangling free against the door. She’s in an oversize tartan wool bathrobe, its sleeves rolled up at the cuff. Her hair is a mess, falling out of a hastily made bun, drooping into her face and over her ears. There is the strong, sweet smell of booze to the place, intermingled with the sickening aroma of her Indonesian cigarettes. He looks at her red eyes and figures the color’s not from crying. On the low table is an empty bottle of Johnny Walker Black. One glass.
“I’m sick,” she says. “Can’t this wait?”
Her voice is not slurred. The drinking must have taken place last night; the hangover today.
Randall wraps an arm around her like her old buddy, leading her to one of the pillows on the floor. Her bedroom door beyond is open, the bed rumpled and unmade.
“How about some coffee?” Randall says, giving her a hand to sit down.
“I couldn’t keep it down,” she says. Her shades are pulled, and her face looks pale green in the dimness of the room.
“The questions won’t take a second,” Kramer says, all smiles, sitting on the floor next to her. Then his eye goes up to the wall decorations, her Japanese prints, and the out-of-place cuckoo clock.
“You lied to us last visit,” he says, suddenly going very cold and monotone. “You told us you didn’t hear from Reni after 1989. In fact, you called her just last month.”
She puts her head in her hands. “This can wait,” she says, clearly in pain. “I’m sick.”
“Self-inflicted,” Kramer says, glancing at the empty bottle. “Don’t expect pity for a hangover. What’s wrong, having trouble living with yourself lately?”
“Sam …” Randall begins, but Kramer shoots him a steely look that shuts him up.
“This is hardball, Eva. You know what I mean.”
She focuses on a space between her knees and nods slowly. “Okay, so she got back in touch with me after all these years. How’d you know?”
Kramer says nothing and Martok’s eyes go to Randall for an instant.
“She got in touch with you?” Kramer finally prompts.
Martok sighs. “She tried to. Left a couple of messages at my office to call her. I didn’t want to talk to her. Didn’t want to think about her anymore.”
“But you finally did?” Kramer says.
She shrugs. “I finally tried. I had to write myself a message so I would place the call. But nobody was home.”
“And you didn’t try again?” Kramer asks her.
“What was the use?”
But he counters with his own question. “Why did she call?”
Martok looks at Kramer through an oily strand of hair. “The messages she left said it was something important she had to tell me. You don’t think it had anything to do with the memoirs you’re looking for, do you?”
Kramer does not reply. He knows that Reni didn’t answer Martok’s call because she was already dead by October 28, sprawled out on her bed with a belly full of barbiturates.
“In fact,” Kramer suddenly says, “you’ve lied to us right down the line. Why didn’t you wait for the morning to call Müller?”
She looks up again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turns to Randall. “What’s up with you guys? I thought we were friends.”
Kramer gives Randall no chance to respond. “We can be. If you start leveling with us. What was so urgent that you had to phone Müller in the middle of the night after we visited you?”
She glares at Randall, wipes the hair out of her face, suddenly realizing where Kramer has got his information. “You prick,” she hisses.
Randall says nothing; the cuckoo comes out of its hole, singing four o’clock. The hunter lifts her gun, but the bird slides back in before she has a chance to aim it.
“You told him about our investigations, didn’t you? About Pahlus in Berlin and how he was out eighty thousand marks.”
Kramer includes Randall in this accusation. If he’s right in his assumptions, Randall must have continued to fill Martok in on the particulars of their investigation during their little slumber party. And by the look on Randall’s face, he sees he’s hit th
e target.
Martok sits huddled on the floor now, saying nothing.
“Was anything you told us the truth?” Kramer asks with a harsh edge, cutting at her. She winces at the sound of his voice. Randall is no longer making noises to ease up on her, seeing the lay of the land for himself now.
More silence; suddenly her body begins to shake and tremble. She is sobbing, head bent into her hands.
“You and Reni probably weren’t even lovers,” Kramer says.
She sits upright, wiping at her eyes with the rolled up sleeve of the bathrobe. Her jaw sets, tiny muscles like iron couplings twitching there. “Oh, we were lovers, all right. Not something I’m overly proud of now, though.”
“What happened?” Kramer asks, his voice softening, his manner less in-your-face.
She shrugs. “We grew apart.”
“And that’s why you phoned Karl-Heinz Müller in the middle of the night to warn him about us?”
She pats the pockets of her bathrobe. There is nothing there.
“I need a cigarette.” She looks around the room. “They’re in the kitchen.”
Kramer looks at Randall, and he gets up to fetch them.
She sniffs once, rubs the sleeve of the bathrobe across her nostrils.
“You’re his lover, aren’t you?” Kramer says suddenly.
She doesn’t react, only hugs her knees to her chest, rocking with her butt on the pillow.
“Was,” she says finally. “It’s been over for a couple of years. But Reni couldn’t deal with that. Underneath her great revolutionary role, she was a fucking prig.”
“In fact, he came between you two?”
She sniffs at this, seeming to honestly consider it.
“That’s what she said, too. Funny. Accused him of stealing every friend she ever had. But it wasn’t that way, you know. He’s an interesting man. Older than a coot, but still vital and fun to be with and knowledgeable about all sorts of things.”
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