***
I had Eli spread out on the terrace floor. Sucker was snoring up a storm. As I rooted through his pockets, Bud apologized over and over for having dragged in the Israeli authorities.
“Spilt milk,” I said, brushing it aside. “Pack us up, Bud. This sucker’s going to be pissed off as hell when he comes to. We want to be long-gone before then.”
59
Closing the cab door, Bud said, “How long do you think Eli will be out?”
“Nowhere near long enough,” I said. “I sorely found myself tempted to kill that son of a bitch to keep him off our heels until we get to Höttl. But grief like the Mossad maybe hunting us because I killed one of theirs? Well, that’s too much heat, even for me in my natural prime, which I surely ain’t in anymore.”
I looked up at the soaring apartment building. According to what useful paperwork I’d taken off Eli, he and his unnamed partner believed Höttl kept an apartment in this relatively newly built high-rise.
Bud said, “Kind of posh. At least on the outside.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I was fighting the instinct to light up a cigarette. “Makes you wonder if this pad’s paid for with Nazi gold or American blood money.”
“Maybe film earnings,” Bud said.
“Yeah, those damned movies.” I slapped Bud’s arm. “Let’s get up there, pal. No guts, no glory, yeah?”
Bud nodded. “What if Eli’s partner is up there?”
I pulled back my seersucker sport jacket and showed Bud my forty-five again. “We’re well past jawin’ with those humorless sons of bitches.”
***
Eli’s partner was there, after all. He lay dead in the hallway, just outside Höttl’s bedroom. He had this terrible smile spread across his face, a kind of bemused-looking rictus.
Bud said, “My God, what killed him?” The poet was crouched down over the corpse, patting him down for papers and I.D. that might give us clues to where Höttl might be hiding right now.
“Whatever did this got him in the hand, I think.” I pointed at the dead man’s right palm. There was a little bloody hole there. I checked the knob to the bedroom. “There’s a little metal prong here on the knob,” I said. I sniffed at it. “Some kind of poison there on the spur. Be careful looking around, Bud. Likely to be more booby traps like that one.”
Nodding, Bud, handed me what he’d taken from the corpse, then opened the bedroom door with the toe of his wingtip.
I went to toss the living room.
All-in-all, the apartment was pretty neutral; no homey touches like personal photos or mementos from Höttl’s rarified travels. Rooting through drawers, I found no paperwork, bills or address books to point to other Höttl domiciles.
Then I checked the closet off the living room.
The space was packed with film canisters.
Jaw tightening as I read them, I checked labels on the metal containers.
I saw:
“Jean Moulin Interrogation/execution—negative”
“Oskar Schindler Interrogation/execution—negative”
“Amelia Earhart Execution—negative”
There were many more along those lines, a veritable who’s who of “the disappeared” during the German Nazi regime.
One canister set me to shaking. I saw black spots and my pulse thrummed in my ears:
“Duff Lassiter (née Sexton) Interrogation/suicide—negative.”
This gasp behind me. Bud said, “God, I am so sorry, Hector. Monster isn’t enough for this one.”
Nodding, I handed him another canister that claimed to contain footage of Marie’s murder in the bookstore. “Welcome to my world, kid,” I said.
“Now I want to be the one to kill him,” Bud said.
“Find some boxes,” I said. “Let’s pack up these tins and scram before Eli comes calling.”
Bud looked sick as I felt inside. “You’re not thinking of actually screening these?” Another frown. “Or for some kind of evidence?”
“Please. We’re going to burn these sorry and sick sons of bitches unscreened, Bud. History never knows about this one, not ever.”
60
“Beau Devlin” and “Raoul Bender” checked into a decidedly downscale but clean hotel. Sucker also had air conditioning. I kicked off my shoes, stripped off my shirt, then stretched out on the bed with my glasses and the notes Bud had taken from Eli’s partner’s body.
The random mail I expected, but couldn’t find, had been in the dead man’s pocket. Several pieces of Höttl’s correspondence were business things, including a tax bill for three Brazilian properties, complete with formal addresses.
I smacked the mattress. Gotcha, demon!
Toweling down from a cold shower, Bud said carefully, “Those films we burned—Höttl may have prints, too, you know.”
The one-eyed poet poured us both some iced tea and handed me a glass. “Yeah, I kind of figure Höttl’s maybe done that,” I said. “Even though he seems to be somewhere in the Brazilian interior, presently, Höttl appears to have left the air conditioning running at that apartment at some cost.” I waved the German’s electric bill at Bud.
“Figure he wanted climate control to protect those bloody negatives,” I said. “Clearly, Höttl didn’t want to risk losing them to humidity or jungle rot. Now we’ve just got to get to Werner’s Mato Grosso hellhole ahead of Eli. Now that an Israeli operative’s been felled by Höttl, I figure they’re going to redouble their efforts to capture the bastard, wrong-headed though it is.”
“I’m sorry for reaching out to them,” Bud said. “I was an idiot.”
“Don’t beat yourself up on that front anymore, Bud. If I’d stopped to think about what we’d done in fifty-eight, and the scale of that state’s indebtedness to the two of us for same, I’d probably have tried the same gambit.” I smiled and held up Höttl’s property tax bill. “But we have his addresses now. All three of ’em.”
Bud looked it over. “Don’t suppose we could get lucky and he’s maybe in Rio.”
“There last of all, I think. We’ve eliminated the apartment here in town, and if you’re Höttl, and you’re really hiding, it’s got to be his place in the interior.”
“Was afraid you were going to say that.” Bud nodded. “We leave soon?”
“Very soon,” I said. “First, I need to work my little black book. Looks like we’re back to having to see if I can find any of my old comrades still north of the dirt.”
Geezers with good trigger fingers—that’s what I’d be seeking.
***
Three hours later I’d gathered together three men crazy enough to hire on for the river run with Bud and I.
I’d tracked Charles Delattre to a place in Cancun. He swore he was in fine shape, but the years had done little to improve his English. He said, “Grand Capitaine, I read you are dead! All the reporters in the newspapers said—”
“Hell, you know journalists, Charles. Damn reporters and newspapers can’t get anything right.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Charles said. “I’m ecstasic to know the recorders are wrong.”
“I’m ecstatic the reporters screwed up, too,” I said. I told him I’d wire him some money and have a plane ticket to Brazil waiting for him at the airport.
Next I scrounged up Jésus Calderone. He’d been a cold-hearted, perhaps even sociopathic hell-raiser who’d helped Jimmy and I out of that bloody dust-up south of the border in the early 1950s. I figured he’d be about forty, now. He was running some kind of boat charter out of the Yucatan for his “pendejo uncle.”
Jésus seemed eager for the change of scenery on my nickel. I also figured, in light of where we were headed, a spare boating expert couldn’t be a bad thing.
Rounding out my recruits was a half-Pima, half-Apache Indian who had my back in a bar fight in 1960 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Boy had been a terror with a knife in his early twenties. His thirties found him bored and idling away his days as a grease monkey in a Phoenix service station.
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“It’ll take ’em about forty-eight hours to get here,” I said to Bud. “That’ll give us time to get at least our initial travel arrangements and guns and ammo stocks seen to.”
Bud said, “The third guy, the Native American, what’s his name?”
“Jonny Lightfoot,” I said. “At least that’s it in our language.”
“Sounds like a fake name, to me.”
“Maybe. I sense Jonny has some legal issues hanging over him. That said, I wouldn’t question him about his handle, my poet. He’s the touchy sort, best of times.”
“Bet your ass I won’t press,” Bud said. “All these guys sound like lunatics and him most of all.”
“Yeah, but our lunatics,” I said.
“This must be costing you a fortune,” Bud said.
“I can afford it this year, and it’s money well-spent. Biggest trick will be keeping this bunch’s enthusiasm tamped down enough to stop ’em from killing Höttl before I can.”
Bud just gave me this look. Once again, it was a hard one to read.
61
Bud and I were to meet up with our recruits for a get-acquainted dinner and bar-crawl before heading out, probably badly hung-over, the following morning.
Not knowing when—or, yeah, if—I’d get another chance, I made a couple of phone calls, first.
I thanked my darling for sending Bud along to have my back.
“Bud will at least keep you more cautious,” Alicia said. “Bud has proven a good balance for your more reckless impulses, Héctor. He has his own reasons for revenge against this man.” She hesitated, then added, “Yet he’s hardly enough against the German, I fear.”
“We’ve called in some more help,” I said. “We’ll be five going in after Höttl, and I’ll put my near-half-dozen up against three times as many of Höttl’s boys, any day.”
Alicia sighed across the miles. “Just remember your promises, Héctor. Do this and come home fast.”
“I surely mean to. I miss you all dreadfully.”
“These bloody things you sometimes do, just don’t start liking them again, Héctor.”
***
Across the miles, Jimmy said, “I got a copy of Marie’s autopsy, finally.”
That came as a gut shot. I said, “Christ, Jimmy, why the hell would you do that to yourself?”
“It was well worth it, by God,” he said. His voice faltered. “She was sick, Hector. Sick with something that Marie couldn’t ever have fixed. It likely would have killed her, Hector. Maybe even a worse death than the one Höttl gave her, may God forgive me saying it.”
“What the hell are you saying, Jimmy? How was Marie sick?”
“She had a rare congenital disease, Hector. You can only get it one way. It comes from genes passed down by both of your parents. It was dormant all these years, but in the last few months, the coroner said, it became active. I think that’s why she wrote the damned book.” Jimmy laid it out for me. When he was finished, I was swarmed by feelings of horror, anger. But the vengeful part of me, the strongest part of me in some ways, that nasty slice relished the prospect of sharing the coroner’s revelations with Werner Höttl.
Jimmy must have been thinking the same thing. He said, “God, how I wish I could be there when you tell Höttl. To see that bastard’s face? Delicious.”
I said, “I’ll see to it they’re among the last words he hears, Jimmy. I’m going to give ’em just enough time to sink in before I kill him.”
***
When I first met Jésus Calderone down in the desert outside Juárez, he’d been a skinny little runt with bad skin and no meat on him. Figured then most of his weight was to be found in his clothes and the steel-toed work boots he fancied.
Jésus still wasn’t much over five-feet, but his metabolism seemed to have pulled a Houdini and lit out for keeps. Now Jésus went two-hundred pounds, easy. Maybe it was all that booze he seemed to have cultivated a high-tolerance for imbibing. He was knocking back the Cuba Libres with awesome speed. His black hair hung almost to his ass. He kept it out of his face with a red bandana. He wore sandals, ratty bellbottom jeans with no knees and a black muscle shirt emblazoned with a picture of Emiliano Zapata on one side and Che Guevara on the other.
Jésus said, “I hate the fucking Germans. They’ve always meddled in my country. My abuelo blamed the German immigrants for all the accordions that have ruined our music. And did you know the Germans were arming one side during the Revolution, trying to get you gringos focused on Mexico instead of going to Europe in the First World War?”
“I remember hearing something about that somewhere,” I said.
“And Trotsky? Killed by an ice axe in Mexico City by the Nazis.” Jésus crossed himself over Che’s face and signaled for another rum and Coke.
I finally allowed myself a cigarette. Firing up a Pall Mall with my old Zippo, I said, “Jésus, Trotsky was a Russian. He was killed by Soviet Intelligence. Some NKVD enforcer called Ramón Mercader.”
Bud’s brown eye skittishly roamed between us.
Jésus helped himself to one of my cigarettes and lighter. He said, “German, Russian… there’s a damn difference?” He squinted at the engraving on my lighter. He read, “One True Sentence. What’s it mean?”
“A sometimes too-elusive dream” I said. “Much like proper revenge.”
Jésus smiled. His front teeth were gold-capped, now. “Revenge only truly counts if you stay alive after,” he said. “And it must be the kind of revenge you can live with, hombre.”
I smiled, said, “Non timebo mala.”
***
Jonny Lightfoot was next to arrive. He refused hard or soft liquor and instead ordered iced tea. His first words: “Weapons?”
“I’ll have plenty of guns and ammo,” I said. I introduced him to Bud and Jésus. He gave ’em cursory nods and said to me, “I’ll need knives. I know what I want.”
I said, “After dinner we will—”
“Not hungry,” Jonny said. “I should start looking for what I want now.”
Well, God bless him for bein’ a professional.
I pulled out my wallet and passed Jonny some bills. Then I handed him a slip of paper with the hotel address and room number. “That’s where we put up tonight. Get what you need and find us there, Jonny.”
***
Lightfoot had been gone perhaps twenty minutes when Charles plopped down in his vacated chair and began pumping my hand. He said, “Solicitations, Grand Capitaine.”
“Felicitations to you,” I said. “How was the flight, Charles?” He looked older, of course. Probably on the cusp of sixty, now.
Charles said, “Fine. I’m belated to work with you again.”
“I’m elated, too,” I said. Bud gave me this look that telegraphed, Who is this idiot?
Serious now, Charles leaned forward, arms crossed on the table. “I have friends in French intelligence. They tell me there are four former Nazis, low-level ones, that the so-called Nazi hunters don’t waste their time with, yet. They were little ones. Hardly more than boys during the war. They are now Höttl’s protestors in this country. I have their names and photos.”
He handed me a dossier full of dope about Höttl’s protectors. Bud raised his eyebrows. Charles said, “Before you worry, Grand Capitaine, let me just say I did not tell them it is Höttl we are hunting. I am not fool, non? Tell them it is Höttl we seek, and suddenly they take an interest. Next, they take charge.”
That set Bud to squirming in his chair.
“So rest assured,” Charles continued, “The French intelligence and others believe we are hunting this other, this movie man Siron Cícero.”
I slapped Charles on the knee. “Get yourself a drink, Charles. Bottoms up, but do it in a jiffy, old pal. We need to get to dinner soon.” I held up his files. “Come morning, we set out to make these die-hard Nazis just another piece of regrettable history.”
62
For some time, I’d labored under the delusion we could take a train s
ome distance toward the patch of rain forest where Höttl’s second-of-three sanctuaries was located.
But the so-called “Devil’s Railroad” had foundered, just like the Madeira-Mamoré Railway that claimed more than eight-hundred lives and resulted in about four miles of completed track—a rail line to, well, nowhere.
So we drove in by Jeep, setting off from Porto Velho to the river Madeira, where we boarded our first boat.
Strange, black-headed, white-bodied birds with beaks like axe heads stood balanced on reedy legs, watching us. Their black and white plumage was separated by red bands at each of the birds’ throats. Our captain, an elderly Portuguese sailor named Getúlio, said, “Red-necked tuiuiú.” He pointed at some parrots perched above them. “And those are macaws.”
“Those last they sell in pet stores back home,” Bud said.
That fact didn’t seem to please the old salt. He said, “Between the poachers, the miners and the people who steal our birds to sell, this country is falling to pieces. Being ruined.” He pointed to several other birds on shore. “Those, there—those are roseate spoonbills. The water is unseasonably deep. Usually, they’d have migrated away this time of year. These are the good animals. Soon, as you go further in, you will see more of the caimans. And the piranhas.”
Höttl’s remotest home was in the Pantanal, a place slowly but surely being converted into a kind of environmentally protected land. But for now, it still had its share of gold and diamond hunters. Poachers, fugitives from various flavors of the law, and hired brigands.
The foliage of Pantanal, according to our captain, was nowhere near as dense or near-impenetrable as other parts of this stretch of Brazil. I was dubious. It already looked pretty wild to me, a helter-skelter tangle of under- and overgrowth. Some called Mato Grosso “The Green Death.”
On shore a massive boa constrictor was killing a deer. A big cat growled from deeper in the jungle. Getúlio muttered, “Jaguar.”
Bud gave me this uneasy look. I’d warned him, just as Alicia had warned me.
Roll the Credits: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 30