by Tom Gabbay
“I’m not too sure about the ‘Teutonic’ bit.”
“Mmm, maybe. ‘German film legend.’” He made the correction. “Sacrifice flair for clarity. That’s life these days. Want to hear more?”
“I’ll wait for the early edition,” I said. He looked a little hurt, but I was pressed for time.
“What about Eva Lange?” I said.
Harry furrowed his brow. “What makes you think she wants to be found?”
“I don’t know if she does or she doesn’t, but that’s not the point. The point is that I want to find her.”
“Think she killed Kleinmann?”
“Again, I don’t care one way or the other.”
He nodded. “If I were you, I’d tell Lili Sterne to forget about her friend and go back to Hollywood, where the sun shines twenty-four hours a day. Lisbon’s a cesspool, and if you go snooping around a cesspool, you’re going to find yourself knee-deep in other people’s shit.”
“Thanks for the advice, but I’m looking for information.”
“Okay. Don’t say I didn’t try, though.”
“Come on, Harry.”
“There’s a chap who might be able to help you out. At a price, of course.”
“Of course.”
“He’s a Slav. I don’t know how or why he got here, but he makes it his business to know everybody else’s business. Not a very pleasant chap, but he gets around.”
“Is his name Roman Popov?”
Harry looked mildly surprised. “You’ve had the pleasure, then.”
“He tried to pick my pocket last night and said it was because he liked me so much.”
“That’s Popov.”
“I wrote him off as a leech.”
“Quite right.”
“But you think he might know something?”
“As I said, he makes it his business to know what’s going on. And he did go out of his way to meet you last night.”
“If he had something, why didn’t he say so, then?”
“One has to proceed with caution in Lisbon if one hopes to survive, let alone do business. A snake like Popov deals with both sides, so he has to be sure he doesn’t get caught in the middle. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was chatting up Major Ritter right now. At any rate, whether he knows something or not, it’s better to have him on your side. I’m afraid it won’t be cheap, though. Hollywood and all that.”
“You know where to find him?”
“He moves around a lot. Like a rat. But you can try here. Don’t tell him I sent you.” Harry scribbled an address on his notepad and tore the page out. “It’s in the Alfama. Not the most pleasant of abodes.”
“Thanks, Harry,” I said, and got up to leave.
“What’s the hurry?” He smiled broadly. “Have one for the road.”
“I’ve got an appointment with a former king,” I said. “Probably shouldn’t keep him waiting.” I signaled the barman to pour Harry another, but he already had it waiting.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Jack. You do get around.”
“See ya, Harry.”
“Count on it.” He winked and disappeared into his glass. I dropped a few escudos onto the bar and headed out.
I’d been staring vacantly out the car window, so I didn’t recognize the villa until we were well inside the gate, and I could see the cliffs off to the west, waves crashing against the distinct profile of o Boca do Inferno. The estate was considerably larger than it had looked from across the estuary, much of the grounds hidden by a grove of tall pines. Alberto pulled into a semicircular drive, where a number of impressive cars were parked, and cut the engine.
“Who does it belong to?” I asked.
“Is the house of Doutor Espírito Santo,” Alberto explained.
“Must be some doctor,” I said. The house was bigger than it had seemed from a distance, too. An entire wing was hidden behind the main structure, almost doubling the size of the place. It looked as though it’d been given a fresh coat of white paint recently.
“He is no doutor for medical,” Alberto explained. “He is own a big bank of Portugal. Too much money.”
“There’s no such thing as too much money, darling,” Lili announced from the backseat, where she was doing a final face check in a handheld mirror. She was in red carpet mode, waiting for someone to open her door. I got out and did the honors, beating a Japanese-looking butler who’d appeared from inside the house and was heading our way. He bowed respectfully as Lili stepped onto the gravel, then indicated for us to follow.
Alberto joined the other drivers, stretched out under a tree while Lili and I were led around to the side of the villa and along a hedge just high enough to screen the source of the voices that were coming from the other side. All the ground-floor windows were shuttered, maybe to keep the rooms cool, more likely to frustrate prying eyes like mine.
We turned a corner where there was a break in the hedge. The butler stopped just short of it and waited for a moment, maybe letting us collect ourselves before the big entrance, then he ushered us through to a pleasant grassy area set in the shade of the pines. A table of tea and cakes, manned by a couple of young waiters, was set up on the far side of the rectangular lawn while a couple of dozen guests gathered in small groups, the men mostly standing while the ladies tended toward the garden chairs.
“Lili, dear!”
The duchess strode across the grass, arms extended, face lit up by a welcoming smile. She wasn’t what you’d call a natural beauty—high, broad forehead, wide cheekbones, and long, dominant chin, with small, birdlike brown eyes and razor-thin red lips. Her flat black hair was pulled back so severely that it looked like she was wearing a helmet. But she moved with grace and she had charisma, the kind that you don’t learn. As she got closer, it occurred to me that the stress of the abdication and the wedding had taken its toll. She looked older than she had in the papers. More lived in.
She placed her hand on Lili’s arm in a gesture of intimacy. “I’m so pleased that you’ve come!” she said. “You’d have disappointed quite a few men if you hadn’t!”
“That wouldn’t do,” Lili purred.
“Of course he is the greatest fan of all. I’ve heard about nothing else since last night.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “He was so miserable that he wasn’t able to have a proper chat with you. He didn’t perk up until I suggested we invite you for tea.” The duchess always referred to her husband as “he,” as if he was some kind of deity.
“He’s attending to some business at the moment,” she continued. “Though I’m certain that when he hears you’ve arrived, he’ll be straight down.”
“Very kind of you to think of us,” Lili smiled disingenuously, picking up on the tone of the afternoon.
The duchess turned on me. “Hello,” she chirped, extending a hand. “Who are you?”
“Jack Teller,” I said.
“Jack and I are traveling together,” Lili explained.
“I don’t blame you.” The duchess kept her eyes locked on mine and gave my hand a suggestive squeeze. “He’s quite handsome.”
“I suppose so,” Lili allowed. “If you like the type.”
The duchess smiled coyly. “But, of course, I’m a married woman.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
She let go of my hand and turned back to Lili. “Look how much of an effort they’re all making not to look at you. Let’s go over and put them out of their misery.” She locked arms with Lili and guided her toward the party. I was about to follow when I was tapped on the shoulder.
“Hey, Teller.”
I swung around and found myself face-to-face with the golden boy. He looked a bit awkward standing there in a dark suit, cup of tea in hand.
“Hello, Brewster,” I said.
“How are things going?…If you don’t mind my asking, that is.” He flashed the million-dollar smile.
“Could be better,” I admitted.
“So I’ve heard.”
“Don’t look so damned happy about it.”
“Look…” He took a step toward me. “I’m sorry that we got off on the wrong foot yesterday. If I was out of line, I apologize.” It sounded genuine enough, even though I knew it was nothing more than a career move. It didn’t matter, though, because I needed a Brewster more now than I had a day earlier. Even if I managed to find Eva before Ritter did, I’d have to find a quiet way to get her out of the country and some timely help from Uncle Sam would be the fastest and most reliable ticket.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I was probably a bit out of line myself.”
“Friends, then?”
“Sure,” I said. “Friends.”
He nodded and glanced over at the crowd Lili was drawing a few yards away. “I don’t know what’s caused more of a buzz around here, the Windsors or Lili Sterne hitting town…What did you think of the duchess?”
I thought about it for a second. “Friendly.”
“That’s a good way of putting it,” he chuckled. “Very diplomatic.”
“So it’s not just me, then.”
“Sorry,” he grinned. “Pretty much anything in pants. It’s all tease, though. No follow-through.”
“I guess I’ll live.”
“Oh, I think she’d give you a good run for your money, all right. If you know what I mean…” Brewster got a kind of faraway look in his eye as he sized the duchess up from across the garden. I wondered what his imagination was up to. “She’s had some pretty exotic training, you know.”
“Training?”
“Sure. When she was in China, back in the late twenties, with her first husband—the duke is number three, you know…”
“Yeah, I read that.”
“Well, her first used to spend a lot of time at the brothels around Shanghai. I mean like day and night. Apparently she got tired of waiting around and decided to join in the fun. They used to go regularly.”
“They went to a brothel together?”
“According to the Brits, anyway. They have a file on the whole thing. They think she might’ve picked up a trick or two out there that helped her snare the king.”
“Maybe,” I said, pretty sure there would be more to it than that. On the other hand, the mighty orgasm—or lack thereof—has undoubtedly had a hell of a lot more influence on the course of human history than the books credit.
“Cup of tea, sir?” The freckle-faced kid looked and sounded like a refugee from Buckingham Palace.
“Is that all you’re offering?” I said.
“At the moment, sir, I’m afraid so, sir.”
“Thanks anyway.”
“Yes, sir.” He performed a perfectly executed shallow bow and turned on his heel.
“I heard about Kleinmann,” Brewster said, switching gears. “Can’t say I’m brokenhearted. It’ll make your job a lot tougher, though.”
“You know him?” I asked, suddenly interested.
“Met him a couple of times. An arrogant SOB, but aren’t they all?”
“Diplomats?”
“Funny,” he said, not laughing.
“What do you know about him?”
“Kleinmann? Not a lot. A party guy.”
“What kind of parties?” I was thinking along the lines of Eddie’s interest in the seedy side of life and wondering if there was some kind of perverted connection between them.
“You’ve been in Hollywood too long, Jack. I’m talking about the Nazi Party.”
“Oh,” I shrugged. “Right.” Maybe I had been in Hollywood too long.
“You see, there are two kinds of Germans at the embassy these days. The lifelong diplomats—educated, old-money, establishment guys…They’ve got a touch of class and they actually know what they’re doing. Then there are the party guys. Hitler’s crowd. They think they have class, but all they’ve got is clout. Like von Ribbentrop himself.”
“Who’s that?”
Brewster gave me a look. He was enjoying this. “Joachim von Ribbentrop, foreign minister for the Third Reich, and close friend and confidant of Adolf Hitler. You’ve heard of Hitler, right?”
“It rings a bell.”
“Talk about arrogance, Ribbentrop is it. Notice I didn’t use the von. It isn’t real. He got it ten years ago. Paid to get himself adopted by the widow of some distant cousin who’d married into the aristocracy. Even the money’s new. He was a wine salesman until he married the boss’s daughter.”
To Brewster’s country-club mind, a bourgeois wine salesman pretending to be an aristocrat was just about the greatest Nazi crime yet committed. And dropping the von from the offender’s name was, to him, a severe, but just, penalty.
“What did Kleinmann do?” I asked.
“At the embassy?”
“Right.”
“No idea,” Brewster said, shrugging it off. Didn’t matter in the slightest to him. “The guy you should ask is over there. The one with the thick glasses.” He nodded toward an unexceptional accountant type who was standing inconspicuously among a half-dozen men involved in a deep discussion about something.
“His name’s Griffin Stropford,” Brewster informed me. “Financial attaché at the British embassy. That’s his cover, anyway. In fact, he’s MI6.”
I gave him a look. “MI6…?”
“See how helpful I can be?” he gloated. “British intelligence. His Majesty’s Secret Service.”
“Not too secret, I guess.”
“Hey, I’m giving you top-level stuff here, Jack. Between you and me.”
“How do you know I’m not a German spy?”
“Fuck you,” Brewster smiled, but he looked a little worried for a second. “Stropford’s the guy who showed me the ‘China file’ on the duchess,” he added.
“That was nice of him,” I said. “I thought we were neutral.”
“Well, there’s neutral and there’s neutral. Anyway, he wanted to know if we had anything on her. As she’s American.”
“Do we?”
“That’s not something I can talk about,” Brewster said solemnly. In other words, he didn’t know.
I was about to ask for an introduction when my attention was drawn to the other end of the garden, where the former king of England was entering. He was accompanied by a tall, urbane-looking gentleman who wore a polka-dot bow tie.
CHAPTER 8
The best thing about the duke joining the party was that they started pouring real beverages. The former monarch had a taste for good whiskey, and I took full advantage of the thirty-year-old malt that suddenly appeared. After two or three I even started enjoying myself.
Lili was in full flow, treating the crowd to her trademark performance of sexual innuendo punctuated with suggestive looks and knowing smiles. The duke happily played straight man in an impromptu double act that went down very well with the would-be courtiers. I was a bit surprised that the duchess was so willing to give up center stage, but she kept a close eye on things. I had the feeling that she could keep a close eye on things from pretty much anywhere on the planet.
Brewster drifted off to ingratiate himself with the high and mighty, leaving me to my own devices. I was hovering in the background, trying to catch the eye of a dark beauty who’d been abandoned by her silver-haired husband when I realized that the man in the polka-dot tie was standing over me.
“The wife of the Spanish ambassador,” he said in my ear. “Thoroughly devoted to her husband, I’m afraid.”
“Was I being that obvious?”
“Ricardo Espírito Santo,” he said, offering his hand.
“Jack Teller.”
“Yes, I know. Lili has been telling me all about you.”
“I hope you didn’t believe her.”
“Not to worry.” He smiled affably. “Your secrets are safe with me.”
Santo was an impressive figure—over six foot tall with a lightly tanned complexion, a prominent jaw, and a penetrating look. I put him in his late thirties, maybe forty. He oozed money. Big money.
“Do you like dogs?” he said.
“Not really.”
“You’ll like mine. Come, I’ll show you.”
“Your first time in Lisbon?” he asked casually as we strolled through the grounds toward the kennels at the back of the house.
“That’s right.”
“As you can imagine, we haven’t seen many Americans this year. Most are avoiding the crossing.”
“Probably something to do with those torpedoes that keep bumping into ships.”
Santo swept the idea away with a wave of his hand. “It would be quite foolish of the Germans to sink an American vessel.”
“Yeah, well, I guess some people aren’t too comfortable betting their lives on Hitler’s good sense.”
Santo smiled, but he didn’t mean it. The dogs could sense his approach and were going wild with anticipation.
“Here are my beauties!” he exclaimed as we turned the corner and the caged beasts came into view. There were three of them, each in a separate cage, all big and mean with huge heads that contained long sharp teeth. The kind of creatures you’d expect to be guarding the Mouth of Hell. Bull mastiffs, I’d say, but I’m not much of an expert. Whatever they were, I kept my distance and hoped they’d be keeping theirs.
“Highly bred,” Santo said, the proud father. “From the best blood.” He got down on one knee and admired them, although I noticed he kept his distance, too.
“Surely, you can appreciate the beauty.”
“Adorable.” I humored him.
One of the trio—a bitch—swiveled her oversized head and took a long hungry look at me while emitting a low rumbling sound from the back of her throat.
“She senses your fear.” Santo laughed as he stood up and extracted a leather cigar case from his breast pocket. He removed the cover and offered me a hand-rolled Cuban.
“No, thanks,” I said, digging out my Luckys. “I’ll stick to these.”
Santo shrugged and turned away. “Let’s walk,” he said, pointing us toward a wooded area behind the kennel. The dogs watched and whined for a minute, then gave it up and settled back into prison life.
We walked in silence while Santo prepped his stogie, meticulously rolling it in his palms to warm the tobacco, neatly clipping the top, then carefully punching a hole in the bottom before firing it up with a solid-gold lighter engraved with the initials R.E.S. The afternoon sunlight caught the smoke as it wafted up, turning and twisting into the pine-scented atmosphere.