“Mona Ransom’s a friend of mine.”
“When the fleet’s in you chaps outnumber the rest of us. I understand she’s an interesting woman. Now listen—”
“Wait a minute. If you used to be an oil man, what are you now?”
“A scribbler. A wordsmith. A writer.”
“Screenplays?”
“Sometimes. I’m not proud of it. I’ve just finished one. The Lady in the Lake. There’s nothing to this writing business, of course. You just fill yourself with gin, sit down at the typewriter, and open a vein. Now, being a private eye, perhaps you can tell me if I’ve got an idea here. … Maybe it’s all just nonsense but I’ve heard a word or two, a rumor of deviltry—you will be utterly candid with me, won’t you? I require that. So, here’s the story. I have this detective, grand fella, we’ll call him Phil, shall we? Now, you won’t believe this, but remember it’s only a story, based on only a rumor … but I’ve heard there’s an active market in Nazi loot right here in Beverly Hills.” His soft voice had dropped to a whisper. He was speaking with the pipe in the corner of his mouth, obviously a long-standing habit. Cassidy’s mind went into a sudden skid as the words dropped quietly between them.
Was this yet another incarnation of Manfred Moller? His appearance as Brenneman’s assistant in Boston had contained an element of humor: maybe this was his idea of a joke. The owlish man was going blithely on. “Sound too nuts for you? Well, I’m not kidding. Lots of Nazi loot being sold right in the middle of an industry owned and run by Jews! The irony is nearly overwhelming. … Still, I suppose it depends on who’s selling the stuff, where the money goes. Supposedly paintings for the most part, some jewels because they’re easier to move from one country to another. Hedges against inflation, so I’ve heard people say The art market’s going to go crazy in the years to come, art and real estate. … Well, speaking as a man whose writing has been more admired for characterization than plot, this strikes me as a great plot. Trot old Phil out for another case, see if there’s life in the old chap yet. Or is it all too preposterous? Tell me, as a professional detective, do I have the beginning of a story?”
A rotund black cat had strolled across the grass and taken to rubbing himself against the writer’s leg. He knelt down with a sharp knee crack, stroked its neck, then looked up at Cassidy, waiting for an answer.
“Sounds crazy to me,” Cassidy said. He felt like a man, Harold Lloyd maybe, clinging by his fingernails to the top of a well, frantically trying to keep from falling in. He was losing his grip. Who was this man? How could he have heard such a story? Of course, his father had always told him that in Hollywood every secret was an illusion. The land-of-no-secrets, Paul Cassidy had called it.
The cat purred into the quizzically smiling face. “Sure, you’re probably right. Crazy story. Well, it was just a rumor I heard at lunch a couple weeks ago. Over at the Paramount lot. Overworked imaginations. Full of details for a rumor. Well, I’ll write something else. What’s your name, if I may be so bold?” He frowned, stood up. “Or are you the latest new phenomenon of the silver screen, too? Am I supposed to know your name, for God’s sake?”
“Lew Cassidy. I’m from back east. You wouldn’t know me. I didn’t catch your name.”
“Mmm. This is where John Wayne would say, ‘I didn’t throw it, hombre.’ My name’s Chandler. Ray Chandler. Oh, Christ! Do you see that strutting nitwit over there doing the bad Von Stroheim impression? Director. Preminger. German. I’ve already been through a picture with an Austrian. Wilder. That’s as close to the Germans as I want to get. He—Wilder, that is—kept telling me, ordering me, to do things. Shut the door, Ray. Open the window, will you, Ray? I had to get him to put it in writing, no more peremptory orders. Damnedest thing. But I may wind up writing the picture for Preminger. Your friend Miss Ransom, he wants her for the lead.” He tapped his pipe against the brick wall, beyond which lay Los Angeles. “Well, Cassidy, ignore the story I told you. I’m a little tipsy. Only way to get through these bloody awful parties. Wish me luck, I go to face the fearful Hun.” He nodded, waved a little shyly as he turned the corner of the pool. Somebody screamed in the water, splashed him, and he flinched, walked away.
Another hour spent wandering the grounds, catching looks from Terry and MacMurdo and Karin, none of which told him anything, another hour of sipping gin and tonic while the ice melted, while the sun sank lower behind the hills of Beverly, another hour of hoping Benedictus didn’t jump out from behind the bougainvillea and confront him or kill him—and Cassidy was working on a major-league headache and losing his faith in Mona Ransom’s big deal. The first lights were flickering on down below in the city. The smog was darkening. The sky out toward the ocean was still brilliant white-blue. He wanted to take Karin, tell her the truth, tell MacMurdo to go win some other war, take Karin and go home. Instead he stood in the slanting rays of sunshine, looking at the party from a safe spot by a phony wishing well from a long-forgotten and probably idiotic movie. A wishing well a foot and a half deep. It was about as good a definition of Hollywood as you were going to get. A place where the dreams were shallow and the realization of them just plain fake. Hooray for Hollywood …
“He’s over here, Lew. He’s standing over there. The man in the white suit.”
Karin had come up behind him quietly and it took a moment for him to see what she was looking at. A man standing alone in the fringe of shadows cast by the thickly forested hillside that rose abruptly from the lawn.
“Man in the white suit,” he murmured.
“He’s my husband,” she said softly. She was staring at him, her face expressionless. The sight of her husband, the man she needed to find more than she needed anything else in the world—seeing him didn’t produce any visible reaction. He had never seen Karin’s face so blank. “He’s the man you’re after, Lew. It’s all over.”
“I wish it were all over.”
“Just take him,” she said. “Where’s MacMurdo?”
“But, Karin … don’t you want to—I don’t know—”
“I don’t want to do anything,” she said. “MacMurdo wanted to find him. That’s what all this was about. I knew that. He was never finding him for me.” She turned to Cassidy. “Did you truly believe that I thought the dear good Colonel was trying to find my husband for me?”
“Yes, I guess I did.”
“I knew at least that much. I was just the means of getting what he wanted. Now he’s got it.” She looked back at the lone figure, standing in the shadow, smoking a cigarette. Waiting.
Then Cassidy caught at least a passing glimpse of the truth. Just a quick peek and it hit him hard, the way Bennie the Brute once had, long ago.
Karin didn’t love Manfred Moller.
She never had.
Maybe it was the other way around. Manfred Moller loved Karin. That was it. MacMurdo hadn’t been finding Moller for Karin, not even as an illusion, not even as the lie. He had been counting only on Karin to lure Moller out. It was never for Karin. She’d never wanted her husband back. Never.
Karin didn’t give a goddamn about her husband, about Manfred Moller.
So why was she going through all this?
If she didn’t love Moller, what was in it for her?
She looked up at him as if she’d read every thought.
“Are you disappointed in me?”
“No. I just don’t get it. Why put up with all this if you don’t want Moller?”
“He has something of mine.”
“Moller?”
She shook her head. “No, no, not him.”
“Karin, please.”
“MacMurdo.”
Cassidy stared at her but she’d closed up. MacMurdo … What the devil did he have of Karin’s? Would he ever understand what was going on? He was having doubts. …
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE FOUR OF THEM STOOD by the wishing well. Cassidy, Karin, Terry Leary, and Sam MacMurdo. Their shadows had lengthened all the way to the retaining wall that held everything in place, ke
pt it all from sliding away.
The man in the white suit had drifted down the terraces and was leaning on the wall, looking out across the darkening city. Searchlights were slashing at the smog in the name of some new movie. If the retaining wall gave way, it was goodbye old kraut, old pal. The man in the white suit lit a cigarette. He was moving very slowly. Waiting. Mona Ransom had told him: Cassidy knew it. She’d told him something. But what? She wanted to make her deal. She wanted Tash Benedictus dead by the side of the road and she knew she had to deliver to make it so.
He thought she’d told Manfred Moller one hard thing. Meet some friends of mine, hear them out, and just maybe they won’t kill you. She’d made a lot of movies. She knew how to cut the dialogue, cut the crap, and get right down to the threat. In the movies you had to lay it on the line. Mona Ransom was a Hollywood baby and she was desperate.
“Okay,” MacMurdo said, “this is your moment, sweetheart.” He gently placed a hand the size of Guatemala on Karin’s shoulder. “You’re what’s going to make this a piece of cake. He can walk away from the rest of us, tell us to go to hell if he’s got the nerve. He can duck back into this fucking hacienda and do his damnedest to get away from us … and we might chew up poor Benedictus and his art deal like a bunch of rabid guard dogs … and Manfred Moller might get away with his minotaur and what’s left of his Nazi network and wind up flying down to Rio. And that could happen, sweetheart. But … but not once he sees you. When he sees you—that’s when we catch the lightning in the bottle. All you do, Karin, is just stand there. Fucking piece of cake. Let him see you.” His hand slipped from her shoulder. He looked at Cassidy, then at Leary. “Let’s move out.”
“Sure.”
“Did you lay on the First Airborne for this? Where’s the air support? You don’t expect the three of us to handle this guy on our own, Colonel?”
“Leary, sometimes you try my patience. Just the least bit. I’m not a good man to push.”
Cassidy said, “Who needs air support? Let’s go.”
Karin’s eyes were blank. They seemed to say, Let’s just get it over.
When it came to faces Cassidy knew that he would for all time carry the memory of Cindy Squires’s face in his mind, embedded in the pain in his heart, the last time he lost himself in her eyes, the look in her eyes, the sweetness and love and hopelessness she knew even before he did. The good-bye look, the last instant of her existence. He would never forget the look until in the end, in the last moments, his consciousness was blotted out and his own life was over.
He wouldn’t remember the look on Manfred Moller’s face quite so long, perhaps, but it was right up there when it came to faces, reactions, looks on kissers. He might one day forget but at the moment he recognized the emotions detailed in Moller’s face. It came just after he turned, just after MacMurdo said: “Herr Moller, we’d like a word with you. But first here’s someone you may have thought you wouldn’t be seeing again.”
Moller turned. He was a tall man with short, pale brown hair, clear blue eyes, a high forehead, an open, solid set of features. He looked like a man who could will his composure. He looked like a man who would regret the need to be ruthless, merciless, but would nevertheless do what needed to be done. His eyes lingered on the immensity that was MacMurdo, then slid slowly to Cassidy. Recognition flickered briefly, memories of Boston, the death of Henry Brenneman.
Then he saw Karin. The composure developed a fissure. A bolt of lightning seemed to have caught him, pinning him to the moment. His eyes widened, his lips parted slightly, his jaw tightened. “Karin.” It was a whisper. “My darling …” He put his hand out to touch her.
Karin remained motionless. Her face showed nothing.
Moller kept reaching for her. He wasn’t seeing the lack of a response: he saw only her face, what he hoped was love, but it was only the reflection of his own consuming love for her.
MacMurdo shook his head and brushed Moller’s hand away.
“Your wife is well. She is in no danger from us. It looks to me like you’d probably like to speak with her, see her alone … well, hell, why not? She’s your wife, you’re entitled.” He shrugged, smiling widely. “All this can be arranged, Herr Moller. But you know how these things work. You’re an old hand at all this. You don’t want anybody to get hurt. Neither do we. So we begin … with a word in your ear. Just a moment of your time and we all get out alive.” He punched Moller lightly on the shoulder, an act of jokey intimacy that took the German off guard. He was vulnerable. He barely heard what MacMurdo was saying.
Cassidy saw Moller’s pain, felt it, watched it form in his eyes, on his features, in the set of his shoulders. The pain, the longing, the loneliness, the yearning for a woman he loved. It had all begun slipping away, this world that held the woman who had come back from the rubble of Cologne, the woman he’d seen come back to life as he fell in love with her, it had begun slipping away when Göring had given him his last set of orders. It was as if Cassidy were seeing a montage. Berlin in flames, so many comrades in their graves, Karin waiting in the mountains with Rolf, then the summons to meet with Göring. … Karin had become a memory for Manfred Moller, as she had for Cassidy. Maybe it was the role she’d been born to play, again and again.
The lost love, the poignant memory …
Karin stared hard at MacMurdo for a long second or two, then turned and walked away without speaking. She didn’t look back.
Mona Ransom was watching, standing by the bar near the pool and the cabana. The lawn was dark emerald, cool, shady.
MacMurdo nudged Moller along the wall toward the forest.
“Let’s go for a walk, pard.”
There was a small, dainty, manicured clearing in the trees where a gazebo stood, freshly painted. It was like another movie. Thumper and Bambi and Goofy and Mickey had to be in the woods somewhere. Baskets of flowers and vines and creepers hung from the gingerbread arches.
Manfred Moller was smoking another cigarette, listening to MacMurdo, wondering how he was going to get out of this nasty business with his minotaur and his wife and his life. Cassidy could read his eyes, couldn’t stop reading them. Moller was the sort of man who’d spent a lifetime learning how to weigh the options, make allowances, come out on top. Right now he was trying to factor in the unexpected—Karin.
MacMurdo wasn’t wasting time. He was sketching out a scenario that Moller could live with.
Cassidy saw them for what they were: two professionals at work. They both knew the outlines of the playing field, the basic rules.
“You, my fine German friend, are a very lucky man. Your team was wicked and then lost the war to boot. I have little time for losers, not much time for the wicked. And I’m not even going to hold your SS background against you. I’m a generous man, see. I’m not going to take you in as a spy and let them stick those live wires up your ass until you tell them everything you’ve ever known. Hell, boy, I’m not even going to put a bullet in your gut for the pure simple joy of it. You’ve killed two men we know of for sure since you’ve descended on our happy land and you tried to kill this gent here and a friend up Beacon Hill way in Boston—”
“Excuse me, Colonel MacMurdo, but may I ask what accounts for all this generosity of spirit?” Moller was calm, still thinking it through, trying to peer into the machinery of MacMurdo’s mind. “And let me assure you that if I had intended to kill this gentleman, he would be dead. I placed him in a maze. He found his way out. My intention was to slow him down so I might escape. I do not kill except to save myself and my mission, when it’s unavoidable. Had this man died, he would have died of his own incompetence.” He smiled quickly at Cassidy. “Obviously he has demonstrated his competence. How he and you have come to this place I would very much like to know. It seems on the face of it that I have been betrayed—”
“Or we are very smart guys.”
Moller shrugged. “That is always a possibility. What do you propose to do with me?” He sounded increasingly confident. Moller knew wh
at he was doing.
“Anything I goddamn well want to do, boy. That’s the unvarnished truth of it. But you’ve run into me on a good day. I figure the war’s over. ’Fore you know it we’ll be gettin’ ready for the next one and we might be fightin’ on the same side.” His laughter must have scared hell out of Thumper and the guys. “You and I, we’ve had tough wars. Your pretty little wife, she may have had it worse than either of us … so I’m proposin’ to let you live, boy.”
“You are quite right about my wife. She is a brave woman.”
“You love her,” MacMurdo mused.
“I do.”
MacMurdo smiled genially, turned his broad back on Moller and leaned forward on the railing, looking into the gathering darkness of the forest. “We know about the Göring network.”
“More than I do, I’d say. In any case, he won’t be needing it.”
“And, of course, we know about the minotaur.”
“Ah.”
“What else was there? The minotaur and what else?”
Moller shook his head. “Originally there were some plates for counterfeiting dollars. Some money. I left the plates on the U-boat. I took about a hundred thousand dollars, all counterfeit. Very good fakes. I left the rest of the money. The minotaur was what mattered. Americans could finance the rest of the network. Göring had plans to reclaim the minotaur from me when he got out.”
“How big is the minotaur?”
He held his hands eighteen inches or so apart. “The Reichsmarshal gave it to me in a specially fitted-out suitcase.”
“I want the minotaur.” MacMurdo turned around. “Give me the minotaur, I give you your wife and your freedom.” He smiled engagingly, acres of gleaming teeth. “Can’t beat that deal with a stick.”
“Won’t your superiors be unhappy with you?”
“My superiors would have trouble finding their assholes if Rand and McNally personally drew the map for them.”
“And their superiors?”
MacMurdo’s smile grew even wider. “Those big boys might just offer you a job, old son.”
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