Pressure Drop

by Peter Abrahams

  They went through the gate. The man in the windbreaker pulled it shut and closed the padlock. They approached Nina’s car. The rear curbside tire was flat. “Got the keys?” he asked.

  Nina paused. This man was big, like Bernie, had a tan, like Bernie, although he spoke without an Australian accent. Might he be a killer too? But if he had wanted to kill her, wouldn’t he have done it inside the gate? Nina handed him the keys. He smiled, a smaller smile than Bernie’s, but his eyes played a role in it as Bernie’s had not.

  The man in the windbreaker opened the trunk. “What’s this?” he said.

  Nina came forward and peered into the trunk. It was Dr. Crossman, curled in the fetal position. The handle of a knife stuck out of his chest. It looked a lot like the steak knives in her kitchen drawer.

  The man in the windbreaker turned to her. He had a broken nose, a bloody face and a corpse in view, yet his eyes seemed amused. For one crazy moment, Nina thought he was having fun. “My name’s Matthias,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  40

  “N. H. Matthias?” said Nina, as the man in the windbreaker jacked up her rental car. “From some hotel with a funny name in the Bahamas?”

  “Zombie Bay,” he replied, glancing up at her. She tried to read the expression on his face, but couldn’t get past the blood. “Have we met, after all?” he asked.

  “I saw your business card last night,” Nina said. “In a drawer in someone’s guest room.”

  “Whose?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I’m waiting to find out.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t leave it there?”

  “This is shrewd interrogating,” said N. H. Matthias, loosening the bolts and spinning them off with his hand. “But you’re wasting it on the wrong guy.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yeah. I’m the one who’s not trying to hit you over the head with a lead pipe.”

  Nina almost laughed. The only reason she didn’t was that she wondered at the same time how she could be in a laughing mood. “All right,” she said. “I owe you that.”

  “You owe me nothing,” he said, looking at her for a long moment. Nina looked away.

  “The guest room is in a house in Connecticut,” she said quietly. “It belongs to a woman named Inge Standish.”

  “A friend of yours?”

  “No.”

  Matthias pulled off the flat, replaced it with the spare. “We seem to know some of the same people.”

  “Like who?” The traffic light at the corner changed, reddening the parts of his face not already bloody, rendering him demonic.

  “Inge Standish, for one,” he replied. “Brock McGillivray, for two.”

  “Brock McGillivray?”

  “The man you call Bernie. He’s a professional diver, working for me.”

  “In the Bahamas?”

  “That’s right.”

  Nina reached into her pocket. “Then what’s this?” she asked, handing him Bernie’s card: The Fifth Estate. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Bernard Muller. N. H. Matthias moved under the nearest streetlight and studied it.

  “Muller,” he said. “How did he pronounce that?”

  “Like duller.”

  “Was he at Inge Standish’s too?”

  “No,” Nina said. Then she remembered the yellow glow near the road during the storm. “I don’t think so.”

  “And this card was just sitting in a drawer?”

  “With two towels and a bar of soap from the Plaza Hotel.”

  “That’s interesting,” he said, handing back the card and kneeling to tighten the bolts on the spare.

  “What is?”

  “The soap.”

  “Why?”

  “It connects him to Inge Standish. And that means he committed two murders, not one.”

  “Dr. Crossman and who else?”

  “Dr. Crossman?”

  Nina gestured to the trunk.

  “I wasn’t counting him. Brock killed an old neighbor of mine. And a man who went diving near the hotel.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. But the murders are related.” N. H. Matthias paused. “Any idea why he wanted to kill you?”

  “No,” Nina said. “I thought he was going to help me.”

  “To do what?”

  “Find my baby. My … son was stolen from the hospital the day after he was born.”

  Nina felt N. H. Matthias’s eyes on her again. There was a silence, broken by an occasional squeak as he wound down the jack. “How long ago was this?” he said, picking up the jack and tossing it and the flat tire in the back seat.

  “Almost six weeks.”

  “And how was Brock going to help?”

  “He said he was working on a story about child kidnappings. I checked him out at Channel Four. They knew him. And he’d done some research already. He knew about …” Laura Bain. How had Bernie known about Laura Bain? Why hadn’t she asked? “I guess I’ve been stupid,” she said.

  “I doubt that.”

  Nina looked at N. H. Matthias. The traffic light was red again. “Shouldn’t you get to the hospital?”

  “What for?” he said.

  “Your face.”

  “My face is fine. You’re the one who was out cold.”

  “I was not.” He smiled at her; there was blood on his teeth. “I’m fine, really,” she said.

  N. H. Matthias kept smiling. “Me too,” he told her. “So let’s not bother with hospitals till the illusion passes.”

  It suddenly struck Nina that without sighs, grunts, swearing or difficulty, N. H. Matthias had just changed a flat tire; again separating himself, she thought, from The Boyfriends. Then she thought: Why should I be thinking that? and almost dropped the keys when he handed them to her.

  “Do you think you can find Two-sixteen East Thirty-third Street?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Good,” he said, getting in. “We might be in a bit of a hurry.”

  “Why?” asked Nina, climbing behind the wheel and starting the car.

  “There’s an old couple in apartment two-thirty-four. I wouldn’t want them to end up like the fellow in back.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It almost happened to you, didn’t it?”

  True, but Nina didn’t understand that either. “Does this old couple have something to do with Dr. Crossman?”

  “I don’t know. Any idea how he ended up in there?”

  Again Nina thought of the yellow glow in the storm. “No,” she said. “But …”

  “But what?”

  “I think that’s one of my steak knives.”

  “In his chest.”

  “Right.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t know how it got there.”

  “So,” said N. H. Matthias, “assuming Brock was going to leave the car on the street, the police would have found you in that hole in the ground and Dr. Crossman and your steak knife in the trunk.”

  Nina considered that. “Do you think Bernie—Brock—could have made my death look accidental?”

  “He did it with Hew.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll tell you later. First I’d like to know more about Dr. Crossman.”

  “No,” Nina said, and suddenly her voice rose. Why now? Why at him? She didn’t know. The sound came from somewhere deep inside, beyond control. “Why am I always fighting for every scrap of information? I want to know now.” She heard the hysteria in her voice.

  He must have heard it too, because his voice was soft when he said: “He was the neighbor I told you about. The police ruled he got drunk and fell off his terrace. But Brock interfered with the evidence.”

  “Thank you,” Nina said. What did this information mean to her? Not much, but for some reason it calmed her; she even felt a rush of optimism, like a drug in her veins. Hysteria, optimism: what was happening to her? She focused her mind on Dr. Crossman, and was trying t
o organize a coherent speech about him when N. H. Matthias said:

  “On second thought, pull over by that phone booth.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s morning in Australia.”

  Nina pulled over. N. H. Matthias took Bernie’s card, got out, walked to the phone. Then he turned and came back. He tapped on her window. She rolled it down. “Have you got a telephone calling card?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I borrow it? I don’t think I’ve got enough change for Australia.”

  “You own a hotel and you don’t have a phone card?”

  “It’s not that kind of hotel,” he said.

  Nina gave him the card. He returned to the phone, dialed, spoke, listened, spoke again. Nina watched. A cold wind blew outside the car but N. H. Matthias didn’t seem to notice. Now he was listening again, his feet planted shoulder-width apart, like an attentive helmsman in tricky water. Inside Nina’s head a little ache came to life, threatened to grow into a prodigy. She closed her eyes; the illusion of painlessness was passing.

  When she opened them, N. H. Matthias was sitting beside her. “Headache?” he said.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Where’s the nearest hospital?”

  “I’m not going.”

  “That’s what the guy in Grand Central Station said.”

  “You followed me from Grand Central?”

  “I followed Brock. You were with him.”

  “Why were you following him?”

  “Are you going to yell at me if I say there’s no time to explain right now?”

  Nina laughed. It made her head hurt more. “No. But it has something to do with Happy Standish, doesn’t it?”

  N. H. Matthias smiled. “You’re like Clarence Darrow.”

  “How so?”

  “Isn’t he the one who never asked a question he didn’t know the answer to?”

  “I think it was someone else,” Nina replied.

  N. H. Matthias kept smiling. “You were right about Brock too. His real name seems to be Bernie Muller—that’s how they know him at Australian Broadcasting. And probably at the Plaza Hotel too.”

  “Do you mean he’s a legitimate TV producer?”

  “No. ‘The Fifth Estate’ hasn’t been on the air for two years. I talked to a production manager in their current affairs department. She remembered Bernie. He was never on staff. Five years ago they filmed a story about pollution on the Great Barrier Reef and hired Bernie as a guide, on a one-time basis. That’s the extent of his TV experience.”

  “But he was so convincing.”

  “Yup,” said N. H. Matthias. He handed her Bernie’s business card. He had penciled another phone number at the bottom. “Bernie came back to Sydney and tried to land a job with them for a while. That’s why she had this number for him—it’s his father’s house. I think we should call him.”

  “Bernie’s father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “In case Bernie’s using a disguise.”

  “What kind of disguise?”

  “A dropped umlaut.” N. H. Matthias looked at Nina. “It might be better if you made the call.”

  And say what, Nina thought; I don’t understand a word you’ve spoken. But what came out of her mouth was this: “As a researcher from Channel Four?”

  “That kind of thing.”

  They talked for a minute or two. Then Nina got out of the car and called Bernie Muller’s father in Sydney. N. H. Matthias stood beside her. Was it by design, she wondered, that he had placed himself between her and the wind? The phone rang once. Then there was a click and a man said:

  “Yes?”

  An old man, Nina thought, with a German accent: not a caricature, like Conrad Veidt’s, more like the soft accent of Mr. Gruber, her childhood piano teacher. “Hello,” Nina said. “Bernard Muller, please.” It was a clear connection; the problem was the echo—her own words came back to her like radar signals bouncing off an unidentified object.

  “Bernd?” said the man, and something else lost in the sound of her rebounding voice.

  “Yes,” Nina said. “This is Mary Good calling from Channel Four in New York.” Out of the corner of her eye, Nina saw N. H. Matthias smile. “It’s about that dub he wanted.”

  “Dub?”

  “Can you hear me? There’s an echo. Maybe I should—” She stopped herself—N. H. Matthias was shaking his head.

  “I am hearing you.”

  “There’s going to be a delay,” Nina said. “Some mix-up in the tape library. I wanted to know if Bernie would like me to send the dub on to Sydney.”

  Silence, except for the echo of her voice, so obviously nervous, she thought, saying, “… dub on to Sydney.”

  “Hello?” she said. “Are you still there?”

  A long pause. Then the man spoke. “Yes. But Bernd is not.”

  “He must be in transit then. He’s checked out of his hotel.”

  Silence.

  “Are you his father? Bernie said the best way to reach him was through you.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes, Mr. Muller. What I might do then—”

  “Doctor.”

  “I didn’t catch that.”

  “Doctor,” he said. “Not Mister.”

  “What I’ll do then, Dr. Muller, is—”

  “Müller. It is Müller, Dr. Müller.”

  “Müller? Maybe I’ve got the wrong number.”

  “This is the correct number. I am Dr. Müller.”

  “Could you spell that? I’m going to send the tape on to Bernie care of you when it’s ready.”

  “M-U-L-L-E-R. With an umlaut.”

  “Over the U?”

  “Where else would it be, then?”

  “Right. I’ll just need your first name for the shipping department and we’ll get this out next week.”

  “Gerd.”

  “G-E-R-D?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “All right. Dr. Gerd Müller, with umlaut. Tell Bernie he’ll have the dub in two weeks and give him my best.”

  “One moment, please,” said Dr. Müller.

  “Yes?”

  “What is this dub?”

  “A story we did a while back on child kidnapping. Bernie’s doing something similar.”

  “Something similar?”

  “For Australian Broadcasting. Nice talking to you, Dr. Müller. I’ve got a call waiting.”

  “Your name was what, again?” he asked.

  But Nina was already hanging up the phone. She turned to N. H. Matthias, saw admiration in his eyes. “You lie beautifully,” he said.

  “It’s my job.”

  He held out his hand. “Mary Good?” he said.

  “Nina Kitchener,” she replied, taking his hand. It was big and warm; she thought of the expression “safe as houses.”

  “You were perfect, Ms. Kitchener.”

  “Call me Nina.”

  “Nina.”

  “Do I call you N. H.?”

  “Matt would be better,” he said.

  “Well, Matt. You’ve flattened my tire. You’ve changed it. You’ve found out that Bernie Muller’s father is Dr. Gerd Müller. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  He laughed. “Gerd Müller was on the faculty of the University of Heidelberg with Inge Standish’s father in the thirties. Happy Standish’s father studied under them. How’s that for a start?”

  “Obstetrics?”

  “Obstetrics.”

  “It’s a start,” Nina said. They got in the car. Nina drove south and parked in front of 216 East Thirty-third Street. “What was the name of Inge’s father?”

  “Von Trautschke,” Matthias said. “Wilhelm von Trautschke.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Not according to my friend Hew. Von Trautschke didn’t survive the war.”

  They got out of the car and walked up the steps of 216. It was a brick apartment building, nine or ten stories high, shabby and unadorned.
Inside there was no doorman, just a locked inner door with a row of buzzers and a list of residents. Matthias was running his eyes over it when a man in a yarmulke came out, lighting a cigar. Matthias caught the door before it closed. Nina followed him in. “He was a bad egg,” Matthias said.

  “Who?”

  “Von Trautschke. That’s what Hew said, although he didn’t say why.”

  Apartment 234, on the second floor, had a plain wooden door with a fisheye peephole and an empty nameplate frame. A mezuzah was nailed to the doorjamb. Matthias knocked.

  A wide-angled eye appeared in the peephole, then vanished. Matthias knocked again. The door remained closed. Nina heard nothing on the other side.

  “My name’s Matthias,” Matthias said in a normal tone. “I called you from the Bahamas. About Felix.”

  The wide-angled eye reappeared. A bolt slid. A lock clicked. Then another. The door opened three inches, held there by a brass chain. Through the gap, Nina saw a tiny white-haired woman clasping her hands.

  “Mrs. Goldschmidt?” Matthias said.

  The old woman looked up at him and didn’t like what she saw.

  “I’ve been in a minor accident,” he said. “Nothing to be concerned about.” He reached into the pocket of his windbreaker and handed her an envelope. “I think these belonged to Felix.”

  The old woman opened the envelope and took out two plastic cards. One looked like a Visa card, the other Nina didn’t recognize. Eyeglasses hung on the woman’s thin chest. She raised them to her face, examined the cards. Her lips moved slightly as she read. Somewhere behind her a man with a Yiddish accent said, “What is it, Hilda?” For a moment the old woman’s eyes filled with tears, but they dried up so fast Nina wondered whether she had imagined them.

  “What do you want from us?” the old woman asked.

  “To talk,” Matthias answered.

  “About?”

  “Felix.”

  “He drowned, you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what talk?”

  “I don’t think he drowned by accident, Mrs. Goldschmidt. I think someone did it to him.” The old woman twisted the plastic cards in her hands, but said nothing. “Don’t you want to find out who, and see that they’re punished?”

  “Don’t I know already?” Mrs. Goldschmidt asked. “Doesn’t the whole world know?”

  “Tell me,” Matthias said.

  “Tell you? Why should I tell you? Read your schoolbooks. They all died in 1945.”