Apt Pupil

by Apt Pupil

  ‘Don’t run around in here, honey,’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘Why, daddy?’

  ‘Because the trolls will get you,’ he said, and held Todd’s card up to the light.

  He saw it at once. This report card, in those flies for four years now, had been carefully, almost professionally, doctored.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Ed French muttered.

  Trolls, trolls, trolls!’ Norma sang gleefully, as she continued to dance up and down the aisles.

  25

  Dussander walked carefully down the hospital corridor. He was still a bit unsteady on his legs. He was wearing his blue bathrobe over his white hospital johnny. It was night now, just after eight o’clock, and the nurses were changing shifts. The next half hour would be confused — he had observed that all the shift changes were confused. It was a time for exchanging notes, gossip, and drinking coffee at the nurses’ station, which was just around the corner from the drinking fountain.

  What he wanted was just across from the drinking fountain.

  He was not noticed in the wide hallway, which at this hour reminded him of a long and echoing train station minutes before a passenger train departs. The walking wounded paraded slowly up and down, some dressed in robes as he was, others holding the backs of their johnnies together. Disconnected music came from half a dozen different transistor radios in half a dozen different rooms. Visitors came and went A man laughed in one room and another man seemed to be weeping across the hall. A doctor walked by with his nose in a paperback novel.

  Dussander went to the fountain, got a drink, wiped his mouth with his cupped hand, and looked at the closed door across the hall. This door was always locked… at least, that was the theory. In practice he had observed that it was sometimes both unlocked and unattended. Most often during the chaotic half hour when the shifts were changing and the nurses were gathered around the corner. Dussander had observed all of this with the trained and wary eye of a man who has been on the jump for a long, long time. He only wished he could observe the unmarked door for another week or so, looking for dangerous breaks in the pattern — he would only have the one chance. But he didn’t have another week. His status as Werewolf in Residence might not become known for another two or three days, but it might happen tomorrow. He did not dare wait When it came out, he would be watched constantly.

  He took another small drink, wiped his mouth again, and looked both ways. Then, casually, with no effort of concealment, he stepped across the hall, turned the knob, and walked into the drug closet. If the woman in charge had happened to already be behind her desk, he was only nearsighted Mr Denker. So sorry, dear lady, I thought it was the WC. Stupid of me.

  But the drug closet was empty.

  He ran his eye over the top shelf at his left. Nothing but eyedrops and eardrops. Second shelf: laxatives, suppositories. On the third shelf he saw Seconal and Veronal. He slipped a bottle of Seconals into the pocket of his robe. Then he went back to the door and stepped out without looking around, a puzzled smile on his face — that certainly wasn’t the WC, was it? There it was, right next to the drinking fountain. Stupid me!

  He crossed to the door labelled MEN, went inside, and washed his hands. Then he went back down the hall to the semi-private room that was now completely private since the departure of the illustrious Mr Heisel. On the table between the beds was a glass and a plastic pitcher filled with water. Pity there was no bourbon; really, it was a shame. But the pills would float him off just as nicely no matter how they were washed down.

  ‘Morris Heisel, salud,’ he said with a faint smile, and poured himself a glass of water. After all those years of jumping at shadows, of seeing faces that looked familiar on park benches or in restaurants or bus terminals, he had finally been recognized and turned in by a man he wouldn’t have known from Adam. It was almost funny. He had barely spared Heisel two glances, Heisei and his broken back from God. On second thoughts, it wasn’t almost funny; it was very funny.

  He put three pills in his mouth, swallowed them with water, took three more, then three more. In the room across the hall he could see two old men hunched over a night-table, playing a grumpy game of cribbage. One of them had a hernia, Dussander knew. What was the other? Gallstones? Kidney stones? Tumour? Prostate? The horrors of old age. They were legion.

  He refilled his water glass but didn’t take any more pills right away. Too many could defeat his purpose. He might throw them up and they would pump the residue out of his stomach, saving him for whatever indignities the Americans and the Israelis could devise. He had no intention of trying to take his life stupidly, like a hausfrau on a crying jag. When he began to get drowsy, he would take a few more. That would be fine.

  The quavering voice of one of the cribbage players came to him, thin and triumphant: ‘A double run of four for ten… fifteens for eighteen… and the right jack for nineteen. How do you like those apples?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the old man with the hernia said confidently. ‘I got first count. I’ll peg out.’

  Peg out, Dussander thought, sleepy now. An apt enough phrase — but the Americans had a turn for idiom. / don’t give a tin shit, get hip or get out, stick it where the sun don’t shine, money talks, nobody walks. Wonderful idiom.

  They thought they had him, but he was going to peg out before their very eyes.

  He found himself wishing, of all absurd things, that he could leave a note for the boy. Wishing he could tell him to be very careful. To listen to an old man who had finally overstepped himself. He wished he could tell the boy that in the end he, Dussander, had come to respect him, even if he could never like him, and that talking to him had been better than listening to the run of his own thoughts. But any note, no matter how innocent, might cast suspicion on the boy, and Dussander did not want that. Oh, he would have a bad month or two, waiting for some government agent to show up and question him about a certain document that had been found in a safety deposit box rented to Kurt Dussander, aka Arthur Denker… but after a time, the boy would come to believe he had been telling the truth. There was no need for the boy to be touched by any of this, as long as he kept his head.

  Dussander reached out with a hand that seemed to stretch for miles, got the glass of water, and took another three pills. He put the glass back, closed his eyes, and settled deeper into his soft, soft pillow. He had never felt so much like sleeping, and his sleep would be long. It would be restful.

  Unless there were dreams.

  The thought shocked him. Dreams? Please God, no. Not those dreams. Not for eternity, not with all possibility of awakening gone. Not In sudden terror, he tried to struggle awake. It seemed that hands were reaching eagerly up out of the bed to grab him, thin hands with hungry fingers.

  (!NO!)

  His thoughts broke up in a steepening spiral of darkness, and he rode down that spiral as if down a greased slide, down and down, to whatever dreams there are.

  His overdose was discovered at 1:35 a.m., and he was pronounced dead fifteen minutes later. The nurse on duty was young and had been susceptible to elderly Mr. Denker’s slightly ironic courtliness. She burst into tears. She was a Catholic, and she could not understand why such a sweet old man, who had been getting better, would want to do such a thing and damn his immortal soul to hell?

  On Saturday morning in the Bowden household, nobody got up until at least nine. This morning at 9:30, Todd and his father were reading at the table and Monica, who was a slow waker, served them scrambled eggs, juice, and coffee without speaking, still half in her dreams. Todd was reading a paperback science fiction novel and Dick was absorbed in Architectural Digest when the paper slapped against the door.

  ‘Want me to get it, dad?’

  ‘I will.’

  Dick brought it in, started to sip his coffee, and then choked on it as he got a look at the front page.

  ‘Dick, what’s wrong?’ Monica asked, hurrying towards him.

  Dick coughed out coffee that had gone down the wrong pip
e, and while Todd looked at him over the top of his paperback in mild wonder, Monica started to pound him on the back. On the third stroke, her eyes fell to the paper’s headline and she stopped in mid-stroke, as if playing statues. Her eyes widened until it seemed they might actually fail onto the table.

  ‘Holy God up in heaven!’ Dick Bowden managed in a choked voice.

  ‘Isn’t that… I can’t believe…’ Monica began, and then stopped. She looked at Todd. ‘Oh, honey—’

  His father was looking at him, too.

  Alarmed now, Todd came around the table. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Mr Denker,’ Dick said — it was all he could manage.

  Todd read the headline and understood everything. In dark letters it read: FUGITIVE NAZI COMMITS SUICIDE IN SANTA DONATO HOSPITAL. Below were two photos, side by side. Todd had seen both of them before. One showed Arthur Denker, six years younger and spryer. Todd knew it had been taken by a hippie street photographer, and that the old man had bought it only to make sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands by chance. The other photo showed an SS officer named Kurt Dussander, swagger-stick cocked jauntily (arrogantly, some might have said) under one arm, his cap cocked to one side.

  If they had the photograph the hippie had taken, they had been in his house.

  Todd skimmed the article, his mind whizzing frantically. No mention of the winos. But the bodies would be found, and when they were, it would be a worldwide story. PATIN COMMANDANT NEVER LOST HIS TOUCH, HORROR IN NAZI’S BASEMENT. HE NEVER STOPPED KILLING.

  Todd Bowden swayed on his feet Far away, echoing, he heard his mother cry sharply: ‘Catch him, Dick! He’s fainting!’

  The word (fatntingfaintingfainttng) repeated itself over and over. He dimly felt his father’s arm grab him, and then for a little while Todd felt nothing, heard nothing at all.

  27

  Ed French was eating a Danish when he unfolded the paper. He coughed, made a strange gagging sound, and spat dismembered pastry all over the table.

  ‘Eddie!’ Sondra French said with some alarm. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Daddy’s chokin’, daddy’s chokin’,’ little Norma proclaimed with nervous good humour, and then happily joined her mother in slamming Ed on the back. Ed barely felt the blows. He was still goggling down at the newspaper.

  ‘What’s wrong, Eddie?’ Sondra asked again.

  ‘Him! Him!’ Ed shouted, stabbing his finger down at the paper so hard that his fingernail tore all the way through the A section. That man! Lord Peter!’

  ‘What in God’s name are you t—’

  "That’s Todd Bowden’s grandfatherf ‘What? That war criminal? Eddie, that’s crazy!’

  ‘But it’s him,’ Ed almost moaned. ‘Jesus Christ Almighty, that’s him!’

  Sondra French looked at the picture long and fixedly.

  ‘He doesn’t look like Peter Wimsey at all,’ she said finally.

  28

  Todd, pale as window-glass, sat on a couch between his mother and father.

  Opposite them was a greying, polite police detective named Richler. Todd’s father had offered to call the police, but Todd had done it himself, his voice cracking through the registers as it had done when he was fourteen.

  He finished his recital. It hadn’t taken long. He spoke with a mechanical colourlessness that scared the hell out of Monica. He was almost eighteen, true enough, but he was still a boy in so many ways. This was going to scar him forever.

  ‘I read him… oh, I don’t know. Tom Jones. The Mill on the Floss. That was a boring one. I didn’t think we’d ever get through it Some stories by Hawthorne — I remember he especially liked "The Great Stone Face" and "Young Goodman Brown". We started The Pickwick Papers, but he didn’t like it. He said Dickens could only be funny when he was being serious, and Pickwick was only kittenish. That was his word, kittenish. We got along the best with Tom Jones. We both liked that one.’

  ‘And that was four years ago,’ Richler said.

  ‘Yes. I kept stopping in to see him when I got the chance, but in high school we were bussed across town… and some of ‘the kids got up a scratch bail team… there was more homework… you know… things just came up.’

  ‘You had less time.’

  ‘Less time, that’s right The work in high school was a lot harder… making the grades to get into college.’

  ‘But Todd is a very apt pupil,’ Monica said almost automatically. ‘He graduated salutatorian. We were so proud.’

  ‘I’ll bet you were,’ Richler said with a warm smile. ‘I’ve got two boys in Fairview, down in the valley, and they’re just about able to keep their sports eligibility.’ He turned back to Todd. ‘You didn’t read him any more books after you started high school?’

  ‘No. Once in a while I’d read him the paper. I’d come over and he’d ask me what the headlines were. He was interested in Watergate when that was going on. And he always wanted to know about the stock market, and the print on that page used to drive him batshit — sorry, Mom.’

  She patted his hand.

  ‘I don’t know why he was interested in the stocks, but he was.’

  ‘He had a few stocks,’ Richler said. ‘That’s how he was getting by. You want to hear a really crazy coincidence? The man who made the investments for him was convicted on a murder charge in the late forties. Dussander had five different sets of ID salted around that house. He was a cagey one, all right’

  ‘I suppose he kept the stocks in a safe deposit box somewhere,’ Todd remarked.

  ‘Pardon me?’ Richler raised his eyebrows.

  ‘His stocks,’ Todd said. His father, who had also looked puzzled, now nodded at Richler.

  ‘His stock certificates were in a footlocker under his bed,’ Richler said, ‘along with that photo of him as Denker. Did he have a safety deposit box, son? Did he ever say he did?’

  Todd thought, and then shook his head. ‘I just thought that was where you kept your stocks. I don’t know. This… this whole thing has just… you know… it blows my wheels.’ He shook his head in a dazed way that was perfectly real. He really was dazed. Yet, little by little, he felt his instincts of self-preservation surfacing. He felt a growing alertness, and the first stirrings of confidence. If Dussander had really taken a safety deposit box in which to store his insurance document, wouldn’t he have transferred his stock certificates there? And that photograph?

  ‘We’re working with the Israelis on this,’ Richler said. ‘In a very unofficial way. I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention that if you decide to see any press people. They’re real professionals. There’s a man named Weiskopf who’d like to talk to you tomorrow, Todd. If that’s okay by you and your folks.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Todd said, but he felt a touch of atavistic dread at the thought of being sniffed over by the same hounds that had chased Dussander for the last third of his life. Dussander had had a healthy respect for them, and Todd knew he would do well to keep that in mind.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Bowden? Do you have any objections to Todd seeing Mr Weiskopf?’

  ‘Not if Todd doesn’t,’ Dick Bowden said. ‘I’d like to be present, though. I’ve read about these Mossad characters—’

  ‘Weiskopf isn’t Mossad. He’s what the Israelis call a special operative. In fact, he teaches Yiddish grammar — if you can believe that — and English Literature. Also, he’s written two novels.’ Richler smiled.

  Dick raised a hand, dismissing it ‘Whatever he is, I’m not going to let him badger Todd. From what I’ve read, these fellows can be a little too professional. Maybe he’s okay. But I want you and this Weiskopf to remember that Todd tried to help that old man. He was flying under false colours, but Todd didn’t know that’

  That’s okay, dad,’ Todd said with a wan smile.

  ‘I just want you to help us all that you can,’ Richler said. ‘I appreciate your concern, Mr Bowden. I think you’re going to find that Weiskopf is a pleasant, low-pressure kind of guy. I’ve finished my own questions, b
ut I’ll break a little ground by telling you what the Israelis are most interested it Todd was with Dussander when he had the heart attack that landed him in the hospital—’

  ‘He asked me to come over and read him a letter,’ Todd said.

  ‘We know.’ Richler leaned forward, elbows on his knees, tie swinging out to form a plumb-line to the floor. "The Israelis want to know about that letter. Dussander was a big fish, but he wasn’t the last one in the lake — or so Sam Weiskopf says, and I believe him. They think Dussander might have known about a lot of the other fish. Most of those still alive are probably in South America, but there may be others in a dozen countries… including the United States. Did you know they collared a man who had been an Unterkommandant at Buchenwald in the lobby of a Tel Aviv hotel?’

  ‘Really!’ Monica said, her eyes widening.

  ‘Really,’ Richler nodded. Two years ago. The point is just that the Israelis think the letter Dussander wanted Todd to read might have been from one of those other fish. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong. Either way, they want to know.’

  Todd, who had gone back to Dussander’s house and burned the letter, said: I’d help you — or this Weiskopf — if I could, Lieutenant Richler, but the letter was in German. It was really tough to read. I felt like a fool. Mr Denker… Dussander… kept getting more excited and asking me to spell the words he couldn’t understand because of my, you know, pronunciation. But I guess he was following ail right. I remember once he laughed and said, "Yes, yes, that is what you’d do, isn’t it?" Then he said something in German. This was about two or three minutes before he had the heart attack. Something about Dummkop. That means stupid in German, I think.’