by Ira Levin
Mengele came in and closed the door; stood looking at Wheelock crouching among crowding black Dobermans, stroking their heads and clapping their firm flanks while they tongued and nuzzled him. Mengele said, “How beautiful.”
“These young fellows,” Wheelock said happily, “are Harpo and Zeppo—my son named them; only litter I ever let him—and this old boy is Samson—easy, Sam—and this one is Major. This is Mr. Liebermann, fellows. A friend.” He stood up and smiled at Mengele, pulling at glove fingertips. “You can see now why I don’t wet my pants when you say someone’s out to get me.”
Mengele nodded. “Yes,” he said. He looked down at two Dobermans sniffing his thighs. “Wonderful protection,” he said, “dogs like these.”
“Tear the throat out of anyone who looks cross-eyed at me.” Wheelock unzipped his jacket; red shirt was inside it. “Take your coat off,” he said. “Hang it there.”
A high coat-stand with large black hooks stood at Mengele’s right; its oval mirror showed a chair and the end of a dining table in the room opposite. Mengele put his hat on a hook, unbuttoned his coat; smiled down at the Dobermans, smiled at Wheelock taking his jacket off. Beyond Wheelock a narrow stairway rose steeply.
“So you’re the one that caught that Eichmann.” Wheelock hung up his shredded-sleeved jacket.
“The Israelis caught him,” Mengele said, taking his coat off. “But I helped them, of course. I found where he was hiding down there in Argentina.”
“Get a reward?”
“No.” Mengele hung his coat up. “I do these things for the satisfaction,” he said. “I hate all Nazis. They should be hunted down and destroyed like vermin.”
Wheelock said, “It’s the boogies not the Nazis we have to worry about now. Come on in here.”
Mengele, adjusting his jacket, followed Wheelock into a room on the right. Two of the Dobermans escorted him, nosing at his legs; the other two went with Wheelock. The room was a pleasant sitting room, with white-curtained windows, a stone fireplace, and to the left, a wall of all-colored prize ribbons, gilded trophies, black-framed photos. “Oh, this is very impressive,” Mengele said, and went and looked. The photos were all of Dobermans, none of the boy.
“Now why is a Nazi coming for me?”
Mengele turned. Wheelock was sitting on a Victorian settee between the two front windows, pinching tobacco out of a cut-glass jar on a low table before him, packing it into a chunky black pipe. A Doberman stood with his front paws on the table, watching.
Another Doberman, the largest one, lay on a round hooked rug between Wheelock and Mengele, looking up at Mengele placidly but with interest.
The other two Dobermans nosed Mengele’s legs, his fingertips.
Wheelock looked over at Mengele and said, “Well?”
Smiling, Mengele said, “You know, it’s very hard for me to talk with…” He gestured at the Dobermans beside him.
“Don’t worry,” Wheelock said, working at his pipe. “They won’t bother you unless you bother me. Just sit down and talk. They’ll get used to you.”
Mengele sat down on a wheezing leather sofa. One of the Dobermans jumped up beside him and turned around and around, getting ready to lie down. The Doberman on the rug got up and came and pushed his sleek black head between Mengele’s knees, sniffing toward his crotch.
“Samson,” Wheelock warned, sucking match-flame into his pipe bowl.
The Doberman withdrew his head and sat on the floor looking at Mengele. Another Doberman, sitting by Mengele’s feet, scratched with a hind leg at his chain collar. The Doberman beside Mengele on the sofa lay watching the Doberman sitting before Mengele.
Mengele cleared his throat and said, “The Nazi who’s coming is Dr. Mengele himself. He’ll probably be here—”
“A doctor?” Wheelock, holding his pipe, shook out the match.
“Yes,” Mengele said. “Dr. Mengele. Mr. Wheelock, I’m sure these dogs are perfectly trained—I can tell as much from all these marvelous prizes”—he pointed a finger at the wall behind him—“but the fact is, when I was eight years old I was attacked by a dog; not a Doberman, a German shepherd.” He touched his left thigh. “This entire thigh,” he said, “is still today a mass of scars. And there are mental scars too. I’m very uncomfortable when a dog is in the room with me, and to have four of them present—well, this is a nightmare for me!”
Wheelock put his pipe down. “You should’ve said so right off the bat,” he said, and stood up and snapped his fingers. Dobermans jumped, sprang, jostled to his side. “Come on, boys,” he said, leading the pack across the room toward a doorway by the sofa. “We’ve got another Wally Montague on our hands. In you go.” He pointed the Dobermans through the doorway, toed something away from the bottom of the door and closed it, tried the knob.
“They can’t come in another way?” Mengele asked.
“Nope.” Wheelock walked back across the room.
Mengele breathed a sigh and said, “Thank you. I feel much better now.” He sat forward on the sofa and unbuttoned his jacket.
“Tell your story quickly,” Wheelock said, sitting on the settee, picking up his pipe. “I don’t like to keep them cooped up in there too long.”
“I’ll come directly to the point,” Mengele said, “but first”—he raised a finger—“I should like to lend you a gun, so you can defend yourself at moments like this when the dogs are not with you.”
“Got a gun,” Wheelock said, sitting back with the pipe between his teeth, his arms along the settee’s frame, his legs crossed. “A Luger.” He took the pipe from his mouth, blew smoke. “And two shotguns and a rifle.”
“This is a Browning,” Mengele said, taking the gun from the holster. “Similar to the Luger except that the clip holds thirteen cartridges.” He thumbed the safety catch down, and holding the gun in firing position, turned it toward Wheelock. “Raise the hands,” he said. “Put the pipe down first, slowly.”
Wheelock frowned at him, white eyebrows bristling.
“Now,” Mengele said. “I don’t want to hurt you. Why should I? You’re a complete stranger to me. Liebermann is the one I’m interested in. ‘The one in whom I’m interested,’ I should say.”
Wheelock uncrossed his legs and leaned forward slowly, glaring at Mengele, his face flushed. He put his pipe down and raised his open hands above his head.
“On the head,” Mengele suggested. “You have beautiful hair; I envy you. This is a wig, unfortunately.” He got up from the sofa, wagged the gun’s barrel upward.
Wheelock got up, his hands folded across the top of his head. “I don’t care doodily-shit about Jews and Nazis,” he said.
“Good,” Mengele said, keeping the gun aimed at Wheelock’s red-shirted chest. “But nevertheless I should like to put you someplace where you can’t give Liebermann a signal. Is there a cellar?”
“Sure,” Wheelock said.
“Go to it. At a not-alarming pace. Are there any other dogs in the house besides those four?”
“No.” Wheelock walked slowly toward the hallway, his hands on his head. “Lucky for you.”
Mengele followed after him with the gun. “Where is your wife?” he asked.
“At school. Teaching. In Lancaster.” Wheelock walked into the hallway.
“Have you pictures of your son?”
Wheelock paused for a moment, walked toward the right. “What do you want them for?”
“To look at,” Mengele said, following after him with the gun. “I’m not thinking of hurting him. I’m the doctor who delivered him.”
“What the hell is this about?” Wheelock stopped beside a door in the side of the stairway.
“Have you pictures?” Mengele asked.
“There’s an album in there. Where we were. On the bottom of the table where the phone is.”
“That is the door?”
“Yes.”
“Lower one hand and open it, only a little.”
Wheelock turned to the door, lowered a hand, opened the door
slightly; put the hand back on his head.
“The rest with your foot.”
Wheelock toed the door all the way open.
Mengele moved to the wall opposite and stood against it, the gun close to Wheelock’s back. “Go in.”
“I have to put the light on.”
“Do so.”
Wheelock reached, pulled a string; harsh light came on inside the doorway. Putting his hand back on his head, Wheelock ducked and stepped down onto a landing of household implements clipped to plank wall.
“Go down,” Mengele said. “Slowly.”
Wheelock turned to the left and started slowly down stairs.
Mengele moved to the doorway, stepped down onto the landing; turned toward Wheelock, drew the door closed.
Wheelock walked slowly down cellar stairs, his hands on his head.
Mengele aimed the gun at the red-shirted back. He fired and fired again; deafeningly loud shots. Shells flew and bounded.
The hands left the white-haired head, groped down, found wooden rails. Wheelock swayed.
Mengele fired another deafening shot into the red-shirted back.
The hands slipped from the rails and Wheelock toppled forward. The front of his head banged floor below; his shoe-soled feet spread apart and his legs and trunk slid farther down the stairs.
Mengele looked, reaming at an ear with a forefinger.
He opened the door and went out into the hallway. The dogs were barking wildly. “Quiet!” Mengele shouted, finger-reaming his other ear. The dogs kept barking.
Mengele pushed the safety catch up and put the gun into the holster; got out his handkerchief, wiped the door’s inside knob, pulled the light string, elbowed the door closed. “Quiet!” he shouted, putting the handkerchief in his pocket. The dogs kept barking. They scratched and thumped at a door at the end of the hallway.
Mengele hurried to the front door, looked out through a narrow pane beside it; opened the door and ran out.
Got into his car, started it, and drove it past the house and around into the empty half of the garage.
Ran back into the house, closed the door. The dogs were barking and whining, scratching, thumping.
Mengele looked at himself in the coat-stand’s mirror; detached the wig and took it off, peeled the mustache from his upper lip; put mustache and wig into a pocket of his hanging coat, pulled the flap out and over.
Looked at himself again as he palmed his cropped gray hair with both hands. Frowned.
Took his jacket off, hung it on a hook; took the coat and hung it over the jacket.
Unknotted his black-and-gold-striped tie, whipped it off, rolled it up and stuffed it into another coat pocket.
Unbuttoned the collar of his light-blue shirt, the next button too; spread the collar, pressed down its wings.
The dogs barked and whined behind the door.
Mengele worked at the holster’s back-strap. Looked at himself in the mirror and asked, “You Liebermann?”
Asked it again, more American, less German: “You Liebermann?” Tried to make his voice more Wheelock-like, more down-in-the-throat: “Come on in. I have to admit I’m goddamn curious. Ignore sem, sey always bark like sat. Them. They. Th, th, th. That, that. Ignore them, they always bark like that. You Liebermann? Come on in.”
The dogs barked.
“Quiet!” Mengele shouted.
7
LIEBERMANN KEPT AN EYE
on the tenths of a mile slowly registering on the dashboard of the kidney-killing little Saab. Wheelock’s house was exactly four tenths of a mile from the left turn onto Old Buck Road—if he was reading Rita’s baroque handwriting correctly, which hadn’t always been the case so far. Between Rita’s handwriting, and rest-room stops necessitated by the Saab’s jolting, it was twenty after twelve already.
Nonetheless he felt that things were falling into place and going nicely. He had been saddened, of course, to hear about Barry’s body being found, but the timing, at least, was something to be grateful for; now he had a strong and provable starting point to make use of in Washington. And Kurt Koehler was there, not only with notes Barry had made—important and useful notes, apparently—but with the influence of a well-to-do citizen besides. Surely he would want to stay on and help in any way he could; the fact that he was there was proof of his concern.
And Greenspan and Stern were in Philadelphia, ready, presumably, to come out with an effective Y.J.D. commando team as soon as Wheelock was convinced he was in danger. “It involves your son, Mr. Wheelock. His adoption. It was arranged for you and your wife by a woman named Elizabeth Gregory, yes? Now please believe me, no one—”
The fourth tenth of a mile slipped into place, and ahead on the left a mailbox was approaching. GUARD DOGS in black-painted letters on a board below; H. Wheelock along the box’s top. Liebermann slowed the car, stopped, waited till a truck coming toward him had passed, and drove across the road to the dirt drive before the box; guided the car’s wheels into deep ruts. The humpbacked drive led gradually uphill through trees. He shifted gears, drove slowly. The car’s bottom scraped against the hump. He glanced at his watch: almost twenty-five after.
Half an hour, say, to convince Wheelock (without going into genes: “I don’t know why they’re killing the boys’ fathers; they are, that’s all”), and then an hour or so for the Y.J.D. to get there. That would be two o’clock, a little after. He could probably leave by three, and be in Washington by five, five-thirty. Call Koehler. He looked forward to meeting him, and seeing those notes of Barry’s. Surprising that Mengele had missed them. But maybe Koehler was overestimating their importance…
Dogs’ barking, a tumult of it, challenged him from a sunlit clearing where a two-story house—white shutters, brown shingles—stood at an angle to him; and at its back a dozen dogs flinging themselves at high mesh fence, barking, yipping.
He drove to the foot of the house’s stone-paved walk and stopped the car there; shifted into neutral, turned the key, pulled up the hand brake. The dogs out in back still barked. At the far side of the house a red pickup truck and a white sedan stood in a garage.
He got out of the car—a real relief—and with his briefcase in his hand, stood looking at the white-trimmed brown house. It would be easy enough to protect Wheelock here; the dogs—still barking—were a built-in alarm system. And deterrent. The killer would probably make his move somewhere else—in town or on the road. Wheelock would have to follow a normal routine and allow the killer an opportunity to show himself. Problem: scare him enough so that he accepts Y.J.D. protection, but not so much that he stays at home and locks himself in a closet.
He drew a breath and marched up the walk and onto the porch. The door had a knocker, a dog’s head of iron, and a black bell button at the side. He chose the knocker; worked it twice. It was old and tight; the knocks weren’t very loud. He waited a moment—dogs were barking in the house now—and put a finger toward the button; but the door opened and a man smaller than he expected, with cropped gray hair and vivid and cheery brown eyes, looked at him and said in a deep-throated voice, “You Liebermann?”
“Yes,” he said. “Mr. Wheelock?”
A nod of the cropped gray head, and the door opened wider. “Come on in.”
He went in, to a dog-smelling hallway with stairs going up. He took his hat off. Dogs—five or six of them, it sounded like—were barking, whining, scratching behind a door at the hallway’s end. He turned toward Wheelock, who had closed the door and stood smiling at him. “Nice to meet you,” Wheelock said, spruce-looking in a light-blue shirt with the collar open and the cuffs turned up, well-fitting dark-gray trousers, good-looking black shoes. No recession in the guard-dog business. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.”
“I read the directions wrong,” Liebermann said. “The lady who called you from New York?” He shook his head, smiling apologetically. “She was calling for me.”
“Oh,” Wheelock said, and smiled. “Take your coat off.” He pointed at a coat
-stand; a black hat and coat hung on it, and a brown quilted jacket, its sleeves shredded with rips and tears.
Liebermann hung his hat up, put his briefcase on the floor, unbuttoned his coat. Wheelock was friendlier than he had been on the phone—seemed genuinely pleased to see him in fact—but something in the way he spoke ran counter to the friendliness; Liebermann felt it, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Glancing at the door where the dogs barked and whined, he said, “You meant it when you said ‘a houseful of dogs.’”
“Yes,” Wheelock said, going past him, smiling. “Ignore them. They always bark like that. I put them in there so they wouldn’t annoy you. Some people get nervous. Come in here.” He gestured toward a room at the right.
Liebermann hung his coat up, picked up his briefcase, and with a pondering look at Wheelock’s back, followed him into a pleasant sitting room. The dogs began bumping and barking behind a door on the left, next to a black leather sofa above which all-colored prize ribbons hung on wood-paneled wall amid trophies and black-framed photos. A stone fireplace stood at the end of the room, more trophies on its mantel, a clock. White-curtained windows in the right-hand wall, an old-fashioned settee between them; in the corner by the doorway, a chair and table, telephone, ledgers, pipes in a rack.
“Sit down,” Wheelock said, gesturing toward the sofa as he went to the settee. “And tell me why a Nazi is coming to get me.” He sat down. “I have to admit I’m goddamn curious.”
Curhious—the r slightly roughened. That was what was bothering him; friendly Henry Wheelock was mimicking him, shading his American speech with a hint of a “Choiman agzent” nothing broad, just the hardly-at-all roughening of the r’s, the lightest dart of a v inside the w’s. Liebermann sat on the sofa—the cushion wheezed—and looked across at Wheelock leaning forward on the settee, elbows on spread knees, fingertips gliding back and forth along the edge of a green album or scrapbook on a low table before him; smiling at him, waiting.
Could the mimicry be unintended? He himself had sometimes echoed the rhythm and inflections of a foreigner’s awkward German; had caught himself doing it and been embarrassed.