by Philip Kerr
I stuffed the statuette back into its nest and glanced around the suite. The bedroom beyond the half-open door was in darkness. The bathroom door was closed. I wondered if the tommy gun and the money and the gold coins were still behind the lavatory cistern’s tiled panel.
At the same time my eye was caught by the ice bucket next to the drinks tray on the sideboard. Beside the ice bucket was an ice pick.
I picked it up. The thing was about twenty-five centimeters long and as sharp as a bodkin. The heavy steel rectangular handle was embossed with Citizens Ice 100% Pure on one side and Citizens on the other. It seemed a curious thing to have brought from America until you remembered that it was possibly a favorite murder weapon. Certainly it looked like an effective one. I’d seen less lethal-looking switchblades sticking out of a man’s back. But there seemed to be little point in borrowing the ice pick in the hope that someone at the Alex might run some tests on it. Not as long as Max Reles was also using it to break the ice for his drinks.
I put down the ice pick and turned to examine the typewriter. A half-finished letter was still on the platen of the shiny Torpedo portable. I turned the platen knob until the paper was clear of the type guide and the paper fingers. The letter was addressed to Avery Brundage in Chicago and was written in English, but that didn’t stop me from seeing that the letter g on the Torpedo was riding one millimeter higher than the other keys.
I had the probable murder weapon. I had the typewriter on which Reles had written false bids for Olympic contracts. I had a copy of the report from the FBI. And a sheet from the Vienna KRIPO. Now all I had to do was check that the machine gun was still where I thought it was. Explaining that would be a tall order even for a man like Max Reles. I looked around for his screwdriver and, not seeing it, began to search the drawers.
“Looking for something in particular?”
It was Dora Bauer. She was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, naked, although she might as easily have covered herself with the object in her hands. It was big enough. A Mauser Bolo is a lot of gun. I wondered how long she would be able to hold it at arm’s length before her arms got tired.
“I thought no one was at home,” I said. “I certainly didn’t expect to see you, Dora dear. And so much of you, too.”
“I’ve been eyeballed before, polyp.”
“Whatever gave you that idea? Me, a polyp. Tsk-tsk.”
“Don’t tell me you’re searching the drawers to steal something. Not you. You’re not the type.”
“Who says I’m not?”
“No.” She shook her head. “You got me this job, and you didn’t even ask for a cut. What thief would have done that?”
“It proves you owe me something, surely.”
“You already collected that debt.”
“I did?”
“Sure. A man with a bottle in his pocket lets himself in here and starts raking through the drawers? I could have shot you five minutes ago. And just because I haven’t pulled the trigger yet, don’t think I won’t. Cop or not. From what I already know about you, Gunther, your old colleagues over at the Alex might think I was doing them a favor.”
“It’s me you’re doing a favor, Fräulein. I haven’t seen so much of a pretty girl since the Eldorado got closed down. Is this how you normally dress for some shorthand and typing? Or is being naked just the way you end up when Max Reles finishes giving you dictation? Either way, I’m not complaining. Even with a gun in your hand, Dora, you’re still a sight for sore eyes.”
“I was asleep,” she said. “At least I was until the telephone started ringing. I suppose that was you seeing if the coast was clear.”
“It’s a pity you didn’t answer. I could have spared your blushes.”
“You can stare at my mouse all you want, polyp, but you won’t see me blushing.”
“Look. Why don’t you put down the gun and then find a dressing gown. After that we can talk. There’s a perfectly simple explanation for why I’m here.”
“And don’t think I don’t know what that is, Gunther. We’ve been expecting you, Max and me. Ever since your little excursion to Würzburg.”
“Pretty little town. I didn’t like it at first, mind. Did you know they have one of the finest baroque cathedrals in Germany? The local prince-bishops built it, to make up for the fact that the citizens of the town murdered some poor Irish priest back in the year 689. Saint Kilian. Max Reles would fit right in if he ever went there. But then he probably does go, now that he owns a quarry or two, supplying stone to the GOC. He murdered someone, too, of course. Let’s not forget that fact. Using that ice pick on the sideboard.”
“You should be on the radio.”
“Listen to me, Dora. Right now it’s just Max who’s staring at the inside of a headsman’s basket. Remember Myra Scheidemann? The Black Forest murderess? In case you’d forgotten, we execute women, too, in this great country of ours. Be a shame for you to end up the same way as her. So be sensible and put the gun away. I can help you. The same way I helped you before.”
“Shut up.” She jerked the long barrel of the Mauser at me and then the bathroom. “In there,” she said fiercely.
I did what I was told. I’d seen what a bullet from a Mauser can do to a man. It wasn’t the hole it makes going in that gave me pause for thought, but the hole it makes going out. It’s the difference between a peanut and an orange.
I opened the bathroom door and switched on the light.
“Take the key out of the door,” she said. “And put it back in the lock on this side of the door.”
Besides, Dora was an ex-whore. Probably still was a whore. And whores are less particular about shooting people. Especially men. Myra Scheidemann was a whore who had shot three of her clients in the head with a thirty-two while they were having sex in a forest. Sometimes I get the feeling that a lot of whores don’t much like men. This one was giving every impression that she didn’t mind putting a bullet in me. So I took the key and put it in the lock on the other side of the door, just as she’d told me to do.
“Now close the door.”
“And miss the show?”
“Don’t make me prove I can handle a gun.”
“Perhaps you should try for the Olympic shooting team. I don’t think you’d have any problem impressing the selectors, dressed like that. Of course, pinning a medal on your chest might prove to be difficult. Although you could always use an ice pick.”
Dora lengthened her arm, took very deliberate aim at my head, and steadied the Mauser.
“All right, all right.” I kicked the door shut, angry with myself for not thinking to bring the little automatic I’d taken from Erich Goerz. Hearing the key turn in the lock, I pressed my ear to the door and tried to continue the conversation.
“I thought we were friends, Dora. After all, it was me who got you the job with Max Reles. Remember? It was me who gave you the chance to climb off the sledge.”
“By the time you and I met, Gunther, Max was already a client. You just gave me a chance to be here with him legitimately. I told you before. I love being in big hotels like this one.”
“I remember. You like the big bathrooms.”
“And whoever said I wanted to get off the sledge?”
“You did. And I believed you.”
“Then you’re a pretty poor judge of character, aren’t you? Max thinks you’re all over him like fleas, but I think you’ve just been pinning the tail on the donkey. And got lucky. Max thinks that because you went to Würzburg you must know everything. But I don’t think so. How could you?”
“As a matter of interest, how did he find out? That I’d gone to Würzburg.”
“Frau Adlon told him. After your trip to Potsdam, he was wondering where you were. And so he asked her. He told her he wanted to give you a reward for finding that Chinese box. Of course, as soon as he knew you were there, he guessed you were on your way to check up on him. With the widow Rubusch or the Gestapo. Maybe both.”
“The Gestapo didn’t
seem particularly interested in Reles and his activities,” I said.
“I suppose that’s why they asked the FBI for information about Max.” Dora laughed. “Yes, I thought that would shut you up. Max got a telegram from his brother in America passing on a tip from someone in the FBI saying that the FBI had received a request for information about him from the Gestapo in Würzburg. You see, Max has friends in the FBI just like he’s got a lot of useful friends here. He’s clever like that.”
“Is that right?”
I glanced around the bathroom. I might have kicked out the window and climbed down to the street but for the fact that the bathroom didn’t have a window. I needed the gun behind the panel. I glanced around for the screwdriver and then opened the four bathroom cabinets. “You know, Max is not going to be very happy when he comes back here and finds me in his bathroom,” I said. “For one thing, he’s not going to be able to use his own toilet.”
There wasn’t much in the cabinets. Most of the man’s toiletries were on the bathroom shelf or on the side of the sink. In one cabinet were a bottle of Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass and some Charbert Grand Prix men’s cologne. They looked like a perfect couple. In another I found a bag containing some rather vulgar-looking dildos, a blond wig, some expensive-looking lingerie, and a diamond tiara that was obviously paste. No one leaves a real one in a bathroom cabinet. Not when the hotel has a perfectly good safe. Of a screwdriver, however, there was no sign.
“It gives Max a real problem about what to do with me. I mean, he can hardly kill me here in the Adlon, can he? I’m not the type to sit still and have my ears syringed with an ice pick. And the noise of a gunshot is going to attract some attention and require some explaining. But make no mistake, Dora, he’s going to have to kill me. And you’ll be an accessory to murder.”
Of course, by now I had realized the significance of the wig, and the tiara, and the Blue Grass perfume. I was reluctant to mention this to Dora, as I still hoped she might be persuaded to cooperate with me. But with each passing minute it was becoming clear that I had little choice now but to scare her into cooperation with what I now knew about her.
“Except that you’ve got no problem with being an accessory to murder, have you, Dora? Because you’ve already helped out with one murder, haven’t you? It was you that Heinrich Rubusch was with the night Max killed him with that ice pick. You were the blond in the tiara, weren’t you? Didn’t the guy mind when you showed him your mouse? That you weren’t a natural blond?”
“He was like any other Fritz when he sees a bit of mouse. All he cared about was that it squeaked when he stroked it.”
“Please tell me that Max didn’t kill him while you were doing it.”
“What’s it to you, anyway? He made no noise. There wasn’t even any blood. Well, maybe just a bit. Max blotted it up with the guy’s pajama jacket. But you couldn’t even see a mark. Incredible, really. And, believe me, he didn’t feel a thing. Couldn’t have. Which is more than I can say. Rubusch wanted a racehorse, not a girl. I had the marks of his hairbrush on my backside for days afterward. If you ask me, the fat pervert had it coming.”
“But the door was locked from the inside when we found him. The key was still in the door.”
“You opened it, didn’t you? I locked it the same way. Lots of hotel whores carry passkeys or key turners. Or know how to get hold of one. Sometimes a client pays you off without a tip. Sometimes they peel some leaves off a bush that’s too tempting to leave behind. So you wait outside for a while, and then go back in and help yourself to more money. Some hotel detective you are, Gunther. The other bull. What was his name? The drunk. Muller. He knew the score. It was him that sold me a key turner and a good passkey. And in return, well, you can imagine what he wanted. The first time, anyway. On the night Max killed Rubusch, I bumped into him, and was obliged to pin some notes on his coat.”
“Which were some of the same notes you’d been given by Rubusch.”
“Of course.”
By now I had given up looking for the screwdriver. And I was scrutinizing my change to see if I had a coin thin enough to fit the screw head on the cistern panel. I didn’t. I did have a sterling-silver money clip—a wedding present from my late wife—and I spent several minutes using that to try to loosen one of the screws; but I succeeded only in mangling the clip’s corner. The way things were looking, very soon I was going to have a chance to apologize to my wife, if not in person, then something vaguely similar.
Dora Bauer had stopped talking. Which was fine. Every time she said something it reminded me of how stupid I’d been. I picked up the tooth glass, washed it out, poured myself a generous measure of Korn, and sat down on the toilet. Things always look a little better over a drink and a cigarette.
You’re in a spot, Gunther, I told myself. In a short while, a man is going to come through that door with a gun, and he’s going to either shoot you or try to walk you out of the hotel and shoot you somewhere else. Of course, he might try to hit you over the head and then kill you with that ice pick, and take you out of here in a laundry basket. He’s been staying here for quite a while. He should know where everything is by now. How things work here.
Or he could just dump your body in the elevator shaft. It might be a while before anyone finds you down there. Or maybe he’ll just telephone his friends in Potsdam and have them come and arrest me again. It’s not like anyone’s going to object. Everyone in Berlin looks the other way whenever someone gets arrested these days. It’s nobody’s business. No one wants to see anything.
Then again, they can hardly take the risk that I won’t say something in front of everyone when they try to sleepwalk me out the front door. Von Helldorf wouldn’t like that. Nor would our honored sports leader, von Tschammer und Osten.
I drank some more of the Korn. It didn’t make me feel any better. But it did give me an idea. It wasn’t much of an idea. Then again, I wasn’t much of a detective. That much was already evident.
31
A COUPLE OF HOURS PASSED. So did a couple more drinks. What else was I going to do? I heard the sound of the key in the lock and rose to my feet. The door opened. Instead of Max Reles I found myself face-to-face with Gerhard Krempel, which put a big dent in my idea. Krempel wasn’t very bright, and it was hard to see how I was going to talk myself out of anything if it was his cauliflower ears that were doing the listening. He had a thirty-two in one hand and a cushion in the other.
“I see you’ve been entertaining yourself,” he said.
“I need to speak to Max Reles.”
“That’s too bad, because he’s not here.”
“I’ve got a deal for him. He’ll want to hear it. I can guarantee that he will.”
Krempel smiled bleakly. “So what is it?”
“And spoil the surprise? Let’s just say the police are involved.”
“Yeah, but which police? The no-account police you used to be, Gunther? Or the ones my boss knows who make problems disappear? You dropped three cards, and now you’re trying to raise. Well, I’m calling your bluff. I don’t care what you’ve got to say. Here’s what I’m saying. You’ve got two ways out of this bathroom. Dead, or dead drunk. It’s your choice. Both are inconvenient to me, but one choice looks less inconvenient to you. Especially as you’ve so thoughtfully provided a bottle and, by the look of things, made a head start on what I’m talking about.”
“What happens then?”
“That’s up to Reles. But there’s no way I’m walking you out of this hotel unless you’re incapacitated somehow. If you’re drunk, you can shoot your mouth off all you like and no one is going to pay a crumb like you much attention. Not even here. In fact, especially here. They don’t like drunks at the Adlon. They frighten the ladies. If we see anyone who knows you, then you’ll be just another ex-cop who couldn’t hold his liquor. The same as that other sot who used to work here. Fritz Muller.”
Krempel shrugged.
“Then again, I could shoot you right now, right here, snoope
r. With a cushion wrapped around this little thirty-two, the noise will pass for a car backfiring. Then I’ll push you out the French window. Shouldn’t make too much of a splash down there. It’s only one floor. By the time anyone notices you in all this rain and in the dark, I’ll have you safely folded up in the back of my car. Next stop, the river.”
The voice was calm and assured, as if killing me weren’t going to give him any sleepless nights. He folded the cushion over the gun, with meaning.
“Better drink up,” he said. “I’m done talking here.”
I poured a glass and emptied it in one swallow.
Krempel shook his head. “Let’s forget we’re in the Adlon, shall we? From the bottle, if you don’t mind. I don’t have all night.”
“Care to join me?”
He took a short step forward and hit me hard across the face. It wasn’t hard enough to knock me off my feet. Just off my vocal cords.
“Cut the dialogue and drink.”
I put the neck of the tall stoneware bottle to my lips and gulped at it like it was water. Some of it tried to come back up, but I gritted my teeth and didn’t let it. Krempel didn’t look like he had the tolerance to wait for me to puke. I sat down on the edge of the bath, took a deep breath, and drank some more. And then some more. As I lifted the bottle a third time, my hat fell into the empty bath, but it might as easily have been my head. It rolled under the dripping tap and remained on its crown, like a large brown beetle on its back. I reached down to get it, misjudged the depth of the bath, and fell in, but without dropping the schnapps bottle. I think if I had broken it, Krempel would have shot me then and there. I took another swig from the bottle to reassure him there was plenty of alcohol left in it, grabbed my hat, and crushed it back on top of my already swimming head.
