by Philip Kerr
“Herr Hebel,” I said in German, staring coldly at him like a porcelain dog. “What can I do for you?”
He put a manicured hand inside the breast pocket of his Savile Row jacket and withdrew a buff-colored envelope, which he then handed to me. “If you have a spare few moments, I was wondering if you might write a translation of this letter from French into German for me? My French isn’t nearly as good as yours, Herr Wolf, and it contains some technical terms that are frankly beyond me.”
These were the first words he’d spoken to me since January 1945, and it took all of my self-control not to remind him of this or to punch him in the nose. Hebel knew that, of course, but it was all part of a careful act that he should pretend he and I were almost strangers. His voice carried the rasping edge of a growl, like a big cat, or a guard dog.
“Certainly, sir. I’ll get right onto it.”
“Take your time, my dear fellow,” he said affably. “There’s no hurry. Sometime this afternoon would be just fine.”
“Very well, sir.”
“You can leave both versions in my room if you like. I’ll pick them up tomorrow.”
And then he went out into the fierce heat and handed a tip to the parking valet, who ran off to fetch his car.
I was on my mid-morning break before I opened the envelope and carefully read Hebel’s typewritten instructions on how and where and when the blackmail money was to be paid. Then I went into the back office and called Somerset Maugham at the Villa Mauresque, and when his friend and secretary, Alan, fetched him to the phone, I told the old man to have the money ready for collection that same evening.
“He’s made contact then?” Maugham was speaking German, which suited me fine; he seemed to like speaking German to me.
“Yes.”
“What did you think of him?”
“The same thing I thought more than ten years ago. That I’d like to see him dead.”
“The offer’s still there.”
“No, thanks. I don’t care to murder anybody, Mr. Maugham. Even the people I don’t much like.”
“Can he be trusted?”
“No, of course he can’t. He’s a snake. But this is a big payday for him, and he’ll want things to proceed without any problems. So, to that extent, everything should go according to plan. At least tonight. After that, your guess is as good as mine.”
“How shall I pack it? The money, I mean. In a parcel?”
“A parcel would have to be unwrapped so the money could be counted. No, anything that slows things down tonight is to be avoided. A bag would be good. Preferably one that you don’t mind giving away to a bastard like Hebel.”
“Would a Pan American Airlines flight bag be suitable, do you think?”
“I don’t know. Can that hold fifty thousand dollars?”
“I should say so.”
“In which case, use it. Either way, have the money ready by seven o’clock. The meet is at eight. I’ll bring the negative and the photograph straight to the Villa Mauresque, as soon as I have them.”
“Fifty thousand dollars,” he exclaimed grumpily. “Must be the most expensive fucking photograph in history.”
“A picture can tell a thousand words. Isn’t that what they say?”
“Christ, I hope not. Otherwise I’m out of f-fucking work.”
“Look, sir, it’s probably best that none of the words that this particular picture can tell are ever heard outside of a Turkish bathhouse or a novel by Marcel Proust. So you’d best reconcile yourself to paying up.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Mr. Wolf. Fifty thousand dollars is fifty thousand dollars.”
“You’re right. And I’ll admit, fifty thousand pictures of Washington are fifty thousand stories I’d love to hear. So, don’t pay him. Tell him to go to hell and take the flak. It’s up to you, sir. But sometimes, when it’s absolutely necessary, everyone has to eat flies.”
“Suppose I give you the money and you drive straight for the Italian border? You could be in Genoa before midnight and on a boat to fuck knows where.”
“And leave my wonderful job here at the Grand Hôtel? I don’t think so. Every man likes to delude himself that he has some moral standards. For years I told myself that I was the most honest man I’d ever met. Of course, that was easy enough in Nazi Germany. But why take my word for it? Mark a few bills. Take a few serial numbers. I’d be easy enough to trace. I daresay even the French police wouldn’t have too much of a struggle to find me or it. Come to think of it, do that anyway. You never know.”
The rest of Sunday passed slowly as it often does, especially when there is an important task to be completed at the end of it. Hebel came back to the hotel just after lunch and went straight to his room without so much as a glance in my direction. He was a cool one, I’ll say that for him. I went out to his car and searched it; there was a brochure from the perfume factory in Grasse and I concluded that this was where he’d been. Meanwhile, the small of my back had started hurting, which is not unusual when I’ve been on my feet for much of the day, and I was keen to get home and have a bath. But first I had an important job to do. As soon as Hebel went out again—around six—I took his key and went upstairs to search the German’s room. I was nibbling around at the edge of his viperous person, keen to see what else he might have among his high-quality possessions that was potentially compromising to my vulnerable and easily compromised client. Letters, perhaps, or another photograph. It was my idea of room service. He had left nothing of value to him in the hotel safe, I knew, because I would certainly have known about it, and nothing in his car, either. That left his hotel suite and, perhaps, as I had suggested to Maugham, some local lawyer with a strong room and a weekly retainer. What I did find was surprising, although not in the way I might have expected.
ELEVEN
It was a nice suite atop the east wing of the hotel, just below a flagpole and the Tricolore, full of summer evening light and the smell of cut flowers, with a fine view of gently sloping lush gardens and, beyond, the deep blue sea. Anchored in the bay, the millionaire Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis’s yacht, the Christina O, with its distinctive yellow smokestack and naval frigate lines, looked like a brand-new Argo in search of some more modern and profitable golden fleece, as devised by Charles Ponzi, perhaps, or Ferdinand Demara.
I looked around the room. There was a big bed, a comfortable seating area, an en suite bathroom, and a sun terrace as long as the Champs-Élysées. On the walls were some French prints depicting anodyne scenes of the French Riviera that always made me think well of gloomier artists like Bosch and Goya, and a large bowl of fresh fruit. On top of a chest of drawers was Hebel’s own portable Grundig tape machine. I switched it on and listened to a minute or two of bebop jazz, which I find is usually more than enough. There was an address book and a diary and a toilet bag filled with an optimistic number of condoms. Not unexpectedly, the closets and the drawers were home to a variety of fine clothes. But on top of a pile of neatly folded shirts from Turnbull & Asser I found an envelope addressed to Bernie Gunther, while under the rubble of socks and underwear was a nine-millimeter Sig, recently cleaned. It was a nice gun with a full clip and I was glad to see it there if only because it made me think Hebel wouldn’t be carrying a weapon when I met him later, but it was the cheeky letter that interested me more and I wondered how I might read it without him knowing that I had. Obviously he’d been expecting me to search his room, which made me think I was probably wasting my time in there. So, after a minute of just staring at the position of the envelope on the top shirt—could there have been a hair I hadn’t noticed that would tell him I’d been in that drawer?—I left it untouched exactly where it was. But on an impulse, and thinking I might use it to reason with Hebel later on, I took the gun, tucked it behind me under the waistband of my pinstripe trousers, and went downstairs again; he wasn’t going to complain to anyone about my borro
wing his gun, especially if it was pointed at his head. I rarely ever do anything on impulse, however, and almost immediately it was an impulse I strongly regretted.
In the lobby there were two plainclothes cops waiting for me and already making a silent inventory of my face, my manner, my morning coat, the way I walked—their eyes were all over me like ants. I knew they were cops because plainclothes always appear a little too plain in a grand hotel. Cops are the same the world over; they usually look as if they belong somewhere else, somewhere second-rate like the Soviet Union, or Alaska, where cheap suits, tight shoes, and creased shirts with yesterday’s collars are almost standard uniform. These two looked like a couple of dull rocks in a silver punch bowl. I ushered them quickly into the back office in case they disturbed the chandeliers or Monsieur Charrieres, the hotel manager, caught a distressing sight of them. For a brief moment I thought they were there to speak to Hebel and wondered how long it would be before he tried to make a deal with them that involved me, but to my surprise, they were there to ask me about Antimo Spinola. They showed their greasy plastic identity cards and muttered their names through a blue cloud of French cigarette smoke, but I was hardly paying attention because I was now more worried that I might miss my appointment with Hebel than I was about any acquaintance I had with Antimo Spinola. The Italian could look after himself; or so I thought. There was five thousand dollars in it if I handled Maugham’s blackmail money without a hitch—more than enough to buy a new car. Or a ticket to somewhere else; increasingly, somewhere else was a place I was keen to visit.
“How well do you know him?” asked one of the cops.
“Spinola? I play cards with him twice a week at the Hotel Voile d’Or in Cap Ferrat. He’s my bridge partner. Which is to say, not well at all. Bridge is that kind of game. Too interesting for a lot of what-did-you-do-today talk.”
“For how long have you played together?”
“Oh, perhaps a couple of years. As long as I’ve worked here, anyway.”
“It’s a beautiful hotel.”
“Isn’t it? So much beauty.” I almost added, “But so much sadness, too. It’s a beautiful, sad world, I think, that has some beautiful, sad people in it,” only you don’t speak to cops like that when they’re asking questions. Not if you want them to leave you alone.
“Is bridge a game involving money?”
“It can be. But not for us.”
“How did you meet?”
“We were introduced. I can’t remember by who. Someone at the Voile perhaps.”
“Two years isn’t very long. Surely you can remember.”
“You would think so. Perhaps the barman at the Voile. Maurice. Nice fellow. Good barman.”
The questions were arriving fast now, like a boxer’s jabs, snapped in from one man and then the other. I’d fought this bout and many others like it before, however; so I tucked my head down into my shoulder, lifted my left to cover myself against a sucker punch, and prepared to defend myself at all times.
“Were you ever at his apartment in Nice?”
“No. He never asked me.”
“And the casino? Did you ever go there?”
I pulled a face. “I don’t like casinos very much. For one thing, I don’t have any money I can afford to lose. And for another, I don’t care for the odds. And I haven’t even mentioned the architecture. Most casinos look like opera houses and I never much liked the opera.”
“Is money important to you?”
“Not especially,” I lied. “As a matter of fact, I’ve always found it very purifying to be without much of it. Especially when you see what a lot of the stuff can do to people.”
“What about Spinola? Is he short of money, do you think?”
“No. But then he hasn’t showed me his checking account.”
“Does he have any enemies?”
For a moment I thought about the gun he’d given me that was now on top of my lavatory cistern and then shook my head. All of a sudden I seemed to have so many guns and so little documentation for any of them. I felt like a forgotten armory.
“None that he’s mentioned.”
“What about friends?”
“That’s what I say. What about them? Inspector, Spinola’s my only real friend. I can’t say if the same is true for him. I certainly hope not, because I’m not much of a friend.”
“What about women?”
“He doesn’t talk about them that much. He’s careful like that. Too careful, perhaps. Because I imagine there must have been someone.”
“Why do you say so?”
“Inspector, he’s an Italian. And a good-looking Italian at that. Not to mention the fact he’s unmarried. I can’t imagine him letting those three things go to waste in a place like the French Riviera.”
“And you’re a German.”
“What can I say? I’ve not been as lucky with women as he is, I expect.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“All right then, how about this. Germans and Italians—we have a habit of forming alliances. By the way, you have my apologies for the previous alliance.”
“Where were you last night?”
“Last night? I had dinner at the Villa Mauresque. With Mr. Somerset Maugham, the famous writer. He’s a very private sort of man, as I expect you know, but I’m sure he won’t mind confirming my alibi. Assuming I need one.” I lit a cigarette and paused, checking out their sweating, swarthy faces, which were almost as creased and nondescript as their clothes. “Look, would you mind telling me what this is all about? Is Monsieur Spinola in some kind of trouble? Is he all right? I think now would be a good time to tell me if something has happened. And why you’re asking me all these questions.”
Up to now we’d been doing just fine using the present tense; but then, the way cops do sometimes, they changed it, they went straight to the past tense with just a short, sharp delay that explained Spinola’s current situation all too clearly. You might have said it was brutal except that there’s no way to sweeten words like these; best just to spit them out like tacks.
“He’s dead, I’m afraid. Monsieur Spinola was murdered. Someone shot him at his home late last night.”
“We found your hotel business card by his telephone. And your name in his diary for tomorrow evening. The casino isn’t open today so we thought we’d come and see you first.”
Feeling the honor, I nodded slowly. “Tomorrow evening—that would be our regular game of bridge at the Voile. Shot? How? I mean, where was he shot?”
“Once, through the heart.”
I kept on nodding but I was thinking about Hebel’s gun now pressing against my kidney like a giant stone, and remembering that it had been cleaned and recently; you could still smell the gun oil in the muzzle. Not that it’s difficult to get hold of a gun on the Riviera. There was a gun shop in Villefranche. And the French have the most relaxed gun laws in Europe. Hitler could have bought a gun without much of a problem. Easy enough after buying the whole French army.
“Do you own a gun, monsieur?”
“Me? No. Guns tend to frighten the guests. Even the Americans, oddly enough. Generally speaking, we find that we can make them pay their bills without too much of a problem.”
“Was he scared of anyone? Did he seem upset about anything?”
“No.”
“You don’t seem that upset about the death of Monsieur Spinola.”
“Oh, but I am. Good bridge partners are rather hard to come by.”
“That’s a pretty callous thing to say.”
“Obviously you don’t play bridge. Let’s just say that I’m most upset about something when I appear to be taking it lightly.”
“Any ideas as to who might have killed him?”
I smiled. Cops are the same the world over, always expecting someone else to do their thinking for them. It’s a wonder tha
t any of them ever managed to pass an exam at school without looking over the shoulder of the next boy. Then again, that’s certainly one way of passing.
“No. I can’t think of anyone. Least of all me. Given the way I play cards, it’s much more likely that Spinola would have killed me. Look, why don’t you ask the people at the casino? It strikes me that the kind of shady folk who operate these places, not to mention the ones who win and lose large sums of money—they’re just the sort of people on the Riviera who kill other people without a second thought. There’s organized crime in Nice, isn’t there? Much of it centered around the casino. Maybe Spinola might have had a run-in with the local mafia.”
“Rest assured that we will make every inquiry.”
“Is that all?”
“It’s enough, isn’t it?”
“What I meant was,” I said with true grand hotel patience and froideur, “do you require me for very much longer? Only, I have an appointment for which I’m already late.”
