Greeks Bearing Gifts

by Philip Kerr

  Elli slipped off the big sofa in the hotel lobby and smiled a smile that was as bright as the chandelier above her head. Her perfume already had me by the knot in my tie and was gently kicking my brain around inside my skull. Sometimes trouble can smell good, especially the expensive kind they keep stoppered up in little jars and bottles and sell to women, or to the men dumb enough to buy it for them. She was wearing black slacks, a clinging black pullover, and red shoes that looked like she really had been serious about dancing after all. The black leather bag she was holding looked big enough to carry a grand piano. Her hair seemed to have grown some and it was even more lustrous than before, as if she’d licked every bit of it clean herself. If I’d been around I could have saved her the trouble. She held me tight for a moment and kissed me fondly on both cheeks, and I came away thinking I was a lucky boy; too lucky probably but I was working on that, slowly. In Greece, it’s just standard practice to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “The owner of that boat we checked out in Ermioni,” I said.

  “Siegfried Witzel.”

  “I received a telephone call a few minutes ahead of yours. From Achilles Garlopis. It seems there’s someone poking around at the house where he got himself murdered. And it isn’t the cops. Could be the murderer come back to look for his monogrammed cuff links—a Nazi named Alois Brunner. Or maybe it’s another Nazi called Max Merten. Then again, it might just be Witzel’s ghost with nothing better to do than haunt the house. I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know. I may never know what I don’t know. That’s a given with a case like this. I could be the dumbest claims adjustor since Woodrow Wilson signed off on the Treaty of Versailles. But I thought I’d go and check it out. Only it might be dangerous, angel. If it is Brunner or Merten, they won’t like us turning up and asking questions or threatening them with cops. Could be you should stay in the car.”

  At this point most normal girls would have cried off and pleaded an urgent appointment with a bottle of shampoo and a favorite book, but not Elli Panatoniou, who it seemed was made of the same Styx-dipped stuff as Achilles—although not, perhaps, Achilles Garlopis. And I certainly hadn’t forgotten the little Beretta in her briefcase she’d been carrying in the bar at the Mega Hotel.

  “Okay,” she said simply, as if I’d just proposed nothing more dangerous than a late-night shopping trip or a visit to the local cinema.

  Before, I’d been merely doubtful of her motives in befriending me; now I was as suspicious as if she’d been a shy blond spinster sent to my hotel by Alfred Hitchcock.

  FORTY

  –

  If Garlopis was surprised to see Elli Panatoniou coming out the hotel front door with me he didn’t show it. Instead he smiled politely, wished her a good evening, and opened the car door for her while I ducked silently into the Rover’s front seat. But I could see he was nervous. Both of us knew that whoever it was at 11 Pritaniou, Greek or German, it probably spelled danger in either language. Near the Acropolis I told him to drive around a bit so that we could scout the area for police cars, but all we saw was an army truck near the entrance to the ancient citadel.

  “The Parthenon is guarded at night by a small troop of soldiers,” he explained, “in case the Persians turn up and try to burn it again.”

  “That’s the official reason,” added Elli. “The reality is that Greeks were stealing pieces of the temple and selling it. My own grandfather has a piece on his desk.”

  Nearer the Acropolis we saw a few rough sleepers.

  “Not so long ago it was the Armenians who fled to Greece,” explained Garlopis. “Then it was Turkish Greeks. This year, it’s the Hungarians and the Coptic Christian refugees who fled from Alexandria when the Israelis invaded the Sinai last October. Who knows who’ll come here next?”

  “Why the Copts?”

  “Whenever there’s a problem with Israel the Muslims take it out on the Copts. So they get on a boat—any kind of boat—and come to Greece. And to here in particular, where the tourist pickings are better.”

  Elli said something in the backseat about British imperialists and Suez but I couldn’t have cared less. The older I got the less I cared about anything. Besides, it was much too late for politics. About twenty-five years too late in my case; but in Athens it was never too late for politics and it wasn’t long before Garlopis and Elli were arguing, in Greek.

  “Park here,” I told him above Elli’s voice. “And not the Greek way either. Do it neatly. Like you’re trying to pass your driving test. So as not to draw any attention to this car.”

  Garlopis nodded and pulled up next to a row of small souvenir shops that had finally closed for the night. We were five minutes’ walk from the house on Pritaniou but caution dictated a bit of distance. Just because Aunt Aspasia said there were no cops around didn’t mean there were no cops around. They might have been watching the house from another address. It’s what I’d have done if I’d been the detective working the Witzel case. Garlopis switched off the engine and took out his cigarettes.

  “If you don’t mind, sir,” he said, “I’ll stay here, in the Rover. The last time we went in that house the police were waiting and we got ourselves arrested. My nerves couldn’t take being arrested again. Not to mention Herr Witzel’s dead body. I don’t like the sight of blood any more than I like having a gun pointed at me.” He picked up one of the towels he kept in the car and mopped his brow with it.

  “Coward,” said Elli.

  “Perhaps,” said Garlopis. “But in youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare.”

  Elli laughed. “Coward,” she said again.

  “What the hell made you so hard-bitten?” I asked her.

  “Suppose you get into trouble. Suppose you need help. What kind of Achilles is it that stays in the car because he’s afraid? No wonder this country is in such a disastrous state if men like this are called Achilles.”

  “Leave him alone,” I told her. “He’s all right. And just for the record I don’t give a shit about Suez or British imperialists, or anything else for that matter. Look, I think maybe you’d best stay here, too.”

  “With him?” Elli’s tone was scornful, and she was already getting out of the backseat of the car. “I don’t think so.”

  She slammed the Rover’s rear door loudly and suddenly I wanted to slap her in the mouth: I was already regretting bringing her along for the ride. Instead I found myself pointing my forefinger at her, as if she’d been an unruly child. It wasn’t that she was anything like a child, it was more that I wasn’t anything like a boyfriend. I was old enough to be her father and felt guilty about the difference between our ages. Someone should have been pointing at my gray hairs and reminding me of what a chump I was. They’d have been right, too.

  “Behave yourself,” I told her. “Not everyone is cut out for this kind of trouble. But with me it’s almost a full-time job, see? Garlopis is a salaryman. An office Fritz. So stop rubbing his nose into his conscience. And if you are coming along, you’d best do as you’re told. Got that?”

  She took hold of my forefinger, kissed it fondly, and then nodded, but there was still mischief in her eyes; I felt like the floor manager in a casino—the guy that watches the customers to make sure they don’t crook the house—only I still couldn’t tell how she was doing it and how much she was getting away with.

  “Whatever you say, sir.”

  “If we’re not back in thirty minutes, go home,” I told Garlopis.

  He looked bitterly at Elli. “With pleasure.”

  Elli shot him a hard look that was replete with accusation, and I pulled her away before she could utter another reproachful remark. I didn’t like her making cracks at Garlopis; that was my job.

  We walked up the street. Above us the rock on which the Acropolis was built was so sheer that you couldn’t actually see the floodlit Parthenon on top. And I
realized I hadn’t actually seen it yet. Not close up. If there’d been more time I might have suggested we walk there. As it was I just wanted to close the books on the Doris and get the hell out of the city and back to Germany. But I’d begun to see it might actually be a good thing to have Elli along if the address really was under surveillance.

  “What have you got against that poor guy anyway?”

  “Oh, nothing very much,” she said. “I suppose he reminds me of my own elder brother. He could amount to something if it wasn’t for his lack of courage.”

  “Don’t be fooled. I’m a bona fide coward, just like Garlopis.”

  Elli grinned. “Whatever you say, Christof.”

  “I mean it. I haven’t stayed alive all this time by collecting police medals.”

  “So who do you think it will be that we find?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. But then ignorance is man’s natural state. It’s not just ex-cops like me who are ill-equipped to separate the true from the false. But no matter how anonymous he or she might be, every murdered man had a family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and I’m hoping to run into one of these—someone who can tell me something new so that I know more than I knew before. Detective work is nothing more than uncovering a chain with the murdered man at one end and at the other, his murderer.”

  “You make it sound like anyone could do it.”

  “Anyone could and those anyones are called policemen. We’ll walk past the address a couple of times before we go in. But first we’ll act like we’re a romantic couple out for a late-night stroll in one of the most romantic cities in the world, just in case anyone’s watching.”

  Elli threaded her arm through mine and pressed her head against my shoulder. As we reached the Glebe Holy Sepulchre Church on the corner of Pritaniou, we turned the corner and slowed our pace to a crawl. Outside number 11 I stopped and took her in my arms. Behind the shutters on the top floor there was a light on and I could hear the sound of radio music. But the rest of the street looked as if the Persians had just left.

  “That’s the idea,” I murmured into her ear. “Give it plenty. The whole Lee Strasberg. Try to act like we don’t have eyes for anything except each other.”

  “Who’s acting? No, really. I’ve decided. I like you, Christof. I like you a lot. You’re not like Greek men. There’s a lot more to you than what’s floating around on the surface. They’re all so shallow. You’re—interesting.”

  “Of course I am, sugar. I was Scab Professor of Philosophy and Mind at Himmler University from 1945 to 1950. Then president of the Diogenes Society until someone stole my barrel. You should read my book sometime about my work for nuclear disarmament.”

  “I’m serious, you idiot.” And then she kissed me like William Wyler was watching us from a hydraulic camera dolly. “Just don’t ask me why. I can’t explain it to myself.” She gave me an excited squeeze. “That’s Manos Hatzidakis. Radio EIR. The best music station in Athens. Maybe that’s the reason.”

  “Must be a Greek in there,” I said, suddenly aware of how much I hated Greek music.

  “Or maybe that’s all a German could find on the dial.”

  In front of the same shabby double-height door was the dark red Triumph Speed Twin with the stuffing coming out of the single saddle, as accurately described by Garlopis’s aunt Aspasia. I touched the engine block and discovered that it was still warm. She touched it, too, and said some more crazy stuff about how she was just as warm on me. We walked on a bit, shared a cigarette in another doorway, and then walked back. It seemed quiet enough. I looked at my watch; we’d already been ten minutes. In another thirty minutes or less Garlopis would leave in the Rover. It was time to close, as the insurance salesmen were fond of saying. The evil eye in the bough of the olive tree was giving it some extra focus in the moonlight and, for a moment, I had a bad feeling about what was going to happen. I suppose that was the point of it. I steered Elli through the wrought-iron gate and onto the flight of stone steps that led up the side of the house. It smelled vaguely of cat piss.

  “You stay here, sugar,” I said. “When I figure it’s safe, I’ll come and get you.”

  “Be careful, Christof,” she said. “I’m not much of a rescue squad.”

  I missed being Bernie sometimes, but it seemed like a small price to pay compared with missing my liberty. I walked to the top of the steps and was about to climb over the wall, as I’d done before, but then I tried the wooden door and discovered it wasn’t bolted. In the yard the cat was nowhere to be seen and everything had been cleaned up: the cracked terra-cotta pots and the rusted motorcycle were gone and even the fossilized grapes had been taken off the vine. There were no lights in the basement but on the upper floor the back bedroom was brightly lit—enough to illuminate the whole yard—and the window was open with a net curtain billowing gently out like a ghost that couldn’t quite make up its mind whether to haunt the place. I walked down the steps to the French windows, pushed them open, and stepped into the squalid room where Witzel had met his death.

  On the floor was a kit bag full of some very dirty laundry and a copy of Gynaika magazine with a picture of Marilyn Monroe on the front cover. A British Webley .38 revolver lay on the table next to a pair of old binoculars, some stale bread, and a plate of tzatziki. There were also some keys, and one of these had a little brass ship’s wheel, around the edge of which was engraved the name Δώρης. It was the same type of fob that I’d seen on Witzel’s key chain when I’d met him for the first time in the office on Stadiou and my new knowledge of the Greek alphabet was just about enough for me to have a vague idea that the name in Greek was “Doris.”

  I picked up the clunky gun and broke open the top to check if it was loaded, and found it chambered with the same anemic .38-caliber rounds that had almost cost the British the last war—I could never figure out why they made a Great War showstopper like the Webley .45 into a .38—but the smaller revolver could still do plenty of damage. I didn’t take the gun along on my passage through the house because now that I was an insurance man I thought I should avoid as many risks as possible and all the actuarial tables prove that when you carry a gun people get shot, even the people holding them. So I emptied the six rounds into my hand and pocketed them, just in case.

  I headed upstairs, tiptoeing toward the source of the Greek music and what looked like a seaman’s peacoat that had been left lying across the banister. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do but I didn’t think shouting hello to the house was an intelligent option; I suppose I wanted to assess the risk, as Dumbo would have said, which meant finding out exactly who I was dealing with before announcing my uninvited presence. When I got to the top of the stairs I saw the bedroom door was half-open. A Greek wearing a vest was lying on a single bed; he had his back to the door and didn’t see me. He was a strong-looking man maybe in his forties, with a sea serpent tattooed on his bare shoulder. I knew he was Greek because he was reading a Greek newspaper and because he was even smellier than his laundry. He was wearing a blue seaman’s cap; what with the novelty key fob downstairs and perhaps because he was smoking the same kind of revolting menthol cigarette that Witzel had smoked, I thought I was probably looking at the captain of the Doris.

  “I’m guessing your name is Spiros Reppas,” I said.

  “Who the fuck are you, malaka?”

  He tossed the newspaper aside and jumped off the mattress, but the cigarette stayed on his lip. He had black eyebrows and a bushy gray mustache that resembled the horns on an old water buffalo. There was a largish scar on his face that almost made me regret I hadn’t brought along the gun. He had small piggy eyes that were full of what was in a bottle beside the bed. The man was drunk and more dangerous than I had supposed.

  “Take it easy, friend. My name is Ganz. I’m a claims adjustor from the company in Munich that insured the Doris. If you’ve come here looking for Siegfried Witzel, then I�
�m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. Your boss is dead.”

  “Dead, huh? How’d that happen?”

  “He was shot, in this house. Someone murdered him.”

  “You did it, maybe?”

  “Not me. Maybe you haven’t noticed but I’m not holding a gun on you. No, there’s a cop says it was Alois Brunner shot your friend. Although you might know him better as Georg Fischer. Like I say, I’m just a claims adjustor.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “That’s what everyone calls it. You’ve heard of insurance, haven’t you? It’s when you pay money in case something bad happens and if it does they give you a lot more money back. I don’t know, but most people seem to understand how that works.”

  “Maybe you’ll pay me to stop something bad happening to you now.”

  “That’s a different kind of insurance. That’s called extortion. Look, just cool your blood a minute, I’m not here to steal anything. Just to talk. Maybe I can help you.”

  “You’ve said enough already, Fritz.”

  Speaking German had been a mistake, not because he didn’t understand it—he did—but because he must have thought that my being German meant I was there to kill him. It was a reasonable assumption, given the record of my countrymen in Athens; everyone knew that most Germans were ruthless and not to be trusted. But it was much too late to fetch the two native Greek speakers I’d left outside the house to try to reassure him in his own language that I was on the level and meant him no harm. I knew it was a mistake because his hand dipped into his trouser pocket and when it came out again it was holding a pearl-handled switchblade. A nice one. I decided to buy one myself if I ever got out of the house alive. He hadn’t yet pressed the button to release the blade so there was still a second or two available for common sense to prevail.