Erich doesn’t care. Money, so important in the early stages of the pan, and so hard to pry from the tight fists of his employer in Argentina, is no longer a necessity. The minor players, Marko and George, will soon be dead and the American idiots in jail, facing many no-doubt angry fellow prisoners. Even criminals, Erich has discovered, whites and colored, hate the Nazis.
Money. He has a sudden inspiration, brought on by desperation and a hangover. He hangs up the phone and trudges down the stairs to the lobby, waiting while a family of four and a half—two young children already squabbling, a father and a very pregnant mother, check in. The license plate on the Plymouth wagon outside says they’re from Wisconsin, not that Erich cares.
Finally the clerk finishes with them and they make the office quieter by leaving it. An older man, world-weary and gray, he says, “Help you, sir?” in a tone that suggests he probably can’t.
“Yes,” says Erich. He’s turned down his presence, opting for sincere rather than dangerous, hoping the old man won’t see it anyway. “You have a restaurant.” He points to the sign that says DINER, right under the COLOR TV and VACANCY ones.
“It’s closed,” says the old man. “There’s a place just down the road a bit, one of them new chains, Denny’s or something. It’s by the interstate near the new Holiday Inn. Can’t miss it.”
“Not what I have in mind,” says Erich. “I was thinking maybe you’d rent me the diner for a few hours for a social group I’m in. We’re Veterans, Army most of us, though we don’t reject the Navy or Marines.” He smiles what he hopes is sincere.
“Can’t help you.”
“Why not?” says Erich, letting a little of the homicidal show in his voice.
“Nobody’s allowed in there.” The old man is turning away when Erich grabs his arm and tugs, hard. The hangover is overcoming the desperation.
“We can do this hard…or easy…”
“Easy,” says the old man, immediately. “Let’s do it the easy way. I’m too damn old to do hard. What you want with the diner?”
“You don’t need to know. A hundred dollars cash, I get the place for one night—tomorrow night. Eight to eleven-thirty.”
“Done.”
Erich takes out the money he got from Bruce Meersman—it was his in the first place—and hands over five twenties. “I see it’s got newspapers covering the windows. That’ll give me privacy. But one more thing…”
“Sure,” agrees the old man, counting the cash like he’s never seen Andrew Jackson so many times. “There’s always one more thing.”
“I don’t want anybody knowing about this.”
“About what?” says the old man. The money disappears in a deep pants pocket.
“Exactly.” Says Erich.
Got the place. Now I need the people.
Back in the room, back to the phones and a depressingly long round of dialing, listening to excuses or he’s not here’s or I can’t be bothered to find him from a variety of bored or resigned people, mostly women. Erich’s thinking, as he dials another number from his list, that if he had to live with these people he’d probably kill them first.
A male voice says, “Hello?” In a voice that suggests the user had never heard good news from the phone before.
“Jackie Forma,” says Erich. Carton has handled all the meetings before but he hasn’t been found since they all fled the old farm house. “This is the Colonel.” Erich can almost hear the man coming to attention.
“Sir?” The voice cracks.
“Jackie, I need you to be at a meeting tomorrow night. Eight PM.” He gives an address into the silent phone. “I want you to call as many of the others as you know and make sure you get them to come.”
Silence. “Jackie? Did you hear me?”
“Um…yeah.” Jackie’s whispering. “But, you see, the thing is…the thing…is…”
“Jackie,” says Erich, more forcefully. “This is the Colonel.”
“Yes sir. I know that, sir. It’s just that…you know, with the fire and all…we thought…we all thought that you were…”
“Were what?” Erich demands.
“Um...dead. The guy…you know, the guy…he beat you pretty bad and the fire? We all had to get away and nobody saw you get out and nobody called or nothing.”
“I’m not dead,” says Erich. “Now, do as I say. Be here at eight tomorrow.”
“Um, well…sir? I don’t think I can make it. See, my Mom’s doing this…thing? Tomorrow and it’s just a bad time for me…”
“Jackie?” Pause. Louder, “Jackie?”
“Sir?”
“You will be here tomorrow night or you will be dead Friday morning. Do you understand me? I will send Aldo to you late at night. You remember Aldo, yes?”
“Oh, my God.” The words come through tears. In the background a woman’s voice shrieks, “Jackie? Where the Hell are you?”
Erich says, “I’m sure Aldo will visit her as well.”
Jackie says, “I’ll be there.”
“Gather the others,” says Erich, and hangs up. Even dead, Aldo has his uses.
In the rapidly darkening room he smiles and sets down the phone. That, he thinks, was pleasant.
“He says they’re gonna do a protest march,” says Lou.
“Where’s Bonnie?” says Cassidy.
“The Nazis? Are going to do a protest? What are they going to protest?”
“Where’s Bonnie?” says Cassidy again, a bit louder.
“She’s at home.” Monk says, distracted.
They’ve regrouped at Monk’s because that’s where Cassidy figured he’d be with Bonnie and she’s dying of curiosity about how the relationship is going. It’s hard to connect ‘relationship’ with ‘Monk’ but it seems to be happening and it’s the best story she’s seen since Marla fell for Vincent in As the World Turns, her favorite daytime drama.
“Why’s she at home?”
“I don’t know. She said she had some things to figure out.”
“I’ll bet she does,” says Cassidy, assuming a lot of lurid plot twists.
Monk asks, “How accurate is this information?”
Lou, “How accurate? Cass, you want to tell him?”
“It’s the real deal, Monk. Lou was so damn scary I would of told him stuff myself.”
“ But is it accurate? Why would the Nazis hold a demonstration?”
“As a distraction,” says Lou. He’s over by the percolator, shaking it to find it empty—again. He opens cupboards looking for the coffee can, doesn’t find one and becomes aware that Monk isn’t listening to him.
Monk says, “I can’t imagine a situation where a Nazi would want publicity.”
“Distraction,” says Lou. “Why don’t you ever have any coffee around here?”
Still nothing from Monk who says to Cassidy, “I’ve got to think about this.” He looks like Sherlock Holmes in search of a pipe and a quiet room.
“Dis,” says Lou, coming over to lean directly into Monk’s face. “Tract. Shun. That’s what they’re doing.”
“Yes, but why?”
“To make a scene outside while they’re killing this Ben-Gurian guy inside?” Suggests Cassidy.
Monk looks up at her, around Lou who is still in his face. “Cassie, that’s brilliant!”
“Why thank you.”
“Wait,” says Lou. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“Perhaps,” agrees Monk. “But not as well.”
“I see,” says Lou. He stands up tells Cassidy, “C’mon. Let’s go home and have sex.”
She looks at Monk, hoping for more compliments, but he’s already lost in thought.
“And coffee,” adds Lou.
“Well, all right.”
More phone calls. Erich is getting tired of dialing the damn thing. This time he calls Carlton, figuring that he and George will be together, probably in bed. Erich is against homosexuals in a preprogrammed, Master Race, ideological sense; but couldn’t care less on a personal basis. Not live-and-l
et-live, just pragmatic. Carlton and George have controlled the money wired to him by Mr. Klement: paying the bills, keeping track of the members, doing all of the clerical tasks Erich hates to do.
He could have, he assumes, hired a secretary, but how to find one as efficient, as malleable and willing to aid and abet Nazis? No, their sleeping arrangements, kept out of sight and mind, were their own affair.
Until he had them killed.
Which, he’s thinking as he dials, will be this coming Saturday at around ten AM.
George answers and tells him to hold for Carlton. George is the passive one, always waiting for his partner to make the decisions, wavering in the background until somebody tells him which way the wind is blowing.
“Carlton,” says the phone.
“Colonel,” says Erich.
“Yes sir.”
Erich is pleased at the subservient tone, feeling like he hasn’t heard enough groveling lately.
“I need to meet with you,” he says. “Tonight at six.” He gives directions and Carlton says, “Yes sir,” again and Erich hangs up, pleased.
That was easy.
But no.
Erich has set up the diner early. The windows are covered with newspaper, the room is cavernous and dark with aisles between tables covered in stacked chairs. He chooses a red booth in the far corner and unscrews lightbulbs at the other tables until there is only a glow above his booth. It is, he knows, ominous and intimidating.
When they arrive, George in a light blue suit with an ascot, for God’s sake, and Carlton dressed down to a basic dark blue pinstripe suit with a vest, a somber tie and a fashionable homburg. As they enter the diner and walk to the booth, Erich thinking George couldn’t be advertising his sexual habits any stronger if he took out an ad in the Tribune. Full page, with details.
He holds back a feeling of revulsion at the blatancy of the costume, but politely invites them to sit.
They squeeze into the booth, an easy thing for the slender Carlton, less so for the overweight George.
Don’t waste time. Erich speaks in the voice he learned at the camps: strong, hard, expectant. “I have a task for you.”
Carlton waits and George shakes, looking like an overfed sparrow, wary of every slight change around him.
“I need you to deliver a package this Saturday morning.”
He waits for a response, gets none, continues. “It’s a simple task, done in minutes. Just deliver the package and leave.”
“We are accountants,” says Carlton. “Why can’t someone else do it?” George is fluttering like a flag in a stiff breeze.
“Because it’s vital it be delivered and I trust you.”
“What’s in the package?”
Erich is annoyed with his tone, so far from the usual subservience, but he decides on a honey approach for the moment.
“It’s a bomb,” he says.
“Eee,” says George, the high-pitched sound like a tea kettle boiling over.
“A bomb,” says Carlton flatly. “You want us,” he gestures with his hand as if to show how unlikely they were to have anything to do with bombs. “To deliver explosives.”
“Yes. It’s perfectly safe. The package has a timer, set to go off fifteen minutes after you deliver it. You won’t even be in the building when it goes off.”
“And if we are delayed? What happens?”
“Why, nothing. The detonator won’t be set until you pick up the package. You’ll have time to go up the elevator, deliver it, and leave.”
“It’s not what we signed up to do,” says Carlton. His eyes are narrowed in suspicion. “Does this have something to do with Aldo’s death?”
“It does,” admits Erich. “I had planned for him to do it, but he’s…”
“Dead,” says George. “That’s what you’re planning for us, too; isn’t it?”
“No,” lies Erich. “No.”
George is staring wildly at Carlton. “That’s what he’s doing. He’s setting us up. He’s going to have us killed.” His voice is getting shrill and his large body is shaking with fear. Sweat is beading on his face and Erich realizes the man is wearing makeup, some kind of mascara and eye-liner that’s beginning to run.
Carlton reaches for a cigarette in his jacket pocket, glances at George, stares carefully at Erich as he lights it. “I do not think,” he says slowly, “That it is in our best interest to do this.” Long pause as he inhales a lot of smoke. “Sir.”
So. Erich considers this insubordination for a moment, weighing it against the absolute necessity of that package being delivered at that time. He considers offering money, but he doesn’t have much left, won’t have until the plan is complete and Klement pays his fee. He toys with the idea of further cajoling, playing to their vanity, or being friendly.
In the end he does what he’s always done, violence. He begins by slapping George across his fat jowls. George jerks back in the booth with a shocked whimper and Carlton drops his cigarette in his lap. He reaches down to get it and Erich grabs his hands, holding them above the table.
He leans in to glare directly as his victim who is beginning to squirm in his seat as the smoldering coal heats his groin. Carlton begins twisting in his seat to dislodge it. His hands are held in a vicelike grip as the Colonel’s grip tightens.
“Let me go,” he begs. “Please…”
“You will do as you’re told,” says Erich, enjoying the moment. Honestly, there haven’t been enough moments like this, where he could inflict pain and watch the reaction. George is whimpering in the seat but begins to make a move to save his partner.
“Don’t,” says Erich, keeping his eyes focused on Carlton. “I’ll kill you both right here if you make a single move. George drops his hands to the table, his eyes wide with terror.
“You will deliver the package,” says Erich. He sees tears forming in Carlton’s eyes as the coal burns into the fabric of the suit. “Say it.”
“I’ll do it,” screams Carlton as his pants catch fire. “We’ll do it! For God’s sake, we’ll do it!”
Erich let’s go and Carlton begins frantically slapping at his crotch to put out the flames.
His voice soft, barely audible, Erich says, “Yes. I know you will.”
Bonnie Lieberman has a small efficiency apartment on Bryn Mawr, a block south of 56th. It’s convenient to the elevated and a corner grocery and to water at Lake Michigan. Today is bright and sunny with a playful breeze to move the fleecy white clouds above and make choppy whitecaps in the water below. She’s dressed in a thin ankle length coat over her sensible office skirt and white blouse with a pink headscarf to keep her hair in place as she walks the concrete path along the water’s edge.
Her thoughts are as troubled as the dancing waves of the lake, ten feet below the path, held back by a tan concrete wall. Water occasionally splashes high enough to wet the walk.
Dion Monkton. Monk. She’s never met anyone like him. He’s beautiful to look at, and smarter than anybody she’s ever met, but clumsy and awkward around anyone except his friends Lou and Cassidy.
Bonnie likes Cassidy, is confused and often annoyed by Lou and—she stops to watch a gull float above the water, held in place by the wind—she seems to be falling for Monk.
That can’t be happening. I can not be falling for this guy.
But she is. She liked him in the office when she was hired to be his assistant. She loved working with him those few days, head to head over financial journals, listening to him get excited over business prospects. She saw him very slowly open up to her as she listened and she saw the real man inside the movie star body.
It helps that she has a degree in finance from the University of California and can keep up with him when he goes sailing grandly into some esoteric branch of economics. His lectures, the ones that sound so haughty and professional, she knows are just his way of dealing with people.
They were kidnapped and tied up for days in that barn and she saw that he’s brave and resourceful and she saw the a
dmiration in his eyes when she got the knife and food. No trace of macho nonsense; he was as pleased at her accomplishments as he would have been of his own.
So now what?
She left his apartment early despite wanting to hear what Lou and Cassidy had to say, frantic to get some distance between them. Cassidy making comments about their relationship was either helping it or ruining it and she doesn’t know which is worse.
I can not be falling for this lug.
It’s eleven-fifteen on Thursday morning and she has the walk to herself. The kiosks that sell soda and popcorn and chips to tourists are closed and boarded up, not yet ready to open for the season. She stops at a bench and watches the water, her thoughts and emotions as roiled as the lake.
“Hey lady.”
She looks up to see a guy in a light green jacket approaching. He’s got his hands stuffed in the pockets and a cigarette dangling from between thin lips. His hair is black and short and mussed by the breeze.
“Join you?” He asks, sitting down too close for comfort.
She studies him for a moment and says, “No. I’d rather be alone.”
“Ah, don’t be like that,” he says, grinning like he’s heard no a lot and doesn’t take it as a reason to say stop. ‘I get slapped a lot,’ that grin says, ‘but I get lucky a lot, too.’
She sighs, not at all in the mood for this nonsense. “Go away, Lothario,” she says. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Hey, can’t blame a fellow for trying, can you?” He leans in, takes a battered pack of Chesterfields from his shirt pocket, taps it to make one jump out and offers it to her. “Smoke?” he says, impressed with his smooth trick.
“I don’t,” says Bonnie.
“Sure you do,” says the guy. He lifts his eyebrows in the direction of her purse where a pack of Camel filtered is showing.
“Ok, she says. “I do. But not with you.”
“Bet there’s some other things you’d do too, am I right? Good looking girl like you, all alone here?” He puts emphasis on all alone.
SERIOUSLY...?: A Lou Fleener Thriller Page 24
