“Explain, please.” Monk’s pipe is still smoldering in the ash tray, proof that smoking doesn’t have to be bad for you.
“They got in each other’s way. They were all so eager to get a piece of me that they kept shoving themselves and even when they did land a punch it was pretty weak.”
“Interesting,” says Monk. “You were saved from being beaten by a crowd because the crowd was too big.”
“And the bar was too small. Seems like a good analogy to my fighting in small spaces problem.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Monk picks up his pipe, which has gone out, goes through the lighting ritual and puts it back down. He’s always had the habit of playing with something. It used to be solitaire, then the white queen from Duke Braddock’s chessboard. For a while it was a pair of metal ball bearings he picked up from God knew where that he rolled around with the most annoying clacking sound. Cassidy eventually wrestled them from him and threw them away.
“But there’s a pressing issue we haven’t addressed,” says Monk, who talks that way. “What do we do now? Are the Nazis going to come after us?”
“No,” says Cassidy. “Lou took care of that.” She gives him a look of sweet approval and he smiles and leans in for a kiss. Monk looks away, annoyed. It’s bothering him that this is bothering him. He knows he shouldn’t be upset with their closeness, but lately it’s just been reminding him of how alone he is.
Cassidy dabs at her lipstick with a napkin. “Lou did that thing you suggested, where we hid our IDs in the car before we went in. They don’t know who we are.”
“That’s good. Means we don’t have to watch our backs all the time. But it doesn’t address the issue; what do we do about the Nazis, and particularly about Mrs. Podalack?”
Cassidy says, “Lou says they killed her.”
“I agree,” says Monk. “The evidence—her star of David in the coat of a Nazi—is proof. The poor woman is dead.”
“Think about it,” says Cassidy. “She survived the concentration camps and gets killed by a Nazi...in Chicago.”
“It is ironic,” agrees Monk.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that it’s wrong. The bastards can’t get away with this. Lou?”
Lou, startled, was reaching for the last cinnamon roll. He pulls back his hand as if caught at something. “I agree. I’m in. We have to nail these guys.”
“Of course,” says Monk. “Anyone have ideas on how?”
“The police didn’t believe us.”
“Those police didn’t believe us,” corrects Monk.
“Fine; those police. What do we do; go to every police precinct until we find somebody who does?”
“We could contact the Israeli Consulate,” suggests Monk.
“Is there one here? In Chicago?”
“Um, no.”
“Then we’d have to go to...?”
“Washington D.C.,” says Monk.
“Right.” Lou goes for the last roll. Screw the calories, he’s fat already. “Better idea; we find them individually and beat the crap out of them until they stop being Nazis. Then we go after Erich Klaussner.”
“Lou, I understand you have a personal stake in this...”
“You think?”
“Having been beaten by them, yes. But this is bigger than personal revenge.”
“No, I have to disagree. Personal revenge sounds exactly like the right idea.”
“Cassidy?” says monk. “Help me out here?”
“I’ve gotta go with Lou on this one. I’d like to slug a few of them myself.”
“This is ridiculous,” Monk says. He gets up rather sharply and the chair tilts back, nearly falling. “I’m not going to dignify this discussion by being in it.” He grabs his pipe, unlit again, and storms off.
Lou and Cassidy watch him leave in stunned silence.
“The hell?” says Cassidy. “What’s with him?”
“I have no idea.” They’re silent for a few seconds and Lou says, “Hey? Want to go to bed and fool around?”
“Are you up to it?”
Lou does an exaggerated Groucho Marx leer.
“You always do that, every time I say up.” But she’s smiling as she says it. “Let’s do it.”
They head for the bedroom as quickly as Lou’s foot allows, forgetting all about Monk’s angry exit.
As clothes scatter around the floor, neither one even thinks about him.
Monday at the offices, Monk and Cassidy drive the Bel Air to the underground lot. Monk’s quiet and moody, bothered by something and Cassidy is bubbly with good cheer, talking about the weather (“pleasant, not too hot”) the office (“We get a new girl today,”) and Lou (“He’s feeling so much better!”) She doesn’t notice the scowl that follows that one.
Monk’s feeling angry and upset at Lou and Cassidy’s relationship lately and it bothers him more that it bothers him than it does that he’s bothered. He thinks he should be above jealousy but more and more lately he’s been feeling like the odd man out. He wants... what does he want?
Conversationally, Cassidy says, “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
Monk snorts, not elegantly, and laughs. “No, why?”
“Just chatting. I was reading Vogue magazine last night and they had an article. It said that 57% of all Americans—men and women—believe in love at first sight.”
“50% of all Americans believe there are UFOs, too. Doesn’t make them real.”
“You’re saying that if you met a girl there’s no way you could just fall for her?”
“No way at all. Love is formed after getting to know each other, sharing common interests, goals and hobbies. Like you and Lou.”
“I knew I loved him the moment I saw him.”
There’s the snort again. “Cassidy, you did not.”
Which ends Cassidy’s sunny mood quickly. She snaps on the radio button a little bit harder than necessary and a very serious announcer—not Walter Cronkite; Cassidy loves Walter Cronkite—tells them the US is sending an additional 3,500 troops to Southeast Asia, Gary Powers spy plane is shot down by the Russians, France exploded an atomic bomb and the Summer Olympics is in Rome next month. The person to watch, they say, is a new boxer named Cassius Clay.
She hits the button and tunes in WLS, the popular rock and roll channel and the car fills up with Chubby Checker singing the Twist.
Monk can’t drive downtown fast enough.
Monk’s in his office at nine pouring through investment periodicals, penciling numbers on spreadsheets and drinking coffee when he hears Cassidy welcoming somebody. He’s curious but doesn’t want to look it so he stays at his desk...stays at his desk...listening to muted girl voices. He can’t make them out and he’s twirling a pencil to distract himself when Cassidy knocks, enters without pausing and brings in a young woman.
“Monk? This is Bonnie Lieberman. She’s the new temp we’re trying out.”
Monk gets up, walks across the room, hand out to shake. He’s seeing a tall woman, mid-to late twenties, with brown hair in a short bob under a small square hat. Her business suit is red with white vertical stripes, the skirt knee-high, the shoes are flat. Her eyes are blue, she’s beautiful and Monk’s fallen head over heels by the time he takes her hand.
“Pleased to meet you,” he manages.
And the love at first sight theory clicks over to fifty-eight percent.
Lou’s at his own desk, lost in thought. It’s been two days and already the bruises have turned from red and black to a sort of muted purple. His ribs feel better and his ankle, though still aching is probably going to heal ok.
He’s thinking about Nazis and Mrs. Podalack and what the hell has he gotten into? How can there be Nazis in Chicago? The idea baffles him. Lou’s never been a joiner—Monk’s his only friend—and though he likes people, he’d never go to clubs like that new Playboy Club Hefner’s opened on Water street and Chicago Avenue.
How people get attracted to cults like the Nazis is beyond his unders
tanding.
But they killed Mrs. Podalack; he’s certain of that. He saw the look Erich gave her when he saw her watching and having her Star of David was the clincher. There’s no way a woman like Irina Podalack would ever give that up.
So she’s dead and Erich, or one of the others, killed her and what was Lou Fleener going to do about it? Monk’s idea of calling on every police precinct until he found a sympathetic detective doesn’t hold much appeal. He had enough of that when he canvassed them giving out his business cards.
Besides, even if he found a cop who listened, what was that cop supposed to do? With the bar down south burned there’s no longer any proof that anybody was there, least of all Nazis.
He pours coffee, absently adds cream and sugar that he never uses and goes back to his desk with the mug. Last night in bed, in typical pillow talk, Cassidy said, “Lou, you’re involved with Nazis.”
Which, at the time—after midnight—and the situation—in bed with a naked woman—didn’t seem so strange. Now though, the very idea is absurd. The big war is over, has been for fifteen years. There are no more Nazis, no more Imperial Japan. El Duce has been El Dead since they hung him from his heels from a lamppost. They’ve been replaced by the Red Menace, the Berlin Wall, the idiotic ‘police action’ in Korea, tensions in Cuba and the always escalating Viet-Nam nonsense.
But Nazis? In America? Ridiculous. Except, last night, they crashed a meeting, fought with them and Monk burned down their meeting hall, that crappy bar near Mokena.
Lou sits back in his chair, his bruises only mildly protesting, lights a cigarette and picks up his coffee mug, bringing it to his lips and blowing across the surface. He can’t go to the cops; who’d believe him?
Cassidy said, “What are we going to do about this?” Meaning, tracking down the killer of poor Mrs. Podalack.
Lou said, “Tracking him is easy; we know where he lives. What to do about him is another question. And do that again.” She’s been idly caressing his shoulder and neck with her long fingernails causing him to think about sex—pretty much everything about Cassidy causes Lou to think about sex, especially when she goes shopping and models her new clothes for him.
He’s getting interested but she says, “But do they know where we live?” And there’s the Nazi thing again which is an effective mood killer.
He says, “No way he knows where we live. How could he?”
Lou falls asleep thinking that; how could he?
Now, in the cool light of the morning, coffee mug cooling by his mouth as he stares at nothing, he’s not so sure. What if... when they took Mrs. Podalack, what if they made her tell them about him? She’d been here, to the office, and she knew his name. Would she have told them?
He thinks about the old woman. Her family killed by this guy, her years in the camps, her resolve to bring him to justice and decides, no; the old woman would never talk. She’d die first. Probably had died first.
Relieved, Lou takes a large sip of the coffee and nearly spit it across the room.
Who put the cream and sugar in it?
Erich sits in his favorite chair, sits there quiet and still. He’s in the huge armchair in the tiny living room. The armoire has been repaired, the sofa returned to its place under the window. It’s Saturday afternoon and the western sun makes the room glow like its lit by the fires of the crematorium. Erich smokes cigarettes and sips Brandy and thinks about his past life.
Recruited willingly into the Homeland Youth Guard at fourteen, burning with a desire to avenge the humiliation done to the country after the last war and the crushing financial collapse that made the economy a nightmare, he listened to the words of Adolf Hitler and believed.
Believed the country could be great again. Believed that the Jews and the Gypsies, the Homosexuals and the Western powers were to blame for their problems. Believed that only a man like Hitler could bring back peace and prosperity.
Erich joined the young gangs that openly attacked Jews in the streets, smashed the windows of their shops. He delighted, with the other boys, in tormenting them, assaulting their wives and daughters. When he was given a chance to become a soldier at sixteen, he left home eagerly, ready to fight, and die if necessary, for the Fuehrer.
He joined the Nazi party in the autumn of 1938 and joyfully participated in Kristallnacht—the night of broken glass, when he and a thousand others were sent to smash Jewish property. Police were ordered to arrest the victims, many of them already beaten by young Erich and his associates and fire departments stood by and watched as synagogues were burned.
His eagerness that night was noticed and he was given higher ranks in the party and in 1940 he joined the SS, becoming a guard at Auschwitz, the concentration camp, a part of Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann’s wonderful final solution.
His memories jump past the war’s end, the collapse of the country, the end of the Nazi party, and he gives little thought to his arrest for ‘war crimes’ his three years in prison, the escape to America, and the rebuilding of his life as “Rick Wills.”
But he does think about the old woman. Irina Podalack. He remembers her and her family back in the camps. The son died early, while the father held out though the beatings and the forced labor, the starvation and disease. Erich personally tormented the three sisters and the mother, Irina, and delighted in their fear of him. The sisters died, the husband shortly after and the dammed US soldiers came and destroyed the camp and life changed for Erich.
He came through Ellis Island, smuggled through their porous immigration process with false papers forged in Argentina. He worked odd jobs, moving randomly and without purpose, just another bit of flotsam bobbing in the ocean that was the post war world.
Eventually he arrived in Chicago and got the job at General Motors as a supervisor. Life was, if not good, at least secure.
One day he got the telegram, relayed through friends of friends, from a man he’d never met but knew well. Ricardo Klement. Not his real name of course; that one was dead and gone, a footnote in history.
At the request of that man, and the several thousand dollars he wired, Erich rented this house and assembled a group of like-minded people, mostly misguided American men, uneducated and worthless, and he hardly noticed the gray-haired old woman next door until she sent that man to spy on him.
Now, back in the present, Erich sips his Brandy and smokes his endless cigarettes. The sun has set and he’s in the dark, the floor lamp being broken in the fight.
Who was he? The man who beat Erich right here in this room, somehow beat his entire group and burned down the bar they met in. The man who left him in the dirt, beaten again, to be found or flee like a criminal in the night.
Who was he?
Irina didn’t talk. Despite the burns and torture, the old woman had beaten him as well. She never talked. And now, her body, buried in a deep hole in the ground behind that bar, she never would.
He gets up and goes to the kitchen and pours another drink. The overhead light is bright and he blinks when he snaps the wall switch and he remembers the old woman’s purse. She had it with her when he and Aldo went to her house that evening, surprising her as she was about to leave.
Her purse.
Erich goes out to his car and opens the trunk. He digs around the box of spare parts and a bag of trash and finds it, a small brown woman’s bag with a short shoulder strap. He brings it inside and dumps the contents on the small metal table, sits down and goes through them.
He finds a driver’s license, some keys, a bottle of pills. Some wadded receipts and a movie ticket stub. A hairbrush, three dollars and two dimes. And a white business card.
He stops and reads the card; Lou Fleener—Private Investigator, with a phone number and no address.
Erich Klaussner, former Nazi prison guard smiles. Now he knows who his enemy is.
And he knows how to find him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
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But I Like Her
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Lou knows where to find Erich and Monday morning at nine he takes Monk’s Bel Air south and west to do it. Monk complained of course, over Lou and Cassidy both glancing at each other with ‘he’s been like this a lot lately’ looks, but he gives in and goes downtown with Cassidy on the elevated train with the rest of Chicago’s commuters.
Lou’s plan is to sit in the car and drink coffee while watching the house and he pulls up to the curb across the street about four houses away. The sun is up, the temperature eerily like California and Lou’s got the window down, listening to birds chirping in the trees. Every twenty minutes or so he turns on the ignition and lets the radio tubes heat up, listens to the news for a few seconds and turns it all off again.
He looks at Mrs. Podalack’s house, empty and silent, and Erich’s house next to it. Nothing on the street moves, nobody comes out. By eleven Lou is beyond bored and he decides to be aggressive.
He walks across the street and up to Erich’s door like a Seventh Day Adventist or a Mormon looking for converts—good luck at this house—and rings the doorbell. He doesn’t have a plan. Maybe say, “Howdy neighbor!” in a cheerful voice, catch Erich off guard by showing up. Beat the crap out of him, smile and leave.
But no one answers the door, of course. Lou waits, rings again, waits, finally leans over to look in the window. He can’t see anything because it’s light where he is and dark in there so he decides to just go in.
Around the back, pick the lock; this is getting to be routine. He’s kind of hoping that Erich shows up, thinking about the rematch in the small room, planning his moves in advance. He opens the door, calls out “Halloo?” and walks in to an empty kitchen.
Not empty like there’s nobody home, but empty, like the place has been cleaned out. The table and chairs are gone, cabinets open and empty, the white refrigerator door open.
Well, hell. Lou goes through the rest of the house but he knows a deserted place when he sees one. He checks the closet and finds it bare, as expected, and he comes back into the living room, a much larger space without the furniture.
Seriously? Page 11
