the One from the Other (2006)

by Kerr, Philip - Bernie Gunther 04

  “I have spent quite a bit of my own money, Eric,” Henkell said. “Not that I mind a bit. You know that. I’ll do whatever it takes to isolate this vaccine. But Jacobs is becoming a nuisance. If we had access to some new funds, we could afford to get rid of him and the Amis. It would make this an exclusively German scientific effort. Just like it was before.”

  “If Bernie did go in my place it really would solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t it?” he said. “I’m really not up to going myself. You were right about that.”

  “The question is,” said Henkell, “whether you’re up to doing this yourself, Bernie. You’re only just back to full health. And you say you find yourself tiring very easily.”

  “I’m all right,” I said, dusting off his concern. “I’ll be fine.”

  In many ways staying at Henkell’s house had suited me very well. I was putting on some weight. Even my chess game had improved thanks to Gruen’s helpful hints. On the face of it, I couldn’t have been more comfortable if I had been a bug in the mane of the Emperor Caligula’s favorite horse. But I was keen to go to Vienna. One reason was that I had gone over the blank sheets of paper I had taken from Major Jacob’s pad and found the outline of an address in Vienna. Horlgasse, 42. Apartment 3. Ninth District. Curiously, this was the same address I had been given for Britta Warzok. But another reason was Engelbertina.

  “Then I agree,” said Gruen, puffing some life back into his pipe. “I agree, but I have one or two conditions. And these cannot be set aside. The first condition, Bernie, is that you should be paid. My family is rich and I will be forever in your debt, so it ought to be a decent amount. I think twenty thousand Austrian schillings would be a suitable sum for performing such a valuable service.”

  I started to protest that it was too much, but Gruen shook his head. “I won’t hear any objections. If you won’t agree to my fee, then I won’t agree to your going.”

  I shrugged. “If you insist,” I said.

  “And not just your fee but all your expenses,” he added. “You ought to stay in the kind of hotel I’d stay in myself, now that I’m rich.”

  I nodded, hardly inclined to argue with such largesse.

  “My third condition is more delicate,” he said. “I think you probably remember me telling you that I left a girl in trouble, in Vienna. It’s a bit late, I know, but I should like to make amends. Her child. My child, must be twenty-one years old by now. I’d like to give them both some money. Only I’d rather they didn’t know it was from me. So I’d like you to go and see them as if you were a private detective retained by a client who prefers to remain anonymous. Something like that, anyway. I’m sure you know the form, Bernie.”

  “Suppose they’re dead,” I said.

  “If they’re dead, they’re dead. I have an address. You could check it out for me.”

  “I’ll get Jacobs to help with the relevant papers,” Henkell said. “You’ll need an Allied Forces Permit to pass through the British, French, and American zones. And a Gray Pass to go through the Russian zone of occupation. How will you get there?”

  “I prefer to go by train,” I said. “I’ll attract less attention that way.”

  “There’s a travel agency I use at the main station in Munich,” said Henkell. “I’ll get them to buy you a ticket. When will you go?”

  “How soon can Jacobs get those travel documents?”

  “Not long, I should think,” said Henkell. “He’s pretty well connected.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “Twenty-four hours?” said Henkell.

  “Then I’ll go the day after tomorrow.”

  “But in whose name should I book it?” asked Henkell. “Yours or Eric’s? We have to think this through carefully. Suppose you were searched and they found you had another passport. They’d assume one was false and that you were an illegal refugee from the Russian Zone. You’d be handed over to them and tossed into a labor camp.” He frowned. “It’s quite a risk, Bernie. Are you really sure you want to do this?”

  “It would look odd if my travel warrant was in one name and my hotel registration in another,” I said. “That’s something your family lawyer might easily discover. No, for continuity’s sake, everything—tickets, travel warrants, hotel bookings—ought to be done in the name of Eric Gruen. And I’ll leave my own passport at my apartment in Munich.” I shrugged. “As it happens, I’d rather not use my own passport in Vienna. The Ivans might have flagged my name. The last time I was in Vienna, I had a run-in with an MVD colonel named Poroshin.”

  “What about the funeral?” asked Gruen.

  “Might be risky to go,” said Henkell.

  “It would look odd if I didn’t,” I said.

  “I agree,” said Gruen. “I’ll telegraph the lawyers to let them know I’m coming. I’ll have them open a drawing account at my mother’s bank. So you’ll have your money as soon as you get there. And your expenses, of course. Not to mention the money for Vera and her daughter.” He smiled sheepishly. “Vera Messmann. That’s her name. The one I left in the lurch, in Vienna.”

  “I wish I could go to Vienna,” said Engelbertina, pouting girlishly.

  I smiled, trying to seem indulgent, but the plain fact of the matter was that the other reason I was keen to go to Vienna was to get away from Engelbertina. For a while anyway. And I was beginning to understand just why her second husband, the Ami, had fled to Hamburg. I’ve known women who have slept with a lot of men. My wife for one, although maybe not four hundred of them. And when I was a cop, back in Berlin, there were always snappers who were in and out of the Alex. I’d been fond of one or two of them, too. It wasn’t Engelbertina’s promiscuous history that made me feel uncomfortable with her so much as the many other strange little things I had noticed about her.

  For one thing, I noticed that she always stood up whenever Gruen or Henkell came into a room. I found it a little strange the way she exhibited a deference to them both that verged on the slavish. I also noticed that she never once met their eyes. Whenever either man glanced in her direction she would look at the floor, and sometimes even bow her head. Well, perhaps this wasn’t so unusual in a German employer-employee relationship. Especially given that they were doctors and she was a nurse. German doctors can be martinets, some of them, and quite intimidating, as I myself had discovered when Kirsten was dying.

  Some of the other strange things I had noticed about Engelbertina I also found irritating, like lines of spider’s thread that I kept pulling off my face as our relationship went along. Such as her tendency to infantilism. Her room was full of soft toys that Henkell and Gruen had bought for her. Teddy bears mostly. There must have been three or four dozen of them. Shoulder to shoulder, their eyes beady and thoughtful, their mouths thin and tightly stitched, they looked as if they were planning a putsch to take over her room. And naturally I suspected that I would have been the first victim of the ursine purge that would have followed their takeover. The teddy bears and I did not see eye to eye. Except on one thing, perhaps. Very probably the second victim of the purge would have been her Philco tabletop radio phonograph, which had been a wedding present from her missing Ami. And if not the phonograph itself, then certainly the one record she seemed to own. This was a rather melancholy ballad—“Auf Wiedersehen,” from Sigmund Romberg’s musical Blue Paradise, and sung on her record by Lale Andersen. Engelbertina played it over and over again, and pretty soon it had me climbing the walls.

  Then there was Engelbertina’s devotion to God. Every night, including the nights when she had been making love with me, she would get out of bed and, kneeling beside it, her hands clasped as tightly as her eyes were closed, she would pray out loud, as if she had been throwing herself on the mercy of a Prussian magistrate. And while she prayed, sometimes—on the nights when I felt too tired to get up and leave her room—I listened and was shocked to discover that Engelbertina’s hopes and aspirations for herself and the world were so banal, they would have left a stuffed panda stupefied with boredom. Aft
er praying, she would invariably open her Bible and literally riffle through the pages in search of her God’s answer. More often than not her random choice of chapter and verse allowed her to form the unlikely conclusion that she had indeed been given one.

  But the strangest and most irritating thing about Engelbertina was her conceit that she possessed the gift of healing hands. Despite her medical training, which was genuine, she would sometimes place a tea towel on her head—quite unself-consciously—and her hands on her victim/patient and proceed to enter some kind of trance that left her breathing loudly through her nose and shaking violently like someone in an electric chair. She did it once with me, placing her hands on my chest and going into her Madame Blavatsky routine, managing to convince me only that she was a complete spinner.

  These days the only time I enjoyed her company was when she was kneeling in front of me, with both hands clutching the sheet as if she hoped that very soon it would all be over. And usually it was. I wanted to get away from Engelbertina in the same way a cat wants to escape from the sticky clutches of a clumsily affectionate child. And as quickly as possible.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I glanced up at the pewter Austrian sky from which snow was now descending onto the roof of the International Patrol vehicle, drifting there like a layer of whipped cream. Of the four elephants inside the truck, probably only the Russian corporal felt homesick when he saw the snow. The other three just looked cold and sick. Even the diamonds in an adjacent jewelry shop were looking a little chilly. I turned up my coat collar, pulled my hat over my ears, and walked quickly along the Graben, past the baroque monument that had been erected to the memory of the hundred thousand Viennese who had died in the plague of 1679. In spite of the snow, or perhaps even because of it, the Graben Café was doing a brisk business. Well-dressed, well-built women were hurrying through the revolving doors with their shopping. With half an hour to kill before my meeting with the Gruen family lawyers, I hurried after them.

  In the back room there was a stage set for a small orchestra, and a few tables where some dead fish masquerading as men were playing dominoes, nursing empty coffee cups, reading the newspapers. Finding an empty table near the door, I sat down, unbuttoned my coat, eyed a handsome brunette, and then ordered a one-horse cab—black coffee in a tall glass with only one inch of cream on top. I also ordered a large cognac, because of the cold. That’s what I tried to persuade myself, anyway. But I knew it had more to do with meeting Gruen’s lawyers for the first time. Lawyers make me uncomfortable. Like the idea of catching syphilis. I drank the cognac but only half the coffee. I had my health to consider. Then I went outside again.

  Situated at the top of the Graben, Kohlmarkt was a typical Viennese street, with an art gallery at one end and an expensive confectioner at the other. Kampfner and Partners occupied three floors at number fifty-six, between a shop selling leather goods and another selling antique religious reliquaries. As I went through the door I was almost tempted to buy myself a couple of rosaries. For luck.

  Behind the first-floor reception desk sat a redhead with all the trimmings. I told her I was there to see Dr. Bekemeier. She asked me to take a seat in the waiting room. I walked over to a chair, ignored it, and stared out the window at the snow, the way you do when you’re wondering if you’re shoes are up to it. There was a fine pair of boots in Bretschneider’s that I and my expenses were thinking of getting acquainted with. Provided things worked out with the lawyer. I watched the snow as far as the window of the embroidery shop opposite, where Fanny Skolmann—according to the name painted on the window—and her several employees were stitching petit point in light that promised to make them blind in no time at all.

  A throat cleared discreetly behind me and I turned to face a man wearing a neat, gray suit with a wing collar that looked as if it had been tailored by Pythagoras. Under white spats, his black shoes shone like the metalwork on a new bicycle. Or perhaps it was just more cream on top of yet more black coffee. He was a small man, and the smaller the man, the more carefully he seems to dress. This one was straight out of a shop window. He looked sharp. He couldn’t have been more than five feet tall and yet he had the look of a creature that killed weasels with his teeth. It was as if his mother had prayed for a baby terrier and changed her mind at the last minute.

  “Dr. Gruen?” he asked.

  For a moment I had to remind myself it was me he was talking to. I nodded. He bowed in a courtly kind of way.

  “I am Dr. Bekemeier,” he said. He motioned me into the office behind him and continued speaking in a voice that creaked like the door on a Transylvanian castle. “Please, Herr Doktor. Step this way.”

  I went into his office where a well-behaved fire was burning quietly, as fires in lawyers’ offices always do, for fear of being put out.

  “May I take your coat?” he said.

  I shrugged it off and watched him hang it on a mahogany hat stand. Then we sat down on opposite sides of a partner’s desk—I on a leather button-backed chair that was the little brother of the one he sat on.

  “Before we proceed,” he said, “you will forgive me if I trouble you to confirm your identity, Herr Doktor. I am afraid that the sheer size of your late mother’s estate requires an extra amount of caution. Given these unusual circumstances I am sure you understand that it behooves me to be quite sure of your bona fides. May I look at your passport, please?”

  I was already reaching for Gruen’s passport. Lawyers, underneath their library-pale skins, are all the same. They cast no shadows and they sleep in coffins. I handed it over without a word.

  He opened the passport and scrutinized it, turning every page before coming back to the photograph and the description of the bearer. I let him roll his eyes across my face and then the photograph without comment. To have said anything at all might have invited suspicion. People always get gabby when they’re pulling a stroke and start to lose their nerve. I held my breath, enjoyed feeling the fumes of the cognac still inside my tubes, and waited. Eventually he nodded, and handed the passport back to me.

  “Is that it?” I asked. “Formal identification of the body and all that?”

  “Not quite.” He opened a file on his desktop, consulted something typewritten on the top sheet of paper and then closed the file again. “According to my information, Eric Gruen suffered an accident to his left hand, in 1938. He lost the two upper joints of his little finger. May I please see your left hand, Herr Doktor?”

  I leaned forward and laid my left hand on his blotter. There was a smile on my face where, perhaps, there ought to have been a frown, for it now struck me as odd that the injury to Gruen’s hand should have occurred so long ago, and that he hadn’t made more of it in connection with the whole procedure of my identification as him. Somehow I had formed the now apparently incorrect impression that he had lost his little finger during the war, at the same time he had lost his spleen and the use of his legs. There was also the fact that the lawyer, Dr. Bekemeier, had been so very precise about the injury to Gruen’s little finger. And it occurred to me now that but for this detail there could have been no positive identification of myself as Eric Gruen. In other words, my finger, or lack of it, had been much more important than I could have known.

  “Everything seems to be in order,” he said, smiling at last. Which was the first time I noticed that he had no eyebrows. And that the hair on his head appeared to be a wig. “There are of course some papers for you to sign, as the next of kin, Herr Gruen. And also so that you can establish the line of credit with the bank until the will has been administered. Not that I expect there will be any problems. I drew the will up myself. As you may know, your mother banked with Spaengler’s all her life, and naturally they will be expecting you to come in and attend to the withdrawals you specified in your telegram. You’ll find the manager, Herr Trenner, to be most helpful.”

  “I’m sure I will,” I said.

  “Am I correct in thinking that you’re staying at the Erzherzog Rainer, Herr
Doktor?”

  “Yes. Suite three twenty-five.”

  “A wise choice, if you don’t mind my saying so. The manager, Herr Bentheim, is a friend of mine. You must keep us both informed if there’s anything we can do to make your stay in Vienna more agreeable.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The funeral service will be held at eleven o’clock tomorrow, at Karlskirche. It’s just a few blocks northeast of your hotel. At the opposite end of Gusshausstrasse. And the interment immediately afterward in the family vault at the Central Cemetery. That’s in the French sector.”

  “I know where the Central Cemetery is, Dr. Bekemeier,” I said. “And while I remember, thank you for making all the arrangements. As you know, Mother and I didn’t exactly get on.”

  “It was my honor and privilege to do so,” he said. “I was your mother’s lawyer for twenty years.”

  “I imagine she had alienated everyone else,” I said, coolly.

  “She was an old woman,” he said, as if this was all the explanation that was required for what had happened between Eric Gruen and his mother. “Even so, her death was still somewhat unexpected. I had thought she would be alive for several years yet.”

  “So she didn’t suffer at all,” I said.

  “Not at all. Indeed, I saw her the day before she died. At the Vienna General Hospital, on Garnisongasse. She seemed fit enough. Bedridden, but quite cheerful, really. Most curious.”

  “What is?”

  “The way death comes, sometimes. When we are not expecting it. Will you be attending, Dr. Gruen? The funeral?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Really?” He sounded a little surprised.

  “Let bygones be bygones, that’s what I say.”

  “Yes, well, that’s an admirable sentiment,” he said, as if he didn’t quite believe it himself.