Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  “What should I do?”

  “Just wait.”

  “Rick,” he said, grabbing my arm, “why are you dressed like a priest?”

  “Because priests are always going where they have no business being.”

  “I’m Father Cochrane,” I said to the severe but very well turned out woman at the front desk. I spoke in English with a slight brogue.

  “Yes, Pater, how can I help you?” she said. She spoke excellent English, but not colloquial English. The slight bar of language kept a distance between us.

  “I’m here to see Hiroshi Tanaka.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

  “He made it very clear I was to come and see him on this very day.”

  “He’s dead, Father.”

  “Oh, well then. The poor man. How did it happen?”

  “An accident. A snowfall while he was skiing.”

  “A snowfall? He was caught in a storm?”

  “No. I’m sorry. Lawine. The snow slide.”

  “Dear me. And he seemed so alive, so vital.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “I hate to be indelicate at such a time, but the orphans are depending on me.”

  “The orphans?” She seemed faintly surprised. The shortage of orphans in Western Europe is even more severe than in white America. Even in the home of Holy Mother Church, babies are in such short supply that childless Italians shop for them in South America.

  “Ah, yes. In Dublin,” I said. No one in Europe knows much about the place, except for the The Troubles of course, because it’s a poor place and therefore neither promising nor threatening. “I met the late Mr. Tanaka in St. Anton, in fact, and although he was not of our persuasion I prevailed upon him to promise a contribution. I thought it was very kind of him.”

  “He was a good man, Pater,” she said ritualistically. There was an 85 percent probability that she was of “the father’s” persuasion. It’s a very Catholic country.

  “Since it was to be a corporate contribution—that was my understanding—perhaps I might speak with his successor. After all, the orphans are as needy now as they were before the sad event.”

  “That would be Herr Schwardtfager.”

  “Might I …”

  “He’s out of town at the moment. You could speak with him next week.”

  “Tell me, my child, what’s your name?”

  “Helga. Helga Kaltenbrunner.”

  “And a melodic name it is. I just had a marvelous thought. Perhaps I could arrange to talk to everyone here at your lovely company. What I’m thinking of is a memorial contribution in the name of Hiroshi Tanaka. What a blessed gesture that would be. Think of a plaque on the chapel—which needs a new roof as chapels so often do—the Tanaka chapel …” It was almost working, but her eyes glazed every fourth beat with the effort of keeping up with the language. I carried on. “… Or even a small new wing to the orphanage itself. The Tanaka wing. It would be betterment of cross-cultural understanding and the ecumenical impulse …” But to hustle, to manipulate, you use words to get past words, to touch emotions, knee-jerk reactions, desires.

  “I would have to take that up with our managing director,” she said, definitely not buying it. I was a fisherman without his hooks, a hunter without a gun, a con man without a line.

  “That would be …?”

  “… Herr Schwardtfeger,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said, as I picked up a piece of their stationery and wrote it down. “You’re a lovely and mature woman, Helga, but you’ve got to learn to take more responsibility on your own. I’ll call next week.”

  “I came up with a lovely scam to talk my way in,” I said to Mike Hayakawa.

  “Yes?”

  “It didn’t work,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “But I learned a lot.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “We can get in. But we’ll only have ten, twenty minutes. Which is plenty if we know what we’re looking for and where it is. If we’re just looking for the great unknown, hoping we stumble on it, we’re in deep shit.”

  “But we have the key,” he said.

  “Their alarm system,” I said, “is right out in plain sight. It requires a key and a number code. See the video cameras.” I pointed at the stone lesbian on the left. She had a camera over her shoulder. Across the street, Chip Sheen tried very hard to look like he wasn’t staring at us. “Inside too. Are they taping or just watching? Maybe they have round-the-clock on-site security. Maybe not. What we do have is a key. What we don’t have is the number code. Unless you’re holding out on me?”

  “No.”

  “They have a lot of expensive electronics to protect. Fax machines, copiers, PC’s. Everyone up there has a PC. It looked like about ten employees. They’re consultants and executive search. Offices in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Los Angeles,” I said, looking at the piece of stationery I had picked up from Helga’s desk. Tanaka’s business card had only listed the Vienna address. “What the hell do they consult about?”

  “I really don’t know,” Hayakawa said.

  Chip Sheen held a paperback book sideways so that it looked like he was pointing a disguised microphone in our direction. I reached over, turned the ignition key, then put a cassette in the tape player. Bruce Springsteen sang, “This gun’s for hire.”

  “You’re so full of shit,” I said. “What’s going on? What game are we playing? Who the fuck are you?”

  “I might ask the same of you. You’re not Irish.”

  “Who cares? Since when is it a crime not to be Irish? This is bullshit,” I said. “If I don’t know more, I’m going to quit.” I opened the car door.

  “Rick, wait.”

  I closed the car door.

  “What?”

  “That car, across the street, I think he’s watching us.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Same guy that followed us in the blue Ford.”

  “How did he find us?”

  “Easy,” I said. “He’s after the same thing we are. He came to the same place. Tanaka’s office. Now, let me in on things, or I take a hike.”

  “Please be patient,” he said. “This is not the sort of thing I expected to be doing. I am an economist. I am here to help place Musashi Company investments. We must be positioned in Europe before 1992. Suddenly this meeting was demanded of me. I was only assigned to Frankfurt six months ago. Three weeks ago I was called back to London to the office of Yoshiro Masaki, who is the head of all European affairs. He sent me to meet Hiroshi Tanaka. He told me I was to get something from him. I was to bring it … I was to get instructions in Vienna once I received it and then bring it where I was told. It was a vital thing. I think perhaps Yoshiro Masaki’s job depends on it. Maybe mine too.”

  “You told my mother yesterday that Musashi takes care of its own, that you had lifetime employment.”

  “Things are not that simple. If Masaki does not deliver this item, this computer disc, then he will be dishonored. Even if it is my failure it is his dishonor because he selected me. Then he must resign.”

  “So this lifetime employment thing is bullshit.”

  “No. He could remain in his job. But he will resign because he has failed Musashi Company. You don’t understand anything in the West. All you care about is self. Your job. Your money. There is no substance. I would go mad if I had to be an American. If it were the sixteenth century and he were a samurai perhaps he would commit seppuku.”

  “What if he doesn’t resign?”

  “He will be placed in a job of diminished responsibility. Some office where he passes papers across his desk and everyone looks at him and knows his failure. Who can live in such shame?”

  “And you?”

  “I must not fail. I will go on without you. Give me the keys. I will go to Hiroshi Tanaka’s house and search it. Then I will wait for the night and go into the office.”

  I tossed him the keys and got out of his car. He w
as genuinely shocked. He gave me a pleading look. Then he gathered his determination and drove off.

  Chip Sheen, across the street, was on the verge of panic. Who was he to follow? Me or Hayakawa? I made as discreet a gesture as I thought he would understand, telling him to stay put. When I was certain the Musashi Élégant was out of sight, I turned around and sauntered across the street to Chip Sheen. I opened the door and got in on the passenger side.

  “What the hell is going on?” he said.

  “Who are you really with?” I said.

  “I think it’s time you answered some of my questions.”

  “You know the Jap spotted you again. Do you know that?”

  “I changed cars and everything,” he said.

  “Some people are just not good at some things. What are you good at?”

  “You’re going to start listening to me. You’re getting me really riled.”

  “You know what, I already had this conversation. Thirty years ago. In the playground behind P.S. 11. ‘Who’s gonna make me’— ‘I am’—‘You and what army?’”

  Furious, he pulled a gun out of his shoulder holster. “I am,” he said.

  “Be calm. Don’t be stupid,” I said. “Put the gun away.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked me. He didn’t put the gun away. He held it with a fondness that made me very uncomfortable.

  “I’m going to rejoin Mike Hayakawa,” I said, telling the truth, “and I am going to convince him that I’m his friend. That he should trust me. That way I can get him out of my way and search for the dingus.”

  “I don’t trust you, Cassella.”

  “I hate to say it, Chip, but it’s mutual.” I tried to speak to him as if the gun in his hand didn’t exist. “I want to trust you. I want to believe that you’ll clear me with the IRS. But you won’t even tell me what agency you’re with.”

  “I told you, I’m IRS.”

  “Yes. Would you please put the gun away? I’m a father now. I can’t afford to die.”

  “You should keep that in mind,” he said.

  “I will, Chip,” I said humbly. “Now, can we drive to Tanaka’s apartment or do you want to let Hayakawa search it alone?”

  “How are you going to get him to trust you?”

  “I’m going to call the cops. Then I’m going to trip the alarm or pretend to trip the alarm. Tell him that he did it. Then I’ll either hustle him out of there or protect him from the cops, whichever seems more practical.”

  “Hey, that’s pretty good.”

  “You like that?”

  “Yes, by golly, I do.”

  “Will you put the gun away then? Please?”

  “Sure,” he said, putting it away. “I just had to make sure you had your priorities straight. Also, I don’t like being kidded, you know. No hard feelings?” He put his hand out.

  “No hard feelings, Chip.” I shook his hand. He looked very gratified. “That was a pretty neat gun. What kind was it?”

  “A Glock-17,” he said. “Made right here in Austria. Nine millimeter, NATO standard ammunition, state of the art construction—polymer, a patented space-age plastic, just nine-point-five-oh ounces fully loaded. Seventeen rounds, one in the chamber, sixteen in the mag.”

  “And that paperback you were reading. What did it have, a microphone inside?”

  “Hey, how did you guess that?”

  Tanaka’s apartment was on Prinz Eugene Straβe near Belvedere Palace. I turned on the radio, Glenn Frey was singing “Better in the U.S.A.” “Drive past it, then stop at the first pay phone you see.” There was a café on the corner. He stopped there.

  “I still don’t trust you,” Chip said.

  “I can understand that,” I said.

  “So I’m going to wait down here. Make sure you don’t double-cross me.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said.

  “I’ll be waiting and I’ll be watching,” he said.

  Inside the café I called the police. I told them that there was a suspicious-looking man in a red Opel parked on Prinz Eugen Straβe near Belvedere Palace and that they should be careful—I thought that he had a gun. When they had taken that report I hung up. Then I called again and told them that I was a neighbor of Hiroshi Tanaka and that I had seen strangers enter his apartment.

  Then I went upstairs to join Mike Hayakawa.

  He jumped when I opened the door. He really wasn’t built for surreptitious entries. “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “I like this place,” I said, standing in the doorway. “A lot. Did you find the dingus yet?”

  “I just got here,” he said.

  “Did you turn off the alarm?” I asked him.

  “Alarm?” he said. “I don’t hear any alarm.”

  “Silent alarm,” I said, which it was. “Like the office. Hooked up directly to the police or security service.” I went to him, took the keys, then went over to the box by the front door, and reset the alarm. The door was still open. So now it was ringing wherever it was connected to.

  “I did that,” he said.

  “Two full turns around?” I asked him. It had been on long enough. I turned it off.

  “No,” he said.

  “You blew it. That’s why I followed you. I knew you’d end up in trouble.”

  “Shouldn’t we get out of here?”

  “Let’s look around,” I said as I closed the front door. The foyer opened onto a living room. The living room faced out on the formal gardens. Light streamed in the windows. I looked down to the street. The call about the man with a gun had really got the police moving. Chip Sheen was surrounded, machine pistols pointing at him from both sides. I turned back to the living room. The furniture was elegant but comfortable—Old World Viennese, like the apartment itself. If I ever got rich and gave up skiing, this was where I wanted to live.

  “I’m getting out of here,” Hayakawa said. He looked panicky.

  I grabbed him and held on. “Never run,” I said. I held on to him.

  “I don’t want to be arrested,” he said. “I cannot afford to be arrested.”

  “Easy. Take it easy. There are already cops downstairs. You run right into their arms, they’ll really be suspicious. Trust me.”

  “Let me look,” he said.

  “Don’t look,” I said. “Cops are like dogs. They smell fear. Do something Zen and calming. How many bedrooms?”

  “What do you mean how many bedrooms?”

  “What’d he have, one bedroom, two, three bedrooms?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just got here.”

  “Just follow my lead. Act like you don’t speak a word in Deutsch. Except maybe Ich spreche keine Deutsch. Don’t panic. Look sure of yourself. Do you have your passport? They’ll be upstairs soon,” I said.

  “You think so?”

  “Teutonic police are efficient. One of the great ethnic secrets of New York City is that while the police department appears to be ruled by Irish-Americans it is actually run by German-Americans.”

  “Is that true?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” I said as the local Teutonic police pounded on the door and demanded we open up.

  “Trust me,” I said. “And remember—you can buy and sell this country. Be arrogant.”

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  I opened the door, put on my most Fatherly smile and best brogue. “No need, no need at all for that pounding on the door,” I said. There were three of them, and they entered with guns drawn, Belgian FN35 automatics. Their leader, a sergeant, put his gun to my gut. The other two brushed past us. They saw Hayakawa. One pointed his gun at him, the other kept moving.

  “Who are you? What are you doing in this apartment?” their leader barked in Deutsch. His gun was pointed at me.

  “Deutsch is it?” I said in Deutsch. “My Japanese friend and I are here at the invitation of the apartment’s owner. Hiroshi Tanaka.”

  “Where is the apartment’s owner?” the sergeant barked.

  “
Actually, we believe he is out of town at the moment. Skiing, I believe.”

  “Put your hands up,” the second Polizei barked at Mike.

  “Put your hands up,” I said in English, in a hurry, because Mike forgot that he didn’t understand. “He doesn’t speak German,” I said. “Only Japanese and English.”

  “Is there anyone else here?” the sergeant asked me. The third man had disappeared down the hall.

  “No. What is the problem?”

  “Passports!”

  “Give him your passport,” I said to Mike, in English, while I reached for mine. I don’t think Hayakawa had ever had a gun pointed at him before. It didn’t make him happy. “Now, sergeant,” I said, “I don’t know the reason for this, but I will have you know that we are respectable people. I am a cleric from Dublin and my friend here is a representative of a major multinational corporation. We happen to be good friends of the owner of the apartment. Such good friends that he gave us the keys”—I drew them slowly from my pocket—“hearing we would be in town, and practically ordered us to stay here rather than …”

  “Shut up,” he said. “You,” he said to Hayakawa, “what are you doing here?”

  “Ich spreche keine Deutsch,” Mike said. Unlike his English, which sounded quite colloquial most of the time, his German had a heavy Japanese accent. It was very convincing.

  “He doesn’t speak German,” I said, as if the sergeant couldn’t understand Mike saying it.

  The sergeant stomped over and examined Mike’s passport. He came back to me. “You set off the alarm!”

  “Ah, dear me,” I said. “I’m hopeless with electronics. At seminary they had microfilm machines. I was forever breaking them. If I touch an automobile it seems to self-destruct. It’s a terrible curse. I’m sure it was something I did wrong. Hiroshi explained it was turn to the left, then turn to the right. Or was it two turns to the left, with the very odd little key here. You see the one.”

  “All right, Pater,” he said. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Gross Gott.” I made a vague sign of the cross.

  “Gross Gott.” “Gross Gott.” “Gross Gott.” “Gross Gott.” Everybody said “God is great,” and I said it back, piously, as the door closed behind them.