The Great Reminder

by R. R. Irvine

  He ran a hand down the front of his vest and adjusted a gold watch-chain. “Looking at me, you wouldn’t know I started out life in Utah behind barbed wire, living in a tarpaper barracks with a coal-burning stove for heat. Then and there, I promised myself I would not only survive but prevail. For years I’ve been buying up the land around Cowdery Junction. And a hell of a lot of Salina to boot. It’s fitting, don’t you think? A German owning the land where his fellow prisoners were murdered.”

  Klebe forced a smile. “When the war ended, the people in Cowdery Junction were among the casualties and didn’t know it. Hawaiian cane made them as redundant as their sugar beets.”

  “You lied to us,” Martin said, raising his voice slightly. “We want to know why.”

  Klebe, looking anxious, glanced at the bartender.

  “Karl Falke,” Martin continued at higher volume. “You told us you didn’t know him well.”

  Traveler spoke more softly. “We’ve learned he was your closest friend in camp.”

  “Who told you that? My brother-in-law, I suppose.”

  “Is it true?”

  Klebe spoke quietly, submissively. “I didn’t want to tell you about it, because I was embarrassed. You see, Karl Falke helped me once when I didn’t have the guts to stand up for myself. He took my side against some hothead Nazis who claimed I was fraternizing with the enemy because of Norma. I didn’t reciprocate, though, when they got on his case.”

  “But you were friends?” Traveler said.

  “Not for long. There were rumors that traitors would be killed when we returned to Germany. That’s when Falke told me about his plan to escape.”

  “Tell us about it,” Traveler said.

  “There was no place to go but the desert, so I told him no, I wouldn’t join him.”

  “Is that when he disappeared?”

  Klebe nodded.

  “Did you ever hear from him again?” Martin asked.

  “Never. I figured he probably died in that desert. That, or he’s living somewhere under an assumed name.”

  ******

  Klebe had offered to arrange lunch for Traveler and his father at the Alta Club, but Martin had his mind set on Branning’s Chili Parlor, a long narrow cafe halfway between First and Second South on State Street.

  He and Traveler were sitting down to Morrison meat pies smothered in chili when a tall man, whose bearing was so upright he looked like he was wearing a back brace, came in and sat beside them. The newcomer had on tan cuffless slacks and a matching sports jacket. His brown shoes were spit-shined. Traveler would have recognized him even without his military haircut. “Colonel Stiles?”

  The man nodded.

  “You look much like your father. This is my father, the founding half of Moroni Traveler and Son.”

  Stiles stared skeptically at Martin.

  “Some genes are stronger than others,” Martin said.

  “How did you find us?” Traveler asked.

  “I went to your office. A man named Chester told me Thursday was your day for Branning’s chili. I know how you feel. I come here every time I’m in Salt Lake on leave.”

  He signaled, almost a salute, for a bowl of chili. “Before I forget, Chester sent you a message. Someone named Lael has vital information for you and will be waiting at the office.”

  When Stiles’s chili arrived, he added Branning’s special TNT sauce, took a quick mouthful, and let out a long sigh of contentment.

  “Are you on leave now?” Traveler asked.

  He shook his head while continuing to chew. “I came home to take care of my father’s affairs.”

  “Your father told me you were assigned to the Pentagon.”

  “On track for a star, or so they say. The trouble is, it won’t be in time for my father to see it. His dream is to have a general in the family.”

  “And yours?”

  “At the moment my main concern is the twenty-five hundred dollars my father paid you.”

  “I tried to talk him out of it,” Traveler said.

  “So he told me.”

  “All your father has to do is say the word,” Traveler said. “We’ll refund his money.”

  “Less expenses,” Martin added.

  Stiles concentrated on his chili for a while. So did Traveler and his father.

  Finally the colonel pushed his plate away. “You’ve had three days on the case. Is there anything I can report to my father?”

  “It’s only been two full days,” Martin corrected. “In any case, we report only to our clients directly.”

  “I have his power of attorney.”

  “If you’ll follow us back to the office,” Traveler said, “we’ll work out our expenses and refund whatever’s left over.”

  “Forget it,” the colonel said. “I want my father’s last days made as easy as possible. Settling the past is important to him. Having someone like yourself try to set matters right will be good enough, he says, even if you fail. Now that I’ve met you two, I don’t think his money’s being wasted.”

  Traveler stared at his father, who said, “We might as well tell him what we’ve done so far.”

  Traveler nodded. “We’ve spoken to a number of people who were involved with the POW camps. Tomorrow we plan a visit to Cowdery Junction. That means paying for a motel, mileage, and other on-the-road expenses.”

  “My father found a letter that might be of help,” Stiles said. “It’s from the missing man’s wife. It’s a translation, of course, which my father had done at the time. That was back in July 1949.”

  Dear Major Stiles,

  As you know, I have written to your government in Washington, also to the President, Mr. Truman, about the fate of my husband, but only you were kind enough to answer a poor widow. I call myself that because I feel certain in my heart that my Karl would have returned to me if he were still alive. Though what he would think of me I don’t know. I have become an old woman before my time.

  I know you’ve tried to find Karl for me without success. Perhaps you could locate his friend. Unfortunately, I don’t know the man’s name for sure, only that Karl had one close friend in camp. He was never named in Karl’s letter because of wartime censorship, but I believe they had met before, during training when my husband was first called into the army. If that is so, I met him when Karl brought him home on leave. His name was Otto Klebe. I have tried to locate him here in Germany, but was told that he immigrated to America. Maybe you could help me locate him.

  Yours sincerely,

  Frieda Falke

  After Traveler read the letter, he gave it to his father.

  “Is censoring names normal procedure?” Martin asked once he’d read it.

  “Absolutely,” Stiles said. “Anything that might possibly be used as a code is deleted. Musical notes, quotations, shorthand, just about anything.”

  “Did your father look for this Klebe?”

  “Now’s not the time to ask him, I’m afraid. He’s just been hospitalized. The doctors say the end is very close, only a matter of days. I hope to God you can put his mind at rest before it’s too late.”

  18

  A TAN four-door sedan, so generic-looking that it was obviously official, was parked in the loading zone in front of the Chester Building. There were two men inside, also generic. Less than a foot ahead of their vehicle, next to a fire hydrant, stood Lael Woolley’s BMW.

  Traveler squeezed into the yellow zone until his truck nudged the sedan’s rear bumper.

  “They’ll never get out,” Martin said.

  “Church security ought to know better,” Traveler answered.

  For once the sidewalk in front of the Chester Building was clear. Traveler glanced across the street at the temple. There was no sign of Mad Bill or Charlie, unusual now that the weather had reverted to spring sunshine, with the last of the thunderheads about to disappear behind the eastern front of the Wasatch Mountains.

  Traveler was heading for the brass revolving door when he spotted Bill an
d Charlie in the lobby, staring out at him with their noses pressed against the plate glass. For a moment, Traveler thought they’d been scared off the sidewalk by Lael’s watchdogs. Then he saw they were both wearing dark jackets over jeans, dress shirts, and ties.

  Martin rapped a knuckle on the glass in front of Bill’s nose. “I thought their dinner with Lael was last night.”

  Traveler followed his father through the door, which kept on revolving to admit the security men. Their appearance caused Bill and Charlie to retreat toward the cigar stand.

  A hand fell on Traveler’s shoulder. He spun out of reach.

  The security men, in their mid-thirties and athletic-looking, shifted their feet as if expecting to be attacked. Both wore gray suits and nondescript ties. The shorter one, six feet as compared with Traveler’s six-three, acted as spokesman. “We represent Mr. Willis Tanner. He wants you to know that he’s been called to the Alta Club. He says you’ll know why and prays that you’ll take appropriate action to make certain it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Tell Mr. Tanner I’m deaf to everything but person-to-person dialogue,” Traveler said.

  “Do you realize who Mr. Tanner is?”

  “I should hope to hell we do,” Martin snapped. “He grew up with my son here. Willis was a bad influence then and still is as far as I’m concerned.”

  The security men exchanged startled glances.

  “That boy was a holy terror, let me tell you. He used to water my liquor so I wouldn’t know he and Moroni were sneaking drinks. They weren’t smart about it, though. Pretty soon there was nothing left but a clear liquid. That’s when Willis got the idea of coloring it with food dye. I’d have caught on a lot sooner if I’d been much of a drinker. Instead, he taught my Moroni how to sin against Joe Smith’s Word of Wisdom.”

  The pair fled.

  Bill reappeared to say, “Lael’s been waiting for you a long time, hours in fact.”

  Martin shrugged. “Let’s go upstairs and get it over with.”

  “She’s with Nephi Bates at the moment. He’s teaching her the finer points of running an elevator.”

  Bates looked like a man in pain or ecstasy, it was impossible to tell which. The elevator’s power had been switched off, allowing it to remain stationary while teacher and pupil worked the stop-start lever. Lael was straddling Bates’s collapsible stool, causing her short skirt to ride high on her thighs. A snarling BYU cougar on her sweatshirt focused attention on the swell of her stomach and breasts. Charlie, his arms folded, was acting as passenger.

  At Traveler’s approach, she stood up, touched Bates on the shoulder, and said, “I’ll tell Uncle Elton how kind you’ve been.”

  In an instant, his face changed; ecstasy wiped away all trace of pain. His lips moved but no sound emerged.

  “You’re right to pray for me,” Lael told him. “My uncle will know that, too. Now, run us upstairs, will you? I have things to say to the Moroni Travelers.”

  “Martin,” Traveler’s father corrected as he stepped into the elevator. “That’s the only name I answer to.”

  As Charlie started to exit, Traveler restrained him to ask, “Why the coat and tie?”

  “We’re paying homage,” Bill answered. “By not changing our clothes, we’re savoring the memory of last night’s dinner with Lael as long as possible.”

  Traveler released the Indian. “You two stick around. We’ll take you out to eat after we finish our business with Lael.”

  “Am I invited?” Lael asked as soon as the elevator started to rise.

  “It’s strictly stag,” Martin told her.

  Her pout triggered a sympathetic scowl from Bates.

  “It’s all right, Nephi,” she reassured. “I was dining with the prophet anyway.”

  He looked awed all the way to the top of the Chester Building, where he fiddled with the stop-start lever until the elevator was aligned perfectly with the lip of the third floor.

  “Don’t forget your promise, Nephi,” Lael said when he opened the grillwork gate.

  He nodded and kept on nodding until he and his elevator dropped out of sight.

  “What was that all about?” Martin asked.

  Lael smiled. “He’s going to keep an eye on you two for me.”

  “He already does that, if you believe Barney’s theory that he spies for the church.”

  Smiling, Lael walked down the hall to their office, where she stood tapping her high heel impatiently until Traveler opened the door for her. Inside, she perched on the edge of his desk, exposing her taupe hose and slender legs to mid-thigh. He tried to avert his eyes, but not before she caught him staring. A look of triumph lit her face.

  Martin got a good look, too, before collapsing into his own client’s chair and closing his eyes.

  Traveler moved behind his desk but didn’t sit down. Instead he stared at the tabernacle dome across the street. “We got your message.”

  “Something about vital information,” Martin added.

  “Our mission in Germany sent a fax.”

  Traveler raised his eyes to the temple spire that held the golden image of the Angel Moroni. He wet his lips; he could still taste Branning’s chili. He refocused on her reflection. “What did Germany have to say?”

  She left her perch for his client’s chair. “Karl Falke was born in 1920 and has been unaccounted for since 1945. His wife, Frieda, was born in Munich in 1922 and died in 1990. Forty-five years is a long time to be alone.”

  Traveler turned away from the window to face her. Her lips twitched, the flicker of a smile.

  “They had one son,” she said. “He died in the bombing when he was four. Falke’s only sister, Elke, passed away in 1987. All her children were born after the war and know nothing about their missing uncle.”

  Martin’s eyes opened. “That doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know already.”

  “Cowdery Junction is still our best hope,” Traveler said.

  Lael tucked her hands inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “That’s on the way to Milburn, isn’t it?”

  “If we take eighty-nine,” Martin said, “it’s no more than a couple of miles off the highway.”

  “The interstate’s faster,” Traveler said.

  “We’re talking about Moroni Traveler the Third,” Lael said. “A son.”

  “Why should Milburn be any different from Milford?”

  Lael’s tongue ran along her upper lip. “I had a long talk with Stacie Breen. I reminded her that I paid a lot of money to find the boy. She said you’d have to know Claire to understand the problems involved. The confusion about Milford and Milburn, or maybe even Midway or Midvale, was Claire’s way. She liked keeping you in the dark, Moroni, so you’d dance to her tune. At least, that’s what Stacie told me.”

  With a sigh, Martin opened the middle drawer of his desk, extracted a notebook, and began thumbing through its pages. “Milburn, Milburn. Nope, there’s no entry here. That’s one cemetery I haven’t visited yet.”

  19

  TRAVELER ALWAYS thought of Duffy’s rib joint as the Zang, a hangout of his youth. The Zang had been a combination beer bar and sandwich grill at the mouth of Edison Street where it ran into Third South. Duffy had changed the name and menu when he took over. His regime included a 5:00 to 6:00 P.M. happy hour and all the ribs a person could eat for five dollars. His profit margin, he once confessed to Traveler, was the vast amounts of beer necessary to cut the grease.

  At the sight of Bill and Charlie, who jointly held the record for ribs consumed during a single sixty-minute period, Duffy limped out from behind the bar, shook his head, and groaned. “Bankruptcy, here I come.” His limp, the result of trying to bounce one too many drunks, made him look as if he were dodging invisible obstacles.

  “No ribs for us tonight,” Traveler said to appease him.

  “Make it four T-bones,” Martin said. “We’re celebrating. We’ll have a pitcher of your best imported beer, too.”

  Duffy grinned at such a prospect an
d escorted them to a back booth. He even ignored Charlie, who immediately began carving Bill’s initials into the already scarred tabletop.

  “Anything to go with those T-bones?” Duffy asked.

  Traveler raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes, sir.” Duffy saluted. “I’ll bring your pot of tea right away.” He limped away humming “Tea for Two.”

  “What are we celebrating?” Bill asked.

  “We’ve got another lead on Moroni the third,” Martin answered.

  “We know. Milburn, Midway, and Midvale. Lael told us the story last night at dinner.”

  “We’ve only just learned about it.”

  Bill closed a hand over Charlie’s Swiss Army knife. “I’ve come to know Lael’s spiritual side. I’m certain she carefully chose the time and place to tell you. No doubt she waited for the moment when you’d be best prepared for such a revelation. As for me, my revelations come when I least expect them.” His voice dropped to a murmur. “Sometimes when I don’t want them.”

  “I’m making Lael a medicine bag,” Charlie said.

  “We’ve offered her honorary membership in the Church of the True Prophet,” Bill added.

  “What did she say to that?” Martin wanted to know.

  Before Bill could answer, Duffy arrived carrying a tray. A large ornate English teapot and three matching cups were arranged around a pitcher of beer.

  As always Duffy’s tea came COD. Traveler slipped the man a twenty.

  “Who’s playing mother?” Duffy asked.

  “I’ll volunteer,” Martin said.

  Duffy arranged the cups in front of Traveler, Charlie, and Bill. “No cheating,” Duffy said. “That tea’s eighty proof. I want someone sober enough to drive.”

  As soon as Duffy retreated into the kitchen, Traveler poured three cups of whiskey. Martin poured the beer.

  “Boilermakers,” Charlie whispered, “often bring magical visions.” He folded his knife and put it away.

  “My word of wisdom exempts that which stimulates and enlightens,” Bill said.

  Traveler sipped. Bill and Charlie emptied their cups in a gulp, then needed half a glass of beer to cool their throats.