The Wind Chill Factor

by Thomas Gifford

  As I spoke to this subdued woman my mind wandered for a moment, remembering Ivor Steynes’ photographs of Brendel through the years, remembering the attack on Steynes’ fortress by men obviously connected with Brendel. Proof. Absolute proof and all the skeins of truth stretching back to the blizzard-swept highway in Wisconsin finally now being pulled together in the cold and snow and icy bleakness of Munich.

  “And Siegfried, too, a Nazi from the other end of the continuum. So the real question now is this: Why and how do you threaten them politically? What does it matter to them if you are Lee? Where the hell do you lead?”

  Of course, we had no answers, only questions, but I was hopeful that she was grasping the significance of the questions. All I could think of was Peterson telling me to be aggressive, push a bit on the situation.

  “I think I should see your husband.”

  Lise took it from there, made it easy for me—was she making it too easy? That thought squirmed out of the snow later, after she was gone.

  “We’re having a party tomorrow night. Why don’t you come?”

  “I have a friend with me.”

  “Roeschler told me. You must bring him, make a pair.”

  “Will Brendel know we’re coming?”

  “Do you want him to?”

  “No. I think we should surprise him.”

  “How do you want to be introduced?”

  “As Cyril Cooper’s brother, John. I would very much like to see your husband’s face. I want to surprise him.”

  “I’m very passive, Mr. Cooper, in almost every way you can imagine. I’m willing to let it all just happen and if there’s a shoot-out in the dining room, well, that will be an improvement on what usually goes on in the dining room.” Her face was calm, expressionless, and for an instant I thought how very peculiar it would be to have to cope with that face on a regular basis.

  “All right,” I said. “We’ll be there.”

  That was when we left and she made that familiar gesture, locking her arm through mine. When we parted she stopped and leaned up to kiss me, the snow in her face, and left me to walk back through the park, to puzzle it out for myself. It struck me that, in contrast to her outward repose, there had been an almost feverish glaze to her eyes.

  I tried to convey to Peterson not only the content of our conversation but my estimate of Lise Brendel. The content was no particular problem; the rest was not a success. I threw my impressions into the beetle-browed face which regarded me with alternating concern and amazement. He didn’t understand. He never understood.

  “You’re not describing your sister, Cooper—at least I hope not. You’re talking about a woman and what you’re saying doesn’t sound very brotherly.” He frowned.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Sounds like the Spider Lady to me. Spooky.” He began to smile, unbuttoning his vest. “The party, though. Now that’s a masterstroke, hers, I’m afraid, not yours. But at least you didn’t decline.” He unzipped his trousers, revealing black, hairy legs fit for a linebacker. He really was mindful of a coiled spring. He looked up from his trouser folding and gave me a quick grin, teeth bared.

  It occurred to me that in all probability the strain or exhilaration of our adventures had driven Peterson clear around the corner into homicidal madness. Was that a comfort?

  “Come with me,” he said, giving me the hairy un-shirted back. I followed him into the bathroom, where the water was running. The tub was full of bubbles. He clambered in among them, slid down, until only his head seemed to float on the cloud of foam. “Sit down and I’ll tell you a story about your solemn Lise.”

  It was hot. The mirror was steamed over and I was sweating. I sat down on the toilet cover and prepared myself. He was grinning like a starving shark.

  Before he began, he had me light a cigar for him. He took it with a soapy hand. My God: Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo. We were crossing ever deeper into make-believe and Peterson was taking a bubble-bath and smoking a cigar. I grabbed a towel and wiped my face.

  “Your Lise Brendel is not exactly a shrinking violet. And she has been something of a problem for her husband and other staid, conservative members of Munich society. She is, in fact, looked upon as a bit of a scandal in certain quarters—quarters which are normally very important to Herr Brendel. Old friends, aristocracy, family connections. They don’t really approve of this girl with the shadowy antecedents—yes, that’s right, Cooper, they’re not all so damned sure who she is either. Out of nowhere palmed off as a von Schaumberg, over twenty years younger than Brendel. Hell, most people thought he’d never get married at all and the rest apparently hoped he’d settle for one of their daughters. Then, wham, along comes Lise and he’s bowled over, as if it were all preordained. Hand me the backbrush, Cooper.”

  He kept on talking with his arm bent backward, ash sprinkling onto the foam.

  “And your Lise did damned little to win these people over. She was standoffish, uninterested in their social whirl, bored by the groups she was expected to join, utterly unconventional, got a job teaching kids ballet, ran around in Levis and looked like a pouting starlet … very bad in the eyes of old-time Munich bluebloods. Sponge, Cooper,” he said, handing me the wooden-handle back scrubber. I threw the sponge into the suds. A cloud of soap landed on his cigar.

  “But in time people would have gotten used to Frau Brendel’s little idiosyncrasies—they were getting used to them until she took up with Siegfried Hauptmann. That little liaison, carried on in full public view, convinced them that everything they’d thought about her in the first place was true. More than true. The general feeling is that this scarlet woman has ruined Gunter Brendel, made him a laughingstock to some and a proven decadent to others—and that she has found a perfect mate in Hauptmann, rich, perverse, chaser of celebrities of both sexes, jet-setter, and God only knows what else, child molester, dope fiend, cat burglar, rapist, and on and on. He’s not well liked, you see.”

  “How about being a Nazi?” I suggested.

  “Oh, hell.” He waved his hand. “No one gives a damn about that. Half of these people, more, probably, figure Hitler got a raw deal. They just don’t much care. Not caring, they don’t really know. They figure there are Nazis still lurking but they’re harmless old men or raving perverts like Siegfried. I’m not saying they’re right—I’m only telling you what they think.” He splashed merrily.

  “How the hell do you know all this?”

  “Cops, Cooper, cops everywhere know other cops. Old school ties. Plumbers go someplace, they talk to other plumbers. Insurance salesmen, they talk to other insurance salesmen. Cops are always willing to talk to cops. If you do it right—and I always do it right.”

  I watched him soap under his arms.

  “Peterson, is all this steam going to make your hair come loose? No, seriously, will it melt the glue or something?”

  “No, Cooper, it won’t melt the glue, for Chrissakes—have you gone mad?’

  “I just wondered, that’s all.”

  He soaped sulkily for a moment.

  “Anyway, once she started screwing Siegfried everyone thought the marriage was over. But Brendel seemed relieved, not in the least bothered by it. The three of them began appearing in public together—and all the observers began to assume the, heh heh, worst—that is, that Siegfried was servicing both of them.” He cocked an eye to see my reaction.

  “Well? Is he?”

  “Nobody knows for sure. How could they? But that’s all gossip anyway, isn’t it? Who cares who’s screwing whom, right, Cooper? Scarlet women, raving perverts, the whole works—who the hell cares? We’re not Masters and Johnson, are we? We’re Peterson and Cooper, one of the great comic teams, and we don’t give a shit about rumors. We’re on the trail of the Master Race.

  “And that’s where my friends, over enough schnapps to pickle a regiment of Hessians, began to lay it on me. Roeschler was right—Siegfried is the leader of a strong new Nazi group, latter-day Nazis with no ties to the past.
Nobody really knows how serious they are, but they have pots of money and are developing an enthusiastic youthful following.

  “The theory seems to be that Brendel very calculatedly unloaded a troublesome wife on Siegfried and used her to build a bridge between the old guard and the new. She became a symbolic uniting of the old and new. It’s not quite as nutsy as it sounds. These guys are not elves from the Black Forest, they’re police officers and they’re not nuts. Towel, Cooper, and stand clear, I’m coming out.” The splashing was absurd.

  Leaving footprints, he wandered into the bedroom.

  “Any theories about who she is?” I asked.

  “No. They don’t know who the hell she is, wouldn’t offer an opinion one way or the other. Nobody ever really asked them—until your brother came along. And he planted the idea in their minds but then he never followed up.”

  He wrapped the towel around himself and dropped onto the bed. He lit another cigar and told me to sit down, for God’s sake.

  “I called Cooper’s Falls again,” he said, “talked to Bradlee. He says Brenner is stronger every day, out of the coma, not talking much but he thinks he’s going to pull through all right. Said the Feds are still all over the place. Can’t find a damn thing, of course.” He pushed back against the pillow. “If they knew what Steynes told us … can you imagine it? They’d go mad. If they knew what my man at Columbia knows, all the stuff that was in those boxes, their brains would turn to Alpo, Cooper. Alpo.” He sighed the sigh of the just. “Did you ever think about what we’re going to do with all this stuff? Will anybody believe us?”

  “Will we live to tell anybody? That’s the question.”

  “I also called Buenos Aires, talked with your little man there—he had a head cold, made my eyes water. He doesn’t know where the hell Kottmann and St. John, the pilot or the plane went to. Sounds like he’s beginning not to give a goddamn but that was probably just the cold.

  “And finally I called Ivor Steynes. I wanted to find out who the killer sent to get Brendel is—I know, I know, faint hope. No answer, nobody home. Frankly, I don’t think we can save Brendel anyway short of kidnapping him. Somebody’s wandering around with Brendel’s name on a bullet.”

  He got up from the bed and began to poke through our baggage, finally emerged with a bottle of brandy.

  “So, my young friend, you’ve got more to worry about than my hair coming unglued.” He poured brandy into a tumbler and handed it to me, poured another for himself. “If Deadeye Dick shoots old Brendel before tomorrow night, you and I are going to miss a hell of a party.”

  Peterson hired a Mercedes sedan and we drove through the snowy streets, leaving the center of Munich farther behind with the slow minutes. The snow had continued, was banked high at roadside, and the night was still as if calmed by a great gloved hand. We wore rented dinner clothes and Peterson was carrying a gun. The only time he spoke was to bitch about having to wear a rented garment. The armholes were tight.

  Snow swept across the hood, the wind hammered at the car, there was no world beyond the edge of the roadway. It reminded me far too much of that first night in the snow, the night I met Milo Keepnews and the gaunt man. Peterson reached into an inside pocket. I expected to see the gun. He withdrew a round lollipop on a white stick and began to suck it, his cheeks bulging. He knew I was staring at him.

  “When I was a kid,” he said, eyes intent on the road, talking past the ball of candy, “I used to say that prayer about what I wanted to have happen if I died before I woke up. I was just a little kid, of course, and I prayed the Lord my soul to take. Well, I got older, went into several nights knowing I might not come out again in the morning, and I began to have doubts about the Lord taking my soul. He might not care—or he might be busy with some other guy’s soul, I mean you couldn’t count on it. And one time, faced with such a night, I got to thinking about very simple pleasures which meant a lot to me. You know how you can’t explain certain things that sort of lodge in your memory? Well, I remembered my father taking me to a Chicago Cubs baseball game at Wrigley Field. I must have been eight or nine. I worshipped Big Bill Nicholson and Phil Cavaretta and we went to the game and—this’ll kill you, Cooper: I can’t even remember who won the game. I remember two things about that game. Nicholson hit a homer and my father bought me one of these suckers, the round ball with the white pasteboard stick coming out of it. It was grape and I could remember the taste with fantastic clarity. And I loved that taste. Yet I hadn’t had one since I was a little kid. And the thought struck me that if I died during the night, why then, I’d never get to taste one of those suckers again. I’ve kept a bunch of them with me ever since, when I go out to do something dangerous—and at just the right times I haul them out and taste that grape again. It’s very comforting, very comforting.”

  I wanted it all to be over. I prayed the Lord my soul to take. I didn’t have a sucker.

  The house was a square, flat-walled thing, well back from the road, with a front lawn of gravel and a statue standing in the middle of it creating a huge turnaround. A hunter’s moon slipped out from behind the screen of cloud cover for a moment, cast an icy-blue silver light, and then was gone, leaving us in the maelstrom of snow.

  We were helped from our car by a pair of uniformed attendants who gave Peterson a ticket and drove the Mercedes away to the rows of other Mercedes which stood like tanks waiting in the order of battle. Peterson hustled me along. “Come on, it’s a party. Have a good time.” He was distracting me from the groping terror in my chest. We were in the doorway, more servants were helping us out of our coats, there was the rumble of a large party, people everywhere, a sea of German being spoken. I understand nothing, floated almost deliriously like a man strapped to a table and rolling groggily toward the operating room. I heard Peterson chuckle and I turned, knowing I was pale. “What are they gonna do, Cooper? Kill us?” His grin snapped at me beneath his mustache. “Hell, everybody dies.” I nodded. “Introduce me to your sister, Cooper. Then we’ll surround the bastards.”

  The faces were all worn by strangers who seemed to see through us. Men wore either black tie or military uniforms, women were mostly in long dresses with bare shoulders. Diamonds caught light from the chandeliers.

  We stood unnoticed by an urn full of ferns and several palms. A string quartet was at work at the far end of the room: you could see the bows flashing over the tide of heads and hear the music behind the blur of conversation, laughter, cries of Germanic greeting. Peterson whisked two glasses of champagne from a passing silver tray. He fingered a palm frond. “I want my sucker.”

  I was grinning numbly as I turned, saw a startlingly pale woman with cropped black hair, short like a raven’s feathers on the nape of her neck. Her dress was black, her eyes were heavily outlined, her skin almost deathly in contrast. Her eyes were pale gray behind round steel-rimmed spectacles. There was a puckered wound at the corner of her right eye, small but strangely obvious, a false note, strangely theatrical. She was wildly out of place and coming toward us, looking past us, and I tugged at Petersons sleeve.

  “I beg your pardon—”

  It wasn’t Peterson. A tall man in an American general’s uniform peered down at me over Ben Franklin half-glasses.

  “Ah. …” I said. “Well, you’re not my friend, are you?”

  “I’m mighty sorry to hear that, son,” he drawled. A large gray-haired woman with arms like draperies of spaghetti gritted her teeth at me. “Are you all right, boy?”

  “He looks drunk,” spaghetti arms said and began reeling him in.

  “Get some air, boy,” the general said, drifting away from me.

  I turned away, caught a tailing of fem in the eye, and heard my name. “Mr. Cooper, good evening. You needn’t cry out, you know.”

  It was the black-haired woman with the glasses that not only failed to disguise the mouse by her eye but drew attention to it.

  “Well, I didn’t mean to shout, but the general, you see—” She was looking slightly pa
st me at the room over my shoulder. She raised her hand as if to slap me. I flinched and she brushed the fern from my face.

  “Mr. Cooper, you don’t look well at all.”

  The glasses magnified her gray eyes. I hadn’t recognized her. It was Lise Brendel.

  “Surprise,” she said calmly.

  I lifted my champagne and dribbled it over my hand.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “I just got here—”

  “I know. I heard.” Her mouth was red, like a forties pinup queen. I shuffled my feet nervously; any rapport that I had expected was utterly nonexistent.

  “What happened to your eye?”

  “Why are you so frightened, Mr. Cooper?” A smile wormed its way onto her face, a trace of gloating. “Still thinking about your Nazis? Well, the place is crawling with them. And has Gunter found you yet?”

  “You said you weren’t going to tell him.” I didn’t know this woman and it occurred to me that she might be on something.

  “I changed my mind and I told him. I told Siegfried, too. I thought his reaction was quite amusing until he hit me in the eye.” She sighed self-consciously. “Do close your mouth. And while you’re doing that I shall attend to my guests.”

  I watched her walk away. Her feet were bare beneath the dress, and several heads, male and female, turned to watch her go. Mouths began moving, faces contorted: she attracted their hatred.

  Peterson appeared from behind the cluster of palms.

  “What in hell was that?”

  I wondered how to break it to him.

  He began to shake his head.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “You’re not going to tell me—”

  “But she’s not the same as she was,” I said. “I didn’t even recognize her. She told Brendel. She said she wouldn’t but she did.” Peterson’s eyes traveled slowly to the foyer, to the door where several servants, large servants, stood at ease.