by Philip Kerr
31 A
COUPLE OF HOURS PASSED. So did a couple more drinks. What else was I going to do? I heard the sound of the key in the lock and rose to my feet. The door opened. Instead of Max Reles I found myself face-to-face with Gerhard Krempel, which put a big dent in my idea. Krempel wasn’t very bright, and it was hard to see how I was going to talk myself out of anything if it was his cauliflower ears that were doing the listening. He had a thirty-two in one hand and a cushion in the other. “I see you’ve been entertaining yourself,” he said. “I need to speak to Max Reles.” “That’s too bad, because he’s not here.” “I’ve got a deal for him. He’ll want to hear it. I can guarantee that he will.” Krempel smiled bleakly. “So what is it?” “And spoil the surprise? Let’s just say the police are involved.” “Yeah, but which police? The no-account police you used to be, Gunther? Or the ones my boss knows who make problems disappear? You dropped three cards, and now you’re trying to raise. Well, I’m calling your bluff. I don’t care what you’ve got to say. Here’s what I’m saying. You’ve got two ways out of this bathroom. Dead, or dead drunk. It’s your choice. Both are inconvenient to me, but one choice looks less inconvenient to you. Especially as you’ve so thoughtfully provided a bottle and, by the look of things, made a head start on what I’m talking about.” “What happens then?” “That’s up to Reles. But there’s no way I’m walking you out of this hotel unless you’re incapacitated somehow. If you’re drunk, you can shoot your mouth off all you like and no one is going to pay a crumb like you much attention. Not even here. In fact, especially here. They don’t like drunks at the Adlon. They frighten the ladies. If we see anyone who knows you, then you’ll be just another ex-cop who couldn’t hold his liquor. The same as that other sot who used to work here. Fritz Muller.” Krempel shrugged. “Then again, I could shoot you right now, right here, snooper. With a cushion wrapped around this little thirty-two, the noise will pass for a car backfiring. Then I’ll push you out the French window. Shouldn’t make too much of a splash down there. It’s only one floor. By the time anyone notices you in all this rain and in the dark, I’ll have you safely folded up in the back of my car. Next stop, the river.” The voice was calm and assured, as if killing me weren’t going to give him any sleepless nights. He folded the cushion over the gun, with meaning. “Better drink up,” he said. “I’m done talking here.” I poured a glass and emptied it in one swallow. Krempel shook his head. “Let’s forget we’re in the Adlon, shall we? From the bottle, if you don’t mind. I don’t have all night.” “Care to join me?” He took a short step forward and hit me hard across the face. It wasn’t hard enough to knock me off my feet. Just off my vocal cords. “Cut the dialogue and drink.” I put the neck of the tall stoneware bottle to my lips and gulped at it like it was water. Some of it tried to come back up, but I gritted my teeth and didn’t let it. Krempel didn’t look like he had the tolerance to wait for me to puke. I sat down on the edge of the bath, took a deep breath, and drank some more. And then some more. As I lifted the bottle a third time, my hat fell into the empty bath, but it might as easily have been my head. It rolled under the dripping tap and remained on its crown, like a large brown beetle on its back. I reached down to get it, misjudged the depth of the bath, and fell in, but without dropping the schnapps bottle. I think if I had broken it, Krempel would have shot me then and there. I took another swig from the bottle to reassure him there was plenty of alcohol left in it, grabbed my hat, and crushed it back on top of my already swimming head. Krempel regarded me with no more feeling than if I’d been a dried-up loofah, and sat down on the toilet lid. His eyes were two puffy slits, as if they’d been bitten by a snake. He lit a cigarette, crossed his long legs, and let out a long, tobacco-flavored sigh. Several minutes passed. They were idle ones for him, but for me they were increasingly hazardous and intoxicated. The booze was strong-arming me into spineless submission. “Gerhard? How would you like to make a lot of money? And I mean a lot of money. Thousands of marks.” “Thousands, is it?” His body twitched as it expelled a derisive laugh. “And this from you, Gunther. A man with a hole in his shoe who gets the bus home. When you’ve got the fare.” “You have got that right, my friend.” With my backside on the floor of the canyon-deep bath and my Salamanders in the air, I felt like Bobby Leach going over Niagara in a barrel. Every so often my stomach seemed to fall away beneath me. I turned the tap and splashed some cold water onto my sweat-covered face. “But. There is money to be had. My friend. A lot of money. Behind you there’s a panel that is screwed on top of the lavatory cistern. Hidden in there is a bag. A bag containing banknotes. In several currencies. A Thompson submachine gun. And enough Swiss gold coins to start a chocolate shop.” “It’s a little early for Christmas,” said Krempel. He tutted loudly. “And I didn’t even leave a boot by the fireplace.” “Last year, mine was full of twigs. But it’s there, all right. The money, I mean. I figure Reles must have hidden it there. I mean, a Thompson’s not the kind of thing you can leave in the hotel safe. Even here.” “Don’t let me stop you drinking,” Krempel growled, and, leaning forward on the lavatory seat, he tapped the sole of my shoe—the one with the hole in it—with the barrel of the gun. I filled my cheeks with the obnoxious liquid, swallowed uncomfortably, and let out a deep, nauseated breath. “I found it. When I searched this suite. A little while ago.” “And you just left it there?” “I’m a lot of things, Gerhard. But I’m not a thief. You have the advantage of me there. There’s a screwdriver old Max keeps in this suite. Somewhere. To remove said panel. I’m sure of it. I was looking for it a bit earlier on. So that I could greet you with it when you showed up with the Mauser in your mitt. Nothing personal, you understand. But a Thompson gets a click of the heels and a salute in any language.” I closed my eyes for a moment, raised the sausagelike bottle in a silent toast, and swallowed some more. When I opened them again, Krempel was examining the screws on the panel with interest. “There’s enough there to buy several companies, or to bribe whoever needs bribing. Yes, there’s a lot of coal in that bag. A lot more than he’s paying you, Gerhard.” “Shut up, Gunther.” “Can’t. I always was a gabby drunk. Last time I got tripped like this was when my wife died. Spanish flu. Have you ever wondered why they call it Spanish flu, Gerhard? It started in Kansas, you know. But the Amis censored that because of the war censorship still in force. And it didn’t make the newspapers until it reached Spain, where they didn’t have any wartime censorship. Ever had the flu, Gerhard? That’s what I feel like now. Like I got a one-man epidemic of the stuff. Jesus, I think I even wet myself.” “You turned the tap, thickhead, remember?” I yawned. “Did I?” “Drink up.” “Here’s to her. She was a good woman. Too good for me. Do you have a wife?” He shook his head. “With the money in that bag you could afford several. And none of them would mind that you’re such an ugly bastard. A woman can overlook almost any shortcoming in a man when there’s a big bag of money on her dinner table. I’ll bet that bitch next door, Dora, doesn’t know about the bag, either. Otherwise, she’d have had it for sure. Mercenary little nanny-goat. Mind you, I will say this for her. I’ve seen her naked, and she’s a peach. Of course, you have to remember that every peach has a stone inside it. Dora’s got a bigger one than most, too. But she’s a peach, all right.” My head felt as heavy as a stone. A giant peach stone. And when my head dropped onto my chest, it seemed to fall such a long way that, for a moment, I thought it had dropped into the leather basket beneath the falling ax. And I cried out, thinking I was dead. Opening my eyes, I took a deep, spasmodic breath and struggled to remain vaguely vertical, but now it was a losing battle. “All right,” said Krempel. “You’ve had enough. Let’s try to get up, shall we?” He stood up and gathered my coat collars in his pomegranate-sized fists, and hauled me roughly out of the bath. He was a strong man—too strong for me to try anything stupid. But I took a swing at him anyway and missed, before losing my balance and falling onto the bathroom floor, where Krempel kicked me in the ribs for my trouble. “What about the
money?” I asked, hardly feeling the pain. “You’re forgetting the money.” “I guess I’ll just have to come back for it later.” He hauled me onto my feet again and maneuvered me out of the bathroom. Dora was sitting on the sofa, reading a magazine. She was wearing a fur coat. I wondered if Reles had bought it for her. “Oh, it’s you,” I said, raising my hat. “I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on. Then again, I expect a lot of people say that to you, sweetheart.” She stood up, slapped my face, and was going to slap it again, only Krempel caught her wrist and twisted it. “Go and fetch the car,” he told her. “Yes,” I said. “Go and fetch the car. And hurry up. I want to fall down and pass out.” Krempel had me propped against the wall like a steamer trunk. I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them again she was gone. He shifted me out of the suite and along to the top of the stairs. “It’s all the same to me how you go down these stairs, Gunther. I can help you down or I can push you down. But if you try anything, I can promise that you’ll be holding on to thin air.” “Grateful to you,” I heard myself mumble, thickly. We arrived at the bottom of the stairs, but I don’t know how. My legs belonged to Charlie Chaplin. I recognized the Wilhelmstrasse door and thought it was sensible of him to choose this way out of the hotel at that time of night. The Wilhelmstrasse door was always quieter than the one on Unter den Linden. The lobby was smaller, too. But if Krempel had hoped to avoid our meeting anyone I knew, he failed. Most of the waiters at the Adlon had a mustache or were clean-shaven, and only one, Abd el-Krim, wore a beard. His name wasn’t Abd el-Krim. I didn’t know his real name, but he was Moroccan, and people called him that because he looked like the rebel leader who had surrendered to the French in 1926 and was now exiled to some shithole of an island. I can’t answer for the talents of the rebel, but our Abd el-Krim was an excellent waiter. Being a Mohammedan, he didn’t drink and eyed me with a mixture of shock and concern as, with one arm draped around the lintel that was Krempel’s shoulders, I lurched toward the exit. “Herr Gunther?” he said in a voice full of solicitude. “Is everything all right, sir? You don’t look well.” Words emptied out of my slack mouth like saliva. Perhaps saliva is all they were. I don’t know. Whatever I said didn’t make any sense to me, so I doubt that it would have made any sense to Abd el-Krim. “He’s had too much to drink, I’m afraid,” Krempel told the waiter. “I’m taking him home before Behlert or either of the Adlons sees him like this.” Abd el-Krim, dressed to go home, nodded gravely. “Yes, that is best, I think. Do you need any assistance, sir?” “No, thanks. I’ve a car waiting for us outside. I think I’ll manage.” The waiter bowed gravely and opened the door for my kidnapper as he waltzed me outside. As soon as the cold air and rain hit my lungs, I started to retch into the gutter. The stuff I was retching you could have bottled and sold, as it tasted like pure Korn. A car immediately pulled up in front of me, and the spray from the tires splashed the cuffs of my trousers. My hat fell off again. The car door opened, and Krempel launched me onto the floor with the sole of his shoe. A moment later the car door slammed, and then we were moving—forward, I imagined, but it felt like we were going around and around in circles on a ride at Luna Park. I didn’t know where we were going, and I ceased to care very much. I couldn’t have felt any worse if I’d been laid out naked in an undertaker’s window.
