This Is How It Really Sounds

by Stuart Archer Cohen

  She pursed her lips into a little smile, her eyes lively, as if she already knew his whole life. “Will you?” Now she changed the subject, as if embarrassed at her presumptuousness. “My father says you are a hero.”

  He had thought he would impress her with the things he had done in the war, but as he looked at the young woman in front of him, his stories seemed base and violent, like something that would dirty her. “A lot of people did more than me,” he answered. His throat became thick, and he cleared it so he could continue. “It’s all mixed up, really. Bad becomes good; good becomes … weakness. But then, mixed up in all of it, there’s evil. And that’s what you hope you’re fighting.”

  As if reminded, she turned to look through the balustrade at the lobby, and he followed her gaze. No one in sight yet. He asked her if she had any idea why Richter would come to Shanghai, just in case she gave away something her father hadn’t, but neither of them seemed to have anything hidden. He quizzed her about the details of how to do foot surveillance that he’d given her the day before. When to follow, when to drop back. He went over the diagram with her in his notebook. He would have liked to have a couple of Chinese men for that, but he didn’t want to get his friends in the KMT police involved because it might be inconvenient later. He had a driver waiting outside in case Richter got into a taxi.

  Just after seven, Richter came down the stairs and made his way into the coffee shop. Anna was flustered, turned her face down and away, as if he might see her through the balustrade. “That’s him.” There was an old fear in her voice.

  He looked around fifty, with cropped, graying hair and a frame that had become fattened and gnarled, though it still had some of the raw energy of the athlete lingering in it. He’d probably been SS; he didn’t have the look of a man who’d spent time on the eastern front, and most of those guys never came back anyway. He’d probably stayed at home keeping things under control for the Party, dealing out favors in exchange for money and women, fingering stray Jews or anyone else uncooperative for deportation. He’d seen guys like that when he’d been in Berlin in 1944: cruel, fat, vicious men romancing a string of desperate hausfraus while their husbands froze to death in Leningrad and Narva. Now he was wearing a charcoal pinstripe suit and a checked silver-colored tie, a proper businessman. In his gut, Charlie knew he was selling something. He could feel it. So who was the buyer, and what was the sale?

  Richter ordered a large breakfast and ate it quickly, his head bowed down toward the plate and his jaws moving rapidly to keep up with his appetite. Not a wary man. An arrogant man, who probably reasoned that if the world hadn’t seen fit to punish his crimes, they hadn’t really been crimes in the first place. A stupid man. Even at twenty-two, just beginning to get into his field, Charlie knew this would be an easy job. Richter finished his breakfast and lingered over another cup of coffee as he read a German newspaper he’d picked up from the rack. He wasn’t hiding anything: he was flaunting it. He made his way through the lobby without dropping off his key, and they had to hurry after him so that they didn’t lose him. To Charlie’s relief, he didn’t get a taxi but went walking straight down the Bund, past the Customs House and the Hongkong Bank. He crossed the street and let Anna follow him for a block or two, then he gave her the sign, and she dropped back and he followed. Richter wasn’t cautious. No glances behind him. No stopping at a newsstand to pick up a magazine and inventory the street. He’d spent his life doing what he wanted, and there’d never been any consequences. Why should he start worrying now?

  Surprisingly, he turned in to the Shanghai Club. They’d be serving breakfast at that hour, though one would think that an ex-Nazi wouldn’t be the most welcome guest. Of course, anyone could be anything in Shanghai. Richter could pass himself off as a Catholic priest if he wanted.

  He signaled Anna to catch up with him, marked the time in his notebook, then retreated across the street.

  “Do you know anyone at the Shanghai Club he might be meeting?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s wait here for a few minutes, let him get settled. Then I’m going to go in, and I want you to stand over by that delivery truck and wait. Change that hat for your other one and put on that scarf. If Richter comes out before I do, follow him.”

  “What will you do if you see him inside?”

  “I don’t know! Maybe I’ll walk right up to him and introduce myself!” He laughed at her puzzled expression.

  He waved at the doorman and passed inside. The club was still cool and sluggish in the early morning. The long bar was untended, and the restaurant was empty. In the front section a Chinese waiter with a silver coffeepot was moving among the leather armchairs and couches. Richter had to be there among the high-backed chairs that faced the other direction.

  Charlie took out a cigarette and moved quickly toward the waiter. “Say, have you got a light?”

  The waiter pulled out a lighter, and, as Charlie looked past it, he noticed Richter’s back. Facing him, now impossible to ignore, was Matthias Vorster, the Afrikaaner who’d spent the whole war in Shanghai. He could see a brief flash of annoyance cross Vorster’s face. They had no choice but to greet each other.

  “Charlie! Good morning, my friend!”

  “Matthias!” He stepped over to shake hands with Vorster, then nodded cordially at the Nazi. Vorster introduced him as a friend from Holland.

  Richter stood up and shook his hand heartily, smiling. “Amerikaner…” He gave him a thumbs-up: “Number one!”

  Vorster spoke for him. “Karl had a tough time during the war, Charlie. All the Jews did under the Nazis.”

  That was a hard one to swallow, but Charlie kept a straight face. “So I’ve heard.”

  Richter seemed to pick up a word here and there. “Nazis—!” He scowled. “Bad!”

  He hadn’t wanted this job, but Richter was tipping the balance here. He spoke directly to the German, knowing Vorster would translate. “What brings you to Shanghai, Herr Richter?”

  The query went back and forth between Vorster and Richter.

  “He’s looking for some relatives. They escaped Germany in 1936, and he heard that they arrived here. He has news about one of their family. Maybe you know them. The man’s name is Hermann Maier.”

  Charlie grimaced and shook his head from side to side. “No. I can’t say I do know a Hermann Maier. But I’ll bet the Jews have got a club of some sort where you could ask. That’d probably be a good place to start. They all know each other.”

  Vorster relayed it to the other man, and a short conversation went on between them. Of course Richter couldn’t go to the synagogue. They’d make him in five minutes. Vorster was likely his bird dog on this. Probably old business associates during the war.

  “What kind of news is it? Good news?”

  “Very good news. The mother of the family was separated from the others. But she survived the war.”

  That was it then: some sort of shakedown to separate Maier from some more money in exchange for the whereabouts of his wife. Except the wife was certainly dead. He could see that by one look at Richter’s swollen, stupid face. “That’s news anyone would be glad to hear. It’s very kind of Mr. Richter to make the trip all the way to Shanghai to find him and tell him.”

  “He is joining relatives in Australia, so it is on the route.”

  “Well, I know a couple of fellows of the Jewish persuasion that I can ask. Where is Mr. Richter staying?”

  “It’s easiest if you just tell me, Charlie. Karl is at the Grosvenor now, but he wants to change. And thank you, my friend.”

  He’d found out what he needed. “It’s a pleasure.” He stood and stuck out his hand. “Mr. Richter: Good luck.”

  When he came out he glanced across the street at Anna and then walked a block before waiting for her to catch up. He told her what had happened, and the expression that came across her face was haunting. A mix of childish happiness, flooded instantly by tides of suspicion and hope and pain. “But Anna, he’s lying.”
/>
  “How do you know he’s lying?”

  “I just know. It’s his type. He’s trying to squeeze your father for more money.”

  He explained the same thing to Maier that night and saw the same mix of emotions as with his daughter, made more pathetic by his gaunt, pale face.

  “If there’s even the smallest chance she’s alive…!”

  “I don’t believe she is, Mr. Maier. She would have contacted your cousin, as you said. She would have found—”

  “But if she is!” he hissed. The man was in agony. “We must find her! We must make Richter tell what he knows!”

  This was going exactly the way he had thought it would as soon as Maier had told him Richter was in Shanghai. “Mr. Maier, I’m sorry. This is out of my—”

  He had come to his feet. “I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars! In any currency you choose! In gold! I’ll deposit it in Hong Kong, if you like. Or America. Anywhere!”

  Anna interrupted him. “Charlie,” she said softly. “Please. It’s my mother.”

  He looked at her green eyes. It wasn’t that she was promising anything; she didn’t have that kind of guile. There was nothing playful or coquettish about her but, on the contrary, something very elegant and reserved and sincere. He wanted that part of her, that part that he’d always thought was unattainable for a farm boy from western Washington.

  “Okay. But we’re not going to kidnap him.”

  “What do you suggest?” Maier asked.

  “I have another idea. Let me take care of it. And don’t worry: he won’t leave Shanghai until he’s found you.”

  * * *

  Charlie’s cell phone went off. He was here again, in this Shanghai, standing at the gate of a house on Lane 37. He’d been staring at the front door some time, but all the staring in the world wouldn’t make it open and release its missing people. He took the cell phone out. It was Pete Harrington.

  “Charlie! How’s it hanging?”

  The joviality of Harrington’s tone annoyed him. “It’s fine. What have you been doing?”

  “Just walking around, checking out the whole scene here. I was here in ’92, and I don’t remember anything! I’ve still got some fans, though. I was recognized twice. It was freaky. Like, these big crowds of Chinese people just surrounded me and stared!”

  “Glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I called about.” Charlie heard a soft woman’s voice in the background. “Umm … I met a girl, and”—Harrington lowered his voice to a near whisper—“I’d say I’ve got a pretty good shot, you know?” His tone returned to normal again. “We’re supposed to meet up tonight. She’s coming by the hotel. So this is kind of a scheduling thing. What time were you and I going to go out?” He added quickly, “I mean, I can cancel, Charlie. No problem. But you just want me to ride in the car for a little while and get a look at this guy … Right? You don’t need me all night.”

  “Are you serious?”

  The singer hesitated at the sound of his voice. “Well, yeah, I mean … Yeah, but not really—”

  “Because if you’re serious, I’m done here. I’m getting on the next plane to L.A.”

  “No, man, definitely, it’s … you know, I’ve got my priorities. We’re here to do this, so—”

  “No!” Charlie cut him off savagely. “You’re here to do this! I’m here because you’re paying me! And you’re paying me whether I stay or go. Understand?”

  “I do, Charlie.”

  “Is she with you right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get rid of her. Right now, while I’m listening. So I can hear it!”

  Harrington’s next words were distant, spoken past his phone. No, not tonight, but maybe—

  “Get rid of her!”

  “Yeah, sorry. No time. Good-bye! Gotta go! No, don’t come with me! Sayonara! Bye-bye! I’m walking away from her, Charlie. It’s done.”

  “What is it with you? Do you just compulsively have to screw off? Because I have to deal with the bodyguard, and right now I don’t see why I should be getting ready to throw myself on a grenade while you chase a piece of ass around Shanghai!”

  The plea coming through the tiny speaker was twisted with pain. “Please, Charlie. Don’t give up on me!”

  “You were the guy who was going one-on-one with the universe! Who was going to kick the crap out of greed.”

  “I still am!”

  He let the assertion drop into silence. It took a while for Harrington to muster the courage to venture a question. “It’s still on, right? Just tell me that.”

  Charlie looked around the quiet walls and tree branches of Lane 37, and through the gate at house number 116. This was his now, too. “It’s still on.”

  He closed the phone and started walking back toward the car. Why was he still in this? There was a good chance his client would blow it and an even better chance he himself would get hurt in the process. That’d be a little piece of hell: stuck in a Chinese hospital with a broken hip and anybody but Zhang seven thousand miles away. Crappy way to end a career. All the people who looked at him as a living legend would see him instead as a silly old man hanging on to one last client, no matter how ridiculous. Of course, and this made him smile as he walked back to the cross street, if he did pull it off … Well, he’d studied Peter Harrington’s business dealings fairly carefully, his rise through the bank and his double-dealing with his bond fund. If Pete Harrington really did punch the banker in the face, it was going to make a lot of people very happy. There’d be a loud noise, and then word would get around, quietly, among those who knew, and some of those men who’d turned him down for jobs, who’d put him out to pasture, were going to say, Holy smokes, it’s Charlie Pico! They’d know that the living legend was still alive.

  * * *

  The bells of a nearby church rang three o’clock, which left him very little time to reconnoiter and get back to the financier’s apartment before he went out for the evening. It took him ten minutes to get back to the car, then he pulled off the surveillance and had the driver take him down to the Bund. The place had been considerably spruced up. Used to be for international banking and trade; now it was all fancy restaurants and chain stores stuffed with overpriced jewelry and clothing. The old resonance wasn’t coming back to him. Too many people around, and, besides, he was working, searching for just the right spot. And there it was, just like he remembered, with its roaring bronze lions and its stately columns and steps, the old Hongkong Bank building, now the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. Perfect. Looked like a Bank with a capital B. Crowded but not constricted. Room for three or four people to get a view from different angles. Easy access to the escape vehicle. He could walk him around and tell him a few stories to get the timing right, if necessary; then Pete Harrington could come from the direction of the old Cathay. Things were getting clearer.

  “Pull over here.” They double-parked, their police plates making them invulnerable, and he walked the terrain and planned out their trajectory. “This is where we’re going to do it,” he told the driver. “You’ll put one man there. He’s going to follow our client with a cell phone camera, like he’s just recognized him and is getting a souvenir. Put the second one over here. Start him at ten meters away, and then he can move in. He should keep the lions in the background and make sure he gets the bank sign. Get somebody who’s not afraid to get physical, because if the bodyguard gets past me and chases our client, your man will need to get in his way and slow him down without creating any suspicion. And I want you over there.” He indicated a place a hundred yards down the street. “You’ll be parked. Use a cell phone with a good zoom and keep an eye on everything; then get him out of here afterwards. Our client should have a ten-second head start, and he’ll come straight to your car. Have the motor running. Got it? From here, you take him straight to the airport.”

  Charlie could tell by the man’s questions that he understood. Zhang worked with good people. He felt okay at the moment. Not
too tired, and his foot wasn’t so bad. He had a plan. He just had to get the financier to this spot, and that was what he’d try to set up next. Now all he had to do was go back and sit Harrington’s house, take a little nap in the car. But it was the time of day when the late-afternoon sun burnished everything with a film of dusty golden light, like the whole avenue was trapped in honey. And here he was, again. “Why don’t you wait here for a while,” he told the driver. “Give me ten minutes.”

  He walked a few hundred yards along the Bund. The sidewalk was filled with well-dressed Chinese people, heavily salted with foreign tourists gaping at the porticos and columns. All so different now, so lousy with cappuccinos and jewelry stores. Where was that place, anyway? Was it this block, or the next one? He came to the alley and walked away from the river, and at first he couldn’t recognize it, because there was a fancy Russian restaurant with a striped awning. He stared for a long time, taking away the awning and the brass menu holder until he saw it once again. Maier’s shipping office. He took a deep breath, then walked farther down the alley to the backstreet that ran parallel with the Bund. It was much quieter here, as it always had been. Three-story row houses somebody was trying to lease out as restaurants, architecture offices. More of an alley than a street. He turned left and walked along the back of a building. There was the window, now bricked closed, and the doorway sealed shut with a barrier of gray metal. No sign on it, but there hadn’t been a sign back then, either. Not in the telephone directory, either. A guy like Vorster didn’t necessarily want to be located. You could find him, or else you probably had no reason to find him. Charlie could find him. Still could.

  The operative piece of information in that whole encounter with Richter and Vorster at the Shanghai Club was that Vorster knew all along who and where Hermann Maier was. His office was virtually around the corner, and, moreover, an operator like Vorster who dealt in shipping on a regular basis would have run across Maier sometime in the past eight years, by name if not in person. They might even have done business. He arranged to meet Vorster at his office one block in from the river. The black marketeer rented a ground-floor office in a building built in the boom of the thirties, with pink and black tiles on the floor and a sleek black telephone and intercom system imported from America. On the walls were pictures of Vorster standing over the bodies of various dead African game, taken in the twenties, from the looks of the clothing. Vorster offered him a cigar and some brandy, joking that he liked to be on the ground floor because in case of an unwanted visitor one could always climb out the window.