by Wayne Turmel
“Vass is dis ‘projection technician’? You’re an engineer all of a sudden? You vent to college in Cedar Rapids?”
“N-n-no, but you see the Count, de Prorok, he does these… scientific lectures…”
He almost pissed himself at the idea of me and science in the same sentence.
“Imagine,” he clucked, “My Villy working with a Count. Such a big shot.”
“Count? What kind of Count?” he demanded. To him, rich people were a problem. European rich people were worse, and aristocrats the source of all evil in the world. In his drunken moments, he admitted his biggest gripe about the Great War was it had crippled the nobility, but ended before finishing the job.
“So you’re just going to travel around doing this big shot’s dirty work? Are you going to wipe his royal arse for him too?”
“Gerhardt, please…” Mama knew better than to get between two butting rams, but maternal instinct is a tough thing to ignore. I stepped between them, pulling myself to my full height. She sighed and moved to the neutral territory of the kitchen, where she pretended to dry dishes but could still hear everything.
“Yes, a Count… well, he’s really an American, but… the p-p-p-oint is, he wants me to go with him as he travels around. For two weeks at first, but then it’ll be p-p-permanen-n-nt.”
He knew better than to believe in the idea of a permanent job. The idea of me with such a beast was beyond his comprehension. “You won’t last t-t-t-two weeks.” He deliberately spit out the “t”s as he often did when reminding me of my many limitations. “People like that don’t hire people like you out of the goodness of their hearts. They use you while they need you and then kick you to the curb. Then you’ll come crawling back to your mama to take care of you. Scheisse,” he shook his head.
I accepted my mother’s weak hug from behind as I sat there, flushed and sweating, determined not to give him the last word, but of course he got it.
Now I stood hours from my escape. Today the Count arrived, and I had to get him and his gear to the Pfister. He was speaking on Monday, then things really kicked off. First to Chicago, then on to Rockford, Madison, and Beloit. After that was probably St. Louis, but then New York, Philadelphia, and dear Jesus anywhere other than Milwaukee. I wouldn’t come back with my tail between my legs. I couldn’t.
“Brown!” a familiar voice slashed through the crowd at the Lake Front Depot. The gleaming silver tip of his walking stick waved over the heads of people disembarking the Hiawatha from Chicago. The multitude parted as the Count strode towards me, hand extended. He gave my arm a squeeze and almost pulverized my hand with the greeting.
“So good to see you my friend.” He looked around with a conspiratorial smile. “Seems remarkably civilized for a… what did you call it? Frozen shit hole?”
“Well, it’s no D-d-des Moines.” I smiled.
He threw back his head and launched a laugh over the heads of the crowd. “Touché, but what is, Brown? What is?”
I managed to find us a taxi and a driver willing to lash the larger cases to his trunk and take a short fare. The Pfister was only five blocks away in Saturday traffic, and the extra dollar tip was sufficient inducement to defy the laws of gravity and risk running afoul of Milwaukee’s finest.
On the way, de Prorok babbled on about his travels, and how good it was to see me again, and how he hadn’t been able to find anyone to fill my rather large shoes (not to mention the Tuareg costume), and damn did it never get warm here, and he still hoped Alice would reconsider and join him, and did he mention I looked well?
We pulled up the front of the Pfister hotel, but a uniformed doorman waved us away before the cab even came to a complete stop. “Gotta bring those bags around back, can’t bring them through here.”
I was going to argue with him, but I felt a less than subtle grip on my arm. “Of course, which entrance? I’m sorry, your name is…”
“Percy, sir. Sorry, rules, you know.”
“Of course, Percy. My man will bring them around. Where would you like them?”
As Percy tipped his cap and gave directions to the freight entrance off Mason Street, I said nothing and pouted. Apparently I was just “his man.” Percy had a name, I didn’t. Three minutes later, I was banging on the back fire door of the Hotel Pfister, surrounded by gear and luggage.
The door opened up, and a Negro porter came out, slapping his arms for warmth. He gave me a silent but friendly enough nod. “This all?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “They wouldn’t let me come through the front.”
“Know how ya feel. Let’s get this inside.” We each grabbed an end of the biggest trunk, and in three trips. “Close this door, tight. Sometimes it don’t close right. I’ll go get us a cart and get it upstairs for ya.”
“Thanks.” I was going to ask his name, but he was already around the corner and gone. I turned back to the door, gripped the handle and prepared to pull it shut, when it flew out of my hand and burst open.
Standing in the doorway was a pig-eyed, red faced, stocky guy in a brown coat, hat and scarf. “Hi kid. Figured it was time we finally had us a little talk.”
I looked around frantically for either an escape route or some assistance, but saw neither. The guy took a step inside, and pulled the door solidly shut behind him. “Relax, I just want to talk for a minute.”
I held my breath as he reached into his coat, but all he pulled out was a business card, and held it out to me with two fingers. I took the card and studied it. His name was printed on it, Joseph Havlicek, Investigator, but what really got me was the big black eye staring up at me. This guy was a Pinkerton.
Most people would be relieved to know he wasn’t a real cop, but most people weren’t raised by radical socialists. The Pinkertons were just above the Bogeyman and just below the Rothschilds on the list of the world’s terrors. What had the Old Man done now?
“Thought we’d have a little chat about your boss.”
“The Count?”
He snorted. “Okay, the Count, de Prorok, whoever. What do you know about him?”
“Whaddya mean? He’s an archaeologist. He goes around giving lectures.” I didn’t know what this guy was looking for.
“So why’s an archaeologist keep muscle around? I mean does he really need a big guy like you to watch a few rocks and projectors?”
He thought I was the muscle. He was not just scary, but out of his ever-loving gourd. “I’m n-n-not… I just run the p-p-projector and help with the lectures.”
His tiny eyes never left my face, and I knew he could see every bright red capillary and drop of sweat on it. I wondered if I could make a break down the hall, but he slid his foot over a few inches and pressed it hard against mine, pushing it back against the wall, pinning me in place. If he wasn’t a cop now, he had been once.
“Okay, let’s try this. I’m going to ask you some questions, and then I’ll leave you alone. I really don’t want to get you in Dutch with the boss.” He took my terrified silence for assent. “Have you ever seen him with anything really valuable? Anything he’s trying to keep hid?”
“N-n-nope, nothing like that.”
“A lot of people don’t believe that.” The calmer his voice got, the scarier he was.
“Like who?”
“People. Some here, some in other countries. They think he has something that don’t belong to him, and they’d like to get it back. No questions asked, you see, but the sooner the better. The longer it takes, the more trouble he’s in. You sure he ain’t hiding something?”
I shook my head.
He leaned in even closer and I could smell the cheap cigar on his breath. “You sure? You’d tell, me, right?”
“I said no, Goddammit.” Just to give myself a little breathing room, I shoved him away. It was nothing much but he bounced off the wall behind him, and his eyes widened.
When you’re my size, people can confuse blind panic with aggression. Sometimes that works to my advantage. Sometimes. Havlicek was trying
to decide which this was. If he guessed that I really had no idea how to fight, I was in a world of hurt.
“What’s going on?” a familiar voice echoed down the hall. The Count and the porter stood there with a rolling metal cart.
“Nuttin’ at all. Just having a word with Mr. Braun here. Pleasure to meet ya. I’m Joe Havlicek.” He stuck his paw out but the Count declined the offer. “Okay, we can do it that way. I represent some people who are looking for stolen property. They seem to think you know where it is.”
I’d never heard de Prorok’s voice sound so icy calm. “What is it I am supposed to have taken?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“I don’t have it. Never have.” His voice was flatter and calmer than before.
“You know they won’t believe you. What am I supposed to tell them?”
I heard a clock tick. An elevator dinged somewhere behind the wall. De Prorok’s answer was almost as quiet, “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have it.” He gestured from the porter to the gear. “Percy, let’s get this loaded if you please. Brown, are you coming?”
“Yes sir.” I stepped over Havlicek’s foot and ignored the little voice telling me to step on it just for grins. The Pinkerton just stood and watched, then shrugged and put his hat on, adjusting it carefully.
“We’ll talk again soon, I’m sure.” He opened the door and a blinding shaft of sunlight and bitterly cold air burst into the dark hallway. “You know where to find me, kid.” Then he was gone.
Not another word was spoken as we loaded the gear onto the cart, wheeled it to an elevator, rode to the seventh floor, and Jasper opened the door to 706. Once inside, the Count tipped him fifty cents. “Thank you, Percy.”
“Thank you, sir. You gentlemen have a pleasant day,” he said with the same smile he doled out a hundred times a day. The door closed behind him with a quiet snick. I waited for de Prorok to say something—anything—but it was awfully quiet for the longest time.
The Count just stood looking out the window. The bright winter sunshine lit up the room, but left him a solitary, lean shadow, staring out at the tarred rooftops of downtown Milwaukee and the star encrusted surface of Lake Michigan. He lit his pipe and blew a long, slow cloud of smoke before he finally turned to me.
“Pinkerton?”
“What? Uh, yeah. Havlicek… Joseph Havlicek.” That got a nod out of him, but it was a completely insufficient answer. “What’s g-g-going on? What are they looking f-f-f-or?”
“Treasure, Brown. They think I have some of the Tin Hinan treasure. I’m not sure what they think I have. Jewels, precious metals, maybe the Holy bloody Grail. Christ, I don’t know what all.”
“And you don’t?” The disappointed look he gave me stabbed me in the gut.
“Willy, I may be… I am…a lot of things, but a thief is not one of them. Yes?”
The best I could choke out was, “Yeah, sure. Of course. Will he come back?”
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised.” He took another long look out the window, then turned to me. His face had transformed back to his usual peppy self. Clapping his hands together and rubbing them vigorously, he gestured to the pile of gear. “Do you know I didn’t have a single competent assistant while you were gone? Just dreadful.”
He opened the box of slides, and I saw them all jumbled together. He waved his hand vaguely in that direction. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, I’m afraid. But you are on the clock.”
That thought made me smile, and I threw my coat on the bed, eager to get back to work. Then I saw the cloth bag. “Oh, I made something…” Oh God, what if he hated it? “It’s n-n-not very g-g-good, but I…” Finally, I reached in and took the sword by the blade, holding it out to him like a dead fish.
“What’s this?” His long fingers reached around the hilt, grasped it and then took an exploratory swipe across his body. “Oh, Brown. This is quite marvelous…” He took a step back, then went into the bent-knee pose the jokers in his films struck before dancing. He beamed happily, hopping forward a few steps then back, waving the sword like a maniac.
He clipped the lampshade, and I had to make a diving catch, but he didn’t notice. He just kept humming merrily to himself, completely oblivious to the trappings of the hotel room or anything else.
“You made this yourself, Brown? I’m gobsmacked. It’s perfect. The weight is a bit wrong, of course, but then this is… tin is it?” I nodded, feeling a warm and very unfamiliar swell of pride. “Clever. They’ll never know from the stage. Especially when you’re all…” He waved his arms to indicate my being dressed up like a big pale idiot.
“You know where this will look especially good? Under the lights at Carnegie Hall.” He must have seen the shock on my face because he plopped his keister on the bed and slapped his palms on his knees. “I was going to save the surprise, but what the hell. It’s not official of course, but I have officially signed with a booking agent. Lee Keedick—you’ve heard me mention him—and he says we are penciled in for a lecture there in June. Imagine, Brown, we could be doing all this at Carnegie Hall.”
He went on and on, but I was fixated on the “we.” Grinning, he leapt to his feet. “Yes, we have engagements all the way through the end of the spring, before I have to go back to Paris, and then Algeria again. How’d you like to stay on through the end of the tour? St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia… the people at the Smithsonian haven’t confirmed yet, but Washington’s a given…”
All those names buzzed around in my head. It was really happening. The big cities back East might as well have been Budapest or Timbuktu, and I was going to see them. But what happened after that?
The happy buzzing was replaced by a nagging question. “What happens after that? When you’re gone?”
He stopped sucking on his pipe long enough to wave it at me. “Damn it Brown, are you always this negative? This is good news, man. We’ll figure out the details. These things always work themselves out.”
That sure hadn’t been my experience, but I just bit my lip, gave him a nod and turned back to the box of jumbled lantern slides. If I was back on the clock, I’d best hop to it.
“Tomorrow I won’t need you, but Monday of course is our lecture at Marquette. Then Tuesday we’re off to Chicago.” “We” were leaving Milwaukee for good on Tuesday.
Sunday morning I took Mama to church. It was the first time in ages, and we both knew it would be the last for a long time. I let her wheedle a completely empty promise out of me that I’d go once in a while, just to stay on God’s good side. She also tearfully demanded to know when I’d be back, and I was vague enough to comfort her but no one could accuse me of lying in church, either. I wasn’t much of a believer, but I never stepped on cracks in the sidewalk.
It took a lot of time on Saturday to get everything in proper order but it was worth it. Monday’s lecture was the usual rip-roaring success. The sword was a big hit, although it was heavier than I thought and I almost de-nostril-ed the Count when he attempted to get me to dance. I guess both the audience and the speaker caught a whiff of danger, because it got a bigger laugh than ever.
The only thing different was the question period. The questions were mostly the same, but the way people asked them sounded, I don’t know, more hostile. An older guy from the Sentinel asked, “The papers say you might still have some of the jewels. Can we see them?”
I didn’t hear the answer, because I was scanning the crowd to see if Havlicek had put him up to that, and if I could spot him. I looked for a familiar hat, and I saw one, but not the hat I was expecting. This was wasn’t brown. It was red and black checked wool. It didn’t belong to Joe Havlicek. It belonged to my Old Man, and he was heading my way.
I could feel the coals in my cheeks blaze brighter. I stood there half dressed in my desert warrior costume, with my white overalls showing. I wished the floor would cave me in and carry me away to a quick, if messy death, but I didn’t have that kind of luck.
He came to with
in three paces of me, then gave me a very slow once-over. “Nice get up.”
I had no response. I knew exactly how ridiculous I must look to him. Up until this moment I’d managed not to think about it.
“Brown, who’s this?” I cringed, and didn’t turn around. I could feel de Prorok over my shoulder. My father raised an eyebrow at the “Brown” but said nothing.
“It’s my father. G-g-g-gerhardt Braun, Count B-b-byron de P-prorok.” I think I remembered to make a vague gesture of introduction.
The Old Man started to remove his cap, but remembering his role as representative of the proletariat, he pulled it further down on his head. The Count held out a perfectly manicured hand, and my father waited just long enough to reciprocate to send a message of extreme disapproval.
“Herr Braun, Sie haben einen feinen Sohn.” His German was flawless, of course as he complimented my father on his fine son. It also had enough of a Prussian undertone to it I knew it would irritate the hell out of the Old Man.
“My English is perfectly good, Herr de Prorok.” In all his years of embarrassing me, this was going to be the worst yet. It was like watching two cars speed towards each other, but unable to do anything except watch and hope for survivors.
“Indeed it is. You must be very proud of your son. I’ve not found anyone else like him.” My father ceded a small shrug. At least he didn’t argue the point. With one more clap on the shoulder, he nodded to the Old Man. “Well, I’ll leave you two. Willy, let’s get packed up, please. I’d like to get back to the hotel as soon as possible.”
I nodded, then turned back to the full brunt of my father’s most severe over-the-glasses glare. He held it until I was sure it left a mark. I could feel my back stiffen and I stood as tall as I could. That gave me about three inches on him, and I needed every one of them. Hopefully he couldn’t hear my knees knock through the robes.
“This is the job you want?” He flicked the robes with his fingertips. “This is a good job for an honest man?” The disappointment dripped from his lips like acid.
