Fear Itself

by Andrew Rosenheim

  Now he drove slowly around the Capitol and into the rising streets on the back side of the hill. The houses here were small and run-down, their front steps wobbly, the windows filled with tarpaulin rather than glass. When he reached the address Reilly had given him, however, Guttman found a large Victorian mansion, its wooden cladding painted dark green with black shutters on the windows. It had a rounded turret at one end like a French chateau, and a wide porch with a wooden balustrade and railing. A uniformed cop was standing in the doorway.

  Guttman locked the car and went into the house, stamping the snow off his feet in the front hall. To one side a parlour ran towards the back of the house. It was a large room furnished by scarlet velvet-covered sofas and a couple of stuffed armchairs. A French painting of a reclining nude hung above the unused fireplace. Ashtrays and piles of magazines were neatly arranged on side tables around the room, presumably to help distract waiting customers from having second thoughts.

  Kevin Reilly from the metropolitan police force came halfway down the stairs. He said, sounding tired, ‘Come on up, Harry.’

  Guttman followed Reilly to the top of the house, then down a dark corridor to the back. Reilly opened the door, then stepped aside to let Guttman past. ‘Hold your nose,’ he said.

  The stench was terrible, but Guttman forgot about it as soon as he stepped inside the room. Sprawled on the floor was the body of a young black man – he could not have been more than twenty years old. He was naked, save for a pair of white cotton underpants which hung, obscenely low, on his hips. There was blood on the youth’s chest and arms, and his head was thrown back, revealing a long deep gash at the base of his neck. Guttman noted the straight-handled razor lying on the floor, its blade extended and smeared with blood, now the colour of prunes.

  This wasn’t all. On the far side of the room, an old wooden beam ran between the two walls of an alcove. From it a man in a black suit was hanging by a thick rope wrapped around his neck. The man’s tongue was sticking out like a defiant child’s, his lips contorted in a painful grimace. But it was his eyes Guttman was most struck by – they bulged as if straining to escape their sockets. About a yard from the body’s dangling feet a small wooden stool lay upended.

  ‘It’s Bock,’ Guttman said, stunned.

  ‘I know it’s Bock. That’s why I called you.’

  ‘Who found him?’ he asked.

  ‘One of the girls. She actually sleeps up here – the working rooms are down a flight.’

  ‘Is that the same kid as last time?’ He pointed at the dead Negro, noticing that blood had also spread in a coagulating pool onto the room’s cheap carpet.

  ‘None other.’ Reilly paused. ‘Let me get Ma.’ Reilly stuck his head out into the corridor and barked an order while Guttman tried to compose himself, and slow the thoughts that were racing through his head. What on earth had Bock been doing here? And why had he killed the kid? A moment of madness, violence fuelled by lust, followed by such remorse that he had hanged himself? It seemed the obvious scenario, but Guttman was mystified. He hadn’t read the man that way at all.

  After a minute they could hear a slow tread coming up the stairs. Guttman found the stink in the room beginning to overwhelm him, a sickening mix of cigar smoke and faecal aroma. His gorge rose, and he struggled to control his growing nausea.

  He said, ‘Bock didn’t smoke cigars.’

  ‘I do,’ said Reilly. ‘If you think it stinks now, you should have been here an hour ago.’

  A creak on the floorboards announced the arrival of Ma Thornton. She was an immense white woman, barely 5 feet tall but looking close to 300 pounds. Her big doughy face was covered in powder, and she’d highlighted her eyes with mascara, her mouth with cherry-red lipstick. She wore a calico dress the size of a tent, and as she crossed her arms now and adopted a world-weary pout, Guttman realised that her biceps were bigger than his own.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘Beats the hell out of me, mister. I haven’t seen the Kraut for a couple of years.’ She turned to Reilly accusingly. ‘That was the night you rousted us.’

  ‘So what about tonight?’ Guttman asked.

  She pointed towards the black youth without looking at him. ‘Anthony asked me if he could use the room up here. I like to keep his business separate – the other customers wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Because he’s coloured?’

  She looked at Guttman scornfully. ‘Half my girls are coloured, mister. No, it’s because he was a fairy. Anyway, I told him he could use it. But that was at eight o’clock; I had no idea he’d still be here …’

  Neither did he, thought Guttman. He pointed to the hanging corpse. ‘What about this guy? When did he show up?’ he asked.

  Ma stared at him. ‘How should I know? I didn’t see him. Nobody did – like I keep telling your dick friend here.’

  ‘Mind your mouth,’ said Reilly.

  Guttman said, ‘You mean the first time anybody saw him he was hanging like this?’

  ‘That’s right. You see, this is Shelley’s room. She said she wasn’t feeling good, so I sent her up to bed. I’m nice that way – she’s a five-dollar girl. And I didn’t want her sitting around in the parlour, in case one of the Joes wanted to go with her. It’s not fair on a customer to put your goods in the store window, then say they’re not for sale. Sort of defeats the whole purpose, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Let’s skip the philosophy of business. So she came up here?’

  ‘That’s right. It was after eleven. Anthony should have been long gone by then. But suddenly Shelley screams the frigging house down, pardon my French, and I came running up and found Anthony lying over there and the stiff hanging here.’

  ‘And no one had seen this guy until then?’ Guttman couldn’t hide his scepticism.

  ‘Not a dicky bird. I swear. He must have come through the back door, up the rear stairs to the second floor, then on up here. Unless one of the girls happened to come out of a room as he was moving along, nobody would have seen him.’

  Guttman was trying to take this all in. ‘Where’s Shelley now?’

  ‘Back to work. She’s downstairs in one of the rooms with Mr Huckleby. He’s a regular and she didn’t want to disappoint him. I could send her up if you’re willing to wait a bit – Mr Huckleby can be a little while.’

  ‘That’s okay. Tell Mr Huckleby to take his time. You can go now.’

  Big Ma Thornton looked at Reilly, who nodded, and she shuffled out of the room.

  Guttman pointed to the bureau, where a watch and a small pile of loose change sat on top. ‘Those are his?’

  ‘Guess so. He must have emptied his pockets when he got up there.’

  ‘Where’s his wallet then?’

  Reilly didn’t answer. Guttman walked over to the body. Reaching up, he patted the front of Bock’s suit jacket, averting his eyes, and avoiding a long thin streak of blood. He felt something, so there was nothing for it – he took a deep breath and reached inside the jacket. As his hand brushed against the white dress shirt he could feel the dead man’s flesh, and he realised it was starting to stiffen. At last his fingers reached the wallet in the inside pocket of Bock’s jacket and he brought it out gingerly.

  Then something else caught his attention. ‘Look at this,’ he said with unconcealed astonishment. With his free hand, he held back the jacket on Bock’s left side to reveal a holster and handgun. Handing the wallet to Reilly, he said, ‘You got any gloves?’

  ‘Yeah. The coroner lent me a pair.’

  Putting on a pair of cotton fingerlets, Guttman reached in and extracted the pistol from the holster, then let the suit jacket flap back into place as he moved well away from the corpse. He checked the chamber, and sniffed the barrel. ‘It’s loaded, but hasn’t been fired. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s a lady’s gun, isn’t it? I don’t know too many stiffs carrying something that weak. A .22 maybe if they’re out to ice somebody, single shot-like. Not a
.25.’ Reilly shrugged. ‘But then, the guy was a fem, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s not my point.’ Guttman was staring at Bock now, curiosity overcoming any revulsion. ‘Think for a minute. The guy decides to kill Anthony. So why not shoot him? Less mess. How he managed not to get blood all over himself is beyond me – there’s only a little bit on his jacket.’

  He turned and looked at Reilly. ‘But let’s suppose he has killed the kid with that razor, and then feels so bad about it that he decides to kill himself. Why noose yourself when you’re packing a rod? That would have done it quicker and a lot less painfully.’

  ‘Maybe he really wanted to punish himself.’

  Guttman nodded. ‘Okay, but I’m not through yet. He gets up on the stool, but only after emptying his pockets first. How tidy of the guy.’ He paused. ‘But then why doesn’t he also take out his wallet and take off his holster?’

  ‘Jesus, Harry, how should I know?’ Reilly looked bewildered. ‘You might as well ask why he wanted to bump himself off. And why did he kill the shine in the first place?’

  Guttman shook his head. ‘I don’t think he did.’

  18

  THIS TIME THE club’s sitting room was crowded, though there was no sign of the Colonel. Jason the butler had help now, a young black woman in a dark skirt and white apron, but most of the people at the tables were just eating sandwiches. The monk-like silence of Guttman’s first encounter had given way to the steady buzz of people who weren’t there to socialise. This club didn’t seem to have any stuffy rules about not conducting business in its rooms, but then Guttman remembered this wasn’t really a club.

  Stephenson was waiting for him, sitting in a chair, reading a copy of the Spectator. He was dressed in a Harris Tweed jacket and grey flannels, and his striped tie looked military. He stood up and shook hands. ‘Why don’t we head for the back?’ he suggested, though there was a table free.

  He escorted Guttman to the same large ground-floor room that Guttman had peeked into before. Then it had been filled with people working in a newsroom-like atmosphere; now a solitary woman with a strikingly pretty face stood by one of the desks, punching holes in printed pages and placing them into large ring binders. She had her hair up in a blonde bun.

  ‘Everybody seems to be at lunch, Katie,’ said Stephenson. The young woman nodded but made no sign of leaving.

  Stephenson went to one of the desks and rifled through a pile of paper until he found what he was looking for. He unfolded a large folio and spread it on the desk. ‘Have a look,’ he said.

  It was a map, with foreign place names, and a topographical rendering that showed mountainous terrain, dotted by lakes. ‘Germany?’ asked Guttman.

  ‘Close. It’s Austria.’ Stephenson pointed to a town at the end of a long thin lake. ‘This is Klagenfurt. Over here is Villach. The blue is the Wörthersee, where the Viennese are fond of spending their summer holidays. Up here,’ he said, moving his finger slightly north, ‘are hills – some are small mountains really, high enough for skiing in winter.’ He pointed to a circle pencilled on one of the hills. ‘And this is where I think we’ve found your man.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Konrad Werner.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Not at all.’ He looked up at the woman across the room. ‘Katie, do you think you could persuade Jason to provide a sandwich for our visitor? And possibly one for me as well.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ she said, and left the room. Guttman said idly, ‘Pretty girl,’ though he was really thinking about Stephenson’s find.

  ‘I’ll let her know you think so,’ said Stephenson. Guttman looked mortified and Stephenson laughed. ‘Don’t worry – she’s my niece.’

  Guttman was even more embarrassed. He said gruffly, ‘Tell me about Werner.’

  ‘Two years ago, a group of walkers found a body on a hillside in Austria, about 20 miles from Klagenfurt. Away from the lakes and walking trails, it’s very wild there; it was pure chance they came across it. The body was badly decomposed, but it looked like a suicide – the man had a bullet in his temple, and the gun was still in what was left of his hand. The walkers reported it to the local police, who were at something of a loss because there wasn’t any identification on the corpse. The man looked German or Austrian – he was wearing the typical clothes of an alpine walker, but no one had been reported missing, and there was nothing at all that could establish his identity. Unsurprisingly, after a few months of pro forma investigation – they checked with all the districts in Austria, and even made a few inquiries in Germany – the police gave up.’

  ‘How did you find out about this?’ asked Guttman, wondering why Stephenson thought the dead man was Werner.

  ‘We had a friend in the Austrian intelligence services. After the Anschluss we lost touch – couldn’t blame him, really, since any contact with us could have cost him his life. But then the Nazis did us a favour – not intentionally, I assure you. They’d kept on Ronge as the head of the Austrian Secret Service, which was an intelligent thing to do since he was both very good and quite the Nazi himself. But something happened and they stripped Ronge of his post and threw him in a concentration camp for a while. Our chap had always been loyal to Ronge, and he was absolutely furious. That’s when he made contact again.

  ‘To cut a long story short, one of the things he told us is that a communication had come from Germany that a Swiss agency was making inquiries about a missing German-American named Werner. Austrian intelligence were told unequivocally not to assist these Swiss people in any way. When our contact dug a little deeper he discovered the police in the Klagenfurt district had been singled out and told not to help the Swiss. That didn’t smell right either, and he mentioned it to our officer when they next met. Our chap asked the Austrian intelligence wallah to dig a bit deeper. That’s when he came up with our dead friend here.’ He suddenly stabbed a finger at the circle on the map.

  ‘But how do you know it was Werner? Couldn’t it have been somebody else?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with an acknowledging nod. ‘But consider this: same height, same build. And – we’ve done quite a bit of work on your Mr Werner – same small scar on his left wrist.’ He added breezily, ‘Thank God the squirrels hadn’t nibbled that away.’

  Guttman was impressed. Stephenson seemed to know a lot more about Werner than the Bureau did, and with far less reason. ‘All right, I’ll accept that it was Werner. So why did he kill himself, and why there?’

  ‘Because he didn’t kill himself, and the location of his murder wasn’t up to him.’ The levity in Stephenson’s voice was gone.

  ‘Please do go on,’ Guttman said, realising he was sounding like the Canadian Brit.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but in some cases I find common sense as helpful as evidence. Think about Werner. Here’s a man who’s a member of the Bund – if an obscure one – determined to make America a Nazi state. So what does he do? Travels to Europe. Understandable perhaps if he’s going to have a visit – his mother is still alive, apparently. But no, he doesn’t see his mother; instead he goes and kills himself in an isolated patch of meadow, having done his best to make sure no one can identify his body. I’m not a policeman or one of these psychiatrists, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

  ‘Also, the gun he used was a Luger, German make. We did a little research and it was a new model – the first came out the previous spring, and they were only issued to senior German army personnel.’ He stopped speaking when Katie came back into the room, carrying a plate in each hand. She put them down on the desk, and Stephenson and Guttman thanked her.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Stephenson, looking at their sandwiches.

  They seemed perfectly fine to Guttman. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Is ham all right?’ He sounded concerned.

  Guttman gave a wry laugh. ‘Sure it is. Just don’t tell my wife.’

  ‘Kosher?’

  ‘She’s not even Jewish. It’s the diet I�
��m breaking she’d be mad about.’

  Guttman took a big bite of his sandwich; he had skipped breakfast. ‘So who killed Werner then?’

  ‘I think the Nazis did.’

  ‘In the middle of an Austrian forest? Why there?’

  ‘They probably thought Werner wouldn’t be found for a long time, and when he was, no one would be the wiser. No ID, etc. An obvious suicide.’

  ‘But why did they kill him? The guy was a member of the Detroit chapter of the Bund.’

  Stephenson looked almost apologetic. ‘That, I’m afraid, is where my certainty falters.’

  Guttman sighed, and said without thinking, ‘They’re dropping like flies.’ Stephenson gave him a look. What the hell, thought Guttman, there seemed no point being coy. ‘One of my informants was murdered a few days ago, here in D.C. He was working at the German Embassy.’

  If Stephenson was surprised by this he didn’t show it. ‘Same sort of business?’

  ‘Yes. Made to look like a suicide. And they almost pulled it off. I—’ He stopped suddenly since the door had been flung open, and three young men came in, talking noisily. They must have worked in the room, for they paid no attention to Stephenson or Guttman, but went to their desks, still talking.

  Stephenson looked at the men, then turned to Guttman. ‘Let’s go to my office. It’ll be quieter there.’

  And as they went upstairs, Guttman found himself wondering just how much he should tell this man. He liked him, he respected his intelligence, and he was impressed by how forthcoming he had been. But … there was no ‘but’ he realised, suddenly aware of how alone he felt. There wasn’t anyone at the Bureau he could share things with. Not if he wanted to keep his job. Part of him wanted to say, Screw the job, but every time a fantasy entered his head of telling J. Edgar Hoover just where he could get off, an image of Isabel, cold and ill and in need of care, brought him down to earth.

  Now he was talking to a guy who was willing to listen and maybe even help. Stephenson had an agenda – Guttman was not naive – but at least it was an honest one and undisguised.