by Dick Cluster
“He was a banker.”
“Not quite a banker. Middle management in a bank. A cog, not a mover and shaker. Now suppose I asked you what a bank employee gives out and then wants back. Any bank, anytime. Not pictures.”
“Money,” said Alex. He took what he told himself would be the last sip.
“Good boy. Now, I don’t know what your business is. You said something about cars. Right now I want to know about your deal with Meyer. Just tell me, in dollars, how much was involved.”
“Two thousand for me.”
“You bring me back that package— without disturbing the contents, and believe me, I’ll know if they’re disturbed. You do that for me, and I’ll match his payment.”
Alex put his cup on the table, where the initials swam slightly.
“One condition.”
“Yeah.”
“I need to know what’s in it too.”
“Why?”
“Suppose it wasn’t something I’d want to bring across customs?”
“You mean narcotics?” Moselle’s white-toothed smile returned. “Come on, Alex! Jerry Meyer?” He put his own drink down, leaning forward, hands on his knees. “Do you know what a banker’s acceptance is?”
Alex didn’t and decided this was no time to be a wise-ass.
“Frankly, no.”
“Well, it’s worth a lot of money, but it’s as legal as you and me. Now, do we have a deal?”
“Yes.”
“By the way, did Jerry send you on any missions to anybody besides me and Cynthia?”
You asked, thought Alex. Does that mean you know what I’m going to answer?
“Yes and no,” he replied, as ingenuously as possible. “He did mention something about calling on a Jay Friedhoff, in Berlin. But he didn’t give me any address. In fact, I don’t know for sure if it’s J-A-Y or J as an initial. Does that mean anything to you?”
Moselle stood up and turned toward the window behind him. His fingers pressed apart the slats of the Venetian blind so he could peek out on his patch of East London. Alex wondered whether that brought him closer to his roots in South Philly, or wherever.
“Man or a woman, this Friedhoff, did he say?”
“I don’t know,” Alex admitted.
Moselle turned back to Alex. He blew on his finger, looked for any remaining dust, and didn’t find any. Most likely someone cleaned and dusted this place every day.
“I like a man who says when he doesn’t know. Now Jerry, his trouble is— was— that he would always overreach, you know what I mean? A little razzle-dazzle exactly where it didn’t belong. Sure, I can get you in to see Friedhoff, for what it’s worth. Not in Berlin. A stone’s throw from Westminster Abbey. You want to give me another call in, say, a half hour?”
“Okay.”
Moselle downed his drink and stood, extending his hand down to Alex. The cuticles and nails were immaculate, the short hairs plentiful and black.
“Glad you came around, Glauberman. Take your time over lunch. How soon do you think I can expect delivery of those items, by the way?”
Alex shook hands without standing. “Give me a week,” he said. Moselle stepped briskly out of the office, leaving Alex to pick at bits of cheese and discard bits of onion. He had nowhere to go in the next half hour, and no one had asked him to leave. He decided, from inertia, to see what happened if he stayed where he was.
He knew the inertia was a cousin, chemically, to the washed-out feeling with which he had woken up. The receptionist came in to clear away lunch, glanced at him curiously, but said nothing. When she had left, Alex sipped cold tea and whiskey, despite his earlier resolve. He hadn’t done a bad job, all in all. He tiptoed over to the antique wooden desk, toying with the idea of taking a peek inside.
“Excuse me, Mr. Glauberman,” the receptionist said, wide-eyed, advancing from the door. “Mr. Moselle left this address for you.” She waited for him to leave the desk and come to her. “Barton Street,” she added, more relaxed. “It’s right by the Abbey. It’s very posh, scads of condos now. He says to go right on over, she’ll be expecting you. She’s a dear old puss, you know.”
“A dear old puss?” Alex looked down at the slip of paper in his hand. Lady Jane Friedhoff, it said. “Oh, of course. I see. Dear old Lady Jane.”
13. You Are the Dead
Outside the elevator, Alex noticed, was a square set of nine pushbuttons like the ones on a telephone. Inside, below the big silver buttons marked 1, 2, and 3, was a similar set. Security system, he thought. Not just anybody gets upstairs to see Jack whenever they want. He felt again like somebody of reasonable importance, who could congratulate himself on a job well done.
Outside, the afternoon was grayer still, but so far it had remained dry. Alex traveled downtown by Underground, dozing and thankful for the doze. He woke in time for Westminster, where he fell in behind assorted tourists: German, American, and Japanese. He left the other visitors as they entered the holy place where martyrs to empire rest and kings are crowned. He found Barton Street on his right.
It was a street of town houses, Porsches, and Mercedes. Through half-curtained windows he caught glimpses of hanging plants, new wood, and bright Formica. Halfway down the block a plaque announced the house that had once harbored T. E. Lawrence, though whether before or after Arabia it did not say. If Alex harbored doubts about Lady Jane Friedhoff— and he did, rather subliminally— some of them were dispelled when he found her name neatly hand-lettered on a white card next to the bell for a basement flat. This must have been the service entrance. It represented a comedown, literally speaking, for a member of the nobility. Still, he would be willing to bet Lady Jane had paid quite a price for her basement flat. He was disarmed completely by the small, spry, white-haired lady who responded to the bell. She offered him his choice of sherry or tea.
“I hadn’t expected company until our mutual friend called,” she added, “but I did unearth some biscuits in a tin.” She pointed him to a wooden armchair in her neat front parlor and opened an illustrated can of sugar cookies that sat upon a doily on the table.
“Just tea would be fine,” said Alex. “If it’s no trouble. The fact is, Gerald Meyer more or less asked me to see you.”
“So our friend told me.” Lady Jane remained standing, seeming to bounce on her toes like a friendly but skittish little mountain goat. “Gerald Meyer. The poor man. I wonder why. I haven’t seen him in forty years.”
“You haven’t?”
“No. I’m British, you understand. Leo— that was my husband— escaped from Germany in the twenties. Well, you don’t want me to go on about family history. After the war— I became a nurse, did I say?— Gerald was a young American GI…”
“Did you know anyone from that time who might still be in contact?” Alex asked. “I believe he wanted you to point me toward someone else. Someone he met in your house, maybe, or at least in your company?”
“Really? Did he say so? I don’t know… I used to look in on Cynthia, the daughter, in her house— when I would visit Berlin. She wasn’t keen on it, though. I don’t think she liked the English-speaking nations very well.”
“She lived several years in the States, according to her father.”
“Is that so?” Lady Jane Friedhoff smiled brightly as she shook her white head. “There, you see, I hadn’t even known that. Gerald Meyer. He meant well, I think— with his marriage, I mean— but when it came time to bring the poor girl over… well, he just couldn’t face it, you see. Now, you take your pick of these biscuits, while I see about that tea.”
She disappeared through a doorway toward the kitchen, leaving Alex nothing to do but sit and take his pick. No, Gerald Meyer had not been able to face it, that was clear. To stand up to the outrage a Jew would get for bringing home even a “good” German in 1945, love or no love, was not the kind of thing a man who changed his mind about sending packages could manage.
Nibbling at a stale cookie, Alex wondered just what he had expected to learn he
re. He was chasing a rambling comment from a morose, drunken Meyer in the Logan Airport bar. This was a wild-goose chase with which Jack Moselle had been only too willing to help. Still, he supposed it was better than being at home, sleeping the day off. That would be just ducking his head against the onslaught of the chemical-imbalance depression that he knew was coming. Better to be out and about, making forward motion, however small. Some tidbit about the young Gerald Meyer might prove useful. What, though? The brand of cigarettes he smoked, Camels or Luckies? The way he earned his pocket money? At the sound of a muffled voice, Alex stood up, but the sprightly if vague old Lady had not returned.
“Excuse me?” he called out. “Did you say something?” He got no answer, but he heard a key turn in the latch of the street door behind him. The door admitted a tall man in a dark cloth cap, a dark suit, and an open olive-green poplin raincoat. Under the cap, he had a soft round face with sharp eyes.
“Come with me now, Mr. Glauberman,” he commanded. “Right quick, too. No getting away this time. You’re interested in motorcars, they say. I’ve got a right nice Jag. Step lively now.”
The tone was bored, but the man’s bearing was alert. He looked like a crafty choir boy, except for the lines and the deep pouches under the eyes. Beneath the left pouch an old white scar stood out, reaching all the way to the soft chin.
Alex turned toward the doorway through which his hostess had left. She was in it again, but only said, “Better do what he says, dear. The tea will have to wait for some other time.”
“Lady Jane Friedhoff,” Alex said. “Well, I should have known. Okay, Mr. uh…whoever. Let’s go take a look.”
Alex did not attempt to argue or to run as the big man followed him out the door. A cold drizzle fell on his head. The Jaguar, double-parked, was a deep maroon color. Inside, it had plush upholstery to match. The driver was just a kid himself, hatless, with short, razor-cut hair. He pulled away as soon as Alex and the man giving the orders were seated in back. A tape player emitted soft sounds from four speakers. A piano and a bass did something between kitsch and jazz.
“Take off your jacket,” said the man in the cloth cap. He went through the pockets methodically, removing airplane napkins, half-chewed toothpicks, two ballpoint pens, the London street guide, and the slip of paper from Moselle’s secretary. He said, “Empty your trousers and let me frisk you.”
Alex handed over his wallet, the spare key to the house in Hackney, and some loose British change. He knelt awkwardly on the floor so the man could satisfy himself that this was really all.
“Don’t carry much but the genuine item, do you?” Cloth Cap said in the monotone to which Alex was getting accustomed. “I’m lifting twenty quid to pay for my time. Don’t look as though you’ll miss it.” He closed the wallet with a sharp snap and handed it to Alex. “Smart,” he said, “leaving your passport home. If I nicked it, that would cost you a couple of days. No London address, neither— just this key here.” He tossed the key up and down in his wide, creased palm, then returned it and the spare change as well.
“Now see here,” he added. “We’re both of us armed, Pete there and me. And I’m going to put this pair of cuffs on you to keep you from getting notions about taking off.” He held up a pair of plastic handcuffs like garbage-bag ties— the kind police used for making mass arrests. Alex turned and put his hands behind him. The plastic cut into his flesh.
Mass arrest was not an experience Alex had gone through recently. But what he felt now was something he recognized from an earlier era. He accepted the cuffs much as he might have if he’d chosen to sit down in a singing, chanting crowd and then, finally, been dragged off to jail. It was the same feeling of being one moment big, bombastic, and the next moment small, a fly in a web. The same sudden realization that now, stuck, you lacked any resource at all except patience.
The driver came to a stop in a no-parking zone beside the Thames. Through the droplets on the window Alex could see a tour boat going by. He told himself that he wouldn’t have been honored by lunch with the big boss, if his fate was to be dumped in the river by the hired help. He twisted his bound hands into the corner of the seat for comfort.
“Good,” Cloth Cap said. “I like to see who I’m speaking to. Now. Suppose you’re walking down a street like this, mate, after visiting the nobility and all. You expect the law and the Iron Lady and the Queen are behind you. Then some bloke nudges you into a car and takes you for a ride, and nobody lifts a finger. Gives you a nasty shock, don’t it?”
Alex wanted to say that he didn’t put much stock in the law or Mrs. Thatcher, but he couldn’t guess what the man’s politics might be. He couldn’t summon up the nonchalance, either. A contorted shrug was the best he could do.
“Your friend Meyer tried to pull the seat out from under his old friend’s arse. He tried to take away a businessman’s protection under the law. That weren’t fair play.”
Alex nodded. A little information was better than none. “What exactly did Meyer do?” he asked.
“Kinda literal-minded, aren’t you?” Cloth Cap tilted Alex’s head by the chin as if to see him in a different light. “Not in a place to be asking the questions, either. But now you got us by the short hairs, to a degree. So I’ll explain it in words you can understand. Meyer had a bright idea to ball up the political protection.”
Ah, thought Alex. A cog, as Moselle had said. A little tooth that makes a big wheel go round. A high-class bagman, working through his position in a very legitimate bank. What Meyer did was to help Interface do its interfacing by forwarding hush money, bribe money, campaign contributions. One form these took, if Moselle had been telling the truth about the contents of the package, was something called banker’s acceptances, whatever those might be. But Meyer had been threatening to screw this up somehow, and the package was part of that threat.
“So you got the idea now, do you? Now, the next idea is that you got nothing to do with that big boys’ game. If the daughter’s got something belongs to us, you just go and bring it back like a gentleman. Otherwise, we’ve got other means. Do you read me now, mate?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Cause there’s limits to our patience. Now, I don’t know what the lady got out of you, but I’m asking you straight. Who the devil are you, and what other good turns did Meyer hire you on for?”
“I’m a car mechanic. I work in Somerville, Massachusetts. I like cars because I’m curious about how things work. I met Meyer in the post office in that town, this past Friday. I was curious about him. He had a proposition for me.”
The big man shook his head, squinting at Alex in a fashion that creased the soft places around his eyes. Then he hammered his right fist into Alex’s left cheekbone. Alex’s head slammed back against the padded upholstery, just behind the side window. The fibers of the plush maroon ceiling went double before his eyes. The other fist exploded into his solar plexus. His mouth sprang open and struggled vainly to take in air. Instinctively he drew up his knees while he remained helpless, paralyzed, from the waist up. His lungs burned and then they slowly, painfully filled.
“He used to do that in the ring,” Pete the driver said. “Think what he could do to your ugly face if he had room to wind up.”
Cloth Cap took in Alex’s troubles with his canny, deep-set eyes. “That may be the real goods you gave me, and it may not. That’s not for me to say. But curiosity is something that you best forget all about. Now, where do we find you if we want you, here in London?”
“Sorry,” said Alex. “That’s personal.”
The right fist hit the same spot again. Alex had the presence of mind to lean away from it. That lessened the shock of his skull against the car body, but it didn’t do much for his cheek. This time the punch was like a spike piercing through to the bone. Alex made himself lower his knees, and waited for the rhythmic agony of the two-punch to his stomach or his crotch.
“You want it to stay personal,” the man said, “you be a good soldier. If we want to
take the trouble, there ain’t gonna be much you can hide. Girlfriend, wife, kid, your old ma at home with her knitting. Okay, Pete, let’s go. Where was you off to next, Mr. Glauberman?”
Still tensing for the next blow, Alex said as coolly as he could, “Victoria Station. If I’m going to do that job, then I’ve got tickets to buy.”
“Victoria, Pete. Now she was a queen worth writing home about. Showed the fuckin’ wogs what for, Victoria did.” Alex was glad not to have said anything smart about Thatcher. Pete slid the Jaguar into gear and glided through slow, narrow streets, while Alex turned his eyes to the blurred, watery outlines of stone and brick. When the car came to a stop, Cloth Cap leaned past him to open the curb-side door. “Out you go, then, mate. Victoria Street. Station’s a block to the left. New Scotland Yard a short piece t’other way.”
Alex had one foot out the door when he felt a small tug on his wrists. His shoulders relaxed as his arms fell free. He flinched at the thought of the blade that had sliced the cuffs, but in a burst of bravado he looked back to say thanks. The punch caught him sideways on the jaw and spilled his head out into the rain. Something like lightning against his ribs sent him sprawling on the broad sidewalk. He heard pedestrians ooh and ah, and sensed them forming a circle around him. The drizzle stung the raw skin of his cheek. He tasted sweet-and-salty blood on his tongue. When his vision cleared, he found himself surrounded by gaping teeth and staring eyes, shop windows full of goods dimly visible behind them. Spread fingers reached out for him.
The sleeve of his jacket had ripped on the pavement. He sat up, vaguely brushing it. His ribs still blazed, while his left shoulder ached dully where he had landed. He swallowed blood and probed through his beard to feel for the teeth on his lower jaw. They were all there. He supposed that had been one last warning he had received. After a few bloody swallows he accepted the hands of a young man in black leather and a woman with a stripe of purple hair.
“A falling-out with my new friend,” he said when he stood. He was just in time to see the maroon Jaguar turn the corner back into the maze of side streets.
