by Dick Cluster
“Forward it to a Captain Gerhard Schultheiss, West Berlin police. And to Cynthia’s friends, too, or their lawyers, to make sure there’s no cover-up. Get somebody to whisper a few words in the ears of one or two of Schultheiss’s superiors.”
“Your wish is my command. I assume you don’t need my help with your own local police?”
“I don’t think so. When they find Joanna, that will take care of itself.”
“And would you mind telling me what you know about Joanna, as long as you’re showing off?”
A small not-kosher sign began to appear in the far corner of Alex’s mind’s eye, a reminder that there were many things about the circumstances of Meyer’s putting-to-death that he still did not know. But he was feeling power now, too much power to pay the sign much mind. The more he seemed to know, the more Moselle might tell him. The more Moselle told him, the greater the chance of a slip that somehow might give Alex a new handle— a handle that could make this smooth, parasitic creature pay for Cynthia’s death.
“I know Meyer met her at the airport Friday night. I know she and he have been an item for a while now. I know he had her pretend to be his second daughter when he wanted to see Cynthia but was afraid to go himself. The cops know all this. More important, they’ve got an eyewitness who saw her and Meyer leave together Friday. I think they’ve got more evidence they haven’t told me about. I don’t know what hand you had in that, Jack, but I expect you were happy to see Joanna put your sick old dog to sleep. That way your two American employees who caught up with Meyer the day I met him didn’t have to do it. Maybe if l had gotten blown up with Cynthia, Jerry’s death could still have been pinned on me. But not now. I wouldn’t get in deeper by protecting Joanna now, if I were you.”
A laugh crackled from the speakerphone. The electronics made it even more mirthless, more bitter, than it already was. “You should be thinking about protecting yourself, hotshot,” a woman’s voice said.
As Alex whirled, the receptionist in the blue suit appeared in the doorway. The blond wig was gone, along with the false British accent. Her own hair was dark, shiny, short, and shaped to her head. The big glasses were gone, too. Her eyes were big but not wide— experienced, angry eyes— under eyebrows penciled into sharp angles. They were set in a face that was round yet severe, a face Alex had been trying to call up since the Jewish cemetery, the afternoon before.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” she whined in a high-pitched little-boy tone. “I have a plant here for Mr. Meyer.” She carried a pistol, a big one, like a police revolver, in her hand. She raised the gun toward Alex. Alex grew warm all over.
He knew he had been foolish. He felt a fool’s urge to stare stupidly at the evidence of his mistakes. But he told himself that Joanna did not call the shots here, or fire them without permission. He forced himself to turn his back on the woman and her gun.
“You don’t want me dead in your office,” he said.
“It’s not Jack who’s facing a murder charge,” Joanna Connor rapped out behind him. “I think you made that perfectly clear. It’s us small fry that have to look out for ourselves.”
“What’s she to you?” Alex demanded of Jack. He hoped ignoring the woman would make her mad. Not mad enough to shoot without Jack’s go-ahead. Just mad enough to make a mistake.
“What’s she to me?” Moselle leaned back in his chair again, stroking his short, handsome, pepper-and-salt beard. “Let’s go back to your Minister of Justice in, where was it, Hesse? Right, Hesse. And his broker. He can’t waltz into his broker’s office and say, ‘Hey, somebody laid a sehr guten instrument on me, a hundred thousand G’s— would you mind turning it into cash?’ He doesn’t want to make his broker suspicious. The thing has to come like any normal acquisition, from a broker in, let’s say, Boston. So Jerry needs a partner who works in a place like that. Then let’s say— as you did say, Alex— that the feds start to close in. So Jerry and his partner decide to grab what they can for themselves, while it lasts.”
“Let’s say, everybody shut up,” commanded Joanna. In the moment of silence, Alex had time to wonder what charms the late Meyer had retained that would raise the hopes of a woman like this. Maybe it was not so much Meyer’s charms as her own history. Unfortunately he knew nothing about her, except her home address, her manner with alleged delivery men, and the one moment when she pushed Meyer through that narrow checkpoint into death. When Jack picked up his story again, she did not interrupt.
“I found out that some payments weren’t ending up in the right place,” Moselle said. “Joanna had the good sense to see it was time to change sides again. Double-cross the crosser, you know. I was willing to let bygones be bygones.”
“Sure,” Alex said. “You’re generous. On the condition she got rid of Jerry for good. But now I don’t see why you need her. Just like you don’t need my body in your office.”
Moselle made an easy swivel in his chair, once around, like a carnival barker spinning his wheel of fortune.
“I don’t know. I think you overprice that little list, just like Jerry did. With his testimony, or Joanna’s, it might be worth something. Even with Cynthia’s, maybe. Not with yours. And believe me, not all by itself. The folks looking into all that, their job is to keep the banking industry pure of criminal influence. With Meyer gone, that’s pretty much taken care of. As for your local police, if they could touch me I wouldn’t deserve to be here. But you, Alex, you were Meyer’s errand boy. You got big ideas, you shot him, you cleaned him out. If you turn up dead, somewhere in London, that’s just another falling-out among thieves. They may have a better suspect, like you say, but if they can’t find her they’ll settle for you. Dead suspects don’t talk back.”
He looked down at his hands again, then straight at Alex. “All in all, I’d rather have Joanna working for me, with you out of the picture, than Joanna singing for her life, with you pulling the strings.”
“Sure,” Alex said. “And once I’m gone, you can always turn her in for two murders, if you need to.”
Get mad, lady, Alex prayed. Now is the time to lose your cool. He turned, hoping to see the gun waver. But Joanna’s eyes were harder than Jack’s. They had seen too many bad decisions already, and too much bad luck. Now they exuded loathing, and the points of the brows punctuated the emotion. The set of her lips was tired, but sure. She took two steps sideways, out of the doorway. Her thumb caressed the hammer of the revolver.
“I want you to walk to the elevator,” she said. “And get in.”
“One last question,” Alex rattled out. “What the hell did you see in Meyer? Besides money, I mean. That big guy you rushed home to bed with, after you shot Jerry… that guy looked a lot better to me.”
This time Joanna Connor took two steps toward Alex. Her finger flexed on the trigger. But Jack said, “Don’t,” and she stopped. She hurled words at Alex from where she was.
“That man was my husband, asshole. Jerry wasn’t my lover, or whatever it is you think. Jerry was my father. Jerry was my father, and he was ruining my life. He ruined everybody’s life that he touched. He talked me into this thing, a little money on the side. Then it started to blow up. So he talked me into the next move, double-crossing Jack. Finally I smartened up. Now do you understand? I’ve got two kids to think about that mean a lot more to me than you do. I didn’t like killing Jerry, though I had enough reasons. But believe me, I’m going to like killing you.”
Alex cast a last look at Jack, but Jack had swiveled again, turning his back. So Alex backed slowly out the door, his thoughts whirling and then straightening out. Gerald Meyer’s second daughter followed him with hatred in her eyes. He backed across the reception area. The elevator was waiting, its door open.
“Jack had your sister killed,” he said. “Cynthia was your sister, and she didn’t deserve to die.”
“Sister!” Joanna’s knuckles whitened on the handle of the gun. “She was a figment of his imagination, and his bullshit silly pride. I had to go with him to find her, b
ecause he got principles all of a sudden, when everything started to cave in. Didn’t she tell you he was going to take good care of her, finally? Now shut up and get in, or I’ll shoot you right here.”
She motioned with the revolver. Alex went.
“And in the end,” he said almost to himself, “Jerry cleaned you out. He sent everything to her, because he guessed you’d gone back over to Jack. The deserving daughter, the selfish daughter. No wonder he quoted King Lear at me.”
“Yeah.” Joanna stepped warily into the elevator cage. “Jerry understood a lot. In books.”
She punched a code into the security system, and the elevator door closed. She turned sideways to Alex, gun hand under her suit jacket. The butt was hidden behind her wrist. The mouth of the barrel made a slight bulge in the jacket, in front of her left arm. Alex raised his hands against the brass bars, like a stickup victim in an old Western. What he had to do was keep her mind on his words, not his pose. The words didn’t have to make sense. They just had to keep her thinking. He swallowed, and she pushed the button marked B.
“What are you going to do after you shoot me?” he demanded. “Hide out forever, wherever Jack finds to shut you away? What about your husband and your kids then? You didn’t convince anybody with those little tricks about the gun and my card, you know. It might almost have worked, except Jerry told me you shot him. He told me right there against the trash can, before he died. That’s what brought me to your house so quick. I didn’t know what to do about you, but I wanted to get myself a look. My mistake was giving you time to get away.”
The elevator glided down between glass walls. Alex raised his hands higher. He edged along the rim of the cage, trying to put the fire pole between himself and the gun. Not that the slim, gleaming pole would do him any good.
“Shut up!” she rapped out. “And stay still. I mean it. Don’t fucking move.”
Alex stayed still. Eye level was just a foot off the reception area carpet now. The bottom half of the elevator would be visible from below. His legs and her legs, but no story would they tell. He waited a second to see whether she was going to respond.
“You’re lying,” she told him, but her eyes doubted that. “He couldn’t have…”
“It was short and sweet, you mean, a bullet to the brain? Oh no, Joanna. He lingered long enough. And do you want to know how your half-sister died? Thanks to your friend Jack, upstairs. She died stuck in a car, conscious, counting the seconds till the gas would catch and burn her alive.”
God, let that not be true, Alex told himself. Let her have gone out in an instant, as Meyer must have. And let Meredith see my hands in the air, and understand.
As the elevator sank, the herbal store seemed to rise at his feet and then levitate upward. The pastry shop was behind him, out of his sight. Then everything disappeared, and the shaft was concrete instead of glass. A ceiling lamp gave off a dim light insight the darkened space. Alex was tempted to crumple and roll, but he didn’t. A switchblade in the dark was one thing. A pistol would be another. And this was no airport lobby, and Joanna was no hired gun. She brought the weapon out from under her jacket. With her free hand, she pointed to the knob of a steel door.
“Get out,” she ordered. As he opened the door, Alex saw her finger press a series of little buttons, and then the big one marked 2. Express to Jack, that would mean. No escape route. No reinforcements. She stepped out after him, gun at his back. “Over by that boiler,” she said. “And kneel down.”
It was a new boiler, probably put in when the renovations were done. Besides the boiler, there were just banks of gas and electric meters, odd pieces of lumber, and an exit door. The exit door wasn’t bolted, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t locked. The basement was much smaller than the upper floors, for some reason. Alex told himself that the cellar of a no-longer fire station would be crazy a place to die. He reminded himself that, unlike other people, he knew where he should look for death. It was like being in a prophecy: the doom couldn’t come before its time. Prophecies were tricky, though. Sometimes you had to give them some help. Over by the boiler, he knelt down and then sprang around it, keeping low.
“It’s gas, Joanna,” he shouted. “You don’t want to shoot wild. If you spring a leak, we’ll both go up this time. I lied to you, yes, but not all the way. He was dead, you’re right. But he told me anyhow, in a different way. I know, and the cops know. Now stop and think. You can quit while it’s still a family crime. He fucked up your life, he led you into his crooked racket. And then you were in fear of your life from Jack. And it was all his doing. A jury might understand that. They wouldn’t feel the same way about you killing me.”
From the elevator shaft came a quiet whump, and then another. In a flash, he knew what those sounds had to be. He peeked around the boiler and saw that Joanna knew it too. She was backing against the wall, near the exit, trying to keep both him and the shaft covered. Groping behind his back, he found a piece of two-by-four and hurled it at her head before she could try putting a bullet through the sheet steel of the door. As she ducked, he threw another, yelling, “Now! She can’t see!”
Then the door burst open, and Alex and Paula and Stork all charged at once. Alex went along the wall, where she’d have to turn the farthest, where an erring slug would miss the gas supply line— he hoped. Otherwise it would be one last bang, and they’d all go the way Cynthia had. Joanna turned, and Alex saw the hole at the end of the barrel. He dove just before he heard the shot.
The bullet did not lodge in his body or in the pipe. When he got up from the floor, Stork had Joanna and Paula had the gun. The elevator door showed the empty shaft through which they’d come— like firefighters to the rescue, down the pole.
“You okay, man?” Stork asked. Joanna stared dully at Alex, the fire dying in her eyes.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Thanks, both of you. What about Meredith?”
“She probably got cut a little, busting the glass.” Paula imitated the motion of swinging a large object with two hands. “The door doesn’t open unless the car is there. She’s a fast thinker. You owe her a few. Now is this all over, or what?”
26. Alex at Home
It wasn’t over, quite. There was the task of forcing the exit and climbing the service stairs, gun in hand. There was the task of cementing the deal, all over again. For better or for worse, Alex learned that a loaded gun gives you no leverage unless you are prepared to use it.
He was severely tempted, once. Jack offered him an extra fifteen hundred pounds as compensation for mental anguish. Right then the trigger felt very functional under his index finger— poised to strike, coiled and ready, in a way the switchblade on the train had not been. He understood why guns lent a hand to so many lethal impulses that might otherwise come and go without result. But he didn’t shoot. He wasn’t built that way, or perhaps Cynthia’s death did not cut him all the way to the bone that would demand revenge, no matter how. In any case, Jack stayed alive and promised to get on the phone to Germany right away. The only one to lose under the terms of the new deal was Joanna. The terms required her to call the police and request to be sent to America to stand trial. Who else she was going to implicate, when her moment of truth came, was going to depend on her calculation of the odds.
Meanwhile, Friday morning was gone. In the afternoon, Alex got his stitches checked and his blood drawn at the clinic of Meredith’s university. His white count was down to the low side of normal, but the doctor assured him this would not inhibit his ability to fight off normal infections. His platelets were fine. He ought to be ready for his next round of chemotherapy in a week and a half, no need to fear.
The idea of another round advanced like a distant thundercloud— the kind of dark cloud that spreads ominously while you walk a mountain trail or a remote beach. You can tell yourself that getting drenched won’t be the total disaster that it seems; it will be followed by getting dry. Yet there is no solace in this telling. The only solace is in trying to ignore the approaching dark
ness and the muffled booms.
Friday evening, Alex was visited by a British policeman bearing a message from his counterpart in America. Joanna Connor had waived extradition proceedings and was on her way, under guard, to Sergeant Trevisone. If Alex did not return voluntarily to present whatever evidence he had, steps would have to be taken to bring him home under duress. Alex bargained for one more day; the policeman said he would be there tomorrow afternoon, as a courtesy, to pick him up.
Saturday morning, Alex talked to Marianne by telephone. It was a long and difficult talk, made much longer and more painful by the process of constructing inadequate sentences in each other’s languages. Alex concluded that Jack was keeping up his end of the agreement. The hands that had actually placed the bomb had been cuffed for now. Marianne invited Alex to visit if he was ever again in Berlin. She did not invite him to make that visit soon.
After the telephone call, Alex and Meredith shopped for an excellent wool sweater for Maria, and posters for Maria and Elizabeth and Matthew. Then Meredith took him on a historical tube-and-walking tour, long promised and a week delayed. The tour began in the low, crowded East End, where working women had fought for suffrage. It ended high on top of Hampstead Heath, not far from Marx’s grave. They looked down on the city in a cold October wind.
“The first night,” Alex said, “I came downstairs to see what was happening. Sunday night, the day I got here. You and Janice were up late, drinking and talking, so I went back to bed.”
“I remember,” Meredith said. “Red red wine, it made me feel so fine.”
“Janice wanted to know if I was planning to stick with you after I got certified as a temporarily normal person. In remission, ready to go on to bigger and better things.”
