Basic Law

by J Sydney Jones

  “Such as Black Forest clocks?”

  She looks up at hers on the wall, and her eyes blink in understanding. She nods.

  “So that’s how you guessed? Because of a clock.”

  “Partly. So why the call in the middle of the night if you’re no longer lovers?”

  Randall comes back in with cigarettes in hand just in time to hear about lovers and almost drops the packet.

  She shakes her head, reaching for the cigarettes, and lights one up. She is one of those smokers who seem to actually eat the smoke, to ingest it like protein. She sits back against the wall, luxuriating, her lungs filled with smoke, and then finally exhales.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try us,” Kramer says.

  Another drag. A sigh. “Okay. Because he’s so sad. Because he’s an old man all alone with no wife and no daughter. All that’s left to him is his business and Reni’s death, even more than her life, is damaging that.”

  “I’m weeping for him,” Randall says.

  “See, I said you wouldn’t understand.”

  “This is the same pitiful old man,” Kramer says, “whom you had an affair with only a few years ago. Right?”

  “So I’ve got a father fixation. So arrest me. What’s it to you if I tell him about your investigations or not?”

  Kramer weighs this one. “Because now we’ll never know about the eighty thousand. That editor in Berlin got his money back. Did you know that? Reni supposedly left it to him in her will, just in case. And if that’s true, it means she may very well have been planning suicide.”

  “That’s what everyone keeps telling you, asshole.”

  Kramer lets it go. “But you told Müller about the editor, didn’t you?”

  After a hesitation, she nods.

  “So we’ll never know if Reni’s father sent the money to avoid a scandal, or if Reni actually stipulated it,” Kramer says.

  “What’s he say?” she asks.

  Kramer rolls his eyes. “Come on. What do you think he’s going to say?”

  She considers this as the ash tumbles off the end of her cigarette onto her robe.

  “I still don’t see what it matters,” she says after a moment’s silence. “God, I could use a drink.”

  Kramer and Randall rise in unison; it is as if they both realize this interview can go no further. There have been no significant looks today between Randall and Martok; like they never met before.

  “You want my opinion?” she says as they go to the door. “I think you fellows are sniffing at the wrong pile of shit. I think you’re afraid to look at what’s staring everyone square in the face.”

  “And what is that?” Randall says.

  “You keep saying Reni didn’t kill herself. Okay. Assume murder. Who stands to gain? You keep chasing some Mr. X who was in some mythical memoirs. But get simple. Get direct. Who inherits? Reni was a wealthy woman, or didn’t you know? Her mother left her well off, and Reni invested wisely. Someone stands to make a tidy sum off her death.”

  Kramer thinks of the housing project he saw at Schnelling and Walther.

  “That’s her father, then,” he says.

  She blows smoke at his suggestion. “Think again. That’s Gerhard. Reni told me he would get the house, the stocks, the whole shitaree. Karl-Heinz is only the executor. He’s already got enough money of his own, anyway. No, you find Gerhard. Ask him how it feels to be a cuckold; see if he has fond memories of his dead wife.”

  Two messages await Kramer back at the hotel in Bad Lunsburg: another threat from Marty, though this one gives him a date four days hence by which he has to return to work or Kate takes over, and one from Helmut in Hamburg who has tracked him down through the Vienna office, requesting him to call, no matter how late he gets in.

  He puts the first on hold till the morning, and dials Helmut’s number. It is picked up on the second ring by Helmut himself.

  They make polite noises of hello and how are you, and then Helmut gets down to business.

  “Look, Sam, when you were here, there’s something I failed to tell you.”

  “What’s that, Helmut?”

  “About the Prague trip. About the car bomb. You remember who rented the car? Who got it gassed and ready to go?”

  It’s not something Kramer has spent much time considering over the years. “Who?”

  “The way I remember, Reni delegated the job to Gerhard.” There is a muffled noise off the phone, and then Helmut’s voice speaking away from the mouthpiece, “Just a second honey. I’ll be right there.” Then back to Kramer again, “You hear me, Sam?”

  “Did he?”

  “What?”

  “Did Gerhard rent the car and get it serviced?”

  “That’s the way I remember it.”

  “So he was the last one to touch it before you and Maria headed for Prague?” Kramer asks.

  “I thought you’d want to know.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Kramer awakens the next morning to a gnawing anxiety that has nothing to do with Reni’s death, Vogel and his goons, or Gerhard’s whereabouts. As he lies on his back in the single bed listening to Randall snore and smelling the sharp bite of late fall coming from the open window, Kramer discovers the anxiety is all about filthy lucre. His finances. Or lack thereof.

  Up to now, he’s been playing it fast and loose with Marty, with his desk in Vienna, with such mundane aspects of life as how one earns a living if thrown out of their job at forty-five years of age. Wordsmith for hire: a bit tarnished and frayed, but some good mileage left on the chassis. Fucking marvelous, that prospect.

  Kramer gets up, not waking Randall. He showers, dresses, and slips out of the room. Over coffee in the palm-filled solarium, he reviews the money front. In the week he’s been on this investigation, he’s clocked four air fares and six nights of lodging at a hundred plus a night—thank God for off-season rates. Not to mention restaurants and rented cars. For two. Well more than three thousand dollars and all on plastic at twelve percent. He doesn’t even know his credit line; they’ll tell him when he reaches it, he figures. He takes a quick drink of coffee, like it’s a bourbon up, and wonders how the hell he’ll ever pay it off.

  Next comes the bank account. At last reckoning, he had about twelve hundred in savings. The checking account is a joke, filled up on the first, empty by the second. Hand-to-mouthing it, Kramer, he tells himself. At your age. You miss one paycheck and you’re on the street.

  He finishes the coffee, swallowing pride with it.

  If you’re one paycheck away from the street, you don’t play fast and loose with the employer, Kramer. You don’t tell him to bugger off in a million silent ways.

  He takes out his pad and pencil and begins composing a fax; no, two faxes, he decides. He’s not going to do any talking this morning; rather he’ll approach it the way he knows best, by the written word. One for Marty and one for Kate.

  One good thing about Friday: no weekend editions, so the coming two days are free, anyway. Marty’s fax is easy: he just promises him the world. Back in Vienna by Wednesday at the latest—though he hasn’t got a clue when he will return—with a story on neo-Nazis and government collusion in Germany that will knock his socks off. Besides, I have vacation due. The ace in the hole. But conciliatory; not telling, asking.

  Kate’s is harder. He needs to convince her to keep the office afloat without bellyaching to Paris. With her, he simply tells the truth; that this is a story he cannot let go of. Trust me, just this once. Pull the extra weight; I’ll pay it back.

  So Kramer finishes these messages, sits back in his chair feeling pious as hell and orders another coffee. The two slips of paper in front of him hold the tiger of anxiety and financial panic at bay. But for how long?

  He looks about the glassed-in terrace, redolent of wet soil in terra-cotta pots, sta
rched linen, and the late nineteenth century. He expects to see an aristocratic Russian family enter at any moment, children neatly decked out in sailor suits, nanny bringing up the rear; all bustles and sun umbrellas and a consumptive older sister.

  Instead, Kommissar Boehm saunters through the door, hands in pockets and a porkpie hat on his massive head. He is wearing his ubiquitous blue suit, moisture at the shoulders. Kramer looks up; rain is washing off the glass dome overhead.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Boehm says, drawing back a chair and seating himself without waiting for an invitation.

  Kramer smiles wanly. “I was going to come and see you later this morning.”

  Boehm takes off his hat, shaking beaded water onto the floor. “The wettest damn fall I remember in years. I’m growing webs between my toes. So what were you going to see me about?” Boehm says, shaking his head at the waiter who is approaching their table, shooing him away. “I thought maybe you’d have come in yesterday.”

  “I was busy.”

  Boehm rubs the end of his nose with thumb and forefinger. “So I heard. He called this morning.”

  “Müller?”

  A nod from Boehm.

  “What’d he want?”

  “Cooperation.” Boehm smiles with his mouth, not his eyes.

  “Such as?” Kramer says.

  “I tell you to lay off private citizens. To mind your own business. Let the police do theirs. That a person might have recourse to a harassment suit. That sort of thing.”

  Kramer feels the back of his neck go red, feels the heat of it in his throat. “Hold on here, friend. I hope to hell you’re not telling me to lay off.”

  Boehm stays calm, picking at a cuticle on his left thumb. “That’s what he wanted me to tell you,” he says. “So I’m telling you. What you do about it is your business. You sure pissed him off. Maybe he doesn’t like your bandage.”

  “He’s afraid of publicity. Bad for business.”

  Boehm considers this with a pinched mouth like he’s sucking a lemon. “He sounded angrier than ‘bad for business’ this morning.”

  “An old woman who once worked for the Müllers actually saw the memoirs at Reni’s. That’s what I told him. He didn’t like that much.”

  “So the memoirs are for real?”

  “What have I been telling you for the last week?”

  “Kramer, this line is boring me. I delivered my message. Now you deliver yours. What’d you find out in Munich?”

  Kramer spends the next few minutes detailing the events of his visit to Vogel and his denial of any personal knowledge of Reni, of how the car in question was supposedly stolen from him. He also tells of the discovery of his old friend, Rick Fujikawa, and of Reni’s visits to him after her monthly meetings and of her bragging about seeing membership and donor lists. Finally, he relates the fact that Rick was beaten by skinheads four weeks ago.

  Boehm’s face shows interest at the mention of membership lists momentarily, then freezes into an impassive mask again as he lets the information settle in for a time, considering it, piecing it together.

  “So he was beat up when Müller was still alive?” Boehm says.

  Kramer nods.

  “And he can’t remember the name of the group Müller was visiting?”

  “No,” Kramer says. “But I figure Vogel’s goons followed her when she left …”

  Boehm nods impatiently. “Yes. You told me what you figure. Not something that holds up in court, though. This Rick. You say he hangs out in the red-light district. His live-in is still in the trade?”

  Kramer nods again.

  Boehm takes out his own pad and pen now and begins making notes to himself. Kramer listens to the scratch of writing for a time, then Boehm flips the pad closed and returns it to his drooping breast pocket.

  “You should have come in yesterday,” he says.

  Before Kramer can reply, Boehm pushes on.

  “I’ll look into the assault on your friend. Who knows? There may be a connection to Vogel. Maybe Müller was followed by Vogel’s boys to this Fujikawa. Dumber things have been done. But I don’t want to roll Vogel over for simple assault. No. I want him on the big stuff.”

  Boehm’s face suddenly goes dark, his eyes narrowing into slits like crossbow apertures in a fortress. Kramer feels uncomfortably like he’s in the sights.

  “So we trade,” Boehm says, casting off the evil mood. “I’ve been looking into the Gorik case. Tracking down witnesses in Berlin. That was a sloppy job of investigation. If I didn’t know better, I’d think my comrades in arms at Berlin central don’t give a shit about the death of an ex-intelligence officer from the East. I’d think they figured however he died, whoever got him, it was good riddance to bad rubbish. So I picked back through the people who saw the accident, and one thing I came up with was the car.”

  “You got a make?”

  “No such luck,” he says. “But one old girl did remember something interesting about it. It was big and fast and didn’t even stop after knocking Gorik into next week.”

  He looks at Kramer shrewdly for a moment, pacing himself.

  “And,” he adds, smiling, “it was purple. The old girl was sure of that. When do you ever see a purple car anymore?”

  This information sets bells ringing in Kramer’s mind, making him recall the car that came close to hitting him earlier in the week.

  “So I ask the next question,” Boehm continues. “This time, it’s closer to home. Your Frau Gruber. I’m curious about that car parked outside her house one night. I talked with her this morning.”

  Kramer feels himself tense up, guessing at the rest.

  “It was dark, she tells me,” Boehm goes on, folding his massive hands on the table in front of him. “But the flashlight lit things up for her. No swearing on a Bible for her, but she’s pretty certain the car parked that night was dark blue or purple.”

  “It doesn’t say on the registration?” Kramer says.

  Boehm shakes his head.

  “And why wasn’t there a tag on the registration when you looked the license number up?” Kramer asks. “Some note about the car being stolen.”

  “There wasn’t, but that means nothing. We’re just getting our records computerized; there’s no cross-referencing yet. But if Vogel tells you to ask the police about it, then he must have filed a report. He’s got himself covered. We’ve got some linkage, though. And now it’s a stolen car, so it allows me to do some checking, to be interested in it without people getting suspicious.”

  “People such as other cops? Have the neo-Nazis gotten that powerful?”

  Boehm shrugged. “My old grandmother always told me better safe than sorry.”

  “Am I getting a message here?” Kramer says.

  Boehm flexes his meshed fingers, cracking a knuckle. “Maybe. You’re a smart journalist, Kramer. You must have other leads to follow.”

  “I thought you wanted to nail the bastard.”

  “Oh, I most fervently do, Kramer. But not for killing you. I mean, I could let you bumble around some more until you make yourself such a nuisance to Vogel that he has you eliminated. Then maybe, just maybe, I’d turn up some more traces, something to connect him to your death. But it’s not a sure bet. You’re not interested in long shots, are you?”

  “I know how to take care of myself.”

  Boehm nods sideways skeptically. “It’s time you let me take the lead with Vogel.”

  “What? You don’t want an amateur mucking up the traces, is that it? Christ, man, you wouldn’t even be on Vogel’s trail if it weren’t for me. You don’t give a damn if Reni was murdered or not, do you? It’s only important that you might be able to pin it on Vogel.”

  “He had motive,” Boehm says. “If, in fact, Müller infiltrated his cell. The neo-Nazis are very reluctant for anybody to know whe
re their money comes from. And the purple car that killed Gorik teases me.” Boehm looks down at his hands, then up at Kramer. “But no, you’re right. I don’t give a damn about Müller. I figure she was a big girl, able to look out for herself. I’m still not convinced her death wasn’t plain old suicide. But I’d be a fool to do a pass on anything that could trip up Vogel. Especially homicide. So I tell you, follow your other leads. Shake other cages for a while. Who knows, they may lead us back to Vogel in the end.” He leans back in his chair. “It’s called division of labor.”

  Kramer looks hard at the Kommissar, trying to read his face for motivation and honesty. It is a blank; a solid chunk of granite staring back at him.

  “If I find out you’re running a cover-up …”

  “Don’t even finish it, Kramer. We want to part company today as friends. I don’t cover up, okay?”

  They sit across the table for a silent moment, eyes locked like newlyweds who failed to get it off the night before.

  It makes sense to Kramer; a crazy kind of logic. A purple car in common is nothing to go on. Suggestive only. Let the cop sniff around for a while.

  Kramer has other leads to follow.

  “How about some help tracking a guy?”

  Boehm squints at the suggestion. “You got a reason?”

  “There’s a husband who stood to profit from Reni’s death. He’s suddenly very nonexistent.” Kramer says nothing about the pull of the past, the search for who is responsible for what happened in Prague in 1968. It’s light-years away from what Boehm cares about, Kramer figures. Money is a tidier motive.

  Boehm is nodding. “I know about him. Didn’t even come back for the funeral. He a friend of yours?”

  Kramer has no idea how much Boehm knows about Reni’s background; decides on limited honesty.

  “Sort of.”

  Boehm laughs, breaking the tension between them. “Sort of. Like the sort of good old friend who stole your girl, in fact.”

  “You’ve been doing your homework.”

  “I try. You settling old scores with this, or do you really believe Gerhard Schwarz could kill someone? He lived here, you know. I used to see him in the shops. Husband of the local celebrity. He didn’t look like the killing kind.”