Basic Law

by J Sydney Jones

  Alexandros Kariakis is waiting up for them at his home on Odos Phaistos, a small replica of an Italian villa with a wrought-iron fence surrounding it, orange-painted wooden shutters, and the sweet scent of magnolia in the courtyard. He’s got a mezedes for them of olives, stuffed grape leaves, chunks of feta, fresh tomatoes, and beans. He lives alone, has an old woman come in from the village to do his meals and keep the house tidy. Though Kramer’s age, he looks and acts two decades older, like an aging roué with an eye forever roving over the young women of the town. He keeps scandal at bay with fortnightly visits to the brothels of Athens and is one of those men for whom the idea of marriage is as foreign as Swahili.

  “We should wake the Chameleon,” Kariakis says, fetching a dusty bottle of raki out of an old Venetian chest in the low-ceilinged living room. Heavy oak furniture, tapestries on the white walls along with reproductions of Oskar Kokoschka and Francis Bacon.

  Kramer is still half-numb from the experiences of the day, but takes the proffered glass of raki gratefully.

  “Was he Irish by any chance?” Kariakis asks, holding his glass up to toast with Randall and Kramer.

  “Everyone’s Irish when it comes to death,” Randall says and throws back the drink in one gulp.

  Kramer and Kariakis do the same.

  “He was a funny one,” Kariakis says. “I did not know him well, but I liked him. He had a heart.”

  Kramer sets the empty glass down on the oak table; Kariakis refills it.

  “How long did you know him, Sam?”

  Kramer looks at the full glass and then at the doctor. “We traveled here together in the ’60s. Then went to school in Vienna. Both running from Vietnam. Keeping the student deferment intact.”

  But he finds he is no mood for a wake; revenge is more to the point.

  “So who do you think they were, Randall?” he suddenly says. “Vogel’s men?”

  “Like the inspector said, Sam. Maybe they were just hunters who pulled off a stupid round when they saw something move on a distant hillside.”

  “You didn’t believe that up on the mountain. You don’t believe it now.”

  “Who is this Vogel?” Kariakis says.

  “It’s a long story, Doc.” Kramer doesn’t take his eyes off Randall.

  “Okay,” Randall finally says. “I don’t think they were hunters. But it’s plausible. I mean weirder things have happened. No sense jumping to conclusions.”

  “I don’t think it’s jumping to conclusions to figure that somebody shooting at you for several minutes—I mean seriously shooting—is trying to kill you.”

  “But kill who, Sam?” Kariakis says, smiling. “Did these people mean to kill all three of you or just you and Randall, or were they after Gerhard and you happened to be there?”

  Kramer feels his heart leap into his throat; quite literally there is a sudden lump that prevents him from swallowing for a moment. His mind runs with what Kariakis has said, and he does not like the goalpost it’s headed for.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Kramer says. “Say we’ve rattled cages over Reni’s death, over the missing memoirs. Say that whoever killed Reni finds out we’re on their trail. So, okay, they get rid of us, right?” He looks at Randall.

  “Right.”

  Kramer pauses for another moment, and then drinks off the raki.

  “But why here? Why come all the way to Crete to do it?”

  “Because it’s out of the way,” Randall offers. “No spotlights.”

  Kramer shakes his head at this. “Accidents can be arranged all over the world. Why a shooting in Crete? Why Gerhard?”

  Kariakis refills the glasses once more. “If you do not mind an outsider offering an opinion …”

  “Please,” Kramer says.

  “Perhaps Gerhard was, in fact, the target.”

  Kramer nods, then pounds the table with a clenched fist. “You’ve got it, Doc. And we led the sons of bitches right to him. He’d still be alive if we hadn’t come looking for him.”

  “But what could he know?” Randall says. “He hasn’t even been in Germany for months.” He stops, looks down at his drink. “Duh. Pardon the slow synapses. Violence tends to disrupt my electrical system. Reni’s confidant, right?”

  Another nod from Kramer. “Right. If she was killed to suppress her memoirs, to eradicate memory of some incident, then wouldn’t our killer want to track down the person closest to her for years, who maybe knows exactly what went into those memoirs?”

  Randall sits up in his chair now, his eyes alert. “And Gerhard just happened to be nowhere available at the time. Off the face of the map. Until we came along and led them right to him.”

  They say nothing for a moment, and then Kariakis repeats his earlier question, “Who is this Vogel?”

  This time, Kramer fills him in a bit more on the possible suspects, having already told him the broad outlines of the case yesterday.

  “I do not think I would want Herr Vogel on the opposing side,” Kariakis says after listening closely for several minutes.

  “Not on your team, either,” Kramer says. “The best place for him is in a zoo.”

  Suddenly, Kramer is taken back to the ridge this afternoon. He sees Gerhard looking down the ravine and waving to the men who got out of the car. And then he’d said something about Vogel. About not liking the coincidence.

  Kramer snaps his fingers. “Gerhard knew something. Remember, Randall, just before he was shot, he said he’d have to go back with us. He had to talk with somebody. I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts it had something to do with why Reni left me. Her big secret that he couldn’t divulge, not even after her death.”

  Kariakis looks curious, but politely holds back questions. Kramer is grateful for this because he suddenly realizes he should not tell his old friend anything more. He understands that he and Randall are marked men now. There is no way the shooters can know that Gerhard did not tell them his secret. If his line of logic holds true, they will be the next targets, as well as anyone involved with them.

  “We need to get back north pronto,” he says to Randall. “Whoever’s responsible for this is pulling the strings back there.”

  Suddenly, he remembers Gerhard’s startling news about Maria; about Reni visiting her. There’s motive for you, as well, Kramer figures. If she was stuck in some Czech jail all these years, wouldn’t she maybe have an ax to grind with those she felt responsible? Like whoever set her up with the car bomb? If Helmut finally tumbled to the bomb, wouldn’t she as well, with nothing better to do than brood and kill bed bugs?

  Two directions. One leading back to Munich, the other to Prague. Kramer thinks about it for a moment, remembering the advice of Kommissar Boehm. Let the police keep tugging at Vogel, he finally tells himself. Meanwhile, we head for Prague to see Maria.

  But Kramer does not share this thought. Kariakis is one friend who’s going to stay out of the loop.

  “Kip time,” Kramer says. “We’ve got some traveling to do tomorrow.”

  “What about the investigation?” Randall says.

  Kramer stands and stretches. The raki has gone to his head, pleasantly.

  “You heard the inspector. It was a hunting accident. I’m not contesting that. Not here. Not now. Murder’s not good for tourism.”

  Kariakis corks the bottle, and Kramer shoots a grin at him.

  “Doc, I’d advise you to keep a watch on your back for a time. Those were not nice fellows this afternoon. If they think we learned something from Gerhard, they may also wonder about anybody we talk to. Get the picture?”

  Kariakis smiles broadly. “I stand warned. But I think those men, if they are professional at all, will be on a flight already from Iráklion, no? After all, Crete is an island. Large in the imagination, tiny in square footage. Foreigners still stand out, especially in the off-season. Especially if they buy weap
ons here. Which I assume they had to do. A person would be insane to try and travel with rifles through airport inspections.”

  “All the same,” Kramer says, “I’d carry a gun for a while if I were you. You do have one, don’t you?”

  Another smile from Kariakis, “Am I not a Cretan?”

  “What about tonight?” Randall says, rising now and yawning.

  “We sleep,” Kramer says.

  “Very funny. I mean what if Doc here is wrong? What if our friends come back to finish the job?”

  Kariakis has walked to a window, opens its shutter and looks out through the garden to the street beyond. He shakes his head as he turns back to them. “I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you. Our inspector is perhaps not very friendly, but is very thorough, very civic-minded. He’s posted a policeman outside.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It’s cold and gray, and the Viennese look at Kramer’s tan jealously as he paces in front of the Café Pigalle, checking the street up and down, keeping his eyes peeled for unfriendly sorts. The meet is set for four thirty. He looks in a window of the café at a clock over the bar: quarter to five.

  One of the ladies sitting at the bar dangling a fishnet-stockinged leg sees him and winks.

  Where the hell are you, Rudi?

  “Was gibts, Kramer? What’s up?”

  Kramer spins around at the sound of the voice. Rudi Tourescu is smiling up at him, dressed nattily in a double-breasted camel-hair overcoat. He is hatless, his black hair plastered to his head like he’s just stepped out of a mobster movie.

  “Take it easy,” Rudi says, seeing the alarm on Kramer’s face. “It’s a friend.”

  “I could use one,” Kramer says.

  “Trouble?”

  Kramer nods. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”

  They’re in the Second District, near the Prater, hardly the sort of place Kramer would have picked for a meet. But Rudi loves it; loves playing the hood with his pinkie ring and a caricature of a greaseball hairdo.

  “We can talk in the car,” he says, nodding toward a long black Mercedes limousine parked across the street and taking Kramer’s arm in his tiny hand. “The only bugs in there are mine.” He laughs loudly, gold teeth showing in front.

  Kramer allows himself to be led to the car and climbs in the backseat. Rudi pushes a button on his armrest, and a window closes between the driver and them. The guy at the wheel never looks back.

  Outside, women in short leather skirts and high boots are staking their places on the street. Offices will be closing soon; customers on their way.

  “So what is it, Kramer?” Rudi says, straightening his slacks as he stretches out in the seat next to Kramer. “What’s so urgent?”

  “I need a gun.”

  Rudi pushes his palms at Kramer. “Hold on, there. I’m in software, remember?”

  “This isn’t bullshit, and I’m not trying to stick you. Strictly off the record. Someone’s after me, and I need to be able to talk back in kind.”

  Rudi screws up his face. “You ever shoot a gun, Kramer? I mean, pardon the question.”

  His German is street; he smells like a flowerpot. Kramer met him a little more than a year ago after writing an article about the wave of new immigrants coming into Western Europe from the former Bloc countries. About how Western countries, Austria in particular, with its negative population rate, needed immigration, needed new blood and the optimism of immigrants. Not a popular article, especially for a country set on a course of kicking the refugees and immigrants out. But one day not long after the article appeared in translation in the local press—where it was ridiculed as more liberal hogwash from Amis who had no idea what the problems were on the ground—it brought him a visitor who had liked it. Rudi Tourescu took the article as a shot in the arm for the immigrant community. Kramer liked the young Romanian right off: spunky, enterprising and cocky. Tourescu treated him like a savior to his people, promised a favor in return.

  It is time to call in favors.

  “I know about guns,” Kramer says. “And I know about your pirated software, too, Rudi. I’ve got nothing against the black market. How can I? I’m a capitalist.”

  “Exactly,” Rudi says, smiling broadly. “It’s the ultimate in free market enterprise. But a gun … that’s a different matter. Who’s trying to kill you?”

  “The bad guys.”

  “You crack me up, Kramer. Know that? You want some help? I’ve got soldiers.”

  “I want a gun.”

  Tourescu nods, picking at a piece of lint on his black slacks. “Just one?”

  “No. Make it two.”

  “Lots of enemies?”

  “No. The other’s for a friend.”

  “It’s not easy.”

  “That’s why I came to you,” Kramer says.

  Rudi’s attention is diverted for a moment by a young woman on the street whose black hair is ridiculously coiffed and piled atop her head, wearing a black rubber raincoat and what look to be riding boots. She is positioning herself at the middle of the block in front of a cheap hotel that rents rooms by the hour. Rudi buttons down his window and beckons the girl in Romanian. She brightens when she hears her tongue, and sidles over to the car, licking her lips and propping her right hand on her hip as she moves.

  When she leans in the window, Rudi says some quick, harsh words to her that Kramer cannot understand. Her eyes go huge and round, and she looks at Kramer with real terror. Rudi nods at her frightened eyes, and then pulls out a wine-colored calfskin wallet from the inside breast pocket of his overcoat, peels off a couple thousand-schilling notes and sticks them in her hand. He crumples her fingers around the bills, says something more, this time in a consoling tone, and she nods, glancing quickly at Kramer again. Finally, she backs away from the car and then moves off down the street, never looking back.

  Kramer lets the silence go for a moment. Then, “What was that all about?”

  Rudi is smiling to himself. “Nothing. My karma buy-off for the day.”

  “You told her I was the man, didn’t you?”

  Rudi turns to him with a mouth open to deny, then pauses, closes his mouth and shrugs.

  “Maybe,” he says. “But it was in a good cause. How old do you think she is?”

  “Eighteen?”

  “Guess again. She’s fourteen going on forty. But I think I scared the shit out of her. She might even take the job I offered her.”

  “What? Selling stolen goods?”

  “It’s better than the streets, Kramer. Better than taking potluck with every kinky bastard in town.” He looks hard at Kramer without an ounce of humor in his eyes. “I won’t have our women selling their bodies. Playing the cheap Gypsy. Those days are over.”

  There’s more silence as business picks up on the street; as the gray day turns to rain that pounds on the roof of their car momentarily, sprouting umbrellas outdoors.

  “Anyway,” Rudi finally says. “About that gun …”

  “Guns,” Kramer corrects him.

  “A couple of nine-millimeter Walthers do you okay?”

  Kramer grins. “If they’re good enough for the police, they’re good enough for me.”

  Rudi returns the smile.

  “You are a smart guy, Kramer. Maybe even savvy. So how’d you get so dumb as to have somebody trying to kill you?”

  “Just because I am so smart. I think I know something somebody doesn’t want me to.”

  “Like what?”

  Kramer snickers. “That’s the problem. I don’t know.”

  Kramer meets Randall at the Café Eiles just down from his apartment building. Randall’s at a cozy window seat, sipping on a mineral water and reading yesterday’s Herald Tribune. An empty plate, smeared with chocolate frosting, sits in front of him.

  “It’s about time you got here,” he
says when Kramer slides into the plush bench seat opposite him. “The boy was getting nervous.”

  Randall smiles a toothy grin at the waiter dressed in a tuxedo as he says to Kramer, “Bastard thinks I’m an indigent.”

  “Aren’t you?” Kramer nods at the waiter to order.

  “Not when you’re around, Sammy.”

  Kramer orders a mocha and looks out at the hulking outline of the Rathaus filling the square across the road. It’s raining steadily now, and the lights of the cars speeding along Landesgerichtsstrasse glisten off the pavement; the red-and-green pedestrian signs cast long glowing streaks of light on the wet, oil-impregnated asphalt.

  “Sacher torte’s good here, Sam. Why not have some?”

  But Kramer ignores this, watching the street, checking for cars that come by too often.

  “You think they followed us here?” Randall says after the waiter delivers the coffee and departs on squeaky shoes.

  Kramer stirs in a cube of sugar. “It’s a possibility. I didn’t see anything or anyone suspicious today, though. But then, I’m not sure I’d notice.”

  “You going to tell me about the mysterious visit you had to make this afternoon?”

  “In a bit.” Kramer checks the clock over the cashier’s booth at the entrance. “We’ve got to get home soon.”

  “Well, then, be that way, jerk. I thought we were in this together.”

  “You’ll see.”

  They sit in silence for another ten minutes while Kramer finishes his coffee. He then pays for both of them and asks the waiter, Michael, how his oldest boy is. The kid has been undergoing chemo for the past six months.

  “Not much change, Herr Kramer. But his spirits are up. I’ll tell him you asked.”

  “Do that,” Kramer says, leaving a generous tip. “It takes time, they say. They caught it early.”

  The waiter nods. “There is that to be thankful for.” He scoops up the tip and places it in a separate compartment of the black leather change purse he carries strapped to his waist.

  Kramer and Randall leave, stepping into the driving rain, and Kramer thinks again that there are many circles of hell to be investigated.