Kiss Me Twice

by Thomas Gifford

  “Years passed, he went to California a couple of times, always made sure he saw Enid. One trip he discovered she had amounted to something, she was a real successful girl, but she’d picked up some bad habits … like a drug habit, for instance. She was in bad shape. She worked for this big company and they weren’t happy with her. They kept her hidden away up in the mountains, they trotted her out to do a job, then they’d hide her again, kept her hopped up, didn’t pay her, fiddled the books—hell, she was making a fortune for them and they weren’t paying her in anything but dope. But they didn’t count on Brian Sheehan. They were fucking with the woman he loved, they’d damn near killed her. …

  “So Brian Sheehan went up to the mountain hideaway with considerable weaponry, all by himself. He killed the three men who were guarding her. He did it with two shotguns. I doubt very much if he felt the faintest twinge of remorse. He got poor Enid out of there. Saved her life, God’s truth.

  “Then you know what the crazy bastard did?

  “He bought the company she worked for. He relieved certain men at the top of their duties and then he took them up to the hideaway in the mountains—or rather, he took them up to the mountains first, then he told them they were through, at which time some of his mick employees from back East came in and tied them up in uncomfortable little packages. Out came the gasoline, they soaked these assholes with it and somebody suddenly got careless with matches and—poof! Whole place burned right down to the ground. Brian Sheehan celebrated by building one very handsome vacation retreat on exactly the same spot. I know, I been to parties there. Enid’s still beautiful and Brian—Christ, he’s a piece of work. You’d swear he was an Englishman, the way he lords it around. He sort of became an Englishman with the end of Prohibition.” Winchell broke into a loud, hacking laugh, staccato bursts. “Lemme tell you, boys, there’s nobody in the world tougher than a tough mick. I wouldn’t kid you.”

  Terry Leary waited, feeling the mist, looking from Cassidy to Winchell, both of them nodding sagely.

  Leary said, “So what do Brian Sheehan and Enid Mallory have to do with all our problems, Winch?”

  Cassidy looked up from his empty coffee cup. “Brian Sheehan is Tash Benedictus and Enid Mallory is Mona Ransom. And the company he bought is Pinnacle Pictures. And Benedictus doesn’t hate those bloody Germans. He hates those bloody Englishmen who took off his ear and removed his eye—”

  “And cut off his arm with a carpenter’s saw,” Winchell said, “and smashed one of his balls with a hammer.”

  “Which,” Cassidy said, “makes him a natural ally of Karl Dauner. A natural ally of anybody who hates the bloody Englishmen.”

  Winchell leaned back, smiling. “Did I tell ya ya’d love it?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE TAXIS WERE SWIRLING THROUGH the wet leaves on Central Park West and rich women in fur coats, too warm for the weather, were walking bright-eyed, button-nosed poodles. One of the dogs had just cocked his leg on one of the Packard’s rear tires. The bored woman, in black gloves and a sable jacket, held the leash and looked the other way.

  Cassidy said, “Let’s go for a walk, Terry,” and headed across the street into the park. The humidity was making his leg act up. His stick made little round indentations on the path. Leary caught up with him. He carried his trench coat over his shoulder, wore a double-breasted gray suit and a collar pin and a gray homburg. To a casual passerby they would have looked like a couple of men-about-town from the pages of Esquire. The complexity of their lives, Cassidy reflected, would have sent that casual passerby reeling. But then everyone’s life was complex when you came right down to it. It was the continual threat of violence that set theirs apart. In any case, it all seemed a trifle daunting to Cassidy, more complex than anything he’d ever tried to unravel. There were so goddam many people involved. … Tash Benedictus, for God’s sake. Brian Sheehan …

  “How does Winchell find out this stuff?” Leary shook his head, perplexed. “Well, I guess it’s his business. He knows so much, it’s amazing he’s still alive.”

  “I suppose he’s got the goods on so many big-timers stuck away in lock boxes, they’ll do anything to keep him alive.” The leaves were thick on the paths. The park was somehow insulated from the city’s racket. They were alone. A red rubber beach ball lay in the grass. Cassidy kicked it into a pond where it floated, a last memory of summer.

  “I wasn’t up there in Maine, amigo. I didn’t meet this character or his crazy wife—she actually came sneaking into your room in the middle of the night? I mean, this is a true story? This is movie stuff, you know that?”

  “That’s where she’s from, the Planet of the Movies. I suppose you act in enough of them you begin to think they’re real.”

  “You ought to know. Your father’s a producer, Karin was an actress—”

  “These are facts already known to me, shamus.”

  “Just a reminder. You’re the one with movie stars creeping into your bed—”

  “One, one movie star. An ex-druggie, hopped-up nitwit, and it’s the husband that matters—”

  “You mean he crept into your chamber as well? What the hell goes on up there in woodsy old Maine?”

  “He made the earth move for me, Terry.”

  “That’s disgusting. And you an old-time football star the kids look up to.”

  “Yeah, I know. This Benedictus thing—what a crooked, twisty life. You wonder if he ever gets confused over just who the hell he is—hero of the Somme, scourge of the bloody Germans, bereaved father of a son dead in the Battle of Britain … or is he the Boston mick ’legger who fell in love with the vamp and bought the studio and systematically iced the guys who’d run the studio … or is he the idealistic Irishman, follower of the martyr Roger Casement, and for that matter a crippled martyr himself at the hands of the Black and Tans, a professional Irish rebel. … The crazy bastard is a walking history lesson. What do you make of a guy like that, Terry?”

  “That’s easy,” Leary said. He stopped by a boulder, dropped his trench coat, and dug a pigskin case from his pocket. He fished out one of Max Bauman’s Havanas and lit it. “He’s a liar, amigo. His whole life is a lie. Maybe not even Winchell has the truth. And he’s a murderer. Not much of a parlay. We’re going to have trouble with this man.”

  They walked on, up a rock-strewn, overgrown hill, down toward the bridle path. Horses moved through the mist, hooves thumping, flicking their heads, snorting.

  Cassidy leaned against an elm, resting his bum leg. “I figure all of his political sympathies are with the Irish, which means they’re against the English. And therefore with the Germans. Maybe he knew some Germans from thirty years ago, from when he went to Berlin with Casement. Maybe he maintained some friendships with guys who rose in the army after Hitler came to power. … Maybe some of those guys worked with Göring, flew with Göring in the Great War. … Maybe those guys were counting on the Göring escape route. …

  “So Moller flew in, got all the way to the right man, Tash Benedictus. Now it all gets a little confused. The maid says Manfred Moller was sleeping with our Enid Mallory, better known as Mona Ransom or Mrs. Benedictus … and somehow Moller’s priceless minotaur wound up with Henry Brenneman in Boston … presumably via Benedictus who was obviously involved at some level with Karl Dauner. Benedictus or Dauner, one of them has to be Vulkan … Vulkan’s running the whole bloody thing. But maybe it doesn’t matter who Vulkan is. …”

  Terry Leary listened stoically, puffing quietly.

  “Then,” Cassidy said, “for some reason, Moller figured he had to kill Brenneman. He took his minotaur and disappeared—now timing and logic tell you that that had to be connected with Dauner’s getting killed … but how? Did Moller just get spooked? Or is it something else? And then who killed Rolf Moller?”

  Terry Leary was watching a beautiful woman with blond wisps trailing from beneath her riding hat canter past, leaning solidly forward in the saddle. “Women and horses,” he mused, then turned back to
Cassidy. “It seems to me what you’ve got boils down to three main questions. First, where is Manfred Moller now? Second, did Manfred kill Rolf Moller, and if so, why? And third, there’s Benedictus: what is his game and where has he gone?” He turned back, watching the woman and horse out of sight around a bend.

  The questions changed a little every so often but the more they changed, the more they stayed the same. And basically it had always been only the one question: where was Manfred Moller? That’s why MacMurdo was in it, why Karin was in it, and finally why he himself was in it. Find Manfred Moller and everything would somehow be made clear, mysteries solved, fates resolved.

  At least he could now explain Tash Benedictus. Terry wasn’t altogether correct. Benedictus wasn’t just a liar: he was a player, he’d been a player all along. And he was still in the game. Whatever he was doing, wherever he was, he was still in the game and still making up his own rules. Everything he was doing was based on two suppositions. He was Irish and he hated the fucking limeys. …

  All the questions bothered Cassidy, like gremlins needling away at him. But there was another one that had his attention like a flashing red light.

  Mona Ransom had told him that Benedictus knew he was coming. …

  If that was true—well, he just didn’t like to think about it. If Benedictus knew Cassidy was coming, then there was a traitor somewhere in the ranks. Was someone watching them from up close?

  Then it occurred to him. Had Rolf Moller discovered the truth? And died for it?

  Karin was in a fury.

  There was nothing of the meek, frightened, confused piece of damaged goods she’d been ever since he met her again at MacMurdo’s invitation. Then she’d been wispy, a haunting memory of the woman he’d married, as if she’d been clumsily erased, leaving an outline, hints of what she’d been before. Now, as if the on-switch had been flipped, she was all there, no wisps, no hints, no memory of the wounded victim.

  MacMurdo was standing by the doors to the terrace, staring out at the buildings across Park Avenue. Leary was sitting on a padded leather stool at his bar, watching her reflection in the slatted mirror behind the rows of glasses and bottles. The mirror broke her into a thousand images and each one of them was in full cry. Cassidy watched her from a deep armchair with a date palm arching over his head.

  “It’s about time you all realized I’m a human being,” she said, gritting her teeth. “I’m not a specimen in a jar or a skeleton dangling in the closet. Here I am, the real thing, an actual person.” She was wearing tan gabardine slacks and a black silk blouse with the collar turned up and the cuffs rolled back. The nurse who’d spent the night with her stood at the entrance to the hallway. She wore a starched white uniform and looked worried.

  “I’m sick of being kept in the dark! Some of you seem to know who I am, who I was. …” She stared briefly at Cassidy, her face softening for an instant. Then the resolve returned. “Some of you know the part of my life I can’t remember. … Some of you lie to me—do you think I’m unaware of all that? Well, don’t be so fatuous. You should know better. …

  “And I’m sick of all the pills, sick to death of sleeping all the time and feeling groggy—”

  MacMurdo said, “It was Rolf who kept you sedated—”

  “Don’t lie to me! Rolf, yes, but on your orders, Colonel. Rolf told me that, told me he had to do whatever you asked. He said you wanted me calm and slow-thinking, you didn’t want me to be troublesome. Why lie, Colonel? Do you have another doctor who’ll have to do what you say now that Rolf’s dead?”

  “No,” MacMurdo said sadly. “Right now I wish I did, I promise you. This is what I wanted to avoid—this hysterical bullshit from an unbalanced woman.” He wouldn’t look at her. He just kept staring out across the terrace from which Rolf Moller had gone to his death.

  “And now,” she went on, pacing angrily across the sunken living room, her fists clenched, “now this new lunacy! No, Colonel, my husband did not materialize out of the night and murder his brother! Mein Gott, the very idea! Every idea you have, every remedy you have—Schlimmbesserung—you know that word? Schlimmbesserung! It means a new remedy, a new solution—that makes everything worse! You’re an expert, Colonel! The idea of Manfred killing Rolf is … it’s preposterous! I’m sick of the whole idiotic business—”

  “Karin!” MacMurdo’s powerful voice, like his laugh, filled the room as he finally turned to look at her. “Frau Moller.” She stopped, staring at him. “May I remind you of the deal you made? You agreed to help us.”

  “A deal with the Devil!” Her face was white, stretched tight across her cheekbones. “Yes, of course, I remember. I’m still here. Yes, I remember. …” She was trembling with either fear or rage. Cassidy couldn’t be sure. “So just find Manfred … and try to keep at least a few of us alive!”

  She stormed out of the room, back down the hallway to her room. The nurse turned to follow. Karin waved her away. “Leave me alone. Please.” The bedroom door slammed.

  “Women!” MacMurdo sighed and spat out the word as if it were spoiled and foul.

  Terry Leary laughed.

  Cassidy knocked softly on the bedroom door. MacMurdo and Leary had gone onto the terrace to watch the mist thicken over Park Avenue. Cassidy was fed up with MacMurdo, didn’t give a damn about him or his plans just then. He knocked on the door again.

  “Who is it?”

  “Me. Cassidy.”

  Several seconds passed; then she opened the door. She turned, went back into the room. He followed her. She’d opened the windows and straightened the bedclothes. Now she stood with her arms folded across her chest, staring at him.

  “If I can’t trust you,” she said, “I’m alone. Maybe it’s best that I realize the truth. Can I trust you? Or not? Just who are you? What are you to me?” Her eyes ate him up. There was the fearlessness of the end of the tether in her eyes again. “I see you in my dreams. You tell me you met me at the Olympics in 1936. I don’t remember the Olympics, I don’t remember you … but I dream of you and the dreams are like memories. In 1936 I was nineteen years old, Mr. Cassidy. A girl. I’d never been away from home. … I remember things from childhood, tiny things. … I know I was a child in 1936. And you met me, you tell me I was beautiful. … What happened after we met? Did we see one another again?” She stared at him, her eyes narrowing, as if that might bring their meeting into better focus. “Why can’t you tell me what you know about me? Why is it all a secret?” The anger had gone out of her voice but not the energy. He could see it: she was free of medication. “Can’t you tell me even that?” She was Karin now. He couldn’t let her disappear again.

  “Because Rolf said I couldn’t!”

  “But why not? What harm could it do for me to know who I am?” She brushed the curtain of hair back from her eye. “What is the point? What has anyone to fear from me? I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not that. Rolf said it’s you, you’re the one in danger. Not physical danger, though you seem to have had nothing but that since you got here. … No, he meant psychological danger. Amnesia is an uncharted land, Karin. Rolf was afraid that forcing you to remember could drive you—could hurt you, could make you not want to live—”

  “Could drive me mad? Could make me want to kill myself? That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it? What’s so awful, Lew? What memories would drive me to kill myself? What was he talking about?”

  “He was talking about how you lost your memory. He didn’t want it forced on you. … He said the amnesia was your way of protecting yourself from the memories.”

  “Memories of the war,” she said impatiently. “The war, the war … trauma. Shock! Rolf acted as if I was the only person who had a bad war. Well, it’s not true! Everybody over there had a bad war and they go on. So why can’t I? Because Rolf brought me back to life—did I become his property? To be protected forever from life?”

  “You didn’t just have a bad war, Karin. It went far beyond that—”

  “We
ll, I’m not having such a hell of a wonderful peace, either!”

  Cassidy laughed aloud. “I know the feeling.”

  “You believe everything Rolf told you?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because it’s all ridiculous!” She spoke calmly, smiling enigmatically. “You don’t know even half of it. Believe me.”

  “Who knows all of it?”

  “That’s the problem. No one knows all of it, we all just know some of it. Not even Colonel MacMurdo knows all of it.”

  “What part doesn’t he know?”

  She laughed, shaking her head, as if it were all a joke. “He doesn’t know what I’m thinking. He wishes he did but he can’t get inside my head so he can’t be sure of me. That frightens him.”

  “And you,” Cassidy said, “don’t know what I know about you. It’s like a Chinese box puzzle, isn’t it?”

  “Tell me what you know about me, Lew. Please.”

  “Wait a little longer,” he said. “Then I’ll help you put all the pieces together. Let’s get Manfred found, let’s get all that straightened out, then there’ll be all the time in the world.”