The Bells of Hell

by Michael Kurland

  Blake felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find that Special Agent Welker had slipped into the seat behind him. ‘Leave unobtrusively a minute after I do,’ Welker told him. ‘I’ll meet you on the corner.’ Welker got up and walked out the door without looking behind him. It was one of the things Welker had taught him, Blake reflected. Never sneak, never hurry. If you sneak, you look like you’re trying to hide something. If you hurry you may be headed somewhere interesting. If you just walk you look like you’re going somewhere you’re supposed to be going. Also never whisper. Whispers carry further than normal low speech. And they arouse the curiosity of anyone who overhears.

  Blake waited a minute, and then pushed to his feet, just as Kuhn was starting to explain how Roosevelt was actually a Jew named Rosenfeld, and walked out, fighting the impulse to glance around and see if anyone was watching. In the hotel lobby he went over to the counter and spent a minute or two asking the room clerk questions about room rates while he casually watched the meeting-room door to see if anyone came out after him. No one did. He thanked the clerk and left the hotel, managing to not quite run to the corner. Welker was waiting, staring in a shop window, examining the fascinating display of cosmetic products inside.

  Blake stopped next to Welker. ‘This makes me nervous,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Being seen with you, I guess. We shouldn’t be seen together.’

  Welker shrugged. ‘I’ve been going to a bunch of these meetings. I’m going to be one of the boys pretty soon – I’m practicing my Nazi salute. And I’ve led Gerard into thinking that I was an ordnance expert during the War. He thought that was very interesting – very interesting. He’s cultivating me. My name, if anyone should ask you, is Schnek. Harry Schnek. Besides, as the old joke says, everybody’s got to be somewhere.’

  Blake refrained from asking, ‘What old joke?’ and instead asked, ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘Everybody’s got to be …’ Welker began, and then, seeing the expression on Blake’s face, went on, ‘My car’s around the corner. Come. Our presence is requested.’ Welker led the way to where his four-year-old black Plymouth sedan was parked and unlocked the door.

  Blake looked the car over. It was not what he thought a Special Agent would be driving. He was not impressed. ‘I thought you’d have something, I don’t know, swankier. Newer, at least,’ he said.

  Welker opened the passenger door. ‘Sit,’ he said, and then walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in. ‘Two things,’ he told Blake as he stepped on the starter and worked the throttle until the car sputtered and coughed into life. ‘One, in our line of work you don’t want a car that stands out – that’s too flashy or too new or too expensive. You want to be as unobtrusive as possible. You live longer that way. Two, Roosevelt hasn’t seen fit to give us money for new cars, or for much of anything else for that matter. We are a shoestring operation. This is my own car, and it’s the best I can afford.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Blake said. ‘I assumed …’

  ‘J. Edgar gets all the fancy stuff,’ Welker said. ‘They even get a clothing allowance for those brown suits they wear. We, not so much.’

  Blake couldn’t think of anything to say, so he said nothing until they pulled to a stop on 92nd Street just off Amsterdam Avenue. There were three police cars parked haphazardly further up the block and a cluster of policemen around one of the brownstones.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘There has been an accidental death here,’ Welker told him. ‘Or possibly a murder. I side with those who favor murder. “Those” in this case being Detective Covitt. You remember Detective Covitt? A perceptive gentleman. He took one look at the crime scene and called me, and I went to fetch you. Exactly why I’m not sure yet. Come along.’ He got out of the car, gently closed the door, and started down the street toward the cluster of cops by the brownstone. Blake obediently trotted behind.

  Covitt came out the front door of the house and trotted down the steps as they approached. When he saw them he waved them over. ‘Glad you could make it,’ he said. ‘Good to see you.’

  ‘You too,’ Welker said. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were in Brooklyn.’

  ‘Yeah, well, Manhattan Homicide’s got a triple murder down on Wall Street, stockbrokers or something. When important people get killed they get the call. When some poor schleb falls down a flight of stairs, we hop on the subway and cover. So we’re covering. In this case it turns out to be a lucky coincidence.’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Guy named, ah, Massen, Karl Massen. German. Came home drunk last night, sometime late, we’re not sure just when. Apparently slipped and tumbled backwards down the stairs. Broke his neck. Mrs Bittleman, the landlady, found him at six thirty this morning when she got up to make breakfast for her guests – it’s a boarding house.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And if Manhattan Homicide got the call it would have gone in as an accident; after all Massen’s just off the boat, no time to get anyone pissed off enough to kill him. But my man Weintz covered and he spotted something and called me, and here we are.’

  ‘Karl Massen. Just off the boat? A German national?’

  ‘Yup. Came in two days ago. A dye salesman, apparently.’

  ‘Die? Like tool and die?’

  ‘No, dye, like pretty colors for your girlfriend’s dresses. He represents – represented, ah,’ Covitt flipped open his notebook and turned it toward Welker and Blake, pointing to a carefully printed line: Vogel und Söhne, Chemische und Farbstoff Grosshändler, it read. ‘I got it off his papers,’ he told them. ‘It means “Vogel and Son, Chemical and Dyestuff Wholesalers”. He was here, as I understand it, to sell German dyes to American fabric makers.’

  ‘Sons,’ Welker corrected. ‘Vogel and Sons. Plural. There are at least two of them.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Covitt said, scribbling a note in the book. ‘Thanks, I guess.’

  ‘Anything to help,’ Welker said. ‘And we are here because?’

  ‘Come with me,’ Covitt said, and headed back through the front door.

  They followed him up two flights of stairs. Blake was glad to see that the body had been removed and there was nothing to note his passing but a substantial blot of blood at the foot of the staircase. He had seen enough dead bodies for a while.

  There were seven doors on the third-floor landing, one unmarked and the others stenciled in faded gilt paint in the middle of each door at about eye height: 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D, 3E, and T. The door to 3B was open and a man in a rumpled gray suit was on his stomach on the floor inside, shining a flashlight under the bed. He pulled himself up as they arrived, and Welker recognized Detective Weintz.

  ‘Nothing,’ Weintz said, dusting himself off. ‘Bupkis. Whatever it is, it ain’t here.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Welker asked.

  ‘Something to connect him and that guy,’ Weintz said, pointing to the door to apartment 3A, across the hall.

  ‘Like what?’

  Weintz shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘And why would we care? What would that mean, or establish, or whatever?’

  Weintz looked at Covitt. ‘You didn’t tell him?’

  ‘It was your find,’ Covitt said. ‘You won’t get no department commendations or nothing, even if we end up making a case from it, so at least you should get the pleasure of telling him what you got.’

  ‘Yeah, well …’ He turned to Welker. ‘I got a list of the people living here from the landlady first thing. Boarders and staff. You know, it’s routine.’

  ‘Right,’ Welker agreed.

  ‘Well, one of the names rang a bell, but I couldn’t figure out what. So I came up to have a look at his room. Here, I still got the passkey.’ He crossed the hall and unlocked the door, pushing it open. ‘Take a look.’

  They crowded into the doorway and peered into the room. Weintz reached in and turned the light switch.

  Blake took an involuntary step
into the room and felt his knees go weak. A buzzing noise from somewhere inside his head filled his ears. Slowly – it felt like it took forever – his legs gave way and he settled to the floor.

  Welker and Covitt looked startled for a second, and then lifted him to his feet between them. ‘What’s the matter?’ Covitt asked. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Here,’ Welker said, ‘Come sit down on the bed.’

  ‘No, no,’ Blake said, his voice louder than he intended. ‘Into the hall. Please. Into the hall.’

  They helped him into the hallway, and he leaned against the wall by the door.

  ‘What happened?’ Welker asked.

  Blake took a deep breath, and then another. ‘It’s him!’ he said finally.

  ‘Him whom?’

  ‘The dead guy. Lehman. It’s him. It’s his trunks. In there.’

  Welker looked into the room and saw the pair of steamer trunks side by side under the window. ‘Those trunks? You’re sure?’

  ‘I remember them. I’m sure ’cause of the labels and everything,’ Blake told him. ‘The big long rectangle and the little round red one. They’re what I looked at when I looked through the crack. I didn’t really want to look at – you know.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought maybe,’ Weintz said, nodding. ‘It’s been a couple of months, but I thought I remembered the name. I spent most of a week looking for those trunks. And here they are.’

  ‘The question is,’ Welker said, ‘how did they get here?’

  ‘I got a better question,’ Covitt told him. ‘How did the dead guy get here?’

  ‘What?’

  Covitt nodded at Weintz. ‘You tell him.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Weintz said. He turned to Welker. ‘The guy renting this room – his name is Otto Lehman, is what he told the landlady. And he’s got the papers to prove it.’

  ‘Oh,’ Welker said. ‘Oh. That’s what you meant about the name. Son of a bitch!’ He thought about it for a minute, and then asked, ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘He ain’t been home from work yet.’

  ‘Good,’ Welker said. ‘Here’s what we’ll do.’

  ‘Maybe he’s run,’ Covitt suggested. ‘Taken a powder.’

  ‘Um,’ Welker said. ‘Give me a minute.’ He went into the room and prowled around for a while, and then came back out, closing the door carefully behind him. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘He’ll be back.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well, I can’t swear to it, but I’ll give you six to one odds. He left his toothbrush and his razor and fifteen bucks in cash in the top drawer. Nah. If he killed Massen, he’ll figure we can’t connect them. And, as it happens, we can’t. We can connect him to the other dead guy ’cause he took his name, but he doesn’t know that.’

  ‘We can’t even say that Massen’s death wasn’t an accident,’ Covitt said. ‘Maybe he did take a header down the stairs.’

  ‘What odds will you give me on that now?’ Welker asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Covitt said. ‘Like you say. But we can’t prove it. Unless the medical examiner can come up with something.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Blake suggested. ‘Or at least let me go. Away from here. I don’t want to be here when whoever this guy is gets back.’

  ‘I want you to get a look at him,’ Welker said. ‘See if he was one of the guys in that warehouse.’

  ‘I was afraid you were going to say that.’ Blake shook his head, paused for a second, and then shook it again. ‘I really don’t want to. If I look at him, then he’ll look at me. And I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘He doesn’t know who you are,’ Welker reminded him.

  ‘And I’d just as soon keep it that way.’

  ‘Come on! He has no way of knowing, or even guessing, that you can ID him.’

  ‘I don’t think that matters to these guys. I think he’ll say, “This guy is looking at me funny, I think I’ll kill him.” Except he’ll say it in German.’

  ‘We’ll fix it so he doesn’t know you’re looking at him,’ Covitt said. ‘I’ll be with you.’

  Blake looked at him. ‘You know,’ he said. ‘You’re a cop. You carry a gun. You arrest people. Me, I’m a typesetter. I set type.’

  ‘We’ll set you up in a van across the street. You’ll see him, he won’t see you.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Blake thought it over for a second. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cause – supposing I identify him – then you’ll arrest him. Then there’ll be a trial and I’ll have to testify. Then the guys you haven’t caught will come after me.’

  ‘I think,’ Welker said, ‘I can ease your mind on that point. There’s no way Covitt can arrest him on your identification. I mean, technically he could, of course, but it would be futile and counter-productive. The smart thing to do would be to keep him under surveillance and see where he leads us. Like we’re doing with the guy at the Bund.’

  Now Covitt turned to look at him. ‘What are you saying?’ he asked. ‘And just why is that?’

  ‘Because we’d blow our hand and we could never get a conviction.’

  ‘Come on – we’d have an eye-witness.’

  ‘Not much of one.’ Welker patted Blake on the shoulder. ‘No offense.’

  ‘I am not offended. Indeed not,’ Blake said.

  ‘Picture the cross-examination,’ Welker told Covitt. ‘“Now, Mr Blake, you were hiding behind a screen, what, twenty feet – thirty feet – from the victim? And the lighting – I understand there were two light bulbs burning, is that right? Not very bright, were they? And the men, they were how far away from you? And your testimony is that you were so horrified at the scene that you really didn’t look at it – just sort of glanced and then glanced away. And this while you were cowering behind the screen, afraid of making a sound, afraid of being seen yourself? Is that right?” And that’s just off the top of my head. The defense attorney will have had time to refine his questions and get them just right.’

  ‘They sounded pretty refined to me,’ Blake said.

  ‘And besides,’ Welker went on, ‘we don’t want to get just one guy, we want to round up the whole group.’

  ‘First you have to find out what the hell group it is,’ Covitt said. ‘And just what the hell they’re up to.’

  ‘You’ve got it,’ Welker said. ‘My point exactly. We need to figure out not just what they’re doing but why they’re doing it. And if it’s worth murdering for, it’s certainly something we want to stop.’ He turned to Blake. ‘What do you say? You’ll be perfectly safe. And you won’t have to testify.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure. If we can’t get something on them better than your identification, there’s no point in even arresting them. Like I said.’

  Blake sighed. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Bring on your van.’

  ‘Good,’ Detective Covitt said. ‘Good.’

  SIXTEEN

  Listen! No, listen carefully; I think I can hear something – Yes, there it was, quite clear. Don’t you hear it? It is the tramp of armies crunching the gravel of parade-grounds, splashing through rain-soaked fields, the tramp of two million German soldiers and more than a million Italians – “going on maneuvers”

  – Winston Churchill, radio broadcast to the US

  ‘The President will see you now.’

  Jacob Welker pushed himself to his feet and followed the secretary down the corridor and into the Oval Office.

  Roosevelt gestured him into the chair beside the massive Hoover desk and waved the secretary out of the room.

  Welker eased himself into the wicker-back chair. ‘Good afternoon, Mr President.’

  Roosevelt closed the stamp album he’d been perusing and looked up at Welker. ‘One of the few things that relaxes me,’ he said, ‘and I have no time for it anymore.’

  ‘You’re a collector, sir?’

  ‘In a small way. I try to give it a half-hour or so every evening. It clears my mind.’ He put the album aside. ‘I can give you a
bout ten minutes,’ he said. ‘I have to meet with the Zog sisters at three.’

  ‘The …?’

  ‘The three sisters of King Zog of Albania. Princesses,’ FDR looked down at a note on his desk, ‘Myzejen, Ruhie, and Maxhide.’

  ‘Maxhide?’

  ‘That’s what it says. And Myzejen and Ruhie. And, presumably, the Foreign Minister. For tea.’

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘You’re unusually monosyllabic today,’ Roosevelt commented. ‘I trust you were sufficiently discreet in coming here.’

  ‘I am in Washington to attend a reception for Count Ciano at the Italian Embassy this evening,’ Welker told him. ‘A few of my SIM buddies from the war are gathering for the event and they asked if I could make it. As it happens, I could.’

  ‘The SIM?’ Roosevelt asked. ‘That’s the Italian Secret Service?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And what is it that they think you do?’

  ‘Last they heard I was still with the Continental. I shall not disabuse them of this notion.’

  ‘Good, good,’ Roosevelt said.

  ‘Also there’s a Brit that I served with who should be there. He’s their cultural attaché over here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still in the Game. If so, I think we could be, ah, mutually beneficial.’

  ‘The game? You mean spying?’

  ‘Yes, sir. that’s what we call it – “the Game”. After all, espionage and counter-espionage are, in many respects, like a great game. Only the penalty for getting benched can be quite severe.’

  ‘War itself,’ Roosevelt said reflectively, ‘can be looked at as a great game. One I fear we will be drawn into all too soon.’

  Welker nodded. ‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ he said.

  ‘There is an old Chinese curse,’ the President told him, ‘that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” And I’m afraid that we do.’

  ‘And they look to be getting even more interesting,’ Welker offered.

  ‘The unemployment numbers are creeping back up,’ Roosevelt said, leaning back and fixing a cigarette into a long ebony holder. ‘Unless somebody does something, even the Democrats will start to turn against my New Deal before it’s had a fair chance to work. And I’m the somebody.’ He took a silver lighter from the desk and used it for its intended purpose.