by Don DeLillo
He laughed, eyes not leaving her face. She judged him the kind of man deeply pleased by the appreciation of others. He would be a studier of faces, eager to gauge people’s reactions to things he said. Robust men were always like this.
“It’s real work,” he said. “Doesn’t involve secret transmitters, hot mikes, all the rest. Like for instance”—she watched his face shade with amusement—“I can let you hear dialogue and other noises pertaining to last night’s amorous activities.”
“Involving whom?”
“You and the Senator, of course.”
“Never happened. Sorry to disappoint.”
“It doesn’t necessarily have to happen,” Mudger said. “All we need’s your voice and his, which we have. The rest is purely technical.”
“You make it happen.”
“Sure.”
“In this case has it already happened or is it pending?”
“I don’t know. Lomax would know.”
“Being the Senator’s man, Lomax might push the wrong button. Scramble the voices beyond recognition. Or erase the tapes.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“You’ve got me thinking I’ve done something wrong.”
Mudger seemed to grow serious. He sat sideways in his chair, left arm extended, resting on the table, his right arm hanging over the back of the chair.
“When technology reaches a certain level, people begin to feel like criminals,” he said. “Someone is after you, the computers maybe, the machine-police. You can’t escape investigation. The facts about you and your whole existence have been collected or are being collected. Banks, insurance companies, credit organizations, tax examiners, passport offices, reporting services, police agencies, intelligence gatherers. It’s a little like what I was saying before. Devices make us pliant. If they issue a print-out saying we’re guilty, then we’re guilty. But it goes even deeper, doesn’t it? It’s the presence alone, the very fact, the superabundance of technology, that makes us feel we’re committing crimes. Just the fact that these things exist at this widespread level. The processing machines, the scanners, the sorters. That’s enough to make us feel like criminals. What enormous weight. What complex programs. And there’s no one to explain it to us.”
That night Mudger stood behind the bar in his living room, mixing himself a drink. He put his glass down on the red folder, the Dorish Report. Lomax sat near the French doors, looking at a magazine. The doors were open, revealing a small Buddhist shrine in the garden beyond the patio.
“Been meaning to ask.”
“What’s that, Earl?”
“Why was the subject carrying a gun?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s over there in Percival’s office, reading, isn’t he? Or hanging around some art gallery. I’d like for you to tell me why he’s carrying a gun.”
“Earl, he shouldn’t have been.”
“Is he some kind of cowboy? What is he, a junior G-man? Because I thought we trained people better than that.”
“It was contrary to procedure.”
Mudger was sitting at the bar, his back to Lomax.
“This business with guns. He’s, what, some kind of sportsman? Shoots fucking bear with a handgun?”
“He was on the Lower East Side. Maybe he thought it was dangerous.”
“He was right, it turned out.”
They both laughed.
“Who’d you press into service?” Lomax said.
“I called Talerico. He’s in Canada these days. We’ve done things for each other before. Always worked out. Tal said he’d see what he could do.”
“That’s what he did?”
“He got some guy from Buffalo. His old jurisdiction. Supposed to be a weapons expert. Famous for midnight raids on National Guard armories.”
“Who?”
“Augie the Mouse.”
They both laughed.
“So Augie goes in there wailing,” Mudger said. “He’s got his fancy little two-pound Kevlar vest. He’s got yellow glasses and ear protectors. He’s wearing everything but platform shoes. And he’s wailing, he’s got this AR-18 and he’s strafing the place, he’s busting it up.”
“What happens, he gets hit.”
“He gets hit but doesn’t know it. When he gets home he takes off his armor and sees this little hole in it. So he starts feeling his chest, his belly. He tells his driver maybe it got deflected into his lungs. He starts coughing and spitting, looking for blood. Finally his driver shakes out the vest and this small lead mushroom hits the floor. Which isn’t the worst of it. Ignorance of technique. The worst of it is that he’s supposed to isolate the subject before going to work. The subject’s supposed to be a-lone. Not a sin-gle wit-ness in sight.”
“You got the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre.”
“Jerk-off. I told Talerico. Where’d you find this jerk-off?”
“Augie the Mouse.”
Mudger laughed, hitting the bar with the palm of his hand.
“Tell you what, it was my fault. Ought to have used different people.”
“Such as?”
“Tieu to dac cong.”
“That’s not your average man in the street they’ll be dealing with,” Lomax said. “I have to tell you I felt a little surge of pride or satisfaction or what-have-you when I got word he walked out of the bar without a mark on him. Plus putting a bullet in the Mouse. I felt gratified, Earl, truth be known. Certain amount of my own time and effort invested there. This is the best penetration I’ve run, frankly. I don’t think your adjusters will find this is just another day’s work.”
Mudger shrugged. The phone at his elbow rang. He picked it up, listened a while, said something, listened some more. Lomax went out on the patio. It was a warm night. He stood in the garden watching Mudger put down the phone and say something over his shoulder at the same time. Lomax walked back into the room, belatedly realizing what it was Mudger had said.
“Congratulations, Earl.”
“Where’s your glass? We’ll have another drink.”
“How’s Tran Le doing?”
“She’s fine. She’s great. Never better.”
“I couldn’t touch another drop, honestly.”
“An eight-pounder,” Mudger said over his shoulder.
“What is it, a fish?”
“Where’s your glass?”
“Maybe just a wee snort, to mark the occasion.”
“Where’s your fucking glass?” Mudger said.
Lightborne stepped off the train and walked through a tunnel under the tracks. On the other side he entered the depot. Klara Ludecke was sitting on a bench near the newsstand. In her lap, for purposes of identification, was a copy of Running Dog magazine. Lightborne’s spur-of-the-moment idea.
He nodded and she followed him back out. Early evening. They walked toward the underground passageway he’d just come out of. The sole on Lightborne’s right shoe started flapping.
“I’m authorized,” he said, “to hand over the agreed sum in cash once the film is in my hands.”
“I’ll be happy to see it go.”
“Can I assume it was your husband who gave you my name?”
“My husband gave me three things. He gave me your name. He gave me an address in Aachen. And he gave me the key to a storage vault located at that address.”
In the passageway Lightborne lowered his voice, wary of the effects of echo.
“Have you seen the footage?”
“He wanted me to have nothing to do with it.”
“Did he tell you anything about it at all?”
“He only told me Berlin, under the Reich Chancellery, during the Russian shelling.”
On the opposite platform the flapping sole began to annoy Lightborne, and he suggested they sit for a while on one of the plastic benches.
“And so the film has been in a vault in Germany all these years.”
“Air-conditioned storage vault,” she said. “To preserve
it properly.”
“I myself first heard of the item some thirty years ago.”
“When my husband was killed I knew that was the reason. He refused to sell at their price. At first they agreed on a price and when the screening was to be. Then Christoph demanded half payment in advance. This was turned down and he no longer wanted to talk with them. They put pressure in so many ways. He still refused. We see what happened.”
“Whose price?” Lightborne said. “Who put pressure?”
“I don’t think you want to know.”
“Do you know?”
The train from New York went roaring by, knocking them back a little in their seats, rippling the pages of the magazine she held once more in her lap.
“I know the name of a company in Virginia. I insisted to tell the police there is something to find there. They treated me as though I were a child. Sex crime. Obviously it could be nothing else. They were almost too embarrassed to discuss it with me. Only sex, it could be. The things sex killers do. One knife wound in the body, I reminded them. Where is the mutilation, the mess? So exact, this sex killer? No, no, they tell me. He picked up the wrong fellow. It happens all the time.”
Another train approached, heading south. They went down the steps near the taxi shack, fleeing the vibration and noise, and ended up strolling in little circles in the parking lot.
“After Christoph was buried, I went to Germany. It was done half in rage. I wanted the film, to possess it myself. I thought to own it would make my husband real again. As though it would give me power. As though the murderers would be taunted. Having it in my hands would make everything real. He died for something. Here it is. This round container with straps. Now I understand. Of course,” she said, “I’ve calmed down since then. Now I only think to sell it. I want to be paid for my husband’s death.”
“Yes, and it’s much, much better to conduct this kind of transaction in an atmosphere of mutual composure.”
She laughed wryly.
“All I want now is to see the last of it. They’ve put their listening devices in my house, they’ve broken in when I was not at home, they’ve made phone calls at all hours. I’m sick of this business. Deeply ashamed and disgusted. I know I’ll be cheated out of the movie’s true value. Still, I want to be rid of it as soon as possible.”
“There’s no question of cheating,” Lightborne said. “My client doesn’t operate that way. Once you hand over the film, you’ll be given a transferral fee. Then my client’s technical people will check to see just what we have. Is it a camera original, the master, as I’ve been hearing? Can we make a workprint for editing? Can we correct whatever defects? There’s a dozen questions like this, most beyond my own scope. If there’s no soundtrack, can we add one? What about final printing?”
“I only know Berlin, the Reich Chancellery, when the Russians shelled the city.”
“Then of course the ultimate question. The content itself. What is actually on film. Once this is looked into, you and I can discuss further monetary installments.”
“I know I’ll be cheated. It doesn’t matter. As long as you take it away.”
They crossed the street and walked slowly past a row of shops. Lightborne went into a paint store, just closing for the day, and asked if he might borrow a rubber band. He looped it twice over his right shoe to keep the sole from flapping. Then he and Klara Ludecke went back through the tunnel to the depot and sat on the bench near the newsstand.
“There is a single container,” she said. “It’s quite large, metallic. I think steel. I don’t know how many reels are inside. Meet me on Fifty-seventh Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. Two weeks from today, noon, south side of the street. I’ll place the object in your hands.”
“Where, exactly, on the south side of the street?”
“Walk up and down. I’ll find you.”
“I’d like to ask,” Lightborne said. “If you know anything about the history behind all this, I’d be interested in hearing.”
“You’re interested in the Nazis?”
“In the period, the era. The great collapse. People in overcoats listening to Bruckner. Hitler handing out vials of poison.”
“This is theatrical, the swastika banners, the floodlights.”
“The wedding banquet,” he said. “The execution of Fegelein in the garden. The burial of the wolfhound and her pups.”
“You respond to the operatic quality, the great flames.”
“Yes, the Russian guns in the distance, the strange celebration in the bunker when they mistakenly thought Hitler was about to kill himself.”
“The last meal was spaghetti,” she said.
The New York train pulled in, the 7:13. Lightborne decided he was sufficiently interested in the circumstances surrounding the movie to wait for the next train, assuming she could tell him something.
“Christoph’s father was an officer with a tank unit that defended against the Russian advance on the Oder.”
“Marshall Rokossovsky, maybe.”
“I was fond of him. Heinz Ludecke. A shy, humorous man. In the war he had a cousin—I don’t know his name. He was a stenographer attached to the Führerbunker in Berlin. The main task of this cousin was to record conversations between Hitler and Goebbels.”
“Yes, they liked to reminisce,” Lightborne said.
“In the confusion at the end, Heinz was taken prisoner by the Russians but managed to escape with false papers. Eventually he ended up in a British camp for refugees and foreign workers. Here he came across his cousin, who carried Belgian papers and a parcel which he obviously regarded with the greatest concern. It seems Hitler’s valet had been ordered to burn all of the Führer’s possessions and effects. This parcel alone had been smuggled out of the bunker by Heinz’s cousin and he insisted that Heinz take possession of it on the theory that he was less vulnerable to interrogation and arrest.”
“They didn’t burn his portrait of Frederick the Great,” Lightborne said. “He gave specific orders the portrait was to be spared.”
“You hardly need me, Mr. Lightborne.”
“I’m sorry, go on.”
“It might be best if you produced your own movie.”
“Please continue, Mrs. Ludecke.”
“Heinz managed to resume a more or less normal life. His cousin vanished completely, never to be seen again, as in a fairy tale. Of course all this I learned from my husband. Whether or not Heinz ever viewed the film, even Christoph never found out. When Heinz died, not so long ago, Christoph went to Germany and took possession of the movie, something he could not do while his father was alive because Heinz would not relinquish it.”
“Why didn’t he destroy it, I wonder.”
“He was devoted to Hitler, and remained so all his life. If he saw what was on the film and if it is the filth some people believe it to be, I’m quite sure he would have destroyed it. Most likely he never saw the movie. I don’t know. Perhaps there’s another answer. The film itself may provide the answer. Or it may do nothing of the kind. In any case it was after my husband acquired the film that he started the fresh rumors of its existence.”
“To heat up the market.”
“To create a fever, yes. Not the happiest of strategies, was it?”
“A sad business,” Lightborne said with feeling.
“You know the circumstances?”
“Merely in outline.”
“He was wearing my clothes when he was killed.”
“To avoid detection. Those people were putting pressure.”
“It was something he did from time to time.”
“A preference.”
“He would go into the city.”
“I see.”
“He said it was only the clothes. He didn’t have relations with men, he said.”
“Was he telling the truth?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “They knew him in that district. Truck drivers near the packing plants. They called him the Red Queen, for the dresses
he wore, always red, my dresses. I knew. I permitted it.”
Lightborne sensed he was supposed to be touched by this. People with their enlightened attitudes. The best he could do was nod his head slowly, suggesting thoughtful consideration. Good time to change the subject.
“I’m forced to wonder, Mrs. Ludecke. Why a two-week wait before you hand over the container? Frankly I’d hoped to have it in my hands today or tomorrow.”
“I’m considering another offer.”
Lightborne grinned, a nervous reflex.
“Lovely,” he said. “All this talk about being so eager to get rid of it. That’s wonderful.”
“I had to allow the other party some time. The other party asked for time. It was common courtesy.”
“Common courtesy, that’s wonderful. I’m always charmed by alliteration. The child in me.”
She seemed amused by her own bold tactics. Caught in the midst of all these vortical energies, she’d found, at least for the moment, an approximation of calm, or perhaps it was objectivity, a view of herself uninfluenced by tragic emotion.
“It was funny about Heinz’s cousin,” she said. “Heinz said that people in the British camp asked his cousin over and over and over again: ‘What was Hitler really like?’ ”
3
Selvy sat on the roof of his building, eating a peach. There was a warm breeze from the west, where the sun hung on a tremulous rim, all ruddle and blood. When the metal door began swinging open, twenty yards away, he moved the peach to his left hand. It was Lomax, in his polyester knit trousers and white belt and shoes, trailed by three kids who lived in the building.
“How do I get rid of them?”
They followed him to the ledge where Selvy sat.
“What you supposed to be doing here?” one kid said.
“This ours, white.”
The smallest kid rubbed his sneaker against the side of Lomax’s shoe, scuffing it slightly.
“They followed me up four flights,” Lomax said.
“The limo’s been stripped by now,” Selvy told him. “Your driver’s long gone.”
“I came in a cab.”
“What is it, unofficial visit?”
