I wondered how long this was going to go on, my patience just about at its end already. How long would it take the old man to drink his fill, or for the bartender to realize he’d already pushed his luck by giving the white-haired moocher more than he should? My question was answered moments later when the bartender came up to the old man, whiskey bottle in hand, and leaned over to speak in the old man’s ear. It took a few seconds before a look of horror came over the old man’s face. He said something that looked like “What?” from my perspective. The bartender just nodded in response. Then I clearly saw the old man say, “No!” The bartender looked like he was about to lean forward to say something else, but the old man turned on his stool and stood up.
His old legs didn’t serve him all that well, but he moved pretty quickly away from the bar regardless. He headed for the door with more speed than I anticipated, and I realized I was about to let him get away.
Standing quickly, I felt a wave of dizziness from all the watered-down drinks I’d been consuming for the last four hours. And then I remembered that I hadn’t tipped the patient little waitress who’d been putting up with my ridiculously slow consumption all evening. By the time I had thrown a buck down on the table and turned away on unsteady feet, the old man was already out the door and gone.
Cursing, I followed after, surprised at all the waves in the floor. They hadn’t been there when I’d entered the nightclub hours before.
Despite my impaired state, I managed to make it to the door. Outside, the cool night air helped my head clear just a little, so I was lucid enough to see that the old man did not appear to be anywhere in sight. Almost panicking, I looked at the doorman. He looked disappointed in me. With a slight shake of his head to convey how much I’d let him down, he pointed up the street.
“Thanks,” I said and started walking. I still felt out of sorts, but I knew I was moving faster than the old man had been able to. When I got to the first corner, I stopped and looked ahead on the sidewalk along Sunset. There was plenty of nightlife along this section of the boulevard, which meant plenty of lights. None of them revealed a shuffling old man. Turning to look up and down the street that intersected Sunset, I saw only darkness to the north and south. Reasoning that if the old man had gone south, I would have seen him crossing Sunset, I turned to the north and kept going; a few seconds later, I was rewarded when a car turned up the street from the boulevard, shining its lights on the walkway ahead of me for a few seconds before it straightened out and headed up the road. In that brief moment, I saw there was someone walking in the darkness ahead of me, and the figure was definitely shuffling with the same gait I’d seen in the Rose Room.
Speeding up to a jog, I chased after. My head had already started hurting, and I knew I was going to be pretty unhappy in the morning, but I kept going despite the discomfort.
When I was about ten feet behind the old man, he must have heard me approaching, as he turned his head toward me. In the darkness, I couldn’t make out his face, but I suspect he looked back with some alarm, as he started moving more quickly away from me.
“Hold on,” I said, surprised at how difficult it was to get any volume in my voice. In the back of my mind, I reminded myself that I needed to start eating better and maybe get some exercise. I’d been spending too much time behind a desk or sitting in my car on surveillance.
The old man didn’t slow down.
So, I tried again. “Wait! I’m a friend of Mercy’s. I need to ask you something.”
That did it.
He planted his feet and turned toward me. I got within a few feet of him before speaking again. His old face was craggy with wrinkles, and even in the darkness I could see deep sadness in his eyes.
“How do you know Mercy?” he asked. It was the first time I’d heard his voice, and I was surprised to hear an accent. German. It triggered a spike of anxiety in me out of all proportion to what I was doing. Out of breath in the dark, pursuing my quarry, there was a part of me that was no longer in Hollywood but in a bombed-out village in France, chasing an enemy soldier through deserted streets. I knew it wasn’t real, but the spike in my adrenaline certainly was. It was almost impossible to shake the feeling of certainty that a Nazi sniper was about to pop his head up from one of the roofs on either side of me. I wanted to take cover, to let the old man go, and it was all I could do to resist the urge.
Confused and conflicted, I said nothing in response to the old man, so he asked again. “How do you know her?”
“She...she hired me. I’m a private detective. She wanted me to find out about her husband, but...then...”
“Do you know what happened to her? Do you know who did this thing?”
“No,” I said, beginning to feel like myself again. “Not yet. That’s why I need to speak to you. The police haven’t been in contact with you yet, have they?”
“Police? No.”
“Would you be willing to answer a few questions for me?”
“Maybe I should go to the police instead.” There was suspicion in his voice.
“You could do that. Maybe you should do that. But...I would ask you to please talk to me as well. Mercy wanted me on this case, wanted me to help her, and I feel I owe it to her.”
This wasn’t exactly true, and I have to say I felt a bit like a bastard for saying it. Still, I knew the old man wouldn’t help me if I told him I really wanted information so I could keep my robotic assistant from being charged with a crime I didn’t think she’d committed, so I stretched the truth a little.
“How did you find me?”
“I followed a lead. That’s all I feel comfortable saying right now.”
“And how do I know you are who you say you are?”
The old man flinched as I reached for my wallet. I put out my other hand in a gesture of peace, but I don’t know how well that translated. It must have worked some, as he didn’t bolt, nor did he swing at me. When I handed him my business card, he took it, but I knew it was too dark for him to read it.
“I’m Jed Strait,” I said. “Private detective. You can call Detective O’Neal at the downtown station if you like. She’ll vouch for me.” I could have added that she was the lead investigator into Mercy’s murder, but I didn’t.
He seemed to think it over for several seconds. Then he said, “Fine.”
“I’d like to find someplace quieter where we can talk,” I said. “Maybe a coffee shop or something nearby?”
The idea of coffee sounded glorious at that point.
“I have an apartment on the next block. We can go there. It’s very quiet.”
“All right,” I said.
We started walking, this time at a more reasonable pace. Before we reached the next intersection, I said, “I’m afraid my lead didn’t offer me your name, sir.”
“Klaus Lang,” he said.
Clowns, I thought, recalling the doorman’s attempt to identify the old man. I should have known.
Chapter Eight
Mr. Lang’s tiny apartment was on the second floor of a two-story building. It smelled of dust and burnt toast. He had four locks on the door, which told me that the place wasn’t the safest or that the old man had possessions he wanted to protect. From the look of the place, though, it was hard to imagine there being anything valuable inside. There was a small sofa covered with a blanket, a floor lamp that lacked a shade, an old Mercury radio on a rickety end table, and a small dining table between the kitchenette and the couch. The old man had books piled two and three feet high in different spots around the room, including several piles in front of the lone window; I assumed that the placement of those particular piles precluded the opening of the window, which helped account for the musty smell of the place. I saw no other room, so assumed that Klaus Lang slept on the sofa; there would have been a communal bathroom somewhere down the dimly lit hallway.
The old man turned on the floor lamp and the overhead light in the kitchenette. Then he cleared some books off of one of the scarred old dining chairs—
there were two—and offered me a seat. In this light, I could see that Klaus looked to be in his seventies. His forehead was deeply lined and his eyes had bags under them; his nose and ears were large and fleshy, and his beard was unkempt. I could see crumbs among the whiskers when he sat across from me.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Yes. Please,” I said.
He leaned over from where he sat and flipped on the electric burner on an ancient stove where a battered coffee pot rested.
I took a notepad and pencil from my coat pocket.
“Thank you for agreeing to talk with me, Mr. Lang,” I said.
“You can call me Klaus.”
“Thank you. Can you tell me how you knew Mercy Attentater?”
He let out a long sigh and looked down at his hands. Then he said, “So, this thing Sasha told me at the club is true? She is truly gone?”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
“What happened?”
I had planned on asking the questions, not answering them. Still, I saw no harm in telling the old man what I knew.
“I don’t believe there’s an official cause of death yet, but it appears she was attacked in her home this morning. The police think she was strangled.”
He groaned at this, and I instantly regretted having given up so many details. If he fell apart now, I wouldn’t get much out of him, and after tonight he might feel more like talking to O’Neal than me. I gave him a few seconds, hoping he could pull himself together.
Then I said, “I’m very sorry, sir. Were you...close with her?”
I still had no idea as to the old man’s connection to the dead woman, only that he had stayed away from watching her act at the Rose Room.
Klaus let out another long sigh. The coffee pot on the stove echoed this as a bit of steam started escaping from the spout. The old man said nothing at first, just pushed his chair back so he could stand and go to the stove. I saw that there was one cup already on the counter and watched as he opened a cupboard door to retrieve another. He gave this second coffee cup a cursory glance inside before setting it down and pouring coffee into both cups.
“Mercy is...was my daughter-in-law,” he said as he turned back toward the table and set the cups down. He didn’t ask how I took my coffee, which was fine with me.
I nodded, wondering if I should write anything down. “So, her late husband...she said his name was Frank?”
Klaus nodded. “My son.”
I scribbled a few lines on my tablet, thinking about his answer and the ways I might follow up without poking the old man’s bruises too hard.
“Sorry if this sounds indelicate, but I can’t help noticing that your last name and Mercy’s married name are different.”
“Mmm. Yes. Our relationship was not, shall we say, official.”
I nodded as though I understood, but I really didn’t. “Would you care to explain?”
He sipped his coffee, and I followed suit. It was bitter and too hot, but I didn’t care. My head still felt like an eggshell, and I figured the coffee was as close to a cure as I was going to find anytime soon.
“As you know,” Klaus said, “Europe was a shambles thirty years ago, yes?”
“Not much different today.”
He shrugged. “In the aftermath of the first war, there was much displacement, much misery and tragedy. I wasn’t immune to the suffering, but...that’s not the point, really. Suffice to say, I had an opportunity to escape the wretched conditions in Germany after the English and the Russians pounded it into dust. Through circumstances more complicated than I want to explain to you now, I had in my care a young orphan, a baby.”
“Frank,” I said even as my wheels were turning. As soon as the old man had said Mercy’s late husband was his son, I had noted a resemblance between him and the man in the photos at Mercy’s house. Now, though, he was saying that he and Frank were not related by blood. I supposed it was possible that the connection I thought I’d made had just been a product of the power of suggestion. Regardless, when I looked at Klaus—old and bearded and frail—I could still see a hint of Frank Attentater. Something wasn’t clicking, but I didn’t know what.
“The same,” Klaus said. “His name was actually Franz. I changed it to something more palatable to the American tongue when we settled in the states.”
I scribbled the name on my tablet. Then I decided to press him a little. “But you didn’t change the last name? Wouldn’t Lang be a little easier for him to live with?”
Again, he shrugged. “Yes. Certainly. But I didn’t want him to forget where he’d come from. I didn’t want him to forget the misery he’d escaped. I wanted him to do all he could to stand against such suffering when he grew to be a man. First names...first names make first impressions. Franz would have caused him problems in America. Attentater, yes, but not so severe. You see?”
“I think,” I said, but I wasn’t exactly buying what the old man was selling.
He smiled now. “And when the second war started and America entered into it this time, I was very proud that my influence had...how do you say it? It had rubbed off on him, yes?”
“Yes.”
“He volunteered. He fought for what was right. He died fighting. It was a good death.”
“And in the meantime, he married Mercy.”
Klaus’s smile grew broader. “Yes. Dear girl. She took care of me, you know?”
“Not just sneaking you into the club for free drinks?’
He shook his head. “Much more. A sweet child. I wished she could have found another line of work. I always feared that some man would...fixate on her, the way she danced. And something like this would happen.” He looked me in the eyes now, deep sadness in his old blue irises. “Do the police have any idea who did this thing?”
“Not yet,” I said, opting to keep O’Neal’s theory about Carmelita out of the conversation for now. “Did Mercy tell you about what happened at the club a few nights ago? The night she got kicked out?”
Now the old man looked away. It was like a cloud passed over his face. He nodded but said nothing.
“What do you think about that? About this man she said looked so much like your adopted son?”
Klaus shrugged. “Doppelgangers,” he said. “They exist, you know.”
I raised an eyebrow at this. “Isn’t that an evil double?” I asked.
“Not necessarily. Sometimes, though.”
“And there’s no way to know.”
He smiled at this, and I thought for a moment that he was trying to cover something. It was almost like he’d forgotten himself when bringing up the idea of a doppelganger, and now he remembered the course he had meant to take all along. I wrote “doppelganger” on my tablet.
“I don’t suppose there is,” he said. “You are right. The man who resembles my son is not necessarily evil. Unless…unless he is the one who hurt Mercy?”
Now it was my turn to look uncomfortable.
He picked up on my expression. “Is that who did this thing?” he asked, leaning forward on the little table and almost spilling his coffee.
“I don’t know. Mercy told me she had seen him again, though. Last night.”
“Where? When?”
“I don’t know. She was going to tell me more before…”
“Before he killed her.”
“Maybe. Look, Mr. Lang, if you know anything at all about this guy, anything, then you really need to let someone know.” I decided I’d held things close to the buttons long enough, so I added, “If not me, then the detective I mentioned earlier, O’Neal. She’s the one handling Mercy’s case.”
“All right.”
“All right, meaning you’ll say what you know?”
He raised an eyebrow and gave me a look that said his patience was wearing thin. “All right, meaning I’ll think about it,” he said. “I don’t know what you think I’m supposed to know about this…this person whom I’ve never met, Mr. Strait. How could I know anything about him?”
“I don’t know. Did Mercy tell you anything else about the man she saw at the club? Other than how he looked like Frank but denied ever having seen her before?”
He pondered for a moment and then said, “No. That was all. She mostly talked about how certain she was, how perfect a match this man was. But, as for anything else about him specifically…no.”
“Okay.” I drew a square on the tablet, more than anything just to have something to do while I thought. After I’d drawn it, I realized it was quite fitting, as I was pretty well boxed in with my investigation. I was staring at nothing but blank walls in an empty room, and there was no doorway out to anywhere else that would make more sense. Then I thought of one other angle, one other way out of the box. I emptied my coffee cup before speaking, though, because I knew there was a pretty good chance the old man would kick me out after I said what I had in mind.
“Klaus, when your son was killed…was there…was there a body recovered?”
“From the airship crash?” He gave me an incredulous look, his bushy eyebrows doing a dance not quite as energetic as the ones I’d been subjected to in the Rose Room. “There were remains, yes. But not a complete set. They found Frank’s dog tags in the wreckage but…not all of him. The fire, you see.”
“Yes. I’m sorry to have asked. It’s just…”
“You think this is really him? Really Frank? Come back and…amnesia, maybe?”
He said it with a sense of wonder rather than the rage I’d been anticipating, and I was grateful for that.
The Double-Time Slide: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 2) Page 9
