Dead Man's Tale (9 page)

We'd made love in T—'s room at the Wilden Mann, but it was still pretty early so we got out of bed, had some drinks and got into a discussion about, of all things, Comparative Lit.

T—likes Schiller and Goethe. The discussion got a little involved and I started giving her my theories as to why Switzerland had never produced any notable poets. After a while I was doing all the talking.

T—listened with a pretty pout on her face. I thought it was because I'd run down her native country, but then she said, unexpectedly, “Yes, Andy, I see you're a student after all.”

I didn't say anything. She seemed disappointed about something, and went on, “Milo Hacha is in Austria. He's a passenger representative for Cosmic Tours on their Innsbruck-Vienna line. At least he was the last time he sent me a post card—about six months ago. And now I suppose you will be leaving?”

Since something had started her talking about Hacha, I didn't want her to stop. “What kind of guy is he?” I asked.

A world of longing came into her voice. “No kind of guy, Andy. Or perhaps every kind of guy there is. I suppose, basically, he's an opportunist.”

“Guiding a bunch of tourists through Austria?”

She shrugged. “He has his reasons. Or perhaps it's a hiatus in his life. You'll know when you find him. You
are
going after him?”

“Yes.”

She filled her glass and mine. We were drinking the new Swiss white wine she liked so much. “And after tonight I won't see you again?”

“It can keep one more day,” I said. “How about going up to Pilatus in the morning?”

She smiled and touched my cheek with her hand. “So you are a sentimentalist,” she said. “I think I like that. I'd like to believe you'll never forget me. But a year from now you probably won't even remember my name.”

“I'll never forget you,” I said. I wasn't trying to be gallant. I meant it.

We kissed and had another glass of the Swiss wine, then I left.

The next morning, when I called for her at the Wilden Mann, T—had already checked out. She left no forwarding address, but there was a letter for me. I sat down in Zum Wilden Mann and ordered a glass of white wine and read what she had written:

Darling,

I hate good-byes, I want to remember you as you were last night. I hope you aren't too disappointed.

As I told you, Milo Hacha is an opportunist. He is also a very clever gambler. Here in Lucerne he lived for two years, supporting me in style, on his steady but unspectacular wins at the Kursaal boule tables. And, should the occasion arise, I believe he could be quite ruthless. I want you to be careful.

Please believe these are not the words of a jilted lover, though it's true—excluding yourself—that of the men I've loved, only Milo Hacha left me.

About our literature—or lack of it: We Swiss are too busy enjoying the good things in life to produce masterpieces. The same is true of Austria, which you are about to visit. Masterpieces are not produced, my student, from love of life. They are produced from despair.

Auf Weidersehen,

T—

Twenty-four hours later Steve and I were on our way by train to Innsbruck. Steve hardly opened his mouth the whole trip. What's behind all this? Whatever it is, Steve is plenty worried. About me, maybe? I'm pretty sure he regrets having let me talk him into taking me along.

The Cosmic Tours office in Innsbruck is located on Maria Theresienstrasse. In German I asked a man there named Kuhn about Milo Hacha. Herr Kuhn was willing but confused.

He threw his hands up in mock anguish, then settled his heavy Tyrolean rump comfortably on his chair. “Men like Milo Hacha I will never understand. He was the best passenger representative we ever had. We were considering him for an executive job either here or in our main office in Vienna—and what does he do?”

He mopped the sweat from his face and went on, “I will tell you what he does. He quits. Like that. With no warning. A week ago he said he was through. This being the height of the tourist season, we were, of course, shorthanded. But does that disturb Herr Hacha? No, certainly not. I tell you—”

“Then he isn't with Cosmic Tours any more?”

“He is—poof!” Herr Kuhn said expressively. “Vanished into thin air. That is Shakespeare. Did you know?”

“There's no way we could trace him?”

Herr Kuhn thought about that for a moment. “Well, there is always Mueller,” he said at last. “Mueller, you see, generally drove Milo Hacha's bus. On the road they roomed together. If anyone knows where Hacha went, Gerhard Mueller is the man.”

I translated for Steve, and Steve said through his teeth, “Ask him where Mueller is now.”

I asked him. He opened a green-covered book and ran a finger like a sausage down a list written in pencil. “Mueller has now four days off. He is to meet our bus at eleven tomorrow in Salzburg.”

“
Danke,
Herr Kuhn.”

We decided to take the night train to Salzburg, which got us there a little before one the next morning. We took a room at the Goldener Hirsch Hotel and slept like a couple of cadavers.

The bus was already there when we came out onto the Siegmunds Platz in front of the hotel. A few minutes later we were on our way to Vienna, via Linz, with Gerhard Mueller at the wheel.

When we reached Linz, where there was a stop for dinner, I approached Gerhard Mueller, smiled and asked in excellent German, “My brother and I were wondering if we could have dinner with you, Herr Mueller.”

“Yes, of course,” Mueller said.

“Good. We'd like to ask you some questions.”

“But surely the passenger representative—”

“Questions about a friend of yours,” I said. “Milo Hacha.”

I gave him the usual story about looking for Milo Hacha in connection with a legacy of unspecified size. He cut me off hastily. “But Milo Hacha is no longer in Austria.”

“Then where is he?”

“He is gone,” said Gerhard Mueller. The soup came and he ate it noisily. It was a clear broth with liver dumplings in it.

“Gone where?”

He shrugged.

“When did you see him last?”

Mueller pretended to give it some thought. He was one of the worst liars I have ever encountered. “Last week,” he said finally. “When we worked together on this bus.”

“How much?” I asked Steve in English.

“A C-note ought to buy his grandmother,” Steve grunted.

“I have a hundred dollars for you,” I said to Mueller, “if you can remember where Hacha went.”

If Steve expected him to fall on his face in the direction of Mecca, he had another expectation coming. Mueller didn't bat an eye.

“Why do you wish to find him?”

“I already told you. Well?”

He leaned across the table towards me. He had rotten teeth and a breath that was equally bad. “Did Dieter Loringhoven send you?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

“I never heard of anyone named Loringhoven. All we want is to find Milo Hacha.”

He picked a fish bone from his teeth. He was having a rough time making up his mind. “Let me see your passports, please.”

He turned to the blank visa pages and studied the stamp, dated yesterday, which had been made at the Swiss-Austrian frontier. When he handed our passports back, his eyes were shiny slits in their folds of fat. “You will not wish to follow Milo Hacha where he went.”

“Let us decide that.”

“
Bitte
. The money.”

I gave him fifty dollars. “Milo Hacha has gone to Czechoslovakia,” he said, and stopped. Then he continued, “That is on account.”

He held out his plump hand. I counted out the balance in Austrian schillings, which we'd obtained for traveller's cheques at the Goldener Hirsch. Herr Mueller was an expert at making money disappear.

“All right, produce. How soon is he coming back?”

“But you don't understand,” Mueller grinned. “He is never coming back. He has been offered an important post with the Czech government.”

I turned to Steve and translated. “I guess that busts it—unless you want to hang around in Vienna for a couple of weeks trying to wrangle a Czech visa. But it would be a waste of time, Steve. They'd never let us in.”

“I got to get hold of him,” Steve mumbled. “You think this chiseller is telling the truth?”

“Now I do.”

“All right. Let me think. Let me think about it.”

We all piled back into the bus for the long ride to Vienna. We entered the old Austrian capital just before midnight and drove along the Mariahilferstrasse to the broad Opern Ring and along that to Karl Lueger Ring and from there to the Regina Hotel on Roosevelt Platz. I must admit I got a bang out of the stately avenues and baroque public buildings with their fantastic spotlighted statuary. I'm going to like Vienna.

Steve's decided to stay, at least for the present. He's crazy, though, if he thinks we can get Czech visas and poke around behind the Iron Curtain.

I'm writing this in our room at the Regina, waiting for Steve. Last I saw of him was in the lobby after we'd checked in. He was just leaving with Herr Mueller. Since Mueller's English is just about nonexistent, and Steve doesn't speak German, apparently they're going to find a translator of their own. Which means Steve doesn't want me in on whatever he's planning.

I hope to hell he knows what he's doing.

I have one of those feelings that won't float. It tells me we're getting into something deep. Why won't Steve loosen up?

13

The lights were on late in the little apartment in the huge, grey-stone apartment building on the Praterstrasse. Although most of the imperial city had been rebuilt since the war, this area, the old Russian zone of occupation, was still shabby with neglect.

Once the apartment had been expensive and chic, and from its windows you could look down four storeys onto the Prater, with its grass and trees and fairyland lights. But now the view was weedy and disreputable. As soon as the Russians had gone and relocation began, the Prater had passed swiftly from upper to middle lower class. In a few years it would be a slum.

In the bedroom of the apartment where the lights burned at three
A.M
., Gerhard Mueller was undressing, a fleshy narrow-shouldered penguin of a man in rumpled underwear. “Well, what do you think?” he chuckled. “What do you think of your Gerhard now?”

The woman waiting for him in the bed made an uncomplimentary noise, the Viennese equivalent of a Bronx cheer. She wore a slightly frayed, very old but very well-cared-for black-silk nightgown. Because of the heat, which smothered the city even at this hour, she had not drawn the sheet over her body.

She was a large woman with full breasts threatening the old black silk, broad, peasant hips, but long and surprisingly slim legs. Her face was red with coarse pores, but she had thick blonde hair, which she kept retinting the most fashionable shade.

“Well, what do you think?” Gerhard Mueller repeated.

“I haven't seen the American's money.”

“I know, but—”

“And Dieter Loringhoven has a thousand schillings waiting for you. Are you dotty, Gerhard?”

“Five hundred dollars, that's what the American said. You heard. You translated, Theresa.”

“You have already earned Dieter Loringhoven's money. Go and get it.”

“I'm afraid of him.”

“But not afraid of crossing the border again with the American? What's the matter with you?”

“Siroky wasn't at the border station. Maybe Loringhoven arranged that. Maybe I was supposed to be killed. Do you think I dare face Loringhoven after that?”

Theresa yawned. “Go to bed then. We'll talk about it in the morning.”

Mueller looked at the woman. His mistress. Desire surged through him suddenly. “I'm not tired,” he said. “Are you?” He went over and sat down beside her.

“Listen to me, Gerhard,” she said, drawing up her legs lazily. “You're no bargain. Do you think I let you sleep with me because you're irresistible? I'll have nothing to do with you—nothing, you hear?—until you get the money from Loringhoven.”

“Theresa.”

“Take your stupid hands off me.”

“
Liebchen. Bitte, bitte
.”

But she pushed his hand away contemptuously. “I said no, Gerhard. Go sleep in the other bed.”

“Theresa—!”

“To the other bed, little man.”

Gerhard Mueller straightened slowly. He felt an obscure, devouring grievance. He had almost been killed recrossing the border, he was afraid to see Loringhoven, and with the sour-faced American he was still up in the air. And now Theresa … He hurled himself upon her.

She rolled swiftly over and he fell face down upon the bed with an
oomph!
that made her laugh. She laughed and laughed, her breasts shaking like jelly.

Mueller got to his knees. He was quite pale.
“Schufte,”
he said.
“Hündin. Hure.”

Theresa struck him in the face. What right did he have calling her a whore! The blow dazed him. His ears rang; he tasted blood. With a murderous cry he grabbed for her, trying to hurt her—for his brush with death at the border, for his fear of Loringhoven, for his indecision about the American, for the delectable flesh she was denying him.

Theresa's eyes widened. She began to struggle. The blood from his nose stained her hair, the sheet, the pillowcase. Their breaths laboured and mingled on the squeaking bed.

She was powerful, and fifteen years his junior. Slowly she forced Mueller back, pinning him down, lying on him with her immovable weight. He writhed helplessly beneath her, crushed, humiliated, weeping for his inadequate manhood.

“Will you get the money from Loringhoven?” she panted in his ear. She ground him deeper into the bed. “Will you?” Deeper. “
Will you …?”