“The Gestapo didn’t seem particularly interested in Reles and his activities,” I said.
“I suppose that’s why they asked the FBI for information about Max.” Dora laughed. “Yes, I thought that would shut you up. Max got a telegram from his brother in America passing on a tip from someone in the FBI saying that the FBI had received a request for information about him from the Gestapo in Würzburg. You see, Max has friends in the FBI just like he’s got a lot of useful friends here. He’s clever like that.”
“Is that right?”
I glanced around the bathroom. I might have kicked out the window and climbed down to the street but for the fact that the bathroom didn’t have a window. I needed the gun behind the panel. I glanced around for the screwdriver and then opened the four bathroom cabinets. “You know, Max is not going to be very happy when he comes back here and finds me in his bathroom,” I said. “For one thing, he’s not going to be able to use his own toilet.”
There wasn’t much in the cabinets. Most of the man’s toiletries were on the bathroom shelf or on the side of the sink. In one cabinet were a bottle of Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass and some Charbert Grand Prix men’s cologne. They looked like a perfect couple. In another I found a bag containing some rather vulgar-looking dildos, a blond wig, some expensive-looking lingerie, and a diamond tiara that was obviously paste. No one leaves a real one in a bathroom cabinet. Not when the hotel has a perfectly good safe. Of a screwdriver, however, there was no sign.
“It gives Max a real problem about what to do with me. I mean, he can hardly kill me here in the Adlon, can he? I’m not the type to sit still and have my ears syringed with an ice pick. And the noise of a gunshot is going to attract some attention and require some explaining. But make no mistake, Dora, he’s going to have to kill me. And you’ll be an accessory to murder.”
Of course, by now I had realized the significance of the wig, and the tiara, and the Blue Grass perfume. I was reluctant to mention this to Dora, as I still hoped she might be persuaded to cooperate with me. But with each passing minute it was becoming clear that I had little choice now but to scare her into cooperation with what I now knew about her.
“Except that you’ve got no problem with being an accessory to murder, have you, Dora? Because you’ve already helped out with one murder, haven’t you? It was you that Heinrich Rubusch was with the night Max killed him with that ice pick. You were the blond in the tiara, weren’t you? Didn’t the guy mind when you showed him your mouse? That you weren’t a natural blond?”
“He was like any other Fritz when he sees a bit of mouse. All he cared about was that it squeaked when he stroked it.”
“Please tell me that Max didn’t kill him while you were doing it.”
“What’s it to you, anyway? He made no noise. There wasn’t even any blood. Well, maybe just a bit. Max blotted it up with the guy’s pajama jacket. But you couldn’t even see a mark. Incredible, really. And, believe me, he didn’t feel a thing. Couldn’t have. Which is more than I can say. Rubusch wanted a racehorse, not a girl. I had the marks of his hairbrush on my backside for days afterward. If you ask me, the fat pervert had it coming.”
“But the door was locked from the inside when we found him. The key was still in the door.”
“You opened it, didn’t you? I locked it the same way. Lots of hotel whores carry passkeys or key turners. Or know how to get hold of one. Sometimes a client pays you off without a tip. Sometimes they peel some leaves off a bush that’s too tempting to leave behind. So you wait outside for a while, and then go back in and help yourself to more money. Some hotel detective you are, Gunther. The other bull. What was his name? The drunk. Muller. He knew the score. It was him that sold me a key turner and a good passkey. And in return, well, you can imagine what he wanted. The first time, anyway. On the night Max killed Rubusch, I bumped into him, and was obliged to pin some notes on his coat.”
“Which were some of the same notes you’d been given by Rubusch.”
“Of course.”
By now I had given up looking for the screwdriver. And I was scrutinizing my change to see if I had a coin thin enough to fit the screw head on the cistern panel. I didn’t. I did have a sterling-silver money clip—a wedding present from my late wife—and I spent several minutes using that to try to loosen one of the screws; but I succeeded only in mangling the clip’s corner. The way things were looking, very soon I was going to have a chance to apologize to my wife, if not in person, then something vaguely similar.
Dora Bauer had stopped talking. Which was fine. Every time she said something it reminded me of how stupid I’d been. I picked up the tooth glass, washed it out, poured myself a generous measure of Korn, and sat down on the toilet. Things always look a little better over a drink and a cigarette.
You’re in a spot, Gunther, I told myself. In a short while, a man is going to come through that door with a gun, and he’s going to either shoot you or try to walk you out of the hotel and shoot you somewhere else. Of course, he might try to hit you over the head and then kill you with that ice pick, and take you out of here in a laundry basket. He’s been staying here for quite a while. He should know where everything is by now. How things work here.
Or he could just dump your body in the elevator shaft. It might be a while before anyone finds you down there. Or maybe he’ll just telephone his friends in Potsdam and have them come and arrest me again. It’s not like anyone’s going to object. Everyone in Berlin looks the other way whenever someone gets arrested these days. It’s nobody’s business. No one wants to see anything.
Then again, they can hardly take the risk that I won’t say something in front of everyone when they try to sleepwalk me out the front door. Von Helldorf wouldn’t like that. Nor would our honored sports leader, von Tschammer und Osten.
I drank some more of the Korn. It didn’t make me feel any better. But it did give me an idea. It wasn’t much of an idea. Then again, I wasn’t much of a detective. That much was already evident.
31
A
COUPLE OF HOURS PASSED. So did a couple more drinks. What else was I going to do? I heard the sound of the key in the lock and rose to my feet. The door opened. Instead of Max Reles I found myself face-to-face with Gerhard Krempel, which put a big dent in my idea. Krempel wasn’t very bright, and it was hard to see how I was going to talk myself out of anything if it was his cauliflower ears that were doing the listening. He had a thirty-two in one hand and a cushion in the other.
“I see you’ve been entertaining yourself,” he said.
“I need to speak to Max Reles.”
“That’s too bad, because he’s not here.”
“I’ve got a deal for him. He’ll want to hear it. I can guarantee that he will.”
Krempel smiled bleakly. “So what is it?”
“And spoil the surprise? Let’s just say the police are involved.”
“Yeah, but which police? The no-account police you used to be, Gunther? Or the ones my boss knows who make problems disappear? You dropped three cards, and now you’re trying to raise. Well, I’m calling your bluff. I don’t care what you’ve got to say. Here’s what I’m saying. You’ve got two ways out of this bathroom. Dead, or dead drunk. It’s your choice. Both are inconvenient to me, but one choice looks less inconvenient to you. Especially as you’ve so thoughtfully provided a bottle and, by the look of things, made a head start on what I’m talking about.”
“What happens then?”
“That’s up to Reles. But there’s no way I’m walking you out of this hotel unless you’re incapacitated somehow. If you’re drunk, you can shoot your mouth off all you like and no one is going to pay a crumb like you much attention. Not even here. In fact, especially here. They don’t like drunks at the Adlon. They frighten the ladies. If we see anyone who knows you, then you’ll be just another ex-cop who couldn’t hold his liquor. The same as that other sot who used to work here. Fritz Muller.”
Krempel shrugged.
“Then again, I could shoot you right now, right here, snooper. With a cushion wrapped around this little thirty-two, the noise will pass for a car backfiring. Then I’ll push you out the French window. Shouldn’t make too much of a splash down there. It’s only one floor. By the time anyone notices you in all this rain and in the dark, I’ll have you safely folded up in the back of my car. Next stop, the river.”
The voice was calm and assured, as if killing me weren’t going to give him any sleepless nights. He folded the cushion over the gun, with meaning.
“Better drink up,” he said. “I’m done talking here.”
I poured a glass and emptied it in one swallow.
Krempel shook his head. “Let’s forget we’re in the Adlon, shall we? From the bottle, if you don’t mind. I don’t have all night.”
“Care to join me?”
He took a short step forward and hit me hard across the face. It wasn’t hard enough to knock me off my feet. Just off my vocal cords.
“Cut the dialogue and drink.”
I put the neck of the tall stoneware bottle to my lips and gulped at it like it was water. Some of it tried to come back up, but I gritted my teeth and didn’t let it. Krempel didn’t look like he had the tolerance to wait for me to puke. I sat down on the edge of the bath, took a deep breath, and drank some more. And then some more. As I lifted the bottle a third time, my hat fell into the empty bath, but it might as easily have been my head. It rolled under the dripping tap and remained on its crown, like a large brown beetle on its back. I reached down to get it, misjudged the depth of the bath, and fell in, but without dropping the schnapps bottle. I think if I had broken it, Krempel would have shot me then and there. I took another swig from the bottle to reassure him there was plenty of alcohol left in it, grabbed my hat, and crushed it back on top of my already swimming head.
Krempel regarded me with no more feeling than if I’d been a dried-up loofah, and sat down on the toilet lid. His eyes were two puffy slits, as if they’d been bitten by a snake. He lit a cigarette, crossed his long legs, and let out a long, tobacco-flavored sigh.
Several minutes passed. They were idle ones for him, but for me they were increasingly hazardous and intoxicated. The booze was strong-arming me into spineless submission.
“Gerhard? How would you like to make a lot of money? And I mean a lot of money. Thousands of marks.”
“Thousands, is it?” His body twitched as it expelled a derisive laugh. “And this from you, Gunther. A man with a hole in his shoe who gets the bus home. When you’ve got the fare.”
“You have got that right, my friend.” With my backside on the floor of the canyon-deep bath and my Salamanders in the air, I felt like Bobby Leach going over Niagara in a barrel. Every so often my stomach seemed to fall away beneath me. I turned the tap and splashed some cold water onto my sweat-covered face. “But. There is money to be had. My friend. A lot of money. Behind you there’s a panel that is screwed on top of the lavatory cistern. Hidden in there is a bag. A bag containing banknotes. In several currencies. A Thompson submachine gun. And enough Swiss gold coins to start a chocolate shop.”
“It’s a little early for Christmas,” said Krempel. He tutted loudly. “And I didn’t even leave a boot by the fireplace.”
“Last year, mine was full of twigs. But it’s there, all right. The money, I mean. I figure Reles must have hidden it there. I mean, a Thompson’s not the kind of thing you can leave in the hotel safe. Even here.”
“Don’t let me stop you drinking,” Krempel growled, and, leaning forward on the lavatory seat, he tapped the sole of my shoe—the one with the hole in it—with the barrel of the gun.
I filled my cheeks with the obnoxious liquid, swallowed uncomfortably, and let out a deep, nauseated breath. “I found it. When I searched this suite. A little while ago.”
“And you just left it there?”
“I’m a lot of things, Gerhard. But I’m not a thief. You have the advantage of me there. There’s a screwdriver old Max keeps in this suite. Somewhere. To remove said panel. I’m sure of it. I was looking for it a bit earlier on. So that I could greet you with it when you showed up with the Mauser in your mitt. Nothing personal, you understand. But a Thompson gets a click of the heels and a salute in any language.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, raised the sausagelike bottle in a silent toast, and swallowed some more. When I opened them again, Krempel was examining the screws on the panel with interest.
“There’s enough there to buy several companies, or to bribe whoever needs bribing. Yes, there’s a lot of coal in that bag. A lot more than he’s paying you, Gerhard.”
“Shut up, Gunther.”
“Can’t. I always was a gabby drunk. Last time I got tripped like this was when my wife died. Spanish flu. Have you ever wondered why they call it Spanish flu, Gerhard? It started in Kansas, you know. But the Amis censored that because of the war censorship still in force. And it didn’t make the newspapers until it reached Spain, where they didn’t have any wartime censorship. Ever had the flu, Gerhard? That’s what I feel like now. Like I got a one-man epidemic of the stuff. Jesus, I think I even wet myself.”
“You turned the tap, thickhead, remember?”
I yawned. “Did I?”
“Drink up.”
“Here’s to her. She was a good woman. Too good for me. Do you have a wife?”
He shook his head.
“With the money in that bag you could afford several. And none of them would mind that you’re such an ugly bastard. A woman can overlook almost any shortcoming in a man when there’s a big bag of money on her dinner table. I’ll bet that bitch next door, Dora, doesn’t know about the bag, either. Otherwise, she’d have had it for sure. Mercenary little nanny-goat. Mind you, I will say this for her. I’ve seen her naked, and she’s a peach. Of course, you have to remember that every peach has a stone inside it. Dora’s got a bigger one than most, too. But she’s a peach, all right.”