Past Perfect (35 page)

“Manfred really never got much from him, but he didn’t expect to. He had what he needed, his reports on all the transactions. Of course the two of them were also photographed together. He said having Ben was like having a Swiss bank account. You don’t draw down on it from week to week, but it’s there for something big. And for the future also. He thought Ben was a man with a future. He was wrong on that, because of Ben’s inability to see how the DDR would come crashing down.

“Manfred saw it though. A few months before it happened, he began putting the pressure on Ben. Then more pressure. He showed him the photographs. Ben got angry, so Manfred handed Ben a list of people at the CIA who would get letters and pictures if Manfred didn’t place a certain call—which he would make only when he was safe in the U.S.”

“Where was Hans during all of this?” I was trying to concentrate one hundred percent, but I began worrying about dehydrating and getting arrhythmia. Despite the humidity, my lips were so parched it slowed down my talking.

“Hans was with them sometimes, which Manfred hated and so did Ben. Such a nasty little man.” She sniffled and, as if she’d developed an instant postnasal drip, began to cough. She held up her index finger—Wait a minute—until she could speak again. “Sorry. I’m allergic to pines. I take shots, but sometimes … Where was I? Oh yes, in October of eighty-nine, Hans came to Manfred and told him he must push Ben to help get the two of them out of Germany. Manfred was shocked. He thought Hans was such a good communist. He was convinced Hans was reporting on him, because the very top men could never trust a Jew who had grown up in Moscow. They would feel his loyalty was to the USSR, not to the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. You knew that about Manfred? His history?”

“Yes. Saved from the Nazis by the communists.”

“He told me he would never have thought to make such a proposal to Hans. He thought Hans would report it so fast he would be arrested before he could even say, ‘I was joking.’ But it became the two of them from that moment on. It wasn’t until we were out of Germany entirely that Hans learned I was part of the package. Interesting, because he also left his wife behind. But maybe Manfred told him it would be impossible to bring her. Who knows? Even if that was so, who could Hans complain to?”

Maria stood and stretched her arms up and out, then took off her hat and tousled her hair. Then she did a few wrist rotations, which gave me a second to do what I hadn’t before, check out her ring finger. Bare. I was dying to ask her if she’d ever married or had a boyfriend. In fact, I was incredibly curious about her life. What had it been like, moving from a despotic regime she was part of, being torn from the man she loved, then sent alone to the freedom of Tallahassee? Had her early childhood been tough, living in Soviet-dominated East Germany, or had her family sheltered her from politics? And what were they like and what had they been doing during World War II? I thought, This is a woman who ought to write her memoirs. What a story she must have!

I got up from the bench slowly, delighting myself that I was able to stand without swooning. The air-conditioned coffee place in the distance glimmered the way the Emerald City must have for Dorothy. Had it been up to Maria, we might have racewalked there, but I kept it at a reasonably poky pace.

“What are your thoughts about Lisa?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I can’t say I’m not nervous, of course. If she killed the other two … She could come to my office and …” She raised her thumb and pointed her index finger and said, “Bang-bang. I’m dead. That’s my nerves speaking, especially after the way Hans was killed. Manfred? Who knows. Maybe, as you say, stories like that are for fiction, but it makes me wonder. From the minute I got here, I felt safe. I have to laugh, everyone living in gated communities. I know. People here have different fears. I myself could walk in any city in the U.S. at two in the morning and feel safe. That’s crazy, but it happens to be true.” It probably was true, but as she said it, it sounded over the top. No, I told myself, not over the top: a little wild. Maybe she needed swagger to get through life, and now some bombast as well to face a possible threat from an old friend.

“From what you’re telling me, you seem to think that Lisa is alive,” I said.

“That’s my hope. Also a little of my fear because of what she might do if Ben ordered her to, but mostly hope.” Then she repeated, “Hope.”

For some reason, I remembered, when I was about ten, my mother reading Maddy and me the Emily Dickinson poem that starts “Hope is the thing with feathers,” and Maddy loving it, genuinely, with tears in her eyes. I’d smiled and nodded sagely. My mother seemed so pleased at our reactions. She gave us her soft-faced my-beloved-daughters look. What I’d really liked about the poem was hearing her read out loud. She had a sweet voice and spoke naturally: none of that business of pronouncing each word as if it were a gem. But, as my sister would put it, as an aesthetic experience? Sure, I got the thing about the bird, but I thought, What crap. Why not “Hope is the thing with blueberries” about a muffin?

“What do you mean that it’s your hope that Lisa is alive?” I asked. “Do you have serious doubts?”

“Yes, I do.” She stopped walking. For a moment she looked the way I felt: close to keeling over from the heat. But she pulled herself together and started walking again, seemingly unaware that she had stopped. “Lisa isn’t the type not to call back when she says she will. She may take longer than most people, but eventually she calls. After calling you and saying it was a matter of national importance, even if she changed her mind, or Ben changed his mind, she would call you again and tell you her problem was resolved. Not just to be polite. So you wouldn’t do exactly what you’re doing, what I would do too — worry and then try to trace her.”

“What’s your theory then?”

“My theory is Ben may have killed her. Years ago I would have thought ‘had her killed.’ But he’s been out of the CIA for years now, and he wouldn’t, you know, hire someone else because it would expose him to blackmail again.”

Emerald City was getting closer. I was so grateful. My head pounded and the cheese sandwich had reconstituted itself and now lodged behind my breastbone.

“Do you think she had anything to do with the two deaths?”

“If she could be convinced that Hans and Manfred were a danger to Ben, then yes. And I think he could convince her of anything.”

“So you think one of them, or maybe both, was blackmailing him again, threatening to expose what he’d done when he’d been in the Agency?”

“Yes. Though it could have been the threat alone, the potential of dangerous information coming out, that frightened Ben. If it was blackmail, most likely Hans did it. He was a little weasel. Lisa told me that Manfred had become an entrepreneur, so I don’t think he would. If he had enough money, what could Ben give him? Maybe because Manfred and Hans had been a package deal coming out, Ben could have assumed they were in any plot together. Or Hans might have told him Manfred was in it. But I have another hope.”

“What’s that?”

“If Lisa is dead, then — I know this sounds terrible — I would be safer, maybe even safe. If I’m right about Ben not risking hiring a stranger, and if he’s not willing to do it himself, then who would go after me?”

I was thinking that was a lot of ifs, but I said, “Good point. But if Lisa did all that for him, why would he risk killing her?”

“Good question.” Maria smiled. She seemed to be enjoying the game of figuring out who did what to whom and why. “All right, this is how I see it. He wanted to make a clean break once and for all. Blackmail and the threat of it have been hanging over him for— what? —fifteen years or more.”

“Look, I don’t want to get you upset, but why wouldn’t he let her do the job on you first before getting rid of her?”

“Maybe she refused to do it. I don’t know. We’ve been friends. For him, that would cancel out everything else she did for him in all their years together. What’s that expression? Oh, she would have signed her own death warrant. It could be something else; he didn’t think I had anything to do with any new blackmail scheme. In his eyes, I was not an important figure. I was just somebody’s former mistress.” We were nearing the street now and she added, “I’ll give you the bottom line. I think Ben may have wanted freedom from blackmail and also freedom from Lisa. She wasn’t getting any younger, you know. If he gets to be in the cabinet, he will have his choice of girls like her who are willing to do anything for a man they worship.” I was lost in my own thoughts, to say nothing of my own headache, so I didn’t immediately respond. “And one more thing, if may.

“Yes, definitely.” I offered an encouraging smile, not at all phony. She was terrific at exploring possibilities, and for someone whose life might be on the line, pretty cheerful. I would have loved to have her with me when I plotted out an episode.

“By getting rid of her, he gets rid of a big expense. Don’t forget, it was his difficulties in keeping her living as nicely as she did that brought him his troubles in the first place.”

Now what do I do? I was thinking. This was all guesswork. Lisa could be anywhere. I could walk into the coffee place with Maria and — surprise! — Lisa would greet her with a gun in her hand to finish the job for Ben. Assuming, of course, that our conclusions about Ben were correct. The question I was asking myself as we crossed the street was: Before I leave the past behind me, is there anything else I want? The answer: Yes, I want justice. Not a lot, but —

Who knows if luck—good or bad —is the thing with feathers too, or if you make your own, but at that moment I happened to look both left and right just to make sure no eighteen-wheeler had turned the corner and was bearing down on us. Safe. Or at least from a truck, but I caught a glimpse of Maria’s face. She was deep in thought, but not so deep that I couldn’t see that whatever she was contemplating pleased her. So I figured it wasn’t the notion that Lisa might still be around to kill her. Conversely, I didn’t think she would be gladdened by Lisa’s death. Nor could she be pleased by Manfred’s death and the end to any fantasy she might have of seeing him again. And since every form of logic and illogic I had at my disposal couldn’t come up with a reason for Maria to have murdered those two men, I decided she wasn’t gloating at putting something over on me.

While before she’d been easy to talk to—I supposed a necessary quality for a real estate broker—now she turned uncommunicative. We sat across from each other in a blissfully frigid little store drinking iced coffee and sharing a pie-size oatmeal cookie. Her head moved up and down rhythmically as if she were keeping the beat to a happy tune only she could hear. Or telling herself, Yes, yes, yes.

That was it. Yes, Ben might be responsible for Manfred’s death, and maybe Lisa’s, but yes, Maria Schneider was going to keep him from profiting from his crimes. What if there were no crimes by Ben, only a naturally occurring fungus and a crazy person who broke into a Minneapolis office and killed a guy? Then Ben had at least inflicted endless insults and pain on Lisa. And he also was a traitor to his country. Why should he be rewarded with a cabinet post?

“Are you okay, Maria?”

“Fine. Sorry, I’m having to digest all that I learned today.”

She was digesting such awful stuff with that contented expression and the nodding business? Not likely. Well, if she wanted to zing it to Benton Mattingly, she could be my guest. “I guess that will take a lot of digesting,” I said, just to be sociable, though I don’t think she heard me. Her head was going up, down, up, down, like one of Nicky’s New York Yankees bobble-head dolls.

But what if Maria’s plan wasn’t getting even in that way, by going to the media or somehow getting the word out on Mattingly? What if instead she decided to supplement her income by taking up the blackmail again? Would she put herself at such risk? Maybe, if she could think of a way to insulate herself better than Hans or Manfred had. But where would that leave my search for justice?

“I really have to run now,” she said suddenly, and only then made a big deal of glancing at her watch. “Why don’t you meet me for dinner? I’ll put a steak on the grill and mix a salad. I’ll tell you what, I’ll be with clients all afternoon so I’ll let you buy the wine. I’ll pay you for it.”

“No, really.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Maria said.

“I was thinking about taking a late-afternoon, early-evening plane back to New York. Surprise my husband. But thanks so much for — ”

“Don’t say no. Please.” She took a business card from a case and jotted something on the back. “Here’s my address.” She jotted some more. “And here’s a little map. Very little, but you can still read it.”

“I’d love to—”

“I understand. If you want to get home to your husband, of course go. It’s only that I would have liked to spend some time with you not discussing, you know, horrible things. Nice things. Funny stories about Lisa. And to show you my villa.”

FRANKLY, I THOUGHT calling it “my villa” wastacky. It was like telling someone, Oh, you must drop by my mansion. But Maria was in the real estate business, so maybe that’s what they called a certain kind of house in Tallahassee. Unless she was being ironic and actually had a bungalow.

The iced coffee followed by a sports bottle of water and a couple of Excedrins didn’t improve my headache and dizziness, so I drove around for a few minutes, checked into a Holiday Inn, and called Adam. “I cannot tell you how awful I feel,” I said and then proceeded to tell him.

“Keep drinking water,” he told me. “Sounds like you’re seriously dehydrated. You’re probably better off leaving tomorrow morning.”

“You’re holding back from saying, ‘How could you sit in the blazing sun in ninety-five-degree heat for three-quarters of an hour?’“

“You’re right.”‘“Without a hat.’”

“Right again. Besides being crazy and giving you a cheese sandwich on a park bench, how was that woman?” he asked.

“Not bad. A little weird. She must bathe in SPF 45 every day or she’d be dead by now. Anyway, I’ll tell you all about it, but it will take the whole six-hour trip up to camp, and maybe even the trip back.”