The Assassini (30 page)

“Sometimes I think that’s an all-purpose excuse for the rest of the world.”

“Perhaps.” He nodded. “Well, to return to your sister—I’m afraid I was a great disappointment to her. I knew Torricelli but only in passing and I never kept any journals or diaries or letters, all the things historians love—”

An intercom on his desk buzzed and his secretary said someone was in the outer office to see him. He looked up at me, said, “Will you excuse me for just a moment? My dock foreman needs a word with me. Please, stay right where you are. Try out my putter if you like, I’ll be with you in just a second.” He grabbed a stack of yellow sheets and went out to the secretary’s office.

I went to look at the photographs more closely. The walls contained an incredibly detailed account of his life. I followed them from one wall to the next, and in the darkest corner of the room there was a gap, just a small space where a picture was missing. In the corner—with a long library table covered with manuals and notebooks and price lists and dictionaries in half a dozen languages and file folders and a couple of withering plants tied to stakes, with this cluttered table drawing your attention away from the photos above—the gap could have gone unnoticed for months, years. You’d have had to be looking at the photographs closely to notice it. And I was
looking. And there it was. Something missing from the story of Klaus Richter’s life. And I knew where it was.

I was admiring the Julius Boros putter when he came back. He sat down on the edge of his desk, holding a stack of white sheets, said something about the endless technicalities of running an import-export operation. He was watching the sand running through the hourglass. “Where were we?”

“Paris.”

“Yes, yes. Well, I was no help to your sister. She came so far …”

“Maybe you were more help to her than you thought.”

“Dear old Torricelli, now, there was a man the historians dream about. He was a pack rat. He kept everything, every menu and every laundry list, every memo. I would bring him papers, he’d file them. Organized, alphabetized, utterly amazing. I always thought it took a tremendous ego, don’t you agree? A man would have to believe in his own importance to preserve everything.” He sighed at the thought. It seemed to me that a man who turned his entire workplace into a photographic history of his own life had an ego of his own. But it was always easy to judge others. I thought I could find my sister’s killers. Ego was everywhere. “Your sister was so patient with me that day. I was running in and out, carrying on a telephone negotiation—she was so understanding but I’m afraid I was a great disappointment to her.”

We went on for a few more minutes but I’d mined the vein for all I was going to get. He said he had a golf date and I thanked him for his time and left.

I nodded to the secretary. She was receiving a package from a delivery man. It was small and flat and wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. Outside in the crowded street I saw a blue and white truck standing with the motor running. There was blue lettering in several languages on the side panel. In English it said: The Galleries of E. LeBecq.

* * *

The banana-nose profile. D’Ambrizzi leaning forward as if listening to what someone was whispering, the bandit’s mustache drooping darkly. A young, hard-faced man next to D’Ambrizzi: was he wearing a uniform? Something Wehrmacht about the stiff collar … The man next to him, thin-faced, harsh lines slicing his face vertically and shadows filling them in, a face of a man who passed harsh judgments, an eyebrow like a crowbar, a single thick smudge over his eyes … Then the fourth man, who had at first looked to be out of focus, indistinct … but there was something,
something
about him … two candles on the table, wine bottles, the picture taken with a flash attachment, casting odd shadows on the wall of painted brick behind them …

I was sitting in a fly-specked, grimy little cantina where workmen were drinking coffee and Cokes and I was trying to keep an eye on the front and side doors of the Global Egypt warehouse. I was drinking thick hot coffee and glancing back and forth from the warehouse to the photograph Val had left for me in the drum. I smoothed it flat and thought about those four men. And I could hear Sister Elizabeth saying
no, five, five men
.

Klaus Richter seemed to be a mighty swell guy. He undoubtedly played to a very low handicap and damned if he hadn’t understood how much the Parisians loved Paris. He loved all those snapshots of himself, a life of which he was proud. And Julie Boros gave him one of his customized putters. Sister Lorraine said he was a pillar of the Catholic community. Nice sense of humor, called Egypt the world’s biggest sandtrap … Helluva swell fella.

And a liar.

He knew D’Ambrizzi in Paris and he’d lied to me about it.

I knew he was a liar because I’d found a picture of him in my sister’s toy drum. He was sitting next to D’Ambrizzi in the snapshot. Young, expressionless, a face that had already seen too much by the time he got to Paris. And I was pretty sure where my sister had gotten the picture.

Val had come to Alexandria looking for a man in the
picture and she’d found him. And then the man with the silvery hair had killed her.

Klaus Richter …

Sitting in the canteen with the sun shining bright as a new half dollar, I realized for the first time since it had begun that I was truly afraid. I was alone, thinking my own thoughts, no Sister Elizabeth or Father Dunn or Monsignor Sandanato to share them with me. The sun was shining and I was drinking a cup of high octane java and nobody had tried to kill me all day. And I was having chills because I was so damned scared. It just came over me all of a sudden. When I realized Klaus Richter was one of the men in the snapshot … and it was important enough to lie to me about. The chills made my flesh crawl. The fear was making me feel like my back was leaking, like I was soaked with blood.

I just hated that.

I hated being afraid. Val had been afraid …

Klaus Richter came out of the side door an hour later. He was carrying his golf bag. He put it in the trunk of a black Mercedes four-door parked in the alleyway, got in, and drove away with the wind swirling dust and sand in his wake.

I put the snapshot into my pocket and walked back across the street. I found the secretary away from her desk and the door to Richter’s office open. Somebody was pounding up a storm in his office. I went to the doorway. The secretary had a hammer and was leaning over the library table flailing at the wall.

I knocked on the door and said, “Excuse me.” She jumped back, turned around with the hammer in her hand, mouth open in surprise. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” I said.

“I hit my finger,” she said, shaking her hand. “But”—she smiled with wide, dark red lips in a dark face—“I would have hit it even without your help.” She recognized me. “You just missed Herr Richter. He won’t be back now until tomorrow.”

“Golf, I’ll bet.”

“Of course. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“It’s not so important, but I thought I might have left my pen behind me.” It was weak but what the hell? “Here, let me do that hammering for you.”

She held out the hammer and pointed to the nail. It was right where I’d hoped it would be. “What kind of pen?”

“Fountain pen. Big old Mont Blanc.” I leaned over the table and pulled the bent nail from the wall, steadied another one, and drove it in with two quick blows. “And the picture?”

She was unwrapping the brown paper package. She folded the paper back and held up the small framed photo. It was a twin of the one in my pocket. I took it from her and she smiled again, shyly. “I’m so glad you weren’t Herr Richter,” she said. “He’s very particular about his photographs, and I wanted to get this one replaced before he noticed it was gone. I put plants and stacks of things over here hoping he wouldn’t see—”

“What happened to the original?” I’d hung it on the nail and straightened it, filling the empty space. I knew Val had taken it, I could see her spotting it and while Richter had been running out of the room conducting his negotiation slipping it into her Vuitton briefcase.
But why?
What was so damned important about that picture?

“I’d never say this to Herr Richter,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper, “but I’m sure the woman who comes in and cleans the office knocked it down while dusting. The glass was cracked, probably, and instead of admitting it, she threw it away—She claims to know nothing, of course. Fortunately Herr Richter had another copy in his photo files. So it’s been a race to get it framed and back on the wall before he noticed.” She was following me around as I pretended to look for my pen. Finally I got down on my knees, slipped it out of my pocket, and “found” it under the desk.

She saw me out, thanking me for the help. I told her I’d enjoyed every minute of it. I could almost feel Val beside me, patting my shoulder, calling me a goof.

But what was the big deal about the snapshot?

It tied Klaus Richter, a legitimate businessman in Alexandria, to D’Ambrizzi forty years before in Paris.
During the Occupation. But what made that so important? Why did he lie about it? And why had Val left it for me? What did it have to do with murdering her?

Back at the Cecil a message was waiting. Sister Lorraine had called, wanted me to call her back. I went up to my room, washed my face, inspected the dressing on my back, and made a gin and tonic, light on the gin. I washed down a couple of pain pills. Stood at the window watching late afternoon settle over the water and the square with the huge statue in the center. The sound of the trams and the buses at Ramli Station, the cool wind blowing steadily off the sea. I finished my drink, staring out over the harbor, watching the shadows lengthen and the lights come on along the Corniche. To my left a yacht club glowed like the promised land where we could all go and have a wonderful, perfect night.
So why did Richter have to lie to me?
A simple truth and I might have shaken my head at the mystery of Val’s quest and maybe, maybe I might have given up …

I was way out at the edge of the circle. I was still out there where it was gray and the lights of safety beckoned. I could still say the hell with it and go home. I had one lying German and nowhere else to turn. Egypt wasn’t yielding up much. I supposed I could go back to Richter, confront him about the photo.… I could keep pushing toward the darkness at the center of the circle, the black hole that had swallowed my sister.… That’s where the secrets were, where the answers were. How much did I want to know the answers … would they bring me happiness and peace? And a gentle eternity for my little sister?

I called Sister Lorraine.

She asked how my researches were going. I allowed as how I seemed to have fetched up against a wall and was beginning to watch my back. She gave a Gallic laugh, rather on the world-weary side, and said she’d remembered something else I might be interested in hearing. I interrupted her. “Sister, could I prevail upon you for the name of a restaurant?” She began to speak but I went on. “And might you be the guest of this poor stranded
wayfarer? Without your help I’d have come a long way for nothing.” It seemed to me I’d done just that anyway, but I was in no mood to spend an evening alone with a bottle of Bombay gin and memories of the silvery hair and the blade in the moonlight. Thanks be to God, she said she’d be delighted, so I thanked God again for small favors, for the Order, and the modern age of the sisterhood. Brave new world. She gave me the name of a restaurant, told me how to get there, and said she’d meet me.

The Tikka Grill was situated next to the El Kashafa el Baharia Yacht Club, whose lights I’d seen from my balcony. The dining room was on the second floor. Our table looked across the harbor at the white yachts with the glow from their deck parties. It was like a scene from a Humphrey Bogart movie. The music was playing softly and my nun was smiling at me through the candlelight. I had the feeling that the only women I knew anymore were nuns. I mentioned it to Sister Lorraine and she tilted her small, sleek head to one side, her eyes wide. “God’s way of saving you from your base self, do you think?”

“I wish God weren’t quite so worried about my base self.”

“Shame on you,” she said. “God is everywhere, concerned with everything. Alexandria is no exception.” She sipped a French white and recommended the fish kebab. As we ate we talked and I felt myself letting down, relaxing. The walls were white stucco. The room was pleasantly crowded. The tablecloths and napkins were a gentle pink, the wine dry and cold, the fish superb. A soothing oasis of reality where I was at least for the moment safe. I told her that Richter had been pleasant enough but hadn’t really told me anything about Val I didn’t know.

She put her silverware down. “Mr. Driskill, I can’t believe you came so far without a real reason. I’m not a detective, but the whole world knows your sister was murdered. You’ve come here because your sister was here … I have the feeling you have decided to—what do you say in English? Take the bull into your own hands?”

“Matters, not bull. Or by the horns, not into your own hands—”

“Whatever. May I be frank?”

“Everyone else seems to be when it comes to this.”

“I think you are being a little foolhardy. I have thought about it since yesterday and I nearly decided to put you and whatever you’re up to out of my mind … but then I thought about your coming so far. And your sister was so—so significant a woman. Such a credit to the Order. And”—she made a small dismissive gesture—“I couldn’t stop you from doing whatever you intend. I am correct, am I not?”

“Tell me what you remembered, Sister.”

“Sister Valentine saw another man while she was here. Or, rather, she intended to. She mentioned it to Sister Beatrice, who mentioned it to me—it had slipped my mind, then I thought of it last night.” She sighed expressively, as if she knew she ought to have kept the name hidden forever. Sister Lorraine was a natural flirt.

“Give me the name,” I said.

“If I do, will you tell me what you’re doing?”

“Sister—” My back was killing me. It had come out of nowhere, like the man with the knife. “I … don’t know what I’m doing.”