Voices of the Dead (20 page)

Harry went back to his hotel. It was 11:40. He was tired, sat on the bed and called the Washington DC Police Department, asked for Detective Taggart.

“Taggart,” he said, coming on the line.

“It’s Harry Levin.”

“Harry, what’s going on?”

“That couple murdered the night Sara died, were they Jewish?”

“Whoa. You trying to solve that one now? I can’t give you information about a homicide investigation.”

“These two cases might be related.”

“Yeah, they were Jewish.”

“How old?”

“He was mid-forties. She was ten years younger.”

“Were they born in Germany?”

“How the hell do I know where they were born?”

“You found shell casings at the scene, didn’t you?”

“How do you know that?”

“What caliber?”

“You’re pressing your luck.”

“What’re you worried about?”

“Nine-millimeter Parabellum,” Taggart said. “Two of them.”

Harry could hear him drawing on a cigarette, blowing out smoke.

“What kind of gun?”

“Luger. That’s all you get till you give me something.”

“Anything taken off the bodies? Personal possessions: a ring, watch, bracelet, earrings, glasses?”

“Who told you that?”

“I’m guessing,” Harry said.

“The dentist had a gold chain. It was broken. Whatever was hanging from it is missing.” Taggart’s voice sounding faint all of a sudden like the connection was fading. “Hey, where you at?”

“Munich,” Harry said.

“Don’t even tell me. Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Hess shot the couple in Georgetown.”

“Yeah? Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“The Krauts were right about you, Harry. You should see someone. Seriously. You’re fucked up.”

He heard static. Taggart had hung up.

He got to Colette’s just before midnight. Stood in front of her apartment building, felt a cool breeze blowing up the street, saw a light on in her apartment. He moved to the door and pressed the button. A few seconds later she appeared in the window, looking down at him. She buzzed him in. He took the stairs. She was standing in the doorway when he got there, wearing a robe and tortoiseshell glasses, hair up, looking sexier than ever. Harry kissed her hard and long, backing her into the apartment and closing the door while he was doing it.

When they finally broke for air Colette was smiling and Harry was too.

“Where have you been? Did you get a better offer?”

He told her about Martz and Lisa.

“My God, Harry, I’m so sorry.” She put her arms around him. “What are the police doing? Do they have any suspects?”

“If they do, they aren’t saying.”

“Come in, have a drink, I’ll make you something to eat.”

Colette took him in the kitchen, sat him at the table and poured him a glass of chilled pinot gris. She cracked two eggs in a bowl and made him a ham and cheese omelet, served it with a little salt and pepper sprinkled on top. She sat across the table and watched him eat, devouring the omelet in six bites, guzzling the wine.

“Harry, you were starving. Can I get you anything else?”

“What about your photographs?”

“You have to see them.”

She walked out of the room and came back with two stacks of prints. Handed Harry the first one, stood by his side while he shuffled through them. There were a couple long shots of the MC and the uniformed Nazis on the dais.

“I showed these to a former teacher this afternoon. Dr. Ritmeier, an expert on Nazis past and present. The MC is Franz Stigler, head of a local Blackshirt faction. By day he’s an electrician.” She paused. “Dr. Ritmeier doesn’t think the men on the dais are real Nazis. He tried to match the names and faces with known SS personnel at the camps and couldn’t.”

“These neo-Nazi idiots are being duped, huh?”

“Isn’t it amazing.”

“What about Hess?”

“Dr. Ritmeier has no information or evidence of Hess being sympathetic to their cause. It would be a serious conflict of interest.”

Knowing it and proving it were two different things. The other photos showed the Nazi banners, cheering Blackshirts on their feet, raising their ax handles, showing Nazism was alive and well in Munich. He glanced up at her.

“What do you think?”

“They’re great. You really captured it,” Harry said. “Let me see the others?”

She handed him the second stack and sat next to him. Individual tabletop shots of the things they’d found in the drawer at Hess’ apartment. Souvenirs Hess had taken from the people he’d killed. He’d bet the gold Star of David in the photograph he was looking at matched the chain the dentist in D.C. was wearing.

She got up, stood next to him and put her hands on his shoulders. He untied the sash and opened the robe. She was naked underneath. He kissed her white creamy stomach, moving up to her breasts, lingered there for a while, stood, kissed her mouth and she led him to the bedroom.

She took off her robe and kissed him and helped him off with his jacket and sat on the edge of the bed, naked, grabbed his belt, pulling him toward her and unbuckling it. He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off, slipped out of his pants and underwear and sat next to her. Now she got on her knees, sexy blue eyes looking up at him behind the tortoiseshell frames, and he forgot about everything that had happened earlier.

In the morning, Harry took a cab back to his hotel. He got out at Königsplatz, stopped at a newsstand to buy a paper and that’s when they got him. He was glancing at the front page when the car pulled up and the doors opened. He heard the quick beat of footsteps on the sidewalk, and then he was lifted off the ground before he had a chance to react. Two Blackshirts carried him to the back of a Mercedes sedan, threw him in the trunk and closed the lid. He heard the tires squeal, felt the car take off, Harry on his side, trying to hold his position.

There was a lot of stopping and starting as they drove through the city, and then he could feel the big sedan accelerate and maintain a constant speed.

He knew who they were and who they worked for and it didn’t look good. But Harry had one thing going for him—a .38 Colt with a five-shot load tucked in his belt behind his back. They’d missed it or hadn’t thought to look.

At 9:28 he felt the Mercedes slow down and turn to the right. Harry drew the revolver, put the hammer on a loaded chamber. Turned his body, legs bent, feet on the bumper side, gripping the Colt with both hands. The Mercedes hit a stretch of irregular ground and bucked up and down for a while before it stopped. Harry’s guess, they were in the woods somewhere and his time was up. He heard two doors open and close and movement on both sides of the car. The trunk lid sprang up. He saw two of them, eyes squinting, trying to adjust from darkness to bright light, seeing trees behind them.

They reached in to grab him. Harry pointed the Colt, fired. Shot one and then the other, both in the upper chest. They staggered back and went down. He climbed out of the trunk, shot the driver as he was getting out of the car, turning with a shotgun in his hands. Went down and didn’t move. Harry slipped the Colt in his pants pocket, picked up the shotgun, and racked it.

He was in the woods surrounded by pine trees. Stood over the two Blackshirts behind the car, aiming the shotgun. Both alive, staring up at him, but not for long based on the amount of blood. Both looking at him surprised. Where’d he get the gun? In German Harry asked who’d sent them. Neither one answered. He could see blood bubbling out of their mouths, and then they were gone.

He tossed the shotgun in the trees, stepped over the third Blackshirt, and got in behind the wheel. The keys were in the ignition. He started the car and drove out of the woods, spun around on the shoulder and went right on the highway. He saw a sign for Munich, 10 km. Harry knew that everyone connected to him was at risk now. He stopped at a gas station on the highway, called Colette. No answer. And remembered her saying she was going to Nuremberg to interview a Jewish couple that had been attacked by Blackshirts two days earlier. He hung up, tried Cordell’s hotel, asked for him, let it ring a while and hung up.

Cordell had slept late, window open, cool night air coming in, all snuggly and such under the eiderdown comforter. Germans might be cold, but they knew how to stay warm. Didn’t want to get up. But at 10:04, he forced himself, got in the shower, stood under the hot water for fifteen minutes, thought he heard the phone.

Got out, dried himself, stood at the sink, towel around his waist, shaved, checked himself out in the mirror. Brown eyes, nice straight teeth, chocolate-colored skin. Afro coming back, had like two inches up there. He turned his face right and then left, admiring his jaw line, his profile.

Ladies grooved on him. Before the service he’d been bangin’ LaDonna, M’shell, Tifany, Bernita and Rochelle, shuffling them in and out of his crib, each thinking she the one. Now thinking back, it had been a lot of work. Maybe he didn’t need five at once. Did one, had to get ready for the next. Once, done all five the same day. Was so sore Mr. Johnson had to lay low, take some time off, Cordell horny all of a sudden, thinking about it.

He heard Marvin in his head, danced into the bedroom, took off the towel, threw it on the bed, reached in his duffel, grabbed a pair of boxers, slipped them on, singing:

            Ain’t that peculiar?

            A peculiar ality…

Now he was trying to decide what to wear, checking out his four leisure suits hanging in the closet. Wore powder blue yesterday. How about, go with the dark green today? Match it with the light green shirt had palm trees all over it.

Cordell had been thinking about leaving Munich. Had to get away from Harry, man was bad luck. Like upside-down horseshoes, broken mirror and a black cat all in one. Man needed a rabbit’s foot in a bad way. Was thinkin’ of takin’ the train to Amsterdam, smoke some of that high-powered hootch was everywhere. Check out the red-light district, see what the Dutch ladies was all about. Sample some Netherland pussy.

Phone started ringing, and then a knock on the door. He looked through the peephole, saw a white dude, face distorted. “Still in here. Come back later.” Phone kept ringing. He moved to get it, heard an explosion. Bullet blew through the door and the window behind him. Cordell ducked down behind the bed, got as low as he could. Two more rounds punched holes through the door. The phone was still ringing. Now the dude was banging against the door, putting his shoulder into it, molding splintering.

Cordell moved to the window, opened both sides all the way, got up on the sill in his boxer drawers. Door sounded like it was going to give. He bent down and squeezed through the window, standing on a narrow concrete ledge, looking down at the dumpsters below him in the alley behind the hotel, holding onto the window, afraid of heights, knees weak and rubbery. But he couldn’t stop, moved across the ledge, taking little bitty steps to the end of the building and reached around the corner, tried to grab the downspout but was too far.

Harry was driving like a maniac through the city, traffic surprisingly heavy for a Saturday morning. Cordell’s hotel was on Bayerstrasse just south of the train station. A few minutes later he pulled up across the street from Pensione Jedermann, a five-story building with a mansard roof, and saw four Blackshirts getting out of an Audi sedan parked in front.

Harry left the Mercedes at the curb, ran across the street and into the hotel. Saw the Blackshirts getting in an elevator. Harry crossed the small lobby, picked up a house phone, asked the operator to connect him to Cordell Sims’ room. It rang a dozen times. He put the phone down, ran back to the Mercedes, got in and drove around the block. He didn’t know what room Cordell was in or what floor he was on, or if he was even in the hotel at that time, but remembered him saying he had a great view of the alley. Harry drove behind the place, and there was a black guy in his underwear, standing on a narrow second-storey ledge. Behind him a Blackshirt with a gun was coming through the window. Cordell looked back at the guy, looked down at the dumpsters lined up below him and jumped. Harry heard him hit, saw him disappear under the trash. The Blackshirt aiming at the open dumpster, firing rounds that pinged off the metal.

Cordell rose up out of the garbage, flipped over the side, landed on his feet and ran down the alley out of the line of fire. He was fast. Harry followed in the Mercedes, clocked him doing twenty, pulled up next to him, side window down.

“Man, what you doing?” Cordell said, slowing down, stopping, body bent over, holding his knees, breathing hard.

“Need a lift?” Harry said.

Cordell went around the front end of the car and got in next to him, grinning. “Harry, you never cease to amaze me. Where the fuck you come from?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“In the neighborhood, huh? Where’d you get this?” Cordell said, nodding, eyes moving across the dash.

“I borrowed it,” Harry said, accelerating down the alley.

Cordell shook his head. “You somethin’ else, Harry.”

He glanced at Cordell’s boxers. “That a new look you’re trying out?”

“It’s part of my new Save Your Ass line. Like when crazed neo-Nazi motherfuckers try to bust down your door, don’t have time to get dressed.”