A Quiet Flame (31 page)

“You really know how to show a girl a good time, Gunther.” She stood up and went over to the next cabinet and drew the drawer open.

 

 

 

AN HOUR OR SO before dawn, exhausted and grimy with dust, and having found nothing else of any interest, we decided to call it a night.

We stayed too long. I knew that because as we came back into the front hall, someone switched on the electric lights. Anna uttered a little stifled scream. I wasn’t exactly happy about this turn of events myself. Especially as the person who had switched on the lights was pointing a gun at us. Not that he was much of a person. It was easy to see why Marcello had talked about a skeleton staff. I’ve seen healthier-looking men in coffins. He was about five feet, six inches tall, with lank, greasy, gray hair, eyebrows that looked like two halves of a mustache that had been separated for its own good, and a rat’s narrow, recreant features. He wore a cheap suit, a vest that looked like a rag in a mechanic’s greasy hands, no socks, and no shoes. There was a bottle in his coat pocket that was probably his breakfast and, in the corner of his mouth, a length of drooping tobacco ash that had once been a cigarette. As he spoke, it fell onto the floor.

“What are you doing here?” he said in a voice made indistinct with phlegm and alcohol and a lack of teeth. In fact, there was just one tooth on his prominent upper jaw: a front tooth that looked like the last pin standing in a game of skittles.

“I’m a policeman,” I said. “I needed to look at an old file urgently. I’m afraid there was no time to go through proper procedures.”

“Is that right?” He nodded at Anna. “And what’s her story?”

“None of your goddamn business,” I said. “Look, take a look at my ID, will you? It’s just like I told you.”

“You’re no cop. Not with that accent.”

“I’m secret police. SIDE. I’m one of Colonel Montalbán’s people.”

“Never heard of him.”

“We both report to Rodolfo Freude. You’ve heard of him, haven’t you?”

“Matter of fact, I have. It was him who gave me my orders. Explicit orders. He says
no one.
And I mean
no one. No one
gets in this place without the express authority, in writing, of the president himself.” He grinned. “Have you got a letter from the president?”

He crept forward and patted me down, his fingers quickly turning my pockets inside out. He grinned. “Thought not.”

Up close, I wasn’t inclined to change my impression of him. He looked inferior and second-rate. But there was nothing second-rate about the gun in his hand. That was special. A .38 Police Special, with a two-inch barrel and a nice bright blue finish. It was the only thing about him that looked like it was in perfect working order. It had crossed my mind to tackle him while he was searching my pockets. But the Police Special quickly changed it for me. He found my gun and tossed it away. He even found the little stiletto in my breast pocket. But he didn’t find the gaucho knife hidden under my belt in the small of my back.

He backed away and patted Anna down, mostly on her breasts, which seemed to give him an idea.

“You,” he told her. “Pretty lady. Take off your jacket and your shirt.”

She stared at him with dumb insolence and, when nothing happened, he got handy with the gun, pressing it under her chin. “You’d better do it, pretty lady, or I’ll blow your head off.”

“Do as he says, Anna. He means it.”

The man grinned his one-toothed grin and stood back to enjoy the sight of her undressing. “The brassiere, too. Take it off. Let’s see those titties.”

Anna looked at me, desperately. I nodded back at her. She unhooked her bra and let it fall onto the ground.

The man licked his lips, staring at her bared breasts. “Now those are nice,” he said. “Real nice titties. Nicest titties I’ve seen in a while.”

I pressed my spine back a little against my belt, feeling the big sheath knife that was there and wondering if I even knew how to throw a knife—especially one that looked as if it belonged on a butcher’s chopping block.

The man with one tooth reached forward and tried to take one of Anna’s nipples between his forefinger and thumb, but she shrank away from his touch behind the shield of her forearms.

“Stand still,” he said, twitching nervously. “Stand still or I’ll shoot you, pretty lady.”

Anna closed her eyes and let him take hold of her nipple. At first he just kneaded it with his fingers, like a man rolling tobacco. But then he started to squeeze, hard. Her face told me that much. So did his. He was smiling with sadistic pleasure, enjoying the pain he was inflicting on her. Anna bore it silently for a while, but that only seemed to make him do it harder, until she begged him to stop. He did. But only to squeeze her other nipple.

By now I had the knife in my hand. I slid it up inside the forearm of my sleeve. There was too much distance between the two of us to risk attacking him with the blade in my hand. Most likely he would have shot me, and then raped and killed her. It was too much gun to take a chance with. But throwing the knife was risky, too.

I let the knife slide into the palm of my hand and gripped the blade like a hammer.

Anna sank onto her knees, whimpering with pain, only he kept hold of her, his face contorted with ghastly pleasure, enjoying every second of the agony that was written in her face.

“You bastard,” she said.

That was my cue, and with a small step forward and both arms pointed straight at the target, I threw the knife, putting my whole hip into it to add to the power of my throw. I aimed at his side, just below his outstretched hand that was still twisting her nipple.

He cried out. The knife appeared to hit him in the ribs, but then it was in his hand. He let it go and it fell onto the ground. At the same time, he shot at me and missed. I felt the bullet zip over my head. I rolled quickly forward, expecting to find myself facing the two-inch barrel, or worse. Instead I found myself staring at a man who was now on all fours, coughing blood onto the ground between his hands and then curling up into a ball, holding his side. I glanced at the knife and, seeing the blood on the blade, guessed that it must have pierced his side to a depth of several inches before he had plucked it out of his torso.

My close proximity seemed to deflect him from the pain and distress of his wound. Twisting his whole body to one side, he tried to shoot again, only this time without lifting his forearm from the stab wound in his side.

“Look out,” yelled Anna.

But I was already over him, wrestling the gun from the grip of his bloody hand even as it fired harmlessly into the ceiling. Anna screamed. I punched him hard on the side of the head, but the fight had already gone out of him. I tiptoed away from him, trying to avoid the pool of his blood that was spreading on the floor like an expanding red balloon. He wasn’t dead yet. But I could tell there was no saving him. The blade had gone through a major artery. Just like a bayonet. From the amount of blood on the floor, it was clear he would be dead in minutes.

“Are you all right?” I picked up Anna’s brassiere and handed it to her.

“Yes,” she whispered. Her hands were cupping her breasts, and her eyes were full of tears. She was looking at him, almost as if she pitied him.

“Put your clothes on,” I said. “We have to leave. Now. Someone might have heard those shots.”

I put his gun under my belt, holstered my own, put the flashlights in Anna’s bag and picked up the two knives. Then I glanced around for anything the cops might get their teeth into. A button. A hank of hair. An earring. The little spots of color on a canvas, like Georges Seurat, that Ernst Gennat had been fond of. But there was nothing. Just him, wheezing his last breaths away. A dead body that didn’t know it yet.

“What about him?” asked Anna, buttoning her shirt. “We can’t just leave him here.”

“He’s finished,” I said. “By the time an ambulance gets here he’ll be dead.” I took hold of her arm and moved her smartly toward the door, then switched out the light. “With any luck, by the time anyone finds him, the rats will have spoiled the evidence.”

Anna took my hand off her arm and switched the light on again. “I told you. I don’t like rats.”

“Maybe you can flash a message in Morse code while you’re at it,” I said. “Just to make sure people know that there’s someone here.” But I left the light on.

“He’s still a human being,” she said, going back to the body on the floor. Trying to keep her shoes out of the blood, she dropped down on her haunches and, shaking her head helplessly, she looked back at me as if begging for a clue about what to do next.

The man twitched several times and then lay still.

“I had a rather different impression,” I said.

Crouching down beside her, I pressed my fingers hard under his ear and paused for the sake of verisimilitude.

“Well?”

“He’s dead,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“What do you want me to do, write out a death certificate?”

“The poor man,” she whispered. Then she did something that struck me as an odd thing to do if you were a Jew: she crossed herself.

“Speaking for myself, I’m glad the poor man’s dead. The poor man was going to rape and kill you. But not before the poor man killed me, probably. The poor man had it coming, if you ask me. Now, if you’re quite through grieving for the poor man, I’d like to get out of here before the cops or any of the poor man’s friends show up and wonder if this murder weapon I’m holding in my hand makes me a suspect. In case you’ve forgotten, they have the death penalty for murder in Argentina.”

Anna glanced at the gaucho knife and nodded.

I went to the door and switched out the light. She followed me outside. At the gate in the fence, I told her to wait a minute. I ran to the edge of the north dock and hurled the knife as far as I could into the River Plate. As soon as I heard the evidence hit the water, I felt better. I’ve seen what lawyers can do with evidence.

Together we walked back to where I had left my car, in front of the railway station. The sun was coming up. Another day was dawning for everyone except the man with one tooth who was now lying dead on the floor of the Immigrants’ Hotel. I felt very tired. In every way it had been a long night.

“Tell me something,” she said. “Does this sort of thing happen to you often, Herr—what did you say your real name was again?”

“Gunther, Bernhard Gunther. And you make it sound like you weren’t there, Anna.”

“I can assure you, I’m not likely to forget this evening in a hurry.” She stopped walking for a moment and then threw up.

I gave her my handkerchief. She wiped her mouth and took a deep breath.

“All right now?” I asked.

She nodded. We reached my car and got in.

“That was quite a date,” she said. “Next time, let’s just go to the theater.”

“I’ll take you home,” I said.

Anna shook her head and wound down the window. “No. I can’t go home. Not yet. Not feeling the way I do now. And after what happened, I don’t want to be alone, either. Let’s stay here for a moment. I just need to be still for a while.”

I poured some of the coffee she’d brought. She drank it and then watched me smoke a cigarette.

“What?”

“No trembling hands. No unsteady lips on that cigarette. No deep drags. You smoke that cigarette like nothing happened. Just how ruthless are you, Herr Gunther?”

“I’m still here, Anna. I guess that speaks for itself.”

I leaned across the seat and kissed her. She seemed to enjoy it. Then I said, “Tell me your address and I’ll drive you home. You’ve been out all night. Your father will be worried about you.”

“I guess you’re not as ruthless as I thought.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

I started the engine.

“So,” she said. “You really are going to drive me home. That’s a first. Maybe you do want to be a saint after all.”

She was right, of course. The fact is, I wanted to prove to her how polished and shiny my armor really was. I drove quickly. I wanted to get her home before I changed my mind. Nobility swims only so far in my gut before it hits its head on something hard and unyielding. Especially where she was concerned.

BERLIN, 1933, AND BUENOS AIRES, 1950

T
HE FIRST WE KNEW about it was a strong smell of burning. Then we heard the fire engines and the ambulances from Artilleriestrasse. Frieda went outside the hotel entrance to take a look and saw an excited crowd of people heading northwest across Pariser Platz. Above the rooftops of the French Embassy something lit up the night sky like an open furnace door.

“It’s the Reichstag,” said Frieda. “The Reichstag is on fire.”

We ran back into the hotel, intending to get a better view from the roof. But in the lobby I met Herr Adlon. I told him the Reichstag was on fire. It was just after ten p.m.

“Yes, I know.” He drew me to one side, thought better of what he had been about to say, and then took me into the manager’s office. He closed the door. “There’s something I want you to do. And it might well be dangerous.”

I shrugged it off.

“Do you know where the Chinese Embassy is?”

“Yes, it’s on Kurfürstendamm. Next to the Nelson Theater.”

“I want you to go there, to the Chinese Embassy, in the hotel laundry van,” said Louis Adlon, handing me some keys. “I want you to pick up some passengers and bring them straight back here. But on no account let them alight at the front door of the hotel. Drive them through the gate to the tradesman entrance. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

“Might I ask who it is, sir?”

“You may. It’s Bernard Weiss and his family. Someone tipped him off that the Nazis were coming to his house tonight to lynch him. Fortunately, Chiang Kai-shek is a friend of Izzy’s and agreed to let him and his family take refuge there. He just called me a few minutes ago and asked if I could help. Naturally, I agreed to let him stay here. And I assumed you would want to help, too.”