Weir knew that at the moment his judgment was clouded by rage, and something besides the soldier’s callous denials and defiance bothered him. He knew men and he knew how they acted under stress, and he sensed a shift in mood, an almost animallike wariness in this lean, blade-faced Italian. Even if the man was lying, and the general firmly believed he was, the lies did not have the strength of true deception, of venality.
“My son, Lieutenant Mark Weir, was shot and killed in Chicago a few days ago. He was shot because he knew something, or didn’t know enough. I think you are somehow connected to his death. I think you can give me some answers.”
“Look,” Lasari said, forcing anger. “You’re coming on pretty strong. I’m a buck-ass private in the U.S. Army doing my duty on assignment in Germany. I’ve got papers and I’ve got orders. I don’t know you or anything about a man you say got killed in Chicago. I don’t know why you’re telling me this shit.”
Lasari suddenly jerked on the male dog’s lead, and as the dog responded and rose he shouted, “Stay! Stay, goddamn it!” He squatted down beside the dog, holding him by a short leash, forcing him back into a sitting position.
He looked directly at Tarbert Weir standing above him and said, “I know I’m a good-looking guy, so this wouldn’t be the first time I got propositioned. Either you walk away from here right now and don’t bother me again, or I’m going to yell for the Polizei and report you as a goddamn pederast...”
Weir’s hand shot down and grabbed Lasari’s shoulder with a force that almost knocked him to the ground. The grip was tight as a vise, closing over his bruised flesh with a violence that sent a wave of pain through his whole body. For a moment he thought he would black out.
“... it’s my son, my only son, we’re talking about, my son and four other dead soldiers, and we are going to talk about it. I didn’t come three thousand miles to listen to some bastard’s lies and disrespect...”
Straining against the general’s powerful grip, Lasari managed to move his hand toward the dog’s collar. He looked up to be sure he had the general’s attention. With stiff fingers he pushed the neck fur aside to reveal the cylindrical microphone, shiny and narrow as a pencil. Weir’s hand dropped from Lasari’s shoulder.
“I can only say it again,” Lasari said roughly. “You got the wrong Jackson.”
Both men glanced around quickly. To Weir the park scene was unfamiliar but natural. Lasari thought he might have spotted a warning figure on the bridge — a bulky male was looking their way. It could be Eddie Neal, the man from the Atelier, even Strasser or a tourist. At this distance his camera almost completely concealed the man’s face.
When the general spoke again, his voice was without emphasis or inflection. “No need to call a policeman. I’ve made a mistake and I acknowledge that. They told me in Chicago I was wrong. Understand the strain I’ve been under...”
“Forget it, no harm done,” Lasari said.
The general went over to the bitch pup and patted her silver ruff. “Nice girl, nice girl,” he said. He turned to Danke and touched the dog’s muzzle, rubbed a hand over the head and neck muscles. Then he put his hand over the collar, completely covering the concealed microphone.
“Later, soldier,” he said to Lasari. “We’ll meet later.”
The man ran a few steps in place on the graveled path, then turned and set off at a brisk jog toward the Alte Brucke.
Chapter Thirty
Sergeant Strasser was on the phone, face hard and flushed, when Lasari came into the apartment. The sergeant listened, nodded and made a final note on the phone pad.
When he hung up, he ignored Lasari and spoke directly to Pytor Vayetch and Herr Rauch, his voice respectful, almost obsequious. “He did not go to Philo Park at all today,” he said. “He had food sent up, stayed in his room. He phoned down to the concierge, booked a flight to Leige. Now he has checked out of the hotel, luggage and all.” He glanced at the phone pad. “Lufthansa flight 981. It leaves in an hour. Neal is going to the airport to make sure he’s on it.”
Vayetch nodded but neither he nor Herr Rauch spoke. Vayetch sat with a drink in his hand and Rauch was at a side table, eating supper from a tray set with Rosenthal china. Strasser turned to Lasari with a cold smile and said, “Your luck is holding, Jackson. Your gumshoe general is leaving town.”
Lasari had spent the last two days in the back bedroom with Eddie Neal or Strasser seated at the apartment bar or lounging in an armchair near the front door, on watch at all hours. Greta had brought Lasari sandwiches and fruit and kept a carafe of fresh water on his bedside table. Once she had come into his room carrying her small portable radio, but Strasser followed moments later to take it away. “You’re not here for her to entertain, buddy,” the big sergeant had said.
Several times Lasari heard the phone ringing, the opening and closing of the front door, and an occasional murmur of voices, the words too indistinct to understand.
It was already dark in the old city when Strasser sent Greta to tell Lasari he wanted to see him. Now, after nearly forty-eight hours of solitude and near silence, Lasari was aware of both the unnatural loudness and bitter anger in his voice.
“You call it luck, Strasser? What the fuck’s lucky about it?” he said. “I never saw the old bastard in my life, that’s how lucky I am. Never laid eyes on him.”
“That seems likely enough,” Vayetch said. “But how do we know the truth about what you revealed to him?” Vayetch went on. “It’s plausible enough that General Weir checked you out with headquarters in Frankfurt. I can believe he found you, not the other way around.” He shrugged. “But the rest of it, what you talked about, what you let slip — we have only your word, don’t we?”
Lasari knew he could not let the heat of his anger warp his judgment, he must not give away the one edge he had, the knowledge that they had taped every word he spoke in Philo Park, even his commands to the dogs.
“As far as proof goes,” he said, “the only test is one of logic. What do I gain by lying to you? You’re my ticket, my only ticket, out of the spot I’m in. If you honestly think the old man knows how and why I’m connected with you guys, you’d better blow me away right now.
“The man’s out for revenge. It has nothing to do with me. He’s looking for somebody who killed his policeman son in Chicago. I happened to spend a night with a girl there. She left my name on the old man’s phone tape, wanted to talk to his son about me. Maybe a guilt thing, maybe she wanted him jealous. I’d just met her...”
Lasari turned to Strasser. “Check it with Malleck, for Christ’s sake! That mother knows where I was when his hyenas found me.” Strasser looked at Pytor Vayetch. “The ginzo here’s right, Mr. Vayetch. It all hangs together. He was with the chick earlier that night. It was afterward she got herself into trouble.”
“Yes. I understand the young lady took a lot of punishment.” Vayetch eyed Lasari with a tight smile. “Is this information a matter of complete indifference to you, Mr. Jackson? That this girl who gave you sanctuary, that you’d made love to throughout the night, was beaten bloody only moments after leaving you? Aren’t you angry about that?”
A silence settled in the room, broken only by fleshy sounds as Herr Rauch savored the veal sausages Greta had served him. He cut each wurst into four pieces, then used blunt fingers to dip the meat into a pot of mustard. After each carefully chewed and relished mouthful, he took a swallow of beer. Vayetch watched impassively as Rauch dipped a corner of his napkin into the beer, then wiped the rim of the stein clean of mustard.