Who was he calling, anyway? Hitler himself?
He was dead meat. He knew it.
"Norm?" Beth was offering the phone.
"Teri Middleton, please," he croaked, hoping the girl was using her maiden name again, or that there was only one Teri employed there. "No, dammit! This isn't a personal call. This's the goddamned police department."
He waved Beth out.
The girl was on the line in seconds. "John?"
"Shit," he muttered to himself. "Teri? This's Norm. I don't want to pry, but have you seen John?"
"No."
"Look, it's important. I want to make sure he isn't in some kind of trouble. We haven't been able to locate him since yesterday."
"Well, I haven't either."
"You're sure?"
"I said so, didn't I?"
"Shit. Oh, shit."
"Swear to God. Really. He was supposed to meet me after work yesterday. He never showed up."
"He didn't?"
"No."
"Okay. Thanks." He lowered the receiver slowly. "What the hell am I going to do?" He looked right through Beth, who had ignored his directive to withdraw.
"Norm?" She sounded frightened now. "What is it? What happened?"
"It's John. He… no. I can't tell you yet. I've got to check some things before I tell anybody." His ass was going to be in a sling. He was, voluntarily, going to confess to an illegal entry. "I'll be back in a little while."
He first checked John's car. It seemed to be in the same parking space as yesterday, though that wasn't remarkable in itself. Still, no one had seen Harald. He hadn't signed in, nor had he called in.
A half hour later Cash was cruising past John's home. Harald's children were playing in the yard. He scrunched down to avoid recognition.
Carrie's Plymouth Satellite stood at the curb. And John's Honda stood inside the open garage, leaning against one wall.
John hadn't gone off to live on the beach at Malibu.
"Shit." His vocabulary had grown terribly limited today, he reflected.
His guts were cramping again.
The feldwebel with the Winter War patch spun through the door of the shack a second after another grenadier smacked it with the heel of a field boot. His submachine gun looked like an eighty-eight. Cash hadn't believed his fear could grow stronger.
Honking horns and squealing tires yanked him out of the flashback.
He had run a stop sign. Death's greedy claws had missed him by inches.
The brush calmed him.
He drove past the Groloch house twice. It hadn't changed, yet it now seemed somehow both deadly and dead.
Annie would tell him what to do.
"What're you doing home?" She had been trying to explain macrame to Tran's wife. The boys were watching television and playing chess. Cash had already discovered, to his embarrassment, just how good they were at the latter.
"Honey, I… I think I yanked the tiger's tail one time too many." He collapsed into a chair. "I don't know what to do." He rubbed his forehead with his left hand.
"What is it?" She was alarmed now.
"It's John. I… I had him sneak into Miss Groloch's place while she was at the funeral yesterday."
"Without a warrant? Stupid. You want to blow your retirement? Norman, I think you've become obsessed. When you start cutting corners-"
"Annie. Please. I know all that. That's not the point. It's already too late to worry about it." His breath came in quick, shallow gasps. "It doesn't look like he ever came out."
Her jaw hung slack for fifteen seconds. "What?"
"John went in and never came out. Just like O'Brien and O'Lochlain's hoods and that Colin Meara kid."
"Oh. Oh, no. Lord, no. Norm, what're we going to do?"
"I don't know. God. I don't know. I wish I did. But all I can think about is what I should've done. I've got to talk it over with Hank, got to do something…"
Annie sat on the arm of the chair. "Poor Carrie."
"Poor everybody." The shit was going to hit the fan in a big way. A lot of people were going to get hurt.
"Whatever you do, don't go charging in there after him. Okay? Promise?"
"Honey, I don't think I've got the guts to go in there again, ever. Under any conditions. I'm scared. I mean, like I haven't been since the war."
The German sergeant relaxed, laughed softly, dragged the pale youth from behind the heap of broken peasant furnishings. His smile was neither gloating nor malicious. He removed the M1 from Norm's trembling fingers, handed it to a landser, patted Norm's shoulder. "Be okay, Yank." He pulled the ration cigarettes from Cash's pocket, passed them around to his men, stuck one between Cash's lips, put the remainder back where he had found them. He and his men took turns lighting up and warming their hands at the stove whose smoke had given the American away.
And it had worked out. Six days later Cash was holding the rifle and passing out the smokes when counterattacking American troops caught up with them.
But the terror had never let up.
What was Joachim Schleicher doing these days? The stone mason's apprentice who had run away in thirty-eight, at sixteen, to enlist and make his contribution to the New Order, had been a bitter old man at twenty-three. Danzig was in Poland now, wasn't it? Had he even bothered to go home? Might be interesting to trace the sergeant someday.
"Norm?"
"Huh? Oh. Sorry. Funny. I keep getting these flashbacks to the war. It's almost like I'm living it over again."
"You'd better get ahold of yourself."
"I know. I know. I almost had a wreck today. I still don't know what to do."
"There isn't a whole lot you can. You just go see Hank. Before you do anything."
"I told you, I'm not going in there again. Not without an army, anyway. You've got me wrong if you think I'm a hero."
Le Quyen appeared from the kitchen with a hot cup of tea, which she offered shyly.
"Thank you, Le Quyen. This'll help." And a few sips did. "That reminds me. I invited Beth Tavares over for supper. Been working her pretty hard. Thought that might help make it up."