His room was on the first floor facing the pool. He looked around. It was small and clean — nothing special. He walked out, closed the door and put the key in his trouser pocket, passed by the couples sitting there and one of the women said, “Ever stay here before?”
It was dark, he couldn’t see her face. “No,” he said.
“Well, you’re going to love it.”
“I’m sure I will,” Hess said. He walked down the street to the Oceanside Shopping Center, bustling with activity, cars driving in and out, people everywhere. He went to Pompano Drugs and bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, shaving cream, razor and a shampoo called Head & Shoulders. He walked down the sidewalk to a men’s store and bought khaki trousers, a dark blue golf shirt, underwear, socks and a pair of brown Docksiders.
Back outside he noticed a post office, closed now. He would see about renting a post-office box in the morning. Hess carried his purchases to a phone booth, set the bags on the floor, picked up the receiver and fed a nickel into the coin slot, pressed 0 for the operator and made an overseas phone call to Munich.
After half a dozen rings, Ingrid said, “Hello,” in a tired voice. It was almost 1 a.m. Munich time. She had probably been asleep.
“It’s Ernst.”
“My God, are you all right? I have been so worried. The police came to the office. They’re going to arrest you for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Your bank accounts have been frozen. If you return to Germany you will be arrested.”
“I need your help with something.”
“Yes, of course, Ernst, anything.” Ingrid took a breath. “Can you at least tell me where you are?”
He could hear voices and the clatter of shopping carts outside the phone booth. “There is fifty thousand dollars in the safe in my apartment.” She had a key. He gave her the combination. “I’ll phone you tomorrow and let you know where to send the money.”
Hess walked back to the motel thinking about Ingrid. He knew he could count on her. They’d had a brief affair years earlier. She had been twenty-five at the time, slightly overweight and insecure, and Hess had taken advantage of her.
The way Ingrid still looked at him, he didn’t think she had ever gotten over him.
He entered the courtyard and noticed the two beer-drinking couples were gone. The pool lights were on, making the water look green and murky. Hess went to his room, took off the elegant Palm Beach outfit and dressed in the clothes he had just purchased. The light blue trousers replaced by khakis that were too long, the orange short-sleeved shirt replaced by a blue golf shirt with a penguin on the upper right side, the white leather loafers with gold bars replaced by stiff brown Docksiders with rawhide laces. The finishing touch was a dark blue cap that said Pompano Beach, the words stacked on the front. Hess glanced at himself, posing in the mirror, and saw a tradesman on holiday.
It was 7:30. He stuffed the Palm Beach clothes, including the blue blazer, into the shopping bag, and dropped it into a trash bin on his way to a Chinese restaurant he’d seen earlier. It was across the beach road from the shopping center. Hess went in, moved past the hostess through the loud dining room to the crowded bar, found a seat between a frail, heavily made-up woman in her seventies and a grey-haired guy about his age, took off his cap and ordered a Macallan’s neat.
The bartender, in a Hawaiian shirt, said, “You two guys brothers?”
Hess glanced to his right and met the gaze of the man next to him. He looked older from this angle, but there was a definite resemblance. He could have been related, Ernst’s cousin or older brother.
“Max Hoffman,” the guy said, hint of a German accent, offered his hand.
Hess said, “Harry Levin.” They shook, manly grips from both of them.
Hess said, “You’re German. I can hear the accent.”
“Born in Berlin. Five generations. What about you?”
“Bavaria,” Hess said. “Schleissheim, just north of Munich.”
“Maybe we’re related after all.”
Max Hoffman set his drink down and placed his left hand flat on the bar top, and now Hess could see the faded vertical sequence of numbers tattooed across the top of his forearm. “You were at Auschwitz,” Hess said, knowing it was the only camp where the Nazis tattooed prisoners. More than four hundred thousand inmates had been assigned serial numbers.
Max nodded. “We were rounded up and packed into a cattle car. Rode three days without food, water or bathroom facilities. Arrived May 12th, 1942.” He sipped his drink. “The door opened and I saw the electric fence and the towers and a line of SS guards with machine guns, standing next to the train. I stepped over the bodies of those who had died during the travel, climbed out of the car and stood in a long line, walking toward a man in a white physician’s coat, standing on a platform, a German shepherd sitting next to him. The man studied each of us with detached indifference, directing the fittest among us to the right and those who were going to die in the gas chamber to the left. I found out later he was Dr. Mengele. With his arms outstretched, wearing the white medical coat he looked like a white angel. The Jews in the camp called him the Angel of Death.” Max Hoffman paused. “There was a putrid stench in the air. I said to Wineman, a friend who was in front of me, ‘What is that awful smell?’ A guard standing nearby heard me and said, ‘Your parents.’ I was strong in those days. I had been an athlete. I wanted to grab the guard and break his neck.” Max Hoffman picked up his drink. “I was there till the 26th of January, 1945, the day Russian troops liberated us.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-eight when I got out.”
“I was at Dachau,” Hess said. “November 1942 till I escaped in May of’43.”
Max said. “How’d you do it?”
“The Nazis said we were being transferred to a sub-camp to work in a munitions factory. It was believable, prisoners were transferred all the time. And I wanted to believe it. Any place had to be better than where I was.” Hess sipped his whisky. “Fifty of us were packed into the back of a truck and driven a few kilometers from the camp. When the truck turned into the woods I knew the real purpose of our journey. SS guards in kubelwagens were following us, but there was a stretch where we lost sight of them and I jumped off the back of the truck.”
“That took guts. How old were you?”
“Sixteen.” Hess took a swallow of whisky. “I followed the truck to a clearing, stood behind a tree and watched the SS guards direct prisoners to a pit that had been dug. Twelve at a time were brought to the edge and shot in the back of the head, the velocity of the rounds blowing the bodies into the hole. More trucks came and more prisoners were executed. At some point the SS murderers started drinking schnapps to calm their nerves. Late in the afternoon when it was over many of the guards were drunk. But someone saw me. I was brought to the edge of the pit, hit on the side of the head with the butt of a carbine and thrown on top of bodies, some still alive, and burrowed down under the dead while the guards were shooting at me.” That was Hess’ recollection of what happened to the real Harry Levin. He could see Max hanging on every word. Hess finished the whisky and signaled the bartender. “A refill?”
“I better,” Max said, “if I am going to hear any more of this.”
“Another round,” Hess said to the bartender, then glanced at the Jew. “I awoke hours later, feeling the weight of the bodies on top of me. I couldn’t see or breathe. The pit had been filled in with dirt. I clawed my way out. It was dark. I ran to a farmhouse and hid in the barn.”
“Where was your family?”
“Killed by the Nazis.”
Max Hoffman shook his head.
The bartender put fresh drinks in front of them.