Mengele looked, reaming at an ear with a forefinger.
He opened the door and went out into the hallway. The dogs were barking wildly. “Quiet!” Mengele shouted, finger-reaming his other ear. The dogs kept barking.
Mengele pushed the safety catch up and put the gun into the holster; got out his handkerchief, wiped the door’s inside knob, pulled the light string, elbowed the door closed. “Quiet!” he shouted, putting the handkerchief in his pocket. The dogs kept barking. They scratched and thumped at a door at the end of the hallway.
Mengele hurried to the front door, looked out through a narrow pane beside it; opened the door and ran out.
Got into his car, started it, and drove it past the house and around into the empty half of the garage.
Ran back into the house, closed the door. The dogs were barking and whining, scratching, thumping.
Mengele looked at himself in the coat-stand’s mirror; detached the wig and took it off, peeled the mustache from his upper lip; put mustache and wig into a pocket of his hanging coat, pulled the flap out and over.
Looked at himself again as he palmed his cropped gray hair with both hands. Frowned.
Took his jacket off, hung it on a hook; took the coat and hung it over the jacket.
Unknotted his black-and-gold-striped tie, whipped it off, rolled it up and stuffed it into another coat pocket.
Unbuttoned the collar of his light-blue shirt, the next button too; spread the collar, pressed down its wings.
The dogs barked and whined behind the door.
Mengele worked at the holster’s back-strap. Looked at himself in the mirror and asked, “You Liebermann?”
Asked it again, more American, less German: “You Liebermann?” Tried to make his voice more Wheelock-like, more down-in-the-throat: “Come on in. I have to admit I’m goddamn curious. Ignore sem, sey always bark like sat. Them. They. Th, th, th. That, that. Ignore them, they always bark like that. You Liebermann? Come on in.”
The dogs barked.
“Quiet!” Mengele shouted.
7
LIEBERMANN KEPT AN EYE on the tenths of a mile slowly registering on the dashboard of the kidney-killing little Saab. Wheelock’s house was exactly four tenths of a mile from the left turn onto Old Buck Road—if he was reading Rita’s baroque handwriting correctly, which hadn’t always been the case so far. Between Rita’s handwriting, and rest-room stops necessitated by the Saab’s jolting, it was twenty after twelve already.
Nonetheless he felt that things were falling into place and going nicely. He had been saddened, of course, to hear about Barry’s body being found, but the timing, at least, was something to be grateful for; now he had a strong and provable starting point to make use of in Washington. And Kurt Koehler was there, not only with notes Barry had made—important and useful notes, apparently—but with the influence of a well-to-do citizen besides. Surely he would want to stay on and help in any way he could; the fact that he was there was proof of his concern.
And Greenspan and Stern were in Philadelphia, ready, presumably, to come out with an effective Y.J.D. commando team as soon as Wheelock was convinced he was in danger. “It involves your son, Mr. Wheelock. His adoption. It was arranged for you and your wife by a woman named Elizabeth Gregory, yes? Now please believe me, no one—”
The fourth tenth of a mile slipped into place, and ahead on the left a mailbox was approaching. GUARD DOGS in black-painted letters on a board below; H. Wheelock along the box’s top. Liebermann slowed the car, stopped, waited till a truck coming toward him had passed, and drove across the road to the dirt drive before the box; guided the car’s wheels into deep ruts. The humpbacked drive led gradually uphill through trees. He shifted gears, drove slowly. The car’s bottom scraped against the hump. He glanced at his watch: almost twenty-five after.
Half an hour, say, to convince Wheelock (without going into genes: “I don’t know why they’re killing the boys’ fathers; they are, that’s all”), and then an hour or so for the Y.J.D. to get there. That would be two o’clock, a little after. He could probably leave by three, and be in Washington by five, five-thirty. Call Koehler. He looked forward to meeting him, and seeing those notes of Barry’s. Surprising that Mengele had missed them. But maybe Koehler was overestimating their importance…
Dogs’ barking, a tumult of it, challenged him from a sunlit clearing where a two-story house—white shutters, brown shingles—stood at an angle to him; and at its back a dozen dogs flinging themselves at high mesh fence, barking, yipping.
He drove to the foot of the house’s stone-paved walk and stopped the car there; shifted into neutral, turned the key, pulled up the hand brake. The dogs out in back still barked. At the far side of the house a red pickup truck and a white sedan stood in a garage.
He got out of the car—a real relief—and with his briefcase in his hand, stood looking at the white-trimmed brown house. It would be easy enough to protect Wheelock here; the dogs—still barking—were a built-in alarm system. And deterrent. The killer would probably make his move somewhere else—in town or on the road. Wheelock would have to follow a normal routine and allow the killer an opportunity to show himself. Problem: scare him enough so that he accepts Y.J.D. protection, but not so much that he stays at home and locks himself in a closet.
He drew a breath and marched up the walk and onto the porch. The door had a knocker, a dog’s head of iron, and a black bell button at the side. He chose the knocker; worked it twice. It was old and tight; the knocks weren’t very loud. He waited a moment—dogs were barking in the house now—and put a finger toward the button; but the door opened and a man smaller than he expected, with cropped gray hair and vivid and cheery brown eyes, looked at him and said in a deep-throated voice, “You Liebermann?”
“Yes,” he said. “Mr. Wheelock?”
A nod of the cropped gray head, and the door opened wider. “Come on in.”
He went in, to a dog-smelling hallway with stairs going up. He took his hat off. Dogs—five or six of them, it sounded like—were barking, whining, scratching behind a door at the hallway’s end. He turned toward Wheelock, who had closed the door and stood smiling at him. “Nice to meet you,” Wheelock said, spruce-looking in a light-blue shirt with the collar open and the cuffs turned up, well-fitting dark-gray trousers, good-looking black shoes. No recession in the guard-dog business. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.”
“I read the directions wrong,” Liebermann said. “The lady who called you from New York?” He shook his head, smiling apologetically. “She was calling for me.”
“Oh,” Wheelock said, and smiled. “Take your coat off.” He pointed at a coat-stand; a black hat and coat hung on it, and a brown quilted jacket, its sleeves shredded with rips and tears.
Liebermann hung his hat up, put his briefcase on the floor, unbuttoned his coat. Wheelock was friendlier than he had been on the phone—seemed genuinely pleased to see him in fact—but something in the way he spoke ran counter to the friendliness; Liebermann felt it, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Glancing at the door where the dogs barked and whined, he said, “You meant it when you said ‘a houseful of dogs.’”
“Yes,” Wheelock said, going past him, smiling. “Ignore them. They always bark like that. I put them in there so they wouldn’t annoy you. Some people get nervous. Come in here.” He gestured toward a room at the right.
Liebermann hung his coat up, picked up his briefcase, and with a pondering look at Wheelock’s back, followed him into a pleasant sitting room. The dogs began bumping and barking behind a door on the left, next to a black leather sofa above which all-colored prize ribbons hung on wood-paneled wall amid trophies and black-framed photos. A stone fireplace stood at the end of the room, more trophies on its mantel, a clock. White-curtained windows in the right-hand wall, an old-fashioned settee between them; in the corner by the doorway, a chair and table, telephone, ledgers, pipes in a rack.