“There’s bad apples in every barrel. Private investigators, property owners-you name it. I once saw a Salvation Army officer empty a collection box into his own pocket, and-”
He cut me off. “Let’s get down to business.”
I extinguished my cigarette and took the ostentatious watch out of my pocket. I slid it across the table.
“I found it on a dead man. In your house. And there was enough stew left for half a regiment. Tell me where those people are now, and I’ll give you time to remove the corpse.”
After he had examined the watch from all sides, he carefully put it back on the table and shook his head.
“That house has stood empty for three years. Only the gardener has a key.”
“That’s not what I understood from your secretary.”
“It must have been a misunderstanding.”
“What about the dead man?”
He stressed each word separately: “That, too, was a misunderstanding.”
“So be it. Guess I’ll go to the police, to clarify all the misunderstandings.”
I reached for the watch but he was faster. “You’ll leave that here.”
“You like it that much? I can tell you where you can get one. Quite cheaply, too.”
He ignored me and slipped the watch into his breast pocket, pulling out a checkbook with the same motion. “You won’t go to the police. At this time, I can’t afford any publicity, no matter how far-fetched.” While the butt of his cigarette glowed and darkened in the ashtray, and I wondered if he’d really let me off so easily, he made out a check for twenty thousand marks.
He handed it to me, and my jaw dropped. “Holy smoke! It has to be a major misunderstanding.”
With a condescending little smile, he put his fountain pen and check book back where they belonged, pushed himself away from the table, and stood up. “I’m used to such affairs, and I know that I can save myself a lot of grief by spending a few dimes. Dimes-you understand?”
I nodded. “Sure. Dimes.” I folded the check. He waited until I had put it in my wallet. Then he pointed at the door. I would have liked to find out the title of the book about the old geezer, but it didn’t seem like the right time to ask. As we walked out into the entrance hall he looked almost contented. “You see-you are a blackmailer.”
“You don’t want to know why I searched your house? It doesn’t interest you at all?”
“No, it doesn’t.” We walked a couple of steps.
“What if I go to the police anyway?”
He stopped and looked down at the floor. For several seconds, all that was heard was the sound of our breathing. Finally, he looked at me and said, with a mildly sad tinge to his voice: “Listen carefully, young man. You better not do that, if you want to cross a street safely in this city, or in this country, or anywhere in the world. I am a peace-loving man-hence that check-but a mere hint from me would suffice to wipe you off the face of the earth. In case you haven’t quite got the picture: You’re talking to Eberhard Schmitz. And who are you? There’s a difference. One of the greatest magnitude.”
“For sure.” I nodded, for the last time. “You may well be right about that.” Then I pointed at his chest. “But we’ll both die of lung cancer.”
11
Loaded down with sandwiches, cookies, chocolate, newspapers, a bottle of Scotch, and two bottles of water, I left the main railway station. It was almost ten-thirty at night. I hurried across the square and crossed the first street. At the second crossing I had to stop for a herd of tourist buses. Suddenly a bell rang behind me, and someone screeched hysterically: “Can’t you see? This is a bicycle lane!”
I whipped around and roared: “Don’t you know how to ride that thing? You’ve got ten yards leeway there.”
The bicyclist braked, turned, and approached me with a stem missionary look on his face. It was a young man in a green-glittering Fifties-style outfit, stiff blow-dried hair, and a T-shirt that said Born to Be Wild.
“This is a bicycle lane. It’s for bicycles. I could have knocked you down, and it would have been your fault,” he informed me, nodding to his own words and coming to a stop in front of me. It was obvious that he expected some sign of gratitude or remorse, and it seemed to me that he would have liked to prolong our conversation.
I left him standing and ran across the street to my car. As I passed him a short while later behind the railway station, I was tempted to show him a perfectly legal brake test.
I drove past the convention building and the Plaza Hotel and on to the autobahn, away from the city lights into dark blue night. I passed the time by trying to calculate how long twenty thousand marks would last in some southern clime. If I had kept going, and the Opel had held up, which was unlikely, I could have been sitting under a straw roof on a beach the following morning, enjoying my shrimp and white wine in the company of a waitress and Whitney Houston on the jukebox. I leaned back. It was warm in the car, and the engine was humming almost perfectly. The waitress came to my table and stayed there all the way to the Gellersheim exit.
I stopped by the first phone booth to call Weidenbusch. His phone rang seven times.
“Yes, hello?”
“Kayankaya. Have you abandoned your position?”
“No, no-I was just taking a bath.”
“Well, what’s up?”
“What do you mean?”
There was a tremor in his voice. He must have had a hard day, probably sitting next to the phone, stripping his necktie down to individual fibers, chewing on one piece of peppermint candy after another.
“You did call me this afternoon.”
“Oh, yes. I just wanted to know what you had found out.”
“A whole lot. If I’m not totally mistaken, you’ll have your girlfriend back soon.”
His “Really?” sounded more frightened than delighted. I was taken aback. “Maybe you’re not so happy about that?”
“No, no …” There was a moment’s silence. Then he took a deep breath and said:
“But, you see, I’ve been thinking about all of it today. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it was not a good idea.”
“What wasn’t a good idea?”
“Sri Dao and me. There’s the language problem, and, and God knows what might come up. Her family, her background-those really are imponderables. Like right now, me having to deal with gangsters.”
“Listen, Weidenbusch, I understand that you’re a wreck, but-”
“No, no, it’ll be better for us to separate. I also talked it over with my mother …” A pause. I looked around for the herd of wild horses that I felt galloping over my prone body. There was the sound of paper rustling at the other end of the line.
“In any case, I’ve decided to pay you for four working days and a per diem of three hundred, that’s eleven hundred altogether. If you subtract the five hundred I gave you this morning, I owe you six hundred. I’ll mail you the check, you’ll get it by the end of the week.”
“Excellent. But what do I do about your girlfriend?”
“Well, I thought-”
“You thought I’d go home now and see if there’s anything good on the tube? Let me tell you what I’m going to do: I’ll go on looking for your friend, and when I’ve found her, I’ll slap her around and tell her greetings from Mr. Weidenbusch. I’ll explain to her that it’s in the language of touch, and love, et cetera.”
“Please don’t be so cynical! This has not be an easy decision for me.”
“You don’t say.”
I was about to hang up when he said: “Wait!” And, after a moment’s silence: “Let me know, in any case. Maybe I’m just a little nervous right now. And promise you won’t go to the police-no matter what happens.”
Back in the car, I sat there for a thoughtful moment, jingling my car keys.
I parked the Opel in front of Theo Manz Cinema Production and pushed the seat back. Then I put on a black knitted hat, took out my provisions and the Scotch, and settled down to dinner. The lights were still on at Mrs. Olga’s, and Theo Manz was throwing a party. A long line of upper middle class vehicles were parked along the curb. Rolling Stones songs roared out of the windows, and from time to time a chorus of female voices screeched along: “I can’t get no satisfaction” and other select passages. Number Six was completely dark. When I was done eating, I opened the Scotch and began my vigil. The brick villa stood diagonally in front of me, and I could see the street in my rearview mirror. No matter whom Eberhard Schmitz sent along to dispose of the corpse, I would not miss him. It occurred to me that I should have asked Weidenbusch if Larsson had tattoos on his arms.