“Kayankaya here. There’s thirty people at the airport about to be deported.”
“How many?”
“Thirty.”
“If this is supposed to be an April Fool’s joke-I’m in bed with strep throat.”
“No joke. They had me locked up there with those people-I just got out a moment ago.”
Somehow, he managed to emit an amused noise from his afflicted larynx. “So where did they want to send you?”
“I suggested Sardinia.”
He repeated that noise, then asked: “What exactly happened?”
“It’s a long story. Why don’t you come over?”
“O.K. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“I’ll be in the departure hall.”
We hung up. I jingled my change for a minute before I put it in the slot and dialed Weidenbusch’s number. After I had given him a broad outline of the progress of my investigation, all the way to the bunker, I paused briefly, then said: “But, sad to say, your girlfriend wasn’t there.”
“No? Are you sure?”
“Pretty damn sure. Unless she didn’t want to be recognized.”
“But even so I would think she’d have contacted me in the meantime.”
“She may be unable to do that.”
“What do you mean? If she wasn’t in the bunker-”
“Maybe someone has other plans for her.”
He gulped audibly and asked me to excuse him for a moment. I heard him open a bottle, pour a drink, and smack his lips; then he came back to the phone and sounded full of resolve: “She must have been scared. That’s why she didn’t say anything. I’m sure she’s in that holding cell! I’ll go to the airport.”
“How come you’re so excited, all of a sudden? Yesterday you told me you wanted to get rid of her.”
“Oh, that was just a bunch of bullshit. I was totally exhausted. Please forget what I told you yesterday.”
Weidenbusch came waddling through the waiting area, holding on to his belly with both hands, as I was enjoying coffee and ham on toast and perusing a travel brochure. Panting, he sat down and yelped: “Where are the cells?” The West End yuppie accustomed to sipping red wine had turned into a derelict barfly. He reeked of alcohol and cigarettes, his hair hung into his face, his shirt front was stained, and his eyes had dark rings around them and gleamed feverishly. He took off his glasses and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
I waved my thumb. “Down the moving walkway, turn right, go outside, cross the parking lot. If they don’t let you in, ask for Commissioner Hottges and mention my name.”
“But-you’re not coming with me?”
I shook my head. “Your girlfriend isn’t there. She is somewhere else.”
“How can you know that?”
“I can’t. I just do.”
“Does that mean you’ll go on looking for her?”
“Are you about to offer me another check?”
“No! Just because …” He ran the tip of his tongue across his upper lip. Suddenly his demeanor changed. He got agitated: “You treat me as if I were one of your suspects!”
Then, furious: “But it was I who hired you, and if I feel like it, I can fire you, too!”
“Any time. Would you like to settle our accounts right now?”
Undecided, he fussed with his eyeglasses. Then he jammed them back on. “I’m going to the cells. You’ll receive your check, as agreed, and since we probably won’t meet again-”
He hesitated. Should he shake hands or just leave with a nod?
I waved a piece of toast at him. “If someone is exerting some kind of pressure on you because of Mrs. Rakdee-I mean, someone apart from your mother-you better tell me about it.”
He looked completely bewildered. “Don’t you understand? You’re fired!”
With that, he turned and disappeared into the gray-green mass of a group of senior tourists. I sat there and finished my toast. Soon after that the first journalists arrived. Loaded down with cameras, they trotted through the hall like a bunch of scared chickens, generating excitement among both travelers and personnel. A bomb, hijackers, the Prince of Monaco, or the Kessler Twins? Hundreds of pairs of eyes scanned doors, counters, and seats. Then I spotted Benjamin Weiss. His six-and-a-half-foot tall figure was clearly visible among a group in colorful outfits who stormed through the sliding doors carrying stacks of paper under their arms and immediately started leafleting everybody. I waved and Weiss shuffled over. He was bundled up in an overcoat, scarf, and knitted cap, and what was visible of his face seemed to cry out for bed rest and hot lemon juice. He sank into a chair next to me, stretched his legs, and muttered: “May I have a cigarette?”
“Not the best thing, in your condition-?”
He repeated his request, emphatically.
I lit one and handed it to him. He took a deep drag and exhaled the smoke slowly.
“First one in three days. In bed, it’s not so bad, but …” He took a second drag. “I’ve been over there. They’re holding exactly thirty-three of them. Three attorneys are talking with them now. The Protestant honcho has promised to help; the Catholic one is at a Silesian Displaced Persons dinner with Wallmann. The entire Social Democrat party is recording a disc for their election campaign, and the refugee ombudsman of the Greens is having a baby. Her replacement doesn’t have a car but is trying to get here soon. What else-oh yes, the Multicultural Office: there, the cleaning woman answers the phone-she doesn’t have a whole lot of German, but as far as I could make out, her employers are attending the opening of a castanet exhibit.…” He stopped and sucked on his cigarette.
“You found all that out in half an hour?”
“Most of it. The rest I had no trouble making up. Now it’s your turn.”
While Weiss kept sliding deeper into his chair, and his cap slowly descended over his eyebrows, I gave a brief description of the alleged forgery gang’s M.O., without mentioning names or localities, and wound up by telling him: “There’s nothing that can be done legally, but I’ll try to get their money and jewelry back.”
Glassy-eyed, Weiss stared into space for a while. Then he sighed and straightened up. “Let’s see what the attorneys can do about it. I’m going back to talk to them. Will I see you again today?”
“When I’ve found their money.”
“I’ll probably stay here overnight.” He wrapped the scarf tighter around his neck. “In case I don’t see you again-”
“-I’ll come by every day and smuggle a pack of smokes
into your bed.”
“Do that. So,” he raised his arm feebly, “good luck.”
“The same to you.”
He left, and I walked to the exit. A damp gust of wind met me at the door. I turned up my collar and hailed a cab with my good arm. “To the nearest hospital.”
“Where’s Heinz?”
“Dunno.”
I helped myself to a small open-face cheese sandwich.
“Is Slibulsky here?”
“Don’t know that either.”
“Charlie?”
“I’m not allowed to know.”
I took a bite, chewed, studied her. She was in her early forties, built like a sumo wrestler. She wore a wig and a pale blue dress with a flower pattern and busied herself knitting a vest for a dog. On the table next to her lay Kohl in fifty pieces.
“So you’re Heinz’s wife?”
The knitting needles stopped clicking, and two hooded eyes gave me the once-over.
“If what you mean by that is that I get to push him down the Zeile once a week in his wheelchair-yes, I am. And I get him his videos, and on Mondays I get him his soccer weekly. But I don’t have to darn his socks. So, I can’t complain.”
She pursed her lips in a hint of a smile. I smiled back, tossed two coins on the counter, and walked down the pink hallway past rows of female legs on both sides. Shoo-be-doo music trickled from speakers in the ceiling. It was almost eight-thirty in the evening. I joined the line of johns winding its way past the rooms and up the stairs all the way to the fourth floor and back. Up on the fourth, I stepped over a barrier that said “Private”, ascended two more landings and knocked on a rust-brown metal door. The door opened and Charlie peered out, a question mark on his face. He was wearing a white silk suit, no shirt, no shoes, and held a box of matchbox automobile models in one hand. When he recognized me, his mouth opened in amazement. Then he raised his arm in a welcoming gesture.