“Well, that’s the way of the world. Memories are memories.”
“No!” he countered vehemently. “When I remember how furious I was when they remodeled our operating theater, I’m furious all over again. When I remember what pleasure I had when I bought my boat, I relive that pleasure. Only love eludes memory.” He got up. “You have to get some sleep. Don’t do anything foolish tomorrow.”
I lay there staring into the twilight. Did love elude memory? Or was it desire? Was my friend mixing up love and desire?
I decided I was not going to call Welker the following day. As it was, I hadn’t decided what to tell him or what to threaten him with or how to stop him. I would sleep and get some rest. I would give Turbo the can of mackerel I had brought him from Cottbus. I would read a book and play a game of chess with Keres or Euwe or Bobby Fisher. I would cook. I would drink red wine. Philipp hadn’t said anything about my antibiotic clashing with red wine or red wine clashing with my antibiotic. I’d postpone my heart attack to some other time.
23 Cat and mouse
But at nine o’clock I was awakened by a call from Welker.
“Where did you get my number?” My number has been unlisted for five years.
“I know it’s Sunday morning, but I must insist that you drop by my office. You can park inside the gate, that way it’ll be…” He broke off. I already knew the game well enough: Welker would start talking, the receiver would then be covered, and suddenly Samarin would be on the line. “We’ll be expecting you around noon. Twelve o’clock.”
“How do I get inside the gate?”
He hesitated. “Ring three times.”
So that was that as far as catching up on my sleep was concerned, or getting some rest, cooking, reading, or playing chess. I filled the tub, sprinkled some rosemary into the water, and got in. Turbo appeared, and I irritated him with a few well-aimed drops. Some water on the thumb, flicked off with the index finger: with a little training you can become quite a champion. And I have many years of training behind me.
Why did I hesitate about how to handle my client’s money laundering? I didn’t really have much of a choice. The TV channels might not be interested in the Russian Mafia-which has no class, no style, no tradition, no religion, and presumably no sense of humor-but the police most certainly would be, which was only right. Why didn’t I give them a call? Why hadn’t I called them yesterday? I realized that I just couldn’t bring myself to do that as long as Welker was still my client.
So the early call and the appointment at noon did have a good side: I could close my case. I brought the phone to the bathtub and called Georg, who told me the rest of the sad tale of the Laban family. Laban’s niece died of tuberculosis in the 1930s in Davos, and his nephew had killed himself and his wife during the Nazi rampages of the Kristallnacht. The nephew’s son and his wife had died childless in London, while his daughter had not managed to flee abroad in time. She had gone into hiding when the deportations to the concentration camps began and was never heard from again. There was nobody who could claim the inheritance.
I got out of the tub and dried myself. If you ask me, Dorian Gray exaggerated. As one grows older one needn’t want to look twenty year after year, and it was no surprise that he didn’t come to a good end. But why can’t I look sixty-six? By what right did my arms and legs become so thin? What right did their former mass have to leave its old home and find a new one under my belly button? Couldn’t my flesh have consulted me before going off and resettling someplace else?
I stopped grumbling and pulled in my stomach when I put on the corduroys I hadn’t worn in ages, a turtleneck, and a leather jacket, and before you knew it I could almost pass for sixty-six. Over breakfast I put on an old Udo Jürgens record. At quarter past twelve I was in Schwetzingen.
Samarin took me to the apartment in the upper story, and as we walked through the old banking hall and the new office area, he and I played cat and mouse.
“I hear you were at the Mannheim police station,” he said.
“I took your advice.”
“My advice?”
“Your advice not to keep what isn’t mine. I gave it to the police. That way whoever it belongs to can go get it.”
Welker was on edge. He barely listened to my report concerning the silent partner. He looked at his watch again and again, his head cocked as if he were waiting for something. When I finished my report, I expected some questions-if not about the silent partner, then at least about Schuler, the black attaché case, my going to the police, or my disappearance from Mannheim. Questions that were so pressing that they had to be answered on a Sunday morning. But no questions came. Welker sat there as if more important issues were at hand, issues he could barely wait to come up. But he didn’t say anything. He got up. I got up, too.
“So that’s that,” I said. “I’ll be sending you my bill.”
And yet this former client of mine might well be in jail by tomorrow morning and not get to see my bill for some years to come. Six? Eight? What does one get for organized crime?
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Samarin said.
Samarin walked ahead, I followed, and Welker walked behind me as we made our way through the offices and down the stairs. I took leave of the old counters with their wooden bars, the inlaid panels, and the benches with the green velvet cushions. It was a pity; I would have liked to sit on one of these benches for a while and muse over the currents and vicissitudes of life. By the gate I said good-bye to Welker. He was in a curious nervous state, his hands cold and sweaty, his face flushed, and his voice shaking. Did he suspect what I was going to do? But how could he?
Samarin did not respond to my good-bye. He pressed the lower of the two buttons near the gate and it swung open. I went to my car, got in, and fastened my seat belt. I glanced behind me. Welker’s face was so tense, so desperate, that I was taken aback, while Samarin looked burly and grim, but at the same time pleased. I was glad to get away.
I started the car and drove off.
PART TWO
1 Drive!
I drove off, and at the same moment Welker leapt toward me. I saw his face, his gaping mouth and wide eyes, at the passenger-side window and heard his fists banging against the car door. What does he want? I thought. I stepped on the brake, leaned across the seat, and rolled down the window. He reached in, pulled up the lock, tore the door open, jumped into the car, slumped down on the passenger seat, reached over me, locked my door, did the same with his, and rolled his window back up, all the while shouting: “Drive! Drive, damn it! As fast as you can!”
I didn’t react immediately, but then I saw the yard gate beginning to swing shut, threw the gear into reverse, and made it out just in time, with only a few scratches to the front fenders. Samarin was running alongside the car, trying to get the door open. “Faster!” Welker kept shouting, holding on to the door from inside. “Faster!”
I floored the gas pedal and raced over the Schlossplatz into the Schlosstrasse. “Quick, give me your cell phone!” Welker said, reaching over to me.
“I don’t have one.”
“Damn!” He slammed his fists down on the dashboard. “How can you not have a cell phone?”
I pulled into a parking lot in the Hebelstrasse and stopped in front of a public phone where he could use my phone card. “Not here! Let’s go where there are lots of people!”
It was Sunday noon and the parking lot was still empty. But what was he afraid of? That Samarin and a few young men in suits would turn up and abduct him? I drove to the Schwetzingen train station, which wasn’t exactly pulsating with life, but there were taxis, a waiting bus, a newsstand, an open ticket counter, and some passengers. Welker took my phone card, his eyes darting in all directions, and went to a phone. I saw him pick up the receiver, insert the card, dial a number, wait, and begin to talk. Then he hung up and leaned against the wall. He looked as if he would collapse if the wall weren’t there.