Liesl looked over at Ben, curious, but caught his signal to wait. They talked idly for a few minutes, Dieter at one point introducing them to a passing colleague. Ostermann, a folded newspaper near his place, seemed preoccupied. Around the room men sat talking quietly or reading papers, formal in jackets and ties, all moving slowly, like people under water.
“Did you see any of the campus as you came in?” Dieter said to Ben.
“Just a glimpse.”
“The grounds are handsome. Of course everything grows so well here. In Europe-you remember the university? Tram lines outside the door.”
“Another reason to prefer it here,” Ostermann said deadpan, teasing him.
“You admit, it’s more pleasant.” He turned to Ben. “You’re still anxious about him? Your friend?”
“No,” Ben said. Did he look nervous? The rest of the room seemed to be moving at a different rhythm, almost placid. “But is there a phone? If I could call-”
“Downstairs,” Dieter said. “Near the toilets. You have nickels?”
Ben hesitated for a second, as if he hadn’t heard, then nodded. Of course they’d be pay phones. Not Chasen’s, phones plugged in at the tables. He was back in the real world, where no one cared about the Crosby grosses or who was being fed to Minot. Or who hadn’t been. One name. He stood up, the envelope almost pounding in his pocket.
“Right back,” he said, hurrying to the stairs.
Riordan might recognize someone, just hearing the name. The top group, Ben guessed, was the most important. But Riordan wasn’t home. Ben hung up the receiver. How did you find people? Phone books. He took out the list, reading the top names to himself, then started leafing through the flimsy pages. Not in Los Angeles. But why give them to Danny, to Minot, if they weren’t local? San Francisco. He picked up the receiver again and asked for long distance information. The top two names, just to check. It took a few minutes. But they weren’t in San Francisco, either.
“He’s all right, I hope?” Dieter, on his way to the men’s room.
“Yes,” Ben said, startled, sticking the letter back in his pocket. “Fine.”
“We should leave soon. After the light goes, the road-”
“Meet you upstairs,” Ben said, already moving.
Why not just rent a post office box if all you wanted was mail? Wouldn’t it have been safe there? But in the script the partners get the police to search the boxes. A court order. Ostermann said his mail was read. Not at his front door, intercepted at the post office, one branch helping another. Maybe something the FBI did all the time, a consulting tip from Dennis. But who had sent the letter? Danny hadn’t just filed reports from scraps of memory. There’d been a source, someone who might be traced. He thought of the paper in his pocket, any fingerprints now smudged by his own. But the police had ways of finding things, paper and postmarks and typewriter strokes, clues invisible to anyone else. Riordan’s friends could tell him. A rush job, a small favor for Congressman Minot.
Upstairs they had gathered near the door.
“You can imagine my relief when it came,” Kaltenbach was saying in German.
“Yes, but will you use it?” Ostermann said.
“Heinrich, I told you, English here,” Dieter said, joining them.
“Yes, no German,” Ostermann said. He held out the paper. “What would people think?”
Ben looked at the news picture-the first group of defendants at Nuremberg, sitting erect in uniforms and proper suits.
“Don’t be foolish,” Dieter said. “It’s nothing to do with us.”
“Do they know that?” Ostermann said, nodding to the room. “It’s the language of criminals now, our German.”
“Criminals. Who, everybody? Are we supposed to be guilty, too? I don’t feel that. Do you?”
“No, not guilt.” He glanced down at the newspaper. “Shame.”
“Ach. A literary position.” Dieter arched his eyebrows at Liesl, a what-do-you-expect gesture. “All right, Ben, you take the criminals. Speak all the German you like, nobody will hear. Liesl, darling, come with me.” He held up a finger. “English only.”
She smiled and put her arm through his. “My car. You still drive in German.”
Before Ben could say anything, they had paired off, Dieter leading everyone to the lot.
“All-American,” Ostermann said wryly, watching him. “So he doesn’t feel German anymore. Just like that. When does that happen? Take an oath and-”
“Any news on your citizenship papers?”
“Not yet. But my lawyer says it’s a question of time only. I have ‘good moral character,’ ” he said, amused. “How dull I must be.”
“You?” Heinrich said. “‘The most provocative writer today.’ They used to say that, all the critics.”
“Well, now just dull,” Ostermann said, smiling. “You heard the good news?” he said to Ben. “Heinrich’s passport came.”
“An American passport?” Ben said, confused.
“With my moral character?” Kaltenbach laughed. “No, Czech. You know, before the war they would help us, a passport of convenience, so we could leave. And then, no Czechoslovakia. So after the war it was a question, would the new government honor the old passports? Give us new ones. And, yes! So it came, from the consulate.”
“But do you want to be Czech? I thought-”
“I must be something. To travel. You can’t, without a passport. So now I can go anywhere. Not like a prisoner. It’s a wonderful thing.”
They had reached the parking lot, Liesl fiddling with her keys.
Dieter looked at Ben’s car. “Daniel’s,” he said, then looked up. “Yes, of course, I forgot. You’re at the house.”
“Not anymore. Now it’s on Lend-Lease.”
“You’ve moved? I didn’t know.”
“Hm. To the Cherokee.”
“You’re living there?”
“It’s convenient. To the studio.”
“Yes, but-” He stopped, slightly flustered. “You don’t mind that-”
“He never really lived there,” Ben said. “It’s just a room.”
Dieter looked at him, not sure how to respond, then at Liesl to see her reaction. “Well, that’s right,” he said finally, uncomfortable. “Just a room.”
“Ready?” Liesl said.
“Would you show me on the map?” Ben said. “Just in case.”
“Yes, all right. It’s very direct.” She brought a map over to him and opened it.
“This isn’t going to be so easy,” he said to her out of earshot of the others. “Tonight.”
“No. Maybe not. Was that true, about the hospital?”
Ben nodded. “He was visiting someone. It was nothing,” he said, suddenly protective. “But I need to ask you something. The mail key for the Cherokee. You never found it in Danny’s things?”
“Again? You asked me that before. No. Look for yourself. Why is it so important? Get them to give you another one.”
“I want to know where his is.”
“Maybe he never had one. Why would he? ‘He never really lived there,’ ” she said, quoting, then looked down. “Just sometimes.”
“I don’t think he used the place for that.”
“What, then? To write scripts?” She folded the map. “Why are we talking about this? Always Daniel. Right here,” she said, motioning with her hand to the space between them. She stopped and exhaled, collecting herself. “They’re waiting. Now Dieter will want to know. Why you didn’t stay. Family should stay. What do I tell him?”
“That I couldn’t keep my hands off you.”
“A nice conversation for an uncle.” She paused. “The key. What does it mean?”
“If you don’t have it, someone else does.”
“Yes?”
“So how did he get it?”
They drove through the suburbs in the foothills and then started the steep climb on the Angeles Crest Highway, a two-lane road that twisted high into the San Gabriels, the low grassy hills giving way to dry chaparral, clumps of sage and prickly pear cactus and dwarf oaks.
“Like a Western,” Ostermann said, gazing out the window.
“ Ja, a stagecoach,” Kaltenbach said from the backseat. “It’s an agony back here. I feel sick.”
“Look straight ahead, not out the side.”
“All these twists and turns,” Heinrich said as they cut sharply into another hairpin curve. “Look at Liesl, she can’t slow down?” Ahead of them, Liesl’s car kept darting out of sight. “And look how close to the edge. It can’t be safe. Just like Lion’s street. I have to close my eyes when she takes me there. So fast. I don’t know how he can live there.”