The American pulled a pint of rye out of his jacket pocket and held it so I could see the label. “Might that impeccable sense of service run to a couple of clean glasses?”
“A couple of glasses? Sure.” I couldn’t guess what he wanted. He certainly didn’t look like he needed a deal on two rooms. If there was a rat crawling over his well-polished wingtips, I couldn’t yet smell it. Besides, there was nothing wrong with the label on his rye. “But what about your friend in the car? Won’t he be joining us?”
“Him? Oh, he doesn’t drink.”
I stepped into the office and reached down a couple of glasses. Before I could ask if he wanted any water with his whiskey, the American had filled both glasses to the brim. He held his glass against the light and said, slowly: “You know, I wish I could remember who it is that you remind me of.”
I let that one go. It was a remark only an American, or an Englishman, could have made. In Germany today nobody wants to remember anything or anyone. The privilege of defeat.
“It’ll come to me,” he said, shaking his head. “I never forget a face. But it’s not important.” He drank his whiskey and pushed the glass to one side. I tasted mine. I was right. It was good whiskey, and I said so.
“Look here,” he said. “It so happens that your hotel suits my purposes very well. As I said, I need two rooms for one or two nights. Depends. Either way I have money to spend. Cash money.” He took a fold of very new deutschmarks from his back pocket, slipped off a silver money clip, and counted five twenties on the desk in front of me. It was about five times the going rate on two rooms for two nights. “The kind of money that’s a little shy of too many questions.”
I finished my drink and allowed my eyes to drift to the passenger still seated in the Buick outside and felt them narrow as, a little shortsighted these days, I tried to size him up. But the American was there ahead of me.
“You’re wondering about my friend,” he said. “If perhaps he’s the lemon-sucking type.” He poured another couple of drinks and grinned. “Don’t worry. We’re not warm for each other if that’s what you were thinking. Anything but, as a matter of fact. If you ever asked him his opinion of me, I should imagine he would tell you that he hates my guts, the bastard.”
“Nice traveling companion,” I said. “I always say, a trip that’s shared provides twice the happy memories.” I took my second drink. But for the moment I left the hundred marks untouched, at least by my hand. My eyes were on and off the five notes, however, and the American saw it and said:
“Go ahead. Take the money. We both know you need it. This hotel hasn’t seen a guest since my government ended the prosecution of war criminals at Dachau last August. That’s almost a year, isn’t it? No wonder your father-in-law killed himself.”
I said nothing. But I was starting to smell the rat.
“It must have been tough,” he continued. “Very tough. Now that the trials are over, who wants to come and take a vacation here? I mean, Dachau’s not exactly Coney Island, is it? Of course, you could get lucky. You might get a few Jews who want to take a stroll down memory lane.”
“Get to the point,” I said.
“All right.” He swallowed his drink and palmed a gold cigarette case from the other pocket. “Herr Kommissar Gunther.”
I took the offered cigarette and let him light me with a match he snapped into life with a thumbnail while it was still only halfway up to my face.
“You want to be careful doing that,” I said. “You could spoil your manicure.”
“Or you could spoil it for me? Yes?”
“Maybe.”
He laughed. “Don’t get hard-boiled with me, pal,” he said. “It’s been tried. The krauts who tried it are still picking pieces of shell out of their mouths.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You don’t look like a tough guy. Or is that just this season’s look for tough guys?”
“What you know is of incidental importance to me, Bernie, old boy,” he said. “Let me tell you what I know, for a minute. I know a lot. How you and your wife came here from Berlin last fall, to help her old man run this hotel. How he killed himself just before Christmas and how she cracked up because of that. How you used to be a Kriminal Kommissar at the Alex in Berlin. A cop. Just like me.”
“You don’t look like a cop.”
“Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment, Herr Kommissar.”
“That was ten years ago,” I said. “Mostly I was just an inspector. Or a private detective.”
The American jerked his head at the window. “The guy in the car is handcuffed to the steering wheel. He’s a war criminal. What your German newspapers would call a Red Jacket. During the war he was stationed here, at Dachau. He worked at the crematorium, burning bodies, for which he received a twenty-year sentence. You ask me, he deserved to hang. They all did. Then again, if he had been hanged he wouldn’t be outside now, helping me with my inquiries. And I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of meeting you.”
He blew some smoke at the carved wooden ceiling and then picked a piece of tobacco off his eloquent pink tongue. I might have given him a short uppercut and then he’d have lost the tip of it. I was with the guy in the car. The one who hated the Ami’s guts. I disliked the Yank’s manner and the advantage he seemed to think he held over me. But it wasn’t worth punching him out. I was in the American Zone, and we both knew they could make trouble for me. I didn’t want trouble with the Americans. Especially after the trouble I’d had with the Ivans. So I kept my fists by my side. Besides, there was still the small matter of a hundred marks. A hundred marks was a hundred marks.
“It seems the guy in the car was a friend of your wife’s father,” said the American. He turned and walked into the hotel bar. “I expect he and some of his SS pals were in and out of this place a lot.” I saw his eyes take in the dirty glasses on the bar top, the overflowing ashtrays, the beer spills on the floor. They were all mine. That bar was the one place in the hotel where I felt truly at home. “I guess those were better days, huh?” He laughed. “You know, you should go back to being a cop, Gunther. You’re no hotelier, that’s for sure. Hell, I’ve seen body bags that were more welcoming than this place.”
“No one’s asking you to stay and fraternize,” I said.
“Fraternize?” He laughed. “Is that what we’re doing? No, I don’t think so. Fraternize implies something brotherly. I just don’t feel that way about anyone who could stay in a town like this, bud.”
“Don’t feel bad about it,” I said. “I’m an only child. Not the brotherly kind at all. Frankly, I’d rather empty the ashtrays than talk to you.”
“Wolf, the guy in the car,” said the American, “he was a real enterprising sort of guy. Before he burned the bodies, he used to take out any gold teeth with a pair of pliers. He had a pair of pruning shears to cut off fingers for the wedding rings. He even had this special pair of tongs so he could search the private parts of the dead looking for rolls of banknotes, jewels, and gold coins. It’s amazing what he used to find. Enough to fill an empty wine box, which he buried in your father-in-law’s garden before the camp was liberated.”
“And you want to dig it up?”
“I’m not going to dig anything up.” The American jerked his thumb at the front door. “He is, if he knows what’s good for him.”
“What makes you think the box is still there?” I asked.
He shrugged. “It’s a safe bet that Herr Handlöser, your father-in-law, didn’t find it. If he had, this place would be in a lot better shape. And probably he’d never have put his head on the Altomünster railway line, just like Anna Karenina. I bet he had less time to wait than she did. That’s the one thing you krauts do really well. The trains. I gotta hand it to you. Everything still runs like clockwork in this damned country.”
“And the hundred marks are for what? To keep my mouth shut?”
“Sure. But not the way you think. You see, I’m doing you a favor. You and everyone else in town. You see, if it ever gets out that someone dug up a box of gold and jewels in your back garden, Gunther, then everyone in town is going to have a problem with other people looking for treasure. Refugees, British and American soldiers, desperate Germans, greedy Ivans, you name it. That’s why this is being handled unofficially. Simple as that.”
“Talk of treasure might be good for business,” I said, heading back to the front desk. The money was still there. “It could bring people back to this town in a big way.”
“And when they don’t find anything? Think about it. Things could get nasty. I’ve seen it happen.”
I nodded. I can’t say I wasn’t tempted to take his money. But the truth was I didn’t want any part of anything connected with gold that had come out of someone’s mouth. So I pushed the banknotes back toward him. “You’re welcome to dig,” I said. “And you can do what the hell you like with whatever you find. But I don’t like the smell of your money. It feels too much like a share of the loot. I didn’t want any part of it then, and I certainly don’t want any part of it now.”
“Well, well,” said the American. “Isn’t that something? A kraut with principles. Hell, I thought Adolf Hitler killed all of you guys.”
“It’s three marks a night,” I said. “Each. In advance. There’s plenty of hot water, day and night, but if you want more than a beer or a cup of coffee, that’s extra. Food is still rationed, for Germans.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I was wrong about you.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, too.” I poured myself some more of his rye. “Every time I look at that line of trees, I remember what happened on the other side.”
TWO
The man from the car was of medium height, dark-haired with protruding ears, and shadowy, downcast eyes. He wore a thick tweed suit and a plain white shirt, but without a necktie, no doubt in case he tried to hang himself. He didn’t speak to me and I didn’t speak to him. When he came into the hotel his head seemed to shrink into his narrow shoulders as if—I can think of no other explanation—he was burdened with a sense of shame. But perhaps I’m just being fanciful. Either way I felt sorry for him. If the cards had been dealt differently it might have been me in the American’s Buick.
There was another reason I felt sorry for the man. He looked feverish and ill. Hardly equal to the task of digging a hole in my garden. I said as much to the American as he fetched some tools from the cavernous trunk of the Buick.
“He looks like he should be in hospital,” I said.
“And that’s where he’s going after this,” said the American. “If he finds the box, then he’ll get his penicillin.” He shrugged. “He wouldn’t have cooperated at all if I didn’t have that kind of leverage.”
“I thought you Amis were supposed to pay attention to the Geneva Conventions,” I said.
“Oh we do, we do,” he said. “But these guys are not ordinary soldiers, they’re war criminals. Some of them have murdered thousands of people. These guys put themselves outside the protection of Geneva.”
We followed Wolf into the garden, where the American threw the tools down on the grass and told him to get on with it. The day was a hot one. Too hot to be digging anywhere but in your pockets. Wolf leaned on a tree for a moment as he tried to get his bearings, and let out a sigh. “I think this is the spot, right here,” he whispered. “Could I have a glass of water?” His hands were shaking and there was sweat on his forehead.
“Get him a glass of water, will you, Gunther?” said the American.
I fetched the water, and returned to find Wolf, pickax in hand. He took a swing at the lawn and almost fell over. I caught him by the elbow and helped him to sit down. The American was lighting a cigarette, apparently unconcerned. “Take your time, Wolf, my friend,” he said. “There’s no hurry. That’s why I figured on two nights, see? On account of how he’s not exactly in the best of shape for gardening duty.”
“This man is in no condition for any kind of manual work,” I said. “Look at him. He can hardly stand.”
The American flicked his match at Wolf and snorted with derision. “And do you imagine he ever said that to any of the people who were imprisoned in Dachau?” he said. “Like hell he did. Probably shot them in the head where they fell. Not a bad idea at that. Save me the trouble of taking him back to the prison hospital.”
“That’s hardly the point of this exercise, is it? I thought you just wanted what’s buried here.”
“Sure, but I’m not going to dig. These shoes are from Florsheim.”
I took the pickax from Wolf, angrily. “If there’s half a chance of getting rid of you before this evening,” I said, “I’ll do it myself.” And I sank the point of the pick into the grass as if it had been the American’s skull.
“It’s your funeral, Gunther.”
“No, but it will be his if I don’t do this.” I wielded the pick again.
“Thanks, comrade,” whispered Wolf, and sitting underneath the tree, he leaned back and closed his eyes weakly.
“You krauts.” The American smiled. “Stick together, don’t you?”
“This has got nothing to do with being German,” I said. “I’d probably have done it for anyone I didn’t much like, including you.”
I was at it for about an hour with the pick and then the shovel until, about three feet down, I hit something hard. It sounded and felt like a coffin. The American was quickly over to the side of the hole, his eyes searching the earth. I kept on digging and finally levered out a box that was the size of a small suitcase and placed it on the grass at his feet. It was heavy. When I looked up, I saw that he was holding a thirty-eight in his hand. A snub-nosed police special.
“This is nothing personal,” he said. “But a man who’s digging for treasure is just liable to think he deserves a share. Especially a man who was noble enough to turn down a hundred marks.”
“Now that you mention it,” I said, “the idea of beating your face to a pulp with the flat of a spade is rather tempting.”
He waved the gun. “Then you’d best throw it away, just in case.”