19 Purchase Street (22 page)

Everything clean.

No one there.

A wall of stainless steel hinged compartments, three by two.

Zeller consulted a listing on a clipboard before opening the compartment that was second from the bottom, fourth from the left. The seven foot tray slid out easily. He partially unzipped the plastic bag, pushed it aside for Gainer to see another Gainer.

It's not you, Norma. It doesn't look enough like you.

A long look at the face, seeing all the times not taken, care not shown, things unsaid. Oh, Norma, never now.

Zeller asked, “Do you identify her?”

“Yes.”

Zeller began to close the bag.

Gainer stopped him. “I want to see all of her.”

Zeller thought he shouldn't but he unzipped the bag entirely to reveal the skin looking reptilian where the massive blisters had been lanced and had dried, the fingers flexed unevenly as though to grab anything, the medical examiner's incision from her pubic hair up to her throat unevenly sutured with large stitches, like a child's sewing.

“Okay?” Zeller asked.

“No,” Gainer said, and walked out.

He had not cried. Not one tear from the moment on the beach when Leslie told him, right up to now. He had wanted to cry but his grief was so intense it would not let him. His mind's way of protecting him. Otherwise, no telling what he would have done. He was changed, though. The way he saw things was different. His surroundings seemed out of register, removed. When he first noticed that sensation he shook his head to try to clear it, but it stayed with him.

Leslie had come to Zurich with him. He never once mentioned making the trip alone. On the flight over she tried to hold him but he insisted on holding her.

She was waiting for him now in Inspector Zeller's office on the fourth floor. When Gainer came in she searched for any visible change. He seemed the same, in control, coping. He sat in the hard official chair next to hers.

Zeller went behind his desk. There was nothing on it but a manila file folder and a meticulously sharpened yellow pencil. Zeller was a dry-looking man in his late fifties. He had a conscientiously tended gray mustache, was dressed in a sincere blue wool suit.

Zeller tugged his suit jacket neat, smoothed his tie and examined both its ends to see that they matched in length.

Delaying tactics. It was always distasteful for him to deal with matters of this sort, cases in which lust was so prominent. Lust to any degree was as much a transgression as any crime he could think of. He had wanted to become a pastor before he won the
Knabenshiessen
one September and became the champion marksman of all schoolboys.

He glanced out the window to Saint Jacob's Church, its spire an acicular finger pointed heavenward. It was his usual reinforcing view.

He flipped open the folder. Wasted no words. Did not spare Gainer.

Showed him photographs of Norma's room at the Dolder Grand. Various angles and numerous detailed close-ups: the nearly empty bottle of cognac, the vial containing Methaquaalude tablets, the vial containing cocaine, her hand mirror with cocaine on it, the vibrator, the tissues. The shower stall with her in it as she'd been found by the chambermaid.

Gainer remained steady, or seemed to.

Zeller went on to the laboratory and medical examiners' reports, which stated that there was spermatozoa on the tissues and on the sheets, and in her vagina and rectum. Cocaine crystals in her nostrils. High percentage of alcohol in her blood. The scalding had not brought about her death. She had died from the combination of the alcohol and the Methaquaalude, which in its effect upon the brain, specifically the medulla oblongata, had prohibited the automatic responses of her lungs and heart.

She had died of lust, Zeller felt, but he said it was the official conclusion of the Kanton police that her death had been accidentally self-induced. No further investigation necessary.

He closed the manila folder.

Gainer considered telling Zeller he was full of shit, it was all shit. He realized, however, he would only sound like the bereaved brother who had been kept in the dark. Besides, no doubt all it would get him was another Zeller.

He signed a receipt for Norma's personal effects and a form confirming positive identification and another form with which he assumed responsibility for the body.

I'm responsible for you now, Norma.

Out on Kasernenstrasse Leslie asked, “We're taking her home with us, aren't we?”

“It's not her,” Gainer said.

“But darling—”

“It's not her.”

In another moment Leslie understood.

The Mercedes at the curb awaited them. The driver put Norma's two pieces of luggage into the trunk and drove to the hotel. They were staying at the Savoy in a quiet suite on the Waaggasse side. Leslie had taken it on herself to handle such details. As much as she could she would try to smooth things along.

Up in the suite Gainer watched and heard her on the phone. He had not told her what arrangements to make, but she assumed and he confirmed by nodding while she talked to the necessary people.

It had to be done that afternoon.

At four o'clock they were driven back to the Kanton Police Station. A hearse was there. They followed it out Badenerstrasse for about fifteen blocks, then into the Friedhof Cemetery and past field after field of dead to the crematorium.

Two men from the hearse and two from the crematorium carried the casket and Norma inside. It seemed crazy to Gainer that there was a casket, but the undertaker had insisted on it.

No ceremony.

Gainer and Leslie waited in the car for nearly an hour. One of the crematorium men came out with a brown cardboard carton ten inches square, carried it with both hands as though it were heavy. Or sacred. Gainer rolled down the car window to receive it.

Back in the hotel suite Gainer opened the carton, removed the shiny metal container. It resembled a paint can, two quart size without a handle or a label, and the same sort of pry-open lid.

“It's not her,” Gainer said.

He shook the container, felt its contents shift and wondered if they really had cremated the casket. Probably they'd saved it to sell again. He placed the container on the writing desk. Turned on the television. Got a soccer match in progress. Bayer-Miinchen playing Ajax-Amsterdam at Munich Olympic Stadium.

He sat there, trying to concentrate on it.

Leslie took Norma's luggage into the bedroom, opened it and found everything messily crammed in. She went through Norma's carryall, removed from it whatever might be important: keys, address book, airline ticket, receipts, every slip of paper and stub. In one of the bags was a pair of leather-framed photographs—a recent one of Gainer alone and another of him with arms around Norma.

The next morning over breakfast Leslie asked should she make reservations for the flight home.

Gainer told her: “Not yet.”

She believed she knew why. Here in Zurich was where it had happened and leaving here would, to a certain extent, close the book on it. He was not ready for that.

They went out for a walk. Their hotel was practically on Bahnhofstrasse, the street Zurich is most proud of. Along there the sidewalks are wider, the shops finer, the way lined on both sides by plane trees and decorated from above with Swiss flags.

Gainer and Leslie walked up one side as far as it went, then crossed over to return on the other side. They looked in store windows, bought a huge chunk of bittersweet chocolate at Sprungle that they passed back and forth as they continued on.

It was Saturday. The crowds along Bahnhofstrasse had a liberated attitude and most of the outdoor tables of the cafes were occupied.

Gainer sidestepped to avoid a little girl enjoying a momentary escape from her mother. At that instant a woman brushed by Gainer and pressed a folded note into his free hand. It took him so completely by surprise he almost threw the note away. He stopped to read:

I have information

regarding Norma. Come

to Kirchegasse 28. Please.

Gainer searched for that woman in the coming-and-going crowd ahead, caught a glimpse of her. She had paused, turned toward him, no doubt to assure herself that he had gotten the message. Then other heads and shoulders cut her from view.

Kirchegasse was a minor street in the older section east of the River Limmat. Number 28 turned out to be a coffee house of a dozen tables. Seated alone in the deepest corner was the woman.

Gainer and Leslie sat down with her.

She appeared to be in her forties, quite pretty, had baby-fine hair of a medium blond shade, conservatively styled. Her eyes were inflamed, the dark semicircles beneath them made all the more apparent by her pale skin. From crying and too little sleep.

“My name is Schebler,” she said, “Alma Schebler.”

Gainer introduced Leslie. “It seems you already know who I am.”

“You are Drew,” Alma said warmly.

Norma's name for him. Hearing it made his insides react as though cringing from the hurt. “You're sure of that.”

“From photographs.”

Gainer assumed Norma had shown them to her.

Alma told him: “Even if I had not seen them I would have recognized you, the resemblance.”

“Norma spoke of you often,” he tried.

“No,” Alma said. A thoughtful pause. “But she might have soon. It was planned that I should go with her to America.”

“To stay?”

“To stay.”

They ordered coffee and pastries. Leslie took small bites from each kind and gave the impression that she was detached from the conversation. Actually she was silently trying to interpret it.

“Norma always stayed at the Dolder Grand,” Alma said. “I have a position at the Dolder. Senior bookkeeper.” Alma's coffee spoon stirred round and round, as though on its own. “At first Norma and I saw one another merely in passing. We exchanged proper automatic greetings, employee and guest. I knew her by name. No, that is not true. I made a point of learning her name. One evening at early dinner on the terrace just by chance our tables were adjacent.” Alma took a deep breath that hitched as if it had caught on something. “That is not true either,” she said. “I arranged to have the table next to hers, hoping she would invite me to join her. She did. We talked for hours and became friends.”

Alma decided to stop at that. She would not say and he would not know how delicate the first intimacy had been, the first of its kind for both Alma and Norma. And what a long, uncertain hunger they had created in one another before daring to risk it. The embarrassment they had anticipated but not felt. Their lake boat rides to shoreline villages such as Stafa and Rapperswil, where they stayed at the smallest, plainest inns and doubted anyone really believed they were close cousins. But it did not matter. They sank nearly out of sight in down-filled mattresses and one another.

What came to Gainer's mind at that moment was Norma having remarked how fond she had become of Zurich.

“I was in the vestibule of the police station yesterday,” Alma said. “I saw you come and go. I called all the good hotels, located you at the Savoy and waited there in the lobby this morning.”

“Why didn't you just come up? Why the note and all this?”

“Fear.”

“Who are you afraid of?”

“I am not sure.”

“The police have decided Norma's death was her own doing. Drugs and alcohol.”

“What do you believe?”

“Someone killed her.” It was the first time he had said it. He hated it.

Alma finally drank her coffee, emptied the cup and signaled for a refill. She immediately went to stirring again. “I have a son,” she said. “His name is Karl. He is twenty, a student at the university. During the summer he works at the Dolder Grand as a room-waiter. Wednesday last, around lunchtime, Karl carried a tray of food to room 438. That is the room directly across the hall from the one Norma regularly stayed in.” Alma told it slowly, deliberately. “Karl was instructed by a man in the room to push the tray in through the partly opened door. It was not an unusual request and Karl tried to do as he was told. The tray accidentally bumped the door open wider and Karl could not help but see the two men who were there. He recognized them because he had served their breakfast that morning in room 280 and one of the men had stuck his fingers in the orange juice and complained that it was not cold. Karl acted as though he had never seen the men before, because that is the conduct the Dolder expects of its waiters, to be polite but remain impersonal.”

Alma paused to get a cigarette from her purse, lit it with a hefty black and gold lighter. She took a heavy first drag, and there was smoke around her words as she went on. “Karl thought nothing of it until he heard what had happened to Norma. He told me about it, asked if I thought he should tell the police. I advised him to stay out of it. Naturally, as bookkeeper I have access to the hotel's records. I looked up room 438 and room 280. On Wednesday a man and wife from Stockholm were in 438. As a matter of fact, they were still there, staying on, so that seemed in order. The registration card for room 280 showed it had been occupied on Wednesday by a woman and her daughter from Vienna. It occurred to me that someone might have tampered with the records. The Dolder is such a large hotel, it would go unnoticed. I called the telephone company and pretended there was a dispute regarding Wednesday's charges to room 280. I was told that three calls to France had been made from that room. Two to Paris, the other to Vernon.”

Alma handed across a slip of paper.

Gainer studied her Germanic numerals.

“Those are the telephone numbers that were called,” she said and waited for his comment before asking: “What will you do with them? Will you go back to the police?”

“No. Did Karl describe the two men to you?” Gainer asked.

“They were French.”

“He's sure of that?”

“Karl is very observant, especially of people.”