A Quiet Flame (39 page)

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Evita didn’t seem ill.”

“Nor do you.”

“Not now, maybe. But I was.”

“Pack’s a good doctor,” said the colonel. “The best there is. You were both lucky to have someone like him treating you.”

“I expect so.”

“I’ll call the von Baders and say that you want to speak to them again. Perhaps there was something we missed before.”

“There’s always something that gets missed. On account of the fact that detectives are human and humans make mistakes.”

“Shall we say at midday tomorrow?”

I nodded.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll drive you back to your hotel.”

I shook my head. “No, thanks, Colonel. I’ll walk, if you don’t mind. The landlady sees me arriving in that white Jaguar of yours, she’s liable to put my room rate up.”

BUENOS AIRES, 1950

T
HEY WERE PLEASED to see me at the Hotel San Martín. Of course, a lot of that was to do with the fact that the secret police had turned over my room—although not so as you would have noticed. There wasn’t much to turn over. Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd greeted me like they hadn’t expected ever to see me again.

“One hears stories about the secret police and that kind of thing,” Mr. Lloyd told me over a welcome-back glass of whiskey in the hotel bar. “But, well, it’s not something we’ve encountered before.”

“There was a misunderstanding about my
cédula,
that’s all,” I said. “I don’t suppose it will happen again.”

All the same, I went ahead and paid my monthly bill, just in case it did. It helped to put the Lloyds at ease. Losing a guest was one thing. Losing a guest who hadn’t paid was quite another. They were nice people, but they were in it for the money, after all. Who isn’t?

I went up to my room. There was a bed, a table and chair, an armchair, a three-bar electric fire, a radio, a telephone, and a bathroom. Naturally, I’d added a few personal touches of my own. A bottle, a couple of glasses, a chess set, a Spanish dictionary, a Weimar edition of Goethe I’d bought in a secondhand bookshop, a suitcase and some clothes. All my worldly possessions. I’d like to have seen young Werther cope with Gunther’s sorrows. I poured myself a drink, set out the chess set, switched on the radio, and then sat in the armchair. There were some telephone messages in an envelope. All but one of these was from Anna Yagubsky. The one that wasn’t was from Isabel Pekerman. I didn’t know anyone called Isabel Pekerman.

Agustín Magaldi came on Radio El Mundo, singing “Vagabundo.” This had been a huge hit for him in the thirties. I turned off the radio and ran a bath. I thought about going out to get something to eat, and had another drink instead. I was just thinking about going to bed when the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Lloyd.

“A Señora Pekerman calling.”

“Who?”

“She rang before. She says you know her.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Lloyd. You’d better put her through.”

I heard a couple of clicks and the tail end of another woman saying “Thank you.”

“Señora Pekerman? This is Carlos Hausner. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”

“Oh, yes, we have.”

“Then you have the advantage of me, Señora Pekerman. I’m afraid I don’t remember you.”

“Are you alone, Señor Hausner?”

I glanced around the four bare, silent walls at my half-empty bottle and my hopeless game of chess. I was alone, all right. Outside my window, people were walking up and down the street. But they might as well have been on Saturn, for all the good it did me. Sometimes the profound silence of that room scared me, because it seemed to echo something silent within myself. Across the street, at the church of Saint Catherine of Siena, a bell began to toll.

“Yes, I’m alone, Señora Pekerman. What can I do for you?”

“They asked me to come in tomorrow afternoon, Señor Hausner,” she said. “But I just got offered a small part in a play on Corrientes. It’s a small part. But it’s a good part. In a good play. Besides, things have moved on since last we met. Anna’s told me all about you. About how you’re helping her to look for her aunt and uncle.”

I winced, wondering how many other people she’d told.

“When exactly did we meet, Señora Pekerman?”

“At Señor von Bader’s house. I was the woman who pretended to be his wife.”

She paused. So did I. Or rather, so did my heart.

“Remember me now?”

“Yes, I remember you. The dog wouldn’t stay with you. It came with me and von Bader.”

“Well, it’s not my dog, Señor Hausner,” she said, as if I still didn’t quite get what she was talking about. “To be honest, I don’t think I really expected you to dig up anything about Anna’s aunt and uncle. But of course, you did. I mean it’s not much but it’s something. Some proof that they did at least enter this country. You see, I’m in the same boat as Anna. I’m Jewish, too. And I also had some relatives who entered the country illegally and then disappeared.”

“I don’t think you should say anything else on the telephone, Señora Pekerman. Perhaps we could meet and talk this over.”

 

 

 

IN THE EVENINGS, when she wasn’t acting, Isabel Pekerman worked at a
milonga,
which was a kind of tango club, on Corrientes. I didn’t know much about the tango, except that it had originated in Argentine brothels. That was certainly the impression I had from the Club Seguro. It was down some steps, underneath a small neon sign, and at the far end of a yard lit by a single naked flame. Out of the flickering shadows a large man approached. The
vigilante
guarding the door. He had a whistle around his neck to summon the police in the event of a dispute he couldn’t handle.

“Are you carrying a knife?” he asked.

“No.”

He seemed surprised at this admission. “All the same, I have to search you.”

“So why ask the question?”

“Because if you’re lying, then I’d figure you might be out to cause trouble,” he said, patting me down. “And then I’ll have to keep an eye on you.” When he had satisfied himself I wasn’t armed, he waved me to the door. Music, which was mostly an accordion and some violins, was edging its way into the yard.

In the doorway was a sort of coop that was home to the
casita
woman, a largish Negress who sat in an easy chair humming an altogether different tune from the one played by the tango orchestra. On her thigh was a paper napkin and a pair of lamb chops. Maybe they were her dinner, but they might just as easily have been the remains of the last man to cause trouble for the huge
vigilante.
She smiled a big, uneven smile that was as white as a swath of snowdrops, and gave me a sizing up-and-down look.

“You looking for a stepney?”

I shrugged. My
castellano
had much improved, but it fell apart like a cheap suit the minute it got snagged on the local slang.

“You know. The café crème.”

“I’m looking for Isabel Pekerman,” I said.

“Where you from, honey?”

“Germany.”

“It’s twenty pesos, Adolf,” said the
casita
woman. “Don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but the lady’s
canfinflero
is Blue Vincent, and Vincent prefers it if you give him the bouquet before you speaks to the
gallina.
”

“I only want to speak to her.”

“Don’t make no difference if you’re a hunter or not. Every one of these
creolos
is from the Center and if you speaks to baggage you’ll have to give him a bouquet. It’s that kind of joint.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” I peeled off a couple of notes and pressed them into her leathery hand.

“Uh-huh.” She shifted for a moment and tucked the notes under one of her substantial buttocks. It looked as safe there as in any bank vault. “You’ll find her on the dance floor, probably.”

I breast-stroked my way through a beaded curtain into a scene from
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The brick walls were covered in graffiti and old posters. Around a dirty wooden dance floor were lots of little marble-topped tables. The low lights on the ceiling barely illuminated the lowlifes below. There were women with skirts slit up to their navels and men with trilbies pulled down low over their watchful eyes. The orchestra looked as oily as the music it was playing. The only thing that seemed to be lacking in the place was Rudolph Valentino dressed in a poncho with a whip in his hand and a pout on his mouth. Nobody paid me any attention. Nobody except the taller of the two women who were dancing the tango with eyes that had done a lot more than just meet.

I hardly recognized her from before. She looked like a circus horse. Her mane was long and very blond with just a touch of gray. Her eyes were big but not as big as her beautiful curving behind, which her skirt did nothing to conceal. She was also wearing a kind of spangled leotard that almost preserved her modesty. At least I think it was a leotard only, it was a little hard to be sure the way it disappeared between her buttocks.

I stared hard back at her, just to let her know I’d seen her. She stared back and then pointed at a table. I sat down. A waiter appeared. Everyone else seemed to be drinking
cubano
from large, round glasses. I ordered the same and lit a cigarette.

A burly man came over to my table. He was wearing boots, black trousers, a gray jacket that was a size too small for him, and a white scarf. He had pimp written all over him like the numbers on a pack of cards. He sat down, turned slowly to look at the circus horse. When she nodded at him, he looked back at me, spreading his mouth into a smile that was somehow both approving and pitying at the same time. I worked it out. He approved my choice of woman but pitied me for being the kind of jerk who would even contemplate the kind of degrading transaction that was about to occur. There was no fear in his craggy face. It was a tough face. It looked like something you could use to beat a carpet. When he spoke, his breath sharpened my thirst for strong liquor. I kept my nose in my glass until he’d finished blowing his patter my way.

Silently, I tossed some notes onto the table. I wasn’t in the mood for anything except information but, sometimes, information costs the same as the more intimate relations. He gathered the money in his fist and went away. Only then did she come over and sit down.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I’ll get the money back off him at the end of the evening and pay you back later. But you did the right thing to pay him. Vincent’s not an unreasonable man, but he’s my
creolo
and
creolos
like things to look like what they’re supposed to look like. In case you’re wondering, he’s not my pimp.”

“If you say so.”

“A
creolo
just looks out for a girl. Kind of like a bodyguard. Some of the men I dance with. They can get a little rough sometimes.”

“It’s okay about the money. Keep it.”

“You mean, you want to?”

“I mean keep the money. That’s all. It’s information I’m after. Nothing more. No offense, but it’s been a hell of a day.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Let’s just talk.” I sipped some of my
cubano.
“You look different from the last time we met.”

A waiter placed a drink in front of her. She ignored it and him.

“So who put you up to it?”

“The cop. The one who brought you. He came to my apartment and said he’d seen me in a show and that he had a special kind of job for me. If I did as I was told, I’d make some money and keep some nice clothes into the bargain. All I had to do was play a rich, worried mother.” She shrugged. “That was easy enough. There was a time when I had a rich, worried mother of my own.” She lit a cigarette. “So I met von Bader and we talked.”

“How long were you there?”

“Most of the day. We didn’t really know what time you were going to show up.”

“And this was all for my benefit?”

“Ostensibly, yes. But Colonel Montalbán wanted me to report on von Bader as well.”

“Yes, that does sound like him. Two jobs for the price of one.” I nodded. “So how was he? Von Bader?”

“Nervous. But nice. A couple of times I heard him on the telephone. I think he was planning to go abroad. He made and received several calls to and from Switzerland while I was there. I know that because once he asked me to answer the telephone. He was in the bathroom. I speak German, as you know. I also speak Polish and Spanish. By birth I’m a German Pole. From Danzig.” She puffed at the cigarette but seemed irritated with it and put it out only half smoked. “Sorry, but I’m a little bit on edge about this. The colonel was none too pleased when I said I couldn’t repeat the performance tomorrow morning. He’s not the kind of man one lets down lightly.”

“So why did you?”

“When von Bader said that you were a famous German detective and that you’d often looked for missing persons, in Berlin, before the war, I’m afraid I rather lost interest in their scheme. Whatever that is. You see, it was I who told Anna Yagubsky about you. And I who suggested that she might approach you for help. I thought that by helping Anna find her missing aunt and uncle you might also help me find my missing sisters. And, since you were helping me, albeit by proxy, I decided to help you. I decided to put you in the picture, as much as I’m able, concerning what the colonel and von Bader are up to. You see, the girl, Fabienne, has gone off with her mother and nobody knows where. That’s pretty much all I know. Von Bader wants to leave the country, but he can’t until he knows they’re safe. I dunno. Something like that. Either way, I’m taking a big risk telling you all this.”

“So why do it at all?”

“Because Anna says she’s sure that you’re the man who’s going to find them. And I don’t mean Fabienne and her mother. I mean our relatives. Anna’s and mine.”

I sighed. “Go ahead. Tell me about them. Tell me about yourself.” I shrugged. “Why not? I’ve paid for your time.”