Boys from Brazil (6 page)

“Thank you, Sydney,” Liebermann said. “I'm really grateful. Anything I turn up, you're the first to know. Not only in this, in everything.”

Beynon said, “Do you have any idea how many men in their mid-sixties die every day?”

“By murder? Or in accidents that
could
be murder?” Liebermann shook his head. “No, not too many. I hope not. And some I'll be able to eliminate by their professions.”

“What do you mean?”

Liebermann wiped a hand down over his mustache and held his chin, a finger crossing his lips. After a moment he lowered his hand and shrugged. “Nothing,” he said. “Some other details the boy gave. Listen”—he pointed at Beynon's notebook—“be sure to put down there ‘between sixty-four and sixty-six.'”

“I did,” Beynon said, looking at him. “What other details?”

“Nothing important.” Liebermann reached into his coat. “I fly to Hamburg at four-thirty,” he said. “I'm speaking in Germany till November third.” He brought out a wallet, a thick worn brown one. “So whatever you get, please mail it to my apartment so I'll have it when I get back.” He gave a card to Beynon.

“And if you find what looks like a Nazi killing?”

“Who knows?” Liebermann put his wallet back in his coat. “I only walk one step at a time.” He smiled at Beynon. “Especially in these shoes.” He braced his hands on his thighs and stood up, looked about and shook his head disapprovingly. “Mm. A gloomy day.” He turned and rebuked them all: “Why do you eat outside on such a day?”

“We're the Monday Mozart Club,” Beynon said, smiling and cocking a thumb back toward the monument.

Liebermann held out his hand; Beynon took it. Liebermann smiled at the others and said, “I apologize for taking away from you this charming man.”

“You can have him,” Dermot Brody said.

Liebermann said to Beynon, “Thank you, Sydney. I knew I could depend on you. Oh, and listen.” He bent and spoke lower, holding Beynon's hand. “Ask them please from Wednesday on. To continue, I mean. Because the boy said six men was going, and would Mengele send them all at once if some will do nothing for a long time? So there should be two more killings not long after the first one—that's if they're working in two-man teams—or five more, God forbid, if they're working separately. And if, of course, the boy was right. Will you do that?”

Beynon nodded. “How many killings are there to be altogether?” he asked.

Liebermann looked at him. “A lot,” he said. He let go of Beynon's hand, straightened up, and nodded good-bys to the others. Thrusting his hands into his coat pockets, he turned and set off quickly toward the bustle and traffic of the Ring.

The four on the bench watched him go.

“Oh Lord,” Beynon said, and Freya Neustadt shook her head sadly.

Dermot Brody leaned forward and said, “What was that last bit, Syd?”

“Would I ask them to
continue
pulling clips.” Beynon put his notebook and pen inside his jacket. “There are going to be three or six killings, not merely one. And more besides.”

Paul Higbee took his pipe from his mouth and said, “Funny thought: he's absolutely right.”

“Oh, come off it,” Freya said. “Nazis hating him over the telephone?”

Beynon picked up his cup and grappled at a sandwich-half. “The past two years have been awfully rough on him,” he said.

“How old is he?” Freya asked pointedly.

“I'm not sure,” Beynon said. “Oh, yes, I see. Just around sixty-five, I should think.”

“You see?” Freya said to Paul. “So Nazis are killing sixty-five-year-old men. It's a nicely worked-out paranoid fantasy. In a month he'll be saying they're coming for
him
.”

Dermot Brody, leaning forward again, asked Beynon, “Are you really going to get the clips?”

“Of course not,” Freya said, and turned to Beynon. “You aren't, are you?”

Beynon sipped wine, held his sandwich. “Well, I did say I'd try,” he said. “And if I don't, he'll only come pestering me when he gets back. Besides, London will think I'm working on something.” He smiled at Freya. “It never hurts to give that impression.”

 

Unlike most men his age, sixty-five-year-old Emil Döring, once second administrative assistant to the head of the Essen Public Transport Commission, had not allowed himself to become a creature of habit. Retired now and living in Gladbeck, a town north of the city, he took especial care to vary his daily routine. He went for the morning papers at no regular hour, visited his sister in Oberhausen on no particular afternoon, and passed the evenings—when he didn't decide at the last moment to stay home—at no one favorite neighborhood bar. He had three favorite bars rather, and chose among them only when he left the apartment. Sometimes he was back in an hour or two, sometimes not until after midnight.

All his life Döring had been aware of enemies lying in wait for him, and had protected himself not only by going armed, when he was old enough, but also by keeping his movements as unpredictable as possible. First there had been the big brothers of small schoolmates who had unjustly accused him of bullying. Then there had been his fellow soldiers, dullards all, who had resented his knack for ingratiating himself with officers and getting easy and safe assignments. Then there had been his rivals at the Transport Commission, some of whom could have given lessons in treachery to Machiavelli. Could Döring tell you stories about the Transport Commission!

And now, in what should have been his golden years, when he had thought he could finally lower his guard and relax, stow the old Mauser in the night-table drawer—now more than ever he knew himself to be in real danger of attack.

His second wife Klara, who was, as she never tired of reminding him in subtle ways, twenty-three years younger than he, was having, he was positive, an affair with their son's former clarinet teacher, a despicable near-faggot named Wilhelm Springer who was even younger than she—thirty-eight!—and at least half Jewish. Döring had no doubts whatsoever that Klara and her faggot-Jew Springer would be delighted to get him out of the way; not only would she be a widow, but a rich one. He had over three hundred thousand marks (that
she
knew about, plus five hundred thousand that
nobody
knew about, buried in two steel boxes in his sister's backyard). It was the money that kept Klara from divorcing him. She was waiting, and had been since the day they married, the bitch.

Well, she would go right
on
waiting; he was in fine health and ready for a dozen Springers to spring at him from alleyways. He went to the gym twice a week—not on regular afternoons—and sixty-five or no, was still damn good at man-to-man wrestling even if he wasn't so great any more at the man-to-woman kind.
He
was still damn good and his
Mauser
was still damn good; he liked to tell himself that, smiling as he patted the nice big hardness through the underarm of his coat.

He had told it to Reichmeider too, the surgical-equipment salesman he had met here at the Lorelei-Bar last night. What a pleasant fellow that Reichmeider was! He had really been interested in Döring's Transport Commission stories—had almost fallen off his stool laughing at the outcome of the '58 appropriation business. Talking to him had been a bit awkward at first because of the erratic way one of his eyes moved—it was obviously artificial—but Döring had soon got used to it and told him not only about the appropriation business but about the state investigation of '64 and the Zellermann scandal too. Then they had got to a more personal level—five or six beers had gone down the hatch—and Döring had opened up about Klara and Springer. That was when he had patted the Mauser and said what he said about himself and it. Reichmeider couldn't believe he was actually sixty-five. “I'd have sworn you were no more than fifty-seven, tops!” he had insisted. What a nice chap! It was a shame he was only going to be in the area for a few days; lucky, though, that he was staying in Gladbeck rather than in Essen proper.

It was to meet Reichmeider again, and tell him about the rise and fall of Oskar Know-It-All Vowinckel, that Döring had come back to the Lorelei-Bar tonight. But nine o'clock had long since passed and no Reichmeider, despite their clear understanding of the night before. There were a lot of noisy young men and pretty girls, one with her teats half out, and only a few old regulars—Fürst, Apfel, what's-his-name—none of them good listeners. It was more like a Friday or Saturday than a Wednesday. A soccer game tided back and forth on the television; Döring watched it, drank slowly, and looked through the mirror at those gorgeous young teats. Now and then he leaned back on his stool and tried to catch a glimpse of newcomers by the door, still hoping Reichmeider would make his promised appearance.

And make it he did, but most strangely and suddenly, a hand gripping Döring's shoulder, a skew-eyed urgency of whispering: “Döring, come outside quickly! There's something I have to tell you!” And he was gone again.

Confused and puzzled, Döring flagged for Franz's attention, threw a ten down, and pushed his way out. Reichmeider beckoned intently, withdrawing a ways down Kirchengasse. A handkerchief was wrapped around his left hand as if he had injured it; chalky dust streaked the legs and shoulders of his expensive-looking gray suit.

Hurrying to him, Döring said, “What's up? What happened to you?”

“It's
you
things are liable to happen to, not me!” Reichmeider said excitedly. “I've been stumbling through that building they're demolishing, down the street in the next block. Listen, what's-his-
name
, that fellow you told me about, the one who's fooling around with your wife!”

“Springer,” Döring said, thoroughly puzzled but catching Reichmeider's excitement. “Wilhelm Springer!”

“I
knew
that was it!” Reichmeider exclaimed. “I
knew
I wasn't mistaken! What luck that I just happened to—Listen, I'll explain everything. I was coming along this street here, heading this way, and I had to take a leak, simply couldn't hold it in. So when I came to the building, the one they're demolishing, I went into the alley beside it; but it was too light there, so I found an opening in the doors they've got walling the place and slipped inside. I did what I had to, and just as I'm ready to come out again, two men come and stop right at the place where I came in. One calls the other one Springer”—he nodded his head slowly, affirmingly, as Döring drew breath—“and that one says to the first one things like, ‘He's in the Lorelei right now, the old bastard.' And, ‘We'll beat the shit out of that fat prick.' I
knew
Springer was the name you'd mentioned! That
is
your way home, isn't it?”

Döring, his eyes shut, breathed deeply and swallowed a portion of his fury. “Sometimes,” he whispered, and opened his eyes. “I go different ways.”

“Well, they're expecting you to go that way tonight. They're waiting there, both of them, with sticks of some kind, caps pulled down over their eyes, collars turned up; exactly as you said last night, Springer planning to spring from an alley! I went through the building and found a way out on this side.”

Döring pulled in another deep breath and clapped a hand gratefully to Reichmeider's dusty shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

Smiling, Reichmeider said, “I'm sure you could lick both of them with one hand tied behind your back—the other fellow's a skinny little nothing—but the wisest thing, of course, is simply to go home another way. I'll go with you if you'd like. Unless, that is, you'd rather get rid of this Springer once and for all.”

Questioningly, Döring looked at him.

“It's a golden opportunity, really,” Reichmeider pointed out, “and he'll only come at you another night if you don't. It's quite simple; you walk down there, they attack”—he glanced down at Döring's coat and smiled skew-eyed at him—“and you let them have it. I'll be a few steps behind, to serve as your witness, and in the unlikely event that they give you any real trouble”—he leaned close and pulled his lapel out to show a holstered gun-butt—“
I'll
take care of them and
you'll
be
my
witness. Either way you'll be rid of him, and the most you'll have to pay is getting hit with a stick once or twice.”

Döring stared at Reichmeider. He put his hand to his coat, pressed the hardness within. “My God,” he said wonderingly, “to actually use this thing!”

Reichmeider unwrapped the handkerchief from his hand and blew at a bloody scrape on the back of it. “It'll give that wife of yours something to think about,” he remarked.

“My God,” Döring exulted, “I hadn't even thought of that! She'll faint at my feet! ‘Oh say, Klara, do you remember Wilhelm Springer, Erich's clarinet teacher? He jumped me in the street tonight—I can't imagine why—and I killed him.'” He clutched his cheeks delightedly and whistled. “My God, it'll kill
her too!
”

“Come on, let's do it!” Reichmeider urged. “Before they lose their nerve and run away!”

They hurried down Kirchengasse's dark decline. Bright headlights swept up and raced past them.

“Who says there's no justice, eh?”

“‘Fat prick'? Oh, you shitty little faggot, I'm going to get you right through the heart!”

They crossed deserted Lindenstrasse; walked slowly now and quietly, close against shuttered storefronts. And came to four stories of stonework building, dark and broken-topped against moonlit sky, footed at front and side with rough-built passages of lumber and painted doors. Reichmeider drew Döring into the side passage's blackness. “You stay here,” he whispered; “I'll go through and make sure he didn't have ten others joining them.”