Coward's Kiss (11 page)

I said that was fine.

He thought some more. “One thing disturbs me, Mr. London. How can you be certain that I won’t run off and leave you to chase Mr. Bannister alone once I’ve got the briefcase? Or that I’ll pay you for it?”

“I can’t.”

He turned both palms upward. His gun was tucked into the arm of the chair. “Then——”

“By the same token,” I said, “how can you be sure I won’t let you go to hell once I get Bannister? We’re both taking a chance, Armin. I don’t mind trusting you. I think you’re trustworthy.”

He laughed, delighted. “Perhaps I am,” he admitted. “Up to a point. Do you know something? I really believe now that you don’t have that briefcase, Mr. London. And that you never did have it at all.”

“I told you that before.”

“But I didn’t believe you before.”

“And you believe me now?”

He produced his pack of Turkish cigarettes again, offered them around again, lit one again for himself. “Do you know anything about confidence men, Mr. London?”

“A little.”

“I’ve had some experience in that area,” he said confidentially. “One does so many things in order to survive. Are you familiar with the First Law of Con?”

I wasn’t.

“Very simply: If the mark does not see your point of profit, you may sell him real estate on the planet Jupiter. If, so far as he can see, there’s no reason for you to be swindling him, you can steal him blind.”

“Uh-huh.”

He smiled pleasantly. “So,” he said. “For a moment let’s take a different postulate. Let us assume that you do indeed possess the briefcase. If so, what possible advantage could you hope to gain by this meeting tonight? You want to get five thousand for the case when I’ve already offered you ten. I have to assume you’re telling the truth, Mr. London. Otherwise I can’t see your point of profit.”

Maddy was grinning. She had come to Armin’s room determined to hate the little man. Now she liked him. He was a charming son of a bitch.

“I accept your terms,” he said. “One hand shall wash the other, as it were. It is a bargain.”

I hesitated.

“Isn’t it a bargain?”

“Just one thing,” I said. “About the briefcase.”

“Go on.”

“If it contains espionage material, it’s no bargain. Papers relating to the security of the United States of America . . . Hell, you know the cliché, I’m sure.”

He smiled.

“I’m an American,” I went on. “I don’t wave the flag, don’t sit around telling everybody what a goddam patriot I am. But I don’t play traitor either.”

He puffed on his cigarette. “I understand,” he said. “I was not born in this country myself, as you must have guessed. My native land doesn’t exist at the present time. It was a small state in the Balkans. The patchwork quilt of Europe—that’s what they once called it. Now the patchwork quilt has turned into a red carpet. But that doesn’t matter.

“I’ve travelled all over the world, Mr. London. You might call me a picaresque character. I’ve lived by my wits, really. Now I live in the United States. I married an America girl, and, a number of years ago became a naturalized citizen.”

He smiled at the memory. “I prefer this country,” he said. “However, I don’t think it’s paradise on earth, or that all other countries are perforce wretched and abominable. I’ve been to them and I know better. The fact that you elect your officials and that these elections, except in certain urban localities, are honest ones, doesn’t intrigue me much. I’m a selfish man, Mr. London. In the pure sense of the word. My comfort is more important to me than abstract justice.”

“That’s not so uncommon.”

“Probably not. But what I’m really trying to say is that I find it easier and more pleasant to live in America. The police may not be honest, but they are a little less blatant in their thievery. They may slap a person around but rarely beat him to death. A person’s more free to live his own life here.”

He sighed. “I won’t go so far as to say that I wouldn’t sell out the United States of America. I know myself too well. I probably would. But the price would be extremely high.”

The room stayed silent for several seconds then. I glanced at Maddy. She’d been listening very carefully to Armin and her face was thoughtful. I looked back at Armin. He was putting out his cigarette. I wondered if he had meant to say all that he said, if maybe his words had carried him away.

He looked up, his eyes bright. “I become intolerably long-winded at times,” he said apologetically. “You asked a most simple question and I delivered myself of a long sermon which didn’t even supply the answer to your question. Set your mind at rest, Mr. London. I’m no spy. The briefcase contains no State secrets.”

“That’s good.”

“Thus,” he said, “there are no problems, no barriers between us. Unless you have another question?”

“That’s all.”

“Then we work together? It’s a bargain?”

“It’s a bargain,” I said.

NINE

HE shook out a cigarette and held it loose and limp between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He didn’t light it. Instead he turned it over and over, staring thoughtfully at it. Suddenly he shrugged and stuck it back in the pack.

“I smoke too much,” he said. “I also have a tendency to waste a great deal of time. But it is difficult to know where to begin. I want to give you as much information as I possibly can, yet I also want to take up a minimum of your time. Your time and mine as well. Time is precious. We will profit more through action than through words. Yet words are essential, too.”

In turn he studied the floor and the ceiling and his neatly manicured fingernails. He looked up at me. “Let me begin somewhere in the neighborhood of the beginning, Mr. London. You are a detective. Your profession must bring you in line with crime and criminals to a greater or lesser degree. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Wallstein jewels?”

A soft bell rang somewhere in the back of my mind. I told him I never heard of the jewels.

He said: “Franz Wallstein was the second son of a Prussian industrialist. He was born shortly after the turn of the century. His father was a typical member of the Junker caste—a second or third-rate Krupp or Thiessen. The older son—I believe his name was Reinhardt, not that it matters—followed the father into the firm. Franz, the younger son, struck out on his own. In the early thirties he entered the service of a particularly noxious Austrian corporal.”

“Hitler.”

“Or Schicklgruber, as you prefer it. Franz Wallstein was neither well-mannered nor intelligent. Followers of fascist movements rarely are. His sole virtue was his dedication to this questionable cause. While never becoming particularly important, he rose to his own level quickly and enjoyed a certain amount of security. He possessed the qualifications of height, blonde hair, blue eyes. He was assigned to a troop of Himmler’s Elite Guards in the SS. Later, during the war, he was placed second in command at one of the larger concentration camps. I think it was Belsen; I’m not entirely sure. In that capacity his dedication did not prove entirely flawless. He stole.”

I lit my pipe. “You were talking about jewels.”

“That’s correct,” he said, but went on as though he hadn’t been interrupted. “It was standard operating procedure to confiscate any and all possessions of concentration camp prisoners, up to and including the gold from their teeth after they had been gassed. This property, in theory, became the property of the German Reich, but the facts did not always follow theory. Goering, for example, looted Europe to augment his private art collection. Minor guards would take wrist watches for themselves, a bracelet for a wife or mistress. Franz Wallstein followed along these lines. He seemed to have an interest in precious stones. If a prisoner managed to retain possession of valuable jewelry until he reached Wallstein’s camp, the jewels generally wound up in Wallstein’s foot-locker.”

He stood up, paused for breath. “Things went smoothly for Wallstein,” he went on. “They did not go smoothly for Nazi Germany. The war moved to an end. Wallstein was at once a hunted man, no longer a trusted servant of a secure government. He was not pursued as avidly as Bormann or Eichmann or Himmler himself. But he was on the wanted lists, as they say. His wife was pregnant at the time and must have seemed like excess baggage to him. He left her in Germany, bundled up his jewels and fled the country.

“He went first to Mexico. The political climate there soon turned out to be less than ideal and within several months it was time for him to make his move again. This time he picked a nation where he felt he would be more welcome. He chose Argentina.”

I shook out my pipe, glanced briefly at Maddy. She was listening closely. So was I, but I wished he would get to the point already. Bannister and the briefcase were more important to me than a crooked Nazi and stolen jewels.

“Argentina was a natural home for him,” Armin went on. “It is certain that he found countrymen there. German is supposed to be the second language of Buenos Aires. Wallstein made himself comfortable, bought an attractive house in a fashionable suburb and married a local girl without bothering to divorce the wife he’d left in Germany. He changed his name to Heinz Linder and opened an importing concern in Buenos Aires. Strong rumor has it that he engaged in smuggling of one sort or another, probably of narcotics. But this remains to be proved. Q.E.D. Whatever his actual means of support, Wallstein-Linder added to his collection of jewels. They reposed in a wall safe on the second floor of his home.”

“And somebody hit the safe?”

He sighed. “Not exactly, Mr. London. The situation is a bit more complex than that. Wallstein was not entirely forgotten. A group of Israeli agents similar to the ones who caught Eichmann were looking for former SS men, Wallstein among them. Two agents followed his trail to Mexico City and lost him there. A few years later they extended the trail to Buenos Aires.”

The bell went off again, louder this time. “I remember now,” I said. “About a year ago. He was found dead in Argentina and identified as Wallstein. There was a short article in the
Times.
”

Armin was nodding, smiling. “The same man,” he said. “There wasn’t much of a story at the time. The Israelis didn’t bother to drag him off for a trial as they did with Eichmann. Franz Wallstein was not that important. They only wished to even the score with him: they tracked him down, broke into his home, shot him dead and left him to rot. The news value was small. The Argentine officials denied that he was Wallstein, not wanting to be accused of harboring a fugitive. The Israelis leaked the story but it still got little publicity.”

“They shot him and took the jewels?”

“No, of course not. They were assassins, not thieves. They did their work and left him there. But the small amount of publicity attendant upon the killing was enough to attract the attention of that sort of professional criminal who specializes in precious stones. A ring of Canadian jewel thieves flew down to Buenos Aires and stole the jewels. I don’t know the precise details of the crime but it was done well, it seems. They broke into Wallstein’s home, tied up his widow, tied up her maid, cracked the safe, grabbed up the jewels and took the first plane out of the country. As I heard it, they were in and out of Argentina in less than twenty-four hours. That may be an exaggeration. At any rate, they worked quickly and left no traces.”

“Any insurance?”

He chuckled. “On stolen jewels? Hardly. He was just a small-scale importer with not too much money—on the surface. He couldn’t attract attention by insuring his collection. It was too great a risk.”

I nodded. “Go on,” I said.

He shook a cigarette from his pack again and rolled it around some more between his fingers. This time he put it to his lips and lighted it. He drew in smoke.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to change the subject.”

“But you didn’t, Mr. London.”

“No?”

“Not at all. The fact that the jewels were not insured is really most relevant. Do you know much about jewel thieves?”

I didn’t know a hell of a lot. “They’re supposed to be an elite criminal class,” I said. “They steal jewels and sell them to a fence. That’s about all I know.”

“They’re elite,” he said. “The rest is inaccurate.”

He smiled when my eyebrows went up. “For a good group of jewel thieves, a fence is a last resort. Their first contact is with the insurance company.”

I didn’t get it.

“Let us suppose that a collection of gems is insured for half a million dollars, Mr. London. Once the theft is a
fait accompli
the company is legally obligated to pay out the face value of the policy to the policyholder. Now let’s suppose further that an agent for the thieves approaches an agent of the insurance company and offers to sell the jewels back for, say, two hundred thousand dollars. The company invariably pays. It’s a clear saving to them of three hundred thousand. And a top thief always prefers to deal with an insurance company, you see. He gets a better price and runs less risk of a double cross.”

“Why?”

“Because the company has to preserve its good name in criminal circles. I’m not joking, Mr. London. It sounds ludicrous at first but it follows the laws of logic. Perhaps, insurance companies only encourage criminal behavior by this practice. They don’t seem to care. The figures on their own balance sheets are of greater concern to them.”

“That’s . . . that’s unfair!”

That was Maddy talking and we both turned to look at her. Armin grinned at her. He said: “Unfair? To whom, my dear? Not to the policyholder, certainly—he gets his—possibly—irreplaceable jewelry returned. And not to the insurance company, which saves money. And not to the thieves, unfair to whom?”

‘To the public——”

“Oh, but the public gains, too,” Armin told her. “Any loss the company sustains is passed on to the public in the form of higher premiums, therefore, it’s to the public’s advantage for the company to save money.”

“But——”

She stopped after the one word and looked around vacantly. She was very unhappy. She’s slick and smooth and big-city, but she was lost now. I rescued her.