Monsters and Magicians (4 page)

In one corner stood a splendid full suit of fluted, Maximillian-style plate armor, its crossed gauntlets resting atop the pommel of a period bastard-sword. On a stretch of wall not covered by a carpet was h^Pg dog-face bascinet-helm and crossed below it were a medieval battle-sword and a horseman's battle-axe, with a short-hafted, quintrefoil mace hung upright between them. All of these pieces were authentic and of museum quality.

The furnishings looked every bit as old, though outstandingly well kept, as authentic as the weapons, but they were not, none of them; rather, they were painstaking reproductions of tables, chairs and cabinets of the period—all dark woods, leathers, inlays and black wrought-iron or rich bronze. Nonetheless, it was a chamber in which a Renaissance nobleman or lady would have certainly felt comfortable, almost at home.

The desk, chair and console were wrought of the same dark woods with similar decorations, but there the similarities ended. The lamps were electric, with variable intensities of brightness. What might have been two small, carven and inlaid chests on either side of the desk actually housed telephone and an intercommunications device, and another on the console held a tape-recorder and its condensor microphone. A fourth, much flatter chest contained a wide selection of hand-rolled cigars, a box of cigarettes and two lighters.

In the leather swivel-chair behind the desk sat a man who, in period attire, would have matched his archaic surroundings almost perfectly. His hair and moustache were raven's-wing black, his skin-tone sat-

urnine, the backs of his hands and long, tapering fingers black-haired. Only a close approach to the whipcord-slender figure would have revealed that the eyes beneath the dark brows were a piercing blue.

As he often did, Pedro Goldfarb found himself working late at his office, so tied up in a case that he had allowed time, partners and employees to depart the offices unheeded.

Before him, a profusion of thick books lay, some of them open, some of them closed but with scraps of paper marking places in them. One yellow legal-size pad lay aside, filled with his neat, pencilled notes, and a fresh one was already a quarter filled. The stubs of two thin cigars lay among their ashes in a big, bronze tray and a third had smoldered out there. Beside a mug half full of cold, black coffee a crystal goblet of a pale amber liquor sat almost untasted.

The man did not miss even a stroke of his writing when, after a light knock, one of the pair of doors opened and a woman's voice said, "Talk about smoke-filled rooms. Sorry, Pedro, I'd thought somebody d left the lights on in here. Do you mean to go home at all tonight?"

"Minute, Danna," replied the man. "Important I get this down now, fresh off my brain."

Wordlessly she seated herself in the side-chair nearest his desk and sat, silent and unmoving, until at length he completed his scribblings and laid aside his pencil with a whuff

"Still on Belcher, Pedro?" she asked. "Or is this that new one, McKiernan?"

He had, as she had been speaking, leaned forward

to bring the mug to his lips, but after only the briefest of tentative sips, he grimaced and declared, "Cold! Hell, Td rather quaff as much hemlock as cold coffee."

The woman stood and reached for the mug, saying, "Here, Pedro, I can go out and fire up Doris's Silex and . . ."

"No, forget it/' He smiled. "Thanks anyway, Danna, really, but if I drink any more caffeine I'll never get to sleep tonight. No, I'll work on this cognac, I think. Would you care to join me?"

Resuming her seat, she replied, with a slight shake of the head, "No, no cognac for me, thank you, but I will have a small glass of your excellent sherry, Pedro."

With a nod, the dark man pushed back his chair, stood and crossed to his commodious liquor cabinet. Then, with a decanter poised over a slender, crystal sherry goblet, he inquired, "Dry or cream, Danna?"

"Not cream, Pedro. Do you still have some of that amontillado?"

When both were again seated, he waved at the clutter atop his desk. "Since you asked: no, not the McKiernans, they're in no real trouble and the agent they're dealing with is a gentleman who goes strictly by the book, young Khoury—reasonable, civil, understanding. No, I turned their case over to Murray.

"But poor Belcher, he's another question entirely. Yes, he's made some mistakes and his halfwitted brother-in-law made some more and far worse ones, and that damned Henry Blutegel rode them so long and so brutally before they came to us that they're both terrified nervous wrecks. But if we can keep them from flipping out and impulsively admitting

guilt to things they really didn't do or, at least, intend to do, my researches here tonight just may cost that Czech bastard this case.

"And in regard to Blutegel, Danna: Has your private research project turned up anything interesting on him and his background?"

The auburn-haired woman's lips became a grim line. "Heinrich Blutegel, a Displaced Person from Czechoslovakia, entered the United States in May of 1947 in company with his bride of twelve weeks, an American Red Cross worker nee Rachel Feingold. His new wife was a native of Kansas City, a registered nurse by profession and heiress of a modest inheritance. Blutegel was then in his mid-twenties— according to his records which, of course, were backed up solely by his sworn statements, his birthplace and former home village having been completely wiped out and destroyed by the Nazis in the course of the war—so she sent him to college and, by the time he had graduated with a degree in accounting in 1952, he had mastered English, speaking the completely unaccented, colloquial English that he uses today. Quite a feat for the unlettered Czech peasant he was supposed to be, Pedro."

He nodded. "I'll say. He's not married, now; I once heard that he was divorced. Have you been able to contact or talk to his former wife, Danna?"

She shook her head once. "Rachel Blutegel committed suicide in 1958, leaving no note and for no apparent reason. His second wife, a younger cousin of Rachel's whom he first met at the funeral, lost her mind and had to be hospitalized in 1965; when she was declared incurable, hopeless, he divorced her

and almost immediately married another nurse, a German immigrant woman thirty years old. She divorced him in 1972, took him for nearly everything he had while he, against advice of counsel, never lifted a finger to contest any of it. She returned to Germany and I'm trying to track her down. At present he lives alone with his bottle in a cheap, furnished apartment; to the best of anyone's knowledge, he owns not one friend and all of his acquaintances are connected with his work."

"Hmm," Pedro gazed long and hard into the glass of pale liquor, then asked her, "It would be very interesting to discover just what the third wife held over his head to keep him from contesting that divorce, that divorce which was so very cosdy to him, so immensely rewarding to her. Who was his attorney in that action, Danna?"

She sighed. "Bill Smith, Pedro. Another dead end street for me."

"Maybe," mused the dark man. "Then again, maybe not; maybe, rather, a part of a deadly pattern. I knew Bill Smith, Danna, knew him rather well, really. Like all his friends, I could never conceive of him pulling a Dutch, as he was supposed to have done. Dammit, that young fellow had real promise, he was headed places, else old Nussbaum wouldn't have taken him on like he-did. The assumption of the authorities was that he was despondent over his personal debts, but it just didn't wash with anyone who knew him at all well. He was on his way up and he knew it, too, moreover, he was proud as punch about his little boy, then two months old. Could it be, Danna. . . ? Could it be that our own Agent Henry Blutegel. . . ?"

She blanched. "Pedro\ My God, Pedro, that's insane] Why in the world would even a thing like Blutegel. . . ?" She paused, then nodded slowly, "You think that perhaps . . . that, maybe, Bill mightVe learned something that could've frightened Blutegel enough to drive him to ... to. . . ?"

Grimfaced, the dark man nodded. "Could be, Danna, could very well be, all things considered. Tell you something you didn't know, too: Bill Smith wasn't born a Smith. His dad legally changed the family name because he had become so ashamed of bearing his true surname early in World War Two. The name was Messerschmidt. Bill didn't tell many people the truth, only his closest friends, that he was originally Wilhelm Messerschmidt, and that he spoke, read and wrote excellent German.

"Now, I've never done any divorce work, myself, but I know the procedure, nonetheless. Who can say that there did not occur some exchanges, possibly very heated exchanges, between the estranged couple? What would be more natural than that, saying things neither of them wished their listeners to understand, they retreated to the supposed safety of a language foreign to said listeners, spoke their thoughts or threats in German? Then, if the dispossessed and not in the least happy Blutegel had in some way learned that his one-time attorney most probably had comprehended all that had been said in his hearing. . . ?

"Danna, this is an order: hand over all your cases to Dundas or Emily or Hammill. Hear? Devote all your working time to this Blutegel thing. Go wherever you need to go, do whatever you need to do: you write the checks, I'll cover them, never fear. It's

the very least I can do for the shade of my dead friend, Bill. This slimy Blutegel may or may not be a hide-out Nazi, but right now I can clearly see him as a murderer and 111 be just as happy to see him proven the one as the other.

"But, back to that other, have you heard anything from that man in Austria?"

After a sip of sherry, she replied, "No, not directly, Pedro. I'm just now in contact with a group in New York City that's in some way affiliated with him and his group. I've also been talking on the phone with a young attorney who works for the Justice Department up in D.C., and I've sent both him and the New York people photocopies of my current file on Blutegel, plus the one I sent to Austria and yet another sent to a man who wrote to me from Tel Aviv. Just today, I got two letters—one from Bonn and one from Prague—asking for copies of the file." She grinned maliciously. "Just wait until you see this month's Xerox bill, Pedro, not to even mention the postage meter."

He waved a hand in dismissal. "Forget it, Danna. Like I just said: you write the checks, I'll see to it that they're covered, all of them. Although I warn you, Danna," he grinned, himself, "any written to jewellers, department stores, boutiques or luxury auto dealers are yours, all yours to cover."

Then all at once he sobered and, in dead-serious tones, said, "But, Danna, how ever much it costs in time or effort or money, get me proof of some kind on that bastard. It's no longer just his crusade against Fitz and Gus Tolliver now; now the sullied honor of an old friend is in the balance, too. When his death

was ruled a suicide, his life insurance holders refused to pay one cent to his widow. I and some others have tried to help her but she's proud, she just won't accept anything that smacks of charity. But as she has no marketable skills, she's growing old long before her time trying to support herself and her kids on the paltry salaries of two menial jobs. She deserves a better life than that, Danna."

Danna Dardrey wrinkled her brows. "She's still a young woman and, as I recall from one brief encounter with her, rather an attractive one. Surely she could find another husband?"

Pedro Goldfarb fielded the question with one of his own. "Is that what you did when your husband died back during World War Two, Danna?"

The auburn hair swirled as she shook her head. "Oh, Pedro, you know better. No, I never remarried, but my own situation was different. I had the home, the security and the moral support of Kevin's parents, who were fairly well off, and I also had Kevin's GI and civilian insurance."

"Nonetheless," he insisted, "don't you think you'd have been better off, more comfortable, more fulfilled in many ways had you found and married some } decent, honest, personable man with a good job and income? So why didn't you do just that, Danna? Why didn't you give your sons a new father, at least, a role model to guide their development?"

"Tom Dardrey, Kevin's dad, was all the role model any boy could've asked for, Pedro," she replied. "He exulted in having two new sons to make into the same kind of fine young man he had made of their father. It helped him better to bear up under the

loss of Kevin, I think. As to why I never remarried, well, I just didn't want another man, any other man, for many years . . . not until I met. . . until Fitz and I found each other, finally. I was never rich, but I was able to provide all the necessities and even a few small luxuries for me and my sons through my working income and the investment f d made with Kevin's insurance policies and, later, the modest bequest his father left us. Besides, I just was stubborn enough to need to make it in this world on my own."

The dark man nodded. "Just so. Then can you not believe that perhaps Will's young widow harbors a similar need to, as you just said, make it on her own, unassisted by others, until she comes across her own Fitz, wherever and whenever?"

While she digested the question, he sipped at his cognac, then asked another: "How good is your German, Danna? Can you speak the language at all? Understand it spoken with any degree of accuracy? Read or write it?"

She sighed and shook her head again. "No, Pedro, none at all. Way back when I could've taken German, but instead I took French as my foreign language elective . . . but don't ask me at this late date about that one, either; I can't even recall how to say or to write 'My aunt eats green pencils.' I once read somewhere that one of the hallmarks of the Celtic race is a facility for languages. Well, if so, then I guess I'm something other than Celtic; I even flounder in Latin, and I've been schooled in that since grade school."

Pedro smiled. "There are no pure races of mankind anywhere in this world, Danna. Didn't you

know that? All humans are mongrels, a duke's mixture of who knows how many strains and tag-ends of extinct races. The only thing that humanity shares is a generally similar body shape . . . that and an inherently savage, murderous, predatory nature."