Stardust (48 page)

“Ready. This all?” He lifted her bag.

“I have to be back. I’m in the scene.”

“They can shoot around you for one day.” He turned to Ostermann. “Have Iris call in sick for her. Doctor’s orders.”

“They won’t like that.”

“We can’t just drop him at the border. One day.”

They started across the terrace, then froze as the phone rang.

“Don’t answer,” Ben said. “That’ll be the hospital, wondering if I ended up here in my nightgown. What did you say at the nurses’ station?” he said to Liesl.

“That you were sleeping. I’d be back tomorrow.”

“Good. So I’m the only one missing. Walking around somewhere near Vine.”

“You’ll be in trouble for this?” Kaltenbach said.

“Not unless they catch us.”

They followed Ostermann’s car down the hill and stayed behind until he veered off with a small wave. Kaltenbach waved back, his eyes fixed on the featureless boulevard, a last look before it shimmered away. By the time they turned on Sepulveda, heading down the coast, he seemed to have lost interest, letting his head rest on the backseat, eyes closed, like someone on a long railroad trip.

“Don’t go too fast,” Ben said. “We don’t want to get stopped.”

“Why are you so nervous? Nobody has any idea. Why are we supposed to be going, if anyone asks?”

“The races. Everybody goes down for the races. Fishing in Ensenada. I don’t know, why does anyone go?”

“Your brother used to say, don’t think about anything,” Kaltenbach said. “Pretend it’s the most natural thing in the world. If you worry at all, they sense it. Like dogs.”

“And did you worry?”

“I was terrified. You know what I think got us through? Alma. The way she’s in her own world. At the border she seemed surprised to see the guards, you know, anything in her way. They didn’t even question us. Of course your brother made a gift to them, but even so. They usually asked questions, to make a show. But not Alma.
Sí, señora
. Up goes the crossing bar. And all I could think was, don’t sweat, don’t let them smell it on you. And you know, if it had gone the other way—well, it was another time. I owe my life to him. Now you.”

“No. This isn’t the same.”

“It feels the same. All that climbing, I was afraid for my heart. Now look, a chauffeur. But the same.” He was quiet for a minute, watching the night landscape pass, dark houses and miles of streetlights stretching down to Long Beach. “I never said good-bye to Alma. I wonder if she’ll notice that I’m gone.”

“Everybody will,” Ben said. “You’ll be in the papers.”

“So. You have to leave to make an impression,” he said, playing with it.

They drove past Huntington Beach, the lights getting fewer, Liesl sneaking glances at him.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said, a little startled, unaware that he’d seen.

“I’m all right, really.”

“It’s not that. The jacket. I bought it. I was remembering when I bought it.”

He fell asleep without realizing it, his head against the window, dreaming of the stars spilling across the sky on Mt. Wilson. Then he was at the Cherokee, watching blood spread in the alley, someone else’s blood, not his. Had Danny fought back? He woke when she stopped for gas, the station overly bright in the black landscape.

“Where are we?”

“Nowhere. Another twenty miles to La Jolla. Maybe we should stop there. It’s a long drive.”

“No,” Kaltenbach said from the back, “it’s important not to stop.” Another lesson from the Pyrenees. “Even to rest. People notice you. You see that car? It’s been behind us. Now it stops, too.”

“It’s the first station for miles,” Liesl said.

“Go to the toilet,” Ben said. “See if they follow. I’ve got your back.”

The attendant came over to start the pump.

“You encourage him,” Liesl said.

“He’s careful. Want a Coke?”

He went over to the ice cooler and pulled out a bottle and opened it, glancing at the second car as he drank. Two men on a Sunday night.
Going where? Kaltenbach came out of the station, head low, his face shadowed by his hat.

“They’re still there?”

“Getting gas. I think it’s all right.”

They paid and left, Ben driving now, one eye on the rearview mirror.

“How would anybody know?” Liesl said to him, using English, Heinrich just a child in the backseat, swiveling his head from time to time. “You think they were watching his house?”

“He’s not the only one in the car. You heard Kelly. The guy was a hired hand. And I’m still here.”

She took this in, thinking for a minute. “And yet you do this. Out here. Where it’s easy for them.”

He said nothing.

“They were going to use Heinrich anyway. You didn’t make them.”

“I helped.”

“So it’s all on your shoulders. All the problems of the world.” She looked out the window, quiet. “You and Daniel.”

“What do I do? Just sit there?” He looked at her. “It’s not much, considering.”

“They’re turning off,” Kaltenbach said, looking out the back.

After La Jolla there were more lights, the hilly outskirts of San Diego. Liesl was fiddling with the radio, Kaltenbach keeping watch for cars.

“In the movies they always hear about themselves on the radio,” Liesl said. “But listen, just music. So we’re safe.” She turned the dial, picking up a Spanish-language station. “We must be close. What will they think of us? Different passports.”

“They don’t care much going out. It’s getting back in. It’ll be easier, just the two of us.”

“With a bandage on your head.” She was quiet for a minute. “Why did he want to kill you? You never told me that part. Why?”

“He was paid.”

“The one who paid him.”

“Maybe I’m getting close.”

“Close,” she said, not following.

“Who killed Danny.”

“Why do you think that? There’s something you’re not telling me.”

He shook his head, dodging. “But I must be.”

“Then he’ll try again,” she said flatly. “You have to go to the police.”

“With what? Tell them Danny was a snitch for Minot? I have to stay close to Minot. That’s the connection.”

She looked down. “He wasn’t that. I still don’t believe it.”

“Maybe he thought he had a reason,” Ben said, letting it go.

“We’re coming to the border,” Kaltenbach said, his voice nervous and melodramatic, as if he had seen guard dogs and soldiers with guns. In fact it was only a string of lighted booths under an arched sign.

“Go to sleep,” Ben said to him. “I don’t want to use a Czech passport if we don’t have to. He’d remember. He’s probably never seen one.”

“I don’t have to show it?”

“We can try. Close your eyes.”

He pulled up to the booth, holding his ID out the open window. A uniform like a state trooper, with a broad-brimmed hat.

“Driving late,” the guard said, checking the ID.

“Want to be early for the races.”

“Not tomorrow you won’t. No races. You didn’t know?”

Ben could feel Liesl tense beside him. “I guess we’ll have to find something else to do,” he said, the suggestion of a leer in his voice.

The officer glanced at Liesl. “I guess.”

She began to hand over her passport, but he ignored it.

“Who’s that?”

“My old man. He likes the ponies. And the tequila.” He nodded to the back. “Got a head start.”

“He’ll feel it, that stuff. Careful tonight. You know where you’re going?”

“We’ve been before.”

“Then I don’t have to tell you. Watch the car. They’ll steal the tires while you’re still in it.”

He stepped back, waving them on, and they drove through the noman’s stretch to the Mexican booth, another bored officer who just looked at them and said “
Bienvenidos
” and then they were over, suddenly in Tijuana.

“It’s done?” Kaltenbach said, almost deflated, cheated out of an expected drama.

“You’re free,” Ben said, stumbling on the word, an unintended irony. “No subpoenas.”

The city was noisy even at this hour, bright with strings of bare incandescent bulbs. San Diego had been asleep, but here there were still crowds, peddlers and shoe-shine kids and Americans in Hawaiian shirts, the smell of frying food, makeshift buildings as dingy as carnival flats. Men with mustaches idled on corners waiting for something to happen, like extras, their eyes following the car. Kaltenbach kept staring out the window, expecting it to get better, but the blocks streamed into each other, the same glare and sinister languor, and for a second Ben wanted to turn around, take him back, make some deal with Minot. But now he was here, even more displaced.

They went to the biggest hotel they saw, with a guarded parking lot, and Ben paid for the rooms in dollars. The desk clerk, a Mexican Joel, barely lifted his eyes as he handed out the keys. There was a restaurant two doors down and they sat in a booth, exhausted, and drank beer, picking at the chiles rellenos the waiter had brought, all that was left before closing.

“How long do you think I will have to stay here?” Kaltenbach said.

“We’ll see Broch tomorrow. I think there’s an airport. Maybe we can get you on a plane for Mexico City.”

“A plane?” Kaltenbach said timidly.

“You don’t like to fly? Oh, such a baby,” Liesl said fondly. “It’s like a bus.”

“In the air.”

“A man who crosses borders. An escape artist.”

Kaltenbach smiled weakly. “Not so difficult. Find a Kohler.” He looked at Ben. “‘My old man.’“

Ben tipped his glass in a toast.

“The other time it was sherry. Your brother found a place, after we got through, and we all drank sherry. It’s what they have there, Spain.” He glanced around the room. “It’s the same language, but this—”

There was a shout from the street, a bar argument that had moved outside.

“Border towns are like this. It’ll be different in Mexico City,” Ben said, wondering if it were true.

“Better food,” Kaltenbach said, looking at it. “Imagine living in such a place. Stealing tires.”

Ben stared at the scarred table top, remembering a wrecked Horch abandoned in Jägerstrasse, tires gone, gold on the black market. Children selling K-rations, as slippery as the kids outside. Where he was sending Kaltenbach. But where Kaltenbach wanted to go.

“It’s an odd feeling,” he was saying. “No one knows I’m here.”

“None of us,” Liesl said. “You could disappear here.” She met Ben’s eyes. “If someone were looking for you. You could—just go. Anywhere. Be safe.”

“Unless you wanted him to find you,” Ben said, looking back at her.

“You could stop.”

“Not now. He won’t stop. I’d always be looking over my shoulder. You can’t live that way.” He touched her hand. “And there’s Danny. Do you want me to walk away from that?”

She raised her head, her eyes wider, as if she were startled to find him there.

“What are you saying?” Kaltenbach said, not following their English.

“Nothing,” she said quickly, sitting up. “Just how it’s like before. When we got out.”

“This place?”

“Yes, everything. How worried I was. What if they turn us back? And then at the border, how easy and you thought, it’s a trick.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Kaltenbach said.

“Then a drink to celebrate. Like this. Everything,” she said, facing Ben again.

“And how calm he was, your brother. Well, and you. ‘My old man.’” He grinned. “But not this,” he said, gesturing to the beer. “Do you think they have schnapps?”

“They may call it that, but it won’t—”

“You can’t celebrate with beer. Not something like this.”

They were another hour, sipping a harsh, burning brandy with a Mexican label, Kaltenbach getting sentimental but not yet maudlin, Liesl smiling to herself as he talked.

“And you’ll come to see me. How far is Berlin? Imagine the neighbors. A movie star. In old Kaltenbach’s flat. Everyone looking, just behind the curtains. You remember the courtyards, how everyone knew your business? Nothing said and they know everything. So you’ll come. Look at you. Since a child. You don’t forget these things. Your mother, so protective. Everything for you, for Hans. Everybody but herself. And then she couldn’t protect you anymore.”

Liesl reached across the table. “Heinrich.”

“Yes, I know, I know. Don’t speak. Like Hans. But then, you know, we begin to forget. They go away from us.” He turned to Ben. “Can I say something to you? Your brother was very brave. I know. This thing, maybe it’s hard for us, but we can’t pretend it didn’t happen. We don’t talk about it, it goes away, but then they go away, too. Look at Hans, he never talks about Daniel now. It reminds him. Once it’s there, in your head—”

“What does he mean?” Ben asked Liesl.

“My mother was anxious. She had pills for that. So one night too many. Maybe an accident. We don’t know, Heinrich,” she said to him. “Not for sure.”

“Ach.” He waved his hand. “So it’s not for sure. And that’s why Hans won’t talk about it. But it’s in his head.”

The kind of idea that can lodge there, Ben thought, so you come back to it, over and over. Use it. Something people don’t want to be
sure about, a car off the road, a fall, something they’d rather not see, not even laid out in a pattern. A convenient way to make people look away.

“He talks about it to me,” Liesl said quietly.

“Forgive me, it’s the schnapps. I don’t mean anything by saying this.”

“I know.”

“But your brother,” Kaltenbach said, switching tack. “That was someone. Right past the guards, not a drop of sweat. Always an answer. ‘Who’s this?’ The signature, you know, hard to read. ‘Pétain.’ On a laissez-passer. Imagine, Pétain. But they believe him.” He cocked his head, looking at Ben. “I used to think, so different, but now I see it. Not the looks, something else. Don’t you see it, Liesl? Doesn’t he remind you?”

She looked at Ben for a second, then finished her glass. “It’s late,” she said, standing up.

At the hotel there was a message in Ben’s box.

“Someone’s here,” Liesl said, apprehensive.

But it was only a flyer from a bar down the street, offering the first drink free.

“Stop worrying,” Ben said, handing it to her.

“Think how easy it would be to do here. Who would know? Somebody in the alley. Another one.”