Vienna (5 page)

“‘The graves stood tenantless,'” she whispered, “‘and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.'” She'd always liked that about Shakespeare—the way he wasn't afraid to use childish words. “‘Squeak and gibber,'” she repeated.

She thought Uncle Anson and her foster father were old friends. They usually spoke in low voices she couldn't hear, and when they spoke louder it was always about how they hoped Tottenham Hotspur would finally march into Stamford Bridge and beat Chelsea straight into the pitch.

Vienna didn't even know Uncle Anson's full name. She never asked because he'd always sort of intimidated her even though he had never been anything but nice. And, looking at him now, it wasn't as if he were a muscle-bound Hercules. He was more like … “Jason of the Argonauts,” she said aloud. Always in command. She saw rocks shifting to crush the Argo and there was Lord Byron:
Those waves, we follow on till the dark Euxine roll'd upon the blue Symplegades
. Euxine was the Black Sea, and …

“Vienna.” Uncle Anson's voice was soft, but she was right. He was in command.
How does he always know where I am?

She secretly called him Mr. Scar, although that wasn't very nice. His fingers were blue-white on the doorknob.

“Come with me.”

She nodded and walked toward him.

“Hold,” he said when she reached him. He pulled out a thin black phone, opened its screen like an army knife and showed her a phone number with a three-one international code. That meant the Netherlands. There were seven other threes in the number, for a total of eight threes. Three raised to the eighth power was—

“Have you seen this number?” Mr. Scar asked.

“No.”

“Follow me.” He turned and marched down a long, featureless corridor. Through a narrow window, Vienna saw a street below, dead in the night. Mr. Scar opened a door seemingly at random and held it for Vienna.

The room was dominated by a mahogany table. Five men and one woman sat on one side, dressed in dark colors. Two men in police uniforms sat opposite them. The policemen looked everywhere but across the table. They had rows of polished commendations over their hearts. Puffy circles around their eyes.

Vienna was surprised to see the woman was Justine Am. Her eyes were red and her hair, brunette this time, was in disarray. And still she was the most beautiful person Vienna had ever seen.
Why couldn't I have been more like her?
The men to her right sat in stony silence.

Mr. Scar held a chair opposite Justine and nodded toward Vienna. She sidestepped in front of the chair, studying the table's dense grain so she wouldn't have to look at Justine.
What's happening?
What was she supposed to do? Soft pressure behind her knees as Scar pushed the chair to her. “Take your seat,” he whispered. “Everything will be fine.” She dropped to the chair; she felt the brief weight of Scar's hand on her shoulder. He moved to the seat beside her.

The tall man next to Justine leaned over the table. “Rest assured I will be filing protests with both the Belgium and British consulates, as well as alerting the American authorities.”

Mr. Scar canted forward until his face was inches away from the speaker. “You lot will explain, in plain English, what this person”—he glared at Justine for a fraction of a second—“has accused my client of. You will address my client respectfully as Miss Vienna.”

The man swallowed and eased back into his chair. Mr. Scar backed away and sat next to Vienna.

The man cleared his throat. “Miss Vienna, my name is James Hargrave. I'm Justine Am's agent and lawyer.” Vienna thought James Hargrave looked like a drawing of a cowboy. His face had those hard angles that cowboys were supposed to have, and he squinted, as if he had been looking at the sun all day. His eyes and his hair were the same shade of dark brown. He was very handsome, but then every man in Justine Am's world would be.

“Buckaroo,” she said under her breath. “From the Spanish
vaquero,
from the Latin
vacca,
meaning cow.”

“Excuse me?” Mr. Hargrave said.

Vienna shook her head once.

Hargrave cleared his throat. “I have little experience in international criminal law, but I have several associates to guide me.” He gestured to the men next to him. “In order to proceed, I need to know what the police have told you.”

“Nothing.”

“Allow me to fill you in, as illegal as that doubtlessly is.” Hargrave glared at the policemen. “Earlier this evening, sometime between the hours of seven and eight, Grant Eriksson was murdered in Justine Am's hotel suite.”

Vienna looked wide-eyed at Justine. “I … am sorry.” Was that the right thing to say about a murder?

Hargrave cleared his throat. “Yes. A tragedy.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because, Miss Vienna, it's natural to look for evidence—”

Mr. Scar interrupted. “They think you had something to do with it.”

Vienna blinked. “How was he killed?”

Hargrave frowned at Mr. Scar. The older man waved away any concerns. “Tell her. Her alibi is unimpeachable.”

“I'm not certain,” said one of the policemen. He coughed. “In her statement, Miss Vienna neglected to mention that she had seen Justine Am the morning of the murder. A remarkable omission given the circumstances.”

“I didn't think it was important,” Vienna whispered.

“And we can be pretty damn certain Grant Eriksson was alive when she left, as your client stated he made love to her later that day.” Mr. Scar leaned forward again. “Answer Miss Vienna's question.”

Hargrave turned back to Vienna. “The gun used was a smaller civilian model; a Kimber or the like. I'm told these guns are often used by women. The ammunition was rimless .38 Super.”

Vienna shifted, but the chair was uncomfortable no matter how she sat. “I don't own one of those. I don't know guns very well. You can look.”

Mr. Scar folded his hands on the table. “The police have already been through your apartment, Vienna. A search was undertaken before I was aware of what was happening.” He glanced at the stack of papers laid out before him. “They were present from nine to ten o'clock. The main cause for suspicion seems to be your laptop's browser history, which recorded several hours spent researching Justine Am.”

Vienna looked at Justine. “Do you think I did it?”

James Hargrave quickly spoke. “Don't answer.” He held his hands up, palms open. “Miss Vienna, despite Lord Davy's glowering demeanor, I will not apologize for your apartment being searched or for you being brought in for questioning. Given the circumstances, Lord Davy would have done the same.”

Lord Davy?
Uncle Anson was a member of the peerage? How could that be? Did he have a periwig? How were such things assigned? Was there a ceremony—

“Miss Vienna?” Hargrave sounded impatient.

“You had to suspect me before you saw my computer,” Vienna said.

“We did, for a number of reasons.”

“I would like to hear them, if I may.”

Hargrave exhaled. “First, a smaller gun was used. Second, you claimed to be a student of World War Two. Yet when my client asked what you were researching, you avoided the question with a joke. This led me to suspect you were lying. A small but clear strike against you.”

Mr. Scar—Lord Davy—broke in. “Telling jokes is not a crime on this side of the Atlantic.”

“Unlike this star chamber,” Hargrave replied, “which most certainly is.”

Lord Davy leaned back and he wasn't Jason of the Argonauts anymore. He was King Lear, full of anger.
I must have done something stupid.
Uncle Anson wore that smile people sometimes had when they weren't happy. “Name the first figure from World War Two that comes to mind.”

“Julius Streicher,” Justine said.

“I'm not familiar with the name,” Davy said.

“I learned it in school,” Justine answered. “Along with how to spot a wanker by the number of scars on his face.”

Davy paled. A short, almost silent bark of air broke the silence. Vienna reflexively put her hand to her mouth. Too late. Everyone was looking at her. She rushed out a question. “Can you spell his name?”

“S-t-r-e-i-c-h-e-r.” Justine's voice remained perfectly calm.

Vienna traced the letters on the desk with her finger. And there it was, next to a picture of a bald man with one of those scary Hitler mustaches. Vienna read the entry. “Julius Streicher was born on February 12, 1885, in the town of Fleinhausen, Bavaria. He was the youngest of nine children. As Streicher was to achieve notoriety as publisher of the virulently anti-Semitic newspaper
Der
 … Vienna blushed. “I don't know how to pronounce the ‘u' with the two little dots above it.”

Justine tilted her head. “
Der Stürmer,
” she said. “It means
The Stormer
.”

Vienna nodded. “… the virulently anti-Semitic newspaper
Der Stürmer,
the impact of his early propaganda is often…” She stopped midsentence. “The rest is very dull.” Her lips silently mouthed words. “I read other things about him.” She was quiet again, not noticing Justine's puzzled look.

“From the unofficial records of the Nuremburg War Trials.” Vienna took a deep breath. “Eyewitnesses reported that Streicher's neck was not broken when he was hanged. He gasped at the end of the rope until one of the executioners silenced him. To speed the process, the executioner added his weight to Streicher's. Several minutes passed before the man ceased struggling.” Vienna slumped in her chair. “There's more, but it's not a happy story. I think he was a bad man.”

“He was,” Justine said.

“At any rate,” Davy said, “there can be no question of Vienna's expertise.”

Hargrave's answer seemed too loud. “An extraordinary demonstration Lord Davy, but you must admit—”

“I don't have to admit a damn thing—”

Suddenly the two men were yelling at each other. Vienna huddled deep inside herself, closing her eyes.
What have I done wrong?
Hot tears on her cheeks. Something brushed against her leg. She flinched and looked up. Justine was staring at her.

“You okay?” Justine mouthed the words silently.

Vienna didn't know how to react—no one else in the room was paying them the slightest attention.
Didn't she accuse me of murder?
Was it permissible to talk to her? Vienna looked down but knew Justine was still watching. “Symplegades.” It came out as a whisper.

“Vienna?”

“I'm scared.”

When Justine spoke her voice was not loud, but it somehow covered the strained conversation of Davy and Hargrave. It was the most remarkable trick Vienna had ever heard, to speak so quietly yet with so much weight. “Both of you shut up.” She didn't sound angry or even interested in what they were saying. The men went quiet as if they'd been slapped.

Without turning from Vienna, Justine softened her tone. “Vienna, how did you know where I was staying?”

“When in Brussels, the scrumptious Justine Am prefers the classical comfort of the Cosmopolitan.…” She let the words trail off. “From an English fan site in Brazil.” As if that meant anything. “They had a picture of you topless on a beach.”

“How did you find my room number?”

“I told the man at the front desk that unless he gave me Justine Am's room number, I would tell management what he had been doing, and he didn't want that.”

“What had he been doing?”

Vienna shrugged. “I don't know. I read a book where a private detective did this and it seemed like it might work.”

Justine's eyes opened a fraction wider. “Perhaps the Brussels's police ought to look into this character.”

Vienna glanced at the others, but they were intent on her and it was easier to look at Justine.

“Why did you track me down?” Justine asked.

“You lied about your name and you called me silly and it made me mad, like you didn't want me to know anything about you, like you wanted to get away as fast as you could. Like I was something to use and throw away.” Vienna was horrified to hear her voice cracking, but she kept her head high.
Crying is well and good,
her foster father had once written in a note left on her pillow,
but it will buy you nothing here, and even less beyond these walls.
It took Vienna a long time to realize that he had written it so she would never forget.

Justine shook her head slowly. “I told you my real name. Justine Am is a pseudonym my first agent thought sounded exotic. You must have read that somewhere in your Internet search.”

Vienna looked back through the images on her laptop. Knowing the shape of the words helped. There it was, on an English site from Tokyo
. Heather Ingles.
Complete with a biography. Justine's father, Robert Ingles, had a civil engineering degree from Stanford University. He'd played tennis until his feet got tangled in a cart at the market. Fall On Out-Stretched Hand. Vienna tried the acronym aloud. “Foosh.” Justine's eyes opened wider. “Barton's fracture,” Vienna added, as if to explain. Whatever that was, it required three operations. No more tennis. Justine's mother, Abigail Jefferson, also attended Stanford University, where she received a doctorate in twentieth-century British literature. Which was the stupidest thing Vienna had ever heard. Two older brothers, Jeff and Scott.

Vienna looked up and saw Justine—Heather—staring at her. Vienna quickly finished reading. “Your full name is Heather Abigail Ingles and your birthday is April fourteenth.” And there was Justine's blood type: B positive.

“Correct on all counts,” Justine said.

“Why do Japanese always go on about blood type?”