Lost Kin Page 2

  Harry started this time, openly, and his mouth might have dropped open. “A what?”

  “That was the point when she stopped talking,” Dietz added.

  She knew about the train job. It was one step away from knowing about Harry doing a man in. Max the apostate was one thing, but Harry’s own history was a stomach punch. Just what game was this girl playing?

  “I see,” he said, turning away from Dietz. Thinking it out. He wondered if it could be blackmail, and irritation smothered the unease in his chest. He placed the Chesterfield back on his lips and lit up. If the dead man had clearly been a GI, Dietz would have had to call the MPs or US Constabulary. But who really knew with that shabby uniform? There was a gray area here, probably just enough.

  He faced Dietz, glaring. Dietz held up his hands as if to say, I’m just the messenger here.

  “Do we have an ID on her?” Harry said.

  “She has no papers, nothing. She could not have been here long.”

  “And she’s Russian, you say?”

  “From the sight and sound of her, yes—something like that.”

  “What about sad sack here? Anything on him at all?” Had he already asked that? Harry’s mind was in that other room now, ransacking it, digging at how she could know of him.

  “Nothing on him. I can check our lists if you wish. But as I say, I cannot—”

  “Cannot act without first alerting US authorities. I know, I know. Listen, Dietz. Hartmut. Before I—we—go any further with this, could you just wait in here a little while? I’m going to speak to her.” Harry handed Dietz the rest of his open pack of Chesterfields. “Please.”

  Dietz took the pack and made it disappear under his thick sleeve as if Harry had just traded him bogus meds on Old Town’s shadiest corner. As much as the man would’ve liked to smoke one, it would gain him so much more out on the street. “But, of course.”

  Harry carried two candles into the next room. The young woman sat on a bench made of bricks, her back straight against the wall. Harry set the candles on a charred end table and the room doubled in light. She wore a grubby white headscarf, a blue shawl around her shoulders, gray wool blouse, surplus German army trousers, and boots. Smooth skin. The room was cooling with that oven ignored and yet sweat glistened on her cheeks, neck, collarbone. She was more woman than a girl, Harry saw—nineteen at the most, a little too gangly, but it was probably from malnutrition rather than puberty. She had dimples and a delicate nose and crooked teeth and her eyes were hard with thick, dark gray irises, two silver rings that reflected the candlelight. Harry was certain he did not know her. If nothing else, he would have remembered all the lugs and two-bit Romeos aiming for a shot at her.

  He pulled a stool over but a leg fell away, firewood now. He squatted so they were eye level.

  “I kill man,” she said in broken German, the accent Slavic. Harry waited for more. She repeated it louder and made a stabbing motion with one hand.

  “You killed him? Down here? Over there?” Harry said in slow German. “It was so easy for you, with only one hand?”

  She shook her head and thrust the imaginary saber with both hands, heaving forward, getting her back into it. Sharp gal: She understood more than the words. “This man, I take him around the corner,” she said using the German idiom for murder.

  Harry pulled another pack of Chesterfields from his attaché case, shook out a cigarette and offered it to her, a real prize. She waved it off.

  “Why do it?” he said. He reproduced her two-handed stabbing motion. “What for?”

  Harry expected her to claim any manner of violation—rape, heirloom theft, the murder of her child. He would give her the benefit of the doubt. She only glanced away, consulting the pockmarks on the wall. Her chin hardened up, the dimples vanishing.

  “I know you understand me,” he added. “Who is he? Let’s start there. American, is he?”

  She nodded, eyes to the ground.

  “Yes? Look at me. That a yes? No?”

  “He is evil swine. A Judas.” She spat, a little too close to Harry’s deerskin loafers. He really should have worn his sturdy old brogues for this.

  “All right, we’ll hold onto that thought. So, who are you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then where did you come from? And why am I here if you’re not going to tell me anything? When you’re the one who came asking for me?”

  She ripped off her headscarf, her black hair tumbling down to her shoulders, and wiped her sweat with it. Harry had seen some cold feet in his time here, but this girl was getting frostbite and fast. She was practically panting now as if running away already.

  “Easy, easy …” Harry stood and made himself big in case she tried to bolt.

  Wet had filled her eyes, and a tear rolled down one cheek. She let the tear stay. She’d been out on her own a while, Harry could smell it on her, like freshly tilled earth with a little compost thrown in. It wasn’t offensive, just opened his eyes a little.

  From his attaché case he drew his chrome thermos, twisted off the red cap, and poured hot coffee in it—real coffee from the PX, its steam gleaming with candlelight. She cradled the cap-cup with all ten fingers as if it was made of fine porcelain and filled to the rim. As she sipped, she studied his Ike jacket with its thick hems concealing the buttons, his captain’s bars and patches, taking it all in with wide eyes as if she had never seen an American uniform up close. It was the look the Germans used to have. It was still amazing to him that this no-nonsense US Army wool could appear exotic to anyone. He wondered if she was new here.

  “Are you a refugee? A Displaced Person? Supposing you are. We can get you to the UN relief people, they can get you food, send you home—”

  She jerked back, eyeing the way out, definitely not what Harry expected. Usually the mention of UN relief brought the same response as a stack of Hershey’s bars.

  “Home no good? Okay okay, not yet we won’t. All right?” He added a smile.

  She nodded and handed back the thermos cap. Now she stared at his face, at his features, but in a different way than she had at the uniform. He said in English, not caring if she understood, “Way I see it? Someone on this block fingered you. They heard screams maybe. Told the cop they knew in the neighborhood, Dietz. But why didn’t you run? You could have. Paid people off with your goods. To me, that means you consider yourself accountable somehow.”

  As he spoke her head lowered, and she stared into her lap. Harry wondered what a girl like this must have been through. She could not help what she does now. What she does, it runs her. He understood that much.

  Another tear. It splashed on her wrist.

  “How do you know my brother?” he said. He didn’t dare give away Max’s name yet. If she didn’t know it, this might end right here.

  She sniffed and stared back at him. Stalling. He figured she too was contemplating just how much to give away.

  Meanwhile, Dietz waited in the other room and likely couldn’t hear them because someone was pounding away at the rubble above, the dust floating down from the bowed beams.

  Irina moved closer. “Please, you remove eyeglasses,” she said.

  Harry shrugged. He could see without the horn rims just fine; they were little more than reading glasses. He pulled them off.

  She studied his face, closer. She could see the freckles on his cheekbones better this way, and those sagging eyelids of his he’d always hated because he suspected they made him look sleepy, lazy. Her eyes sparkled. A corner of her mouth turned up in a half smile.

  “What?”

  “May I see hands?” she said.

  Harry slid his specs into a pocket and held his hands out with knuckles up, like a guy about to get a manicure. She flipped his hands over and her eyes searched his palms as if scanning a book for a passage. Then she slapped his hands away like a mom confirming a kid’s washed hands. “You stand.” She stood.

  Harry stood and gave her a little joke salute. She was under his height of fi
ve nine, but with a proper dame’s heel on she could face him nearly eye to eye. She studied his earlobes and his head. He’d neglected to comb his hair in his hurry to leave and his cowlick in back was probably sticking straight up.

  She laughed.

  Harry rolled his eyes. “That’s quite enough, sister,” he said, but smiling as he patted down his hair. Her laugh faded and they studied each other, their faces slack. She muttered something in her language and gave him that look again, nodding as if recognizing him.

  “Irina. My name is Irina,” she said.

  “Yeah? That’s a nice name. And you know my brother.”

  “Yes, I know him, Mister.” She nodded to confirm it.

  “Forget Mister. You asked for me by name. You know about me.”

  She shook her head. “Not here,” she whispered. “Not with dead man. Not with police.”

  Dietz had surely heard the laughing and the German surely would not know what to make of it. These casual Americans joke around even with murder suspects? Harry went back into the adjoining room and made a straight face to reassure Dietz, who stood and replied, “So. I can watch over the body while you call your authorities. You will need at least a jeep for her and for the stiff there.”

  Dietz would gladly do that, Harry reckoned. Hot sips of fresh American joe or an officer’s pack of finer smokes was well and good, but the detective had also stumbled on a swell little score—while he waited he could help himself to the goods in here. Harry couldn’t blame him. This whole busted city, this whole country, hell, most of this continent was back to caveman rules.

  “No? Then, I go and bring the MPs for you?” Dietz added.

  Irina stood in the doorway, her eyes fixed on Dietz, ignoring the corpse in the dark. Harry shook his head at Dietz.

  “Then what is it, Herr Kapitän?” Dietz said.

  “I might have another job for you,” Harry said.

  “Oh?”

  “Can you find a way to get the corpse to your morgue incognito, or somewhere safe, just to … keep him on ice for a while? Nice and quiet, like. And do not worry, I’m fully responsible. You’re just following orders.”

  Just following orders—always an unfortunate word choice, but there it was.

  All expression had emptied from Dietz’s face. Harry had expected this. Just like their conquerors, every German, from a blind grandma to a jumpy little Hans, had learned never to show too much excitement. Harry pushed his attaché open wide, placed the thermos back inside, and produced two packs of Lucky Strike and two cans of Spam.

  “What about preserves?” Dietz said.

  “Berry jam? Marmalade? It’s all in the PX. You just say the word. Consider this only a down payment on the lease.”

  Dietz grunted, and a smile slipped out. “What about her?”

  “She’s my problem. But I’m asking you to keep quiet about her too. It’s part of the Kompensation. Deal?”

  Two

  THE YOUNG WOMAN WHO CALLED herself Irina was not going to come clean easy. Harry had learned to be patient in such situations. After that meat grinder of a duel he’d survived in Heimgau, he could well understand her state. As for him, seeing that long curved blade in a man wearing US Army green certainly gave him a jolt. But it also evoked the nightmares he used to have about nearly being killed in the same grisly manner he had killed a man—run through just like that apparently bogus GI in the cellar, but again and again and again. In other nightmares, he could not protect anyone from being killed as hard as he tried. His parents. Max. Babies. He had woken screaming, sweating. The more he prevented death, the less he prevented it. Situation normal, all fouled up. But those nightmares had waned with time. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for a refugee on the lam, always running, always worked up, feeling eyes on you all the time over your shoulder, the monkeys riding your back with razor claws.

  If he pushed this girl Irina too hard, he would only bring it all back and she would hightail it. She needed her rest, and she needed comfort, and then he would find out all there was to know about Max. Harry brought her back to his billet by flagging a ride from one of the off-duty GIs who cruised around in requisitioned German cars serving as private taxis—a Joe gives an officer and his Gretchen a ride, Harry pays Joe double, and no one’s the wiser. By this point Harry was holding Irina up, she was so tired. She had gazed at the dark mass of his modest mansion against the night sky as if it was a castle in a dream. It stood on a secluded avenue near the vast English Garden, whose woods and meadow lawns the Allied air raids had scorched so thoroughly that much of it looked like Central Park after a wildfire. Harry had a fine view though, looking onto a surviving thicket of birches and oaks. The mansion was two stories of decorative modern style with strong clean lines, a patinated copper roof, and chalky stucco-over-sandstone that looked more like something out of fin de siècle Paris than the pastoral yellows and rosés Munich’s buildings had flaunted before the age of smoke damage. Art Deco, most called it, some Art Nouveau. It was definitely a bastard. As with most mansions here, as with Harry’s previous billet in Heimgau, the home had a nasty provenance. It belonged to Jews the Nazis had forced abroad or shipped away, then to a Nazi party fat cat before he too vanished. But what could Harry do? Live in a barracks? They were inheriting what came before.

  Once inside, he got Irina to a secluded upstairs servant room far from his master bedroom. The narrow feather bed swallowed her, and soon she was snoring. Then he had to assure his German housekeeper Gerlinde that his visitor in need was not after her job even though the girl was young enough to be Gerlinde’s daughter but with twice the looks. It was a private matter and Gerlinde was to feed the girl and get her whatever she required, within reason.

  “Fräulein Irina needs her rest above all. That comes first. No matter what she tells you,” he instructed Gerlinde.

  “All in order,” Gerlinde replied with a curt nod. “I’ll stay till she’s well.”

  That evening as Irina slept, Harry retreated to the den with its dark wood paneling and shelves and brass sconces. He had a broad desk to match and a leather sofa laden with tassels. He sat there with a whiskey, cupping it in his hands like hot soup so he could think.

  Before Dietz made off with the corpse, Harry had the detective retrieve the saber from the body and wipe it clean with a rag. Dietz had protested that this was destroying evidence. For his worries Dietz got to keep much of the goods in the cellar, with Irina’s blessing. Harry kept the saber. The other two swords went with him too, bound to his attaché case. He was taking a chance by keeping a murder weapon. But this way Dietz could know he wasn’t going to leave the detective hanging with a corpse and an unsolved murder. They could share the shame. In any case, Dietz might simply have hawked the saber on the black market—just tell a GI it belonged to a Nazi and the deal was licked.

  Near midnight, Irina started awake. Gerlinde put her in a quick bath (so Gerlinde could change the grimy bedding, no doubt), and Irina was sound asleep again. Harry poured another whiskey. The day was Friday the thirteenth. He just had to laugh at that. He was not superstitious and he wasn’t even naïve, not anymore. Those first months in Heimgau had sure sabotaged his idealism. Yet he was on to something here. He had not thought about Max for so long. So many times he’d reminded himself that he shouldn’t want to see his brother ever again, not after all he’d put the family through. Then, after he transferred to Munich, he found himself wondering and he used his status to do some discreet asking around. The Military Police told him they had nothing on a Max Kaspar. He tried the local Counter Intelligence Corps office—the CIC. CIC had nix. MG was no help to him either. He had limited access to records; that got him nowhere. New files showed up all the time, but he wasn’t counting on it. He told himself he’d go try the British zone one day or even the French. He never did. Max was surely no Nazi, yet who knew where he’d ended up? His brother might have become desperate, or dependent, or simply fallen in love. And Harry had to stay wary of bigger players who could k
now more about Max. The US zone bigwigs, War Department mucky-mucks, and gung-ho CIC agents always held the best trump cards and those sorts of operators could seize a man’s final chips at any time. All it took was one weakness.

  Harry toasted himself. Here he was feeling alive again, all thanks to a girl with nothing to lose. He drank, and he felt a warmth that he was sure was not the whiskey.

  Mail lay on the desk. He brought the small stack over to his lap—Stars and Stripes, the new Munich paper, and more of those humble letters from locals crafty enough to try his home address with shady opportunities and thinly disguised bribes. Those made good fire starter. One letter was from the US Army confirming that his deployment was ending mid-November, a little over a month away.

  He still had time to reenlist, but something had held him back and what happened tonight did not make the decision any easier. He took another drink, for strength. If he was going out with a bang, he didn’t have much time to find the firecrackers.

  The next morning, a Saturday, it was all Harry could do not to wake Irina up first thing. He stared out his vast rear windows at the frost sparkling on his terrace and small classical garden. They were getting frost every morning now. He thought of the frost on all that Munich rubble, melting and trickling down in, then refreezing and clogging crevices as the snow came down to blanket all. The best you could do was not slip on it. The worst, not let the weight of it smother you for good. He closed his eyes to the thought. Sleep had not helped him. He’d started awake twice in the night thinking, I could lose my post over this corpse, this girl. Dishonorable discharge. End up in a stockade even. Some desperate snake could use it to brand him a born kraut lover or even worse a Communist. Un-American. Such were the times, again, already. War didn’t end all fears; it only started new ones, and every Joe and Fritz was looking for a scapegoat. And that wasn’t even the worst of it, he did not forget—someone could pin the train job on him and his killing Spanner or even frame him for the murders Spanner had done. It all made Harry wonder what came first: Irina murders a guy and then comes looking for him by way of a plainclothes cop, or she’s already looking for Dietz and then has to murder a guy?