Lost Kin Read online

  “Alles klar, Herr Kaspar.” Gerlinde glared toward the tub, sighed, and shuffled out.

  Maddy had dunked herself. Harry stood at the edge, making sure not to catch a toe on the tub’s clawed feet, and saw the pink of Maddy’s shoulders and chest and knees and thighs showing through the remaining daubs of bubble bath foam. She emerged, spit out a long stream of water, and stared up at him. He smiled for her. She showed him a pink breast, the areola a brighter pink, and submerged it. No smile.

  “I missed you Friday night,” Harry said. It was the truth. He’d last seen her Saturday morning when she came home from being out all night to find him questioning Irina. She’d stayed in her bedroom and probably slept right through Sunday as far as Harry knew. She had demanded her own room from the start, and he’d left her to it long ago.

  Maddy shrugged, sending water sloshing. She gave his uniform a nasty once over as if he should’ve worn a tuxedo to her bath. How dare he remind her of work? She had come over as a WAC, but Harry had only seen her wear the uniform in photos. Instead of rotating home she’d signed on as a secretary for the Munich PX, a position she referred to, if she had to, by its official designation of administrative clerk. She apparently reported to an office across from the Wittelsbacherplatz, just around the corner from just about everything in town and just about everyone in the know.

  “Did you get your reenlistment?” she said. “That where you’ve been?”

  “The papers can be pushed, if need be,” Harry said.

  “Can they?”

  Harry knew what she meant. People who dared to push can push them.

  “Where did you stay?” he said. “After the dance.”

  Maddy’s official billet was a hotel suite she shared with four administrative clerks. She hadn’t slept there for months. Her room there was storage for clothes, a dressing room. The four had a little racket going in the fine garments of top Nazi cronies’ wives and mistresses and daughters. It was amazing what lavish furs, gowns, and lingerie the fat cats’ women had been wearing while the rest of Germany starved, and burned, and died. But that was a failed Democracy for you.

  “My place,” she said. “And it wasn’t a dance. It was a party.”

  Harry chuckled. “That’s funny. I’m trying to imagine you clearing stacks of minks off your bed at three in the morning.”

  Maddy snorted. “Why don’t you stop trying, and pour me some of that hot water?”

  Harry lifted, poured. Maddy closed her eyes as the steamy water swirled around her, enveloping her, the foam bubbles whirling.

  “Now, the window please?”

  Harry shut it, and the muggy warmth hit him before he could get back to the tub. Maddy raised a gam and let it hang over the side. Harry thought about stroking it. He thought about stroking a lot of her. Maddy watched him, smiling.

  “Where’s your refugee girl?” she said.

  “I don’t know. She hit the road apparently.” Harry stared at her. “You didn’t scare her away, did you?” It was just possible, if Maddy had bothered to get out of bed to do it.

  “Me?” Maddy touched her red nails to her neck. “I really don’t see how I could. Or why I would. We could have become fast friends.”

  “You might have learned something. About this place. Been through a lot, that girl. Seen a lot.”

  Maddy drew the leg back under water. “I bet.”

  “Not like that. It was on the level, Madd.”

  Maddy let out a little cackle of a giggle from deep in her throat. Her lips shined red from heat, no lipstick required. “I know: You tell me where she went, and I’ll tell you where I was.”

  “I wish I could tell you.” Harry wiped sweat from his cheeks and neck.

  Maddy was sweating, beads of it running down her cleavage.

  “What are we doing here, Madd? Huh? What?”

  Maddy’s hand rose from the tub and reached for his. It was so warm it didn’t feel wet.

  She told him to go wait in her bedroom.

  He did it. He folded his uniform over a chair. She came in and slipped under the silk covers with him, her heat surging through him as he caressed her, and she him, both of them sweating again and damping the sheets. She moaned and turned from him. He ripped away the silk, entered her from behind.

  Afterward they lay still, on their backs, letting their bodies cool.

  “There’s that big shindig Wednesday,” Maddy said.

  Regional Military Government was hosting a reception for another delegation of visiting congressmen and VIPs from major business and industry. A medieval manor and its vast grounds south of Munich would serve as a proper bulwark against the rubble, the stench, all that displaced poor. The main entertainment was horse racing of all things, featuring thoroughbreds formally owned by Nazis, and bird shooting was promised. Maddy had been talking about it for weeks. The swell soirée would go into the night. She was bringing multiple outfits. It was to be the last outdoor function before the cold weather hit full force. It was also a last chance at landing an even better position.

  “It starts in the afternoon,” Maddy added.

  “All right,” Harry said.

  But then Maddy’s voice went beyond pouty to a new, and Harry had to admit, sympathetic tone that he wanted to kiss and scream at the same time. It said: “All I ask, Harry? Just go to one party with me. Just dance with me, dammit. A girl needs a good ole whirl out of her man occasionally.”

  It meant: We—I—just can’t go on like this, Harry honey. We’re hitting a dead end here.

  Harry wondered if this was her real voice. It had to be in there somewhere, and it would eventually claw its way up to the surface just like the rest.

  And then she said, “Sometimes, it’s like you think the war’s about to start instead of it being over. Is that what you’re thinking? You know something that I don’t. Something that keeps you on edge like this.”

  Harry considered telling Maddy the whole truth. Not just about Irina, but about that train job back when the world was simpler and still sick of war. She’d see he was not who she assumed he was. Not down deep. He was going to lose the fluff and fat he had gained in Munich, and if she didn’t like it, she could hoof it. They could all hoof it. He ruled out telling her, or anyone, about Max though. He had too much to learn first.

  He lay there staring at Maddy. She had fallen asleep with her mouth open, an unlit Pall Mall stuck to her lipstick. The truth was that he didn’t know exactly who she was either. In her resentment at him, who knew whom she’d tell? The PX alone got the word out faster than Radio Munich, not to mention the nine plus shindigs she attended a week. He wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to kick him out of his own mansion.

  He was getting a chill lying there. He pulled on one of her swanky plundered robes, gathered up his uniform, and skulked back down the hallway to his room.

  By the time he was eating the ham-and-cheese roll Gerlinde had left out despite his clear orders to the contrary, that bum named Earvin Posey had returned to oust Maddy from his brain. So the bum had died twice—once in Southern Austria and last Friday in Munich. Talk about down on his luck. Posey was no Posey, Dietz had said. How right Dietz was and didn’t even know it. Too bad the man found in Posey’s GI fatigues wasn’t talking. Harry needed talk. A revelation. Even if it was hearsay, it might just lead him to Irina. He thought about that as he popped the rest of the roll in his mouth and licked the mustard from his fingers.

  These days, in this broken town, only one thing made people talk like a barker, a crier, a confessor. He thought about Maddy’s swanky robe, and it gave him an idea. Down in a cellar storage closet he found the mansion’s smartest duds, more of the surplus left by the previous owner. He chose a black wool overcoat with sable collar and a bowler hat, but he decided against spats—he wanted a hint of old money, but that was too much. Back upstairs, he slathered on eau de toilette and a hair tonic that made him sneeze. He wrapped his neck in a scarf of lavender cashmere.

  And out he went. He hit
the streets and felt passersby watching him, the rare silly rich man, some eyeing him for what he appeared to be and others for what they could take from him. He added American flavor by putting on his gleaming horn rims, chain-smoking Chesterfields with a cigarette holder, and tossing the butts as largesse.

  On Sunday, he had done the quickstep—he had hit all the obvious spots in his uniform, wearing down his soles. Today was the masked ball. He would try the darker mirrored haunts and let his costume do the talking. The edges of Old Town had what he wanted. He tried the black markets on squares, corners, and down alleys. He had the cigarettes, chocolate, and enough dollars for flash but didn’t need them. The getup alone made them come to him.

  He hit up the Displaced Persons from the East, former forced laborers who’d refused to go home. “I like to buy sabers,” he said in a simple German he accented with American Rs. “You know anyone who sells fine sabers from East?”

  They directed him to squats, cellars, and more black markets, each with fewer Americans and Germans than the last. No one had sabers, but that didn’t stop them from suggesting yet another spot. One pair even showed him the way like boy guides in old Casablanca, hoping for a cut, any cut.

  “A girl named Irina sells sabers. You know her?” Harry said and described her. And they nodded, yes, oh yes.

  Six hours later, it was all Harry could do not to rip off the soft silky greatcoat and toss it in the gutter. He had struck out, his sword hunt leading to nowhere but a lean-to behind a shell of a warehouse where another widow with at least six children gave herself to GIs for a syrette of morphine, or Pervitin pep pills, or even a rotgut poteen if they had that.

  Darkness came and a chilling wind with it. Harry had fled his dead-end tour. He was now blocks from his billet, heading home. A boy in short pants ran by. Harry halted him, pressed the silly bowler on the boy’s head, wrapped his neck in the cashmere scarf and sent the boy on his way. Harry coughed again, having smoked so many his pipes were raw. He spat into the cold wind and it sprayed. A girl named Irina? He might as well have said Dorothy Lamour. He had his dance, but they had theirs, and they were leading for a way, any way, to part the rich American dupe from his cabbage. Right now, someone was probably crafting a fake saber out of some old Nazi sword, hoping for the return of the soft touch. Amerikanski sucker.

  “Pardon, sir. Good evening. You were looking for a saber, isn’t that right?”

  Harry stopped, turned. A man stood behind him. He’d spoken in German with a thick Slavic accent. He wore a threadbare army overcoat and scruffy felt Tyrolean hat with a shredded feather, had a longer beard like a farmer, thick wire glasses held together with Leukoplast tape, and more gaps in his teeth than teeth. His hair and beard were streaked with gray. Harry had seen him earlier, hanging on the fringes of the sucker seekers.

  “You followed me,” Harry said.

  The man nodded.

  “Well, I’m not looking anymore.” Harry turned to press on. He would take the back way home and lose the man.

  The man followed. Harry stopped, sighing. The man shuffled up to him but kept his distance. The moonlight shined on his glasses, revealing cracks in the lenses.

  “You all had your chances,” Harry added.

  “But, I did not want anyone else to hear. You must understand, it would have spoiled the show.”

  “I understand. They were working me hard. Who wants to make enemies, that it?”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, I’m all out of scratch,” Harry said, “and I don’t even have a butt left.”

  “This is no problem.”

  “So what is it, then? Out with it.”

  “You seek a girl, you said. Yes? I know of this girl you seek.”

  Five

  THE NEXT MORNING HARRY SAT in a jeep before a bare plank barricade, revving his engine, waiting for the guard to return. He had reached the Displaced Persons camp at the Standkaserne just north of Munich center. Most of the DP camp premises were former concentration camps, Hitler-Youth schools, army bases. The Standkaserne was a former barracks. Keeping Jews and forced laborers from the East in such encampments was tough to swallow, yet they provided the best sites for them to be fed, get medical attention, and be easily repatriated. The Standkaserne DP camp seemed less distressing than most. The new guardhouse looked more like a pine wardrobe set outside, and the flimsy barricade of bare stumps and one unpainted board just might stop an intruder in a wheelchair.

  The man on the street with the Slavic accent had told Harry to try this DP camp. Their encounter had lasted less than a minute. The man was standing back, his face shrouded in hat, glasses, beard, darkness. His description of Irina included details Harry didn’t mention yet the man didn’t know Irina personally, he assured Harry—he was simply a humble admirer of young woman and had seen her trying to sell the sabers Harry spoke of. All had laughed at her. The Slavic man told Irina she needed to sell to Americans, but she was afraid of Americans. She said they would send her home. Harry asked the Slavic man where her home was, then where his home was, but the man was already backing up into the dark night. Harry said he could warm up in Harry’s mansion. The Slavic man waved his hands and said, “No, please, but thank you, I can assure you there’s nothing more I can tell.” Then the Slavic man took off in a sprint and Harry lost him at the next corner. It was strange but all Harry had needed.

  He had a new jeep from the motor pool and wore his uniform. He’d decided to go with what he was. He wasn’t a civilian, not just yet.

  He tried the horn. Still no guard came.

  He got out, pushed up the bare plank, almost got a sliver for his effort, and drove on in, passing the scraggy trees that lined the main avenue and then along the mix of dark wood bungalows like giant garden huts and larger stucco structures. Homemade signs bore a mix of Hebrew, Cyrillic, and an English with strangely formed letters—probably dictated by an English speaker but painted by a non-English speaker, he reckoned. He only passed a few people going in and out of the nearest buildings, in twos and threes, shoulders relaxed as if they were shopping.

  Three old sedans and a rusty truck were parked on a long rectangle of crushed gravel. Harry parked there and continued on foot, passing no one but a group of girls who were laughing and skipping along. A two-story building bore a sign that read UNRRA in familiar black letters, from stencils borrowed from the US Army no doubt. It stood for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration—the people now entrusted with caring for the Displaced Persons. Harry expected a line out the door, but there was no one here. The front entrance was open. He walked on through, poking his head in doorways. He saw empty desks. The sounds of stray typewriters sent him to more doorways, and upstairs, and finally to a sign that read Administration Office in English.

  The room was crammed with tall wooden file cabinets taking up one wall, a metal desk, incompatible office chairs strewn in a rough circle, and shelves and stacks of shoe boxes with numbers and names—what looked to Harry like makeshift post office boxes. Crammed, yes, but organized well. He respected that. He also saw no dust. He sat in one of the chairs facing the imaginary rest of the group circled in the other chairs, feeling like a man too early for a meeting. One wall had a map of Europe with old and new countries, their various displaced and repatriated peoples marked out in colored arrows that crossed and re-crossed each other’s, while the wall behind the desk had a large chalkboard on which different nationalities and nation groups were listed along with their approximate numbers and status, Repatriated, Still Displaced, Permanent Refugee, In Transit. It looked a hell of a mess to untangle.

  Footsteps. Harry stood. A woman marched in. She had short blond hair. She stopped in the center of Harry’s imaginary circle with her arms cocked back, staring around the room as if looking for anything that Harry had touched or moved. She wore a shirt of muted blue-gray plaid, trousers tucked into her socks, and ankle boots. Her eyes landed on him.

  He smiled at her. “Good morning.”

&n
bsp; “You left dirt in the hall. Or is this mud?” she said in English with a slight British tinge.

  Harry looked down at his brogues, checked the soles. “Little of both. Sorry.”

  “So what is it you want?”

  “Actually, I was looking at your chalkboard there.”

  Her eyes found the chalkboard, but her head had not moved.

  He kept smiling. “That for your camp, or for the region?”

  “Region. Camp network. Same thing.”

  The woman walked over to the desk and sat, looking at papers in an inbox. The light from the window bathed her there. It was a shame that those blond locks weren’t longer, Harry thought. It would go all too well with her fair skin. Good thing she wore the military look, he wanted to tell her—she would be too distracting otherwise. And those greenish-blue eyes, too.

  “Know what always gets me?” he said. “We have to put these people up in former barracks and detention camps. A concentration camp? Why when Germany has all these palaces and castles. Supposing we put them all up on the grounds of some former lord or monarch or what have you?”

  She lifted a memo to read. “You’re making conversation,” she said after a pause. “This is what you Americans do. I have no time for it.”

  He dropped the smile. “I’m not making conversation. I’m gathering information.”

  He told her his title and function and reported the closest thing to the truth—he was here checking up on suspect Displaced Persons.

  “But, your authority does not cover DPs specifically,” she said.

  “No. It does not.”

  Her chin ticked up a notch. She set the memo back in the inbox.

  “Is it hard to keep track?” Harry said. “All those people, coming and going?”

  “Of course. Many go unaccounted.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Some choose to go their own way.”

  “But, you know about them.”

  She shrugged. “The ones who pass through here? Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t.”