Lost Kin Page 8

  “Who says he’s shady?” Harry said.

  “He just looks it. You know what I mean.”

  He knew. Maddy was sharing a common outlook among Americans. Germans who didn’t amuse them or serve them directly weren’t even Nazis; they were just dirt. They were subjects who needed to be kept in their place or they’ll start leering. Harry threw back two quick gulps. He imagined himself hurling the glass into the fireplace.

  “And then,” Maddy continued, “you’re obsessed with this DP girl?”

  Harry faced a window. He didn’t want her to see how she was getting to him. He wasn’t surprised she knew any of this. With all those friends of hers, she had more voices keeping her up to date than the radio, and this big city was a small town. “You do not know what you’re talking about,” he said. “But you’re right about one thing: I mucked up the works real good by forgetting your party—”

  “To hell with the party, Harry.”

  “All right. To hell with it.”

  “Fishy cop. That girl, probably a communist for all you know. And the rest of it? I just don’t get you. You’re running around like some private dick, but you’re certainly not that. So what are you? You know what I used to think? Why you choose to go your own way?”

  “What? Tell me what you thought.”

  “You’re scared. Because you’re scared of moving up.”

  Harry laughed.

  Maddy matched it with a grimace. “You’re headstrong, that’s for sure. The ones who know a thing or two about Germans say it’s the Prussian in you. But I don’t buy that.”

  Harry’s smile had fallen away. “You didn’t give up on me. I’ll give you that.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t. Until tonight. And then I realized it, why you don’t move up in rank and don’t want to.”

  “Oh? Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Because it keeps you anonymous.”

  Harry didn’t answer. His teeth were clenched und wouldn’t unlock.

  “You get your rank elsewhere. Another way. Because it’s all—this whole solo dance of yours—is precisely the opposite of what it seems.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You are involved in something.” Maddy was clawing at the chair arm.

  “Meaning?”

  “You’re not who you say you are.” Maddy had raised her chin in defiance. “And you want to know what else? I’ll bet you haven’t reenlisted either.”

  Harry glared back, helpless.

  “You told me you would, but you haven’t. And you know why? Because you got something big that’s going to keep you in clover after—after you get that uniform off maybe.”

  Harry fought the urge to laugh again, just to spite her. He set his glass down instead. He sighed. “Maybe you just never knew me.”

  They stared at each other, eyes fixed. It was more like a staring contest than some sad yet loving stalemate.

  Maddy said, “You’re running some kind of racket, aren’t you?”

  “A what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I heard words.” Harry threw back the rest of the whiskey and let it burn.

  “Okay, maybe it is an operation then.” Maddy stood. She faced him.

  “Look, you’re sore at me,” Harry said. “I understand. But, and I hate to disappoint you, there’s nothing to it. It’s like I told you—”

  “What is it? Meds? Whores? What? Maybe one of those fine art rings. Or, maybe it’s something more … important. More unusual. Maybe you’re covering for someone. Maybe you really aren’t who you say. No. Goddamn do-gooder like you, maybe you’re more the cloak-and-dagger type.”

  “Me?” Harry said. “You’re saying I’m some kind of secret agent?” He laughed again.

  Maddy’s cheeks had puffed up like stones, her eyes wide and glaring, reflecting all the fire that was left. “Go on, go on,” she continued, “out with it.” She stomped her foot and grinned at him, her teeth shiny as if slathered with aspic. Harry knew the grin. She writhed her hips into position, smoothing them out with her long fingers. She was preparing herself for him, for it. Talk about a racket—what could be more of a racket than she was running?

  She moved in. Harry backed up to the buffet. The warmth left from the fire made his face feel stretched dry. He could tell her anything—he was into church artifacts or diamonds even, selling them back to the states APO for a killing, using the girl Irina as a messenger. Sure, why not? That or he really was a spy, sure he was—he was sneaking around the Soviet zone incognito and running a network by way of the black market and reporting straight to CIC or even to Wild Bill Donovan of the Office of Strategic Services. Never mind that the OSS had been disbanded and Harry didn’t even know who the new secret agents were.

  He held up a hand, stopping her.

  “What?” Maddy said, smiling now, one of those sultry, full, barely parted lip jobs that really made him want to open those lips with his tongue. If she took one more step, his hand would feel the warmth of that gleaming skin and would buckle, and he’d be kissing her before his brain knew what hit it. She said, “What is it you really do, honey? Just tell me.”

  Harry kept the hand up. “I’m going to tell you the truth. There was a murder. This Irina girl had seen a man get killed. It looked like she did it, but I don’t think she did. I just feel bad for her. I don’t want to see any innocent punished for something they didn’t do—or, in her case, something she might have been forced to do. These poor bastards have been through enough. I have some good clues. I think she has been at that DP camp. I just have to … dig deeper. So you see? There you have it. That’s my racket.”

  Maddy was shaking her head at him, her forehead pinched. She stepped back from his hand. “No, there’s something else. Something behind it. Someone.”

  He couldn’t tell her about Max. He couldn’t tell anyone until he knew the score. Sweat itched under his wool uniform. The anger was rising up in him like a lava bubbling in his brain, burning behind his eyes. He let it. It was the only way to keep her backing up. He let his lava thoughts tumble out as words: “You think you’re above all that. Helping people, it’s like some virus you don’t want to catch. Just like the rest of them.”

  “What? No, I only figured …”

  “Figured what, Madd? Figured I was another Joe you could push around? I’m just another of those silky pillows you collect.”

  Maddy stepped back to the middle of the room, shocked. She seemed to have lost inches in height. Harry followed her. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “No. No, it is not.” She pulled on her coat slowly, dragging it on over her shoulders as if she was ready to trudge out into a bitter snowstorm. Her skin had gone pale, as if already out in the cold.

  “I’m not what you wanted,” Harry said. “See? We’re getting to the bottom of it now, aren’t we?”

  “Maybe a fella shouldn’t get so sore,” Maddy muttered.

  “At least I know I’m trying. But can you say that about yourself?” The sweat ran down his face but he let it, tasting it salty on his lips. “Huh? Can you? What are you good for here?”

  Maddy buttoned up her coat, her jaw hard. “Go to hell, you.”

  “Me? I’m going to hell? Then I’ll have a lot of company.”

  She clenched her fists, glaring around the room like the tough dame looking for something to throw. “You’re going to regret this. You’ll see. You’ll come crawling back.”

  “You think you own this place. This country, this people. You think you own me.”

  Headlights shot around the room from outside. A car was pulling up.

  Maddy flashed a wild grin at him.

  “That’s the car,” Harry said. “You told the driver to come back.”

  She glanced out the window and her grin flashed at him again, like a neon sign on the fritz.

  “You’re going to that party anyway,” he said.

  Maddy threw her shoulders around and stomped out, for the foyer.

  “But you aren’t g
oing to let me go, are you? That’s your move. You’re really showing me up, aren’t you? Pull some more of that rank you cherish so well.” Harry followed her to the door.

  She flung the door open and her heels popped at the stairs as she rushed down and out.

  Harry was grinning now too, almost chuckling, anything to hold back the anger. He bounded back inside and over to one of the windows and watched the car just as it was turning around, crunching gravel. He had expected to see a man in the back seat with her but all he saw was her, sitting rock-hard and upright, a cigarette in her mouth and her lips tight around the holder. Her face was still pale, and the night cast dim, damning shadows on her proud face.

  “Think I’m an impostor? Take a good look at yourself,” he blurted at the cold glass as the car sped off.

  Seven

  “EVER BEEN IN A STOCKADE, KASPAR? Well? Have you?” shouted MP Major Warren Joyner, his fists balled white. It was only Harry and Joyner in a cold, windowless basement room in Joyner’s building, another swell hand-me-down from the era of Nazi police no doubt. There were concrete walls a brownish gray, a metal table and two chairs, a caged lamp above, and one dandy of an iron drain in the middle of the floor.

  “No, sir,” Harry said from his seat at the table. He kept his chin up. Act like you’ve done nothing wrong, he’d reminded himself.

  “Well, you’re damn fucking close.” Joyner paced around Harry in his chair. Twice now one of his large fists had sprung open and slapped at the wall as if he wanted Harry to be that wall. It was Thursday the eighteenth now, already evening. The call to Harry’s office had been harmless: A Major Joyner needed Captain Kaspar right away, a clerk told Harry. He had crossed back over the Isar River on foot and Joyner met him out on the street and pulled him along by an elbow and down to this basement, heaving the metal door open like it had been stuck for years. Harry, expecting the worst, had removed his glasses.

  He could hear the air pumping out Joyner’s broad nostrils as the major paced. Joyner stopped before the table, facing Harry. His sleeves were rolled up.

  “I have the corpse,” he said.

  “Corpse,” Harry replied. Not even like a question. He only flinched inside, but it was like a dull blade.

  “Do not fuck with me,” Joyner said, “do not.” Harry expected a scream, but this was a low growl from deep within Joyner’s gut. His face showed red blotches. “I got your corpse, Kaspar,” the growl continued. “I got it back, I should say.”

  Harry kept his hands under the metal tabletop and pressed to his thighs so their shaking wouldn’t give him away. He made his eyes meet Joyner’s. “Sir, I’m sorry—but with all due respect, I’m a little confused.”

  Joyner’s thick fingers wrapped around the opposite chair back, wanting to twist the metal like a rope of licorice. “I see. And is that because you want to fuck with the United States military even more than you already have?”

  Harry dared a sigh. “Look, sir—will you just sit down? Please?”

  Joyner, glaring, plonked into his chair and his belly met the table, driving the table frame into Harry’s knees.

  “I know what you’re thinking. You think this born German has gone native,” Harry began. He brought his hands to the table and spread them out. “But the truth is, I was helping a refugee. Young woman by the name of Irina. Slavic—might be Russian, Ukrainian, not sure yet. A poor DP all out of options. Her family doesn’t know where she is,” he added, improvising, and realized he could’ve been talking about Max. “So, there are no Germans involved for me to protect.”

  “As far as you know.”

  “Yes. True. But I’m betting on it. A girl like this doesn’t know Nazis. Appears to me she did the deed but in self-defense, if at all. I screwed up. Supposed I could figure out what happened, maybe save her some grief. I haven’t. I’m certainly not the best private dick.”

  “Are you as bad a betting man as you are a shamus?”

  “Sir?”

  “You truly have no idea who can be behind this, do you?”

  “Do you? With all due respect?”

  Joyner laughed. “You think I would tell you?”

  “No. And why should you?” Harry sighed again, eyeing his pack of Chesterfields on the table. His fear waning, the dull blade withdrawn, he was realizing how lucky he was. Joyner could have jailed him and asked questions later. He could have let Legal Division or CID deal with him. Wash his hands of Harry. But not Sheriff Joyner. True to his legend, the man was doing it his own way. If he got others involved—the paper shufflers, the brass, the patronizers—they’d only muck up the works.

  “Go ahead. You can smoke now,” Joyner said. As Harry lit up the major added, “Damn sticks are bad for you, you know. No one wants to talk about that. No one wants to hear it. But I’m telling you, some day? People will get it.” He shook his head. “People think I’m crazy. Sometimes I think I’m the lone wolf.”

  “I know how you feel, Major,” Harry said.

  Joyner looked away. They sat in silence. Harry stabbed out his cigarette after two puffs. Joyner watched him do it. Harry added, “Sir, if you don’t mind me saying, I can understand how you would not trust me. How you can never accept people here. They’re either greedy, backstabbers or brown noses. And that includes a good deal of true-blue Americans nowadays.”

  Joyner snorted.

  “But the rest, these DPs like this Irina girl? They suffered more than anyone. Almost as much as the Jews, some of them. And they’re barely surviving now. So I had to give her the benefit of the doubt. I think you know what I mean.”

  Joyner nodded, his eyes on the table.

  Harry thought of Max, wondering what his brother the actor would think of his performance. Max had told him the best ones always came from the heart, from a truth. In this moment, Harry felt that.

  “Can I ask a question?” he said.

  “Shoot.”

  “How you found out about this?” Harry thought better of mentioning Dietz by name. The detective might still be in the clear.

  Joyner set his hands on his belly, his fingers interlocked. He shook his head at Harry. “Acting on a tip-off.”

  “Anonymous?”

  “Is there any other kind these days? For Christ’s sake.”

  Harry told Joyner more details including the possibility of an accomplice, but he left out Dietz and of course Irina’s mention of Max. Joyner, for his part, said the Munich police had no clue who brought in the corpse, but they promised an inquiry. Fat chance of that, Joyner remarked—the police were more worried about scrounging toilet paper than codes of procedure.

  “Do you have an ID on it?” Harry said.

  Joyner shook his head. “Only thing saving your ass? That corpse probably isn’t American. Uniform’s too old, for starters. Hell, the sorry bastard wasn’t even circumcised.”

  Harry understood it now. Joyner was left with what few other American officials would want—a corpse that wasn’t American but, owing to the uniform and a total lack of clues, was stuck between US and German jurisdictions. Joyner was probably just as angered by having the thing dumped on him. But he wasn’t one simply to pass the buck and dump it on the CID or CIC either. He wouldn’t trust them any more than any other agency. Harry could commiserate.

  They were doing a hell of lot of commiserating, he and Joyner.

  “Was the tip-off straight to you?” Harry asked.

  Joyner only shrugged, his lower lip jutting out. The gesture confirmed it for Harry. Again, it all came back to Irina, and what she knew, where she’d been. Harry told Joyner a little more, reporting his attempts to find Irina and his visit to DP Camp Standkaserne.

  “So. Do you know any more than that—than I do?” Harry said.

  “I’m … still working on that,” Joyner muttered. He heaved himself from the chair with a grunt and shuffled over to the door. He was wheezing as if he had climbed stairs.

  “Sir? Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s jake.”

&nb
sp; Joyner opened the door for Harry. Harry followed the major down the dim hallway and past a desk that had a guard when they’d arrived but was now empty.

  Outside, on the courtyard, the air stung their cheeks. Harry buttoned his overcoat up to his neck. “That’s it, sir?”

  “Yep. That is all.”

  “Better get a coat on, Major, if you’re heading back to your billet.”

  “Not just now. Got some work to do yet.”

  “All right, well, I’ll keep you posted. I am sorry for any trouble.”

  Steam pulsed from Joyner’s nose. He seemed to consider Harry with a mixture of anger and fatigue, as others might a flat tire.

  “I’m recommending a reprimand for you,” Joyner said. “And I’m making it as severe as I can.”

  “I understand, sir.” Harry’s chest tightened a little, but what could he do? It could have been much worse. He had obstructed evidence. He had harbored a suspect.

  “But, I’m keeping it in a drawer—my drawer that only I can open. In case you foul up again.” Joyner’s mouth had curled down on one side as if he needed to spit. “Now I don’t want to hear about you running around like some private shamus anymore. Are we clear? You’re a liaison. You make sure the USO and Munich caterers union are square, schoolchildren get the new textbooks, all parties are happy. That’s what you do.”

  Unless you have something only Sheriff Joyner can use, the major was also saying.

  “Understood,” Harry said and turned to go.

  Joyner grabbed his elbow. “And one other thing. If I find out any Germans are involved in this, don’t even need to be Nazis, you are going to end up in a stockade. And for a good goddamn while.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Damn right. Now, go on home and smoke another cigarette if you have to. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Eight

  HARRY HEADED OFF INTO OCTOBER’S coldest night yet spewing angry gusts of cigarette smoke. Some snake of a weasel had sold him out, warning Sheriff Joyner as if he himself was the murderer. He didn’t like being dealt double, not since it almost cost him his life back in Heimgau. Joyner said it was anonymous but it was still a hot tip because it fingered him. All he was doing was trying to help a girl. And hoping to find his brother—he could admit that to himself.