Arno Zimmer - Death Comes to the Torpedo Factory

He still carried the damning photographs in his jacket and if anyone searched him, it would all be over. He toyed with the idea of sending the originals to the Dumonts, hoping they would be appeased and leave him alone, but that would signify total capitulation after a brave beginning. No, the originals were his protection and needed to be guarded at all cost. He had to stop procrastinating and find a place for their safe-keeping.

Scatcherd could be irrational but was not so obsessed with either the Dumonts or Bellows that he would blindly pursue a Pyrrhic victory. He sensed that events were closing in on him and concluded that a half measure of success would be better than total defeat. His next message to the Dumonts was almost conciliatory and read: BARRINGTON DUMONT DROPS OUT OF THE RACE AND THE ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS ARE YOURS. NO FURTHER DEMANDS WILL BE MADE.

He smiled as he finished the note. He would not go out again tonight with those brawny men possibly lurking about. He would mail what he considered his mollifying demand in the morning on the way to work.

Scatcherd’s mood had taken another one of those unpredictable swings and there was no telling how long his current fortitude would last. Right now, he was feeling rather smug. His stomach was settled and he actually felt some hunger pains. Scatcherd dumped the leftover Hungarian goulash into a pan and turned on the hot plate. His dinner would be ready in time for him to plop in front of the television and watch “The FBI.” If only he had someone impressive, with moral rectitude, like the character of Inspector Lewis Erskine, to investigate the Dumonts. He would be sure to bring them down.

WHILE SCATCHERD WAS writing his second note, Helga Dumont was in route to New York City. Comfortably ensconced in a plush swivel chair in the Metroclub car of the train, she was sipping her second Manhattan as the Metroliner chugged toward Pennsylvania Station.

In the taxi to the Essex House, she fretted about her looks like a schoolgirl primping for the junior prom. She was too tightly-bound in her black Bergdorf Goodman dress and did not feel comfortable – or confident. She wondered if he would notice the bulges here and there that seemed to pop up randomly as she constantly smoothed and patted herself. She cringed when she noticed the driver grinning in the rear-view mirror as she performed her fretful, self-conscious fussing.

It had been years since that rendezvous in the City and it had gone horribly. She was in the throes of frequent “hot flashes” at the time and had repeatedly snapped at him without provocation. Today, she was determined to be on her best behavior. She would try to emulate some of the demureness that came so naturally to her daughter. While Helga was not the submissive sort, she admitted to herself that he had tamed her in the past without difficulty, had seduced her as a young girl in Berlin, and could do so again.

Helga had been staying at the Essex House for years and the management of the Art Deco-style hotel treated her almost like royalty. She always had a room where she could see the trees in Central Park. Every time she strolled through it, she was reminded of the Tiergarten back in her ancestral home and she had a sudden yearning to re-create those youthful years in Berlin.

Her hotel was also close by her favorite shopping destinations on Fifth Avenue. However, this trip was not supposed to be about love-making, nostalgia or shopping. Helga needed advice and perhaps even assistance in ridding herself of a pestilence in the form of Leonard Scatcherd.

SIEGFRIED FUETTENER WAS an ingenious, clever man but above all else he was a survivor who had honed his skills thirty years earlier serving in an elite Germany army intelligence unit. He had used those talents to establish a new identity and to escape from Germany into Belgium just as the Allied forces were swarming Berlin and other major cities.

It was 1953 when Fuettener decided it was time to emigrate to the United States. It did not take him long to track down the Dumonts living in Virginia with young Barrington, now eight years old. From that day forward, Siegfried wondered if he could possibly be the boy’s father.

Siegfried lived quietly in Mineola, New York running a small machine shop. He never married, fearing the encumbrances of a family should he be forced to move quickly. He had his dalliances, to satisfy his libidinous needs, but he eschewed intimate relationships, determined to avoid the inadvertent exposure of any details about his prior life. Some of his compatriots lived lavishly on stolen Nazi loot and other ill-gotten treasure, drawing attention to themselves with fatal results.

Siegfried was of Slavic descent and, while still German, did not meet the purity standards for the master race. Even had he wanted to marry Helga, her family would have strongly objected. Only the vast wealth of the Dumont family and the prospects of a barren post-war existence in Germany overcame the objections of Helga’s father to the effete American, Augustus Dumont.

Helga imagined that Siegfried might be pining for her, but he seldom thought about that original flirtation and regretted their more recent tryst at the Essex House during one of her shopping trips. He certainly didn’t mind that she had married that wimpy American soldier but, as Barrington matured into a young man, Siegfried became more and more certain that the boy was his son.

Siegfried had surreptitiously reached out to Helga when the boy was still a child. She would periodically send pictures of Barrington, along with saccharine notes, to a Harold Jones at a post office box in Manhattan. For emergencies, there was an answering service under the same name.

Siegfried had been a cautious man since those halcyon days in the German army and his low profile had kept him safe in America. Nonetheless, he was prepared to do anything for the boy even if it meant endangering himself. Helga’s message had said it was an emergency and so he took the train into New York and walked the thirty blocks uptown to the Essex House.

HELGA WOULD HAVE loved to be seen with Siegfried in the cocktail lounge at the Essex House, but she knew that such a public meeting would be indiscreet. She waited patiently in her room for his call from the house phone in the lobby. Within minutes, he was at her door.

Helga looked at Siegfried and inwardly moaned at what she had lost. Now in his late 50s, he stood as tall and erect as a young man, square-jawed with piercing dark eyes, like a Teutonic soldier of old. His once dark hair was now silvery but still bountiful. It was combed back in waves and set off his navy-blue suit with distinction. Siegfried had an outfit for all occasions and tonight he would have easily fit in with all the other distinguished guests staying at the Essex House. Helga imagined how he would charm the Virginia elites at one of her soirees.

The two former lovers neither embraced nor kissed, as Helga had envisioned the moment. When they stood facing each other just inside the door of her hotel room. Siegfried had taken Helga’s outstretched arms and held them at the wrists, squeezing them just enough to stop her advancement. A gentle, almost imperceptible smile formed on his mouth and any romantic aspirations that Helga had imagined were quickly dashed.

Dispirited, Helga silently guided him to the sitting area of her suite. Siegfried was the first to speak. “What is this urgent problem that brings you to New York so suddenly, Helga?” Without answering, Helga took Scatcherd’s threatening note and the Polaroid from her purse and thrust them at him. He quickly scanned the note and then turned to the photographs. Helga was hoping to see some emotional reaction to the one of them standing close together at the lawn party but Siegfried’s face was stolid.