Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

“You looking for a stepney?”

I shrugged. My castellano had much improved, but it fell apart like a cheap suit the minute it got snagged on the local slang.

“You know. The cafe creme.”

“I’m looking for Isabel Pekerman,” I said.

“Where you from, honey?”

“Germany.”

“It’s twenty pesos, Adolf,” said the casita woman. “Don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but the lady’s canfinflero is Blue Vincent, and Vincent prefers it if you give him the bouquet before you speaks to the gallina. ”

“I only want to speak to her.”

“Don’t make no difference if you’re a hunter or not. Every one of these creolos is from the Center and if you speaks to baggage you’ll have to give him a bouquet. It’s that kind of joint.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” I peeled off a couple of notes and pressed them into her leathery hand.

“Uh-huh.” She shifted for a moment and tucked the notes under one of her substantial buttocks. It looked as safe there as in any bank vault. “You’ll find her on the dance floor, probably.”

I breast-stroked my way through a beaded curtain into a scene from The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The brick walls were covered in graffiti and old posters. Around a dirty wooden dance floor were lots of little marble-topped tables. The low lights on the ceiling barely illuminated the lowlifes below. There were women with skirts slit up to their navels and men with trilbies pulled down low over their watchful eyes. The orchestra looked as oily as the music it was playing. The only thing that seemed to be lacking in the place was Rudolph Valentino dressed in a poncho with a whip in his hand and a pout on his mouth. Nobody paid me any attention. Nobody except the taller of the two women who were dancing the tango with eyes that had done a lot more than just meet.

I hardly recognized her from before. She looked like a circus horse. Her mane was long and very blond with just a touch of gray. Her eyes were big but not as big as her beautiful curving behind, which her skirt did nothing to conceal. She was also wearing a kind of spangled leotard that almost preserved her modesty. At least I think it was a leotard only, it was a little hard to be sure the way it disappeared between her buttocks.

I stared hard back at her, just to let her know I’d seen her. She stared back and then pointed at a table. I sat down. A waiter appeared. Everyone else seemed to be drinking cubano from large, round glasses. I ordered the same and lit a cigarette.

A burly man came over to my table. He was wearing boots, black trousers, a gray jacket that was a size too small for him, and a white scarf. He had pimp written all over him like the numbers on a pack of cards. He sat down, turned slowly to look at the circus horse. When she nodded at him, he looked back at me, spreading his mouth into a smile that was somehow both approving and pitying at the same time. I worked it out. He approved my choice of woman but pitied me for being the kind of jerk who would even contemplate the kind of degrading transaction that was about to occur. There was no fear in his craggy face. It was a tough face. It looked like something you could use to beat a carpet. When he spoke, his breath sharpened my thirst for strong liquor. I kept my nose in my glass until he’d finished blowing his patter my way.

Silently, I tossed some notes onto the table. I wasn’t in the mood for anything except information but, sometimes, information costs the same as the more intimate relations. He gathered the money in his fist and went away. Only then did she come over and sit down.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I’ll get the money back off him at the end of the evening and pay you back later. But you did the right thing to pay him. Vincent’s not an unreasonable man, but he’s my creolo and creolos like things to look like what they’re supposed to look like. In case you’re wondering, he’s not my pimp.”

“If you say so.”

“A creolo just looks out for a girl. Kind of like a bodyguard. Some of the men I dance with. They can get a little rough sometimes.”

“It’s okay about the money. Keep it.”

“You mean, you want to?”

“I mean keep the money. That’s all. It’s information I’m after. Nothing more. No offense, but it’s been a hell of a day.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Let’s just talk.” I sipped some of my cubano. “You look different from the last time we met.”

A waiter placed a drink in front of her. She ignored it and him.

“So who put you up to it?”

“The cop. The one who brought you. He came to my apartment and said he’d seen me in a show and that he had a special kind of job for me. If I did as I was told, I’d make some money and keep some nice clothes into the bargain. All I had to do was play a rich, worried mother.” She shrugged. “That was easy enough. There was a time when I had a rich, worried mother of my own.” She lit a cigarette. “So I met von Bader and we talked.”

“How long were you there?”

“Most of the day. We didn’t really know what time you were going to show up.”

“And this was all for my benefit?”

“Ostensibly, yes. But Colonel Montalban wanted me to report on von Bader as well.”

“Yes, that does sound like him. Two jobs for the price of one.” I nodded. “So how was he? Von Bader?”

“Nervous. But nice. A couple of times I heard him on the telephone. I think he was planning to go abroad. He made and received several calls to and from Switzerland while I was there. I know that because once he asked me to answer the telephone. He was in the bathroom. I speak German, as you know. I also speak Polish and Spanish. By birth I’m a German Pole. From Danzig.” She puffed at the cigarette but seemed irritated with it and put it out only half smoked. “Sorry, but I’m a little bit on edge about this. The colonel was none too pleased when I said I couldn’t repeat the performance tomorrow morning. He’s not the kind of man one lets down lightly.”

“So why did you?”

“When von Bader said that you were a famous German detective and that you’d often looked for missing persons, in Berlin, before the war, I’m afraid I rather lost interest in their scheme. Whatever that is. You see, it was I who told Anna Yagubsky about you. And I who suggested that she might approach you for help. I thought that by helping Anna find her missing aunt and uncle you might also help me find my missing sisters. And, since you were helping me, albeit by proxy, I decided to help you. I decided to put you in the picture, as much as I’m able, concerning what the colonel and von Bader are up to. You see, the girl, Fabienne, has gone off with her mother and nobody knows where. That’s pretty much all I know. Von Bader wants to leave the country, but he can’t until he knows they’re safe. I dunno. Something like that. Either way, I’m taking a big risk telling you all this.”

“So why do it at all?”

“Because Anna says she’s sure that you’re the man who’s going to find them. And I don’t mean Fabienne and her mother. I mean our relatives. Anna’s and mine.”

I sighed. “Go ahead. Tell me about them. Tell me about yourself.” I shrugged. “Why not? I’ve paid for your time.”

“My mother got me out of Poland just before the war. I was twenty-five years old. She gave me some jewels and I managed to bribe my way into Argentina. My two sisters were too young to come with me. At the time, one was ten and the other was eight. The plan was that I’d send for them when I could. I wrote to tell my mother I was well, and received a letter back from a neighbor, saying that my mother and sisters were now in France, and in hiding. Then, in 1945, I received word that my two sisters were false weight aboard a cargo ship from Bilbao.”