Ross Thomas - The Eighth Dwarf

“You know what I’ve got in my left hand?” Jackson said.

“What?”

“Got me a tire iron. So if that isn’t a gun in your pocket, you’d better watch your kneecap.”

The man smiled and took his hand from his pocket. It was empty. “No gun,” he said. “Let’s take a spin and talk about that rotten little dwarf.”

“All right,” Jackson said. He released the tire iron, making sure that it clattered against something, and started the engine. He drove to the end of the drive and turned right into the street. When he came to the first street lamp, he pulled over and parked under it.

“The spin ends here,” Jackson said. “Now tell me about him, the rotten little dwarf.”

The man looked up at the street lamp and then at Jackson. He was about Jackson’s age, perhaps four or even five years older. He wore a jacket that was a salt-and-pepper tweed, wrinkled flannel trousers, a white shirt, and a dark tie. He had a thin face that just escaped being gaunt. His brown hair could have used a trim, but the mustache that he wore under his sharp nose seemed well cared for. There was too much bone to his chin.

“We found him in Cairo,” the man said.

“Ploscaru.”

The man nodded and smiled again. “Old Nick.”

“During the war.”

“That’s right. We signed him on.”

“Who signed him on?”

“My old firm.”

“And who are you?”

“Baker-Bates. Gilbert Baker-Bates.”

“Hyphenated.”

“That’s right,” Baker-Bates said, and slipped his left hand into his jacket pocket. It came out with a package of cigarettes. Lucky Strikes. He offered them to Jackson, who refused with a shake of his head. Baker-Bates lit one for himself with a wartime Zippo lighter that was olive drab in color.

“It must be a burden, that hyphen,” Jackson said.

“I don’t notice it much anymore.”

“What was the old firm in Cairo — SOE?”

“Not bloody likely.”

“The other one?”

Baker-Bates nodded and blew some smoke out.

“What’d you want with the dwarf?”

Baker-Bates waited until a car went by. The car was a 1938 Ford standard coupe with a blown muffler. Two men were in it, Mexicans. Baker-Bates stared at them as they drew abreast of the Plymouth, slowed, and then sped off.

“He did some odd jobs for us once in Bucharest. When I found him in Cairo he was starving, living off some Gyppo bint that he’d lined up. Well, we took him on again; gave him a bath; ran him through the odd course in Alex — cipher stuff mostly; and then dropped him and a fist man back into Romania with twenty bloody thousand in gold.”

“Dollars?”

“Pounds, lad, pounds. Gold sovereigns, although, thank God, they were yours and not ours.”

“Mine?”

“OSS. We put it together; they paid for it. Your chaps wanted two things: first of all, information on how good a job of work your bombs had done on the Ploesti refineries, and secondly, how the Romanians were keeping your pilots that they’d shot down. We’d take anything else that the dwarf could skim off and send back. Plus any mischief he could create. That’s what the gold was for.”

“You dropped him in by parachute, huh?”

“Right.”

“That must have been a sight.”

Baker-Bates shrugged indifferently.

“So he went in with about a hundred thousand dollars in gold.”

Baker-Bates blew out some smoke. “About that”

“I’d say you made one damn-fool mistake.”

“Well, as they say, if ever you need a real thief, you should cut him down from the gallows or hire a Romanian. We hired two.”

“The fist man was also Romanian?”

“Right.”

“And you never heard from them again.”

“Oh, we heard from them, all right,” Baker-Bates said. “Once. A five-word message: ‘Ploscaru dead. Police closing in.’”

Jackson leaned back in the leather seat, looked up at the street lamp, and chuckled. The chuckle went on until it turned into a laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I think Nick’s already spent your money.”

“That doesn’t worry us. We wrote the rotten little bastard off long ago. He’s ancient history. Besides, it wasn’t really our money, was it?” As if to answer his own question, Baker-Bates flipped his cigarette out into the darkness. “You two, you and the dwarf, you don’t interest us much. You’re spear carriers. It’s the chum at stage center that we’re really interested in.”

Jackson stared at the thin Englishman for several moments. “Kurt Oppenheimer,” he said finally.

“That’s the lad. Kurt Oppenheimer, the zipper king’s son.”

Jackson nodded. “And you’re going to tell me about him.”

Baker-Bates seemed to think about it. He glanced at his watch and said, “Your treat?”

“Sure,” Jackson said. “My treat.”

The bar that they found was only a few blocks from the hotel. It was a small, hole-in-the-wall kind of place, a bit dank, a bit smelly, and its few customers were sad Mexicans who seemed to have even sadder problems which they discussed in low tones. Both Jackson and Baker-Bates ordered beers and drank them out of the bottle.

“The first thing I should tell you is this,” Baker-Bates said after a long swallow. “We don’t want Oppenheimer in Palestine.”

“Why?”

“He had a bad war, very bad, but it developed his talents.”

“What kind of talents?”

“Remember Canaris?”

“The Abwehr admiral.”

Baker-Bates nodded. “They say that Canaris had him once in late ’43, but let him go. They say that he fascinated Canaris, that they had long talks.”

“About what?”

“The morality of political assassination. Canaris was a jellyfish, you know. They’d have done for Hitler early on if Canaris had ever been able to make up his mind. But Canaris had him and that’s a fact although some still say that Canaris didn’t let him go, that he escaped.”

“Oppenheimer.”

“Oppenheimer.” Baker-Bates held up a thumb and forefinger that were less than an inch apart. “Some say that he was that close to Himmler once. That close, they say, though it’s probably cock. And there’re even some who’ll say that he did in Bormann there at the end, but that’s cock too — although there’s no doubt about the SS Major General in Cologne and that Gauleiter down near Munich and maybe two dozen others.”

“So you’re looking for him?”

“That’s right; we are.”

“What’re you going to do if you find him — put him up for an OBE?”

“The war’s over, chum, long over.”

“One year,” Jackson said. “One year and twenty-seven days.”

“Oppenheimer hasn’t heard. Or if he’s heard, he hasn’t paid any attention.”

“How many?”

“Since V-E Day?”

Jackson nodded.

“At least nine, perhaps ten, perhaps more. Mostly minor bods and sods, nobody very important, but still, we’d’ve liked to have got our own hands on them. It’s almost as though he were going around tidying up for us — to save us the bother, so to speak.”

“And now you’re afraid he might turn his talents to Palestine.”

“Baker-Bates took another swallow of his beer. You know what’s going on there, don’t you?”

“The Empire’s in trouble,” Jackson said. “When the League of Nations handed you the mandate for Palestine back in — when, 1920?”

“Officially, it was ’23.”

“Okay, ’23. That was when you promised the Jews a national homeland. That was in one breath. But in the next you swore to the Arabs that the Jews wouldn’t create any problem. But the Hitler started in on the Jews, and those who could get out decided to take you up on your promise. The Arabs didn’t much like it.”