Peter Leonard - Voices of the Dead

He got in an elevator, rode up with three Orientals, watching the lights flash as they passed floors, got off at five, checked room numbers till he found 573. Door was closed but not all the way. He knocked. “Yo, Harry.” Pushed it open a crack, saw the phone on the bed, off the hook, two skinheads ripping the place up. Didn’t see Harry.

He went in. A skinhead with an ax handle came at him. Cordell went left, ducked, felt it swoosh by his head, and bust a hole in the wall. Cordell hit him and he went down.

Now the second one came at him. Cordell somersaulted over the bed, landed on his feet, surprised the guy. Moved in, hit him with a combination, left hook, straight right. Skin dropped the wood, ran for the door, first one just ahead of him. Cordell picked up the ax handle, chased them in the hall, watched them run for the stairs, open the door and disappear. Heard someone behind him, turned in a batter’s stance, arms cocked, hands gripping the skinny end of the handle, saw Harry.

“You taking batting practice, 12:30 in the morning?”

“You had visitors, Harry. Was just showing them out.” He lowered the ax handle. “Man, you are a popular guy.”

Harry walked into his room, Cordell right behind him. It smelled like paint and he saw why. There was a crude-looking black swastika sprayed on one of the white walls. Dresser drawers had been pulled out, clothes dumped on the floor. He went over to the bed, picked up the phone, put the receiver back and placed it on the end table. He’d left the photographs from Berman on the desk. They were gone.

“Two of ’em,” Cordell said. “Skinheads. Looked like the dudes come to the ratskeller. Same tribe. Missed ’em by a minute.” He paused. “What’s goin on?”

Harry looked at the swastika again. “I think they’re trying to scare me, convince me to leave town.”

“They doing a good job,” Cordell said. “Maybe you should listen.” His eyes scanned the room. “Who are they? Why they after you?”

“I don’t know.” Were they working for Hess? That was the logical explanation, but he didn’t want to get into it right now. Needed time to think.

“Come on, Harry.”

“What’re you doing here?” Harry said.

Cordell reached in his pocket, took out the watch. “Found it in the street outside the police station. Thought you probably want it.”

Cordell handed it to him. Harry, thinking he’d lost it, fit the band on his wrist and fastened it.

Cordell sat on the bed. “Who’s Anna? Will you tell me that?”

“My wife,” Harry said.

“How long you married?”

“Three years,” Harry said, turning the desk chair around to face him, sitting in it. “’50 to ’53. She died giving birth.”

“What happened?”

Harry said. “Her immune system was screwed up.” He paused. “She was a survivor. We both were. I was at Dachau. Anna was at Helmbrechts, a small concentration camp for women, southwest of Hof in Upper Franconia.”

Cordell gave him a blank look.

“It’s in East Germany near the Czech border.”

Cordell got up, took off his jacket and laid it out on the bed.

“In April 1945, the war was ending. The Germans were finished. It was just a matter of time before the Americans and Russians closed in on them. The Nazis shut down the camp and marched these starving women 195 miles to a Czech town called Prachatice. The prisoners were so hungry they ate grass; they ate decaying animal carcasses. The last day, Anna was one of seventeen prisoners marched into the woods. It was an uphill climb for thirty minutes. Anyone who couldn’t do it was shot. Fourteen of seventeen didn’t make it. The three who did were given their freedom. The American army came through the next day. Anna was taken to a hospital. Emaciated, dehydrated. She was five six, weighed seventy-eight pounds. Two of her toes had frostbite from walking barefoot in the snow, had to be amputated. An army doctor told her she wouldn’t have lived another day.”

“Where’d you meet?” Cordell said.

“We both ended up in Detroit. I was living with my uncle and she went to stay with a cousin. We were fixed up and hit it off. It was 1949. I was twenty-one, she was twenty. We dated and got married a year later.”

“What about you?”

“I was sent to Dachau with my parents. They were killed. I escaped.”

“I thought my past history had some crazy shit in it,” Cordell said. “Man, you got like a black cloud over you.” He fingered the chains around his neck. “How old were you?”

“Thirteen when I went in.”

“What’d you think?”

“The world had gone crazy,” Harry said. “You trick yourself. You say it’s not going to last, it’s going to end. But you know it isn’t.”

“I was thirteen my mom took to the needle, started turnin’ tricks, bringin’ home these raggedy-ass brothers.”

“What’d you think?”

“Same as you.”

“What’d you do?”

“Quit school, started working for a dude name Chilly Willy, sold heroin at the projects: Gardens and Brewster. Chill say cop arrest you, what’s he going to do? You’s a kid. He going to slap your wrist, send you home.”

“Who’d you sell it to?”

“Anyone needed a fix,” Cordell said. “I made a hundred dollars a day when I started, two hundred when I got busted five years later. Could either do time or join the army. Like there was a choice. Sign me up for the armed services, I said. Judge thought I’d be going to Nam. I did too. Got nothin’ against the Viet Cong, but fightin’ them was preferable to incarceration.”

“I can understand. Listen, I better get the manager up here. I don’t want them to think I joined the Nazis,” Harry said, looking at the swastika on the wall.

“Call, they come back,” Cordell said. “Pension Jedermann. Check on you tomorrow.”

He walked out, closed the door.

Harry called the front desk at 1:15, said there’d been a break-in. A man from hotel security knocked on the door a couple minutes later. He wore a blue blazer and carried a walkie-talkie and was the size of a defensive tackle. He came in, looked around and asked Harry a few questions.

Did he know who did it?

No.

Was he in the room at the time?

Dumb question.

Was anything missing?

Just his photos of Hess. Of course, he said no.

Did he want to speak to the police?

Harry shook his head.

The security man told him they were going to move him to a suite for the inconvenience. No charge.

Harry said, OK. Where else was he going to go at 1:30 in the morning?

Rausch sat in the driver’s seat of the Volkswagen, side window cracked six inches. He smoked, flicking ashes and blowing smoke through the opening. He glanced at the clock on the dash. It was 1:42 a.m. Hess had been in the house for almost two hours, and Rausch wondered what was taking him, although Hess had told him he enjoyed walking around before he woke them. Looking at their photographs, their furniture, and their belongings. For Hess it was better to know something about them, to feel a connection, make it personal.

Rausch was parked on Baaderstrasse, in a quiet residential neighborhood. He saw a figure coming toward him on the sidewalk, Ernst Hess in silhouette, the faint glow of a streetlight behind him. He walked to the car and got in. Rausch felt crowded now, two big men sitting almost shoulder to shoulder in the narrow interior. He could see the rush of power, Hess still charged with adrenalin.

“You were in there for a long time,” Rausch said. He started the car, slid the shifter into gear and accelerated.

“We were talking. I enjoy conversing with civilized, intelligent people.”

“I thought something had gone wrong.”