Peter Leonard - Voices of the Dead

Phone started ringing, and then a knock on the door. He looked through the peephole, saw a white dude, face distorted. “Still in here. Come back later.” Phone kept ringing. He moved to get it, heard an explosion. Bullet blew through the door and the window behind him. Cordell ducked down behind the bed, got as low as he could. Two more rounds punched holes through the door. The phone was still ringing. Now the dude was banging against the door, putting his shoulder into it, molding splintering.

Cordell moved to the window, opened both sides all the way, got up on the sill in his boxer drawers. Door sounded like it was going to give. He bent down and squeezed through the window, standing on a narrow concrete ledge, looking down at the dumpsters below him in the alley behind the hotel, holding onto the window, afraid of heights, knees weak and rubbery. But he couldn’t stop, moved across the ledge, taking little bitty steps to the end of the building and reached around the corner, tried to grab the downspout but was too far.

Harry was driving like a maniac through the city, traffic surprisingly heavy for a Saturday morning. Cordell’s hotel was on Bayerstrasse just south of the train station. A few minutes later he pulled up across the street from Pensione Jedermann, a five-story building with a mansard roof, and saw four Blackshirts getting out of an Audi sedan parked in front.

Harry left the Mercedes at the curb, ran across the street and into the hotel. Saw the Blackshirts getting in an elevator. Harry crossed the small lobby, picked up a house phone, asked the operator to connect him to Cordell Sims’ room. It rang a dozen times. He put the phone down, ran back to the Mercedes, got in and drove around the block. He didn’t know what room Cordell was in or what floor he was on, or if he was even in the hotel at that time, but remembered him saying he had a great view of the alley. Harry drove behind the place, and there was a black guy in his underwear, standing on a narrow second-storey ledge. Behind him a Blackshirt with a gun was coming through the window. Cordell looked back at the guy, looked down at the dumpsters lined up below him and jumped. Harry heard him hit, saw him disappear under the trash. The Blackshirt aiming at the open dumpster, firing rounds that pinged off the metal.

Cordell rose up out of the garbage, flipped over the side, landed on his feet and ran down the alley out of the line of fire. He was fast. Harry followed in the Mercedes, clocked him doing twenty, pulled up next to him, side window down.

“Man, what you doing?” Cordell said, slowing down, stopping, body bent over, holding his knees, breathing hard.

“Need a lift?” Harry said.

Cordell went around the front end of the car and got in next to him, grinning. “Harry, you never cease to amaze me. Where the fuck you come from?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“In the neighborhood, huh? Where’d you get this?” Cordell said, nodding, eyes moving across the dash.

“I borrowed it,” Harry said, accelerating down the alley.

Cordell shook his head. “You somethin’ else, Harry.”

He glanced at Cordell’s boxers. “That a new look you’re trying out?”

“It’s part of my new Save Your Ass line. Like when crazed neo-Nazi motherfuckers try to bust down your door, don’t have time to get dressed.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you were a boxer man.”

“Why is that?”

Harry said, “They don’t seem fly enough.”

“Oh, fly, huh? ’Cause you now an expert? Got nothing to do with fly, Harry. Got to do with comfort. Freedom. Understand what I’m talking about?”

“I had my boxer period,” Harry said. “Switched back to briefs. I look better in them.”

“Better for who?”

“Whoever I’m with.”

“Listen to Mr. Vain himself.”

He took a left and a right on Bayerstrasse. Cordell’s hotel was behind them about a quarter mile. “We better go to the police.”

“We tried that,” Cordell said. “What do you think they gonna do?”

“Then we’re going to have to pick up an outfit for you. Head over to Maximilianstrasse.”

“Ever since I run into you, it’s been an adventure,” Cordell said.

Harry parked, took a business card out of his wallet and handed it to Cordell along with a pen.

“Yeah, Harry, I know where you work at.”

“Write your sizes down. Shirt, pants, shoes. I know what you like. I’ll see if I can find a Louis the Hatter. Pick you up a leisure suit, rhymes with pleasure, right?” Harry said, having a little fun with him. “Don’t go anywhere.” He was grinning when he got out of the car and walked down the street.

Hard to explain, Harry’d get him in trouble, show up get him out. Cordell didn’t know what he’d a done, Harry hadn’t come when he did. He checked the glove box, found the owner’s manual and car papers, Benz was registered to Friedrich Acker. Wondered if it was reported stolen? Wondered if the police were going to show up like they did last time? Cordell promised himself he got out of this mess today he would leave town, not look back. He sunk down in the seat watched people walk by the car, no one really paying much attention to him, brother sitting there practically naked.

When Harry finally came back, he was carrying two shopping bags, got in the car, slid them over to Cordell.

“Here you go,” Harry said.

He opened the first bag, looking at green suede knickers and a white shirt. “The fuck is this?”

“Selection wasn’t good,” Harry said. “It was the best thing I could find.”

“Best thing you could find? You go to a costume shop?” Second bag had hiking boots and green knee-highs. “This some kind a joke?”

“Try it on,” Harry said. “It’s temporary. Just till we get your clothes.”

Cordell slid the shirt out, unfolded it, took all the pins out and put it on. Now he grabbed the shorts, slid into them. Put on the knee-highs and the boots. Saw Harry look over with a grin. Met his gaze. “Don’t say nothing.” He leaned forward, grabbed the rearview mirror, tilted it to the right and looked at himself. “Who am I suppose to be Harry, Hans the mountain boy? Feel like I’m in a Shirley Temple picture.”

Harry started the car, checked the mirrors and pulled out of the parking space, punched it and they were moving in traffic.

“Where we going now?”

“Lisa’s office,” Harry said. He parked, took the Colt out of his pants pocket and turned the cylinder to a live chamber. Two rounds left. He could feel Cordell’s eyes on him.

“What’re you going to do with that?”

He glanced at Cordell. “Defend myself.”

“What am I supposed to do? Where’s my gun at?”

“Stay behind me.”

“Harry, you a bad-ass now. That right?”

He had two rounds in the Colt and five more in the safe in his hotel room.

They took the elevator up to the fourth floor, room 412, ZOB in black type, all caps, stenciled on the frosted glass panel in the door.

“What’s ZOB mean?” Cordell said.

“It was named after a Polish resistance group during World War Two, the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa. They fought the Nazis.” Harry knocked on the door. No one came. He turned the knob. It opened. He stepped in, turned on the lights, saw something was different immediately. The bookcases were empty. The photos of at-large Nazis had disappeared from the wall. The top of Irena’s desk that had been covered with stacks of files and paper was now bare, nothing on it. He took the Colt out of his pocket, holding it with two hands, Cordell to his right but behind him, crowding him a little.

“Sure this’s the right place?” Cordell whispered. “Looks like they moved.”