Peter Leonard - Back from the Dead

Drove back to his apartment in West Palm and went to work. He’d filled and weighed twenty-five bags when the phone rang. Cordell picked it up said, “Yo?”

“It’s Joyce.” Kinda quiet voice like she didn’t want no one to hear what she was sayin’. Cordell thinking, Joyce. Joyce who?

“I need your help. The Nazi’s back,” he thought she said, sounding upset, talking fast.

Okay, now he got it. “Yo, Joyce, slow down, tell me what’s going on.”

She was afraid, asked Cordell to come pick her up and she would explain everything. Man, this was bad timing, but then he thought, hold on, be cool. He could put her in the guest room, free room and board, she could help with the operation. Bagging and weighing weed you could teach a monkey to do, and Joyce, from what he remembered, was fairly intelligent. Not that he knew her all that well. But they had this connection.

Cordell left everything where it was, drove to Palm Beach and picked her up. She was waiting in the lobby. He walked her out, Joyce all nervous, looking around while Cordell put her suitcase in the trunk. On the way back to the apartment Joyce told him what had happened, and Cordell thought it was hard to believe. He’d seen the Nazi on the kitchen floor with a bullet hole in his chest, and if the motherfucker wasn’t dead, man was a vampire. But he didn’t say nothin’. Joyce helped him one time so he was going to help her back.

Cordell opened the apartment door and knew something was wrong. The green plaid drape on one side of the window had been pushed through the broken glass and was blowing in the wind. Joyce was looking at it too, and then at him, could read his expression, see something wasn’t right.

“What happened?”

“Look like somebody broke in.”

He stepped in the apartment behind Joyce, put her suitcase on the floor and closed the door.

“You don’t think they’re still here?”

Cordell didn’t answer, he was moving into the room, seeing the twenty-five lids he’d left on the table, gone, plastic garbage bags on the floor, gone too. All he could think of was the Colombians. Who else? Followed him from the farm. They had his money and now they had the woo woo. Sell it again to some other dumbass, steal it back. But it didn’t make sense. Okay, they took five grand off him. But could’ve made ten times that or more dealing with him straight up. They had the weed and he had the clientele. Cordell went into the kitchen, got on his knees on the yellow-and-white linoleum, pulled out the strip of wood under the cabinets, grabbed the money, twenty-five grand, and the nickel-plate semiautomatic, thinking, call High-Step, find out where the Colombians was at, settle up. But what about Joyce?

She came in, stood over him and said, “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

“Colombians stole my weed.”

With that Joyce started crying. “Tell me this isn’t happening.” Cordell got up, put his arms around her and said, “There, there now. Everything gonna be okay.”

Stark phoned early evening, gave Harry the flights Hess, alias Gerd Klaus, had taken.

“Flew Stuttgart-London on Lufthansa, September twenty-eighth. Had a two-hour layover. Flew London-Detroit on Pan Am, arriving on the twenty-ninth, checked into the Statler Hotel downtown.”

“Amazing,” Harry said, writing the information down on a lined yellow pad. “How do you do it?”

“I have friends in high places,” Stark said. Harry could hear him drawing on a cigarette and blowing out the smoke. “Tell me what’s going on. I thought this guy was dead.”

“Well, evidently there’s been an eyewitness account of his resurrection.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t see how it’s possible. I told you what happened.” Harry assumed Joyce was just being paranoid.

“I remember,” Stark said. “Who could survive that?” He paused. “What’s it have to do with this information I just got for you?”

“Nothing,” Harry said. “That’s something else.”

“But, I suspect, related.”

“Could be.”

Harry hung up, ripped the paper off the pad and handed it to Colette. “Find the locker and you might have your next story.”

“What do you think is in it?”

Joyce called again while they were having dinner.

“Harry, I’m sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a problem.” She told him about the Colombians. “I can’t stay here, Harry.”

“Go to a friend’s,” Harry said. “Go to a hotel till I can get down there.” He paused. “Put Cordell on, will you?”

“He wants to talk to you,” Joyce’s voice sounding faint.

“Yo, Harry, my man. How’s everything in the Motor City?”

“You’re back at it, huh?”

“It’s the only trade I know.”

“I don’t want Joyce involved in this.”

“She ain’t involved. You involved?” Cordell said to Joyce. “No she ain’t involved.”

“Get her out of there, will you?”

“Harry, tell me you don’t believe the Nazi’s back. No offense,” he said to Joyce.

“I saw him,” Joyce said.

“Keep an eye on her,” Harry said to Cordell. “I’ll be down as soon as I can.”

Colette kissed Harry and put her arms around him, holding on tight. “Harry, I am going to miss you so much.”

They had talked about when they were going to see each other again. Harry had been kicked out of Germany for carrying a concealed weapon. If he returned he would be arrested, prosecuted and sent to prison.

Harry had said, “Let’s see how it goes. You might be happy to get away from me for a while. You might get home and not think about me.”

And Colette had said, “You might get lonely and call Galina.”

“Don’t worry. She’s mad, not talking to me.” Harry kissed her. “When are you coming back?”

“Oh, now you want me.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Harry said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

She saw the last of the passengers moving through the gate into the jet way. She heard last call for her Pan Am flight to London on the intercom.

“Harry, I have to go.” She kissed him one more time, showed her ticket to the gate agent and walked toward the plane.

Colette was in London seven hours later. Going through customs took forever. She didn’t have a lot of time. Her flight to Stuttgart was scheduled to take off in thirty minutes. Colette went down to baggage claim where the lockers were, tried to insert Hess’ key in locker number 48 but it didn’t fit. Now she had to get to the Lufthansa gate that was on the other side of the terminal. She ran most of the way and made it with only a couple minutes to spare.

In Stuttgart Colette went to baggage claim, retrieved her suitcase and went through customs. She found the lockers, but again the key didn’t fit. So now she was concerned. How did Hess travel from Munich to Stuttgart? He could have gone by train, but she doubted he would take that chance. Hess was well known and recognizable in Bavaria. And if he had booked a flight, Hess’ name or his alias, Gerd Klaus, would have been on an airline manifest. Based on that supposition, Colette believed Hess had driven to Stuttgart. And since he was flying to London the locker had to be in this terminal. Colette talked to a Lufthansa ticket agent and learned that the Lufthansa lounge on the third floor had lockers.

She checked it out, found locker 48, and tried the key. It didn’t fit. So, if not Stuttgart, where? Munich was the final possibility and she was going there anyway. First the airport and then the train station.

Franz Stigler was returning from the men’s toilet when he saw the blonde enter the locker area. Eyes glued to her perfect butt in tight jeans, the denim fabric straining to hold it in, as he walked back to the bench where he had been sitting, grabbed the folded sections of a newspaper, opened one, using it as a prop, glancing over the fold, studying the blonde. He was sure he had seen her before but who was she?