Peter Leonard - Back from the Dead

“I remember this feeling of freedom when we were liberated. I remember being in Krakow, walking through the town square shouting, ‘I’m a Jew. I’m a Jew.’ Finally able to say it and proud that I was.”

“I know what you mean,” Hess said. “The stigma was finally gone.”

Hess saw a woman in a bathing suit standing by the pool next door. She glanced at them and waved. Max saw her and waved back.

“Who’s that?”

“My neighbor, Lois Grant. Lost her husband eight months ago. We’ve gone out a couple times. Nothing serious.”

“How old?”

“Forty-eight.”

Hess said, “You like the young ones, huh?”

Max grinned. “I’ll introduce you if you want. Nice lady.” He sipped his drink and got up. “Harry, relax, I’m going to take a shower, wash off the chlorine. I’ll light the grill when I come back. You hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.”

The afternoon sun had dipped over the house. Hess, sitting in shadow, felt a slight chill. The retirees across the way, he noticed, had disappeared, gone back to their apartments. Hess knew he had to seize the opportunity. He went inside, locked the patio door and closed all the windows.

Hess walked down the hall to Max’s bedroom, went in and stood listening at the bathroom door. He could hear the shower, and heard the doorbell ring. He moved to the front of the house, looked out and saw a maroon Ford parked in the driveway and a tall man with dark shoulder-length hair at the front door. Hess watched him press the doorbell again and heard it echo across the foyer to the patio doors. When no one responded, the man knocked impatiently. Hess waited him out, saw him go to the car, glance back one more time, get in and drive away.

Hess returned to the bathroom door, heard the shower turn off and the rattle of the shower curtain being pulled open. He drew the revolver and knocked on the door, heard Max say, “Just a minute.”

The door opened, steam floating through the crack, Max visible now with a towel wrapped around his waist, wet hair dripping water on his chest.

“Someone is at the door,” Hess said, holding the gun down his leg, pillow on the floor against the wall.

Max opened the door halfway. “Who is it?”

“Some guy wants to talk to you.”

“Tell him to hang on.”

Hess raised the revolver and shot Max point blank in the chest. Max glanced down at the little spot of blood just above his right nipple, and charged through the doorway. Hess stepped back and shot him again, lower this time, center chest, and still he charged, Hess retreating, firing two more times from the hallway, the .38 jumping, and now Max staggered and fell face down on the white tile, blood running out from his body in crimson streams following the level of the floor. Hess glanced at himself in the hallway mirror, spatter from the gunshots on his face, shirt and khaki trousers.

Hess dragged Max into the bathroom and lifted his wet naked body, first his legs, then his torso, into the tub. He found a bucket and mop in the laundry room and a bottle of ammonia and cleaned the floor, coughing at the toxic fumes. When he was finished, Hess went in the guest bathroom, wiped the blood off his face and arms with a washcloth, and changed into one of Max’s Cleveland Indians tee-shirts and cap and a pair of his madras Bermuda shorts. Hess looked in the full-length mirror on the bedroom wall and barely recognized himself in the borrowed clothes.

Hess planned to stay there for a few days until his money arrived. Max had said he didn’t have any friends in the area. And since they looked somewhat alike, Hess thought, as long as he maintained a low profile, he could become Max Hoffman, assume the Jew’s identity. Wear his clothes, drive his car. But what was he going to do with Max’s body? He could weigh him down and dump him in the Intracoastal. But what if a fisherman snagged the body and brought it up? That wasn’t out of the question. Not in a fishing community such as this. No, dumping a body in water was dangerous. Hess himself was proof of that.

In a flashback, maybe triggered by the blood spatter, Hess recalled the scene in the forest outside Dachau, the pit dug, the bodies shot and thrown in, and saw the solution to his problem. He would bury Max Hoffman somewhere on his own property.

In the garage Hess found a shovel and walked around the house, trying to find an area that wasn’t visible to the neighbors, which didn’t leave many options. The only possibility was the north side of the house adjoining the vacant lot. There was a flowerbed that was roughly eight feet long by three feet wide.

Hess sunk the shovelhead and pulled back, lifting a shovelful of dirt and pieces of flowers that had yellow and white petals. He dug down three feet and hit the water table, but for his purposes it was deep enough. The sun was hanging on the rooftops, red highlights subdued by heavy clouds. He could see a woman down the street, walking her dog, and hear the low rumble of boats moving by on the waterway. Hess was exhausted, sweat-soaked and filthy but he had to finish the job. He found garbage bags in a drawer in the kitchen and a roll of duct tape. He cut the bags in half, taped the sections together and laid out a canvas of plastic on the bathroom floor. He grabbed Max’s legs and pulled his body half over the side of the tub and then all of him, wrapping sections of plastic around him and securing the sections with silver duct tape.

It was dark and quiet when Hess dragged Max’s plastic-wrapped body through the garage and out the rear door, and rolled him into the hole and filled it in with dirt. When he was finished he went in the garage, locked the door, stripped off his soiled tee-shirt and dirt-caked shorts and walked naked through the house to the guest bathroom.

He showered and dressed in a pair of Max’s trousers and a blue cotton shirt, went in the kitchen and poured a much-needed glass of Macallan. He sat at the kitchen table, going through Max’s wallet, which held two $20 bills, a $10, a $5 and a $1. Hess studied Max’s face on his Ohio driver’s license. Max had a bigger nose and grayer hair but other than that they really did look remarkably similar. He practiced forging Max’s signature with its big dramatic flourishes, and finally wrote one that looked passable.

In the morning, Hess, wearing Max’s white terrycloth robe that had the faint smell of aftershave, walked through the garage, out the door, and surveyed his work from the night before. There was a convex mound where he had buried Max and filled in the hole with dirt. And now, despite the missing flowers, there was nothing suspicious about the garden.

Hess carried Max Hoffman’s wallet in his back pocket as he drove south down the coast in Max’s light green Chrysler New Yorker that was the size of a motor yacht and only had two doors, stopping at a restaurant in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. He ordered eggs over easy, sausage, toast and black coffee. He’d brought the Palm Beach Post with him and perused it while he ate. There was a small one-column article about the murder in Palm Beach and the same sketch and description he had seen in yesterday’s paper.

On the next page was a photograph of Tony and Denise Brank under a headline that said Hijacked Couple Back Safely in South Florida. A Bahamian fisherman had rescued the shanghaied American erotic film producer and his actress wife on a remote island in the Bahamas. U.S. Coast Guard officials said the Branks’ fifty-one-foot Hatteras pleasure yacht had been returned to them.

After breakfast, Hess stopped at Publix, bought enough food for a few days and went back to Max’s house.

Zeller had underestimated Harry Levin, sure he was in control of the situation when Levin walked in his house. Surprised when the man pulled a gun on him. It was embarrassing. This scrap-metal dealer had made him look like an amateur. Zeller wasn’t convinced Levin or the journalist knew where Hess was hiding anyway.