Peter Leonard - Back from the Dead

He walked around the side of the house, looking in windows. The interior was dark. Zeller stood on the patio, watching a speedboat, with its long hull, rumble past. Felt the sun’s heat on his face and wiped sweat off his forehead. Noticed a mattress floating in the pool, and a woman at the house next door, sitting on her patio, reading a book. She glanced over at him and waved. Zeller waved back. He heard the drone of an engine and saw a biplane in the distance, trailing a banner advertising 2-for-1 Happy Hour cocktails at Mon Jin Lau. He tried to turn the handles on the French doors. They were locked.

At 3:40 p.m., Zeller drove south on A1A to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. The second Max Hoffman lived at Marine Terrace, a huge pink oceanfront condominium on El Mar Drive. Zeller parked in the lot, walked in the lobby and rode an elevator to the eighth floor. He found 8612 and rang the bell. The door opened, a woman with blonde hair, sixties, said, “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested. And listen, you, there’s no soliciting here.”

“I’m looking for Max,” Zeller said.

“My Max?” The woman frowned. “And who’re you?”

“What’s going on?” a short bald man said, coming toward them.

Zeller said, “Have you talked to Herr Hess?”

“Who?”

“Ernst.”

“I don’t know any Ernst.”

“My mistake,” Zeller said. “Sorry to have disturbed you.” Zeller was back in Pompano Beach fifteen minutes later, driving on the beach road north past the pier. He saw a motel called Treasure Island, pulled in and looked around. It was built in a U-shape with a swimming pool in the center, rooms facing the ocean and a private beach.

He checked in and slept till seven, showered, walked down the beach to a seafood restaurant. He went in, sat at the bar and had two vodka tonics and later ordered grilled mahi mahi, French fries and two glasses of Chablis. After dinner he walked back to the motel, and stood on the beach at the water’s edge, looking up at the stars. With any luck he would conclude his business in the next two days and be on a plane back to Germany.

Squirrel said, “You going to let him get away with that?”

“I’ve got news for you,” Dink said. “He already did.” Police had located his truck in a strip mall across the street from the Rodeo Bar. Jesus lord, that had pissed him off something fierce.

“What I’m sayin’ is, you going to just let it go? Man put a bullet hole in your floor board.”

“What do you got in mind?”

“Something, I’ll tell you that.”

“Oh, now that’s helpful.”

“You know what I mean,” Squirrel said.

Dink sure did. He’d given it some serious thought too. This Kraut Zeller’d hired them and then poof he’d disappeared without payin’ them. Nothin’ they could do about that, so Dink turned his attention back to this Jew, Levin. His first instinct was to torch the man’s home, show him what happens you fuck with good ole boys from east Tennessee. But what the hell good would that do?

His next idea was to clean out the man’s house, empty the place, call Harry, say, “Hey, seen your furniture and such?” Sell it all back to him. Squirrel pointed out a few flaws in the plan.

“Where we gonna get a movin’ van? And let’s say one miraculously appears, who you gonna get to help you? ’Cause it ain’t gonna be me.”

Dink said, “You got a better way let’s hear it. Don’t keep me in suspense any longer.”

“Tail the man till an opportunity presents itself,” Squirrel said, tilting the beer can up to his mouth till it was empty. Then belching, filling the inside of the truck with the second-hand smell of sausage and gravy.

“Jesus,” Dink said, fanning the air in front of his face with one hand and rolling down the window with the other.

Squirrel grinned, showing brown front teeth parted down the middle. “Like havin’ breakfast all over again.”

Eight hours later they were in Squirrel’s El Camino, with its gunmetal junkyard hood contrasting the original white paint color, just down the street from Harry Levin’s house. Squirrel had his side window cracked about an inch, hot-boxing Camels like he was going to the chair. Squirrel’d smoke one down to a nub, light a new one with it and push the nub through the opening in the window. Must’ve been fifteen on the street.

Dink was dizzy sitting in the cloud of smoke. It was still dark out when they got there, watching the overcast sky lighten as the sun came up, looking at the dark shapes of trees that had lost most of their leaves.

Squirrel said, “What do you know about this Nazi Zeller was tryin’ to locate?”

“That’s about it,” Dink said. “Man was a Nazi.”

“What’d Zeller want him for?”

“Didn’t say.”

“How’s this fella Levin know where the Nazi’s at?”

“No idea. But what if we find the Nazi first?”

“And then what?”

“Sell him. Somebody’ll pay good money for a genuine Nazi.”

“I thought you admired them.”

“I do but this is commerce.”

Dink saw Levin roll down the driveway and followed him along Woodward Avenue to the freeway and through Hamtramck where the Polacks lived to a scrap yard, mountain of metal rising up behind a low-slung cinderblock building on one side of the yard and a big two-storey warehouse on the other side. They had to get in there for a closer look and Dink had just the way to do it.

They drove back to Dink’s rented house in Pontiac. The landlord had left an old icebox in the garage. It was white with gold fixtures and weighed enough to give you a hernia. Squirrel backed the El Camino up to the garage, lowered the tailgate, laid a tarp over the truck bed and they picked up that goddamn reefer and slid it in without too much room to spare.

“Think this is a good idea?” Squirrel said. “Man knows you.” Dink pulled the brim of the Cat Diesel cap low over his eyes. “But he’s got to see me and then recognize me.”

“What do you think this is, some great disguise?”

“I call it the element of surprise. He’s not gonna be expectin’ me. You understand?”

Squirrel, breathing through his mouth, looked at him with vacant eyes.

There were two trucks ahead of them in line for the scale, colored guys sellin’, by the look of it, steel and copper pipes they’d yanked out of abandoned houses. When it was their turn, the man working the scale, whose blue work shirt had a white name patch that said Archie on it, told them to put the refrigerator on the scale.

“Will you look at that,” Archie the scale man said. “What year is it?”

He had long brown hair parted down the middle and held in place by a headband.

“1926 Gibson,” Dink said.

“Where in the world you get that?”

“Garage,” Dink said.

Squirrel said, “What can you give us for it?”

“I can go twenty-eight dollars, but you can probably get more at an antique store. It was made out of copper, I’d go eighty-four.”

Dink said, “How ’bout it was made out of gold? What would you give us for it then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, he don’t know,” Dink said to Squirrel.

The scale man folded his arms across his chest in a gesture that said he wasn’t going to take any shit. “You want to sell it or not?”

“Well we’re not takin’ it back home, I’ll tell you that.”

“I need your name and address.”

“Why do you want to know that for?”

“We’re payin’ cash for scrap, IRS wants to know who we’re paying.”

“Aubrey Ponder,” Dink said. “Sleepy Hollow trailer park in Pontiac.”

Squirrel gave him the evil eye. Dink looked at him and grinned.