Peter Leonard - Back from the Dead

The cop opened the door, Harry got out, leaned against the side of the car, palms on the edge of the roof. The cop kicked Harry’s feet apart, holstered his weapon, and brought Harry’s wrists together, tryin’ to handcuff him. Cordell moved toward the cop, aiming the .45, took his gun and keys, led him to his car and cuffed him to the steering wheel.

Stigler turned onto the highway and had gone maybe one hundred meters when they passed six police cars, lights flashing, coming the other way. Hess looked in the side mirror and saw them slowing down, turning into the woods where they had just driven out. “Who told the police?”

“I have no idea,” Stigler said.

Hess studied his face, believing that you could read an expression, see when a man was lying, his face giving him away with a nervous twitch or blink. But Stigler’s face was like granite in the dim light. Who else could it have been? The men Stigler commanded were low-IQ laborers. They were brawn, good at carrying out orders but not at making decisions. Hess was sure it was Stigler, the electrician, looking for a way to better his life, and he was also sure Fraulein Rizik had given him the idea. She had been causing trouble, that was obvious, but interesting how prescient her accusation turned out to be.

A few kilometers down the road Hess said, “Franz, pull over, I have to take a leak.”

Stigler slowed down and stopped the car on the side of the road. “Do you mind if I join you? My bladder feels like it is going to explode.”

Inside the tree line, Hess pulled the Walther and shot Stigler while he was relieving himself.

Hess changed into a dark green electrician’s uniform he had taken earlier from Stigler’s van, hiding it in the trunk of the sedan. The shirt was too small and the trousers were too long. The cap fit well. He drove to a gaststatte on the outskirts of the city for a beer and something to eat, sat at a table in the loud crowded room, men lining the bar, hoisting mugs, smoke from cigarettes swirling up to the wood beams, the scene so comfortable and familiar, so quintessentially Bavarian. No one gave him a second look in his new disguise. He ate weisswurst and a pretzel, drank his beer, paid the bill and walked out to the parking lot.

“They’re gonna be lookin’ for us and we’re gonna be easy to spot,” Cordell said. “Police know what we look like, know what kinda car we’re drivin’. Probably sent our pictures to immigration. Where we goin’?”

“France,” Harry said, holding the Mercedes steady on the dark highway, heading west to Baden-Württemburg.

“What about Austria, isn’t it a lot closer?”

“We think Hess might be going to Nice,” Colette said. “He has a friend who owns a villa outside the city.”

“You’re not wanted in France, are you, Harry?”

“I don’t think so. We’ll cross over somewhere along the Rhine,” Harry said, glancing at Colette. “Do you know a place?”

“Kehl. It’s across the river from Strasbourg.”

“Never been to France,” Cordell said.

“Listen, I appreciate everything you’ve done. But you don’t have to come with us to Nice. If I was you I’d take a train to Paris and catch a plane back to Detroit.”

“I got nothin’ to go home to. You don’t mind, I’ll hang with y’all for a while longer. You never know, you may need some help.”

“We don’t even know if we are going to find Hess,” Colette said. “And if we do, who is he going to have with him? No offense, Harry, I think we need Cordell.”

Harry wasn’t trying to get rid of him. “All right, come with us.”

Harry stopped for gas on the way to Ettlingen, bought a cup of coffee and a map of Baden-Württemburg, opened it at a table in the cafe and drew a circle around Kehl. The guy who worked in the gas station thought it was about 160 kilometers.

When he went back to the car Cordell was asleep in the front seat, and Colette was stretched out in back, snoring. Cordell opened his eyes one time and said, “Yo, Harry, where we at?”

“Just passed Rastatt.”

“Oh yeah? Rastatt, huh?” Then his eyes closed and he was snoring in cadence with Colette, Harry thinking they were a lot of fun to travel with.

He arrived in Kehl a little before 2:00 a.m., drove south through town and west toward the river. He could see the lights of Strasbourg in the distance. Getting a hotel would attract too much attention, so Harry parked in a municipal lot near the Rhinepromenade, turned off the car, rolled the seat back and closed his eyes.

In daylight Strasbourg looked enormous spread out across the river. Harry could see the spire of a church rising above medieval buildings. He woke up Colette and Cordell and drove through Kehl. Approaching the bridge to Alsace-Lorraine, Harry saw German police stopping cars, checking IDs and pulled over. “Got any ideas?” he said to Colette.

“Go back to the docks,” Colette said. “We’ll take a sightseeing cruise into Strasbourg. The ship stops in the old town and you have a couple of hours to see the city.”

Harry bought three tickets for the Kehl-Strasbourg Scenic Cruise. They were on the top deck, sitting in chairs — every seat taken — getting ready to leave when Harry saw the police car creeping through the parking lot past rows of cars, stopping behind his Mercedes rental. He felt a vibration as the engines started. Two cops got out and looked inside his car. One of them said something to the other and pointed at the boat. Deck stewards released the mooring lines.

“Harry, they’re coming this way,” Colette said.

“Stay calm and stay down.” Saying it as much to himself as Colette and Cordell. What happened from here was out of their control.

The cops were moving through the parking lot almost to the dock when the ship started to move, engines laboring then picking up speed, chugging up river.

They cruised north past Strasbourg, passing ships and barges and spectacular views on both sides of the river. Thirty minutes later they crossed over to the French side and came back, taking a canal into the city, docking in the old town. Harry, Colette and Cordell got off the ship with the other passengers and showed their passports to immigration officials.

Harry rented a Peugeot sedan at Hertz, got in behind the wheel and unfolded a map of France, tracing a line with his finger straight down from Strasbourg to Nice. They’d have to go through Switzerland and the western edge of Italy. Harry didn’t like it. He wanted to stay in France, avoid any more foreign borders.

He plotted a course that took them through Mulhouse, Besançon, and Lyons straight south to Avignon, Aix-en-Provence, and then east along the Côte d’Azur. Harry drove eight hours to Aix. Colette directed him to Les Deux Garmons, a brasserie on the Cours Mirabeau. It felt good to get out of the car.

They crossed the street and went in the restaurant. Harry ordered sole meunière ; Colette , fruits de mer, and Cordell, fillet of beef. They drank a bottle of Côtes du Rhône and ate without saying much, had profiteroles and coffee for dessert, and got back in the car.

Cordell took it the rest of the way, found a radio station in Marseille that played Motown, singing along with Stevie Wonder and the Temptations.

“Harry, check this out,” Cordell excited as they passed through Cannes, the city lit up and alive on one side of the car, the Mediterranean on the other — pleasure yachts outlined in lights, anchored in the harbor. “I might like this better than Palm Beach and there ain’t no Colombians tryin’ to blow my head off.”

“Just Germans.”

Traffic was heavy in Nice, people on the street partying, Cordell taking it all in, eyes lit up again. “Might like it here even better.”