Joseph Kanon - Stardust

“All right, I’ll look. Where do you keep your valuables?”

She looked at him blankly.

“Jewels,” he said. “Cash.”

“Jewels? Just the pearls-in the bedroom.”

But the bedroom was untouched, except for the bed, the spread twisted and still damp from sex. Nobody had taken anything from the bureau drawer, the velvet box with earrings and a clip. There was still money under the handkerchiefs.

He went through the rest of the house, turning on lights, Liesl close to him, still anxious, fear bobbing just beneath the surface. Not just an intruder, a more general violation.

“Ever have any trouble before?” Ben said.

“No, it was safe. I was safe here.”

“You’re still safe,” he said, taking her by the shoulders. “Stop.”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” she said, not really hearing him. “Every knock. Always looking back. I thought it was different here.”

“Liesl, nothing’s missing. So, just in here?” he said, turning in to the study.

She nodded. “The desk. Somebody went through the desk.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s different. Look at the blotter-see the one end out? To look under. See for yourself. You know his drawers.”

She picked up the cigarettes, lighting one now, her hand shaking, then stood watching him go through the drawer. Everything seemed the same. Until the second drawer, the folders of personal papers. The police accident report, jammed at the end, not where he’d put it.

“What?” she said, seeing him hesitate.

“Something’s out of place.”

He went through the envelope, flipping through the photos.

“Everything’s here. Probably where I put it, just looked different.”

“No, you noticed.”

“Liesl, why would someone break into the house and not take money-anything-just go through a desk?”

“His desk.”

“All right, his desk.”

She inhaled smoke, then folded her arms across her chest, holding herself in. “It’s what you said. I didn’t believe you. Why would anybody do that? I thought it was just your way of-” She broke off, hearing herself, racing. “But it’s true, isn’t it? Maybe I always knew it. That he wouldn’t. I didn’t want to be afraid. And now they’re in my house. Somebody killed him and they’re still not finished. What do they want?”

“I don’t know,” he said, coming over to her.

“Maybe they think I have it-whatever they want.”

“They didn’t go through your things. Just his.”

“I can’t stay here. Listening. Any noise. I’ll go to my father’s.”

He took her by the shoulders, as if he were holding her down before she could fly away.

“I’m here. You’re just nervous, that’s all. I’ll be right next to you. All night.”

“Oh, next to me, and what will Iris think?” An automatic response.

He smiled at her. “The worst, probably.”

“How can you joke?”

“I’ll check the doors. Nothing is going to happen to you. I promise.” He kissed her forehead. “If you’re worried about the house, I’ll talk to somebody. Make it safe.”

“Who?”

“Guy I met. He’d know.”

She dropped her head to his chest. “When is it going to be over? The phone rings-your husband’s in-when was that? And it’s still not over. What did he do? Go with Rosemary? And he’s dead for that? It’s crazy. And now you. What am I doing? His brother.” She raised her head. “Maybe that’s crazy, too. My lover.”

“Say that again,” he said, brushing her hair.

She looked away. “Oh, that doesn’t make it any better.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense. It happens. We wanted it to.” He paused. “We seduced each other.”

“So nothing makes sense.”

“What happened to him. We have to make sense of that.” He touched her hair again. “Just that.”

Liesl’s father’s birthday went exactly as predicted. Dieter read a long prepared toast, then Ostermann stood up for his own prepared thank-you. The others were more spontaneous, but none of them brief. “The Conscience of Germany,” a glib phrase from Time, had now become a kind of honorary title, his own von. The toasts ran to form: the books, the humanitarian concerns, the early courage in speaking out, all noted before and repeated now, familiar as myth.

The dinner itself followed a prescribed pattern. It had been called for late afternoon, a throwback to the curfew days when aliens had to be home by eight, and the food, according to Liesl, was unvarying- steaming bowls of chicken soup with liver dumplings, boiled beef with horseradish, potatoes, and red cabbage, followed finally by Salka’s chocolate cake, a menu that seemed designed to weigh people down in their chairs for the toasts. Later, after the brandies, there would be coffee and mohn cookies, more winter food as the California sun poured through the window.

Salka’s house, on a steep wooded road dropping down into Santa Monica Canyon, was modest, a doll’s house compared to Lasner’s. The guests were many of the same people who’d come to Danny’s funeral, and they greeted Ben like an old friend with the fast hospitality of exiles. Brecht was there again and spent most of the time arguing with someone in a corner. Lion Feuchtwanger, interrupting, playing peacemaker; Fritz Lang, with a monocle. Thomas Mann had not come this time, a social deference, not wanting to eclipse the birthday honoree. Kaltenbach wore a suit that needed cleaning.

Ben noticed scarcely any of it, preoccupied, the German toasts droning in the background, Liesl down the table, her face half-hidden by one of Salka’s flower arrangements. Did she look different? Did he? Could anyone tell? If he looked down at the lace tablecloth, blotting out the rest, he could see her last night, riding him, her breasts bobbing, and he smiled to himself because no one else knew, their secret. Maybe this was the excitement spies felt, sitting down with the enemy, knowing something, holding it to themselves, while no one else had the faintest idea. What was more secretive than sex? Kaltenbach stood up to make his toast. Ben glanced down again at Liesl, this time meeting her eyes, amused, talking to him in code, just the two of them.

When he went out to the kitchen to open more wine she followed, standing behind as he pulled the corkscrew, putting her hand on his waist. He turned, their faces close.

“Somebody’ll see,” he said quietly, glancing toward the dining room, the angle of the table.

She pulled at his shirt, moving them away from the sink, the open door.

“No, they won’t,” she said, urgent, her eyes darting with excitement. “Not here.” Kissing him then, her lips warm, unexpected, alive with risk. From the dining room there was the tinkle of glass, and they kissed harder, racing ahead of it.

He pulled away, breathless. “They’ll see,” he said, already hard, his face red with it, unmistakable.

“I don’t care,” she said, eyes shiny, still moving, then leaned forward again. “I don’t care.”

Not really meaning it, playing, but the words flooding into him like sex itself, rushing, wonderful. Then there was the scrape of a chair and he turned back to the counter, grasping the wine bottle, and she slipped over to the refrigerator, opening it with a faint suppressed giggle, kids stealing cookies, waiting to be found out. He took a breath to calm himself and started in with the wine. But when he saw that the chair belonged to Ostermann, standing to respond to a toast, he glanced back at Liesl, a complicit smile, something they’d got away with after all.

After dinner Salka led the party down Mabery Road to the beach to watch the sunset. Ben had volunteered to drive Feuchtwanger home, a cliffside house on a twisting Palisades road that would be treacherous in the dark, so he was late joining the others on the broad beach. People who’d come earlier for the day were still in bathing suits or sweatshirts and stared openly at Salka’s group in suits and ties. Liesl took her shoes off, but the men didn’t bother, formal even in the sand. The light on the water had already begun to turn the deep gold just before orange.