Stephen King - Different Seasons

Alarmed now, Todd came around the table. 'What's the matter?'

'Mr Denker,' Dick said - it was all he could manage.

Todd read the headline and understood everything. In dark letters it read: FUGITIVE NAZI COMMITS SUICIDE IN SANTA DONATO HOSPITAL. Below were two photos, side by side. Todd had seen both of them before. One showed Arthur Denker, six years younger and spryer. Todd knew it had been taken by a hippie street photographer, and that the old man had bought it only to make sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands by chance. The other photo showed an SS officer named Kurt Dussander, swagger-stick cocked jauntily (arrogantly, some might have said) under one arm, his cap cocked to one side.

If they had the photograph the hippie had taken, they had been in his house.

Todd skimmed the article, his mind whizzing frantically. No mention of the winos. But the bodies would be found, and when they were, it would be a worldwide story. PATIN COMMANDANT NEVER LOST HIS TOUCH, HORROR IN NAZI'S BASEMENT. HE NEVER STOPPED KILLING.

Todd Bowden swayed on his feet Far away, echoing, he heard his mother cry sharply: 'Catch him, Dick! He's fainting!'

The word (fatntingfaintingfainttng) repeated itself over and over. He dimly felt his father's arm grab him, and then for a little while Todd felt nothing, heard nothing at all.

27

Ed French was eating a Danish when he unfolded the paper. He coughed, made a strange gagging sound, and spat dismembered pastry all over the table.

'Eddie!' Sondra French said with some alarm. 'Are you okay?'

'Daddy's chokin', daddy's chokin',' little Norma proclaimed with nervous good humour, and then happily joined her mother in slamming Ed on the back. Ed barely felt the blows. He was still goggling down at the newspaper.

'What's wrong, Eddie?' Sondra asked again.

'Him! Him!' Ed shouted, stabbing his finger down at the paper so hard that his fingernail tore all the way through the A section. That man! Lord Peter!'

'What in God's name are you t -'

"That's Todd Bowden's grandfatherf 'What? That war criminal? Eddie, that's crazy!'

'But it's him,' Ed almost moaned. 'Jesus Christ Almighty, that's him!'

Sondra French looked at the picture long and fixedly.

'He doesn't look like Peter Wimsey at all,' she said finally.

28

Todd, pale as window-glass, sat on a couch between his mother and father.

Opposite them was a greying, polite police detective named Richler. Todd's father had offered to call the police, but Todd had done it himself, his voice cracking through the registers as it had done when he was fourteen.

He finished his recital. It hadn't taken long. He spoke with a mechanical colourlessness that scared the hell out of Monica. He was almost eighteen, true enough, but he was still a boy in so many ways. This was going to scar him forever.

'I read him ... oh, I don't know. Tom Jones. The Mill on the Floss. That was a boring one. I didn't think we'd ever get through it Some stories by Hawthorne - I remember he especially liked "The Great Stone Face" and "Young Goodman Brown". We started The Pickwick Papers, but he didn't like it. He said Dickens could only be funny when he was being serious, and Pickwick was only kittenish. That was his word, kittenish. We got along the best with Tom Jones. We both liked that one.'

'And that was four years ago,' Richler said.

'Yes. I kept stopping in to see him when I got the chance, but in high school we were bussed across town ... and some of 'the kids got up a scratch bail team ... there was more homework... you know... things just came up.'

'You had less time.'

'Less time, that's right The work in high school was a lot harder ... making the grades to get into college.'

'But Todd is a very apt pupil,' Monica said almost automatically. 'He graduated salutatorian. We were so proud.'

'I’ll bet you were,' Richler said with a warm smile. 'I've got two boys in Fairview, down in the valley, and they're just about able to keep their sports eligibility.' He turned back to Todd. 'You didn't read him any more books after you started high school?'

'No. Once in a while I'd read him the paper. I'd come over and he'd ask me what the headlines were. He was interested in Watergate when that was going on. And he always wanted to know about the stock market, and the print on that page used to drive him batshit - sorry, Mom.'

She patted his hand.

'I don't know why he was interested in the stocks, but he was.'

'He had a few stocks,' Richler said. 'That's how he was getting by. You want to hear a really crazy coincidence? The man who made the investments for him was convicted on a murder charge in the late forties. Dussander had five different sets of ID salted around that house. He was a cagey one, all right'

'I suppose he kept the stocks in a safe deposit box somewhere,' Todd remarked.

'Pardon me?' Richler raised his eyebrows.

'His stocks,' Todd said. His father, who had also looked puzzled, now nodded at Richler.

'His stock certificates were in a footlocker under his bed,' Richler said, 'along with that photo of him as Denker. Did he have a safety deposit box, son? Did he ever say he did?'

Todd thought, and then shook his head. 'I just thought that was where you kept your stocks. I don't know. This ... this whole thing has just... you know ... it blows my wheels.' He shook his head in a dazed way that was perfectly real. He really was dazed. Yet, little by little, he felt his instincts of self-preservation surfacing. He felt a growing alertness, and the first stirrings of confidence. If Dussander had really taken a safety deposit box in which to store his insurance document, wouldn't he have transferred his stock certificates there? And that photograph?

'We're working with the Israelis on this,' Richler said. 'In a very unofficial way. I'd be grateful if you didn't mention that if you decide to see any press people. They're real professionals. There's a man named Weiskopf who'd like to talk to you tomorrow, Todd. If that's okay by you and your folks.'

'I guess so,' Todd said, but he felt a touch of atavistic dread at the thought of being sniffed over by the same hounds that had chased Dussander for the last third of his life. Dussander had had a healthy respect for them, and Todd knew he would do well to keep that in mind.

'Mr and Mrs Bowden? Do you have any objections to Todd seeing Mr Weiskopf?'

'Not if Todd doesn't,' Dick Bowden said. 'I'd like to be present, though. I've read about these Mossad characters -'

'Weiskopf isn't Mossad. He's what the Israelis call a special operative. In fact, he teaches Yiddish grammar - if you can believe that - and English Literature. Also, he's written two novels.' Richler smiled.

Dick raised a hand, dismissing it 'Whatever he is, I'm not going to let him badger Todd. From what I've read, these fellows can be a little too professional. Maybe he's okay. But I want you and this Weiskopf to remember that Todd tried to help that old man. He was flying under false colours, but Todd didn't know that'

That's okay, dad,' Todd said with a wan smile.

'I just want you to help us all that you can,' Richler said. 'I appreciate your concern, Mr Bowden. I think you're going to find that Weiskopf is a pleasant, low-pressure kind of guy. I've finished my own questions, but I’ll break a little ground by telling you what the Israelis are most interested it Todd was with Dussander when he had the heart attack that landed him in the hospital -'

'He asked me to come over and read him a letter,' Todd said.

'We know.' Richler leaned forward, elbows on his knees, tie swinging out to form a plumb-line to the floor. "The Israelis want to know about that letter. Dussander was a big fish, but he wasn't the last one in the lake - or so Sam Weiskopf says, and I believe him. They think Dussander might have known about a lot of the other fish. Most of those still alive are probably in South America, but there may be others in a dozen countries ... including the United States. Did you know they collared a man who had been an Unterkommandant at Buchenwald in the lobby of a Tel Aviv hotel?'