Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

“Hey. Sigmund Romberg. Wake up.”

Muller stirred, took a sniff of air, and then let out a deep breath that smelled like a wet malting floor. Wiping his sandpaper chin with the back of his hand, he looked around thirstily.

“It’s by your left foot,” I said.

He glanced down at the bottle and pretended to ignore it, only he wasn’t very convincing. He could have pretended he was Frederick the Great and he would have looked more persuasive.

“What do you want?”

“Thanks, but it’s a little early for me. But you go right ahead and have one if it makes thinking any easier. I’ll just stand here and watch and have fun imagining what your liver must look like. You know, I’ll bet it’s an interesting shape. Maybe I should paint it. I do a little abstract painting now and then. Let’s see, now. How about Still Life with Liver and Onions ? We can use your brains for the onions, okay?”

“What do you want?”

His tone was darker now, as if he were getting ready to hit me. But I was on my toes, moving around the room like a dancing master just in case I had to slug him. I almost wanted him to try it so I could. A solid right to the jaw might have helped sober him up.

“Since we’re talking of interesting shapes, why don’t we talk about that joy lady who was in here last night? The one wearing the tiara. The one visiting the man in 210. Name of Rubusch, Heinrich Rubusch. Did he give you the four leaves, or did you take it off the pussycat in the corridor? Incidentally, if you’re wondering why it’s any of my damn business, it’s because Rubusch is dead.”

“Who says I took four leaves off anyone?”

“Your concern for the welfare of the hotel’s guests is most touching, Muller. The serial numbers on those four new bills in your wallet match the numbers on a fold of notes lying on a table in the dead man’s room.”

“You’ve been in my wallet?”

“You might ask yourself why I’m telling you that I’ve been in your wallet. The fact is I could have brought Behlert or Pieck or even one of the Adlons along here and found those leaves in front of an audience. But I haven’t. Now ask me why.”

“All right. I’ll take a card from your pack. Why?”

“I don’t want to see you fired, Muller. I just want you out of this hotel. I’m offering you a chance to leave under your own steam. Who knows? That way, you might even leave with a reference.”

“Suppose I don’t want to leave.”

“Then I’ll go and fetch them anyway. Of course, by the time we get back, you’ll have got rid of the leaves. But that won’t matter, because that’s not why they’ll fire you. They’ll fire you because you’re stinking drunk. In fact, you stink of it so bad, the city’s thinking of sending a gas sniffer here to check it out.”

“Drunk, he says.” Muller picked up the bottle and then drained it. “What do you expect, in a job like this, with so much hanging around? What’s a man to do with himself all day if he doesn’t drink?”

I was almost ready to agree with him there. The job was boring. I was bored myself. I felt like a calf’s foot in aspic jelly.

Muller looked at the empty bottle and grinned. “Looks like I need another leg to stand on.” Then he looked at me. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you, Gunther?”

“With the intellectual equipment you have, Muller, I can see that it might seem that way. But there’s still a lot I don’t know. Take that joy girl. Did you bring her into the hotel, or did Rubusch?”

“He’s dead, you say?”

I nodded.

“I ain’t surprised. Big fat man, right?”

I nodded again.

“I saw the girl on the stairs and reckoned I could tap the tree for a little trickle-down, you know?” He shrugged. “Who can live on twenty-five marks a week? She said her name was Angela. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I didn’t ask to see her papers. Twenty marks was good enough ID as far as I was concerned.” He grinned. “She was pretty good, too. You don’t see many snappers as good-looking as that one. A real peach, so she was. So, like I said, I ain’t surprised the fat man is dead. I felt my arteries tighten like clams just looking at her.”

“Was that when you saw him? When you saw her?”

“No. I saw him earlier on that evening. In the bar. And then in the Raphael Room.”

“He was one of the Olympic Committee’s party?”

“Yes.”

“And where were you? You were supposed to be keeping an eye on them?”

“What can I tell you?” he said irritably. “They were businessmen, not students. I left them to get on with it. I went to that beer house on the corner of Behrenstrasse and Friedrichstrasse-Pschorr Haus-and got soaked. How was I to know there was going to be trouble?”

“Hope for the best but expect the worst. That’s the job, pal.” I took out my cigarette case and flicked it open in front of his ugly face. “So. What’s it to be? A letter of resignation or Louis Adlon’s Oxford toe cap buried up your arse?”

He took a cigarette. I even lit it for him, just to be sociable.

“All right, you win. I’ll resign. But we ain’t friends.”

“That’s okay. I’ll probably cry a little when I get home tonight, but I think I can live with it.”

I WAS HALFWAY ACROSS THE ENTRANCE HALL when Hedda Adlon winged me with a tilt of her jaw and the sound of my name in full. Hedda Adlon was the only person who ever pronounced my first name as if it really meant what it means: brave bear, although actually there’s some debate that the “hard” part actually means “foolhardy.”

I followed her and the two Pekingese dogs that were always with her into the office of the hotel’s assistant managing director. This was her office, and when her husband, Louis, wasn’t around-and he wasn’t around much when the hunting season got under way-Hedda Adlon was very much in charge.

“So,” she said, closing the door, “what do we know about poor Herr Rubusch? Have you telephoned the police?”

“No, not yet. I was on my way to the Alex when you caught me. I wanted to tell them in person.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

In her early thirties, Hedda Adlon was much younger than her husband. Although she had been born in Germany, she’d spent much of her youth living in America, and she spoke German with a slight American accent. Like Max Reles. Only that was as far as the similarity went. She was blond, with a full German figure. But it was a healthy figure. As healthy as several million marks. You don’t get a healthier figure than that. She enjoyed entertaining and riding-she had been an enthusiastic member of the Berlin fox hunt until Hermann Goering had banned hunting with dogs in Germany-and was very gregarious, which was, I suspected, one of the reasons why the close-lipped Louis Adlon had married her in the first place. She added an extra touch of glamour to the hotel, like a mother-of-pearl inlay on the gates of paradise. She smiled a lot and was good at putting people at their ease and could hold a conversation with anyone. I remembered a dinner at the Adlon in which she was seated next to a Red Indian chief wearing his full native headdress: she spoke to him all evening, as if she’d been talking to the French ambassador. Of course, it’s always possible that he was the French ambassador. The French-especially the diplomats-do like their feathers and their decorations.

“I was going to ask the police if they might handle the matter discreetly, Frau Adlon. On the face of it, Herr Doctor Rubusch, who was married, had been entertaining a young lady in his room shortly before he died. No wife could ever like the news of her widowhood to be delivered with that kind of postscript. Not in my experience. So, for her sake, and the sake of the reputation of the hotel, I was hoping to put the matter straight into the hands of a homicide detective who’s an old friend of mine. Someone who’s equipped with enough human skills to deal sensitively with the case.”