Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

I opened the bathroom door and switched on the light.

“Take the key out of the door,” she said. “And put it back in the lock on this side of the door.”

Besides, Dora was an ex-whore. Probably still was a whore. And whores are less particular about shooting people. Especially men. Myra Scheidemann was a whore who had shot three of her clients in the head with a thirty-two while they were having sex in a forest. Sometimes I get the feeling that a lot of whores don’t much like men. This one was giving every impression that she didn’t mind putting a bullet in me. So I took the key and put it in the lock on the other side of the door, just as she’d told me to do.

“Now close the door.”

“And miss the show?”

“Don’t make me prove I can handle a gun.”

“Perhaps you should try for the Olympic shooting team. I don’t think you’d have any problem impressing the selectors, dressed like that. Of course, pinning a medal on your chest might prove to be difficult. Although you could always use an ice pick.”

Dora lengthened her arm, took very deliberate aim at my head, and steadied the Mauser.

“All right, all right.” I kicked the door shut, angry with myself for not thinking to bring the little automatic I’d taken from Erich Goerz. Hearing the key turn in the lock, I pressed my ear to the door and tried to continue the conversation.

“I thought we were friends, Dora. After all, it was me who got you the job with Max Reles. Remember? It was me who gave you the chance to climb off the sledge.”

“By the time you and I met, Gunther, Max was already a client. You just gave me a chance to be here with him legitimately. I told you before. I love being in big hotels like this one.”

“I remember. You like the big bathrooms.”

“And whoever said I wanted to get off the sledge?”

“You did. And I believed you.”

“Then you’re a pretty poor judge of character, aren’t you? Max thinks you’re all over him like fleas, but I think you’ve just been pinning the tail on the donkey. And got lucky. Max thinks that because you went to Würzburg you must know everything. But I don’t think so. How could you?”

“As a matter of interest, how did he find out? That I’d gone to Würzburg.”

“Frau Adlon told him. After your trip to Potsdam, he was wondering where you were. And so he asked her. He told her he wanted to give you a reward for finding that Chinese box. Of course, as soon as he knew you were there, he guessed you were on your way to check up on him. With the widow Rubusch or the Gestapo. Maybe both.”

“The Gestapo didn’t seem particularly interested in Reles and his activities,” I said.

“I suppose that’s why they asked the FBI for information about Max.” Dora laughed. “Yes, I thought that would shut you up. Max got a telegram from his brother in America passing on a tip from someone in the FBI saying that the FBI had received a request for information about him from the Gestapo in Würzburg. You see, Max has friends in the FBI just like he’s got a lot of useful friends here. He’s clever like that.”

“Is that right?”

I glanced around the bathroom. I might have kicked out the window and climbed down to the street but for the fact that the bathroom didn’t have a window. I needed the gun behind the panel. I glanced around for the screwdriver and then opened the four bathroom cabinets. “You know, Max is not going to be very happy when he comes back here and finds me in his bathroom,” I said. “For one thing, he’s not going to be able to use his own toilet.”

There wasn’t much in the cabinets. Most of the man’s toiletries were on the bathroom shelf or on the side of the sink. In one cabinet were a bottle of Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass and some Charbert Grand Prix men’s cologne. They looked like a perfect couple. In another I found a bag containing some rather vulgar-looking dildos, a blond wig, some expensive-looking lingerie, and a diamond tiara that was obviously paste. No one leaves a real one in a bathroom cabinet. Not when the hotel has a perfectly good safe. Of a screwdriver, however, there was no sign.

“It gives Max a real problem about what to do with me. I mean, he can hardly kill me here in the Adlon, can he? I’m not the type to sit still and have my ears syringed with an ice pick. And the noise of a gunshot is going to attract some attention and require some explaining. But make no mistake, Dora, he’s going to have to kill me. And you’ll be an accessory to murder.”

Of course, by now I had realized the significance of the wig, and the tiara, and the Blue Grass perfume. I was reluctant to mention this to Dora, as I still hoped she might be persuaded to cooperate with me. But with each passing minute it was becoming clear that I had little choice now but to scare her into cooperation with what I now knew about her.

“Except that you’ve got no problem with being an accessory to murder, have you, Dora? Because you’ve already helped out with one murder, haven’t you? It was you that Heinrich Rubusch was with the night Max killed him with that ice pick. You were the blond in the tiara, weren’t you? Didn’t the guy mind when you showed him your mouse? That you weren’t a natural blond?”

“He was like any other Fritz when he sees a bit of mouse. All he cared about was that it squeaked when he stroked it.”

“Please tell me that Max didn’t kill him while you were doing it.”

“What’s it to you, anyway? He made no noise. There wasn’t even any blood. Well, maybe just a bit. Max blotted it up with the guy’s pajama jacket. But you couldn’t even see a mark. Incredible, really. And, believe me, he didn’t feel a thing. Couldn’t have. Which is more than I can say. Rubusch wanted a racehorse, not a girl. I had the marks of his hairbrush on my backside for days afterward. If you ask me, the fat pervert had it coming.”

“But the door was locked from the inside when we found him. The key was still in the door.”

“You opened it, didn’t you? I locked it the same way. Lots of hotel whores carry passkeys or key turners. Or know how to get hold of one. Sometimes a client pays you off without a tip. Sometimes they peel some leaves off a bush that’s too tempting to leave behind. So you wait outside for a while, and then go back in and help yourself to more money. Some hotel detective you are, Gunther. The other bull. What was his name? The drunk. Muller. He knew the score. It was him that sold me a key turner and a good passkey. And in return, well, you can imagine what he wanted. The first time, anyway. On the night Max killed Rubusch, I bumped into him, and was obliged to pin some notes on his coat.”

“Which were some of the same notes you’d been given by Rubusch.”

“Of course.”

By now I had given up looking for the screwdriver. And I was scrutinizing my change to see if I had a coin thin enough to fit the screw head on the cistern panel. I didn’t. I did have a sterling-silver money clip-a wedding present from my late wife-and I spent several minutes using that to try to loosen one of the screws; but I succeeded only in mangling the clip’s corner. The way things were looking, very soon I was going to have a chance to apologize to my wife, if not in person, then something vaguely similar.

Dora Bauer had stopped talking. Which was fine. Every time she said something it reminded me of how stupid I’d been. I picked up the tooth glass, washed it out, poured myself a generous measure of Korn, and sat down on the toilet. Things always look a little better over a drink and a cigarette.

You’re in a spot, Gunther, I told myself. In a short while, a man is going to come through that door with a gun, and he’s going to either shoot you or try to walk you out of the hotel and shoot you somewhere else. Of course, he might try to hit you over the head and then kill you with that ice pick, and take you out of here in a laundry basket. He’s been staying here for quite a while. He should know where everything is by now. How things work here.