Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

“I don’t know, Max. If I did it, I’d have to do it my way. Straight or not at all.”

“Didn’t you hear me saying that’s what I want? There’s no other way but straight for a business like this.”

“I’m serious. No interference. I report to you and no one else.”

“You got it.”

“What would I do? Give me an example.”

“One of the things I want you to do right away is take charge of the hirings and the firings. There’s a pit boss I want you to fire. He’s a faggot, and I don’t like faggots working in my hotel. Also, I want you to handle all the interviews for any positions in the hotel and casino that come up. You got a nose for these things, Gunther. A cynical bastard like you will want to make certain that we’re hiring honest, straight people. That’s not always so easy. You can get a lot of smoke blown in your eyes. For instance. I pay top money here. Better than any other hotel in Havana. Which means that most of the girls who want to work here-and it’s mainly girls I hire, because that’s what the customers want to see-well, they will do anything for a job. And I mean anything. Only that’s not always so good for business, see? And it’s not always so good for me. I’m only human, and that amount of major fucking temptation is not what I want in my life right now. I’m through with all of that fucking around. You know why? Because I’m going to marry Dinah, that’s why.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“Does she know?”

“Of course she knows, you nudnik. The girl’s meshugge about me and I feel the same way about her. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re going to say-I’m old enough to be her father. Don’t start with the gray hair and false teeth again, like last night, because this is the real thing. I’m going to marry her, and then I’m going to use all my show-business connections to help make that girl a movie star.”

“What about Brown?”

“Brown? What’s Brown?”

“That’s the university Noreen wants her to go to.”

Reles grimaced. “That’s what Noreen wants for Noreen. Not for Dinah. Dinah wants to be in motion pictures. I already introduced her to Sinatra. George Raft. Nat King Cole. Did Noreen tell you the girl can sing?”

“No.”

“With her talent and my connections, Dinah can be pretty much anything she wants.”

“Does that include being happy?”

Reles winced. “Including being happy, yeah. God damn it, Gunther, you’re a hard fucking bastard. Why is that?”

“I’ve had a lot of practice. More than you, perhaps. And I guess that’s saying something. I’m not going to give you the whole lousy résumé, Max. But by the time the war ended, I’d already seen and done a few things that would have given Jiminy Cricket a heart attack. The conscience I’d started out in with life grew a couple of extra layers, like the skin on my feet. Then I was a houseguest of the Soviets for two years in one of their rest homes for exhausted German POWs. I learned a lot from the Ivans about good hospitality. But only what it isn’t. When I escaped I killed two people. That was a pleasure. Like it never was before. And you can take that to mean whatever you want. After that I ran a hotel of my own until my second wife died in a lunatic asylum. I wasn’t cut out for that. I might as well have tried running a finishing school in Switzerland for young English ladies. Come to think of it, I wish I had. I could have finished quite a few, forever. Good manners, German courtesy, charm, hospitality-I come up short on all of those, Max. I make hard bastards feel good about themselves. They meet me and then go home and read their Bibles and thank God they’re not me. So what makes you think I’m up to this?”

“You really want to know?” He shrugged. “All those years ago. The boat on Lake Tegel? You remember that?”

“How could I forget?”

“I told you then I liked you, Gunther. I told you then that I’d thought of offering you a job, only I had no use for an honest man.”

“I remember. The whole evening is still etched on my eyeballs.”

“Well, now I have a use for one. It’s as simple as that, pal. I need a man of character. Pure and simple.”

A person of character, he said. A mensch, he said. I had my doubts. Would a mensch have helped Max Reles to silence Othman Weinberger by handing the American the means to destroy Weinberger’s career, and possibly his life, too? After all, it was I who had told Reles about Weinberger’s Achilles’ heel: that the little Gestapo man from Würzburg was suspected, wrongly, of being a Jew. And it was I who had told Max Reles about Emil Linthe, the forger, and how a man like Linthe might bribe his way in the public records office and give another man like Weinberger a Jewish transfusion just as easily as he’d given me an Aryan one. In my own defense, I could argue that I’d done all of that to protect Noreen Charalambides from being murdered by Max’s brother. But what character was left to a man who’d done something like that? A mensch? No, I was anything but that.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll take the job.”

“You will?” Max Reles sounded surprised. He stared at me for a while with narrowing eyes. “So now I’m curious. What was it persuaded you?”

“Maybe we’re more alike than I care to admit. Maybe it was the thought of that brother of yours and what he might do to me with an ice pick if I said no. How is the kid?”

“Dead.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. The kid turned rat on some friends of mine to save his own skin. He sent six guys to the electric chair. Including someone I went to school with. But he was a canary who couldn’t fly. Abe was about to finger a boss when he got himself thrown out of a high window of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island in November 1941.”

“You know who did it?”

“He was in protective custody at the time, so, sure, I know. And one day I’ll take my revenge on these guys. Blood is blood, after all, and there never was any permission asked or given. But right now it wouldn’t be good for business.”

“Sorry I asked.”

Reles nodded grimly. “And I’d appreciate it if you never asked me about it again.”

“I already forgot the question. Listen, we Germans are good at forgetting all kinds of things. We’ve spent the last nine years trying to forget there ever was a man called Adolf Hitler. Believe me, if you can forget him, you can forget anything.”

Reles grunted.

“One name I do remember,” I said. “Avery Brundage. What ever happened to him?”

“Avery? We kind of fell out after he got himself on the America First committee to keep the U.S. out of the war. It made a change from trying to keep Jews out of Chicago country clubs. But that slippery bastard’s done all right for himself. He’s made millions of dollars. His construction company built a large chunk of Chicago’s gold coast: Lake Shore Drive. At one stage he was going to run as a candidate for governor of Illinois until certain people in Chicago told him to stick to sports administration. You might say we’re competitors these days. He owns the La Salle Hotel in Chicago. The Cosmopolitan in Denver. The Hollywood Plaza in California. And a large chunk of Nevada.” Reles nodded. “Life’s been kind to Avery. Recently he got himself elected as president of the International Olympic Committee.”

“I suppose you made a fortune in 1936.”

“Sure. But so did Avery. After the Olympics were over, he got himself a contract from the Nazis to build the new German embassy in Washington. That was payback from a grateful Führer for heading off an American boycott. He must have made millions. And I didn’t see a cent of it.” Reles grinned. “But it was all a long time ago. Dinah’s the best thing that’s happened to me since then. She’s a hell of a girl.”