Ira Levin - Boys from Brazil

The five were the same as the other eight. Different, but the same. Klaus reported that the Widow Schreiber had propositioned him.

A few more clippings came in, with a note from Beynon: Afraid I can’t justify this to London any longer. Has anything come of it?

Liebermann called him; he was out.

But he returned the call an hour later.

“No, Sydney,” Liebermann said, “it was only wild geese. Thirteen I checked, out of seventeen that could have been. Not one was a man the Nazis would plan to kill. But it’s good I checked, and I’m only sorry that I put you to so much trouble.”

“Not a bit of it. The boy hasn’t turned up yet?”

“No. I had a letter from his father. He’s been down there twice, in Brazil, and twice to Washington; he doesn’t want to give up.”

“Pity. Let me know if he finds anything.”

“I will. And thank you again, Sydney.”

None of the final few clippings was a possible. Which was just as well. Liebermann turned his attention to a letter-writing campaign aimed at getting the West German government to renew attempts to extradite Walter Rauff—responsible for the gassing of ninety-seven thousand women and children and living then (and now) under his own name in Punta Arenas, Chile.

In January of 1975 Liebermann went to the United States for what was to have been a two-month speaking tour, a counterclockwise circuit of the eastern half of the country starting and ending in New York City. His lecture bureau had booked seventy-odd engagements for him, some at colleges and universities and the majority in temples and at luncheon meetings of Jewish groups. Before being sent on the tour he was escorted to Philadelphia and put on a television program (along with a health-food expert, an actor, and a woman who had written an erotic novel; but invaluable and hard-to-arrange publicity, Mr. Goldwasser of the bureau assured him).

On Thursday evening, January 14th, Liebermann spoke at Congregation Knesses Israel in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A woman who had brought a paperback copy of his book for him to autograph said as he wrote in it that she was from Lenox, not Pittsfield.

“Lenox?” he asked. “That’s near here?”

“Seven miles,” she said, smiling. “I’d have come if it were seventy.”

He smiled and thanked her.

November 16th: Curry, Jack; Lenox, Massachusetts. He hadn’t brought the list with him but it was there in his head.

That night, in the guest room of the congregation’s president, he lay awake, listening to snowflakes patting at the windowpanes. Curry. Something with taxes, an assessor or auditor. Killed in a hunting accident, someone’s wild shot. Aimed shot?

He had checked. Thirteen out of seventeen. Including the three on October 16th. But only seven miles? The bus ride to Worcester wouldn’t take more than two hours, and he didn’t have to be there till dinnertime. Even after dinnertime in a pinch…

Early the next morning he borrowed his hostess’s car, a big Oldsmobile, and drove to Lenox. Five inches of snow had fallen and more was coming down, but the roads were only thinly covered. Bulldozers pushed snow aside; other machines threw snow away in rushing arches. Incredible; back home everything would have been stopped dead.

In Lenox he found that no one had admitted shooting Jack Curry. And no, off the record, Police Chief DeGregorio wasn’t sure it had been an accident. The hit had been suspiciously clean; smack through the back of the red hunting cap. That seemed more like good aim than bad luck. But Curry had been dead five or six hours when he had been found, and the area had then been walked over by at least a dozen people; so what could the police have been expected to find? Not even the shell had turned up. They had nosed around for someone with a grudge against Curry, but hadn’t found anyone. He had been a fair and even-handed assessor, a respected and well-liked townsman. Had he belonged to any international group or organization? The Rotary; beyond that, Liebermann would have to ask Mrs . Curry. But DeGregorio didn’t think she’d want to talk much; he heard she was still pretty broken up about it.

At midmorning Liebermann sat in a small untidy kitchen, sipping weak tea from a chipped mug and feeling miserable because Mrs. Curry was going to cry any minute. Like Emil Döring’s widow, she was in her early forties, but that was the only resemblance: Mrs. Curry was lank and homely, with boyishly chopped brown hair; sharp-shouldered and flat-chested in a faded floral housedress. And grieving. “ No one would have wanted to kill him,” she insisted, massaging below her flooding eyes with reddened crack-nailed fingertips. “He was…the finest man on God’s green earth. Strong, and good, and patient, forgiving; he was a… rock , and now—Oh God! I—I’m—” And she cried; took a crumpled paper napkin and pressed it to one streaming eye and the other, laid her forehead on her hand, her sharp elbow on the tabletop; sobbed and shook.

Liebermann put his tea down and leaned forward helplessly.

She apologized in her crying.

“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s all right.” A big help. Seven miles through snow he had come, to start this woman crying. Thirteen out of seventeen wasn’t enough?

He sat back, sighed, and waited; looked about dispiritedly at the small streaky-yellow kitchen with its dirty dishes and old refrigerator, carton of empty bottles by the back door. Wild Goose Number Fourteen. A fern in a red glass on the windowsill behind the sink, a can of Ajax. A drawing of an airplane, a 747, taped to a cabinet door; pretty good from where he sat. A cereal box on the counter, Cheerios.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Curry said, wiping her nose with the napkin. Her wet hazel eyes looked at Liebermann.

“I’ll only ask a few questions, Mrs. Curry,” he said. “Did he belong to any international group or organization of men his own age?”

She shook her head, lowered the napkin. “American groups,” she said. “The Legion, Amvets, Rotary—no, that’s international. The Rotary Club. That’s the only one.”

“He was a World War Two veteran?”

She nodded. “The Air Force. He won the D.F.C., the Distinguished Flying Cross.”

“In Europe?”

“The Far East.”

“This one is personal, but I hope you won’t mind. He left his money to you ?”

Cautiously she nodded. “There’s not too much…”

“Where was he born?”

“In Berea, Ohio.” She looked beyond him, and with an effortful smile said, “What are you doing out of bed?” He looked around. The Döring boy stood in the doorway. Emil, no, Erich Döring, gaunt and sharp-nosed, his dark hair disordered; in blue-and-white-striped pajamas, barefoot. He scratched his chest, looking curiously at Liebermann.

Liebermann rose, surprised; said “ Guten Morgen ” and realized as he said it—and the boy nodded and came into the room—that Emil Döring and Jack Curry had known each other . They must have; how else could the boy be visiting? With growing excitement he turned to Mrs. Curry and asked, “How does this boy come to be here?”

“He has the flu,” she said. “And there’s no school anyway because of the snow. This is Jack junior. No, don’t come too close, hon. This is Mr. Liebermann from Vienna, in Europe. He’s a famous man. Oh, where are your slippers , Jack? What do you want?”

“A glass of grapefruit juice,” the boy said. In perfect English. An accent like Kennedy’s.

Mrs. Curry stood up. “Honest to Pete,” she said, “you’re going to outgrow them before you ever wear them! And with the flu!” She went to the refrigerator.