Eric Norden - The Ultimate Solution

“What did he do?”

“Oh some of the kids and us had been having some fun with a puppy, we had Ma’s shearing scissors, and he stopped us right in the middle and killed the thing off with a stone. What a drag. He had this crazy thing about animals, he thought we shouldn’t have no fun with ’em. A real nut case. We was just foolin, around, it wasn’t even crying loud enough to bother nobody at the tables.”

“What tables?”

“The chess tables, those stone chess tables where all those old creeps go and play. That old tod plays there all the time.”

Kohler glanced at me, his eyes elated. God, this could be it.

“You say he plays there all the time,” Ed said, deliberately sounding a bit bored so the kid wouldn’t sense his interest and try to exploit it. “Is he out there today?”

“Nah, he hasn’t been around for a couple of weeks. Maybe he croaked, who knows. Let’s hope so.”

Shit. Two weeks since he’d visited Penny, two weeks since the kids had seen him in the park. The bastard must know we were on to him, he must be hiding out somewhere. Kohler looked just as disappointed but he kept on trying.

“He hasn’t been back even once in that time?”

“Well, we haven’t seen him and we’re out there most every day unless it rains. His friend’s still around though.”

“His friend?” Ed couldn’t help himself, he spat out the words, and the kid looked up at him with an appraising look in his eyes.

“This is pretty important, hah?”

Kohler just nodded, probably fighting back the urge to take the little brat by the neck and wring the truth out of him.

“So if I tell you about his friend, and maybe where to find him, I’ll get that citation, right?”

“That’s right, son,” Kohler said with saintlike patience.

“And maybe a thousand marks reward, too, hah?”

Kohler must have been gritting his teeth by now, but he nodded. The kid was quiet for a minute, apparently considering the offer, and then he jumped to his feet.

“All right, buddy, you got yourself a deal. Just follow me and I’ll take you right to him, he was out there at the chess tables an hour ago, he should still be there .”

His younger brother looked up from the wriggling hamster.

“Hey, how about me, I saw him too.”

“Fuck you, Bob, this is my operation.”

The other boy spat after us and, for nothing better to do, drove a nail through the pulsing pink belly of the hamster.

The chess tables were over on the eastern edge of the park off MacDougal, shaded by a row of leafy old elms. “He’s still there.” The kid whispered it, even though we were fifty feet away. “The second table. The guy with the dirty blue shirt.”

“You’re sure?” Kohler asked.

“’Course I am,” he sneered. “You think I’d take any chances with a thousand marks?”

“All right, you wait for us here. Come on, Bill.”

We ambled over, looking like two guys out for a pleasant dinnertime stroll, and stopped by the table beside a cluster of kibbitzers. I didn’t know anything about chess, but I could tell our boy was winning by the number of pieces of a different color he’d cleared off the board. Kohler and I positioned ourselves on either side of him, casually, keeping-our eyes on the board like true aficionados. He was a guy of medium build, in his late sixties or early seventies, with white hair that looked like it’d been cut by a lawnmower and a scraggly goatee. He wore an old sweat-stained blue denim work shirt over khaki slacks, and his bare feet were thonged into those cheap leather sandals you find in the artsy-craftsy shops along Eighth Street. They could have used a good washing, too, but then so could the rest of him. I was downwind, in a position to know.

“I’m afraid your rooks are forked,” he said, pushing a piece across the board, and then Ed and I each had him by an arm and were dragging him to his feet.

“Police,” I said, loudly, pulling the Schmeisser out with my free hand and waving it melodramatically in the air. If the Japs were around and waiting to make a play, now was the time, and I hoped our invisible tails were really out there and not holed up in an air-conditioned bar somewhere. But all that happened was that the little knot of onlookers broke and eddied as we shoved through, swinging the old guy along between us, his feet scraping the ground. He didn’t say anything throughout, no protest, nothing, and we got him into the car with no trouble outside of a few surprised exclamations from passersby. The kid ran along after us, and when I’d prodded the old man into the back seat and angled in after him, the gun cocked all the time and trained squarely on his belly, the little snot tried to squeeze into the front seat. Ed shoved him out into the street unceremoniously, but he kept at it.

“Hey you guys, when am I gonna get my thousand marks, we made a deal. I want it now, just like ya promised…”

Ed leaned lazily out the driver’s window and backhanded him across the face, hard. The kid sprawled into the gutter, blood spurting out of his mouth.

“Never try to con a con man,” Kohler told him equably. “There was no citation, and there isn’t going to be any thousand marks.”

Ed must have felt as elated as I did over our first real breakthrough, and maybe that was his way of showing it. A good release for aggression, as Mrs. Gellert would put it.

“Where are we taking him?” I asked as we pulled out into the traffic. The old man wasn’t cowering or begging, in fact he wasn’t doing much of anything, just sitting in the corner staring out the window, as if he were on a Sunday drive.

“Where do you live?” Kohler asked when we stopped for a light at Sixth. He said nothing, and I prodded him in the ribs with the Schmeisser.

“The man asked you a question.”

“At 285 West 12 thStreet, off Hudson.”

The voice was deep, resonant, and didn’t sound frightened. Maybe he was a pro, maybe he just had guts. Maybe both.

“Let’s take him over to his place and check it out,” Kohler said, cutting into Bleecker on Sixth. “Before anybody else beats us to it. You never know what we might find there.”

The same thought was in both our minds, which was why we kicked the door down in the crummy fourth-floor loft, threw the old man ahead of us and went in crouched and with our guns ready. But there was nothing there but some crummy furniture and an assortment of junk that must have taken years to collect, ranging from one of those old bubble vending machines that used to dispense gum and candy to an ancient sundial. Empty pint bottles of cheap whisky and raw muscatel were strewn over the floor and the place smelled like a cross between a distillery and a locker room. The bed was just a soiled mattress, and Kohler and I picked the old man up from the floor where he’d fallen and threw him onto it.

“If this guy is a Nip agent,” I said sotto voce as we propped the door back into place, “he’s either acting his part well or the Empire’s fallen on hard times.”

“He could be just an acquaintance of the Jew. The kid said they played chess together, maybe that’s all there is to it. But we’ve got to act on the assumption he knows something, and try to get it out of him.”

We walked over to the mattress and stood over the old man, who was rubbing his shoulder tentatively.

“Look, mister,” Kohler said in a friendly tone, “we’re not going to hurt you if we can help it. In fact, if you’re clear on this there’s some money in it for you, enough to keep you in decent booze for six months. So just cooperate, and we’ll get along fine.”

He dragged over a rickety kitchen chair and straddled it backwards, facing the old man. I stood back and at an angle, covering them and the door both, just in case.