Eric Norden - The Ultimate Solution

I lurched to the desk and called Kohler’s office number at Gestapo headquarters, but there was no answer. I glanced at my watch. It was almost eight-thirty, I’d slept longer than I’d thought. I tried Beck’s extension with no more luck, then rang the duty officer. I got the same guy who’d checked me in last night, which helped, but it still took me five minutes of wheedling to get Kohler’s home number and address. He should be there by now, he had to be. Our one chance was to follow our original plan and let the whole goddamn Gestapo in on this. If that didn’t buy us immunity, nothing would.

I’d already dialed the first five digits when I realized his private number would be under Komeito surveillance too. Shit, I might as well call up the Imperial Mission. Kohler lived way out in Brooklyn, Bay Ridge, but I could get there in an hour and with any luck he could alert a dozen sub-agents tonight and rope the rest in first thing tomorrow. I felt a little stirring of hope, but not much. Things were spinning out of control, badly out of control.

I checked the Schmeisser’s action, slipped an extra clip into my side pocket, and went down to the squad room. Touhy and Henderson were playing cards and swilling beer, both of them far too short. A patrolman I knew by sight was filling out his duty roster in the corner, a shade taller than me but he’d have to do. I ordered him to strip, and Touhy and Henderson stared at me like I’d gone freudy. But Callender had spread the word about my authorization so neither of them said anything, and when the bewildered rookie tried to put up an argument I just pulled rank fast and hard. Ten minutes later I left the precinct swinging my nightstick, cap pulled down as far over my forehead as it would go, just another uniformed cop changing shifts. At least, I hoped that was the way it looked to whoever was watching for a plainclothes detective named Bill Haider.

The minute I reached Fifth I hailed a cruising cab, hoping for the best, I’d told the desk to dispatch an unmarked car to the corner of Eighty-fifth and First and just to be on the safe side I changed cabs twice on the way, leaving the first one at Amsterdam and Sixty-ninth, then ducking in and out of the Seventy-second Street subway station and grabbing another by the Seventy-third Street exit. When I took over the plain blue Porsche from Tolloffson I was sure I’d managed to shake any tail, but as an added precaution I took evasive maneuvers along a half-dozen nearly deserted East Side streets. Nobody stayed even close. For the first time in two days I could be sure I was on my own. It was a good feeling.

I took the Horst Wessel Drive down to the bridge, still clogged with homebound traffic, and crawled across to Brooklyn. The sun was going down over Jersey, shrouded in a murky haze of pollution, and it was as muggy as ever. A few fat raindrops dribbled sluggishly from the overcast sky, and there were angry thunderclouds rolling to the west. The weather suited my mood, if nothing else.

On Flatbush I pulled up next to a cabbie and got directions to Bay Ridge, out through Prospect Park and across Ocean Avenue into the Himmler Parkway. It took me less than twenty minutes but then I made the wrong turnoff and got screwed up around Dykjer Heights, which cost me another half hour, and by the time I pulled up around the corner from Kohler’s tree-lined residential street it was almost ten. The rain had started to fall in earnest, which didn’t help any, and I had to walk two blocks to find a pay phone. As I searched through my water-logged pockets for a five-pfennig piece, I prayed Kohler was in. He wasn’t.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t expect him back for a while yet.” Her voice was high, a bit nasal. “Who did you say this was?”

I hadn’t, but somewhere a little monkey-faced Jap with earphones would be anxious to know.

“Beck, Pete Beck, Mrs. Kohler,” I lied, hoping she didn’t know his voice. “I’m calling from headquarters. Ed and I are working on a case together and I need to check something out with him…”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Beck, my husband has spoken of you. Well, he should be home in an hour or so, but if it’s important you could ring him at Ernie’s, that’s a little bar here in the neighborhood, he went over about nine for a few drinks.” Her voice grew querulous. “I do wish you people wouldn’t work him so hard, Mr. Beck, I’ve really never seen Edward so tired, and edgy at the same time…”

I tried to hide my impatience. “Do. you have that address, Mrs. Kohler?”

“Well no, no I don’t but it’s in the book, just a few blocks from here over on Shore Road.”

I thanked her and hung up, then scrabbled anxiously through the Brooklyn directory. Hell, I could understand why Kohler wanted a drink, a bottle for that matter, but why couldn’t he stay put tonight of all nights? I found Ernie’s, thought of calling, then decided to go directly over. I just hoped to hell he wasn’t soused yet.

The rain was letting up a bit by the time I found the joint, but I was already soaked to the bone. And my luck wasn’t running any better. The bartender said Kohler had just left.

1 got into the car and cruised slowly back along the way I’d come, finally spotting him on the same corner where I’d parked earlier. He was walking slowly despite the rain, a brown paper bag tucked under one arm. Booze, probably, to help sleep come. Poor Ed, he really believed he was off the hook.

As he started to cross the street toward his house I got out and followed him, calling out his name, softly at first, then louder when he didn’t turn around. We were about thirty yards apart when he finally looked back, squinting against the rain, and the headlights caught him square, pinning him like a moth. Before I could even shout, the car hurtled out of the shadows and struck him head on, flinging his body up and over the hood to land with a dull thud ten feet behind. He lay there in a crumpled heap, unmoving, but the car reversed slowly, and then with a sudden burst of speed backed over his body. There was a sickening crunch feat I could hear from thirty yards away, then another as the car ground forward across what was left of him and screeched off up the street. As it cornered I could see the driver’s face briefly but clearly in the yellow pool from the street lamp, mouth tight, eyes boring straight ahead. They didn’t turn in my direction as the car sped off, and I lowered the Schmeisser. The driver was Pete Beck.

It was pure reflex that sent me back to the car and after him, nothing more, and I would have lost the trail quickly if he hadn’t been returning to Manhattan by the same route I’d followed coming over. Even then it was a sloppy tail, and the only thing I had going for me was the bastard’s own self-confidence; Beck must have been doing the following, and the killing, for so long now he just couldn’t imagine the tables being turned on him. The rain helped some too, but it obscured my visibility as well as his, and I lost sight of him a half-dozen times before I caught a glimpse of the black Mercedes Rommel cutting off the Drive at Eighty-sixth Street. From then on it was fairly easy, and I kept a safe two cars behind until he pulled up on the corner of Ninety-eighth and Lexington, a block of fairly expensive townhouses. I sat hunched over the wheel, keeping a low profile, as Beck got out and headed up the street, stopping to look back and around, but only perfunctorily.

The rain was coming down hard again, drumming on the sidewalk and covering my footsteps as I followed him, and the only real risk came when he was opening the door of the old reconverted brownstone in the middle of the block. I had to cross the street before he could get inside so I ran then, quickly but softly, and he was pulling the key out of the lock when the butt of my Schmeisser slapped him hard over the right ear, the force of the blow sprawling him forward into the entranceway. I shut the door quickly and stood over him with the gun, listening for any signs of activity inside the house. There was nothing but Beck’s low, guttural groaning. I bent over him expecting anything, but he was in no shape to make trouble. Blood gurgled from an open wound on his head and he began to retch convulsively, spewing a little puddle of bile onto the parquet floor. I relieved him of his gun and frisked him, but there was only the one weapon, a bulky Walther P38 automatic. The groans were trailing off now and he started to crawl across the floor, breathing shallowly. When he managed to pull himself to one knee I waved the Schmeisser in his face.