Eric Norden - The Ultimate Solution

It started out bad, and got worse. An air-raid siren shrilled me awake and I fumbled the phone off the receiver, croaked something to the duty operator and slumped back into sleep. An hour later some subliminal guilt mechanism clawed me up to consciousness and I managed to scrabble a Picayune out of the crumpled pack on the nightstand, light it and shove it between my teeth, no mean logistics job. The room was hot, still sour with stale cigarette smoke and schnappes. I forced myself up, turned the cooler to high, then lurched into the head, shaved bloodily, and writhed for five minutes under an icy shower. Shit, what a night. Nothing registered after that dive on Bleeker, the two dumb greedy blondes, the fat one trying to grope my balls. The miserable sow. There could have been trouble, but I checked the Schmeisser Special before tucking it into my belly clip and there were no expended rounds. I shrugged on a short-sleeved nip sports shirt over my slacks and rifled through the jumble of bills on the dresser. Sixty-five gone, half a week’s take-home. For what? 1 tossed a lightweight jacket over my arm and took it all out on the door.

Outside, I felt a little better. It was still hot but some of the humidity had drained out of the air overnight and there was a feeble breeze stirring. I decided to walk it, more for therapy than anything else, and cut crosstown , along Seventh Avenue to Central Park South, feeling a little more human as the fresh air hit me. Two sailors were haggling with a hansom cab driver by the fountain outside the Plaza, and I walked through the park to the zoo past a parade of starched nurses wheeling prams and mothers dragging kids with pastel balloons moored to their grubby paws. I cut across to Fifth at the Sixty-sixth Street exit, leaving what little green was left in Manhattan behind for another day, thinking it would be a good morning to take off and just lie in the Sheep Meadow under the sun, or maybe hire a rowboat and drift across the lake. My spirits dropped again, and my belly churned in protest as I dragged in harsh lungfuls of smoke.

When I reached the precinct I was already an hour late, so I said screw it, and walked on to Sweeney’s on the corner of Third and Seventy-fifth, picking up black coffee and orange juice at the counter and steering my tray to a corner table where I’d spotted Kappy hiding behind the News. Its headlines screamed a double rape-murder in Queens, which made me feel a little bit better, since somebody else had problems too. Kappy looked up and grimaced. He was unshaven, still in uniform.

“What happened to you?”

“Don’t ask. You just go off?”

“Nine-thirty.” He folded the paper and tossed it on an empty chair. “You want me to go back and clear the roster?”

“No, fuck it.” My pack was empty so I took one of Kappy’s. “It’s the first time in months, nobody’s gonna grab my ass. What’s happening?”

He drained his coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand.

“Not much. A couple of b and e’s in the Eighties, a warehouse lift, just small potatoes, and some 311s in the park. Why the hell anybody goes in there after dark I’ll never know. And yeah, the Iberian Ambassador’s car, a Mercedes, they pulled it right under his nose, double-parked outside his apartment house on Fifth. The doorman says he didn’t see a thing.”

“Joy ride?”

“Pro, it looks like. We swept midtown and had it on the relay. Nothing. Damn thing’s probably getting sprayed in Jersey right now. So what are we supposed to do? Let him make a diplomatic incident out of it if he wants to.”

“Am I supposed to tell him that?”

“Locurto’s got it now. You weren’t so dumb coming in late.”

I finished my coffee, looked at the time, and sighed.

“Back to the thin blue line. See you tonight?”

Kappy nodded resignedly and returned to his paper.

Callender was duty officer this week and as I came in he called me over to the desk, his eyes speculative and alert.

“You got visitors, Lieutenant, been here a half hour or so. I let ’em wait in your office. Official visitors,” he added quickly.

“Centre Street?”

He smiled.

“Not that easy. Washington.”

“Our friendly Gestapo?”

He nodded, enjoying every moment.

It was going to be one of those days. The last time I’d worked with the feds was on the Toronto thing, and I’d prayed that really would be the last time. I ground my cigarette underfoot, put on what I hoped was a sufficiently steely-eyed expression, and walked down the corridor to my office.

There were three of them, and they’d made themselves right at home. Ed Kohler, a heavy-set guy in his mid-forties whom I’d gotten to know during the Toronto mess, was seated behind my desk, a plastic carton of coffee in front of him, and another guy was sprawled on the old couch picking at his cuticles with a nail file. A little old prune-faced man in a rumpled double-breasted suit and shiny black turtleneck perched on the chair by the window, a decrepit briefcase balanced on his knees. He must have been at least seventy, and his shock of off-white hair had deposited a light film of dandruff on his shoulders. I waved to Kohler, who was a pretty good sort, not as gung-ho as most of them, and he got up with a smile and shook my hand, then gestured toward the man on the couch.

“Special Agent Beck, Peter Beck, he’s with our New York office.”

Beck unwound his lanky frame and ambled over to shake my hand. He had thinning sandy hair and pale, slightly hyperthyroid blue eyes that didn’t blink once as they neatly scanned and filed me. He was dressed with the same studied anonymity as Kohler, dark suit, white shirt, sober silk knit tie, neatly knotted, a sliver of crisp white handkerchief in the breast pocket. Even their plainclothes were a uniform. Kohler gestured to the old man in the corner.

“And that’s Professor von Leeb, from the Seidlitz Institute.”

The Professor jumped to his feet and snapped a spindly arm into the air. I was a bit taken back, since nobody really salutes anymore except on holidays, but I mumbled a perfunctory heil and flapped my right hand up, feeling silly.

“The Professor’s just flown in from Berlin,” Kohler said meaningfully. “He’s in New York on official business.”

Kohler took the leather chair facing the desk as I settled myself, pretending to shuffle some papers on the blotter while I thought quickly. Okay, a VIP despite his looks, but what was he doing in the 23 rdPrecinct? I hoped his car hadn’t been lifted too.

“I’ve explained how you helped us with that Toronto business, Bill, and the discretion you showed then.” Kohler spoke slowly, carefully, and I couldn’t miss the caution in his voice. “The Professor is assured you’ll exercise the same discretion in the matter that concerns us now.”

I nodded, in place of anything better to do.

Von Leeb looked at me intently, his little bird-eyes bright. “Those priests, you have no more trouble?” His voice was shrill, laced with a strong Bavarian accent, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in the scarecrow neck as he spoke.

“No,” I answered evenly, “there’s been no more trouble.” Christ, half the Nips in Canada had been purged. “The Imperial Mission granted us full cooperation, and it’s understood the Emperor’s protection extends only to Christians in the Home Islands.”

The old man bounced on his seat.

“Soon it shall not extend even there!” His withered hands, mottled with liver marks, danced angrily on the briefcase. Apparently he went along with the Contraxists and wasn’t afraid to say so, which meant he was either very dumb or very high-placed, and in either case I wasn’t going to take him up on it. I looked at Kohler, almost in appeal.