William Kennedy - Very Old Bones

He stole an artificial leg from the hospital where he recuperated, sold the leg to an amputee for two hundred cigarettes, bartered the cigarettes for a live pig, traded the pig to a butcher who supplied the mayor of Darmstadt in exchange for the loan of a Leica and a roll of film, bided his time until he had secretly photographed an American lieutenant colonel in bed with three Fräuleins and a Doberman pinscher, blackmailed the colonel into lending him his automobile, drove to the officers’ quarters and cleaned out another colonel’s vast hoard of medicine, chocolate, uniforms, military insignia, and whiskey, imposed these gifts on a black marketeer known as the King of Mannheim, and earned himself the right to deal in currency for the King, which was his goal from the outset.

The Meister carried a pistol, which was visible in the crotch of his left arm, and as he dropped references to this killing, that murder attempt, I grew wary of getting thick with his mission, which I had yet to understand. But as he unraveled the operation, I again grew comfortable, because I would be dealing with legitimate life: buying money at banks, using legitimate dollars that I could easily have come by legally. I lost my fear and entered into the brilliance of a solvent future, one in which I would crown Giselle the queen of all fortune, and where we would reign as sovereigns of a post-military lif e in the haut monde.

The Meister’s method was a complex cycle of money in motion. On the street he sold marks to Americans for scrip, turned the scrip into greenbacks through a network of American army associates (like myself) by legal means, buying money orders, for instance; then sent me and others to Switzerland with the greenbacks, where we bought German marks at considerably less than their value in the American sector of Germany. Back in Frankfurt we’d take our cut, and the Meister would then sell the marks for scrip at a profit, turn the scrip into greenbacks, and off we’d go again to Switzerland on our moneycycle.

The danger was minimal. Military personnel underwent baggage inspection at the American zone’s exit points, but I had educated luggage and also the inspection of officers was usually perfunctory for officers are honest — except the Captain, who was a grand thief in his heart, a petty thief in his skin. It was he who owned half the marks I first changed with the Meister, and it was he who saw dollar signs in his dreams after I told him of the Meister’s scheme.

What can I say of international currency violation? Not much more than that it’s the rape of the system. The Swiss have been fucking the rest of the world with their secret vaults for generations. What the Meister and I did was to join the game.

It would have taken me years to get rich on this arrangement, but I did finance my marriage and honeymoon, did fulfill the vision of Venice as altar and nuptial bed — Giselle and I afloat on the Grand Canal, stroked along in our gondola of desire, knowing that today is tomorrow, and tomorrow is forever, and that we will be in ecstasy, we will be rich and free, and we will manifest our own destiny forever; and not only will we never die, we will not even grow old. That’s what I told Giselle the night before we returned to Germany and I was arrested by the Military Police.

They interrogated me for two days, then let me go but confined me to quarters, not as a total prisoner, but restricted to one room and the grounds at headquarters Kaserne , where the MPs were billeted. They escorted me to chow and kept checking to see that I hadn’t gone off. Being a married officer, I’d had my own apartment in an army housing project close to the center of the city, but I could no longer live there.

They knew that two other officers were involved with the scam — my boss, the Captain, and Warrant Officer Archie Bell. They transferred Archie to Korea but sent the Captain to cushy London, which led me to believe that the Captain was the informer in the case. Vengeance is my estimate of his motive, since I took Giselle away from him. The police must have known he was dealing, confronted him, and he ratted. And there I was, an upstanding citizen, suddenly thrust among outcasts, thrown into an underworld role for which I had small talent and less stomach.

Right after they checked on me I dressed and left the Kaserne, walked past the guard at the gate and took his salute, then caught a taxi to my apartment, where I changed into my German suit. Giselle was at work and I decided not to leave her a note. I’ve always quested after mystery, and as I studied myself in the mirror I realized that the Orson of the past was gone forever. I took all the cash I had in the drawer, slicked my hair with Vaseline, put on the leather coat I’d bought in emulation of Meister Geld, and stepped out into the Teutonic darkness.

I went looking for the Meister, my first stop being his movie theater. The usher said he’d never heard of anybody named Meister Geld and I realized then that I didn’t know the man’s real name, or if he had one. The usher grew impatient and said if I wanted to go inside I’d have to buy a ticket, and I did.

A military hanging was in process in the film. A much-decorated warrior wearing his uniform and medals ascends to the gallows, and disdains the hood that covers a hanged man’s death gasp. Hangman loops rope around his neck, man proudly strokes his medals, and hangman weeps as trapdoor springs. Close on face of hanged man: tongue out, eyes all but exploded. Hold on face as eyes return to normal, tongue recedes into mouth. View on military guards weeping as they look at hanging man. Close on hanged man, dead and smiling. His eyes suddenly open, his smile widens, and he laughs.

I went up the stairs toward the office by the projection booth. It was as I remembered, but empty: no movie posters, no naked women, no furniture, telephone, or rug. Meister the Magnificent had made himself disappear. The usher came in behind me, said I shouldn’t be up here, and ushered me out into the night. I circled several blocks, looking for the Meister’s car, my peregrinations bringing me eventually to the only other place where I knew to look for him, the Rhineland Bar. It was busy with a mix of men and women, whores and pimps, and I sought my main connection, the sugar whore, but without success. I wanted to see her again expose her scar, the validity of which I had begun to doubt. Was it pasted on? Tattooed? Drawn? Would it run during sex, or come off on your stomach? Would you then be scarred?

Sitting with a whore who was not as attractive as my sugar whore was a corporal from Seventh Army who had worked as a courier for the Meister. All I knew him by was Bosco, which may or may not have been his name. And when I had this thought I realized how very little I knew about any of my co-conspirators. I’d met Bosco in Switzerland, where the Meister had sent him with greenbacks — to deliver to me — for the purchase of German marks, the Meister reasoning that I was the more suave, more cosmopolitan figure to deal with bankers.

Bosco, now in civilian clothes, looked like a character out of the funny sheets of my childhood, Wash Tubbs. He was short with glasses and wiry black curls all over his head. I found him a mix of regular-army rube and bright, wily skuldugger. We’d had drinks on two occasions and talked of the Meister, about whom Bosco was mysterious but portentous. What I took home from him was that the Meister not only dabbled in the black market, the currency conduit, and the flesh exchange, but Bosco also hinted vaguely at the more exalted intrigue of politics. And that implied politics. Was the Meister an agent? A double agent? A provocateur? A hired political killer? I couldn’t say. But that’s how the imagination went.