Dead Man's Tale (8 page)

Later, Goody phoned a friend who drove them home to Mineola, where they spent the night at Lou's apartment.

That was where the dream ended, but there was more than the dream involved.

Two days later Steve was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder. The grand jury was unable to present a prima-facie case against him, and he was released. The fact that Chicken Little—who drew a life sentence—implicated him didn't matter legally.

Section 399 of the Criminal Code of the State of New York states: “A conviction cannot be had upon the testimony of an accomplice, unless he is corroborated by such other evidence as tends to connect the defendant with the commission of the crime.”

The boys who were left in the garbage-hauling business paid Barney Street his price. Joey Imparato's two towns were taken over. They were well satisfied.

But a week before Joey Imparato died with six bullets from Chicken Little's revolver in his body, Estelle Street had overheard a conversation between her husband and her one-time lover. While she was quietly making herself a drink in the living room, she had heard it all from the adjoining dining room.

Estelle knew she shouldn't have overheard that conversation, so she put her coat on, slammed the door and came in a second time with a loud, cheerful greeting.

Estelle waited six months before she told Steve. Now, in Lucerne, with the dream bringing it all back, Steve broke out in a cold sweat as he paced the floor.

Would he kill Milo Hacha? Could he?

The door opened and Andy came in. His face was flushed; he looked happy. He had been sobered by the events in Holland, but most of the time Andy had seemed to regard their European trip as a jaunt. That was all right with Steve. All Andy knew was that they had to find a man named Hacha because of Barney Street's will. As for the real purpose of the trip, to kill Hacha if he was alive …

“What are you doing up?” Andy asked.

“One of those nights. I couldn't sleep. How'd it go, kid?”

“How'd what go?”

“You know, with the Ohlendorf broad. You saw her, didn't you?”

“Yes,” Andy said. “I saw her.”

“Well, is she going to talk or isn't she? Does she know where Hacha went?” Steve licked his dry lips. “We been in Lucerne eight days now. You like it here? You want to settle down or something?”

“Hey, take it easy.”

“I didn't mean to yell at you.”

“Okay.”

“Don't tell me,” Steve said suddenly, “you've made time with her already.”

“Did I say that?” Andy tried not to sound belligerent.

“You look it. What is it, love? What are you so close-mouthed about, Andy?”

“Let's say there are some things I don't like to kick around,” Andy said shortly. “Even with my brother. Now how about hitting it, Steve? We're both bushed.”

“You know when I get like this I can't sleep,” Steve said. “Anyway, this works out great. You oughtn't to have any trouble pumping the broad now.”

“She's not a broad!” Andy heard himself yelling.

“Okay, okay.”

Andy sat down on the edge of his bed and began to undress. “Steve. Suppose I find out about Milo Hacha—say, tomorrow. What's on the programme when I do?”

Andy looked up. Steve had turned away and gone over to the window, staring out as if the street lights on Haldenstrasse, the absolute blackness of the lake, the thrusting bulk of the mountains beyond against the lightening sky were irresistibly attractive.

Andy felt a sudden chill. He began to say more. But then he swallowed the question.

“I'm turning in, Steve. Good night.”

“Good night, kid,” Steve said.

Andy saw him shiver.

PART IV

MUELLER

11

Europe lay gasping under the hottest summer in years.

The heavy rains fell early that year, and the heat followed them. From Cape Passero in Sicily to the German Baltic ports, from Brest to the Elbe River, the Continent lay smothering.

The great cross-country buses, an institution in German-speaking countries, a week before had been floundering and slipping hub-deep in mud on the secondary roads. Now they were leaving clouds of thick, yellow dust from Schleswig to Carinthia. Their gleaming glass roofs parboiled the American tourists who staggered out to view the ruins of the
Schloss
at Heidelberg and the baroque splendour of the brand-new, rebuilt State Opera House on The Ring in Vienna.

Gerhard Mueller was waiting at the Goldener Hirsch in Salzburg, Austria, for the bus he was to drive. He was a short, flabby man sweating through the grey Tyrolean jacket that was his uniform. The driver who had brought the bus through the Tyrol from Innsbruck gave Mueller a limp greeting and repaired to the Goldener Hirsch for a cool drink.

Mueller waited until the tourists took their pictures of the Horse Mural, and then they piled back into the big Mercedes-Benz for more punishment. He held his right hand out and looked at it. The fingers were still trembling. The day before, he had almost been killed.

Mueller entered the bus and sat down, his heavy, damp thighs filling the driver's bucket seat. He swivelled his beefy neck once to look at his tourist passengers.

There was the usual assortment of old maids, school-teachers with guidebooks, harrassed couples with teen-aged children. All were Americans. The passenger representative, in his natty uniform, was explaining in English why on this particular express tour they could not stop over in Salzburg but must drive straight through, beyond Linz, to Vienna.

It had not been many kilometres from Linz where, yesterday, Gerhard Mueller had almost been killed.

For a thousand schillings, he thought. Nobody had told him he'd be shot at, and he hadn't even collected his money yet. He was to get it in Vienna from Dieter Loringhoven, who had a room in the Hotel Astoria on the Kärtnerstrasse. Loringhoven would be pleased. He would get the money. But never again!

Just as Gerhard Mueller was about to pull out of the broad square between the Goldener Hirsch and the Horse Mural, someone banged on the outside of the door. Mueller pulled the lever and the door opened.

Two men stood there in the dust of the square. They wore suits with the unmistakable sheen of American wash-and-wear fabric. One looked about forty and the other not much more than half that age. The passenger representative, whose name Mueller did not yet know because he was new, the replacement for Milo Hacha, hurried over and smiled dutifully down at the Americans.

In German the younger American asked, “Is Gerhard Mueller aboard? In Innsbruck they said Mueller would be with this bus.”

“I am Mueller,” Mueller said. The younger man nodded. The older one looked unhappy, but relieved.

The passenger representative wrote out two tickets, took their traveller's cheque and gave them a few schillings in change. They climbed into the bus, found two vacant seats and sat down.

Gerhard Mueller slipped the big Mercedes-Benz into first and drove off, leaving a dust cloud in the square.

There had been dust yesterday too, on the border above Linz and Freistadt and more dust, choking yellow swirls of it, on the secondary road which ran north into Czechoslovakia, between the Vltava River and the main highway from Ceske Budejovice through the Tábor in Prague.

To earn his thousand schillings Mueller had taken Milo Hacha only as far as Ceske Budejovice. He needed the money; what with a wife and two children in Innsbruck and a mistress in Vienna, a bountiful blonde who liked the pastries at Demel's and the expensive dinners at the Sacher Hotel. So Mueller had agreed to guide Milo Hacha across the border at Dieter Loringhoven's proposal.

Hacha, an exile like himself, was going in secrecy to Prague to face a great future, it seemed. At first Hacha had undoubtedly been suspicious. It must have taken all Dieter Loringhoven's eloquence to persuade him; Hacha was nothing if not canny. Wasn't the Czech regime widening, like Gomulka's Polish Communist Party, to include other Socialist elements? And hadn't Milo Hacha's father been a hero of the people?

In the end, Hacha had agreed, and Mueller had been selected to take him across the border, not only because they knew each other, but because Mueller knew the border from his activities in the black market during the occupation.

But why the secrecy? Why had Milo Hacha to sneak like a fugitive across the border? And why, most importantly from Gerhard Mueller's point of view, since it had almost cost him his life, hadn't his friend Siroky been at the Czech border station to pass him through again on his way back? But Siroky, who had regularly taken ten per cent of Mueller's profits during the black-market days, was gone, and Mueller had never seen any of the other border guards before.

He had asked for Siroky. In reply, they had demanded his papers. Since he had no papers, he made a dash for it. They had chased him back away from the border. They shouted for him to stop and he ignored them, so they shot at him. He ran until he fell.

Then he had hidden in a hayfield, listening to the big crows overhead, to the distant train whistle, to his own heart banging against his ribs and finally to the jack boots of the border guards tramping through the hay.

All night Gerhard Mueller had remained in that hayfield. His body was trembling and he could not stop sweating. He had expected to die at any moment. It was the longest night of his life.

When it grew light enough to see his hand as a white blur he had made his way stealthily across the field, heading east. Here the Vltava River was little more than a stream, and he was able to wade across. A dog barking somewhere had made him flounder from the swift, knee-deep water, water as cold as acid, and begin to run.

He had gone east two kilometres, before the sun came up. In the distance he saw the pine-covered hills of the Bohemian forest. Soon he had heard some belled cows and seen a little yellow cottage nestling at the foot of the first slope; it had half-timbering on the walls and a steep gable roof. At the front door a heavy-chested horse waited patiently in the traces of a wagon.

Mueller remembered staring at the wagon, afraid and yet tempted. Then the distant dog had barked again, and it had sent him sprinting towards the wagon.

At that moment a gaunt, hard-faced man in farm clothing had stepped out of the house. Mueller, ready to take to his heels, had stammered a greeting in Czech and said he was heading for Ceske Krumlov, a small rural village near the border.

“I am going to Ceske Krumlov,” the farmer said in a rusty voice, and Gerhard Mueller had clambered into the wagon with a silent prayer of thankfulness.

The road southward was narrow and unpaved. The wagon jolted and clanked. The farmer never spoke another word. Mueller recalled dozing, and in his doze dreaming that he was back in Vienna, window-shopping along The Graben for a thousand-schilling present for his buxom mistress. It was from this pleasant reverie that the farmer's nudge roused him, and he had opened his eyes to find himself at the shabby little free market of the village.

The farmer had not even answered his wave.

He had walked quickly south. When he saw the border station he tasted fear again and left the road. It was still early morning. No more than ten hours had passed since he had left Milo Hacha. He was hungry and tired. He had climbed a little hill and looked down on Austria.

Ten or twelve metres below, a border guard in an olive-coloured uniform stood staring in the same direction. Then Gerhard Mueller had picked up a rock, made his way down the slope like an animal, crept up behind the guard and swung. The man had dropped without a sound.

And he … he had to run for his life.

Now, driving the big bus through Gmunden on the road to Linz, where there would be a stop for dinner, for the first time Mueller could dwell logically on what had happened.

What had happened was that they had tried to kill him. For crossing the border illegally? Of all the satellite countries, Czechoslovakia was the most prosperous—the West Germany of the Soviet camp—with little to fear from contamination by the West.

Then why had they tried to kill him?

At first he thought Dieter Loringhoven might be able to tell him, but as the bus neared Linz Mueller wasn't so sure. The more he thought about it, the less he liked the idea of asking Loringhoven. And by the time he had driven across the Danube bridge and into Linz along the Volksgartenstrasse, his panic had grown to include Dieter Loringhoven.

Hacha's return to Czechoslovakia was a secret, that had been impressed upon him by Loringhoven. But he, Mueller, shared the secret. Then was it no coincidence that they had tried to kill him? Had Loringhoven perhaps planned it that way? Was Loringhoven as ruthless as he was suave?

Gerhard Mueller groaned. One thousand schillings. One thousand schillings would make Theresa very happy.

He parked the Mercedes-Benz under the chestnut trees on the Volksgartenstrasse. As the tourists filed out, the passenger representative was recommending roast pork with
Knödel
and, of course,
Linzer torte
. Three or four of the passengers stopped to snap pictures. But the two Americans who had asked for him when they boarded the bus seemed to be waiting to speak to him. What could it be about?

12

From Andy Longacre's diary:

… in bed together one final time.

T—knew what I wanted, of course. I'd asked her about Milo Hacha three days running. Probably the weather had something to do with her attitude. Lucerne, like any vacation spot, can be pretty dismal in the rain. It rained on and off for two days, with a low, dark sky hanging over the lake when it wasn't raining, hiding the mountains. Then the third day dawned bright and hot as hell. I asked her that day, too, but she remained peevish. Then, all of a sudden on the fourth night, after I promised Steve I'd get him an answer, she told me.

The funny part of it was, I didn't even ask her that night.