Past Perfect (34 page)

“Was he married?” I nodded. “I am glad he had someone at the end. He was a strong man, but always needed a woman.” She lifted her sandwich off her lap to cross her legs. For someone who must walk miles a day showing real estate, she was wearing surprising shoes, white patent pumps with three-inch stiletto heels. Pretty ugly, I thought, like what a nurse would wear in a porn movie. As my mother would have remarked, They cheapen a perfectly nice look. “Is there a suspicion about the way he died, it being unusual?”

“Not officially. Not that I know of. People say that’s more the stuff of fiction. But Hans Pfannenschmidt is another story. He was stabbed to death in his office a couple of months ago.” Her mouth formed an O, but she definitely wasn’t as emotional hearing about him as she had been about Manfred-Dick’s death. It was the O anyone’s mouth would make when hearing that someone she knew slightly had been murdered. “That’s one reason I wanted to come here and talk with you. Whoever killed Hans seemed to have planned it. The police weren’t able to find anyone on the security cameras who might be of interest to them. They’re at a loss as far as suspect and motive. He was a widower with children. From the little I learned, he seemed to have been a nice, responsible person. Do you know what he was like in Germany?”

“Not nice. I know Manfred didn’t like him. He said Hans was sneaky and for himself only. Hans was a small man, and skinny. Manfred called him the Weasel. His judgment was usually correct, but I only knew the man slightly, so I can’t tell you for myself.” Finally she took a bite of her turkey sandwich. I’d been getting just the teeniest bit edgy, having glommed my sandwich almost immediately before wondering if there could have been strychnine between the cheese slices. I might have disguised whatever taste it might have had by putting on so much mustard.

“Lisa seems to have dropped out of sight in Washington,” I said. “Look, Hans was killed. Then Manfred died from a rare infection that took so long to diagnose that it was too late to do anything for him. I’m worried about her.”

“You think Lisa is dead too?”

“No. Actually, I don’t know. But she called me more than a month ago, talked about a matter of national importance —she didn’t say what it was —and said she’d call back the next day. She never did. Did she ever mention anything that, in your opinion, could have turned into something big?”

She smiled fondly. “No.”

“Did you know that she had left the CIA?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She was tired. That’s all. Always traveling, living in motels or, you know, the ugly houses the government keeps with linoleum on the living room floors. She wanted a normal life.”

“Couldn’t she have had a nice life living in Washington? She owned a house there and I bet it didn’t have linoleum floors. Why do you think she disappeared?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. She had a lovely house in Washington.”

“I saw another house she had once,” I said. “She bought it while I was still working for the Agency. Great location that was becoming gentrified. Couldn’t have been cheap, plus I got the impression she’d put some money into upgrading. How was she able to afford living like that on a government salary?”

I expected to hear something like She comes from a wealthy family, but instead Maria said, “Ben.”

“Ben?” She nodded. I got the impression she thought I was a little dense for being surprised. “Do you think his wife knew?” I asked. “She was the one with the money, so it must have come from her— whether she knew about it or not.”

“No,” she said dismissively. “Of course she didn’t know.”

“Did he have control over her money?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea how he —what’s the word? — diverted it.”

I gave her a minute on her turkey sandwich, not so much out of politeness, but because I’d read a mystery ages ago about a murderer taking a single bite of something knowing it didn’t contain enough poison to kill him —while his victim ate the whole whatever-it-was. Actually, I had taken off on that once in a script, with Jamie taking only a tiny taste of poisoned beluga caviar and setting it aside—she being too Brooklyn, too down-to-earth for caviar — while the evil agent of North Korean nuclear interests watched in frustration.

“Did Lisa do a lot of work for Ben?” I asked.

“Not so much, I don’t think. She worked with him closely on, you know, the three of us. Not only getting us familiar with U.S. ways of doing things. I know she came to Germany with him several times before we got out, though I didn’t meet her then. She stayed in West Berlin when he came to see us. I only found out later.” I pushed my hair behind my ears. My scalp was soaked and I knew my hair would start frizzing from the roots out, until I’d look like one of those pathetic kinked girls in Woodstock photos who never got any, even during the Summer of Love. The top of my head throbbed. Maria, on the other hand, looked as if she had arranged a private, cool breeze. My mother once said something about insensitivity to heat being a sign or symptom of something, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

“Do you know what Lisa was doing for him regarding the three of you?” I asked. She shook her head. “Did you know that Ben is being considered for a job in the cabinet? It’s expected to open up soon.”

“Months ago, Lisa told me he wanted to leave his company. It was too time-consuming. He found it tedious. There were a couple of very important jobs in the government he was hoping to be considered for.”

“Hans and Manfred are dead now,” I said, “so you’re the only one who can give me an answer. Was there any reason Ben Mattingly might not want the three of you around? Like being up for an important government post and being afraid something would become public?”

“I can’t… Truly, I can’t think of anything.”

“So the possibility that Ben sent out Lisa to get rid of Hans and Manfred doesn’t strike you as realistic?”

“No. Lisa as an assassin? That’s laughable.” But Maria wasn’t laughing. For an instant, she attempted a small smile. “I’ve known her for a long time now. Not deeply, but well enough to understand she has a lot of troubles.”

“Like troubles with truth,” I suggested.

“Yes. She lies all the time. Well, often. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve said, ‘You’re making that up.’ Sometimes she says yes, sometimes she swears it’s the truth. Her knowing I’m aware of her lying never makes her stop.”

“But you told me that you had a sixth sense that you could trust her.”

“Lisa’s lies are never big, about business or matters of the heart. They are lies to make her look good, or to get sympathy.”

“She’ll give two or three different stories, lies, about the same thing.”

“Yes,” Maria said. “But truthfully—if I can use that word in this discussion of lying—were you ever fooled by her? She never chose one version of a lie and stayed with it. If you knew her for any length of time, you would hear different stories and know precisely what she was doing.”

“Then how were you able to get so close to her?”

“The answer is, we aren’t close. But I like her very much and also feel sorry for her. It doesn’t matter which of her stories you believe. At bottom she is a lost soul, an American child moving around Europe, rootless. Her parents … I don’t know about them. They were either bad parents, cruel, or parents who gave her no attention. I would have loved to see her CIA file, because she may have told the truth there.”

“So if Lisa was a victim,” I asked, “was Ben a villain?”

I’d seen too many actors take a long beat before responding to wonder whether Maria was thinking this over or just pausing for dramatic effect. Finally she said, “Yes, Ben was the villain.”

When she didn’t elaborate, I asked, “In what way?”

“I’m tempted to say in every way I can think of, but that isn’t true. He could be charming. He was very intelligent, very thoughtful about capitalism and communism, not only the Cold War politics, but about their philosophies and, you know, how the philosophies turn out in practice.”

“But?”

“The but,” she said. “He was a man who was unable to say no to himself. It wasn’t because he had no self-control. He just didn’t believe he should say no to himself, not ever. He wanted money, so he married it. He wanted to be important and worldly and powerful, so he went to work for the CIA. He wanted someone who would live only for him, so he got Lisa. He wanted women, so he got women.”

“Did Lisa know about the other women?”

She clapped her hand against her forehead. A theatrical gesture, as if as a child she’d been exposed to too many over-the-top German operettas. “I can’t believe it. Well, I can. She spoke about it. Of course she knew. He had woman after woman after woman, like a parade. And Lisa excused it by saying they meant nothing to him. She called them his orifices. She said, Ben is very European in his attitude. I told her that was not European, that was sick. Sometimes he didn’t see her for weeks because he was too busy with his wife and a woman.”

“Did she ever have anyone else?”

“Of course not. She loved him completely.”

“And you don’t think she would kill for him?”

This time her long silence was believable. “She might. If he worked on her long enough, he probably could get her to see anything his way.”

We spent the next few seconds with our water bottles. Then I asked, “Are you at all concerned about your own safety?”

“I don’t think so, though of course, if Lisa was forced to choose between Ben and me, she would choose him.”

“And kill you?”

“She would try to. I assure you, I will be very cautious from now on. I am a realist and I understand I cannot be sentimental in a situation where there are all these … questions.” She smiled and said, “You must be too hot here. Every day when there is sun, I have lunch outside. My friends at the office tell me I’m crazy. Come, we can get coffee right over there. Inside. Air-conditioned.” She pointed to some office buildings.

“One more question,” I said.

“Okay.”

“How were the three of you able to get out of Germany?”

No pause this time. “Blackmail,” she said.

“BLACKMAIL,” I REPEATED CALMLY, as if the word occurred in my life as frequently as cappuccino.

My reaction seemed right. If I’d gasped like a complete amateur, Maria might have held back. Not that I was conning her with my composure. She realized she’d said something startling. But she made no attempt to get up and go. Instead, she took off her hat and raised her face to the sun. As she closed her eyes, I noticed her Evian bottle was still three-quarters full. Mine had no more than one swallow left. Screw this: I could write off my obsession with the past, snatch her hat and water, and be out of there. Good-bye Sunshine State. Excepb even with her porn heels and at least ten extra years, she would outrun me.

I was so sick from the heat. All I could do was stay motionless. The hot, thick air itself was fighting me. Any movement made me feel as if I would keep going in that direction, until my unconscious body hit the bench or ground. Either she enjoyed the heat or had chosen the park because she figured being out in the midday sun would make anyone at least a little dopey. If so, she knew she could take it because she was made of the toughest stuff—like the Spartan who put a fox under his garment and hung tough while it ate out his guts.

Finally, she put the hat back on and turned a bit to face me. “Let me try to remember. Manfred met Ben around 1985. It was at a meeting in Charlottenburg, in the British sector, though it was really a U.S., DDR dispute. About radio towers, which doesn’t sound like much, but it had become a nasty business. Ben was in Berlin at the time and was brought along, probably a courtesy, like a host would take a guest to a show to keep him amused. Ben’s cover was State Department, but Manfred said he was too confident for …” She paused. The sun must be getting to her, I decided. Suddenly, she was looking lousy, crimson-faced. Her eyes seemed momentarily unfocused. But then she simply blinked and said, “Forgive me, I’ve never thought about this in English. Ben acted too confident for someone claiming to be at the middle level at State. Manfred knew immediately what he was, of course, or rather, who he was with. For a reason even he couldn’t say, he didn’t think Ben was a spy. More of a policy man and very smooth.

“They talked, very friendly. You wouldn’t think someone in the Stasi could be so polished, but Manfred was. Ben was trying to cultivate him, which of course Manfred understood. They made a point of seeing each other after that. Ben came into East Berlin on a Polish passport. He was fluent in Polish. If he had used a U.S. passport or one from anyplace else in the West, he would have been followed as he entered East German territory. Of course, Manfred was also trying to cultivate Ben during these meetings. He saw in Ben someone very turned on to two things, money and power. Women also, but Manfred didn’t think women were as much of a weakness. At the beginning, Manfred gave him some information that he was permitted to give. Like bait for fish. He also introduced him to Hans sometime later, I don’t know when. The head of the Stasi, Manfred’s superior, told him Hans had to be involved and that the order came from the highest level.

“Manfred spent almost two years meeting Ben. Very friendly. They had something in common. Two charming men, secret work. Both unfaithful to their wives. With mistresses. The difference was, I was Manfred’s only woman. Not even his wife. She didn’t matter anymore to him. We lived in my apartment most of the time. He only went back to his wife for short periods, to make things look good. Her father was very high in the party.”

I wondered how much truth there was in Manfred-Dick’s explanation to Maria of why he didn’t leave his wife, and how much Maria simply chose to believe because she loved him. On the other hand, Manfred had brought her out of Germany with him. In similar circumstances, I would have bet big money that Ben would have found an excuse to leave Lisa: He deserved a new beginning. He didn’t want to schlepp an extra suitcase.

“After two years, Manfred understood Ben was having trouble keeping Lisa satisfied. In the money sense. Obviously he couldn’t go to his rich wife for help. One thing led to another. Since they were giving each other bits of unimportant information, Manfred said to Ben, ‘Look, we’re two grown men. Let me help you a little. Just give me what information you’ve already been giving me and I can arrange some cash. I won’t put your name on it. I’ll say it’s for someone else.’ Ben didn’t fall for it, but in another few months, he allowed himself to be convinced. Not great amounts of money, but not small, Ben being an American with a high lifestyle.