The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction (67 page)

They’d just started on coffee and Schnapps when someone stood up and started singing. Andy Winslow blinked in astonishment. It was Jacob Maccabee. He was swaying drunkenly, leaning on Lisalotte Schmidt’s shoulder, singing “
Es zittern die morschen Knocken
”.

Lisalotte joined in, then a couple of people at Maccabee’s table. The grey-suited chairman stood up and rapped his gavel a couple of times, then realized it wasn’t going to work and started waving the gavel like a conductor’s baton. Now the whole room was singing. When the song ended, Jacob swung into “
Kampflied der Nationalsozialisten
”. The songs came to a roaring conclusion, followed by men jumping up at one table after another giving the stiff-armed salute and
Sieg heil
-ing
.

Jacob sat down to a round of applause.

Rose Palmer leaned over and whispered in Winslow’s ear, “I thought he would try to make himself inconspicuous in the middle of all these Aryans.”

“Leave it to Jacob,” Winslow whispered back. “Right into the lion’s den, and challenge anybody to call him out on it!” He couldn’t help grinning.

Once the singing had died down, the diminutive, grey-suited chairman rapped his gavel again. “Ladies and Gentleman,
Damen und Herren, Kameraden
—” a round of applause at the last word. He went on like that, mixing English and German, and all the while it was obvious that he was leading up to the boffo introduction of the special guest of the evening.

“But, first, a special treat!”

He reached under the speaker’s lectern and came up with something the size of a movie poster. He studied it himself. The side turned towards the audience was blank.

“In case any of you missed this recent newspaper, I want you all to see it.”

With a grin, he turned the poster towards the audience. It was a huge enlargement of the
Mirror
front page with the photo of the Essex Street synagogue, blown up and burning. He made a clucking sound with his tongue, the kind your mother does when you’re just mildly naughty. “Isn’t that a pity.”

The audience howled with laughter and applause.

“And now,
Damen und Herren
, the noble leader of our movement in Sudetenland, a comrade-in-arms in the great National Socialist revolutionary movement, the man who led our separated brethren from the false and artificial state of Czechoslovakia back into the welcoming embrace of the Fatherland. May I introduce to you – Herr Heinrich Konrad.” He hadn’t bothered to use Konrad’s
nom de guerre.

Andy Winslow felt Rose Palmer grab his hand under the table. Her nails were sharp and her fingers were like ice. He returned the squeeze, heard her exhale a held-in breath.

No question, these guys went for drama; and give ’em credit, they did it well. Up to now the room had been filled with so much
Gemutlichkeit
you could choke on it. Now the atmosphere was completely changed. You’d think that Joe DiMaggio had just been introduced to a room full of rabid Yankee fans.

Where the heck had Konrad been? Maybe in a back-stage room, Winslow decided. Certainly not in the dining room. Now, as the chairman finished his introduction, the houselights snapped off and a spotlight blazed on. Striding from the rear of the room came Heinrich Konrad decked out in full Nazi regalia: swastika armband, jackboots and all. The spotlight followed him to the microphone, then dimmed a little as a second spot hit the oversized portrait of the
Führer
behind the podium.

Oh, he was good. The flashy uniform, the black hair in its widow’s peak, even the silver-rimmed specs to add just a touch of the intellectual, took away just a bit from the brute in the fancy get-up. The speech was the usual palaver that these gangsters had been peddling. Stuff about the master-race, the New World Order, the brilliance of the
Führer,
the greatness of the world’s most advanced civilization, the pinnacle of humankind in painting, music, poetry, industry, literature, blah-blah.

And then he got into the really nasty part. The part about the subhuman vermin who needed to be exterminated. Oh, the Jews. Of course he had it in for the Jews. But the Slavs were not far behind. Caligula Foxx would get a kick out of that. Surely he fell into that category.

Come to think of it, didn’t Konrad, too? Wasn’t he some kind of Czech by birth, same as Caligula Foxx? But, no, he was a German, a true Aryan. Too bad he wasn’t a blue-eyed blond, but then neither was the
Führer, nicht wahr?

For a few minutes Andy Winslow felt himself caught up in the flow of Konrad’s words. The man’s English was fluent if lightly accented, and he painted pictures of a bright future of towering cities and glittering machines – and then he would leap back to his theme of racial purity, and armies marching like robots across a landscape.

They loved it. Oh, they loved it. Konrad could have been elected Mayor if he’d wanted. As soon as he finished, the boobs in the audience went nuts.

*

When it was all over, Andy Winslow and Rose Palmer made their way out of the meeting-room. The main restaurant downstairs was filled with diners – happy New Yorkers celebrating the holiday season, and out-of-towners come to see the bright lights and the tall buildings of the big city.

A hand came down on Winslow’s shoulder and another on Rose Palmer’s. They turned to see Jacob Maccabee. His tie was askew, his overcoat was buttoned wrong and his homburg was on the back on his head. Winslow was a tall individual and Rose Palmer was proportionately sized. Maccabee grinned at them. He was shorter than either. Before Maccabee could speak, Winslow said, “That was brilliant, Jacob. Crazy brilliant, but brilliant.”

Rose Palmer asked, “Whatever gave you the idea of singing those disgusting songs?”

They had moved away from the restaurant now. The meeting was breaking up and Winslow recognized some of the people from the upstairs room wandering off to find cars or cabs.

“Come on, I don’t want to see my friend the importer again. If he tries once more to sell me a Blaupunkt radio I think I’m gonna punch him in the shnozzola.”

Rose Palmer said, “Where’s Lisalotte?”

Maccabee said, “Did you watch that thug Konrad? Did you see the way he looked at her? I made it a point to light a cigarette for her while he was making his speech, and he spotted her and his eyes lit up. Man, he looked at her the way my cat looks at a slice of raw liver.”

“But where is she now?”

“They’re together. I don’t know where Herr Konrad is staying while he visits our burg. Maybe uptown at the German consulate. Maybe in a hotel or some safe house they’ve got set up. We’ll find that out.”

Winslow fingered the Beretta inside his jacket, snug in his armpit in its holster. “I was tempted,” he said. “A couple of times.” He pulled the automatic partway out of its resting place, far enough to show it to Maccabee. Rose Palmer already knew where he kept it.

“Bad idea, Andy.”

“But … that man … even if Caligula hadn’t said anything about him, you could tell Konrad’s a disgusting animal. And a dangerous one. And you just left her there to go off with him?”

Maccabee made a growling noise deep in his throat. “Fräulein Schmidt is a tough cookie, Rose. Don’t you worry about her. When Konrad finished his rant, all those Nazis started in on
Deutschland Über Alles
again and Konrad started working the crowd like Al Smith at the Easter Parade. He cut through that mob like a hot knife through butter. Every thug got a handshake and a
Sieg heil
, and then the big cheese moved on to the next bunch of suckers. Till he got to Lisalotte. You could tell that was his plan all along, from the first time he laid eyes on her.”

A Checker cab rolled past, throwing up black slush from the gutter. They were nearly at Church Street now.

“Jacob,” Rose persisted, “I still want to know what gave you the idea of singing like that. You weren’t really drunk, were you?”

“Jews don’t get drunk.”

“You don’t know everybody I do.”

“Anyway, it was this.” He laid a finger across the bridge of his nose and swept it down to the tip. “Put me in a lineup with a Chinaman, a Choctaw, and a Hottentot, and ask anybody to pick out the Jew and they’ll get it right on the first try.”

“But—”

“But nothing, Rose. It’s the old Poe gimmick. Hide in plain sight. If a Jew tried to infiltrate that bunch of Nazis, what’s the obvious thing to do? He’d head for the darkest corner he could find, he’d keep his head down and his trap shut and hope that nobody’d notice him. And do you think that would work? In a pig’s ass – pardon my French, Rose – they’d catch him out in a minute. So I stood up and acted drunk and sang Nazi songs. No Jew would do that; so they just figured I was an unlucky Aryan who managed to pick up a bad gene from a wandering ancestor. So maybe this drunk wasn’t quite one hundred per cent pure Aryan, but he was obviously a good Nazi, so let him be. At least for now.”

Rose wasn’t satisfied. “What now? Do you think Lisalotte will actually spend the night with that – that person?”

“Ah, Rose, Rose, don’t be so squeamish. This isn’t a Mary Roberts Rinehart romance. Lisalotte may not enjoy staying over with that thug but, believe me, it isn’t a fate worse than death. It’s bad, but death is worse. And she’ll get more information from him in a few hours than I could get in a month is my bet.”

He took off his homburg, punched out a dent in it and set it back on his head. He straightened his tie and rebuttoned his coat. He said, “I’m headed for the subway, kiddies. My beloved helpmeet and the offspring are calling to me.”

Winslow said, “Wait, I’ve got my car. We’ll give you a lift.”

“Not necessary. Thanks all the same. I’ll see you atWest Adams Place tomorrow. Lunch-time unless you hear different. I’ll lay a double sawbuck that Schmidt will show up and she’ll bring the bacon with her.”

*

Maccabee was right. Andy Winslow and Jacob were completing their reports to Caligula Foxx when the brass knocker sounded. Foxx himself wore his usual aquamarine shirt with hand-painted tie and comfortable grey flannel suit. Winslow knew that Reuter was busy in the pantry preparing the day’s luncheon so he answered the door himself. He had already placed a silver tray with coffee urn and cups and pastries on Foxx’s oversized desk.

Lisalotte had changed her outfit to a stylish toque hat of forest green and a matching winter coat. In the foyer she doffed the coat to reveal a dark grey dress set off with mild yellow trim. To Andy Winslow she looked simultaneously weary and energized, as if she had followed a hard night with a brief rest and a refreshing shower.

Ever courtly, Foxx rose and took Lisalotte’s hand. He escorted her to a seat and poured coffee for her. There was a low table beside her chair and she placed the cup and saucer on it carefully.

“I am no blushing schoolgirl,” Lisalotte announced, “but, in all my life and all the men I have had dealings with, no one comes close to that beast. I just hope the filth and the stink of him is off me.” She held her hands before her and studied them. She exhaled.

“He is staying in a hotel in Yorktown. The Rotfrauhaus on Eighty-Sixth Street. He is registered under the name of Antonin Dvorak.”

Caligula Foxx burst into laughter. His belly shook with merriment. “Oh, that is too good, too good, Lisalotte. That alone makes my day, and it’s hardly mid-morning yet.”

Andy Winslow said, “I don’t get it, Caligula. What’s so special about that name?”

“Why, Herr Konrad entered this country under the name Bedrich Smetana. My cousin Sexton Blake warned me of that. I don’t imagine a person whose musical tastes are as – shall we say, as limited as your own – would get the joke. Nor the punch line of becoming Antonin Dvorak once he’d arrived in New York. Oh no, Herr Konrad is a despicable individual, but he is neither stupid nor ignorant.”

He leaned forward, studying the assortment of pastries Reuter had provided. He selected one and transferred it to a Dalton dish, cream-coloured with maroon-deckled trim, circled in gold. He sliced a wedge-shaped morsel from the pastry and popped it in his mouth, consuming it with obvious pleasure.

He turned to Lisalotte Schmidt. “You have my gratitude, my dear. You have done a greater service, I imagine, than you realize. But now we need to know what information you gathered from Herr Konrad-Smetana-Dvorak. Why is he in this country? Surely not just to address a room full of ne’er-do-wells and malcontented bully-boys.”

“He is going to Long Island, to the village of Carrolton Beach. Do you know that place? I do not, Mr Foxx.”

Foxx nodded. “I know the place. Yes. Go on.”

“There is an aeroplane factory there. They are developing a new kind of aeroplane for the government. I do not know the details, but Konrad says Hitler wants it for his own forces. He says that Hermann Goering is eager to see the plane, to see its plans, and to build a copy of it for the Führer.”

She paused to down a heavy draught of coffee, wiped her lips with a linen napkin, and resumed.

“He has a spy in the aeroplane factory. He is going to see him tomorrow, to get a set of blueprints from him and take them back to Germany.”

Foxx steepled his fingers on his chest. “I don’t suppose you know his spy’s name?”

“He said it was Richard Strauss.” She gave the name its proper pronunciation.
Reek-hardt.

Foxx shot a look at Jacob Maccabee. “Well, Jake, what can you add to that?”

“Only aircraft factory any where near Carrolton is Sapphire-MacNeese. Good company.”

“Connections?”

“Mr Foxx – how long have you known me? Of course!”

Foxx sliced another wedge of pastry. For a man of his enormous appetite he was a fastidious eater. He nodded to Maccabee, signalling him to continue.

“Aaron Lieberman. Chief designer there. Reports directly to Carter MacNeese. MacNeese bounces between Long Island and their California plant. Flies his own plane every time he wants to hit the other coast. Seems to me it would be a long commute, but who am I to say?”

Foxx pursed his lips. “Tell me about this Lieberman.”