The Second Son: A Novel (22 page)

The man next to him was shoveling the last bits of rice onto a fork. He had yet to look up. “
Salud
, friend,” he said. “He’ll be by in a minute. Best to have your voucher out.”

This was the sticking point. Hoffner realized his time at the Ritz might be short-lived. He turned to have a look around and was nearly flattened by a waiter carrying a large silver tray.

“Watch yourself, friend,” the man said as he buzzed by, and Hoffner pulled back. When he looked out again, Hoffner saw Mila a few meters off, standing directly across from him.

She was in a different pair of trousers, slightly lighter blouse, but the belt, hair, and eyes were exactly the same. She was smiling at him.

She walked over. “You always do what you’re told?”

The shock of seeing her left Hoffner momentarily at a loss.

“We’re down here,” she said, “but you’re welcome to stay with your new friend if you like.”

Piera, Leos, and a third man—with oddly drooping eyes and a scar across his left cheek—were working through several bowls of beans and chicken when Mila and Hoffner drew up.

Hoffner said, “Pawn to—”

“Yes.” Leos cut him off as he continued to eat. “He likes all that. You wouldn’t be standing here if he wasn’t tucked away.”

Mila sat, and Hoffner took the chair next to her. He said, “I didn’t expect to see you.”

“And I didn’t expect to find my father being held hostage.” She was smiling.

Leos had his glass to his lips. “That’s unfair,” he said.

“You would have killed him, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So what else would you call it?”

Leos thought a moment, shrugged, and drank.

Hoffner said, “You just happened to stop by the Ritz?”

She poured them both some wine. “Workers’ Canteen Number One,” she corrected. “And no. When my father goes to the club, I bring him lunch. When he gets kidnapped, I tend to follow along.”

Leos said, “So now it’s kidnapping.” He chewed through a bone. “I suppose next you’re going to tell me I actually killed him.”

Hoffner was struck by how easily they tossed this all about. Leos would have shot Piera without a thought. He was just as likely to share a bowl of chicken with him. Evidently instinct worked minute to minute these days.

Piera pushed his bowl forward and sucked something in his teeth. “Did you find your son?” he said, with no real interest.

There was a commotion by the door, and they all turned to see the head man shaking his head. One or two others in line were doing the same. Finally the head man threw up his hands, stepped back, and little Aurelio—shirt and ginger hair matted in sweat—moved past him. The man with the droopy eyes was instantly on his feet.

Aurelio drew up and stared, his breathing heavy.

The standing man began to shake his head, as if to say, Well?

It took Aurelio another moment to focus. When he did, his voice was quiet.

“
Patrullas
,”
he said. He seemed almost confused by it. “No papers. Nothing.” He looked at Hoffner, then Mila, then Hoffner again. “They took him. On the street.” It was as if he were watching it play out in front of him. “The butt of a rifle to the head and gone. There won’t even be enough of him left to bury.”

4

PASE DE LA FIRMA

In the early spring of 1919, while Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner recovered from his investigations into the murder of Rosa Luxemburg, General Severiano Martínez Anido arrived in Barcelona to quell the more dangerous elements within the anarchist Sindicato Unico. The Sindicato was the most powerful union in the country and had recently begun to encourage some of its members to explore alternative measures when dealing with work stoppages, lockouts, and industrialists in general. It seemed that bold words and tossed rocks were getting them only so far. The leadership wanted something more permanent. Thereafter, bullet and garroting-wire sales rose dramatically throughout the city.

General Martínez Anido, a mild soft-spoken little man, had been sent on direct orders from the prime minister, Don Eduardo Dato. Dato’s exact words—if his secretary’s memory can be trusted (she had somehow remained on the telephone line while Dato made his intentions clear)—were to “get yourself to that rat-infested Catalan pisshole, cut off the balls of every last swine-fucking anarcho, and feed them to the bastards’ wives.” Martínez Anido, never one to take an order at anything less than face value, immediately set about infiltrating the dark and murderous secret society of the Unico with men of his own. By December he had rounded up thirty-six of the worst of them—including their leader, Roy del Sucre—and had them all rotting behind bars in the always inviting Fortress of Mahón in the Balearic Islands. Rumor had it that one of these detainees had been accidentally castrated (although how one is accidentally castrated is anyone’s guess), but Dato’s secretary was less than forthcoming on that front. The rest of the inmates languished fully intact, one of them a twenty-two-year-old Josep Gardenyes, although no records show anyone of that specific name on the prison rolls at the time. His cellmate had been a droopy-eyed man with a scar on his left cheek. When, fifteen months later, the two managed to avenge themselves by ambushing and machine-gunning Dato in Madrid’s Plaza de la Independencia (by then Gardenyes had taught himself to steer a motorcycle with his knees), they became brothers in blood.

The sole surviving brother was now sitting in the corner of a dank bar six blocks from the Ritz, his fourth whiskey already gone, his droopy eyes unashamedly weeping. He had felt a moment’s hesitation crying in front of the woman, but she was a doctor and no doubt had seen worse. The two Communists had lived through bloodlettings of their own: who were they to fault a man his passion? And Aurelio was probably more drunk than he was himself. As for the German—he would be dead within a week, so what difference did it make?

Leos pushed the bottle toward the man and hoped one more glass might be enough to stop the wailing. Remarkably, the man was managing to cry even while drinking.

“It would be pointless,” said Aurelio. He had been working through a canteen of water and was in full command of his faculties. “I didn’t recognize any of the boys who picked him up, and I know them all.”

Leos said, “So how do you know these were
patrullas
?”

“Because they told us,” Aurelio explained. “ ‘We’re with the
patrullas
,’ one of them shouted. ‘We won’t put up with this kind of disgrace! You have us to thank. The true spirit of anarchism.’ On and on. Then they smacked the rifle across the back of his head and tossed the body into the car. They weren’t even carrying the right kind of pistols.”

Hoffner, who had been listening for the better part of the last five minutes, finally spoke. “So you think they took Gardenyes for another reason.”

Aurelio reached for his canteen. “Whoever they were, they were sloppy.”

“How?”

Aurelio took a drink. “You have one on your belt. Put it on the table.”

Without hesitation Hoffner pulled the Luger out and set it next to his glass.

“That,” said Aurelio. “That was what one of them had.”

“Which means?” said Leos.

Aurelio looked across at Hoffner. “Those names on the list—the ones you gave him—Gardenyes found one of them.”

Vollman had been right, thought Hoffner. The SS had wasted no time in getting here. They had killed Gardenyes for poking around. “I know,” said Hoffner.

“No,” Aurelio said. “Not the chess player, the drugs. Bernhardt. Another German. That was what had these
patrullas
-not-
patrullas
looking for him. It’s why Gardenyes sent my crying friend here to find you at the Chinaman’s.” Aurelio glanced over at the man. “All right—it’s enough already.”

The man went on undeterred and Aurelio looked back at Hoffner. “I’m guessing you knew that would happen—the
patrullas
.”

“I didn’t.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

Hoffner picked up his glass. “The pistol’s there. I’m sure no one would mind if you used it.” He drank.

Aurelio nodded over at Mila. “She would.” Hoffner thought he saw a moment of color in her cheeks before Aurelio said, “She’s the one who’d have to clean it up.”

Leos tossed back the last of his glass and set it firmly on the table. He was done. “I’m sorry your friend is dead,” he said as he stood. “
Patrullas
or not, I have to get back.”

Hoffner was peering into his glass. “New kind of deliveries to be made?” He lapped at the last of his whiskey and then said, “I’d be careful there.”

It was clear Leos understood exactly what Hoffner was talking about. Leos stared for several seconds before saying, “What else did Vollman overhear?”

“You’d have to ask him that yourself, wouldn’t you?” Hoffner now felt every eye at the table on him; he continued to gaze at Leos. “He thinks it goes through Teruel.”

“Then he thinks wrong.”

Hoffner waited. This wasn’t misdirection; this was a reclaiming of control. For better or worse, Leos was speaking the truth; the drug/gun conduit didn’t run through Teruel. The question was, What had Georg found to send him there?

Hoffner said, “You be sure to tell him that.”

Leos stood silently. He then swept a glance across the table and said, “
Salud
. You have my condolences.” He turned and headed off.

Aurelio watched him through the door before turning to Hoffner. “What the hell was that?”

Hoffner leaned forward and took hold of the bottle. “He runs drugs. It’s a dangerous business.”

“So what’s in Teruel?”

Hoffner poured himself another glass and set the bottle down. “Evidently not drugs.”

With surprising speed Aurelio reached over and grabbed hold of Hoffner’s hand. The whiskey in the glass spilled to the table. For such a small man, Aurelio had a remarkably strong grip.

Hoffner said, “If you’d wanted a glass, I’d have been happy to pour you one.”

Aurelio tightened his grip.

Hoffner said, “It’s an easy hand to break. It’s been broken before.”

“What’s he moving?” said Aurelio. Hoffner said nothing, and Aurelio’s gaze grew more severe. “This is what got Gardenyes killed,” Aurelio said, “so I think I’d like to know.”

Hoffner was beginning to feel a deep ache up his wrist and into his forearm. Aurelio had done this before. Even so, Hoffner said, “He was already dead—isn’t that what he told me?”

Aurelio brought the thumb tighter into the palm, and the ache moved past the forearm and into the elbow. Hoffner shut his eyes momentarily from the pain, and the grip suddenly released. He opened his eyes and saw the Luger held just above the table and aimed at Aurelio.

Hoffner had been wrong at the clinic; Mila looked very comfortable with a gun.

“Put it down,” Hoffner said.

She was staring across at Aurelio: the little man hadn’t moved. “He was going to break your hand,” she said.

“He might have broken it already,” said Hoffner. He was stretching the fingers and wrist. There would be pain but nothing else.

Piera, silent to this moment, said quietly, “Put the gun on the table, Mila.”

The sound of her father’s voice did nothing to shake her. It was several long moments before she turned and held the gun out to Hoffner. Reluctantly he took it. She sat back and he set the gun down.

Hoffner said to Aurelio, “You can take your hand off your own gun now, or you can shoot me. It’s up to you.”

Aurelio remained absolutely still. He then slowly brought his other hand up from under the table. It was clear Mila had not been aware of this. Aurelio said, “I wasn’t going to shoot you.”

“I know that,” said Hoffner. “She didn’t. So now we all know.” With his good hand, Hoffner poured a glass and placed it in front of her. The color had yet to return to her face. Mila took it and drank, and Hoffner said, “So—about this Bernhardt. Gardenyes found him?”

Aurelio was still studying him. He slid a glass to the center of the table and watched as Hoffner filled it. “His place,” Aurelio said. “Not what you’d expect. Down by the docks. Too nice for the neighborhood and much too nice for a drug addict.”

“But no Bernhardt.”

“No.” Aurelio took the glass.

“And nothing else?”

Aurelio drank.

Hoffner said, “So now they come looking for you and Gabriel?”

Aurelio finished the glass and held it out for another. Hoffner refilled it.

“They’ve made their point,” Aurelio said, “but who knows? The CNT will take credit. This is what they were going to do anyway. They like statements like this—a man tossed in a car, beaten, a bullet to the neck, no trial, no discussion. It keeps the socialists and Communists thinking we anarchists can be trusted. That we can take care of our own loose cannons. Whoever did this knew how to play it.” He drank. “Leos is moving guns?”