If the Dead Rise Not

He puffed the cigar for a moment and then blew out a funnel of smoke that might have come from the funnel above my head. The boat was maybe thirty feet long, and I thought maybe I’d seen it somewhere before.

“I figure it was a mistake to dump that sonofabitch, Isaac, in the canal. Nine meters. Not deep enough. But out here the water is sixteen meters deep. That’s not Lake Michigan or the Hudson River, but it’ll do. Yes, there’s that and the fact that I’m not exactly a stranger to this shit. So relax, you’re in good hands. The one remaining question I have for you, Gunther-and it’s an important one from your point of view, so I advise you to pay attention-is whether we deep-six you dead or alive. I’ve seen both, and it’s my considered opinion that it’s best you go down dead. Drowning’s not quick, I don’t think. Me, I’d prefer a bullet in the head beforehand.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

“But don’t let me sway you. This is your decision. Only, I need to know what you know, Gunther. Everything. Who you’ve told about me, and what. Think it over for a minute. I have to take a leak and put a coat on. It’s a little chilly out here on the water, don’t you think? Dora? Give him another glass of water. It might help to make him talk.”

He turned and walked away. Krempel followed, and in the absence of a personal cuspidor, I spat after them.

Dora gave me some more water. I drank it down greedily. “Guess I’ll have all the water I can drink in a little while,” I said.

“That’s not even funny.” She wiped my mouth with my tie.

“I’d forgotten how beautiful you are.”

“Thanks.”

“Nope. You’re still not laughing. I guess that wasn’t funny, either.”

She glared at me like I was dermatitis.

“You know, in Grand Hotel, Joan Crawford’s not supposed to fall for Wallace Beery,” I said.

“Max? He’s not so bad.”

“I’ll try to remember that when I reach the bottom of the lake.”

“I suppose you think you’re like John Barrymore.”

“Not with this profile. But I do think I’d like a cigarette, if you have one. You can call it one last request, since I’ve already seen you naked. At least now I can be sure when you’re wearing a wig.”

“A regular Curt Valentin, aren’t you?”

Under the fur she was wearing a lavender-colored knitted dress that hugged her figure like a coat of emulsion, and over her wrist was a drawstring pouch bag that contained a handsome gold cigarette case and lighter.

“It looks as if Saint Nicholas has been here already,” I said as she pushed a cigarette between my cracked lips and lit it. “At least someone thinks you’ve been a good girl.”

“By now anyone would think you’d learned to keep your nose out of other people’s business,” she said.

“Oh, I’ve learned that, all right. Perhaps you’d like to tell him that. Maybe a good word from you has a better chance of success than one from me. Better still, perhaps you still have that gun. I’d say that where Max Reles is concerned, a Mauser has an even better chance than any amount of good words.”

She took the cigarette from me, drew in smoke, and then put it back in my mouth with cool fingers that were almost as heavily perfumed as they were ringed. “What makes you think I’d ever betray a man like Max for a dog like you, Gunther?”

“The same thing that makes a man like him attractive to a girl like you. Money. Lots of it. You see, it’s my opinion, Dora, that if there was enough money involved, you’d betray the infant Jesus. As it happens, there’s even more money than that hidden in Max Reles’s bathroom at the Adlon. There’s a bag full of money behind a panel that’s screwed in front of the lavatory cistern. Thousands of marks, dollars, gold Swiss francs, you name it, angel. All you need is a screwdriver. Reles has one somewhere in his drawers. That’s what I was looking for when you and your mouse came and disturbed me.”

She leaned toward me. Close enough for me to taste the coffee that was still on her breath. “You’ll have to do better than that, polyp, if I’m going to help you.”

“No, I don’t. You see, angel, I’m not telling you so that you’ll help me. I’m telling you so that maybe you’ll help yourself and, in the process, you’ll have to shoot him. Or maybe he’ll shoot you. It certainly won’t make any difference to me at the bottom of Lake Tegel.”

She stood up abruptly. “You bastard.”

“True. But then again, at least this way you can be sure I’m on the level about the money. Because it’s there, all right. Enough to start a new life in Paris. To buy a nice apartment in a smart part of London. Hell, there’s enough there to buy the whole of Bremerhaven.”

She laughed and looked away.

“Don’t believe me if you don’t want to. It makes no odds to me. But ask yourself this, Dora dear. A guy like Max Reles. And the kind of people he needs to pay off to stay in business. They’re not the kind who take a personal check. Graft is a cash racket, Dora. You know it. And a whole sack full of cash is what it takes to keep a racket like this one afloat.”

She stayed quiet for a moment, looking preoccupied with something. Probably she was picturing herself walking up Bond Street with a new hat and a thick wad of pound notes underneath her garter. I didn’t mind contemplating that picture myself. It was certainly preferable to contemplating my own situation.

Max Reles came up on deck again, followed closely by Krempel. Reles was wearing a thick fur coat and carrying a big Colt.45 automatic attached to a lanyard around his neck, as if he didn’t trust himself not to lose it.

“I always say, you can’t be too careful with your firearm when you’re planning to shoot an unarmed man,” I said.

“Those are the only kind I ever shoot.” He chuckled. “Do you take me for a fool who would go up against a man with a gun? I’m a businessman, Gunther, not Tom Mix.”

He dropped the Colt on the lanyard and put his arm around Dora and pressed her fingers between her legs. The other hand still held his cigar.

Dora let Reles’s hand remain where it was as he started to rub her mouse. She looked like she was even trying to enjoy it. But I could see her mind was somewhere else. Underneath the cistern in suite 114, probably.

“The Little Rico kind of businessman,” I said. “Sure, I can see that.”

“It looks like we have a movie fan, Gerhard. How about Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea? Did you see that one? No matter. You can catch the real thing in just a few minutes.”

“It’s you who’s going to get caught, Reles. Not me. You see, I have an insurance policy. It’s not Germania Life, but it’ll do. And it kicks in the minute I’m dead. You’re not the only one with connections, my American friend. I’ve got connections, and I can guarantee they’re not the same ones you’ve been getting chummy with.”

Reles shook his head and pushed Dora away. “It’s strange, but no one ever thinks they’re going to die. Yet no matter how crowded most cemeteries look, somehow there always seems to be room for one more.”

“I don’t see any cemetery, Reles. In fact, now that I’m out here on water, you make me glad I never paid up front for my own funeral.”

“I really do like you,” he said. “You remind me of me.”

Reles took the cigarette from my mouth and flicked it over the side. He thumbed the hammer back on the Colt and pointed it at the middle of my face. It was close enough to see down the barrel, to feel the stopping power and smell the gun oil. With a Colt.45 automatic in his hand, Tom Mix could have held up the arrival of talking pictures.

“All right, Gunther. Let’s see your cards.”

“In my coat pocket there’s an envelope. It contains a couple of drafts of a letter addressed to a friend of mine. A fellow named Otto Schuchardt. He works under Assistant Commissioner Volk for the Gestapo, in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. You can easily check these names out. When I go missing from the Adlon, another friend of mine at the Alex, a detective commissar, is going to post the final draft of that letter to Schuchardt. And then your meat will be fried in butter.”

“And why would the Gestapo be interested in me? An American citizen, like you said.”

“A Captain Weinberger showed me what the FBI sent to the Gestapo in Wurzburg. It was pretty thin stuff. You’re suspected of this. You’re suspected of that. Big deal, you say. But about your homicidal brother, Abe, the FBI knows plenty. About him and your father, Theodor. He’s an interesting man, too. It seems that he was wanted by the Vienna police when he went to live in America. For murdering people with an ice pick. Of course, it’s always possible they framed him. The Austrians are even worse than we are here in Berlin in the way they treat their Jews. But that’s what I wanted to tell my friend Otto Schuchardt. You see, he works on what the Gestapo calls the Jew Desk. I think you can imagine the sort of people he’s interested in.”

Reles turned to Krempel. “Go and fetch his coat,” he said. Then he looked at me grimly. “If I find you’re lying about this, Gunther”-he pressed the Colt against my kneecap-“I’m going to give you one in each leg before I push you over the side.”

“I’m not lying. You know I’m not.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

“I wonder how all your smart Nazi friends will react when they find out who and what you are, Reles. Von Helldorf, for instance. You remember what happened when he found out about Erik Hanussen, the clairvoyant? Why, of course you do. After all, this is Hanussen’s boat, isn’t it?”

I nodded at one of the life preservers attached to the guardrail. On it was painted the name of the boat: Ursel IV. It was the boat I’d seen outside von Helldorf’s office window in the Potsdam police praesidium. That put a smile on my face.

“You know, it’s kind of ironic when you think about it, Reles. That you of all people should be using the Ursel. Did von Helldorf sell you this tub, or is it just a loan from an aristocratic friend who’s going to feel terribly let down when he discovers the sad truth about you, Max? That you’re a Jew. Badly let down, I should say. Betrayed, even. I knew some cops who found Erik Hanussen’s body, and they told me he was tortured before he was killed. I even heard tell they did it on this boat. So people wouldn’t hear the man screaming. Von Helldorf is an unforgiving man, Max. Unforgiving, and unbalanced. He likes to whip people. Did you know that? Then again, maybe you could be his pet Jew. They say even Goering has one these days.”

Krempel returned with my crumpled coat in one hand and in the other the envelope containing drafts of the letter I had asked the page boy at the Adlon to post the previous evening. I watched Max Reles read it with a mixture of keen anticipation and shame.

“You know, it’s surprising what a man will find he is capable of doing when it comes right down to it,” I said. “I never thought I could write a letter denouncing someone to the Gestapo. To say nothing of basing that denunciation on a man’s race. Ordinarily I’d feel pretty disgusted with myself, Max. But in your case it was a real pleasure. I almost hope you do kill me. It’d be worth it just to imagine the look on all their faces. Avery Brundage included.”

Reles crushed the letters in an angry-looking fist and threw them over the side.

“That’s all right,” I said. “I kept a copy.”

The Colt.45 was still in his other hand. It looked as big as a four iron.

“You’re a clever man, Gunther.” He chuckled, but the lack of color in his face told me he wasn’t laughing. “You played those cards well, I’ll say that for you. However. Even if I spare your life, it still leaves me with a hell of a problem. Yes, sir, a hell of a problem.” He puffed the cigar and then threw that over the side, too. “But you know, I think I have the solution. Yes. I really think I know.”

“But you, my dear.” He turned to look at Dora. She had opened her bag and removed her powder compact and was now checking the perimeters of her lipstick. “You know too much.”

Dora dropped the compact. This wasn’t a surprise to anyone, as Max Reles was now pointing the Colt not at me but at her.

“Max?” She smiled-nervously, perhaps-thinking for half a moment that he was joking. “What are you talking about? I Iove you, darling. I’d never betray you, Max. Surely you know that.”

“We both know that’s not true. And while I think I have a way to guarantee that Gunther here won’t actually denounce me to the Gestapo, I don’t have a way of ensuring the same thing from you. I