your money. It feels too much like a share of the loot. I didn't want any part of it then, and I certainly don't want any part of it now.'
'Well, well,' said the American. 'Isn't that something? A kraut with principles. Hell, I thought Adolf Hitler killed all of you guys.'
'It's three marks a night,' I said. 'Each. In advance. There's plenty of hot water, day and night, but if you want more than a beer or a cup of coffee, that's extra. Food is still rationed, for Germans.'
'Fair enough,' he said. 'For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I was wrong about you.'
'For what it's worth, I'm sorry, too.' I poured myself some more of his rye. 'Every time I look at that line of trees, I remember what happened on the other side.'
TWO
The man from the car was of medium height, dark-haired with protruding ears, and shadowy, downcast eyes. He wore a thick tweed suit and a plain white shirt, but without a necktie, no doubt in case he tried to hang himself. He didn't speak to me and I didn't speak to him. When he came into the hotel his head seemed to shrink into his narrow shoulders as if--I can think of no other explanation--he was burdened with a sense of shame. But perhaps I'm just being fanciful. Either way I felt sorry for him. If the cards had been dealt differently it might have been me in the American's Buick.
There was another reason I felt sorry for the man. He looked feverish and ill. Hardly equal to the task of digging a hole in my garden. I said as much to the American as he fetched some tools from the cavernous trunk of the Buick.
'He looks like he should be in hospital,' I said.
'And that's where he's going after this,' said the American. 'If he finds the box, then he'll get his penicillin.' He shrugged. 'He wouldn't have cooperated at all if I didn't have that kind of leverage.'
'I thought you Amis were supposed to pay attention to the Geneva Conventions,' I said.
'Oh we do, we do,' he said. 'But these guys are not ordinary soldiers, they're war criminals. Some of them have murdered thousands of people. These guys put themselves outside the protection of Geneva.'
We followed Wolf into the garden, where the American threw the tools down on the grass and told him to get on with it. The day was a hot one. Too hot to be digging anywhere but in your pockets. Wolf leaned on a tree for a moment as he tried to get his bearings, and let out a sigh. 'I think this is the spot, right here,' he whispered. 'Could I have a glass of water?' His hands were shaking and there was sweat on his forehead.
'Get him a glass of water, will you, Gunther?' said the American.
I fetched the water, and returned to find Wolf, pickax in hand. He took a swing at the lawn and almost fell over. I caught him by the elbow and helped him to sit down. The American was lighting a cigarette, apparently unconcerned. 'Take your time, Wolf, my friend,' he said. 'There's no hurry. That's why I figured on two nights, see? On account of how he's not exactly in the best of shape for gardening duty.'
'This man is in no condition for any kind of manual work,' I said. 'Look at him. He can hardly stand.'
The American flicked his match at Wolf and snorted with derision. 'And do you imagine he ever said that to any of the people who were imprisoned in Dachau?' he said. 'Like hell he did. Probably shot them in the head where they fell. Not a bad idea at that. Save me the trouble of taking him back to the prison hospital.'
'That's hardly the point of this exercise, is it? I thought you just wanted what's buried here.'
'Sure, but I'm not going to dig. These shoes are from Florsheim.'
I took the pickax from Wolf, angrily. 'If there's half a chance of getting rid of you before this evening,' I said, 'I'll do it myself.' And I sank the point of the pick into the grass as if it had been the American's skull.
'It's your funeral, Gunther.'
'No, but it will be his if I don't do this.' I wielded the pick again.
'Thanks, comrade,' whispered Wolf, and sitting underneath the tree, he leaned back and closed his eyes weakly.
'You krauts.' The American smiled. 'Stick together, don't you?'
'This has got nothing to do with being German,' I said. 'I'd probably have done it for anyone I didn't much like, including you.'
I was at it for about an hour with the pick and then the shovel until, about three feet down, I hit something hard. It sounded and felt like a coffin. The American was quickly over to the side of the hole, his eyes searching the earth. I kept on digging and finally levered out a box that was the size of a small suitcase and placed it on the grass at his feet. It was heavy. When I looked up, I saw that he was holding a thirty-eight in his hand. A snub-nosed police special.
'This is nothing personal,' he said. 'But a man who's digging for treasure is just liable to think he deserves a share. Especially a man who was noble enough to turn down a hundred marks.'
'Now that you mention it,' I said, 'the idea of beating your face to a pulp with the flat of a spade is rather tempting.'
He waved the gun. 'Then you'd best throw it away, just in case.'
I bent over, picked up the spade, and launched it into the flower bed. I put my hand in my pocket and, seeing him stiffen a little, laughed. 'Kind of nervous for a tough guy, aren't you?' I brought out a packet of Luckies, and lit one. 'I guess maybe those krauts who are still picking pieces of shell from their mouths were just careless with their eggs. Either that, or you tell a good story.'
'Now, here's what I want you to do,' he said. 'Climb out of that hole, pick up the box, and carry it to the car.'
'You and your manicure,' I said.
'That's right,' he said. 'Me and my manicure.'
I climbed out of the hole and stared at him, then down at the box. 'You're a bastard, all right,' I said. 'But I've met a lot of bastards in my time--some of the biggest, bigger than you--and I know what I'm talking about. There are lots of reasons to shoot a man dead in cold blood, but refusing to carry a box to a car isn't one of them. So I'm going into the house to wash up and fetch myself a beer, and you can go to hell.'
I turned and walked back to the house. He didn't pull the trigger.
About five minutes later I looked out my bathroom window and saw Wolf carrying the box slowly to the Buick. Still holding his gun, and glancing nervously up at the windows of the hotel as if I might have a rifle, the American opened the trunk and Wolf dropped the box inside. Then the two of them got into the car and drove quickly away. I went downstairs, fetched a beer from the bar, and then locked the front door. The American had been right about one thing. I was a lousy hotel-keeper. And it was high time I recognized that in some practical way. I found some paper and, in large red letters, wrote on it 'CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.' Then I taped the sign to the glass in the door and went back into the bar.
A couple of hours, and twice as many beers later, I caught one of the new electric trains into Munich's main railway station. From there I walked through the bomb-damaged city center to the corner of Ludwigstrasse, where, in front of the charred ruins of the Leuchtenberg Palais and the Odeon, once the best concert halls in Munich, I took a tram north, in the direction of Schwabing. Here, nearly all of the buildings reminded me of myself, with only the housefronts standing, so that while the general appearance of the street seemed hardly impaired, everything was in reality badly damaged and burned out. It was high time I made some repairs. But I didn't see how that was possible doing what I was doing. Working as the Adlon house detective in the early thirties, I had learned a little about running a grand hotel, but this had been very poor preparation for running a small one. The Ami was right. I had to go back to what I knew best. I was going to tell Kirsten that I intended to put the hotel up for sale, and that I planned to become a private detective again. Of course, telling her was one thing; expecting her to register any sign of comprehension was quite another. And whereas I still had a facade, Kirsten seemed like a complete ruin of her former self.
On the north edge of Schwabing was the main state hospital. It was used as the American military hospital, which meant that Germans had to go somewhere else. That is, all except the lunatics, who went to the hospital's Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. This was just around the corner from the main hospital, in Kraepelinstrasse. I visited her as often as I could given that I was running a hotel, which meant that lately I'd been coming only every other day.
Kirsten's room enjoyed a view of Prinz Luitpold Park to the southeast, but I could not have described her
