The waiting area was full of people waiting to see the doctors. He went over to a window where a busy woman finally was able to ask him what he wanted.
“I would like to see Dr. Royal if I may.'
“And your name?'
“Aaron Kamen from Kansas City.'
“Okay. One moment please.” She took another phone call and then began looking through an appointment book.
“How would nine-thirty be?'
“You mean in the morning?'
“Mm hm.” She nodded expectantly.
“I'm not a patient. I just need to see him for a second.'
“May I ask what it's in regard to?” He didn't took like a drug salesman but you could never tell anymore.
“It's a personal matter.” He leaned forward, suddenly conscious that the people there in the waiting room were listening with all ears. “I'm looking for an individual and was told he might be able to give me some information.'
“Let me see if he's in, sir,” the busy nurse told Aaron Kamen, touching a control on the call director and speaking to someone. He heard her say, “A gentleman is here to see him,” and, “No, he doesn't.” She turned to face him across the counter that separated the lobby from the rest of the clinic's interior. “Who did you say you were with?'
He told her again who he was and, satisfied that he was neither a prospective patient nor a drug salesman, she told him to take a seat and Dr. Royal would be with him in a moment. The moment was about twelve minutes. A nurse came and told him to follow her please, and escorted him through the length of the building to a corner office, depositing him in the presence of his quarry.
“Mr. Kamen, how can we help you?” He was not the man Kamen had expected to find. It's conceivably a fallacy that we wear the face we've earned, the face we've come to deserve in our years of living. This was the face of a benevolent, kindly man. More Jean Hersholt than Erich Von Stroheim, to be sure. Yet without a hint of any sinister elements, without the infamous Tear-of-Satan birthmark, still Kamen chilled with the sure knowledge of the evil confronting him. Maybe it was in the eyes. He'd have been unable to articulate how he knew, but this was his quarry.
It was Dr. Solomon Royal, to be sure. Not Shtolz of the forties’ passport or fifties’ driver's license photographs, but on a visceral, intuitive wavelength Kamen knew the kindly, questioning face studying him through bifocals was the elderly Butcher of Lebensborn a lifetime later. Unexpectedly, though his feelings were a puzzle, he knew he'd found Emil Shtolz.
He made up his mind instantly not to play games. “I'm here about Alma Purdy,” he said, putting all his contempt into the words, letting this human monster know that his freedom had finally run its course.
“Pardon?” A saintly smile. Inside the genius mind of Dr. Royal a shadow moved from under a corner of the brain and the other one who lived inside slithered out of the darkness.
“You know her,
The man was very good, he'd give the devil his due. Not a flicker of recognition found its way into the sympathetic face. One shoulder went up slightly. The aging, handsome head shook again, but the eyes remained flat and unchanged. “I'm sorry, but I just don't ... Oh! Yes!” He reacted convincingly, smiling. “The woman with the prosthesis. I'm sorry. It just didn't register for a moment. I couldn't place who you meant.” Kamen listened for Munich in the consonants. Just a touch of something, a guttural quality. His own accent was thicker than this man's.
“Shtolz, what have you done with Mrs. Purdy?” In his right pocket he felt the weight of the hammerless revolver that he carried as a precaution. He was strong. More powerful than this old Nazi. He would fear nothing. Nonetheless, he wished he hadn't stopped. Wished the local law-enforcement people had found him. He wished Randall or Pritchett were here now. “The police know about you, by the way; they're on the way here.” He sensed his tactical mistake as the words came out.
Shtolz turned and reached for the telephone, his face hardening into a question mark. This was what Kamen expected. He'd call a lawyer, or perhaps the cops. Try to have Kamen thrown out of his clinic. But instead, the doctor surprised him.
“Would you pull a file for me, please? I need the file on Alma Purdy. P-U-R-D-Y. She was a referral from Dr. Levin. The lady with the prosthetic hand, remember? ... Okay.” He hung up. “She'll have it in a moment.'
A few seconds passed. “What did you do with her?” Aaron Kamen's voice was loud in the room. “Answer me, you smiling Nazi bastard!'
“I didn't do a thing,” he said, smiling, but with that look people get when they're trying to humor an unruly person. “Mrs. Purdy came to see us for the first time a few weeks back. She was referred to the clinic because of some complications she'd been having. May I ask what your relationship is to Mrs. Purdy?” He was infuriatingly unruffled.
“I'm her friend. And I want to know where she is.'
“That part isn't any big mystery. Unless she's been released she is a patient at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis.'
“You mean I can pick up the phone and speak to her in St. Louis right now?” Kamen's tone was razor edged.
“I don't see why not.” The eyebrows shot up again. “She has no—” A nurse came in with a folder. “Oh, good. Thanks.” He got up, taking the folder, opening it up right there in front of Kamen.
“See, she has acute rheumatoid arthritis in the arm and the prosthesis was causing a great deal of pain.” Kamen was beginning to wonder if perhaps this was all paranoia. What if he called the hospital and Mrs. Purdy was all right after all? He'd feel like a total imbecile. Hospitalization would explain why she hadn't called back. He'd just called the man a Nazi bastard.
“This is as I thought,” Royal continued. “She was admitted to Barnes about three weeks ago. Here's the report based on our X rays. There's the note about our admission and, you see, there's her present room number.
The Nazi hunter was an experienced, tough, resolute fighter, and he was not a stupid man. In theory, he could never be so easily deceived. But theory and real life are often far different birds, and who better to convince and lull and mislead and persuade than the ultimate method actor, the man or woman with more than one personality? Shtolz, long subjugated and submerged, was a genius as well as a murderer, and Aaron Kamen alone was no match for him. Shtolz, the real inner being, came snaking out of Solomon Royal's twisted mind and killed the man in a few heartbeats.
There were calming, reassuring words. Cleverly manufactured facts detailing the seriousness of the absent Mrs. Purdy's arthritic pain, a smokescreen of doctors and nurses and medical initialspeak, a convenience of contrived history swirled in front of Kamen's tired eyes. It might be argued that had he felt better he would have proved to be a more worthy adversary. But Emil Shtolz, brilliant butcher of the secret Himmler breeding farms, was fighting for his life.
He kept the thing under his desk in the office. There was one in his car, one in the bedroom, another here. Over the years he'd become proficient with them. He thought of them as his brass knuckles, but they were far more than that. Protrusions came between the fingers, a heavy tube was clenched in the palm, and the hard, sharpened striking surfaces protruded from top and bottom. Shtolz no longer remembered the name of the weapons, which he also used as grip strengtheners.
It was the simplest move to slide his right hand into the one beneath the desk, pulling the file off with two hands as he stood, speaking as he moved, the right thumb visible on the file folder, the left hand with the papers now crossing over the right as he handed the folder to Kamen, right hand curling around the powerful knuckles, focusing on a spot a foot in space beyond the man's head—hands moving, right hand at the left shoulder, weight into the blow, expert knowledge of anatomy targeting the hard striking surface as the extended fist smashed into Kamen's temple.
