Voices of the dead

“No, I am sorry, Herr Hess, he has not.”

That was unusual. But lately, Arno had seemed to lose his concentration. Hess gave her his phone number at the hotel.

At 4:00 p.m. Hess drove to a bar in a town called Allen Park, a gray single-storey cinderblock building, paint peeling, pickup trucks outnumbering cars in the parking lot. The inside was dark and crowded, men lining the bar, loud rock music playing. He was approached by a man in his mid-thirties, long hair pulled back and tied in a ponytail, muscular arms exposed in a sleeveless denim jacket.

“You Mr. Klaws?” he said, pronouncing the name wrong.

Hess nodded. He could see Sieg Heil tattooed on his right forearm.

“How was your flight over? I’m Buddy.” He extended his hand and Hess shook it. “So you’re the genuine article, huh? Never met a real Nazi before. Sir, this a real honor, I mean it.”

He reminded Ernst of the Blackshirts, his own neo-Nazis, a generation that was missing something, a generation that would never measure up to the high standards or the high achievers of the Third Reich.

“Ever meet Adolf Hitler?”

“I was fortunate enough to make the Fuhrer’s acquaintance, yes.”

“What was he like?”

“Charismatic, mesmerizing, a born leader.”

“I’ll bet. He’s one of the greatest men that ever lived. I read Mein Kampf. Talk about a page-turner, I couldn’t put it down.” He glanced at the bar. “Want a beer or something?”

“Do you have the weapon?”

“Well, you bet. No time like the present, huh?”

Hess followed him outside to a red pickup truck parked in the lot.

“Step into my office,” Buddy said, grinning.

Hess opened the passenger door and sat on the bench seat. Buddy got in and reached for the glove box, opened it and took out a blue steel semiautomatic with a suppressor on the end of the barrel.

“Here she is,” Buddy said. “Silenced Walther PPK, exposed hammer, double-action trigger mechanism. Reliable and concealable. Magazine release button is on the left side of the frame, but as a former military man I bet you knew that. Holds seven plus one in the throat. And a box of extra rounds like your man Mr. Rausch specified. I myself prefer a higher-caliber weapon, something with knockdown power. What’re you huntin’, small game?” Buddy smiled again. “Extra ammo’s in the glove box. Total for everything’s eight hundred dollars.”

More than twice what the gun was worth, the American Nazi taking advantage of him. Hess reached for his billfold in the inside pocket of his sport jacket, opened it, counted eight hundred-dollar bills out of a thick stack and handed the money to Buddy. He slid the gun in his right side pocket and put the box of cartridges in his left pocket. “Do you know a secluded area where I can fire the weapon?”

“Sure do. Tell you what, you can follow me or ride with me. Your choice.”

Hess followed him out of Allen Park on a two-lane road to a rural area with farms on both sides of the road. Buddy turned left on a dirt road that went straight into woods, slowed down and parked on the side of the road. They walked through the trees, reminding him of the Vonderer Forest in Bavaria, big mature trees, high canopy of leaves. They walked in deeper and came to a clearing, a stretch of open grass that was fifty meters wide.

“Here you go. This is about as secluded as you’re going to get.”

Hess was going to try the Walther out on Buddy. Kill anyone who could identify him. But he might need another weapon or even the man’s assistance with something. Keep your options open, Hess said to himself.

Buddy’d read about the Blackshirts this neo-Nazi organization in Munich, Germany and wrote a letter: To whom it may concern, saying he would like to start a Blackshirt chapter in Detroit, Michigan, USA. And if any of them were ever planning a visit to the…f A‚ he’d be honored to show them around. He’d even put some Blackshirts up at his house in Hazel Park, a suburb of Detroit.

He didn’t hear anything for months, then got a letter from some guy named Arno Rausch saying a famous Nazi, Gerd Klaus, was coming to town and he could use some help procuring a firearm, a Walther PPK fitted with a suppressor.

Buddy knew just where to get it. He’d met Ed Stannard at the Gun amp; Knife Show at the Light Guard Armory a few years back. Ed, who everyone called “Ed the Head,” dealt guns both legally and under the table. Buddy’d called him, told him what he needed and drove out to his farmhouse in Saline that had tall bushy marijuana plants growing around the outside, looking like overgrown shrubs.

The inside smelled like weed and Ed had guns spread out across the carpet of the empty living room. Ed’d screwed the silencer on the end of the barrel of the Walther and handed it to him.

“Here you go, bro.” Ed’d said. “Don’t get caught with the suppressor, they give you like ten years.”

“Don’t worry,” Buddy said.

“Need any assault rifles? I can give you a real good deal.”

“I’m all set,” Buddy said. “But how about some ammo for the Walther?”

“No problem.”

Buddy’d been a member of the Viking Youth Corps and the Imperial Aryan Alliance but was between organizations at that time. He had 88, neo-Nazi code for Heil Hitler tattooed on his left shoulder, and Arbeit Macht Frei on his right biceps, German for: “work makes you free.” What was on the gates at concentration camps. And Seig Heil on his right forearm.

Buddy’s dad, Herb‚ had been a member of the American Nazi Party and used to goose-step around the house in his Nazi uniform: brown shirt, black tie and pants, red, black and white swastika arm band, peaked cap with the Totenkopf emblem on it. His dad preached racial purity to Buddy and his sister Tanya. He’d said, “Immigrants, homosexuals, nigs and Jews were polluting our society.” His dad and his buds would burn Mexican flags they called buzzard rags, and Israeli flags they called kike Kleenexes.

His dad used to get in arguments with the other Nazi Party higher-ups, and they even tried to kick him out. His dad had said, “I am a member of the American Nazi Party in perpetuity until voluntarily, or by natural or unnatural means I am so relieved.” Whatever that meant.

In truth, Buddy thought his dad looked like a clown walking around, saying Seig Heil! And Heil Hitler! But Buddy liked the Nazis. Had read everything he could get his hands on about them. He loved the swastika and their uniforms and their cool black boots. He agreed with their ideology too about Aryan purity.

The next morning Hess drove by the scrap yard, a mountain of metal behind a warehouse and a small cinderblock building. He stopped on the side of the road and watched a crane with a grapple hook load metal scrap into the back of huge semi-trailers.

Hess turned around and drove through Hamtramck, a predominantly Polish town. He didn’t have much respect for Poles. Germany had invaded Poland in 1939, taking over the country in a couple weeks. He remembered seeing newsprint photographs of German troops goose-stepping through Warsaw. He stopped at a pay phone, dialing the number for S amp;H Recycling Metals, getting ready to use a Southern accent and a name he had seen in the Detroit News.

A woman’s voice said, “S amp;H, how may I direct your call?”

Hess said, “Is Harry there?”

“Who’s calling please?”

“This is Ray Meade.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Levin’s out of town. Sir, what did you say your name was?”

“Ray Meade, darlin’. When do you expect him?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. He’s driving back from Pittsburgh.”

Hess hung up the phone.

Fifteen minutes later he was parked on Lothrop near 14th Street in front of a brown two-storey brick house, the address Rausch had received from their contact at police headquarters in Munich. Hess was looking at a black- and-white photograph of Cordell Sims taken the night he was arrested. A big American sedan passed by him,