“Think you can manage a shave, or should we do it for you?”
“I can shave myself,” Gunther said stiffly.
“What about clothes?” Bernie said. “You can’t go looking like that.” A dirty undershirt marked with stains.
Gunther nodded toward the closet, then turned to Jake. “So how goes your case? I thought you had given up.”
“No. I’ve got lots to tell you.”
“Good,” Bernie said. “Talk to him. Maybe that’ll wake him up.” He opened the closet and pulled out a dark suit. “This fit?”
“Of course.”
“It better. You’re going to make a good impression if I have to hold you up.”
“It’s so important to you?” Gunther said, his voice distant.
“She sent your wife to the ovens. Isn’t it important to you?”
Gunther looked down and took another sip of coffee. “So what is it you want, Herr Geismar?”
“I need you to talk to your Russian friends. Find out about somebody. There was a shooting in Potsdam.”
“Always Potsdam,” Gunther said, a grunt.
“A Russian shot a friend of mine. I want to know who he is. Was.” Gunther raised his eyes. “Somebody shot back.”
“His name isn’t on the report?” Gunther said, a cop’s question.
“Not just his name. Who he was.”
“Ah, the who,” Gunther said, drinking more coffee. “So, another case.”
The same case.
“The same?” Bernie said, following the conversation from the closet. “They said it was an accident. A robbery. It was in the papers.”
“It wasn’t a robbery,” Jake said. “I was there. It was a setup.” He looked at Gunther. “The shooting was the point. They just happened to get the wrong person.”
“That was your friend.”
Jake nodded. “The man they wanted took one in the shoulder.”
“Not a sharpshooter, then,” Gunther said, using the western term.
“It’s easy to miss in a crowd. You know what the market’s like. All hell broke loose. Shooting all over the place. Ask your friend Sikorsky.”
Gunther looked up from his coffee. “He was in the market? In Potsdam?”
Jake smiled. “Peddling cigarettes. Maybe he was buying a rug, I don’t know. He got out fast enough when the shooting started, just like everybody else.”
“Then he didn’t see the first shots.”
“I saw them.”
“Go on,” Gunther said.
“Talk while you shave,” Bernie said, nudging him toward the bathroom. “I’ll get more coffee.”
Gunther shuffled to the sink, obedient, and stood for a minute in front of the mirror looking at himself, then started to lather his face with a brush. Jake sat on the edge of the tub.
“Don’t be long,” Bernie said from the other room. “We have to go over your testimony one last time.”
“We’ve been over my testimony,” Gunther said to the mirror grimly, his grizzled face slowly disappearing under a film of soap.
“You don’t want to forget anything.”
“Don’t worry,” Gunther said, to himself now, leaning on the sink. “I won’t forget.”
He picked up a straight-edge razor, his hand shaking.
“Are you going to be all right?” Jake said quietly. “Do you want me to do that?”
“You think I might hurt myself? No.” He held up the razor, looking at it. “Do you know how many times I’ve thought how easy it would be? One cut, that’s all, and it’s over.” He shook his head. “I could never do it. I don’t know why. I tried. I put the razor here,” he said, touching his throat, “but I couldn’t cut. You think it would cut me now? An accident?” He turned sideways to look at Jake. “I don’t believe in accidents.” He faced the mirror again. “So tell me about our case.”
Jake shifted on the tub rim, disconcerted. Not the drink talking, the voice behind the drink, suddenly naked, not even aware of being exposed, like someone in a window taking off his clothes. What goes through your head when you feel a razor on your throat? But now it was there again, taking a calm, neat stroke upward through the soap, guided by a survivor’s steady hand.
Jake started to talk, his words following the rhythmic scraping, trying to match the logical path of the shave, down one cheek, curving around the corners of the mouth, but soon the story went off on its own, darting from one place to another, the way it had actually happened. There was a lot Gunther didn’t know. The serial-number dash. Kransberg. Frau Dzuris. Even young Willi, loitering in Professor Brandt’s street. At times Jake thought Gunther had stopped listening, stretching his skin to draw the razor closer without nicking, but then he would grunt and Jake knew he was registering the points, his mind clearing with each swipe of his soapy face.
Bernie came in with more coffee and stayed, leaning against the door and watching Gunther’s expression in the mirror, for once not interrupting. A Russian kneeling in front of a Horch, gun out. Meister Toll. Gunther rinsed the blade and splashed his face clean.
“Is this presentable enough for you?” he said to Bernie.
“Just like new. Here’s a shirt,” he said, handing it over.
“So what do you think?” Jake said.
“Everything’s mixed up,” Gunther said absently, wiping his face.
“I’ve confused you.”
“It’s more, I think, that you have confused yourself.”
Jake looked at him.
“Herr Geismar, you cannot do police work by intuition. Follow the points, like a bookkeeper. You have two problems, so you make two columns. Keep them separate, don’t leap from column to column.”
“But they connect.”
“Only at Kransberg. Who knows? Maybe the one coincidence. The obvious point, you know, is that Tully wasn’t looking for Herr Brandt. The others, yes. Not him.” He shook his head, slipping into the shirt. “No, put your numbers down in order, each in its own column. It is only when the same number comes up that you have a match, the connection.”
“Maybe they connect at Potsdam. That keeps coming up.”
“Yes, and why?” Gunther said, buttoning the shirt. “I’ve never understood about Potsdam. What was he doing there? And that day, a closed city.”
“You asked me to check on that,” Bernie said. “Passes into the American compound. Zero. No Tully.”
“But he was found there,” Jake said. “Russian sector, Russian money.”
“Yes, the money. It’s a useful point.” Gunther picked up the coffee cup again, drinking. “If he got Russian money, it must have been here. But not from an Ivan buying watches, I think. Who has so much? Have you heard anything from Alford?” No.
“Try again. The tie also?” he said to Bernie.
“You want to look your best for the judge,” Bernie said.
Jake sighed, stymied. “Danny won’t get us anywhere. We have to find Emil.“
Gunther turned to the mirror, slipping the tie underneath his collar. “Keep your columns separate. There isn’t yet the connection.”
“And I suppose the shooting in Potsdam wasn’t connected either.”
“No. There a number matches.”
“Shaeffer, you mean.”
“Herr Geismar, you have a gift for ignoring the obvious. A gift.” He leaned toward the mirror, knotting his tie. “There are three people standing in the market. Close. When you describe it, you see a gun pointing at the photographer. But I see her bending down. I see it pointing at you.”
