this nonsense in his sleep.”
“He was wide awake,” Connolly said flatly. “I interrogated him.”
“Ah,” she said, her voice wry with scorn. “So now we have the Gestapo too. Like the movies. The rubber hose. The castor oil. Some drug? Is that how he died?”
“No. He killed himself.”
She looked up at him, interested. “Why?”
“Remorse, I think.”
“Remorse.”
“Not about you. He was loyal to the end, Eisler. A good party man. But Karl-that was something else. I don’t think he’d ever seen a man killed before. That shook him. I guess he didn’t know your lover was the hot-blooded type.”
“My lover,” she said, her voice cold with contempt, and Connolly thought of that day at the ranch. Something had happened between them. Not a lovers’ quarrel. No. She’d been angry with him for putting them at risk.
“Maybe he just didn’t know his own strength,” Connolly said.
“Enough foolishness.” She turned slightly to go.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice hard.
She froze, looking up at him.
“That’s right. You don’t want to make a scene. Not here. Not in front of the customers. We’ll go somewhere else. Then we can talk some more.”
“You must be crazy. You come up to me here, in this place, with these-what? Accusations? The rantings of a dead man. ‘I know.’ ‘I know.’ You don’t know anything. Leave me alone.”
“I have a gun,” he said quietly.
She stopped. “Now the melodrama too?”
“It’s over, Hannah. There was a witness at San Isidro,” he said. “He’s identified your friend. And you.”
She looked at him again, assessing. “It’s a lie.”
“Is it?”
“Then why wait so long? All this—” She spread her hand toward the room.
“We wanted to see if they’d send someone else. But they didn’t, did they? Your friends. What if it’s a trap? Send Hannah. She’s expendable. Now that Eisler’s dead. They’re closing you down too.”
He had touched some anger. “You fool,” she said, glaring at him. “Do you think that matters? There’ll be someone else. Always. That’s why we win. Yes, we,” she said, catching his look. “Who do you think won this war? The baby GIs with their Hershey bars? We won it. Communists. Such a dirty word to you. But we knew. We stopped them. You think politics is about elections? No-bodies. So, one more, one less? What difference?”
“Then we’ll start with you.”
She tossed back her head. “Yes, start with me. Take your time. You think you have so much time? Idiot,” she said in German. “It’s already too late. What did you think? We could sit by and watch you do this? And not protect ourselves? Children-you’re all children here. Do you think we would give a gun to a child?”
“Do you think we’d give one to a gangster?”
She paused, a flicker of a smile on her face. “No. He would have to take it. While the child was playing, perhaps.”
“For his own good.”
“Yes, for everybody’s good. But very carefully. So he wouldn’t know. We had to be very careful.”
Connolly paused. “And yet here you are.”
“For exactly one more minute. Then we are going to smile-it’s very pleasant, the gallery, yes? — and people will say, ‘You see, not so serious. They must have been talking about the art.’ You think you know something? Where is your proof? Friedrich? I was always very careful with Friedrich. When they put him at the ranch, I thought it was a trap-I wouldn’t even look at him. And he thought I had arranged it, so clever. But you know, there is luck in America. Not like Germany. Everything is lucky here. They thought he’d feel at home speaking German. But we never did. All that time, we were too afraid to talk. We couldn’t believe our luck, you see. But afterward, that was more difficult. So I had to be careful. No paper. No strings. Nothing. Nothing to connect us at all. Now what do you want to do? Arrest me? With your gun? Over nothing at all? I don’t think so. Who would believe such a thing?”
“Do you really think you’re just going to walk out of here?”
“No. I have to say goodbye to some people first,” she said coolly, “but then-It’s getting late. You can follow me, of course. But what will you find? Friedrich’s gone. So there is no Corporal Waters. Then my work-well, that’s over. You see, I don’t even have to be careful anymore. Unless you have something else to tell me?”
Then, smoothly, she began to turn away, and Connolly, in an instant of panic, looked around the room-Emma still lurking by the doorway, the kitschy art, people laughing outside-and felt everything slip away. Without thinking, he grabbed her arm, jerking her back toward him.
“It’s not about Eisler. It’s about Karl. You’re not listening. I don’t have to prove a thing about your ‘work.’ I’m arresting you for murder.”
“Let me go.”
“That wasn’t careful, killing Karl.”
“Let me go,” she said, pulling her arm away, but Connolly held it. “What do you think you’re doing? On whose authority? Whose authority?” Her voice, louder now in the empty room, caused a few people out on the patio to look up.
“The police are outside. On their authority. You can say your goodbyes later.”
Her face, gone white, now twisted itself in a cold rage. “Take your hands off me,” she said, so self-possessed that Connolly obeyed the order and dropped her arm. “Madman. I never killed anybody.”
“Yes, you did. Technically, you might get away with being an accessory,” he said. “I don’t think so. Either way, you’ll be gone for years and years. I’ll see to it.”
“You,” she said, almost spitting the word.
“What’s the problem?” A deep voice: Hector, looming next to them.
“Come,” Hannah said, another order.
Connolly looked up at him, feeling suddenly dwarfed. Black eyes. “Hannah says you killed Karl all by yourself,” he said, improvising. Again the question mark. No one had known Karl’s name. “The man in the alley at San Isidro. You shouldn’t have done that, Hector.”
Hector glanced at her, then stared at Connolly, stunned. He seemed to lean back, as if he had been struck.
“Don’t listen to him. He’s crazy,” Hannah said.
“All by yourself. We thought she helped, but she said no, you did everything.”
Hector’s confusion made him jumpy. Connolly could see the tension creep into the broad, impassive face, the eyes as alert as an animal’s.
“You should have thrown away those boots,” Connolly said, pointing at his feet. “We matched the prints.” A lie, but would Hector know? “Just like a fingerprint. All over the bushes. When you pulled his pants down.”
Now the eyes, no longer confused, took on a shine of menace.
“Come,” Hannah said. “Foolishness.”
“You weren’t trying to kill him. I know. Just knock him out, the way you do.” As he said it, another blackboard leap. Someone else looking up at the tall, glowering man, black eyes flashing. “Like Batchelor. The soldier at the PX. You weren’t trying to kill him. Just teach him a lesson, right?”
“Shut up,” Hector said, his voice a low rumble.
“You didn’t kill him, just roughed him up a little. I can’t blame you. So why’d you kill Karl? We thought she told you to.” He nodded his head toward Hannah. “But she says she wasn’t there.”
Hector turned and looked at her, obviously surprised.
“Don’t say anything,” she said coldly.
“We know you killed him,” Connolly said quickly. “We didn’t know you did it alone. See, the way we saw it, you knocked him out-he’s just out. Messed up. But she said you had to kill him, you had to finish it. Did you even know who he was? Did she tell you? Eisler said you didn’t know.”
“Shut up,” Hector said again, louder now.
“It was smart making it look like the murder in Albuquerque. To tell you the truth, we thought that was her
