Once Departed

“Put a good title on that,” Mike said, “and think up a snappy ending, and you could sell it. What’d you find out?”

Quint looked at him warily. “What’d I find out about what?”

Mike sighed. He pulled the morning edition of the Madrid Pueblo from his jacket pocket and slapped it smartly against his knee. “Look,” he said, “come on up to Chicote’s, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Never touch the stuff,” Quint told him. “I’ve got to get back and do some work.”

“I’ll tell you what I know, if you tell me what you know,” Mike said.

Quint looked at him sourly. “If my poor sainted mother knew I hung around with bad influences like you… okay, let’s go.”

Chicote’s, one of the half dozen most famed bars in the world, is located at No. 12, Jose Antonio, about a hundred yards up the street from where Quint had parked. They made their way in that direction.

Something there is about a score or so saloons throughout the world that gives them a soul, the very soul of the city in which they dispense the beverage that sooths. Sloppy Joe’s in Havana, Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans, Harry’s in Venice, the Raffles Bar in Singapore, the Crystal in Tombstone, McSorley’s in New York. Each of these are the cities in which they exist. Pat O’Brien’s is New Orleans; Harry’s New York Bar, in Paris, is the Paris of the expatriate American. Just as Dean’s in Tangier, was Tangier, and the city and Dean’s died together, it was never the same after the old bartender passed away.

So it is that Chicote’s is Madrid’s bar. Internationally famed, wherever the drinking set bend elbows. And what made it so? The endless publicity given gratis by such as Papa Hemingway in his stories? The personality of the original Chicote himself? The fact that the place is the hangout of the most beautiful whores in Spain? The fabulous liquor museum in the basement—the largest collection of alcoholic drinks in the world? Perhaps all of these things.

Be that as it may, when Quint Jones and Mike Woolman pushed their way through the door, emerging from the white glare of the afternoon sun of Spain into the dim cool of the large bar, it wasn’t in search of any of the establishment’s claims to fame other than its liquor. Spanish laws are lax, if not non-existent, when it comes to beverages, but there is no record of a customer ever complaining of cut whisky, or a phonied up vintage date on his wine bottle in Chicote’s.

Mike darted a nervous glance around the Spanish equivalent of a cocktail lounge, which made up the first large room as you entered from the street. The long bar was beyond. Aside from half a dozen lackadaisical tarts, sitting alone at their tables, empty coffee cups before them and awaiting a trade that seldom developed this time of day, the lounge was empty.

Mike banged himself with his paper and said, “Let’s get in a corner here. Some of the bartenders speak English.”

They found a table, Quint ordered Fundador and Mike, Veterano cognac.

Quint grunted at the other’s choice of brandy. “That stuff’s too sweet,” he said, as the waiter poured the double shot.

“Thank God you don’t have to drink it,” Mike said.

When the waiter was gone, Quint sipped his drink and said, “Okay. You tell yours first.”

The newsman said, “Nothing startling but it backs some of the possibilities I brought up this morning. You know Albrecht Stroehlein, the plump, weepy eyed ex-Gestapo lad who claims he used to be buddy-buddy with Hitler back in the old beerhall days.”

“So?”

“So, I’ve been checking on him. Up until a couple of months ago he was on his uppers. Worked for a while as a waiter on the Costa del Sol, begged handouts from more prosperous Nazi refugees, that sort of thing. But then he went up to Berlin.”

“Berlin!” Quint said. “I thought he was wanted for war crimes.”

“Evidently, somebody’s had a change of mind. When he returned, he got himself nicely outfitted, rented a swank apartment, started eating in Horcher’s. That sort of thing.”

Quint said, “West Berlin, or East Berlin?”

Mike thought about that, rubbing the bottom of his chin nervously. “I wouldn’t know. Maybe I can find out. Actually, Berlin is the big clearing house for European espionage these days.”

Quint said, “Listen, is it possible that Stroehlein knew personally such bigwigs as Martin Bormann, Heinrich Mueller, Doktor Stahlecker? Knew them well enough so that if he saw one of them today, he’d recognize him?”

Mike Woolman’s eyes went empty. He picked up his drink and tossed it back. “Uh huh,” he said. “It’s most likely. Start talking, friend.”

“I can’t. I promised it was off the record. But I can tell you this. Ronald Brett-Home talked Marty and Ferd Dempsey into throwing that party with Ferencsik as guest of honor. He also got them to spread the word that it was open house—everybody welcome. But none of those secret agents you mentioned this morning were invited. They all crashed. They all took advantage of the open house deal.”

Quint finished his own drink and made circular motions over his glass to the waiter, in the way of ordering a couple more of the same. He went on, “Another thing. You’re possibly right about our sneaky friend Joe Garcia. He came up to the place not long after you left, and hinted around that it would be best if I watched myself. That if I didn’t keep my nose clean I might be bounced out of Spain.”

“Uh huh,” Mike said. “But back to this Martin Bormann and the other missing Nazis.”

“Can’t. Off the record.”

“Look here, Quint, damn it, what did Bartholomew Digby tell you at lunch?”

“How’d you know I had lunch with Digby?”

Mike Woolman grinned nastily at him, while the waiter filled up their glasses. When that worthy was gone, he said, “I located your leak at the Embassy.”

“What are you talking about?” Quint growled.

“You know what I’m talking about: Ester. You bewitched the poor girl with your cheap gigolo charm and whenever you want some inside information, like where does C.I.A. man Bartholomew Digby usually eat his lunch, she finds out for you.” Mike Woolman shook his finger. “Very sneaky, my friend. And very un-American.”

Quint grunted. “Evidently, Ester is springing leaks in all directions these days, if you’ve got to her too. Anyway, Digby made me promise to keep our discussion under the hat.”

“And you agreed,” Mike said disgustedly. “You bastard, I think you did it on purpose. You’re in no hurry for your material. You can let it accumulate for months before you use it. But I’ve got to be in a continual hurry, trying to get a beat before one of the other agencies gets it first.”

Quint grinned at him. “I gave you all I have that I’m not honor bound to keep secret. What else have you got?”

Mike came to his feet, disgusted. “I ought to tell you to get lost, but there’s one other item. Remember I said the local police seemed to be holding the lid on something? Something the Brett-Home murder seemed to be connected with?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it seems the tourist bureau is on their necks. Tourism is currently Spam’s biggest source of hard currency. If anything happened to keep the hordes of visitors out of the country, Franco’s new economic plans would fall flat as the Big Leap Forward in China. They simply can’t let anything get into the news that would scare tourists away.”

“Come on, come on. Drop the other shoe.”

Mike said, “There’s been a wave of Jack the Ripper type murders in Madrid for the past six months and more. Probably quite a bit more. Some monster is loose.”

Chapter Four

After Mike had gone, Quint sat for a time, finishing his drink. He’d tried to get the newsman to stay on and