CHAPTER 6
If it was a bluff, I decided not to call. I gave Maas a blanket, told him to go to hell, and went to bed. It wasn’t the most restful night I’ve ever had.
Next morning I met Lieutenant Wentzel in his office. He seemed much the same. He sat behind a yellow oak desk that was decorated with a telephone, a blotter, and an in-and-out file that had nothing in either tray. He was wearing the same clothes except for a fresh white-on-white shirt and an apple-green tie. His fingernails were still clean and he had shaved again.
He indicated the chair in front of his desk. Another man, whom I did not meet, sat in a chair by the window. He didn’t look at me. He looked out of the window. The view was the brick wall of some kind of factory or warehouse. He may have been counting the bricks.
I made a statement to a stenographer Wentzel called in. I kept it short and as brief as possible. Wentzel excused himself, and I sat there in the chair smoking cigarettes and putting them out on the floor. There was no ash tray. The room was painted the same green that map makers use. The floor was of oiled dark-brown wood. The ceiling was dirty white. It was a room where a government’s work is done by the people it hires. It also had that sense of impermanency that most lowerechelon government offices have, probably because their occupants are on the way either up or down or out and they know that this job, this project, is only temporary. So there are no pictures of the wife and kids in the folding leather case, no personal items to make the office assume an air of permanency.
Wentzel came back with the secretary as I was finishing a cigarette. He read my statement to me. I had made it in German, and it seemed longer, more detailed, pedantic and methodical than I had thought. It had the peculiar sound of your own voice coming out of another’s mouth.
“So does that seem correct to you, Herr McCorkle?”
“Yes.”
“Your employees, the bartender and the waitress, have already been with us and have made similar statements. Would you like to read them?”
“Not unless they vary a great deal from mine.”
“They do not.” I took the pen he offered and signed three copies. The pen scratched a little. I handed it back to Wentzel.
“I assume you have not heard from the man Maas.”
“No.”
Wentzel nodded. He seemed neither surprised nor disappointed. “Your colleague, Herr Padillo. Was he overly concerned about yesterday’s incident?”
There was no sense in being trapped, “I haven’t talked to him yet. I imagine he will be concerned.”
“I see.” Wentzel stood up. I stood up. The man in the chair by the window remained seated, absorbed in the brick wall.
“If further developments occur that concern you, Herr McCorkle, we’ll be in touch.”
“Of course,” I said.
“And should the man Maas make any attempt to reach you, I am sure you will let us know.”
“Yes. I will.”
“So. I believe that is all we need. Thank you.” We shook hands. “A
Maas had been curled up asleep on the couch when I left my apartment that morning. For all I knew, he was still there. It was not yet noon, the time for his appointment. I walked out of the police station in downtown Bonn, around the corner, and into a
I stood at the bar with the rest of the morning drinkers and had a glass of Pils and a Weinbrand. I looked at my watch. It was eleven twenty-five. My appointment with Wentzel had taken less than twenty minutes. The Weinbrand was gone, but my beer glass was almost full. I decided on another brandy.
It was time for sober reflection, for cunning and for foxylike wiliness. Here was McCorkle, the friendly saloon- keeper, pitted against some of the most fiendish minds in Europe. Maas, for example. He would have a fiendish mind. I thought of the short fat man and couldn’t bring myself to dislike him, much less hate him. If I had worked at it, I probably could have found some excuses for his behavior. Then there was Padillo, off to God knows where. How well did I know Padillo? No better than the brother I never had. There were a lot of questions whose answers seemed not to lie in the bottom of a glass, so I went out into the street, got into my car, and headed for Godesberg.
The routine of opening the place, checking the menu, going over the accounts, and writing up purchase orders occupied the next half hour. Karl was at the bar, a trifle morose.
“I never lied to the fuzz before.”
“You’ll get a bonus.”
“A lot of good that’ll do me in jail.”
“You’re not going to jail. You’re not important enough.”
He ran a comb through his long blond hair. God knows who he was trying to look like that week. “Well, I’ve
