There was a silence on the other end. He must have been switching on the tape recorder. “Where are you, McCorkle?”
“Padillo said to tell you he was dead.”
I hung up.
It took them fifteen minutes to get to my house, which was pretty fair time. There was a knock on the door and Fredl answered it. I wasn’t getting up for anybody.
Hatcher, the man I had met at the saloon, was with Burmser. They came in quickly, wearing nice gray suits and black shoes and carrying their hats. They stopped when they saw Symmes and Burchwood, who just looked at them and then looked away.
“This is Gerald R. Symmes and Russell C Burchwood,” I said. “This man is Mr. Burmser and the other one is Mr. Hatcher. If you want, they’ll show you their little black books that tell you who they work for.”
Burmser started toward Symmes and Burchwood. “What are you going to do—put the cuffs on?” He stopped and looked at Hatcher.
“Would you like some coffee—or perhaps a drink?” Fredl asked.
“This is Miss Arndt, my fiancee,” I said. “Mr. Burmser and Mr. Hatcher.”
“I’ll take the drink,” Burmser said.
Hatcher nodded. “Please,” he said.
“Where’s Padillo?” Burmser demanded.
“As I said, he’s dead. You can fish in the Rhine for what’s left of him. Along with a man named Jimmy Ku and a man named Maas. They’re all dead, and there are a couple more that are dead on a Dutch barge that’s tied up about a mile up the river.”
“Did you say Ku?”
“Yes. Ku.”
Hatcher reached for the telephone and dialed a number. He started talking into it in a low voice. I didn’t pay any attention to what he said.
“Now we come to the problem that Mr. Symmes and Mr. Burchwood face,” I said. “Padillo offered them a deal. I intend to see that it’s carried out.”
“We make no deals, McCorkle,” Burmser said. “I’m sorry about Padillo, but he wasn’t acting on our authority.”
“You’re a goddamned liar, Burmser,” I said. “Padillo’s job was to get Symmes and Burchwood here into West Berlin. Isn’t that what you told him? Didn’t you tell him that it was just a run-of-the-mill job, that all he would have to do would be to shepherd them through Checkpoint Charlie and they’d be carrying all the necessary papers and passes in their nice new suits? And didn’t you work a deal with the KGB to trade Padillo for Symmes and Burchwood—and didn’t you do it without getting clearance on it? It was going to be your own coup. Christ, Burmser, you know what a crummy deal you pulled. And Padillo got out of it, or tried to, using whatever method he could get his hands on. He wanted out. He wanted to run a bar somewhere in Los Angeles, but in the end he would have settled for just being left alone. Yet you couldn’t let him have that; you had to set him up for the prize-patsy award, and in the end he got killed and you killed him just as if you had put the gun up against his back and pulled the trigger three times, just to make sure he was dead.”
Fredl came in with the drinks. Burmser’s tight expression didn’t change. He accepted the drink but offered no thanks. He took a long pull and set it down. It could have been Pepsi-Cola for all he knew.
“Some of these things, these operations, you don’t understand, McCorkle. You couldn’t possibly, because even Padillo didn’t. I told you in Berlin to keep out of it—that it was a delicately planned thing and depended on exact timing. But you came blundering in—”
“I didn’t blunder in; I was asked in by my partner. And, by the way, have you checked out Cook Baker recently? He’s dead, you know. Padillo killed him in East Berlin. He killed him when he found out that Baker had shot a man named Weatherby. He also killed him after he found out that Baker was working for the opposition, but I don’t think that bothered Padillo too much.”
Hatcher grabbed for the phone again and started dialing. He was having a busy day.
“And remember your Berlin spiv—Bill-Wilhelm? Maas and Baker fingered him and somebody shot him and dumped him in front of me just in front of the Cafe Budapest. Was all that part of your delicate operation?”
Burmser glanced at Hatcher, who signaled that he had heard that morsel, too, and would check it out.
“Now then. Let’s get down to the polite blackmail.”
“We don’t pay blackmail, McCorkle.”
“You’ll pay this or you’ll find this whole sweet mess reported in a Frankfurt paper under Miss Arndt’s by-line. She knows it all—every last detail.”
A thin film of sweat popped out on Burmser’s forehead. He chewed on his upper lip, remembered that he had a drink, and took a big swallow as if he were thirsty.
“What about Symmes and Burchwood?”
“These two young men, against impossible odds, outwitted their fiendish Communist captors and, with a remarkable display of determination and daring, escaped over, under or through the Berlin wall to safety.”
Symmes giggled. Burmser had his drink to his mouth again and choked.
“They’d never buy that.”
“Why not? They’d have them under lock and key. And it’s going to come out. Too many people know about them now. I can name a half dozen who might peddle the story this afternoon for the price of a drink.”
