He offers me a glass of Ricard. I watch as he adds water, transforming the liquid from clear to milky white.
'Not quite absinthe,' he says, 'but still makes a good louche. I acquired a taste for it in the Legion. You know about my military career?'
'You're a legend, Jurgen.'
He grins.
'Actually, all I know is what Mace told me.'
'Inspector Bartel's an okay guy for a cop. And you, Mr. Weiss – are you a cop, too?'
I explain that though my drawings are used in law enforcement, I'm a civilian in town to cover the Foster trial.
'And now you want to draw me?' He smiles, strikes a pose.
'I'd prefer you a little more relaxed.'
He slumps over. '‘The Absinthe Drinker’ by Degas, no?'
'A little less stagey, if you don't mind.'
'Sure.' He assumes a normal posture, then lets his features fall into repose. In those few seconds, his face seems to age a dozen years.
'That's good. It works better for me when you're comfortable.'
We chat casually as I start to sketch.
'This drawing – will you be showing it to witnesses?' he asks.
'If I wanted to show your picture, Jurgen, I'd make things easy for myself and take a photograph.'
He nods. 'I've heard photographs lie, that only art can tell the truth.'
'Photographs can also be art.'
'And drawings can also lie, no? Forgive me for asking, Mr. Weiss, but what's the point of this exercise?'
'I like your face, I'm having fun drawing it. And I was hoping a portrait session would give us a chance to talk.'
'About the Flamingo killings?'
I start to work on his eyes. 'Something you want to tell me about that?'
'I'm curious why people are still interested after all these years.'
'People?'
'Inspector Bartel and you.'
'I was a kid here when the murders happened. I knew the teacher, so I've always been interested.'
Jurgen raises his right eyebrow at the same time, making his smile go sweet. It's a characteristic expression, one I want to catch. I set to work on his eyebrows, then his mouth.
'I think there's more to it than that, Mr. Weiss.'
'You're right, there is. And please call me David.'
'Yes, thank you. Please forgive my formality. It's my European background. Jack Cody always said he liked that about me, the way I made his clients feel so ‘well-served.’
He tells me he returned to Germany this past winter, his first visit since he ran away from home at age sixteen. His kid sister was dying after fighting breast cancer for two years. It would be his last chance to see her, so he closed his restaurant for two weeks and flew over.
'My niece met me at the Frankfurt airport. She had crisscross tribal marks cut into her cheeks, a ring in her nose, a tack on her tongue, and a baby perched on her back in a papoose. ‘Yoo-hoo, Uncle Jurgen – it's me, Gisela!’ One look at her and I wanted to get back on the plane. My brother-in-law Hans is a podiatrist. He keeps a scabby pink oversize model of a foot on his desk. My sister, Eva, looked bad. I remembered her as a stout girl. Now she weighed less than a hundred pounds. The time, see the ‘new Germany.’ After a couple days sightseeing, I told them I thought it was pretty much the same as when I left – crappy food, crummy little houses, petty middle-class concerns. ‘Oh, Uncle Jurgen, you're so funny – isn't he Mutter? Vater? But Eva knew I wasn't kidding, that I was thrilled to discover I'd made the correct decision when I left.' He pauses, clicks his glass against the bottle of pastis. 'She died in April, poor darling! I didn't go back for the funeral. Wired over a big wreath.' Jurgen bottom-ups his drink, sets down his glass, and wipes his eyes.
I've got him down pretty well on paper, I think: the suave ability to appraise others that shows in his eyes, the bittersweet irony in the set of his mouth. Taking a cue from Pam's perception of him as a ‘kinky Bogie,’ I idealize him a little, working to instill the proper degree of cynicism and rue.
'Nice watch,' I tell him, indicating the heavy gold Vaucheron-Constantin dangling from his wrist.
'Jack Cody left it to me.'
'Do you think Jack had the lovers killed?'
Jurgen shakes his head. 'Not Jack's style. If he'd wanted them dead he would have killed them himself. Anyway, Barbara was the love of his life.'
'She was cheating on him.'
Jurgen shrugs. 'They weren't married. He cheated on her, too.
They had an arrangement.'
'Tell me about Walter Maritz.'
'He was a crooked cop who became a crooked private eye. Jack punished him hard for what he did to Barbara. He deserved everything he got.'
'What did he do to her?'
'You don't know?'
'Tell me.'
Jurgen smiles. I start to work on a second drawing. This time I want to catch him in storytelling mode.
He tells me that after Barbara's au pair washed up headless from Delamere Lake, she and her husband hired a slew of private detectives to find their abducted kid. About two years later, after the Fulraine's were divorced, Maritz approached Barbara out of the blue saying he'd heard rumors there was a little white girl with blond hair living in Gunktown with blacks. Barbara, grasping at the offered straw, hired Maritz and gave him money to spread around the ghetto. Every few weeks Maritz came back, reported what his informants said, and asked for more money to further loosen tongues. This went on for three or four months until Barbara met Jack through a mutual friend.
'Jack, of course, knew who she was and was taken with her right away. When she told him about Maritz, that she'd given him nearly twenty grand to develop leads, Jack knew right away she was being scammed. He offered to handle it for her. She was relieved. She didn't much like dealing with Maritz. So Jack called in Maritz for a little talk. After ten minutes, he knew for sure Maritz was a liar.
'That's when he brought me in and a couple of muscle guys who used to handle security around The Elms. We took Maritz to a garage out back. Jack told the muscle guys to beat the truth out of the fuck. Maritz didn't hold out long. About a minute in he was on his knees confessing the scam. Jack told him he had to give the money back. Maritz said he couldn't, he'd gambled it all away. Jack, cold as ice, told him if he couldn't pay in money he'd have to pay in broken bones. Maritz, terrified, begged for mercy. Jack, sick of listening to the fuck, told the muscle guys to give it to him good. They broke both his kneecaps and half his ribs, then I drove him to the hospital. I warned him not to say anything. ‘You're a lucky guy,’ I told him. ‘Mr. Cody could have had you killed.’ Maritz, still whimpering, got the point. I dumped him at the E.R. entrance. Takes a year to recover from a beating like that. He recovered, went on with his life. ‘Live and let live,’ as they say.'
'Next day Jack met with Barbara, explained the swindle, and told her he got all her money back. Then he paid her every cent out of his own funds. That's what brought them together. Soon afterwards they became lovers, and after that their bond was what they did with each other in bed.'
It's a good story and clearly Jurgen relishes telling it. He laughs when I tell him Maritz told the cops he received money from Barbara after Andrew Fulraine hired him to follow her.
'After what Jack did to him he wouldn't dare go near her. And she would never have met with him. A woman like that doesn't get taken twice. She'd have told Jack and by the next morning Maritz's body would've been rotting in a dumpster.'
'Fulraine hired him to follow her. That was confirmed.'
'Then Maritz scammed Fulraine, took his money, and made up reports. He couldn't have followed her. She'd have spotted him right away.'
