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November 15: All Jewish pupils expelled from German schools.

January: Hitler in Reichstag speech vows that if war erupts, it will mean the extermination (Vernichtung) of all European Jews.

Whew—talk about yanking the welcome mat out from under a whole tribe of people. Jerk or not, he had to admit that his grandfather showed brains getting out of Germany when he still could, 1938 obviously not a good year for the Hebes…

Careful.…for people of Hebrew extraction.

“Solve the Jewish problem?” He’d done the six-year red-shirt program at Badger U, and knew what that meant. Truck innocent people off to the gas chambers or burn them alive. What kind of scum did that sort of thing to their fellow human beings?

Bern spent a moment picturing himself in Germany, 1938, a group of soldiers dressed in gray approaching him, but each one scared crapless because Bern wasn’t about to run from a bunch of cowardly Nazis. Grab one by the throat, that was the way to start, then kick the legs out…

Enough, enough…

He wanted to be damn certain of this before he started casting Nazis as bad guys.

Thing was—and this still made no sense—Bern couldn’t think of anyone who hated Jews more than his grandfather. Of course, the old man hated every shade of colored person, too, plus Catholics. People from the South—rednecks or white trash. Florida? They were retard Crackers, and who could blame the man, frankly. California Commies, same thing. The Wegian Legion from Minnesota, don’t get Grandy started on them. The Wegian weenie whiners. But why would his grandfather, Frederick Roth, hate Jews if he was one?

Or…maybe this was all bullshit. Everything in the briefcase fake.

His grandfather had done some bizarre things in the twenty months he lived after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He’d changed his will umpteen times, depending on who in the family had pissed him off most recently. Bern, who he despised, was suddenly made chief executive officer of all the old man’s holdings in Florida. A shocker—apparently forgetting that Bern had spent three weeks in a teenage psych ward for braining the old bastard with a ball-peen hammer. Also forgetting the feud the assault had signaled, grandfather and grandson trying to top the other’s vicious attempts to get even.

Another shocker: Augie, the old man’s pet, had been demoted from his cushy executive job in Oshkosh and transferred to Florida to be Bern’s assistant.

Behavior that was as weird as the old man leaving a briefcase that contained passports and other stuff—and Bern had to admit this—that were sucking the joy right out of knowing the old bastard was rotting in his grave. Which probably was the intent.

How could he fake the briefcase’s odor, though, the smell of rodents’ nesting? And why the photo of the glamorous woman with the smoldering eyes?

Bern wished now he’d brought all the passports with him so he could compare the photographs again. The young blond Jewish guy was actually his Hebrew-hating grandfather?

Wanting to question whether that was true was something that seemed less and less weird.

B ern signed off from the computer, picked up the passport and other stuff he’d brought —a bottle of Pepto-Bismol because he still felt seasick, a garbage bag just in case—and went outside into the sodium daylight of a marina after 10 P.M.

Yes, there was Moe out there by the docks, riding the dinosaur-sized dozer, cowboy hat tilted forward on his head as if he were on a mechanical bull. What was the retard doing this time of night? Outside, with a storm forming, too, light flashing in mountainous clouds to the east. The sort of day Bern was having, he’d probably be struck by lightning. Maybe for the best.

Bern walked toward the bulldozer. What he wanted to do was take the Luger replica he’d bought in Milwaukee and shoot the man between the eyes. Same one he’d used to scare the dork Ford, and stuttering what’s his name following behind the Viking so close Bern could hear them laughing their butts off whenever he stopped puking long enough to catch a breath.

To Moe, Bern had said, “You could’ve spewed on them but chose me instead?” The two of them finally on the dock; Bern on his knees, running cold water over his head. He’d wanted to say, “That shows questionable business judgment…a decision an executive probably wouldn’t make. Like handing the cops several thousand dollars’ worth of stuff that’s rightfully mine. A death wish, motherfucker, that’s what it shows!”

Another situation in which profanity would have been appropriate.

Take the Luger, stick the skinny barrel in the Hoosier’s ear, and squeeze off two or three from the eight-round clip. No…better yet, use Cowboy Moe’s own weapon, the chrome .357 six-shooter he carried in his truck. Afterward, turn himself in, and tell the jury exactly what had happened: I’m sitting there, minding my own business, so sick I wanted to die. Seriously—die. On the back of a boat, trying to breathe air that didn’t taste like diesel fumes. Finally, getting a little better—dozing, I’m pretty sure—when I feel what I think is salt water hit me in the face. But guess what…?

Not guilty. Even if only one of the jurors had experienced a hell trip like today with his idiot nephew. First time in his life Bern could actually smell colors. Reds, blues, greens—each with its own unique diesel stink, and they all triggered the gag reflex.

B ern was determined to keep his temper, though. He needed Moe. Couldn’t fire him yet because no way was Bern going out in rough weather again, no matter how much he loved the Viking. So Moe’s scuba and boating skills would be needed. Bern didn’t care anymore about profit, but he still wanted to find the wreck. For one thing, he wasn’t going to let the nerd laugh at him, then steal what rightfully belonged to him. Something else: His grandfather knew the wreck’s location. Why?

Bern had a lot on his mind—the Jewish thing drifting in and out between thoughts of holding a gun to the Hoosier’s head…of wondering what the old man’s real motives were…also seeing the glamorous woman, imagining her photo, hoping she was still around with those smoldering eyes. She had to have been some beauty queen the old man was wild about—why else the photo?

Forgiveness, as the old man used to say, was for people who didn’t have the balls for revenge.

That’s how Bern planned to spend the evening: sit in his condo, and leaf through the leather-bound journal, hoping a woman’s name jumped out at him from all that faded writing. The other papers, too, most of them in German, which he didn’t understand, but a name, at least, might point him in the right direction. Tell him the woman’s identity.

How would the old man feel if he knew Bern ripped the clothes off his old sweetheart?

Go insane, that’s what he’d do. Touch the sacred flesh was the best way to screw his grandfather.

Tomorrow, he’d put a call in to Jason Goddard, the old man’s personal assistant. Leave a message, because it was Saturday, then try a cell phone number that might still be good. Also, he was thinking of asking Augie to contribute his expertise, the little brownnoser who’d learned to speak and read German to get in good with the old man.

Trust him with the old man’s journal? He’d give some thought to that.

Now, though, Bern had to make nice with the redneck Hoosier—and do it in a hurry, too, with that thunderstorm coming. Moe was working overtime, trying to make up for what he’d done that afternoon.

Not a chance in hell.

21

I’d been wondering about it for a while but told Chestra, “I just realized something. There have to be twenty, twenty-five photographs in this room. But your godmother, Marlissa Dorn, isn’t in any of them. I find that surprising.” I waited for a moment, deciding if I should add, “There are none of you, either.” Then did.

The woman was standing with her back to me in the gold lame gown, her shoulders wider than her hips, silver-blond hair piled atop her head, a pearl necklace visible beneath wisps of hair and delicate ears. Without turning, she said, “You’re not the first to notice. Tommy asked the same thing.”

Meaning Tomlinson.

Outside, there was a flash of blue light, then another. Lightning. It illuminated the balcony’s wrought-iron