In view of the revelation about Neff’s Waffen-SS past I wondered if these other acquaintances of his might have included Alois Brunner, but I still saw no good reason to tell Garlopis about meeting Brunner in the Mega bar. It would only have scared him the way it had scared me. I collected my coat and went to the door.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“I thought I’d walk over to the Megaron Pappoudof and tell Leventis in person that I’m moving hotels. Just to make him feel as if I’m taking him seriously. Policemen like that kind of attention to the umlauts.”
“You are taking him seriously, aren’t you, sir?”
“Sure. I want to come out of this in one piece. Any talk about firing squads worries me.”
“I’m delighted to hear it. I’d hate to end up in Haidari among all those awful criminals.”
“I’ve known a lot of criminals and I can tell you that, with the exception of the ones like Alois Brunner, most are just ordinary people like you and me. They lack imagination, that’s all. Crimes are committed when men take an idea that seems like a good idea and then can’t think of enough good reasons why it might not be a good idea.”
“All the same, I’d rather avoid the Haidari, if possible. For the sake of my children, you understand. They’re at the Lycée Léonin, one of the best schools in Athens. It takes a dim view of parents who don’t measure up to the rigorous moral standards set by the monks who run the school. That’s the only reason my wife has not yet divorced me. Would you like me to accompany you, sir?”
“No, I want you to stay here and telephone Dr. Lyacos at the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus and arrange for us to see him again. I need to speak to him about Professor Buchholz. And see if you can find out from that lawyer, Papakyriakopoulos, if Arthur Meissner has agreed to see me yet. I’ll be back in an hour. At least I hope I will.”
“Well done, sir. We’ll make a Greek out of you yet. Your pronunciation of his very complicated name was faultless.”
“I’m German, Mr. Garlopis. We have some very complex words of our own to practice on. Some German words take so long to say that they have their own damn timetables.”
THIRTY
–
In his office at the Megaron Pappoudof I told Lieutenant Leventis I was changing hotels.
“Is that all you came here to tell me, Commissar? That you’re going to the GB? I’m disappointed.”
“I thought you’d like to know in case you wanted to buy me breakfast one morning. You can probably look out of your office window and see into my bathroom, if it helps make that happen.”
“Good idea. But are you sure no one is dead in it?”
“Just my love life, probably. When they find that body you can arrest me all over again.”
“Why bother? You’re still my number-one suspect in the Witzel case.”
“Clearly you’re not very good with numbers. You already told me the name of your number-one suspect. At best I’m number three.”
“Who’s number two?”
“Garlopis.”
“That’s not very loyal of you, Commissar.”
“No, it isn’t. But his home is in Greece. Mine’s in Germany. And I want to get back there one day. Which is why I’m in here writing my room number on your handkerchief in lipstick.”
“Anything else you want to talk about?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“I told you, Commissar. I’m blind here and I want you to be my dog. So bark a little, will you?”
I lit up a cigarette and blew some smoke at the high ceiling. The fan wasn’t moving, which was how I knew it was still officially winter in Athens. Otherwise it seemed quite warm in his office. Leventis leaned back on his chair, looking at me steadily all the time, waiting for me to say something more, and then nodded when I didn’t. “You keep your mouth shut unless you’ve got something to say. All right. Not many people can do that judiciously. Especially in here. You’ve a talent for saying not very much, Commissar.”
“I never learned much by listening to myself.”
“No? Then maybe I can tell you something interesting.”
“That’ll make a nice change.”
“Don’t forget your position here, Ganz.” He wagged his finger at me like I was a naughty schoolboy and grinned. “You’re a little impertinent for a suspect.”
“That’s just my manner. It doesn’t work with everyone. Only with people, not cops. Look, I said I’d cooperate with you, Leventis, not crown you with wild olive. And we both know I’m a poor choice of suspect. On account of how I turned up at the murder scene after the murder. Garlopis, too. It’s time you admitted that, copper, or else you’re dumber than I thought you were.”
“My name isn’t copper, it’s Stavros P. Leventis. But you can call me lieutenant. And in here I don’t have to admit to a damn thing. I leave that to other people. What’s dumb about that?”
“Nothing at all. What does the P stand for, anyway?”
“Patroclus. Only keep that quiet.”
“I’ll lend it someone else’s armor if it will help get me out of this damn country. Tell me what’s so interesting, Pat.”
“Last night, the City Police picked up a local burglar by the name of Tsochaztopoulos, only everyone calls him Choc.”
“Now that I can understand.”
“He put his hands up to a whole string of burglaries across the city, but here’s where it starts to get interesting.”
“I was hoping it might.”
“He claims he was put up to robbing Frizis’s office in Glyfada. Says the job was to take one client file and to cover his tracks so that the lawyer didn’t even know he’d been there. Says he was paid to do it by a man he met in a nightclub. The
