“Take it easy, friend. My name is Ganz. I’m a claims adjustor from the company in Munich that insured the Doris. If you’ve come here looking for Siegfried Witzel, then I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. Your boss is dead.”
“Dead, huh? How’d that happen?”
“He was shot, in this house. Someone murdered him.”
“You did it, maybe?”
“Not me. Maybe you haven’t noticed but I’m not holding a gun on you. No, there’s a cop says it was Alois Brunner shot your friend. Although you might know him better as Georg Fischer. Like I say, I’m just a claims adjustor.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“That’s what everyone calls it. You’ve heard of insurance, haven’t you? It’s when you pay money in case something bad happens and if it does they give you a lot more money back. I don’t know, but most people seem to understand how that works.”
“Maybe you’ll pay me to stop something bad happening to you now.”
“That’s a different kind of insurance. That’s called extortion. Look, just cool your blood a minute, I’m not here to steal anything. Just to talk. Maybe I can help you.”
“You’ve said enough already, Fritz.”
Speaking German had been a mistake, not because he didn’t understand it—he did—but because he must have thought that my being German meant I was there to kill him. It was a reasonable assumption, given the record of my countrymen in Athens; everyone knew that most Germans were ruthless and not to be trusted. But it was much too late to fetch the two native Greek speakers I’d left outside the house to try to reassure him in his own language that I was on the level and meant him no harm. I knew it was a mistake because his hand dipped into his trouser pocket and when it came out again it was holding a pearl-handled switchblade. A nice one. I decided to buy one myself if I ever got out of the house alive. He hadn’t yet pressed the button to release the blade so there was still a second or two available for common sense to prevail.
“You really don’t like insurance, do you?”
“Could be. But most of all I don’t like you. I’ll probably think of a good reason why after you’re bleeding to death on the floor.”
“Look, friend, there’s no need to be as stupid as you look. I can see you haven’t yet understood the principle of risk. You’d be surprised at how many idiots are injured getting out of a bath—although that obviously wouldn’t ever happen to you—or just walking across a bedroom floor. But I promise you that’s exactly what’s going to happen unless you put away the toothpick.”
“Say your prayers, malaka, because you’re the one who’s going to get injured.”
FORTY-ONE
–
Spiros Reppas thumbed the button on the pearl handle of the switchblade and it sounded as harmless as a camera shutter, but when he came slashing and jabbing at me with the point, I guessed he didn’t want me to say cheese so I turned and ran down two flights of stairs three at a time with the idea of reaching the Webley on the table by the French windows. Of course, he couldn’t know the gun was empty but I wanted it because even an empty Webley will get you further than no Webley at all.
I heard his feet close behind me and, realizing I wasn’t going to make it to the Webley in time, I grabbed the navy peacoat off the banister to help me try to defend myself. When we reached the bottom of the stair, I spun around and using the coat, I smothered his first and second lunge with the knife. He took a step back, feinting with the blade, which he clearly knew how to use, drunk or sober, while I twisted the coat around my left forearm and prepared to parry a third thrust. Neither of us spoke. When two men have an honest difference of opinion it’s best to let them settle it with a more old-fashioned sort of dialectic than pure reason. The third time he came snarling at me like a rabid dog he went for my throat and I raised my thickly wrapped forearm to prevent his switchblade from slicing through my jugular. The navy peacoat absorbed most of the blade’s sharp length but it wasn’t thick enough to stop the tip of the knife from stabbing my arm. I yelled with pain, twisted my arm and the knife to one side, and then lashed at him with my right. It was a good punch, a big Schmeling uppercut that ought to have broken his jaw except that he ducked under it, clawed the coat away with the knife, and came at me again. There was fear and murder in his red-rimmed eyes and maybe just a hint of uncertainty now about the outcome; I expect I looked much the same way myself. Fortunately the knife came within reach now, a few inches from my nose, and high enough for me to clap my two hands hard on opposite sides of his arm simultaneously—one on the back of his hand and the other on the inside of his forearm—a fortunate bit of training I remembered from the Berlin police academy in the days when it seemed every punk on the streets thought he was Mackie Messer. I got lucky. Luckier than I deserved, given the injury to my own forearm. My
