“No.”
“Good.”
“So who is it in the house? The Nazi?”
“No such luck. It’s Spiros Reppas. The captain of the Doris.”
“You didn’t kill him, did you? Only, there’s quite a lot of blood on your hands.”
She was a cool one, all right. The way she spoke made me think that it wouldn’t have bothered her very much if I had killed him.
“He won’t be sniffing any roses soon, but otherwise he’s fine. Just a headache and a broken nose.”
“Thank God for that. In my experience the Greek police take a pretty dim view of murder.”
“Look, go and fetch Garlopis, will you, angel?”
“All right. But I don’t like it here. This is hardly my idea of a night out. We could have been having a lot of fun if you weren’t an ex-cop.”
“I’m sorry about that. But we can’t leave. Not quite yet. I need to ask our seafaring friend some questions first. Up until now we were just exchanging blows. He’s been pacified so tell Garlopis the danger is over but that I need those clean towels he keeps on the car seats. I have to use one of them on my arm and the other on the captain’s face. And be nice. For a coward Garlopis is actually quite a decent fellow when you get to know him. I should know. Like I already told you, I’m often a coward myself.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“It’s true. The only reason I went in there was because I was afraid of what might happen if I didn’t. Believe me, sometimes bravery is just the very small space that exists between two kinds of fear: his and mine. Now go and get him like a good girl. And the towels. Don’t forget to bring those towels.”
FORTY-TWO
–
I threw one of the clean towels at Spiros Reppas, who was now seated quietly on the battered sofa, and waited for him to wipe his ruined face; his nose looked like a butcher’s elbow and his eyes were full of whatever protein-filled plasma fills them when you rearrange a man’s face for the worse. Aqueous humor, I suppose, but nobody was laughing. With my left forearm wrapped in another towel, I was seated at the table and had the Webley right in front of me hoping it might underline my questions and lack of patience with the way things had gone up until now; but the gun was still unloaded because I’d shot people before who tried to murder me and I didn’t want any more blood spilled. A broken nose and a cut on a forearm were enough splash for one evening.
Elli and Garlopis were hovering in the doorway beside the stairs, uncertain and uncomfortable witnesses to an interrogation they’d rather have avoided. They probably wondered if I was capable of hurting Reppas again. I was wondering the same thing. In the bedroom upstairs the radio was playing another jolly Greek tune and Elli was quietly humming along with it until I shot her a narrow-eyed, irritated look that was supposed to make her desist. She was nervous, I guess, and trying to hide it. The sight of guns and knives and quite a bit of blood will do that to some women. On the other hand, maybe she just didn’t see that this was hardly the time or the place to have a song in your heart.
“Why don’t you go upstairs and turn that damn radio off?” I said. “It’s irritating me.”
“Don’t you like Greek music?” she asked.
“Not particularly. And while you’re up there, have a peek around and see what you can find.”
“What am I looking for?”
“You’ll know it if you see it.”
“There speaks the great detective.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“I had the strange idea that Leventis believes you are.”
“Everyone looks like a great detective to a cop like him. Even an old Kraut like me.”
“You’re not so old, for an old guy.”
She went upstairs. She moved like a black panther—rare, beautiful, and still steeped in unfathomable mystery—and after a while the radio went quiet, which left some room for my brain to untangle itself.
I tossed the injured man’s wallet to Garlopis. I’d already looked through it, but everything inside was printed in Greek.
“See what this can tell us,” I growled at him, still irritated but now more with myself, mostly for being irritated at Elli. Then again, someone trying to shoot you will do that sometimes. I lit a couple of cigarettes, because a cigarette is the perfect panacea for injured forearms and broken noses, a heal-all nostrum that requires no medical training and always works like magic. I tucked one between the captain’s bloodstained lips and smoked in silence for a moment, remembering something Bernhard Weiss had told me when he was still the boss of the Murder Commission at Berlin’s Alex:
“Make the silence work for you,” he’d said. “Just look at the way Hitler makes a speech. Never in a hurry. Waits for the audience to settle, and the expectation to mount. ‘When will he speak?’ ‘What will he say?’ It’s the same with a suspect. Have a cigarette, check your fingernails, stare at the ceiling, like you’ve got all the time in the world. Your suspect will be telling himself that he’s the one who’s supposed to have nothing better to do, not you. Chances are your man will say something even if it’s to tell you to go and screw yourself.”
After a minute or two Reppas wiped his nose again, inspected the amount of blood on the towel, removed the cigarette from his mouth, and spat a scarlet gob to one side. Cigarette and psychology were evidently working well.
“So what happens now, malaka?”
“That’s up to you, Captain.”
“Says the man with the gun.”
“Look, friend, it’s your gun, not mine. And if you hadn’t pulled the trigger on me you might still
