Harry quietly interceded. 'You think maybe I ought to explain? I'm kind of used to these things.' He smiled gently at us. 'I'm afraid it's like the colonel says: pretty bad.'
It was. Peter van Cortlandt, genteel, standoffish, the ultimate patrician, had been found dead in the gutter in Frankfurt's raunchy sex district, a few blocks from the railroad station, at 3:30 a.m. He was lying in front of the Hotel Paradies, a ratty little place with a 'sex-kino' on the ground floor and rooms that were rented by the half-hour above. He was wearing only a shirt and a pair of socks, and had apparently been killed in a fall. The rest of his clothing- but not his watch, wallet, or Yale class ring-was found in a third-floor room of the Paradies, the window of which was immediately above his body.
The desk clerk had told the German police that he thought he remembered Peter coming in a little after midnight with a blonde he had seen around, but he wasn't sure; there were so many. ('So many blondes or so many gray-haired gentlemen?' the Polizei had asked. 'Take your pick,' the clerk had answered with a shrug.)
An autopsy had already been performed, the conclusions being that Peter had been killed by a fall from Room 303 of the Hotel Paradies, and that there were drugs and alcohol in his system. It was not possible to determine whether his death had been accidental or if he had been thrown from the window. A search had been instituted for a tall husky blond called Utelinde, or Linda, who was reputed to have the word amour tattooed on her left buttock.
'I hate to say it,' Harry said, 'but the Polizei have about as much chance of finding her as…' He lifted his shoulders resignedly. 'This is a pretty common occurrence around the Kaiserstrasse. There's not a night goes by but some soldier or some businessman on the prowl doesn't wind up like this.'
'Now, wait a minute!' I said, my throat tight. 'This wasn't some bum, this was Peter van Cortlandt!' Disconcertedly, I shook my head, tried to regroup my muddled thoughts. 'It's got to be a mistake.'
'I'm afraid not,' Robey said. 'It's Peter, all right.'
There was more. An unopened package of condoms had been found in his trousers pocket; a few of the hairs on the tousled bed in Room 303 had been analyzed as his ('Some of them extracranial,' Harry said delicately); and he had been seen drinking in two nearby bars earlier that night.
As these unsavory details came out, the ends of Robey's mouth buried themselves in dry little grooves that hadn't been there before. He was angry, I thought, less at Peter's killer, if there was a killer, than at Peter himself, for the shabby, squalid way he'd permitted himself to die. Not quite angry, maybe, but let down; disappointed in the wretchedly common end of a distinguished man; shamed by proxy.
Me, I didn't feel that way, but what I did feel wasn't any more commendable. I wish I could say that I had refused to believe any of it, and insisted from the beginning that Peter had been set up, but I didn't. I was astonished, of course, because what I knew of him was as contrary to the notion of drunken whoring on Frankfurt's Kaiserstrasse as anything could be.
But you have to remember where I was myself at the time. I had been married for a decade, contentedly and (I thought) securely. I had been faithful to Bev, and, generally speaking, happy to be faithful. And then I was suddenly alone, betrayed, confused, aching for solace, and bursting with healthy young hormones. During the ensuing year I had found myself, sometimes to my considerable surprise, in a few places in which, as it now was for Peter, it would have been damned embarrassing to be found dead.
How did I know what stresses he'd been under? He was aging. Was the job getting to be too much? Was his marriage breaking up? Was he estranged from his children? I had no idea. Who was I to say it was inconceivable or reprehensible that he should lay himself down on a foul bed, rented for half an hour, in the Hotel Paradies.
And so I accepted it as simply one more proof that we never really know anyone else, regretting Peter's death but absorbed in my own life, my own problems. When the meeting drew to a low-spirited close, I went up to my room and called Tony in San Francisco, forgetting that it was four in the morning there, to tell him about Peter. I also asked him what he knew about the forgery.
'Only that Peter thought there was one,' Tony said, his voice shocked and dull, 'and that it was something in your line. I thought he was having a little private joke.' There was a long silence. I heard him breathe twice. 'You mean there is one? A forgery?'
This depressing and unhelpful exchange completed, I was downhearted and headachy. I took another couple of codeine, dropped onto the bed, and slept heavily until 7:00 p.m. Down for a groggy bowl of soup, and back to sleep.
The next day was more of the same: codeine, soup, and sleep. But Monday I was better, managing to work for a few hours at learning the ropes with Corporal Jessick, and spending the rest of the morning with Harry, tediously trying to construct pictures of No-neck and Skull-face with Photofit, a jigsaw-puzzle-like set of thousands of photographs of eyebrows, noses, and chins. None of them seemed ugly enough.
The afternoon brought a setback of sorts. While I was dozing after lunch the telephone rang.
'Chris, I've been calling you for days'
Rita Dooling. Calling with more offers and counteroffers and counter-counteroffers. My head started aching again the moment I heard her voice.
'I know, Rita,' I lied, with sinking heart. 'I've been trying to get through to you.' What traitor had given her my number at Columbia House?
'Sure, I just bet you have. You probably went all the way to Europe just to get away from me. Well, what do you say?'
'To what?'
'To nine-and-three-quarters percent of your book,' Rita said mildly. She was used to dealing with me.
'Oh yeah, that's right.' I lay down on my back with the telephone cradled against my ear. 'Well, I've given it a lot of thought, a lot of thought, and I can't see it. In the first place, I just don't want to be bothered with figuring out nine-and-three-quarters percent on every royalty check-'
'Uh, it's not just the royalty checks. She figures she ought to get nine-and-three-quarters percent of your advance too-the one you got last April. Five hundred, she says it was, so that comes to forty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents.'
'Jesus Christ, Rita.'
'Look, I'm just passing on what her attorney told me. You know I'm on your side, Chris.'
'I know.'
'Still, if it was me, I'd give it to her,' she said, generous as ever. 'And if you don't want to do the figuring, why don't you ask your publisher to send the nine and three quarters directly to her?'
Because I'd be embarrassed to, that's why. 'I'll tell you what,' I said. 'Let's put that aside for the moment-'
'I've been hearing that for a year and a half. If you want my honest opinion, Christopher, you're treading water. You don't want Bev back, but you can't face letting go and admitting ten years of marriage are just time down the drain. You've got mixed-up feelings of loyalty and guilt, and your self-concept has been so traumatized-'
'Rita, I'm going to have to introduce you to my friend Louis one of these days.'
'I know your friend Louis. We talk about you a lot.'
'Wonderful. Now, I was going to say: About this business of her getting the car and me getting poor old Murphy-'
'Oh, that's past history, forget that. She's mellowed on that one. She says she's happy to see you keep them both.'
'If.'
'Well, of course 'if'. What she suggests-and I'll tell you honestly, if I were you, I'd go for it-is that you sell the house-'
'Sell the house,' I echoed hollowly.
'-and split the proceeds fifty-fifty with her, but with a guaranteed fifteen thou up front in cash. Do that and she'll forget about the car.'
'And Murph, no doubt.'
'Well, no. That is, not exactly. She says that if you want Murphy-'
'Uh, Rita, I have to go now. My beeper just buzzed; I mean beeped.'
'You have a beeper?'
