Dead Man's Tale (3 page)

Estelle did a whirlabout in a shower of silver drops and with a smooth, fast crawl swam out into deep water.

The car stopped on the circular driveway and two men got out. The big one wore slacks and a sports shirt with the collar laid back. The other was little and skinny and wore a dark-blue suit. The big man, who had been driving, left the motor idling. The two men stood quietly for a moment, listening to the Dobermans.

“I'm not wild about this,” the little man said.

The big man shrugged. “They're locked up. You worry too much.”

“I just don't like them dogs,” the little man insisted. “I heard all about Barney Street's dogs.”

“You're a regular old lady,” the big man said. “Come on.”

The front door was not locked. There was a light on in the hall and another on the stairway landing. The high-pile carpet in the hall and on the stairs muffled their footfalls. They went up side by side, not hurrying.

“Estelle?” a voice above them called. “Wasn't that a car?”

They reached the top of the stairs and turned left. There were two dark doorways and one door partly open with light behind it. They went to the partly open door and heard someone shuffling around beyond it.

“Estelle?” The door started to close.

The big man raised his foot and kicked it open.

Barney Street stood there, a silly smile on his face.

The big man shot the smile off his face three times with a .45. The little man shot him in the belly once with a snub Police Positive. When Barney Street fell down he didn't look much like anything any more.

The two men went down the stairs. Out of the house, they climbed into their car. The big man drove it sedately around the circular driveway, heading for the gate. The dogs were still barking.

When Estelle saw the headlights swing out onto the road, she rolled over again and began to swim slowly back to shore. The cold water made her tingle all over, especially her breasts. She felt wonderful.

PART II

OLD JOOST

3

Mynheer Van Hilversum stared angrily at the neat stack of papers on his desk.

They were all there—the police records from the war years and afterwards; the yellowed sheets of the underground newspaper; the dozen or so occupation orders that had been rescued from the fire in the town hall that mad summer in 1944—some of them bearing Milo Hacha's extravagant signature.

Mynheer Van Hilversum was a completely bald, fusty little man who wore rimless glasses that were always sliding down his bridgeless nose. He had an enormous drooping moustache that had been the colour of corn silk in 1944. Now it was white.

For twenty-odd years he had been the mayor of Oosterdijk, where everything but the big dredging machines that were transforming the old Zuider Zee into fertile polder land stood still. Twenty-some years this past April, he thought with a sigh.

He neatly rearranged the papers a third time, lining them up precisely with the edge of his desk. If he got to his feet and looked past the heavy, comfortable furniture and through the window across the room he could see the Oosterdijk Canal running straight, like a ruler, across the flat, green countryside to Hoorn. He could also see, far down the canal, the sails of Old Joost's windmill stubbornly turning in defiance of the electric water-pumping stations. But Mynheer Van Hilversum did not wish to see Old Joost's windmill, so he did not look out of the window.

“Tell them about the girl,” his wife said.

The mayor looked up. He had forgotten she was there. “That is out of the question, Johanna.”

“Tell them about the girl!”

“I will never tell them about the girl,” Hilversum said, shaking his head.

“You old fool, if you don't tell them, I will.”

Johanna was a big woman, with a blocky red face and blonde hair going grey. She had been strappingly pretty in 1944. Mynheer Van Hilversum, though he had been mayor for almost a quarter of a century, had always been a little afraid of her.

She leaned over the desk and riffled contemptuously through the papers Hilversum had stacked there. “These?” she sniffed. “What are these? Do they tell the whole story?”

Hilversum admitted they did not. He took a large watch out of his vest pocket and fussed with it, wishing the Americans would return soon so he could have done with the whole sorry business. “Sergeant Hacha was a member of the occupation army,” he said patiently. “But Sergeant Hacha was a Czech who did not like his German masters. So—”

“At least you can speak his name now,” Johanna interrupted. “It's years since you have spoken his name.”

“Please, Johanna,” her husband pleaded.

“I could not help doing what I did! I am not ashamed!”

Hilversum's close-set little eyes blinked. “No, I suppose you couldn't. I don't blame you, Johanna. I blame no one.”

“And the Englishman?”

“I know nothing of the Englishman.”

Johanna laughed. When she stopped laughing, she pointed a large finger at Hilversum. “The two Americans spoke of a legacy. Since Milo Hacha is dead, that legacy belongs to the girl. I want her to have it.”

Hilversum scrubbed his face with dry hands. It was a mannerism his wife detested. His glasses fell off and landed on the desk. He retrieved them and set about polishing them with a large handkerchief. “They will want information about the mother.”

“I am not ashamed.”

“
I
am.”

Johanna shrugged. “Why should we have to stay here in Oosterdijk? If Katrina Joost received the legacy, we could go anywhere.”

“So now it comes out,” Hilversum said, sighing. “It is the money you want.”

“Katrina Joost is the rightful heiress.”

“And you are the rightful guardian.”

“Well, am I not?” There was a faint knock at the door.

“The Americans,” Johanna whispered. “You'll tell them?”

“No,” Hilversum said.

Hans appeared. “Mynheer, the Americans are here.”

“In a moment.”

The servant, whom Mynheer Van Hilversum could barely afford, nodded and withdrew.

“Your own wife's flesh and blood,” Johanna said venomously. “And you wish her to spend her life with that dirty old blind man?”

“Old Joost is dying,” Hilversum said, although he knew that changed nothing for the better.

“And he will leave Katrina, when he dies, a creaky old windmill and a run-down farm! Remember, Mynheer. If you don't tell them—”

“Hans!” Hilversum called. He looked at his wife. “And now, get out.”

He was almost surprised when she obeyed.

The older of the two Americans came in first, said something in his difficult language, smiled and stuck out his hand. Mynheer Van Hilversum assumed he was supposed to shake the out-thrust hand, so he did. The younger American, hardly more than a boy, said in a French Hilversum could understand, “We appreciate the trouble you've gone to for us, Monsieur.”

Hilversum waved deprecatingly and answered in French. “It is nothing. Will you please be seated?”

Steve and Andy Longacre sat down. Hans came into the room with a tray of cheese and bread and beer. Steve, looking with distrust at the mottled headcheese, selected a slice of Edam. “Ask him if we can have the papers we want photostated, Andy. Unless you think that's rushing things.”

“How should I know?” Andy said in English, and asked the question in French.

Hilversum nodded at once. “But of course. As mayor of Oosterdijk, I can even certify the copies for you. Will that be satisfactory?”

“The old boy seems in a hurry,” Steve said after Andy had translated.

“Isn't that what you want?”

“I guess so. Tell him we want to know how Milo Hacha died.”

“Your friend back home is going to be disappointed,” Andy said.

“What? Oh. Sure. Well, that's the way it goes.”

Andy translated the request and Hilversum nodded again. He spent the next few minutes shuffling through the miscellany on his desk, withdrawing old newspapers, mimeographed forms, a police report.

“These are in German,” he said, “except for the underground newspapers.” He added with unforgotten bitterness, “Even our police reports were in German in those days. You read German?”

“Yes, I do,” Andy said. “We'll have them photostated and then return them at once if that's all right with you.”

“But of course, Monsieur.”

Andy and Steve shook hands with the mayor and asked if they could see him tomorrow. Hilversum said that he would be honoured. Hans materialized to show them out.

The mayor's strapping wife, who the Americans assumed was twenty years younger than Hilversum, was waiting by the front door. She smiled at Steve and Andy. “You have what you wish?” she asked in French.

Andy nodded.

Just then Hilversum came down the hall, staring unhappily at his wife. But she smiled at Andy, looked outside and said, “It will rain soon, Messieurs.” She spoke a stilted school-book French. “There is nothing more dismal than Oosterdijk in the rain.”

Andy saw dark clouds brooding over the low banks of the canal. The red-brick sidewalk was almost grey in the dreary light. Down-canal, past the streets of the little town, black and white cows were drinking peacefully.

Hilversum shook hands with them again. Once Andy thought the old man glared at his wife. The woman shook their hands, too, with crushing enthusiasm.

“Thank you for your hospitality, Vrouw Van Hilversum,” Andy said, wishing she would let go.

Then, with a shock, he realized that she was pressing something into his hand—a folded piece of paper. Andy palmed it and slipped it into his pocket as he followed Steve out. Could the mayor's Amazonian wife have developed a sudden yen for him? He hoped that the smile he was directing at old Hilversum over his shoulder was not as guilty-looking as it felt.

Her prediction had been right, for the sky opened up suddenly. They had to run back to the hotel through a driving rain.

4

From Andy Longacre's diary:

… when he read in the papers that Barney Street had been murdered, sure he was scared. Who wouldn't be? He was Street's lieutenant. But the way Steve was scared was something I hated to see. Maybe the picture I'd formed in my mind of Steve when I was a kid had something to do with it. But, I can't blame myself for that, and I can't blame Steve. It just happened.

He was twenty when our parents died in the auto accident, and I was seven. For a long time he tried being father and mother to me, but that isn't the part I remember. The part I remember is carrying his glove to baseball games and cheering myself hoarse when he pitched that no-hitter against Republic. Practically everything I learned came from him.

His getting married must have been part of it. He married young, it fizzled. Looking back on it, I think he got married hoping Joyce would be the mother he thought I needed. But she was no good, and it didn't last three years. Or maybe it didn't last because he was in the rackets even then, I don't know.

Anyhow, I already had my image of Steve and it took a long time to realize it didn't fit the facts. I sure as hell didn't know it before I went off to college, because I wanted to be just like Steve. That's why he sent me out of town, I guess.

He turned white when he read about Barney Street's murder. All of a sudden he looked like a defeated old man and he's only thirty-six. Then, he said he was going to Europe.

“For a friend,” he said. “There's this inheritance and it looks like I'm elected to find the heir.”

I said I wanted to go with him, but he told me it was out of the question. I didn't ask him why he had to go. Maybe I should have, but looking back on it I must have figured it wasn't a bad idea if he got out of town for a while. Because if they'd killed Street they might be gunning for Street's right-hand man, too.

Also, an overseas trip appealed to me. That part of it was selfish, but I wanted to go. We knocked it around for a while and I finally talked Steve into it by pointing out that I could speak French, German and Russian, while all he could talk was American, and a pretty specialized brand of American at that.

Ten days later we took a KLM flight to The Hague.

Except for a jaunt up to Canada with Steve the year before I got out of high school, this is my first trip out of the United States. Maybe that's why it's difficult to sort out my impressions. Or maybe it's because I'm worried about Steve and still trying to figure out what he's after.

Anyhow, I decided this diary would be a big help, because if I write down what I see and experience, it will stick better. That's what they teach you in college. Funny, I've been out of school less than a month. It seems much longer than that.

The Hague is a beautiful city. They string flowers—geraniums mostly—on wires over the narrow, crooked streets. The Dutch meander along these streets as if they'd never heard of the automobile. It's rough on drivers, but the bikes are even worse. There are millions of them. Kids ride them. Grownups go to work on them. Elderly women in black come whizzing down the streets and young couples pedal along holding hands. There are ten million people in Holland and five million bicycles. At least, that's what they told me at the hotel on Lange Poten Strasse. I believe it.

We didn't stay in The Hague long. We went to the Dutch office of CARE because Steve said they might have something on our man. They did. They brought out the file on Milo Hacha and it showed that Barney Street had been sending monthly packages to Hacha during the early postwar years. Then he just dropped out of existence.

If he was dead, they didn't know it. I couldn't get over the notion that Steve was disappointed. Not because we couldn't find Hacha, but because they couldn't tell him for sure that he was dead. That doesn't make sense, I know, but it's the impression I got.