Self's deception (14 page)

PART TWO

1
A final favor

I set out on my homeward journey with a hangover. The three days of sun, wind, and having Leo beside me had gone to my head.

I closed the book of my journey with Leo and put it away. It was at any rate only a thin little book. I had met her Tuesday morning in Amorbach, and by Friday evening I was back in Mannheim, though I felt I had been away for weeks. The traffic, the jostling pedestrians, the din of construction all around, the big, bleak palace in which there's supposed to be a university, the renovated Water Tower that looks as peculiar as Frau Weiland from next door when she comes back from the hairdresser, my apartment with its smell of stale smoke— what was I doing here? Wouldn't I have done better to head from Locarno down to Palermo, even without Leo, and swim from Sicily to Egypt? Should I get back in my car?

I quickly read through the newspapers that had piled up during my absence. They reported a terrorist attack on an American military installation, Leo's hiding in the State Psychiatric Hospital and the part Wendt had played in it, and an account of Wendt's life and death. There was nothing that I didn't already know. The Saturday edition reported that Eberlein had been temporarily suspended and that someone from the ministry had provisionally assumed his duties. I took note of that. I also took note of the fact that I had disappointed Brigitte.

A wanted poster with Leo's face on it had been put up at the post office, just as she had predicted. Ever since wanted posters, which I only knew from Westerns, had been reintro-duced with the rise in terrorism, I have been expecting some roughneck with clanging spurs to come marching into the post office with a saddle bag slung over his shoulder and a Colt at his hip, stop in front of the poster, eye it, snatch it off the wall, roll it up, and put it in his bag. As the door falls shut behind him the dumbfounded customers hurry to the window to watch him swing himself up onto his horse and go galloping down the Seckenheimer Strasse. This time, too, I waited in vain. Instead, I came up with a few questions and answers. If the two dead men had belonged to the terrorist group, how did the police know that they had to search for Leo? For them to know about Leo, they had to have caught one of the terrorists and made him talk. And then, how come the police knew about Leo but not about the other members of the group? They must have caught one of them, and only one: the guy who Leo said had just come back from Tuscany, Bertram. He could have provided the police with only vague descriptions of Lemke and the fifth man, which was why the police had not managed to come up with particularly good composites. The other guy, Giselher, had to be dead.

But what really preoccupied me that weekend was my wanderlust and homesickness. Wanderlust is the longing for anew country that we don't yet know, and homesickness is a longing for an old country that we no longer know, even if we think we do. Why did I have this longing for the unknown? What did I want—to leave or to return? I puzzled over these thoughts until a toothache suddenly drove the nonsense away. It started Saturday evening with a slight twinge during the late movie, just as Doc Holliday rode out from Fort Griffin to Tombstone. By the end of the broadcast, as the camera passed above and beyond Helgoland, the pain, to the sound of the national anthem, was pulsating all the way up to my temples and my left ear. When the picture faded out at Helgoland's eastern tip with its crumbling tooth-shaped rock, I felt utterly demoralized. If only we could trade in Helgoland for Zanzibar again!

I haven't been to a dentist since my old one died ten years ago. I looked in the phone book and chose one two blocks away. The pain kept me awake all night. At seven thirty I started calling the dentist every five minutes. At eight on the dot a woman's cool voice answered. “Ah, Herr Self? Is your tooth bothering you again? Would you like to drop by now? We've just had a cancellation.” I went over right away. The cool voice belonged to a cool blonde with flawless teeth. She sent me in right away, though I was not the same Herr Self who was already a patient there. I hadn't been aware that there was another Herr Self in the area. From what I know of our family tree, I'm the last twig to have sprouted.

The dentist was young, with a sure eye and a calm hand. The dreadful moment when the syringe approaches, fills your field of vision, and disappears because it has entered the oral cavity in search of a place to puncture, then the wait for the puncture, and finally the puncture itself—the doctor was so quick that I barely suffered. He managed to keep me calm, do his job, and flirt with his assistant. He explained to me that he wasn't sure if he could save tooth three-seven. It was deeply decayed. But he'd give it a try. He would remove most of the cavities, apply Calaxyl, seal it with Cavit, and put in a temporary bridge. A few weeks would show if tooth three-seven would hold. Was that all right?

“What are my options?”

“I could extract the tooth right away.”

“And then?”

“Then we wouldn't opt for a permanent bridge, but we'd do something removable for three-five to three-seven.”

“Do you mean I would be getting dentures?”

“Don't worry, not a full denture, just a removable prosthesis for the rear of the third quadrant.”

But he could not deny that the prosthesis was meant to be put in and taken out, and was to remain overnight in a glass, where I would find it waiting for me in the morning. I quickly consented to any and all measures necessary to save tooth three-seven. Any and all measures.

I saw a movie once in which a man hanged himself because he was about to get dentures. Or had it been an accident? He had wanted to hang himself, but then as he was dangling there changed his mind but couldn't do anything because the dog had pushed over the chair on which he had been standing with the noose around his neck.

Would Turbo render me this final favor?

2
What insanity!

I went to Nägelsbach's office. He didn't ask me why I came only now, or where I'd been. He took down my statement. He already knew that I had passed myself off to Frau Klein-schmidt as Wendt's father. He also knew that she had let me into his apartment, thinking I was his father. But he didn't reproach me for that. I found out from him that the police were still completely in the dark about what Wendt's death meant.

“When is the funeral?”

“Friday, at the cemetery in Edingen. Wendt's parents live there. Remember the commercial back in the fifties? 'Want a house that's nice and new? Wendt will make your dreams come true!' Old Wendt used to have a small office in the arcade at the Bismarckplatz. Now it's grown into a big agency, with offices in Heidelberg, Schriesheim, Mannheim, and God knows where else.”

I was already at the door when Nägelsbach touched on Leo. “Did you know that Frau Salger was hiding in Amorbach?”

“Have you arrested her there?”

He looked at me carefully. “No, she was already gone by the time one of the neighbors who'd seen her mug shot on TV called us. That's the way of the world—mug shots are also seen by the people you're looking for.”

“Why weren't you able to tell me the other day why you had a search out for Frau Salger?”

“I'm sorry, I can't tell you that now either.”

“The media says it's all about a terrorist attack on an American military installation—was that around here?”

“It had to have been in Käfertal or in Vogelstang. But we don't have anything to do with that.”

“What about the Federal Criminal Investigation Agency?”

“What about it?”

“Has it been brought into the case?”

Nägelsbach shrugged his shoulders. “One way or another, the Agency's always involved in such cases.”

What I was interested in was how the Agency was involved in all this, but I could see from his expression that there was no point in asking any more questions. “By the way, do you remember an attack on the army recruiting office in the Bun-senstrasse about six years ago?”

He thought for a while, and then shook his head. “No, there wasn't any attack in the Bunsenstrasse—not six years ago, nor at any other time. What's that all about?”

“Somebody mentioned it the other day, and I couldn't remember there having been such an attack either, though I wasn't as sure as you seem to be.”

He was waiting for me to continue, but now it was my turn to stall. Our interaction had become extremely wary. I asked him about his work on Rodin's Kiss, but he didn't want to talk about that either. When I asked him to give my regards to his wife, he nodded. So the creative and marriage crises were continuing. When I was young, I thought that the worst was over once you made it through high school, then it became university finals, the first day at work, the wedding ceremony, and last of all, widowerhood. But things never get any easier.

Old Herr Wendt ruled his real-estate empire from an office in Heidelberg's Mengler-Bau. While I sat waiting in the reception area I watched the bulldozers digging up the Adenauer-platz yet again. On a big empty desk stood a small yellow bulldozer, a matching crane, and a small blue truck and trailer.

Wendt's executive secretary turned out to be more of an executive than a secretary. She was running the business until further notice. Herr Wendt had also entrusted her with the handling of his personal affairs, so could I please tell her how she might help me? Frau Büchler stood facing me, coolly toying with my business card. Gray hair, gray eyes, gray outfit—but she was no gray mouse. Her face was practically wrinkle free and her voice was young, as though a wily Brazilian cosmetic surgeon had lifted her vocal cords as well as her face. She moved as if today she owned the office, and tomorrow the world.

I informed her of my dealings with Dr. Rolf Wendt, of our last conversation, our scheduled meeting, and how I had gone looking for him and found him. I hinted at the connection between Wendt's death and the current investigation into Leonore Salger and told her how, in my view, these ought to be looked into. “Perhaps that is what the police are doing. But the way they're handling things seems suspicious. First they didn't want to say why they're looking for Frau Salger, and then they went on the air and publicly announced their hunt for terrorists, and as for Rolf Wendt's death: They either know more than they're saying, or less than they ought to know. Solving the Wendt case can't be left entirely up to the police. This is why I'm here. I want to take on the case. I stumbled into this case by chance, and now it won't leave me in peace. But I can't continue working on it at my own expense.”

Frau Büchler showed me over to the lounge, and I sat down in a bulky construction of steel and leather. “If you work on this case, I assume you will want to talk to Herr and Frau Wendt, am I right? And you'll be asking them quite a few questions?”

I replied with a vague wave of the hand.

She shook her head. “It's not a question of money. In his own way, Herr Wendt has always been generous with his money, and now he has lost all interest in it. He intended it all for Rolf. Their relationship was not good, otherwise Rolf would not have lived in that hole—with a father with Herr Wendt's resources! But Herr Wendt had not given up hope. In the past, he had hoped that Rolf would join the family business and run it one day, but then later Herr Wendt hoped that Rolf might want to have his own psychiatric hospital. Herr Wendt would see to the construction of the hospital and its administration. This almost became an idée fixe with him. Time and again over the past few years we looked for old hospitals, schools, barracks, just for his son. Once we even bought some riding stables in the Palatinate because Herr Wendt felt they would be ideal for converting into an insane asylum. What insanity! Can you imagine? Throwing good money at some ramshackle stables, just like that? I'm only glad that we …” She smiled at me. “As you can see, Herr Self, for me real estate is the be-all and end-all. But enough of that. If you are hired for this case, you must promise that, for a while at least, you will not disturb Herr or Frau Wendt. If you are hired, you would report to me. What do you say?”

I nodded. She sat with her legs neatly and symmetrically together, like a model in a fashion magazine. Her hands were clasped quietly, only to start up sometimes unexpectedly in a brisk gesture. This gave her an air of competence and authority. I decided to try that myself at the earliest opportunity.

She rose. “Thank you for dropping by. You will hear from us.”

3
A bit flat

By that evening I had the case.

This time I didn't have to worry about ruffling anybody's circle of friends and could go at it no holds barred: Wendt's friends and girlfriends, his colleagues, his acquaintances, his landlady, his sports club, his local bar, his garage. I tracked down the young woman I'd seen him with at the Sole d'Oro, the friend from university with whom he'd traveled to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, and his card-playing pals: an unemployed teacher, a tomato-fetishizing artist, and a violinist from the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra. I also dropped in at the Eppelheim Squash Courts, where he was a regular. Everyone expressed their dismay at Wendt's death. But the dismay was not so much about Wendt's having died as the fact that somebody they knew had been murdered. Murder was something that only existed in papers and on TV! Rolf, of all people! He got on so well with everyone, he was so well-regarded!

The violinist was the third person who told me that.

“Well-regarded? Why 'well-regarded' and not 'liked'?”

eyed her strong hands with their short nails. “We were together for a while, but somehow there wasn't much of a spark. You know what I mean?”

According to the young woman from the Sole d'Oro, there hadn't been much of a spark with her either. She worked at the Deutsche Bank where Wendt had an account. He'd approached her and asked her out. “He was utterly dependable, as dependable with his account as with our dates.”

“That sounds a bit flat.”

“What can I say? We never really hit it off. At first I thought he was a bit standoffish and didn't want me to get too close, because he went to university and had a doctorate, and me with my banking traineeship. But that wasn't it. He just couldn't break out of himself. I waited and waited, but nothing happened. Maybe there wasn't anything there. You'd think that there'd be more there when someone's a shrink, but I guess why should there be? I mean, I'm in banking and it's not like I've got any money.”

I'd caught her on her lunch break, and she stood in front of me in her business outfit with her perfect hairdo and discreet makeup. Very appropriate for a young employee in a big German bank. But there was more to her than money and percentages. Rolf Wendt, who couldn't break out of himself, whom one is seriously interested in for a while, with whom one wonders at first if one did something wrong, and then if something's wrong with him—the others had not seen him or defined him as clearly as she did. And it wasn't a matter of his being reserved with women. His squash instructor said more or less the same thing: “He was a doctor? See, I didn't even know that. A good player, though, and I wanted to get him into sets with others. We've got a good club thing going with our squash courts, even though they're new.” He eyed me. “You could do with some exercise. Anyway, Wendt always kept to himself. He was a nice guy, but he always kept to himself.”

Frau Kleinschmidt didn't hold it against me that I wasn't Herr Wendt. “So you're a detective? Like Hercule Parrot?” She asked me in and put the kettle on. We sat in her kitchen, which had a corner bench, a cupboard, and a linoleum floor. The washing machine and the stove were brand-new. The drapes, the curtains in the glass doors of the cupboard, the oilcloth on the table, and the decals on the refrigerator all had Delft tile patterns.

“Are you in any way connected with Holland?” I asked.

“You saw the tulips in the garden and put two and two together!” She beamed at me with admiration. “My first husband was from there. Willem. He was a driver, a trucker, and when he had the Rotterdam route he always brought back the bulbs. Because he knew I liked flowers. He had connections, you see, and didn't have to pay for the bulbs. Otherwise we'd never have been able to afford all those flowers, what with the kids. Now that they're grown up, my second husband brings them from town—the bulbs, I mean.”

“Your children have left home?”

“Yes.” She sighed. The water whistled in the kettle and she poured it through the coffee filter.

“You must have been happy to get a nice young tenant.”

“I was. We didn't ask for too much rent, because I said to my husband, 'Günther,' I said, 'the young doctor is in the psychiatric hospital. The only people who end up there are poor devils. The rich who pay their own doctors big money end up in other places.' But things didn't really go the way I hoped.

The young doctor was nice and polite, always said hello and asked how we were, but he never came in and sat down. He never came by for dinner, or to see us on a Sunday. Even after he spent the whole day studying. When I was out in my garden, you know, I could see him at his desk with his books.”

“What about friends, or girlfriends?”

Frau Kleinschmidt shook her head. “We wouldn't have minded if he'd brought in a girl from time to time—we're not like that. And we've got nothing against friends either. But I guess he was a loner.”

That was all she had to say. There were no unusual contacts, no unusual activities. A picture-perfect tenant. I had shown Frau Kleinschmidt Leo's picture before, but showed it to her again. I also showed her a picture of Helmut Lemke. She didn't recognize either of them.

“Have the police sealed Wendt's apartment?”

“Do you want to take another look?” She got up and took a key off a hook on the wall. “We can get in through the boiler room. The police said we can't go in through the front door until the investigation is over. We're not allowed to break the seal on the lock.”

I followed her down the cellar steps, through the boiler room, and through the broom closet into Wendt's apartment. The police had done a thorough job in turning the place upside down. What they hadn't found I wouldn't find either.

The days passed. I did my job by the book, but wasn't really getting anywhere. I'd have liked to talk to Eberlein, but he was out of town. I'd also have liked to talk to Wendt's sister. She was living in Hamburg and, like her brother, didn't have a phone. Frau Büchler wasn't sure if the sister intended to come to the funeral. There had been some tension between her and her father, and also between her and her brother. I sent Dorle Mähler, née Wendt, a letter.

I also got a call from my old journalist friend Tietzke. “Thanks for having tipped me off the other day.”

“For having tipped you off?”

But no sooner had I spoken the words than I knew what he was talking about. How could I have missed that! On the day of Wendt's murder, Tietzke had appeared on the scene at the same time as the patrol car and the ambulance. Only I could have tipped him off that fast. Or the murderer.