The Zurich Conspiracy (15 page)

Bourdin picks up the gold club and slams it on a box on the ground. Bam. Bam. Bam. Josefa tries to stop him, but he keeps thrashing it with all his might.

“I want to know what’s in there,” he roars. “I want to know what you bastards are hiding in there!” Bam. Bam. Bam.

Josefa woke up with a start. The hammering continued. And now a voice.

“Josefa! Open up! Open the door!” Though the voice seemed familiar, she tried to ignore it.

“Josefa, I know you’re in there. Open the damn door!”

Josefa dragged herself out of bed. Her head was throbbing.

“I’m sick. I look awful. Go away!” she whined through the locked door.

“If you don’t open up this minute, I’ll howl like a wolf,” Helene threatened.

Josefa opened the door a hair. “I don’t want you to see me like this,” she squawked.

“Are you nuts? Let me in,” her friend commanded.

“You’ve got to let me go back to bed.”

Helene began to howl. She’d stunned Josefa by doing this once before when they were jogging in the woods. She could imitate a wolf howl perfectly ever since participating in a scientific study on the animal in Romania. Josefa was a bit embarrassed by her demonstration in the woods because people were walking nearby.

This time, it was more than embarrassing—it was a shock.

She opened the door wide. Helene was in full safari gear, right up to the hat and rubber boots.

“Dog,” said a child’s voice. “Dog.”

Josefa peered past Helene. Sali was on the lower landing, wearing the new glasses Josefa had picked out with him; they were a perfect fit in spite of his jug ears. The lenses reflected light from the stairwell window. Josefa heard herself say, “No, Sali, that’s a wolf, not a dog, a
wolf
.”

“You are dog?” he asked, pointing a finger at Helene. Josefa looked at Helene and Helene looked at Sali.

“No,” Helene solemnly said. “I am a wolf.”

And before Josefa could stop her she howled again.

Then Sali’s mother came running up the stairs, quickly took the boy by the hand and led him downstairs. Helene pushed Josefa resolutely into her apartment, took off her boots, got a blanket out of the bedroom, tucked Josefa in on the sofa, and retreated to the kitchen to make some tea.

“You could easily have said something,” she scolded, filling the pot with hot water. “You might die here, you know, and nobody would know anything about it.”

“I don’t intend to die. I’m just sick,” Josefa said grumpily.

“That’s what your secretary told me too. I called your office after not hearing from you for five days.” Helene handed her the piping hot mug.

Josefa didn’t want to think about the office at all. Better to put it out of her mind completely. “Walther blames the whole disaster on me. And it was
Bourdin
, that complete moron, who ran right into it.” It was all a nightmare.

Her friend shook her head. “I saw it in the newspaper. It didn’t look too good. But the question is: Are you going to put your neck in that sling?”

“I’ve had it up to here with the whole business. Those miserable sons of bitches!” Josefa slopped some of her tea.

Helene laughed. “Anger does you good, my dear. Grab ’em by the balls and let ’em have it!”

Josefa actually did feel somewhat better. All that sleep had done her a bit of good.

After they finished their tea, Helene offered to pick up Josefa’s mail and go grocery shopping for her. As her friend was going out the door she stopped and said, “My mother spoke about you again. She’s still expecting you for coffee and cake. I told her you were up to your ears in work right now.”

“Give her my regards at least,” Josefa said in a flat voice, closing the door behind her.

She went back to the couch and began thumbing through the newspapers Helene had brought from downstairs. Then she spotted the headline:

BEAT THÜRING DROWNS OFF TENERIFE

Spanish police announced on Thursday that after an intensive investigation they now assume that the Swiss financier Beat Thüring drowned off Tenerife on July 21. The former CEO of the bankrupt Swixan Group…

Josefa didn’t read any further. She stared at the photograph next to the report. It showed Thüring on Tenerife with “friends,” the caption said. Two men, tanned and laughing, each with an arm around Thüring’s shoulder. An attractive blonde was just in front of the three men, looking up at them from her seat. One of the men had a hand on her neck. Josefa immediately recognized the woman. She was wearing the same green chemise dress she’d been wearing at the Tenerife hotel. Ingrid.

He was already waiting at the zoo entrance, looking a bit lost among the children and parents queuing up at the ticket counter, when Josefa came around the corner. He wore a brown checked shirt, beige pants, and a cap. His face was lined.
The tired detective short on sleep.

“You don’t need your cap, you’ve already got one,” Josefa said by way of a welcome.

Sebastian Sauter instinctively put his hand to his head. Or was it out of embarrassment?

He had phoned her just as she was going out the door for a breath of fresh air, and his call had given her a guilty conscience. How long had it been since he’d called her about his cap? And she never got back to him. But he didn’t seem annoyed.

“I’m on my way to the zoo,” she informed him.

“Then I’ll meet you there,” he replied quickly.
A decisive man, this Sebastian Sauter
, she’d thought approvingly after hanging up.

Now she handed him the plastic bag with his hat. He accepted it with an impish smile.

“It’s my favorite pattern.”

They stepped aside to avoid a stampede of excited children.

“What makes it your favorite cap?” Josefa asked.

“Long years of loyalty.”

She grinned. “And it just happened to be at my place that you strayed from this principle.”

The detective scratched his face. He’d apparently shaved in haste and was now bleeding slightly in one spot. Then he reached into his pocket. “I’ve brought you a little thank-you present.”

Josefa was caught by surprise. She unwrapped the gift, revealing a tiny, cube-shaped box. Should she open it right here, right in front of him? She wasn’t sure. But Sauter made the decision for her. “Let’s go for a coffee?” he suggested.

“We’ll have to buy a ticket for the zoo because the café is inside,” Josefa explained. She really didn’t want to sit in a café instead of taking a walk through the zoo—her tried-and-true method of unraveling her thoughts. But why shouldn’t she let the detective accompany her on her stroll? Perhaps that would prove to be an even more efficient method of sorting through things.

“And when we’re inside,” she said to Sauter, “we must go see the gorillas. They’ve had a birth.”

“You won’t scare me away; it’s my day off.” He headed for the ticket window.

They drank their coffee from paper cups at the café bar surrounded by a pack of wild children. Josefa opened the box a bit nervously. What kind of present would a cop give? An object the size of a strawberry was wrapped in tissue paper. Josefa unwrapped it carefully: a miniature cup and saucer made of wood.

“Rosewood,” Sauter explained. “I made it myself—a memento of your good coffee.”

Then she remembered with embarrassment that she hadn’t even offered him a second cup that night.

“You made it yourself? You’re a craftsman?” Josefa rotated the delicate little cup and saucer in the palm of her hand.

“I carve pipes too, from briar root,
bruyère
.”

“You’re a versatile man, Herr Sauter. If the burglars only knew.”

“Burglars?”

“Your clientele, remember?”

“Aha,” was all he said.

“I shall give your piece of work a place of honor.” Josefa rewrapped the little cup and saucer.

“How’s your neighbor?”

“I think she’s OK. I don’t see her very often, and she’s out most evenings. She’s a ballet dancer, but you already know that.”

The sky was overcast and the air muggy as they walked out of the café.

“Have you caught the burglars yet?” Josefa inquired, turning toward the ape house.

“Maybe it was only one guy. Or one woman.”

She gave him a searching look. He straightened his cap. “No, we don’t have anything yet. There are burglaries all the time, and only some of them get cleared up.” He glanced at her and then changed the subject quickly. “How’s
your
work going?”

Josefa regaled him with stories of the rich and famous but left out the events of the golf tournament and her problems with Schulmann. She could tell by the look on his face that he obviously found her job fascinating. Certainly, she took care of some prominent people, and he probably recognized some of the names from the papers or TV. Add the exotic places where she organized those glittering events, and her contacts around the world, and maybe it was impressive. She wondered if he was having trouble reconciling the sloppily dressed woman beside him—T-shirt, jeans, parka, hiking shoes—with the perfume of that beautiful world of luxury? She’d only touched up her face a little, and now some red lipstick stained the paper cup.

The shrieks of the peacocks and other birds filled the air. Josefa wondered why she was telling him all this. “A policeman’s life can’t deliver that much glamour and excitement,” Sauter said when she had finished.

“Too much excitement for me at the moment. That’s why I’m going to see the apes.”

Detective Sauter was just opening the door to the ape house when Josefa astonished herself by saying, “I resigned yesterday.” He turned around quickly and looked her in the face with an expression she found hard to read. His crinkled face was now almost smooth, as if two hands had gently pulled the skin on his temples back. But he didn’t say another word. It would have been hard to hear him anyway over all the noise in the giant hall.

Rows of visitors were crowded in front of the glass wall; kids sitting high atop their fathers’ shoulders. They’d all come to see the newborn gorilla baby. But something was odd. Many of them were turning away from the glass, a solemn look on their faces.

Josefa pushed her way into the crowd in order to have a better look inside the enclosure. The mother gorilla was sitting very near the glass with what appeared to be a sleeping baby in her arms. Sauter tugged on her sleeve and pointed to a transparency on the pane: “Kayra gave birth on Saturday to a stillborn baby. We are leaving it with her until she gives it up on her own.” At that moment the gorilla turned its head and looked Josefa straight in the eye and then lowered her head. There was a look of infinite sadness in the mother ape’s eyes that took Josefa’s breath away.

Her mother is lying in the hospital bed: This is your mother, she hears someone say, but the woman
in the bed is a stranger to her. She looks like a ghost, ugly and scary. She is raving, and her crooked lower lip hangs down, saliva drooling from it. Josefa wants to leave; does not want to look at her. That is not my mother. That is not Mama; no, that’s not her, never! Why must Mama take all this medicine? She’s so different from how she was before. If she didn’t take those pills, she would be the way she used to be. My dear, cheerful mother. Why does nobody tell me anything? Why do I always have to show this woman, this stranger, any consideration? It’s been months now. She lies in bed and cries. Because she’s in pain. But I do not want to be here. I want my mama back. She ought to be normal, like other mothers. Why does Mama let them do this to her? Why does she not put up a fight and get out of her sickbed? Why doesn’t she come back home?

Josefa does not want to visit this woman anymore. She does not want to see, or touch, her anymore. And then that terrifying Sunday. Papa takes Josefa to the hospital. He does not tell her why. Josefa screams and lashes out in fury. But Papa pushes her up to the bed where her mother is lying; her eyes are wide open, her face sunken. Mama grabs Josefa’s arm so hard that it hurts. She says in a gasping voice: She belongs to me. These words again and again: She belongs to me. Her fingernails dig into the sweater on Josefa’s arm. Josefa tries to free herself. She hears her father say: She belongs to us,
cara
, both of us. His voice is very gentle. What’s going on here? Why does nobody tell me anything?