Apt Pupil

28

Todd, pale as window-glass, sat on a couch between his mother and father.

Opposite them was a greying, polite police detective named Richler. Todd’s father had offered to call the police, but Todd had done it himself, his voice cracking through the registers as it had done when he was fourteen.

He finished his recital. It hadn’t taken long. He spoke with a mechanical colourlessness that scared the hell out of Monica. He was almost eighteen, true enough, but he was still a boy in so many ways. This was going to scar him forever.

‘I read him… oh, I don’t know. Tom Jones. The Mill on the Floss. That was a boring one. I didn’t think we’d ever get through it Some stories by Hawthorne — I remember he especially liked "The Great Stone Face" and "Young Goodman Brown". We started The Pickwick Papers, but he didn’t like it. He said Dickens could only be funny when he was being serious, and Pickwick was only kittenish. That was his word, kittenish. We got along the best with Tom Jones. We both liked that one.’

‘And that was four years ago,’ Richler said.

‘Yes. I kept stopping in to see him when I got the chance, but in high school we were bussed across town… and some of ‘the kids got up a scratch bail team… there was more homework… you know… things just came up.’

‘You had less time.’

‘Less time, that’s right The work in high school was a lot harder… making the grades to get into college.’

‘But Todd is a very apt pupil,’ Monica said almost automatically. ‘He graduated salutatorian. We were so proud.’

‘I’ll bet you were,’ Richler said with a warm smile. ‘I’ve got two boys in Fairview, down in the valley, and they’re just about able to keep their sports eligibility.’ He turned back to Todd. ‘You didn’t read him any more books after you started high school?’

‘No. Once in a while I’d read him the paper. I’d come over and he’d ask me what the headlines were. He was interested in Watergate when that was going on. And he always wanted to know about the stock market, and the print on that page used to drive him batshit — sorry, Mom.’

She patted his hand.

‘I don’t know why he was interested in the stocks, but he was.’

‘He had a few stocks,’ Richler said. ‘That’s how he was getting by. You want to hear a really crazy coincidence? The man who made the investments for him was convicted on a murder charge in the late forties. Dussander had five different sets of ID salted around that house. He was a cagey one, all right’

‘I suppose he kept the stocks in a safe deposit box somewhere,’ Todd remarked.

‘Pardon me?’ Richler raised his eyebrows.

‘His stocks,’ Todd said. His father, who had also looked puzzled, now nodded at Richler.

‘His stock certificates were in a footlocker under his bed,’ Richler said, ‘along with that photo of him as Denker. Did he have a safety deposit box, son? Did he ever say he did?’

Todd thought, and then shook his head. ‘I just thought that was where you kept your stocks. I don’t know. This… this whole thing has just… you know… it blows my wheels.’ He shook his head in a dazed way that was perfectly real. He really was dazed. Yet, little by little, he felt his instincts of self-preservation surfacing. He felt a growing alertness, and the first stirrings of confidence. If Dussander had really taken a safety deposit box in which to store his insurance document, wouldn’t he have transferred his stock certificates there? And that photograph?

‘We’re working with the Israelis on this,’ Richler said. ‘In a very unofficial way. I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention that if you decide to see any press people. They’re real professionals. There’s a man named Weiskopf who’d like to talk to you tomorrow, Todd. If that’s okay by you and your folks.’

‘I guess so,’ Todd said, but he felt a touch of atavistic dread at the thought of being sniffed over by the same hounds that had chased Dussander for the last third of his life. Dussander had had a healthy respect for them, and Todd knew he would do well to keep that in mind.

‘Mr and Mrs Bowden? Do you have any objections to Todd seeing Mr Weiskopf?’

‘Not if Todd doesn’t,’ Dick Bowden said. ‘I’d like to be present, though. I’ve read about these Mossad characters—’

‘Weiskopf isn’t Mossad. He’s what the Israelis call a special operative. In fact, he teaches Yiddish grammar — if you can believe that — and English Literature. Also, he’s written two novels.’ Richler smiled.

Dick raised a hand, dismissing it ‘Whatever he is, I’m not going to let him badger Todd. From what I’ve read, these fellows can be a little too professional. Maybe he’s okay. But I want you and this Weiskopf to remember that Todd tried to help that old man. He was flying under false colours, but Todd didn’t know that’

That’s okay, dad,’ Todd said with a wan smile.

‘I just want you to help us all that you can,’ Richler said. ‘I appreciate your concern, Mr Bowden. I think you’re going to find that Weiskopf is a pleasant, low-pressure kind of guy. I’ve finished my own questions, but I’ll break a little ground by telling you what the Israelis are most interested it Todd was with Dussander when he had the heart attack that landed him in the hospital—’

‘He asked me to come over and read him a letter,’ Todd said.

‘We know.’ Richler leaned forward, elbows on his knees, tie swinging out to form a plumb-line to the floor. "The Israelis want to know about that letter. Dussander was a big fish, but he wasn’t the last one in the lake — or so Sam Weiskopf says, and I believe him. They think Dussander might have known about a lot of the other fish. Most of those still alive are probably in South America, but there may be others in a dozen countries… including the United States. Did you know they collared a man who had been an Unterkommandant at Buchenwald in the lobby of a Tel Aviv hotel?’

‘Really!’ Monica said, her eyes widening.

‘Really,’ Richler nodded. Two years ago. The point is just that the Israelis think the letter Dussander wanted Todd to read might have been from one of those other fish. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong. Either way, they want to know.’

Todd, who had gone back to Dussander’s house and burned the letter, said: I’d help you — or this Weiskopf — if I could, Lieutenant Richler, but the letter was in German. It was really tough to read. I felt like a fool. Mr Denker… Dussander… kept getting more excited and asking me to spell the words he couldn’t understand because of my, you know, pronunciation. But I guess he was following ail right. I remember once he laughed and said, "Yes, yes, that is what you’d do, isn’t it?" Then he said something in German. This was about two or three minutes before he had the heart attack. Something about Dummkop. That means stupid in German, I think.’

He was looking at Richler uncertainly, inwardly quite pleased with this lie.

Richler was nodding. ‘Yes, we can understand that the letter was in German. The admitting doctor heard the story from you and corroborated it. But the letter itself, Todd… do you remember what happened to it?’

Here it is, Todd thought. The crunch.

‘I guess it was still on the table when the ambulance came. When we all left. I couldn’t testify to it in court, but—’

‘I think there was a letter on the table,’ Dick said. ‘I picked something up and glanced at it Airmail stationery, I think, but I didn’t notice it was written in German.’

Then it should still be there,’ Richler said. That’s what we can’t figure out’

‘It’s not?’ Dick said. ‘I mean, it wasn’t?’

‘It wasn’t and it isn’t’

‘Maybe somebody broke in,’ Monica suggested.

"There would have been no need to break in,’ Richler said. ‘In the confusion of getting him out, the house was never locked. Dussander himself never thought to ask someone to lock up, apparently. His latchkey was still in the pocket of his pants when he died His house was unlocked from the time the MED-Q attendants wheeled him out until we sealed it this morning at 2:30 a.m.’

‘Weil, there you are,’ Dick said.

‘No,’ Todd said. ‘I see what’s bugging Lieutenant Richler.’ Oh yes, he saw it very well. You’d have to be blind to miss it ‘Why would a burglar steal nothing but a letter? Especially one written in German? It doesn’t listen. Mr Denker didn’t have much to steal, but a guy who broke in could find something better than that’

‘You’ve got it, all right,’ Richler said. ‘Not bad.’

Todd used to want to be a detective when he grew up,’ Monica said, and ruffled Todd’s hair a bit Since he had gotten big he seemed to object to that, but right now he didn’t seem to mind. God, she hated to see him looking so pale. ‘I guess he’s changed his mind to history these days.’

‘History is a good field,’ Richler said. ‘You can be an investigative historian. Have you ever read Josephine Tey?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Doesn’t matter. I just wish my boys had some ambition greater than seeing the Angels win the pennant this year.’

Todd offered a wan smile and said nothing.

Richler turned serious again. ‘Anyway, I’ll tell you the theory we’re going on. We figure that someone, probably right here in Santa Donate, knew who and what Dussander was.’

‘Really?’ Dick said.

‘Oh yes. Someone who knew the truth. Maybe another fugitive Nazi. I know that sounds like Robert Ludlum stuff, but who would have thought there was even one fugitive Nazi in a quiet little suburb like this? And when Dussander was taken to the hospital, we think that Mr X scooted over to the house and got that incriminating letter. And that by now it’s so many decomposing ashes floating around in the sewer system.’

‘That doesn’t make much sense either,’ Todd said.

‘Why not, Todd?’

‘Well, if Mr Denk… if Dussander had an old buddy from the camps, or just an old Nazi buddy, why did he bother to have me come over and read him that letter? I mean, if you could have heard him correcting me, and stuff… at least this old Nazi buddy you’re talking about would know how to speak German.’

‘A good point. Except maybe this other fellow is in a wheelchair, or blind. For all we know, it might be Hermann himself and he doesn’t even dare go out and show his face.’

‘Guys that are blind or in wheelchairs aren’t that good at scooting out to get letters,’ Todd said.

Richler looked admiring again. ‘True. But a blind man could steal a letter even if he couldn’t read it, though. Or hire it done.’

Todd thought this over, and nodded — but he shrugged at the same time to show how farfetched he thought the idea. Richler had progressed far beyond Robert Ludlum and into the land of Sax Rohmer. But how farfetched the idea was or wasn’t didn’t matter one fucking little bit, did it? No, what mattered was that Richler was still sniffing around… and that sheeny, Weiskopf, was also sniffing around. The letter, the goddam letter! If only he hadn’t been forced to make something up on the spur of the moment like that! And suddenly he was thinking of his .30-.30, cased and resting on its shelf in the cool, dark garage. He pulled his mind away from it quickly. The palms of his hands had gone damp.

‘Did Dussander have any friends that you knew of?’ Richler was asking.

‘Friends? No. There used to be a cleaning lady, but she moved away and he didn’t bother to get another one. In the summer he hired a kid to mow his lawn, but I don’t think he’d gotten one this year. The grass is pretty long, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. We’ve knocked on a lot of doors, and it doesn’t seem as if he’d hired anyone. Did he get phone-calls?’

‘Sure,’ Todd said off-handedly — here was a gleam of light, a possible escape-hatch that was relatively safe. DussanderY phone had actually rung only half a dozen tunes or so in all the time Todd had known him — salesmen, a polling organization asking about breakfast foods, the rest wrong numbers. He only had the phone in case he got sick… as he finally had, might his soul rot in hell. ‘He used to get a call or two every week.’

‘Did he speak German on those occasions?’ Richler asked quickly. He seemed excited.

‘No,’ Todd said, suddenly cautious. He didn’t like Richler’s excitement — there was something wrong about it, something dangerous. He felt sure of it, and suddenly Todd had to work furiously to keep himself from breaking a sweat. ‘He didn’t talk much at all. I remember that a couple of times he said things like, "The boy who reads to me is here right now. I’ll call you back."’

‘I’ll bet that’s it!’ Richler said, whacking his palms on his thighs. ‘I’d bet two weeks’ pay that was the guy!’ He closed his notebook with a snap (so far as Todd could see he had done nothing but doodle in it) and stood up. ‘I want to thank all three of you for your time. You in particular, Todd. I know all of this has been a hell of a shock to you, but it will be over soon. We’re going to turn the house upside down this afternoon — cellar to attic and then back down to the cellar again. We’re bringing in all the special teams. We may find some trace of Dussander’s phonemate yet.’

‘I hope so,’ Todd said.

Richler shook hands all around and left. Dick asked Todd if he felt like going out back and hitting the badminton birdie around until lunch. Todd said he didn’t feel much like badminton or lunch, and went upstairs with his head down and his shoulders slumped. His parents exchanged sympathetic, troubled glances. Todd lay down on his bed, stared at the ceiling, and thought about his .30-.30. He could see it very clearly in his mind’s eye. He thought about shoving the blued steel barrel right up Betty Trask’s slimy Jewish cooze -just what she needed, a prick that never went soft. How do you like it, Betty? He heard himself asking her, You just tell me if you get enough, okay? He imagined her screams. And at last a terrible flat smile came to his face. Sure, just tell me, you bitch… okay ? Okay ? Okay ?…

‘So what do you think?’ Weiskopf asked Richler when Richler picked him up at a luncheonette three blocks from the Bowden home.

‘Oh, I think the kid was in on it somehow,’ Richler said. ‘Somehow, some way, to some degree. But is he cool? If you poured hot water into his mouth I think he’d spit out icecubes. I tripped him up a couple of times, but I’ve got nothing I could use in court And if I’d gone much further, some smart lawyer might be able to get him off on entrapment a year or two down the road even if something does pull together. I mean, he’s still a juvenile. Technically, at least In some ways, I’d guess he hasn’t really been a juvenile since he was maybe eight He’s creepy, man.’ Richler stuck a cigarette in his mouth and laughed — the laugh had a shaky sound. ‘I mean, really fuckin’ creepy.’

‘What slips did he make?’

‘The phone calls. That’s the main thing. When I slipped him the idea, I could see his eyes light up like a pinball machine.’ Richler turned left and wheeled the nondescript Chevy Nova down the freeway entrance ramp. Two hundred yards to their right was the slope and the dead tree where Todd had dry-fired his rifle at the freeway traffic one Saturday morning not long ago.

‘He’s saving to himself, "This cop is off the wall if he thinks Dussander had a Nazi friend here in town, but if he does think that, it takes me off ground-zero." So he says yeah, Dussander got one or two calls a week. Very mysterious. "I can’t talk now, Z-5, call later" — that type of thing. But Dussander’s been getting a special "quiet phone" rate for the last seven years. Almost no activity at all, and no long distance. He wasn’t getting a call or two a week.’

‘What else?’

‘He immediately jumped to the conclusion that the letter had been stolen and nothing else. He knew that was the only thing missing because he was the one who went back and took it.’

Richler jammed his cigarette out in the ashtray.

‘We think the letter was just a prop. We think that Dussander had the heart attack while he was trying to bury that body… the freshest body. There was dirt on his shoes and his cuffs, and it was fresh, so that’s a pretty fair assumption. That means he called the kid after he had the heart attack, not before. He crawls upstairs and phones the kid. The kid flips out — as much as he ever flips out, anyway -and cooks up the letter story on the spur of the moment It’s not great, but not that bad, either… considering the circumstances. He goes over there and cleans up Dussander’s mess for him. Now the kid is in fucking overdrive. MED-Q’s coming, his father is coming, and he needs that letter for stage-dressing. He goes upstairs and breaks open that box—’

‘You’ve got confirmation on that?’ Weiskopf asked, lighting a cigarette of his own. It was an unfiltered Player, and to Richler it smelted like horseshit No wonder the British Empire fell, he thought, if they started smoking cigarettes like that.

‘Yes, we’ve got confirmation right up the ying-yang,’ Richler said. ‘There are fingerprints on the box which match those in his school records. But his fingerprints are on almost everything in the goddam house!’

‘Still, if you confront him with all of that, you can rattle him,’ Weiskopf said.

‘Oh, listen, hey, you don’t know this kid. When I said he was cool, I meant it. He’d say Dussander asked him to fetch the box once or twice so he could put something in it or take something out of it’

‘His fingerprints are on the shovel.’

‘He’d say he used it to plant a rose-bush in the back yard.’ Richler took out his cigarettes but the pack was empty. Weiskopf offered him a Player. Richler took one puff and began coughing. ‘They taste as bad as they smell,’ he choked.

‘Like those hamburgers we had for lunch yesterday,’ Weiskopf said, smiling. ‘Those Mac-Burgers.’

‘Big Macs,’ Richler said, and laughed. ‘Okay. So cross-cultural pollination doesn’t always work.’ His smile faded. ‘He looks so clean-cut, you know?

‘Yes.’

‘This is no jd from Vasco with hair down to his asshole and chains on his motorcycle boots.’

‘No.’ Weiskopf stared at the traffic all around them and was very glad he wasn’t driving. ‘He’s just a boy. A white boy from a good home. And I find it difficult to believe that—’

‘I thought you had them ready to handle rifles and grenades by the time they were eighteen. In Israel.’

‘Yes. But he was fourteen when all of this started. Why should a fourteen-year-old-boy mix himself up with such a man as Dussander? I have tried and tried to understand that and still I can’t.’

‘I’d settle for how,’ Richler said, and flicked the cigarette out the window. It was giving him a headache.

‘Perhaps, if it did happen, it was just luck. A coincidence. There is a word I like very much, Lieutenant Richler -serendipity. I think there is black serendipity as well as white.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Richler said gloomily. ‘All I know is the kid is creepier than a bug under a rock.’

‘What I’m saying is simple. Any other boy would have been more than happy to tell his parents, or the police. To say, "I have recognized a wanted man. He is living at this address. Yes, I am sure." And then let the authorities take over. Or do you feel I am wrong?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say so. The kid would be in the limelight for a few days. Most kids would dig that. Picture in the paper, an interview on the evening news, probably a school assembly award for good citizenship.’ Richler laughed. ‘Hell, the kid would probably get a shot on Real People?

‘What’s that?’

‘Never mind,’ Richler said. He had to raise his voice slightly because a ten-wheeler was passing the Nova on either side. Weiskopf looked nervously from one to the other. ‘You don’t want to know. But you’re right about most kids. Most kids.’

‘But not this kid,’ Weiskopf said. ‘This boy, probably by dumb luck alone, penetrates Dussander’s cover. Yet instead of going to his parents or the authorities… he goes to Dussander. Why? You say you don’t care, but I think you do. I think it haunts you just as it does me.’

‘Not blackmail,’ Richler said. ‘That’s for sure. That kid’s got everything a kid could want There was even a dune-buggy in the garage, not to mention an elephant gun on the wall. And even if he wanted to squeeze Dussander just for the thrill of it, Dussander was practically unsqueezable. Except for those few stocks, he didn’t have a pot to piss in.’

‘How sure are you that the boy doesn’t know you’ve found the bodies?’

‘I’m sure. Maybe I’ll go back this afternoon and hit him with that. Right now it looks like our best shot.’ Richler struck the steering wheel lightly. ‘If all of this had come out even one day sooner, I think I would have tried for a search warrant.’

‘The clothes the boy was wearing that night?’

‘Yeah. If we could have found soil samples on his clothes that matched the dirt in Dussander’s cellar, I almost think we could break him. But the clothes he was wearing that night have probably been washed six times since them.’

‘What about the other dead winos? The ones your police department has been finding around the city?’

"Those belong to Dan Bozeman. I don’t think there’s any connection anyhow. Dussander just wasn’t that strong… and more to the point, he had such a neat little racket already worked out. Promise them a drink and a meal, take them home on the city bus — the fucking city bus! — and waste them right in his kitchen.’

Weiskopf said quietly: ‘It wasn’t Dussander I was thinking of.’

‘What do you mean by th -’ Richler began, and then his mouth snapped suddenly closed. There was a long, unbelieving moment of silence, broken only by the drone of the traffic all around them. Then Richler said softly: ‘Hey. Hey, come on now. Give me a fucking br—’

‘As an agent of my government, I am only interested in Bowden because of what, if anything, he may know about Dussander’s remaining contacts with the Nazi underground. But as a human being, I am becoming more and more interested in the boy himself. I’d like to know what makes him tick. I want to know why. And as I try to answer that question to my own satisfaction, I find that more and more I am asking myself What else.’

‘But—’

‘Do you suppose, I ask myself, that the very atrocities in which Dussander took part formed the basis of some attraction between them? That’s an unholy idea, I tell myself. The things that happened in those camps still have power enough to make the stomach flutter with nausea. I fed that way myself, although the only close relative I ever had in the camps was my grandfather, and he died when I was three. But maybe for all of us there is something about what the Germans did that pleases and excites us — something that opens the catacombs of the imagination. Maybe part of our dread and horror comes from a secret knowledge that under the right — or wrong — set of circumstances, we ourselves would be willing to build such places and staff them. Black serendipity. Maybe we know that under the right set of circumstances the things that live in the catacombs would be glad to crawl out And what do you think they would look like? Like mad fuehrers with forelocks and shoe-polish moustaches, heiling all over the place? Like red devils, or demons, or the dragon that floats on its stinking reptile wings?’

‘I don’t know,’ Richler said.

‘I think most of them would look like ordinary accountants,’ Weiskopf said. ‘Little mind-men with graphs and flow-charts and electronic calculators, all ready to start maximizing the kill ratios so that next time we could perhaps kill twenty or thirty millions instead of only seven or eight or twelve. And some of them might look like Todd Bowden.’

‘You’re damn near as creepy as he is,’ Richler said.

Weiskopf nodded. ‘It’s a creepy subject Finding those dead men and animals in Dussander’s cellar… that was creepy, nu? Have you ever thought that maybe this boy began with a simple interest in the camps? An interest not much different from the interests of boys who collect coins or stamps or who like to read about wild West desperados? And that he went to Dussander to get his information straight from the horse’s head?’

‘Mouth,’ Weiskopf muttered. It was almost lost in the roar of another ten-wheeler passing them. BUDWEISER was printed on the side in letters six feet tall. What an amazing country, Weiskopf thought and lit a fresh cigarette. They don’t understand how we can live surrounded by half-mad Arabs, but if I lived here for two years I would have a nervous breakdown. ‘Maybe. And maybe it isn’t possible to stand close to murder piled on murder and not be touched by it.’