Voices of the dead

Harry said. “Her immune system was screwed up.” He paused. “She was a survivor. We both were. I was at Dachau. Anna was at Helmbrechts, a small concentration camp for women, southwest of Hof in Upper Franconia.”

Cordell gave him a blank look.

“It’s in East Germany near the Czech border.”

Cordell got up, took off his jacket and laid it out on the bed.

“In April 1945, the war was ending. The Germans were finished. It was just a matter of time before the Americans and Russians closed in on them. The Nazis shut down the camp and marched these starving women 195 miles to a Czech town called Prachatice. The prisoners were so hungry they ate grass; they ate decaying animal carcasses. The last day, Anna was one of seventeen prisoners marched into the woods. It was an uphill climb for thirty minutes. Anyone who couldn’t do it was shot. Fourteen of seventeen didn’t make it. The three who did were given their freedom. The American army came through the next day. Anna was taken to a hospital. Emaciated, dehydrated. She was five six, weighed seventy-eight pounds. Two of her toes had frostbite from walking barefoot in the snow, had to be amputated. An army doctor told her she wouldn’t have lived another day.”

“Where’d you meet?” Cordell said.

“We both ended up in Detroit. I was living with my uncle and she went to stay with a cousin. We were fixed up and hit it off. It was 1949. I was twenty-one, she was twenty. We dated and got married a year later.”

“What about you?”

“I was sent to Dachau with my parents. They were killed. I escaped.”

“I thought my past history had some crazy shit in it,” Cordell said. “Man, you got like a black cloud over you.” He fingered the chains around his neck. “How old were you?”

“Thirteen when I went in.”

“What’d you think?”

“The world had gone crazy,” Harry said. “You trick yourself. You say it’s not going to last, it’s going to end. But you know it isn’t.”

“I was thirteen my mom took to the needle, started turnin’ tricks, bringin’ home these raggedy-ass brothers.”

“What’d you think?”

“Same as you.”

“What’d you do?”

“Quit school, started working for a dude name Chilly Willy, sold heroin at the projects: Gardens and Brewster. Chill say cop arrest you, what’s he going to do? You’s a kid. He going to slap your wrist, send you home.”

“Who’d you sell it to?”

“Anyone needed a fix,” Cordell said. “I made a hundred dollars a day when I started, two hundred when I got busted five years later. Could either do time or join the army. Like there was a choice. Sign me up for the armed services, I said. Judge thought I’d be going to Nam. I did too. Got nothin’ against the Viet Cong, but fightin’ them was preferable to incarceration.”

“I can understand. Listen, I better get the manager up here. I don’t want them to think I joined the Nazis,” Harry said, looking at the swastika on the wall.

“Call, they come back,” Cordell said. “Pension Jedermann. Check on you tomorrow.”

He walked out, closed the door.

Harry called the front desk at 1:15, said there’d been a break-in. A man from hotel security knocked on the door a couple minutes later. He wore a blue blazer and carried a walkie-talkie and was the size of a defensive tackle. He came in, looked around and asked Harry a few questions.

Did he know who did it?

No.

Was he in the room at the time?

Dumb question.

Was anything missing?

Just his photos of Hess. Of course, he said no.

Did he want to speak to the police?

Harry shook his head.

The security man told him they were going to move him to a suite for the inconvenience. No charge.

Harry said, OK. Where else was he going to go at 1:30 in the morning?

14

Rausch sat in the driver’s seat of the Volkswagen, side window cracked six inches. He smoked, flicking ashes and blowing smoke through the opening. He glanced at the clock on the dash. It was 1:42 a.m. Hess had been in the house for almost two hours, and Rausch wondered what was taking him, although Hess had told him he enjoyed walking around before he woke them. Looking at their photographs, their furniture, and their belongings. For Hess it was better to know something about them, to feel a connection, make it personal.

Rausch was parked on Baaderstrasse, in a quiet residential neighborhood. He saw a figure coming toward him on the sidewalk, Ernst Hess in silhouette, the faint glow of a streetlight behind him. He walked to the car and got in. Rausch felt crowded now, two big men sitting almost shoulder to shoulder in the narrow interior. He could see the rush of power, Hess still charged with adrenalin.

“You were in there for a long time,” Rausch said. He started the car, slid the shifter into gear and accelerated.

“We were talking. I enjoy conversing with civilized, intelligent people.”

“I thought something had gone wrong.”

“What could go wrong?”

“Maybe the man had a weapon and surprised you.” He saw Hess glance at him.

“How long would you have waited?”

“Until you were finished.”

“What if I did not come out?”

“But you did.”

“I am asking you this hypothetically.”