Greeks Bearing Gifts

THIRTY

In his office at the Megaron Pappoudof I told Lieutenant Leventis I was changing hotels.

“Is that all you came here to tell me, Commissar? That you’re going to the GB? I’m disappointed.”

“I thought you’d like to know in case you wanted to buy me breakfast one morning. You can probably look out of your office window and see into my bathroom, if it helps make that happen.”

“Good idea. But are you sure no one is dead in it?”

“Just my love life, probably. When they find that body you can arrest me all over again.”

“Why bother? You’re still my number-one suspect in the Witzel case.”

“Clearly you’re not very good with numbers. You already told me the name of your number-one suspect. At best I’m number three.”

“Who’s number two?”

“Garlopis.”

“That’s not very loyal of you, Commissar.”

“No, it isn’t. But his home is in Greece. Mine’s in Germany. And I want to get back there one day. Which is why I’m in here writing my room number on your handkerchief in lipstick.”

“Anything else you want to talk about?”

“Not a damn thing.”

“I told you, Commissar. I’m blind here and I want you to be my dog. So bark a little, will you?”

I lit up a cigarette and blew some smoke at the high ceiling. The fan wasn’t moving, which was how I knew it was still officially winter in Athens. Otherwise it seemed quite warm in his office. Leventis leaned back on his chair, looking at me steadily all the time, waiting for me to say something more, and then nodded when I didn’t. “You keep your mouth shut unless you’ve got something to say. All right. Not many people can do that judiciously. Especially in here. You’ve a talent for saying not very much, Commissar.”

“I never learned much by listening to myself.”

“No? Then maybe I can tell you something interesting.”

“That’ll make a nice change.”

“Don’t forget your position here, Ganz.” He wagged his finger at me like I was a naughty schoolboy and grinned. “You’re a little impertinent for a suspect.”

“That’s just my manner. It doesn’t work with everyone. Only with people, not cops. Look, I said I’d cooperate with you, Leventis, not crown you with wild olive. And we both know I’m a poor choice of suspect. On account of how I turned up at the murder scene after the murder. Garlopis, too. It’s time you admitted that, copper, or else you’re dumber than I thought you were.”

“My name isn’t copper, it’s Stavros P. Leventis. But you can call me lieutenant. And in here I don’t have to admit to a damn thing. I leave that to other people. What’s dumb about that?”

“Nothing at all. What does the P stand for, anyway?”

“Patroclus. Only keep that quiet.”

“I’ll lend it someone else’s armor if it will help get me out of this damn country. Tell me what’s so interesting, Pat.”

“Last night, the City Police picked up a local burglar by the name of Tsochaztopoulos, only everyone calls him Choc.”

“Now that I can understand.”

“He put his hands up to a whole string of burglaries across the city, but here’s where it starts to get interesting.”

“I was hoping it might.”

“He claims he was put up to robbing Frizis’s office in Glyfada. Says the job was to take one client file and to cover his tracks so that the lawyer didn’t even know he’d been there. Says he was paid to do it by a man he met in a nightclub. The Chez Lapin in Kastella.”

“Sounds like a real hole. Did this man have a name?”

“Just Spiros.”

“That narrows it down nicely. And what was the client’s name?”

Leventis grinned patiently. “Spiros told Choc to look for a client file in the name of Fischer. Georg Fischer. He did the job as asked. Went in and out without a trace. Took the client file back to the club a few hours later, and got paid.”

“So everyone was happy.”

“Now it just so happens that Frizis’s diary contains an appointment with a Mr. Fischer just a few days before he was murdered.”

“Well, it would if he was a client.”

“Fischer is a German name.”

“That’s right.”

“I was hoping you might have a theory on that one.”

“It’s the fourth most common German surname there is. That narrows it down.”

“Come on, Ganz. You can do better than that. Whose side are you on here?”

“Whose side? I don’t know the names of the teams that are on the pitch here. And even if I did I certainly couldn’t pronounce them.”

“You know, I think I must have left my sense of humor in my other uniform.”

“The clean one?”

“I’d hate to kick you on the leg, Ganz. I’d probably get gangrene. What kind of commissar were you, anyway?”

“I wore a shirt and tie, turned up for work every day, carried a warrant disc, and sometimes they let me arrest people. But none of the bosses really gave a shit about me detecting any crimes because they were too busy committing crimes themselves. Nothing serious. Crimes against humanity and that kind of thing. Look, Pat—Lieutenant—I was making a living and trying to stay alive, not preaching the First Crusade. Let me ask you this. Did you show this Choc fellow your photograph of Brunner? The one you showed me?”

“Yes, but he’s quite sure it wasn’t him who put him up to the job.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean?”

“Hegel said it once. It’s German for ‘I’m thinking.’”

After a while I shook my head for emphasis, just to let him know I’d finished the thought.

“What do you think you’re dealing with here? An insurance claim? Look, I know you know more than you’re saying. I can see it written on your face.”

“Now you know why I stopped being a criminal and became a cop instead. All right. Maybe I do know something. But don’t get mad when I tell you. I only just figured this out myself. And I’d feel better about telling you what that is if we walked across the street and you let me buy you a drink.”

Leventis picked up his cap and walked toward the office door, buttoning his tunic.

“Two things I can smell from a hundred meters away. My mother’s giouvetsi lamb stew and a lying cop.”

“I keep telling you. I’m in the insurance business.”

“It’s my guess your company hired you because you’re an ex-cop and you’ve got a dirty mind. I’m just doing the same as them. Detection is in your blood, Ganz, as if it was a disease.”

“If you mean it’s one that I can’t seem to shake off, then you’re right. It’s like leprosy. I keep winding bandages around my face but nothing seems to work. One day I’m afraid I’m going to lose my nose.”

“That’s an occupational hazard for all detectives.”

His secretary handed him his gloves and a little swagger stick and we went downstairs and outside.

Behind the long marble bar at the Grande Bretagne was an old tapestry as big as the fire screen on a theater stage, depicting the triumph of some ancient Greek who probably wasn’t Hector on account of the fact that he was riding in a chariot instead of being dragged behind one. It was a nice quiet bar; the prices were fixed to make sure of that, like heavily armed hoplites. Facing the tapestry were eight tall stools and sitting at the bar was like watching a large projection screen with just one stationary, rather dull picture, a bit like Greek television. They had so many bottles behind the bar I guessed they must have some navy-strength gin and since the barman evidently knew the difference between a fresh lime and the liquid green sugar that came in a bottle I ordered a gimlet and the lieutenant ordered iced raki.

We sipped our drinks politely but I was already ordering another and a packet of butts.

“All excuses sound better after a drink. So now you’ve had yours, start talking, Commissar.”

“All right. When you showed me Brunner’s picture, I took my time about it, right? That was me, racking my brains, trying to remember where I’d seen him before. France, Germany, the Balkans—it’s taken me until now to realize I was opening the wrong drawers. I couldn’t remember him because he wasn’t in my memory. He was at the end of a bar. This bar.”

I only told Leventis this small lie because I didn’t want him asking about Fischer at the bar of the Mega Hotel and discovering I’d already asked questions about him myself.

“You mean Brunner was in here? In this hotel?”

“That’s right. In this very bar. About a week ago we got to talking, the way two men do when they discover they’re both from the same part of the world. He told me his name was Georg Fischer and that he was a tobacco salesman. Gave me a packet of Karelia to try. There’s not much more to it than that. I didn’t remember him right away because he’s almost fifteen years older than that picture you showed me. Less hair. Put on a little weight, perhaps. Gruff voice like he gargles with yesterday’s brandy. I mean, you don’t connect a wanted Nazi war criminal with a friendly guy you meet in an Athens bar. Well, when you mentioned the name Georg Fischer back in your office I suddenly put two and two together and came up with the man I’d met in this bar.”

“This story you’re telling—you spread it on a field of sugar beet, not Lieutenant Stavros P. Leventis.”

“It happens to be true. People look different when they’re in uniform. I mean, looking at you anyone would think you know what the hell you’re doing. He struck up a conversation because I figure he’d been keeping an eye on me ever since I arrived in Athens. My guess is that he was looking for Siegfried Witzel and that he was hoping I might help him. Unwittingly, of course.”

“I guess that’s your own middle name, Commissar.”

“My guess is that he waited for Witzel to show up at MRE’s offices around the corner, and then followed me when I followed Witzel to the place where he’d been lying low ever since the Doris sank. Went back a bit later and then killed him. He and Witzel probably knew each other from before the war. I’m not sure but I think Witzel was involved in some scheme to look for ancient Greek artifacts that he could sell on the black market. Assuming there is a black market for that kind of thing.”

“Sure there is. It’s a thriving one, too. There are lots of museums and private collectors who want a bit of Greek history on the cheap. Not just ours. Roman treasures, too.”

“I’m still working on that. I’m hoping I’ll have a little more information after I’ve spoken to the director of the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus. It looks like there was some agreement between the museum in Piraeus and a museum in Munich to share any discoveries. But that might just have been a cover. Maybe Brunner wanted a share, too. Or maybe it was a revenge thing. I don’t know. But if I had to guess some more—”

“You do.”

“Then I’d say that Brunner might have had something to do with the sinking of the boat. I have no idea how. Not yet.”

“Tell me more about Fischer.”

“Good suit. Gold watch, nice lighter, even nicer manners. He looked like he was doing all right for himself. He spoke Greek. Or at least as far as I was able to tell. What I mean to say is that he was reading a Greek newspaper and he seemed to speak to the barman fluently enough. He said he liked it here. And I got the impression he was in Greece a lot.”

“Is that all?”

“Look, I’ve got lots of faults but protecting Nazi war criminals isn’t one of them.”

“Says you.”

“Frequently.”

“And Meissner? Has he agreed to meet you, yet?”

“Right now that’s a maybe, too.”

“You’ve got a lot of maybes, Commissar. Enough to operate a roulette wheel, maybe. Certainly many more than your old bosses in Germany would ever have tolerated. From what I’ve read of the SS and the Gestapo they didn’t much like maybes. They preferred results. We have that in common at least. In case you’ve forgotten, my own boss is a man called Captain Kokkinos and he’s an impatient man. He thinks I should bring you in and sweat you and your fat friend, Garlopis. He’s been hitting the walls because I don’t.”

“I’ve seen your walls. And I don’t think your decorator will care.”

“Because then I’d have to waste time listening to your lies. So I tell you what I’m going to do, Ganz. From now on, you’re gonna tell me every move you make. Anything you do, I want a report. Just like you were a cop again. You can have your secretary type it. If you don’t, I’ll make sure they bury you in the deepest cell in Haidari. Solitary confinement for as long as it takes to break you. I don’t much care about Garlopis. He’ll say anything to stay out of prison. But you’re another story. You’ll be talking to yourself inside a fortnight. Because no one will be listening. Not even me. I’ll forget all about you, maybe. This is the home of democracy but we can behave in some very undemocratic ways when we put our minds to it. So you can take your choice. But you need to start confiding in me like I’m your father confessor. Only then can you get absolution. And only then can you go home.”

I nodded, full of compliance and cooperation, like I was the most craven informer ever to be bullied by a policeman. But I could already see I was going to need the firm of lawyers in Piraeus that Dietrich had recommended and later that day I called them and made an appointment on the same day we were scheduled to see Dr. Lyacos again.