The Mordida Man

14

They had slipped the Belgravia Locks Ltd. coveralls off in the Volvo Dunjee had rented and stored them in the car’s trunk. Back up in his room at the Hilton, Dunjee dialed a number while Hopkins counted the Krugerrands.

“What’s gold bringing?” Hopkins asked.

“Eight-oh-two, the last I noticed,” Dunjee said and listened to the phone ring. It was answered just before the third ring by Delft Csider with her usual noncommittal “Yes.”

“You were great,” Dunjee said.

“I got tired of waiting in that phone booth.”

“Sorry,” he said. “How are you at wheedling?”

“Try me.”

“There’s an Alitalia flight to Rome tomorrow morning at eight forty-five, flight 317. I want seat three-B for myself in first class. And I want the two seats just across the aisle from me for my secretary, D. Csider, and my associate, H. Hopkins. Hold on.” He looked at Hopkins. “You got a passport?”

“Rome?” Hopkins said.

“Rome.”

Hopkins thought about it. “I got a passport,” he said.

“He’s got one. Second, I need something else from that instant printer of yours who did the locksmith thing.”

“What?”

“A couple of dozen letterheads. Make them read ‘Anadarko Explorations, Inc.’ Think up some address and phone number for Tulsa. I want letters typed on each one — some long, some short. My name below as president.”

“Anyone going to be reading the letters?”

“Maybe just the salutations. They should include a lot of names and addresses in Kuwait, Oman, and maybe Nigeria.”

“Anything else?”

“Is Grimes around?”

“He’ll be back at four.”

“Tell him I’ll either see him or talk to him then.”

“I’ll tell him. Where do you want to stay in Rome?”

“Some place expensive.”

“The Hassler do?”

“Perfect.”

“I’ll try,” she said. “What else?”

“Let’s have dinner.”

“Seven?”

“Fine. I’ll either see you or call you by five.”

After they said goodbye, Dunjee hung up the phone and turned to Hopkins. “Five thousand for Rome plus expenses.”

“Rome, is it?”

“Rome.”

“Might see the Colosseum.”

“Don’t bank on it.”

“Be too busy, will we?”

“I don’t know.”

Hopkins stacked the twenty Krugerrands into one pile. “At 802 an ounce that’s 16,040 dollars. There was another nine hundred quid in that envelope you found. You want a slice?”

“No.”

“You’re making me rich, Mr. Dunjee, sir.”

“I know.”

Hopkins used his forefinger to knock the pile of gold coins over. “When will we be getting to the nasty part?”

“Maybe in Rome. Maybe not. I don’t know.”

“Never been to Rome.”

“You’ll like it.”

Hopkins nodded. “I’ll go. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m greedy, I am.”

“Everybody is,” Dunjee said, took out his address book, and turned to the page where he had written the name “Frank” and a telephone number. He stared at the number for several moments, then shrugged, picked up the phone, and dialed.

When a man’s voice said hello, Dunjee said, “Frank?”

“Frank, is it?” the man said.

“That’s right.”

“The Kraut, you mean?”

“Frank won’t like that.”

“What?”

“You calling him a Kraut.”

“You’re a Yank, aren’t you?”

“Right.”

“I never knew a Yank yet who minded being called Yank, so why should a Kraut mind being called Kraut?”

“Well, you know Frank.”

“I know he owes me fifty quid in rent and I’ve got his stuff locked away in the bin down in the cellar and if that’s what you’re calling about, I’m thinking you’d better be bringing it along.”

“Fifty? Frank didn’t say it’d be that much.”

“Fifty it is. I keep records. All down in black and white.”

“Well, Frank wants his stuff, so I’ll come up with it somehow. You take a check?”

“No checks.”

Dunjee sighed. “I guess you’d better give me that address again. Frank wrote it down on the back of a napkin and you know how Germans write — all spikes and squiggles.”

The man on the telephone recited an address and Dunjee wrote it down. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“With the fifty quid.”

“With the fifty quid.”

After he hung up, Dunjee showed the address to Hopkins. “Bayswater,” Hopkins said. “Not far — maybe five minutes. Who’s Frank?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. He seems to be German and his name was written on the back of one of those girlie pictures.”

“So what’s the fifty quid going to buy?”

Dunjee shrugged. “Let’s go find out.”

The old house was on a dead-end street called Caroline Place. The landlord was a fifty-six-year-old man whose bulging brown eyes gave him a perpetually startled look, which may have been caused by a bad thyroid, or by the awful surprise that life had handed him. His name, he said without being asked, was Mr. Thumbolt and wasn’t it too bad how the niggers were ruining the country. “I keep ‘em out of here though,” he said, adding sadly, “Most of the time.”

“You said fifty,” Dunjee said.

“Fifty. Twenty-five per. In advance. He missed one week and I didn’t think nothing about it because he was always in and out — you know, sleeping here only one, two, maybe three nights a week. But after he didn’t show for eleven straight days and no word, well, I packed him up and locked him away in the bin.”

“Frank said he owes only one week.”

“I got it down in black and white.”

“Let’s take a look,” Dunjee said.

Mr. Thumbolt limped to a desk in the cluttered ground-floor bed-sitter and flipped open a gray ledger with red leather corners. “Right here,” he said, jabbing his finger at a name. The name was Frank Glimm, and Dunjee ran his eyes over the dates of payment and learned that Glimm had been renting the third-floor bed-sitter for three months.

“That’s not two weeks,” Dunjee said. “That’s eleven days.”

“One day to move him out and clean it up, right? Another day to show it, right? Another day before the new one can move in, right? That’s three days. Three plus eleven is fourteen. Two into fourteen makes seven. Seven days in a week at twenty-five per, times two, makes fifty.”

“Frank isn’t going to like this, is he, Ralph?” Dunjee said to Hopkins.

“He’ll scream,” Hopkins said. “Close, Frank is. Very close.”

“Tell him to come scream at me,” Mr. Thumbolt said.

Dunjee took fifty pounds from his pocket in one- and five-pound notes and counted them slowly onto the desk. “There’s your fifty. Where’s his stuff?”

“Bit of a walk,” Mr. Thumbolt said and limped out of the room and down the hall. Dunjee and Hopkins followed. “Got this in Africa, I did,” Mr. Thumbolt said, giving his limping left leg a slap. “Bloody Krauts anyway.”

At the end of the hall he opened a door, switched on a light, and started down a flight of stairs. The cellar was crammed with discarded furniture. In one corner old bed slats had been used to build a floor-to-ceiling bin. The bin was full of suitcases, trunks, and cardboard boxes tied with string. Mr. Thumbolt produced a ring of keys and used one to unlock a padlock on the bin’s chicken-wire door.

“I flog everything they leave behind but the luggage,” he said. “Chap over in the Portobello Road gives me a price. Wirelesses, gramophones, irons, pots and pans, things like that. One of these days I’m going to flog this lot off.” He pointed to two large suitcases, not new. “That one and that one.”

Dunjee took one; Hopkins the other. Both were heavy.

“Frank said something about a cardboard box,” Dunjee said.

“No box,” Mr. Thumbolt said firmly.

“No box. I’ll tell him that.”

“What about the wireless,” Hopkins said. “Frank said he had himself a nice little Grundig.”

“He’s a liar,” Mr. Thumbolt said. “No pots, no pans, not a dish, and just a couple of glasses. He says he had a wireless, you tell him I say he’s a liar.”

“I’ll tell him,” Hopkins said.

“What about mail?” Dunjee said as they went back up the stairs.

“No mail. Never got any mail.”

“Well, he was never one to write,” Hopkins said.

The suitcases weren’t locked. They opened them on Dunjee’s bed in the Hilton. There was nothing in the first suitcase except clothing — most of it of Italian and French manufacture. It had been packed carelessly. None of it was expensive. Dunjee went through each pocket, turning them inside out when he could, and even checking the waistbands of the trousers. He found nothing except three French francs.

Hopkins found the heavy steel box in the second suitcase. There were scratches around its lock. It looked as though someone had used a screwdriver or a chisel in an attempt to pry up one corner. The attempt had failed. There were four round dents in the top of the box where it had been struck by something, possibly a ball-peen hammer.

“How’d you know there was a box?” Hopkins said.

“I didn’t.”

“You asked him about it.”

“I asked him about a cardboard box.”

“Well, he sure had a go at this one. Nice little box.” He weighed it in the palm of one hand. “Quarter-inch steel, or I’m a liar.”

“What about the lock?”

Hopkins used both hands to raise the box up to eye level. He stared at the lock. “Very pretty. Looks German. Or Swiss. They make ‘em and the French buy ‘em to hoard their gold in. Or so I hear. No gold in this one though. Not heavy enough.”

The steel box was not quite as large as those that cigars come in and not nearly as deep — no more than an inch or so. Hopkins put the box back down on the bed, took out his wallet, and selected a steel pick. He knelt and began to probe the lock with his pick. “Tricky little bastard,” he said. “It’s Swiss.”

“How can you tell?”

“I can tell.”

Dunjee lit his third cigarette of the day. It took him seven minutes to smoke it. A minute after he had ground it out in a tray Hopkins said, “Ah!” He looked up at Dunjee. “It’s open,” he said.

“It’s not open.”

“All you have to do is lift up the lid.”

“Well, lift it up.”

“I’m going to take a stroll down the hall, mate.”

“You want me to lift it up?”

“That’s up to you,” Hopkins said. “When I was inside, a pal of mine told me about a box like this. Described it exactly, he did. Last thing he ever saw.”

“Blind?”

“Blind. Boom, it went. Little glass fragments. Acid all over his face and in his eyes. He was a right mess.”

“Take your walk,” Dunjee said, went over to the bed, picked up a pillow, and placed it over the box.

“Well, I’ll just go over here in the corner.”

Dunjee felt around underneath the pillow until he had a grasp on the lid. He pressed the pillow down hard, turned his head, and squeezed his eyes shut. He relaxed his pressure on the pillow, lifted the lid up quickly, then slammed it and the pillow down again, his eyes still closed. Nothing happened. Dunjee backed quickly away.

“You lift it up?” Hopkins said.

“I lifted it.”

“How far?”

“An inch. At least an inch.”

“Not to worry then.” Hopkins crossed over to the bed, tossed the pillow aside, turned the box around, and lifted the lid. “Aw shit,” he said, turning away in disgust.

“More pretty girls?” Dunjee said.

“How’d you know?”

“I didn’t.”

Dunjee sat down on the bed, took the pictures out, and looked at each one, both back and front. These were five-by-seven glossy prints. Some were the same poses and participants as he had seen in the box in Abedsaid’s apartment. Others were different. There were twenty-four of them. Dunjee put them aside.

There were two envelopes in the box. One was sealed; the other wasn’t. In the unsealed envelope were six Polaroid color pictures. They showed some people at a sandy beach, all of them in swimsuits. There were two women and two men. One of the men was Oriental. The other man was pudgy with unkempt hair that came down almost to his jaw line. The pudgy man wore sunglasses. Five of the pictures were of the group of four. The sixth picture was of a man lying naked in a bed. He was smiling at the camera and pointing at his erection. The smiling man was blond, in his late twenties, and looked hard-muscled.

“Want to see what Frank looks like?” Dunjee said, holding out the picture.

“Shame on him,” Hopkins said. “He hasn’t got all that much to be smiling and pointing about. How do you know it’s Frank?”

“I’m guessing.”

Dunjee ripped open the sealed envelope. Inside were twenty-five very new, quite crisp hundred-dollar bills. “You got lucky again, Harold,” he said and handed the bills to Hopkins.

“Lord love us,” Hopkins whispered and started counting the money.

Dunjee looked again at the front of the envelope that had contained the money and then at its back. He took a final look inside. Down in the far left corner was a folded piece of paper, no larger than a postage stamp. He unfolded it carefully. It was a ruled piece of paper, apparently torn from a spiral notebook. On it written in pencil were two capital letters, “G. G.” Then an address: “18 via Corrado.”

Hopkins looked up from his money. “Anything?”

“An address.”

“Where?”

“Rome,” Dunjee said. “If we’re lucky.”

Hopkins looked down at the money in his hand, then over at the open metal box, and then back at Dunjee. He shook his head slowly. “You’ve got luck you don’t even know about yet, mate.”