Payback (16 page)

He'd not only stolen Mack's death, but his life; and whatever Mack had done, as Mitchell saw it now, it was strictly and inexorably Mitchell's doing.

***

He turned on the radio and got the click-clacks of an all-news station.
Give us twenty-two minutes and we'll give you the world. Click-clack, click-clack
. There were no new deaths in the Naturalite case. There were no new leads. No old leads either. On the other hand, according to the L.A. police, there was “one very interesting angle that emerged and to which we're pursuant.” Mitchell stopped to wonder what the angle might be and where cops learned to talk.
Click-clack, click-clack
. The company's stock, which had yesterday plummetted by nine-and-a-quarter, was today holding steady.

Mitchell got through to the L.A. Task Force and asked for Ortega. “You're pursuant to an interesting angle,” Mitchell said.

Ortega said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Hey, not me,” Mitchell said. “Your inspector. On the news.”

“Oh,” Ortega said. “That one,”

“As opposed to all the others,” Mitchell said.

There was silence, a pause.

“Where are you, by the way?”

“Me?” Mitchell said. “In bed. Where're you?”

“On the phone,” Ortega said, “—where your secretary told me you were off in Guatemala.”

“Well … I'll be leaving any second,” Mitchell said. “I just thought I'd say good-bye.”

“Or
auf Wiedersehen?
”

“No.”

“Okay,” Ortega said. “Because I wouldn't want to see you throwing money after bad.”

“Have you got something?”

“Yeah, we do,” Ortega said. “We got somebody bet about a hundred thousand dollars that your stock was gonna drop. That was Friday afternoon. And you know what the odds've been?”

“Thirty-three to one.”

“Pretty good,” Ortega said. “Any buyers come to mind?”

Mitchell lit a smoke. “Anyone with a hundred-thousand dollars in his fist.”

“Yeah. It's not a whole lot of money anymore. You got a teenage executive'll do it in a month. You got a dope guy, forget it. He could do it in a day.”

“Very likely,” Mitchell said.

“Very likely and a half. And the poison. We could play a little game,” Ortega said. “I mean, why not cyanide? Strychnine? Or something's maybe easier to get. You ever think of that angle? Heroin. Synthetic heroin. Why?”

Mitchell didn't answer.

“Cuz he's got it in the house. That's
why
,” Ortega said. “He's a chemist. He's a dealer. He's a head. I don't know except he's tangled up with drugs.”

Mitchell didn't answer.

“Or not,” Ortega said. “I'm kind of spitballing.”

“Oh.”

There was silence for a time.

Mitchell said, “The angle you're pursuing …”

“Is the stock. It's the stock market angle. Not that we could take it very far,” Ortega said. “We kind of stand at the shoreline and wave at it.”

“Offshore bankers,” Mitchell said.

“You got it. In Panama, Nassau, Geneva—”

“In Vienna?”

“Don't forget about Liechtenstein. Yeah. He's ahead,” Ortega said. “About two million dollars, is the figure I've been given, and there's nothing we can do, and the point is, you want to give him two million more.”

“In Guatemala?” Mitchell said.

“Yeah. Okay. All right,” Ortega told him. “Fine. Up to you.” He whistled through his teeth. “
Cuidado, amigo
. You know what that means?”

“Be careful.”

“And if not—be good,” Ortega said.

15

It was snowing in Vienna. The way Mitchell saw it—crawling in a taxicab, radio blasting him with FM Strauss—it might have been a city in a glass paperweight. Miniature, frozen, calm and unreal. He watched it going by now, gingerbread and Gothic, block-long palaces every other block. He could find another image: City
mit Schlag;
whipped cream topping on a pastry-shop world. Moving up the Ring, that continuous boulevard that ran around the whole Inner City like a moat, he could picture it animate with two-horse phaetons, with Hapsburg royalty spitting on the
Volk
, Maria-Theresa saying let 'em eat strudel and the Austrian peasantry grinning like a fool. It wasn't too far from the Hapsburgs to Hitler; the music had been louder but the dance was the same.

They passed the university, its architecture dating from the 17th century, and turned off the Ring to the more or less Left Bank quarter of the town. Cobblestoned streets and the tiny cafés and eclectic bookstores that blossom on the turf.

The driver pulled up at a 19th-century limestone facade. A gilded sign that said
Hotel Wien
. It looked, from the front, like a forty-room establishment, something with a listing like “charming but cheap” in American guidebooks, and tidy enough to rate a Michelin star.

The lobby was small but not without pretension. Oriental carpeting and dark, almost ominous red velvet drapes that blocked out the daylight. A couple of stiff-looking red velvet chairs. Over to the side was an onyx counter with a switchboard on it and a porter behind it—a teenage troublemaker buried in a book, its cover showing two bare tits and a knife. A second counter, made of shinier onyx, had a small bowl of flowers and a middle-aged clerk. Mitchell wondered idly if the clerk and the porter ever spoke to each other and what they'd have to say.

He moved to the desk. The clerk did a formal and obsequious smile and said, “
Ja. Guten Tag.
”

Mitchell said, “Does anyone sprechen Sie English?”

The clerk said, “A little,” and widened up his smile. It didn't get any better, it just got bigger.

Mitchell put his bag down and said, “You have a Mr. Mitchell from the States. From America. He checked in yesterday, I think.”

The clerk said, “Ja. Herr Mitchell check in, Herr Mitchell check aus.”

Mitchell closed an eye. “Out,” he said. “Gone?”

“Gone,” the clerk said. “Very firshtick in ze morgen.”

“When?” Mitchell said. “How early? What time?”

The clerk looked over at the rebel with the book. “
Hans
—
Herr Mitchell. Wann ging der Herr weg?
”

“
Nein
,” the kid said.

“
Was bedeutet das, ‘nein'?
”

“
Nine
,” the kid said. “O'clock. Checked out. About an hour and a half ago.”

Mitchell said to Hans, “Did he say where he was going?”

“
Nein
,” the kid said, and retreated to intense concentration on his work: Studies in Advanced Sado-Sexual Perversion in the European Novels of the Twentieth Century.

“Yeah. Okay,” Mitchell said. “I'd like a room.”

***

It was small and clean. It had a serviceable dresser and a straight-back chair and a hard double bed; a night table holding a built-in radio, a built-in lamp and a big black telephone that looked like a boot. He picked up the phone and then waited while the kid finished Chapter Twenty-seven and decided on a plug.

“
Was nehmen Sie?
” The voice had a twinge of annoyance.

“Hans,” Mitchell said, “we've got business to discuss. In private. At your desk. So when do you think you could arrange for that, huh?”

“Shit. What's the deal—you want a hooker?” Hans said.

“I want to talk,” Mitchell said. “To you. At your desk. I want to put a little silver in your come-spattered hand and I want some information.”

“At noon,” the kid said, “Herr Glauber takes a break. Herr Glauber leaves without variation on the dot and is back within the hour.”

Mitchell took a walk. He had a beer and a sandwich at a side-street tavern with a student clientele. The students around him were engagingly scruffy and furiously earnest, the boys pontifical, the girls on the make. There were times he felt old.

Hans was alone, presiding at the switchboard with a slow-dripping cigarette hanging from his mouth. He was eighteen, tops, and a student of everything Bogart ever did. He had stringy blond hair, a few pimples on his chin.

Mitchell said, “Hi.” He had four hundred schillings—a twenty-dollar bill—waiting crisply in his hand.

Hans said, “You better make it eight hundred schillings.”

“Hey punk.” Mitchell squinted. “You don't even know what I'll be asking for yet.”

The porter just nodded. “But whatever it is if you'll hit me with a four-note, you'll hit me with an eight.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Mitchell said. “If I'd've had your brains when I'd've been your age—”

“You'd be rich.”

“I'd be in jail.” But he grabbed another bank­note and put it on the desk. “Herr Mitchell,” he said, “who checked in yesterday and checked out this morning—what room was he in?”

“Room one-twenty-four.”

“Did he have any visitors?”

“No.”

“Did he get any phone calls from anyone?”

“Not that I know.”

“Did he ask you for directions?”

“Directions?”

“Say how to get from this place to that.”

“Uh-huh.” The boy nodded.

“Good,” Mitchell said. “Then directions to where?”

The boy said nothing, just looked at him. The butt dripped ashes on his pants. Mitchell took another four-hundred from his wallet but held it in his hand.

“Der Nachtlokal.”

“What the hell's that?” Mitchell said.

“It's a nightclub. It's what you call in English, it's a strip.” The boy thought it over. “It's a striptease joint.”

“Uh-huh. And you know all the words,” Mitchell said. “Did you tell him to go there? I mean … did you recommend it to him?”

“No. He already knew it. He had it written down. In a notebook, okay? The name of this nightclub. He couldn't pronounce it so he showed it to me.” Hans looked quickly at the money. “The next part is worth a little more,” the boy said.

“That's for me to determine.”

“And for me not to talk.”

Mitchell took another bank­note from his wallet and held it with the other. “Talk,” he said, “fast.”

“Underneath the name of the nightclub was a name.”

“Keep going,” Mitchell said.

“It said Eva Schoener.”

“Keep going.”

“That's all. Nothing else. That was it.”

“What else did he ask you?”

The boy shook his head.

“When he left—checked out—do you know where he was going?”

The boy didn't know.

Mitchell pulled the last four-hundred from his wallet. “Now listen. For the sixty-dollar question,” Mitchell said, “you're gonna show me your ledger.”

The boy drew a blank.

Mitchell pointed at the board. “The telephone ledger. The ledger where you write down the outgoing calls.”

The boy made a face. “That's illegal,” he said.

“Legal,” Mitchell said, “pays two schillings flat.”

The boy scratched his chin. “Make it sixteen hundred.”

Mitchell said, “You're going too far with this, kiddo.”

“Then fourteen hundred.”

“Hey buddy?” Mitchell said. “In another ten seconds, I am picking you up, I am breaking your neck, and I'm looking at the motherfucking phone book for free.”

It got him the book.

Room 124 had made two quick calls. He copied the numbers.

Then he took the room key for 124 and put the money on the desk.

***

The bed was a mess. It looked as though the Rose Bowl game had been played there and both sides had lost. A damp white towel at the bottom of the tub. The ashtrays were brimming. A whisky glass, still half full with the padding of some long-melted ice.

He lit a cigarette. He had no idea what the hell he was doing; he was moving on impulse. Part of him was thinking, in the movies they'd've done it—grabbed the old room key and headed for the room.
Miami Vice
they'd've punched Herr Glauber and mutilated Hans, but they'd've come here anyway. Except in the movies they'd've found something too. They had to. The propman had put it there.

Shit.

He went over to the wastepaper basket: two crumpled packages of Chesterfield Lights and a match-book. The cover said, Krasdale Markets/Quality Products Since 1908. A crumpled piece of paper. He unfolded it and looked at a spiky writing in a ballpoint pen:
Der Nachtlokal
—
Eva Schoener
, it said.

He hesitated, stood there poised in the doorway and peering through the room. Maybe he was trying to feel Mack's presence, maybe catch a few vibes, a few stray electrics from a hard day's night. But the only thing he caught was his own pragmatic, rather troubled reflection in the mirror on the wall.

***

He called Janet from a booth, catching her at home before she chugged off to jog; it was 8 in L.A. He didn't tell her where he was so she could lie with impunity to anybody else. He just wondered what was up.

“
Nightline
,” she said. “They wanted you to appear. They were willing to handle it through their Guatemalan affiliate. Leo fielded it. Somehow.”

“Good,” Mitchell said. “What else is up?”

“You mean aside from Leo?” Janet said. “Well, you've got George who's started muttering in the halls. George said you ate the contingency fund and you're plunging into red. He likened it to a thermometer going well below zero. And our credit rating stinks. George said you pulled an international recall and it—”

“Skip it,” Mitchell said. “What else?”

Janet paused. “You got a threatening phone call.”

Mitchell took a breath. “When?”

“Around … five, five-thirty last night. I asked who's calling and he said, ‘An old friend.' Then he said something like, ‘Tell him if I don't get the money on time he's in serious trouble.' I think he made about three syllables out of the word serious.”