3.
There was someone tailing him. He
couldn’t see anyone, but still, he knew that someone was tailing
him. It didn’t really matter. He was going back to his rented
rooms. There was nothing suspicious in that. Nothing to be seen. But
he was curious as to why someone would be following him. Bauer
had no reason to be suspicious. If he did, then Cinnamon may be in
danger.
Jim hesitated as he passed a café,
looking through the window at the tables inside. No reason to worry
about who was tailing him, but still…
Making a split second decision, he
entered the café, seating himself at an empty table close to the
door. It became immediately obvious to him why these tables near the
front of the café were empty - the cold poured through the single
glazed window and pushed away the heated air behind. But he wasn’t
worrying about that. He kept his gloves on and kept his eyes directly
obliquely toward the street.
He saw a man in a tightly buttoned
overcoat walk past without a second glance. But then there was a
woman, moving hesitantly, looking about herself as if she had lost
something. Jim raised his eyes up to her and she saw him through the
window. Her face flushed, but before she could move away he had
opened the door and bowed his head to her.
‘A coffee, Fraulein?’ he asked her
simply.
Her lips parted and she almost shook
her head - but then she nodded swiftly, and followed him into the
café.
‘Sit down, Fraulein,’ he said,
pulling out a chair.
He recognised her as she removed her
hat. Liesl Weismuller, Bauer’s current woman. He scrutinised her,
seeing the fine lines about her eyes and the edges of her mouth that
had not been evident in the photographs, contrasted by the bounce and
thickness of her hair as it tumbled in a dark mass from beneath her
fur hat. She wasn’t very old, but she had been made mature by
working for Bauer. Working for? Slaving for? He wasn’t sure what to
call it. The fact that she was here implied that she enjoyed a
certain amount of freedom. He wondered if she enjoyed her duties, or
whether she put up with them as an unavoidable price for staying
alive.
‘You were following me, Fraulein,’
he said, before his thoughts could run too far. ‘Why?’
‘I – ’ she began hesitantly, and
then seemed to steel herself and said, ‘I was watching you at the
club, Herr Baum. Watching you selling that woman to Herr Bauer.’
‘Well?’ Jim asked her with a light
shrug.
‘He sent me away,’ she said, and
she couldn’t disguise the slight tremble of her lips. ‘I have
nothing and nobody now, Herr Baum. Because you brought that
woman to him.’
Jim’s eyes narrowed slightly as he
tried to read her. He couldn’t risk betraying any feeling about her
situation. She could still be attached to Bauer.
‘Well, what do you expect me to do
about it?’ he asked. He glanced up as a waitress approached the
table, saying curtly, ‘Two coffees, bitte.’
As he had expected, his tone sent the
girl away without any extra fuss. He pulled a cigarette out of his
pocket and lit it. The first inhale pushed away some of the chill
that was drifting through the window, and he breathed smoke out into
the air in a lazy cloud.
‘Well, Fraulein?’ he asked again.
‘What am I supposed to do with Herr Bauer’s cast offs?’
Her lips pressed together in a thin
line. The waitress returned, putting down two cups of coffee on the
table between them, and Jim nodded in a mute thank you.
‘I have nowhere to go, Herr Baum,’
Weismuller said, almost in the tone of a challenge. She looked up at
him, her brown eyes defiant. ‘I came to Herr Bauer with nothing
more than the clothes I stood in, and those were replaced almost
immediately. I have left with nothing more than what I wear now. I
have no family in this country. I have no money. I have no home.’
Jim took a deep swallow of his coffee,
watching her over the rim of the cup. There was something about her –
something he could not pin down. He could see why Bauer had wanted
her. She wasn’t simply attractive. There was a spark of
intelligence and defiance that brought her features to life. A shard
of pity made itself felt deep inside him. It was his fault that she
had been cast out. There were always sacrifices made on missions like
this, but he didn’t have to like it. He never enjoyed the human
cost of such things.
He pulled out the sheaf of money that
Bauer had given him in exchange for Cinnamon. He leafed through the
notes carelessly and watched Weismuller’s eyes widen a little, her
lips parting as if she were hungry. She took a mouthful of her own
coffee to cover her reaction, and he smiled.
‘Here,’ he said, tossing a couple
of hundred mark bills onto the table. ‘That should set you up for a
couple of days.’
She stared at them as if he had just
thrown a dirty napkin toward her.
‘I don’t need your charity,’ she
said tightly.
Jim looked at her. What was it about
her? There was something in her face that made a part of him soften.
It didn’t do to have feelings like that in these situations. It
never helped.
He drank the last mouthful of his
coffee and stood up, tossing a few coins onto the table for the
drinks. Then he very deliberately placed two fingers on the bills and
pushed them toward the woman.
‘If you don’t take them, Fraulein,
the waitress will,’ he said pointedly.
He walked out of the café without
waiting for a response. He didn’t turn his head toward the window
as he walked past the front of the building, but he saw out of the
corner of his eye Weismuller’s fingers moving cautiously toward the
money. It was in her pocket before he had moved out of sight.
******
‘You think she was on the level,
Jim?’
Rollin leant back in his chair and
carelessly rested his feet on the arm of the chair next to him,
blowing smoke out of his mouth in a slow cloud.
‘I think she was on the level,’ Jim
nodded. He fanned out the cards he held in his hand, scrutinised the
symbols, and then flung them down on the table. ‘I fold. You’ve
got me beat, Rollin.’
Rollin swung his feet back to the floor
and reached out to the table. He turned the cards over and looked at
them with a grin.
‘You could usually out-poker a
pro-gambler, Jim. What’s wrong with you?’
He threw his own cards down on the
table. They weren’t playing for money, just for matchsticks that
were scattered across the table. There was no vested interest in the
game for either of them.
Jim scratched his head, taking a
mouthful of his drink and grimacing at the taste of what passed for
scotch in this place.
‘I don’t know, Rollin,’ he said.
‘Something bothers me about that woman. Not whether she was on the
level,’ he said quickly, raising a hand. ‘No, I’m certain she
was. Just – ’
‘Let me make a guess,’ Rollin said,
leaning forward slightly. ‘She had long, dark hair and a figure
that could stop clocks? She had that look in her eyes – that lost
kitten look. It was cold outside and you had that wad of money in
your coat, and you couldn’t leave her to freeze?’
‘It’s not like that, exactly,’
Jim said, suddenly disconcerted. Was it just her face and that look
in her eyes that was bothering him? Was he really such an easy target
for the lady-in-distress routine? But no. He had seen how she had
taken that money, like a beggar child snatching food that had been
dropped by a careless passer-by.
‘Forget about her,’ Rollin said
pointedly, gathering up the cards and beginning to shuffle them with
expert hands. ‘If she’s off his hands, she’s off ours too.
She’s irrelevant. It proves Cinnamon’s played her part well.’
‘Hmm,’ Jim said slowly. ‘Barney
and Willy checked in recently?’ he asked as a change of subject.
‘Not long before you came back,’
Rollin nodded. ‘They’ve got everything set up for the roadworks
and all their permits checked out fine. They’re going to start the
serious work tomorrow. Said they’ll be round here after dinner.’
‘Good,’ Jim said pensively. ‘That’s
good.’
‘You’re worried about Cinnamon
too?’ Rollin asked perceptively.
‘She can look after herself,’ Jim
said, but his eyes met Rollin’s, and he knew they both understood
one another.
‘Well, I’ll be introducing myself
to Bauer tomorrow,’ Rollin smiled, leaning back in his chair again
and taking out a cigarette. ‘I should catch sight of her then and
see she’s all right.’
‘And Bauer should start feeling the
squeeze,’ Jim said with a grim smile. ‘I know his type. Once he
gets scared that it’s all going to come out, he’ll start getting
careless. He’ll be thinking about you. No one else.’
******
Jim wondered sometimes if he did too
much smoking and drinking on missions like this. Smoking, drinking
liquor, and drinking coffee. He had too much time to think about
things, not enough time to act. He stood at the window of his room,
looking through the crack between the curtains at the apartment block
opposite, watching the people going about their lives. He almost
laughed as he watched each little person in their little square of
light, acting as if they were in total privacy. He remembered
watching a film like that a good ten years ago. Jimmy Stewart, was
it? A Hitchcock film. A guy watching people to occupy his mind, and
discovering a murder. Funny the things one watched for relaxation…
There was a couple there arguing about
something. Another couple setting down cups on a clear table. A
little boy bouncing up and down on his toes watching the light
drifting snow, up too late and too excited. Jim’s eyes drifted up a
storey, and he saw a light snap on, a woman walking across the room,
loosening her dark hair with one hand. His focus tightened. Liesl
Weismuller. She had perhaps got an apartment with that money he had
given her. It was a shabby place across the street – shabbier even
than this building – and was likely to be cheap.
He watched her as she moved across the
room. She was looking about herself as if the place was unfamiliar.
Her behaviour seemed consistent with her story in the café, at
least. She had no bag but a paper one that was perhaps filled with
groceries, and she looked tired and cold. She sat down at the table
and started to unpack items. He was right – bread, some tins and
packets, a few fresh vegetables. She took a cigarette out of a new
carton and lit it. And then she looked over toward the window, stood
up, and closed the curtains.
He watched for a few minutes longer,
finishing his cigarette and just staring at the drawn curtains,
watching her shadow moving behind them. He didn’t want to get
involved. He knew he should not get involved. But – there was just
something about her. Something that drew him to her.
He told himself not to be foolish. He
turned away from the window and stubbed out his cigarette in the
thick glass ashtray on the bedside table. He could hear Rollin and
Barney and Willy next door, the poker game revived and their
laughter and talk coming quietly and sporadic through the door. They
never questioned the times that he needed to be alone. In some ways
he wished perhaps that they would. But he always turned away from
their concern. They were good friends, sticking to him through all of
his unsociability.
He sighed. It was time to stop
brooding. He opened his suitcase and rummaged through the neatly
folded clothes in there. In the bottom, carefully wrapped in socks
and underwear, were two bottles of proper, expensive scotch. He drew
out one, gave the label a cursory glance, and pushed through the door
back into the main room.
‘Jim, come join us,’ Rollin said
immediately, patting an empty chair. ‘I need someone who can
actually play this damn game.’
Jim laughed as Barney protested and
Willy shot Rollin an injured look. He raised the bottle in his hand
and said, ‘I brought out the good stuff. It seemed like the right
time for it.’
‘Always the right time for the good
stuff,’ Barney nodded, holding up his glass and examining the small
amount of liquor at the bottom. ‘I don’t know what they call
this, but it’s not good.’
‘Well,’ Jim said, turning to the
cupboard and fetching himself a glass. ‘Finish off that and I’ll
raise your spirits with this. We can drink to a smooth first day.
Rollin said you got the works set up?’
‘Yeah,’ Willy said economically.
‘No trouble at all.’
‘I don’t think one hand knows what
the other hand’s doing in this country,’ Barney added. ‘No one
questioned us.’
‘Yeah, that’s the best way,’ Jim
said, pouring himself a glass of clear amber liquid. ‘Why don’t
they ever have ice boxes in these countries?’ he complained,
peering into the refrigerator with his glass in one hand.
Rollin laughed. ‘They don’t need
them,’ he said, getting to his feet. He opened the window and
bitter air flooded in. He looked up, then knocked at something
hanging from the window ledge above. ‘Here,’ he said, holding out
an icicle as long as his forearm. ‘I guess you can do something
with that.’
Jim’s eyes glinted. ‘That I can,’
he said. He took the icicle and put it on the counter, then knocked
it into pieces with a meat tenderiser. ‘That really is on the
rocks,’ he said as he slipped a couple of chunks into his glass and
Rollin’s. He fetched Barney’s and Willy’s empty glasses and
treated them in the same way, and then swept the rest of the ice into
the sink.
Rollin took his glass, sat back down in
the armchair and put his feet up on the coffee table. He lit a
cigarette and took a long drag before lifting the glass to his lips
and taking a sip. Then he grinned. ‘Best I’ve ever tasted. Good
American scotch and pure European ice. What a combination.’
‘Deal me in,’ Jim said, regaining
his empty chair. ‘I’m going to finish off the night by winning
myself a fortune in matchsticks.’
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