Back from the Dead (8 page)

“You better sit down,” Conlin said.

“Maybe I better.”

“You might be more comfortable in your apartment.”

“This is fine.” Joyce didn’t want to be alone with Conlin right now. She might break down and tell him everything. It was a difficult position to be in. Hess was alive and back in Palm Beach but she couldn’t tell the police. They sat in two chairs against the wall, Conlin’s body angled, facing her.

“You going to tell me what really happened that night?”

“I did.”

“You saw him, didn’t you?”

“Who you talking about?”

“This guy Klaus, or whatever his name is, killed your friend Lenore. But he was looking for you, wasn’t he?”

“Why would he be looking for me?”

“That’s the hundred-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?” Conlin paused, staring at Joyce. “I talked to Mrs. Frankel, she said you were staying at her estate while your apartment was being painted. You told me you were staying at Frankel’s so you could put up Harry Levin from Detroit and his buddy, Cordell Sims. Which one is it?”

“Both.”

“Both, huh? How do you know Harry?”

“We’re old friends, went to school together. We’ve kept in touch.”

“Yeah, where was that at?”

“The Jewish day school.”

“And out of the blue he decided to come and visit?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Which one of you shot the German? Or was it the colored guy, Sims?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. My guess would be Harry Levin?”

“Then why’re you asking me?”

“According to Detroit police he’s got a permit to carry a firearm. Big one, too, .357 Mag.” Conlin took a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out and lit it with a silver Zippo. “I was in Freeport a few days ago visiting a guy looks a lot like this.” He held up the artist sketch again. “Shot with a high-caliber round – through and through, and dumped in the ocean. Sound familiar? That’s usually enough to get the job done. But this German is either tough or lucky or both. But you don’t know him, uh?”

Joyce met his gaze but didn’t say anything. Conlin’s hunch was right on the money but there was no way he could prove it. “You might be interested to know Klaus escaped from the hospital in Freeport, hijacked a boat and took it to Palm Beach. Went to a lot of effort to get back here. Like he had some unfinished business to take care of. But you don’t know anything, is that right?” Conlin paused for effect. “You probably have nothing to worry about then.”

He got on his feet. “There is one more thing I should tell you. You read about that woman was strangled last night a few blocks from here? Klaus is our main suspect. Murdered her, took a shower, fixed himself a snack. We’ve got a real wacko on our hands. Fingerprints match the prints on the security guard’s handgun and flashlight. They also match the prints in Lenore Deutsch’s house. But from what you tell me he’s not after you, so you’ve got nothing to worry about. Listen, you have a nice evening, Ms. Cantor.”

The phone was ringing when Harry walked in the kitchen. He threw his keys on the counter and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Harry, I think I just saw him.”

It was Joyce.

“Who’re you talking about?”

“Hess. He’s alive.”

“Not unless he’s back from the dead,” Harry said. “No way he could’ve survived. It’s impossible.” Although there had been a shred of doubt in the back of his mind when he dumped Hess’ body in the ocean and watched the current take him out to sea.

Joyce told him about seeing Hess in the lobby and everything Detective Conlin had said.

“Harry, I’m scared. I don’t know what to do.”

“Call Cordell. He’ll take care of you till I can get down there.”

It was almost dark when Hess checked into the Vista del Mar, a motel on the ocean in a little town called Pompano Beach, thirty minutes south of Palm Beach by taxi. There were two couples sitting in lounge chairs by the pool, drinking beer, talking loud and laughing as Hess walked past them, went to the office and checked in.

His room was on the first floor facing the pool. He looked around. It was small and clean – nothing special. He walked out, closed the door and put the key in his trouser pocket, passed by the couples sitting there and one of the women said, “Ever stay here before?”

It was dark, he couldn’t see her face. “No,” he said.

“Well, you’re going to love it.”

“I’m sure I will,” Hess said. He walked down the street to the Oceanside Shopping Center, bustling with activity, cars driving in and out, people everywhere. He went to Pompano Drugs and bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, shaving cream, razor and a shampoo called Head & Shoulders. He walked down the sidewalk to a men’s store and bought khaki trousers, a dark blue golf shirt, underwear, socks and a pair of brown Docksiders.

Back outside he noticed a post office, closed now. He would see about renting a post-office box in the morning. Hess carried his purchases to a phone booth, set the bags on the floor, picked up the receiver and fed a nickel into the coin slot, pressed 0 for the operator and made an overseas phone call to Munich.

After half a dozen rings, Ingrid said, “Hello,” in a tired voice. It was almost 1 a.m. Munich time. She had probably been asleep.

“It’s Ernst.”

“My God, are you all right? I have been so worried. The police came to the office. They’re going to arrest you for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Your bank accounts have been frozen. If you return to Germany you will be arrested.”

“I need your help with something.”

“Yes, of course, Ernst, anything.” Ingrid took a breath. “Can you at least tell me where you are?”

He could hear voices and the clatter of shopping carts outside the phone booth. “There is fifty thousand dollars in the safe in my apartment.” She had a key. He gave her the combination. “I’ll phone you tomorrow and let you know where to send the money.”

Hess walked back to the motel thinking about Ingrid. He knew he could count on her. They’d had a brief affair years earlier. She had been twenty-five at the time, slightly overweight and insecure, and Hess had taken advantage of her.

The way Ingrid still looked at him, he didn’t think she had ever gotten over him.

He entered the courtyard and noticed the two beer-drinking couples were gone. The pool lights were on, making the water look green and murky. Hess went to his room, took off the elegant Palm Beach outfit and dressed in the clothes he had just purchased. The light blue trousers replaced by khakis that were too long, the orange short-sleeved shirt replaced by a blue golf shirt with a penguin on the upper right side, the white leather loafers with gold bars replaced by stiff brown Docksiders with rawhide laces. The finishing touch was a dark blue cap that said
Pompano Beach,
the words stacked on the front. Hess glanced at himself, posing in the mirror, and saw a tradesman on holiday.

It was 7:30. He stuffed the Palm Beach clothes, including the blue blazer, into the shopping bag, and dropped it into a trash bin on his way to a Chinese restaurant he’d seen earlier. It was across the beach road from the shopping center. Hess went in, moved past the hostess through the loud dining room to the crowded bar, found a seat between a frail, heavily made-up woman in her seventies and a grey-haired guy about his age, took off his cap and ordered a Macallan’s neat.

The bartender, in a Hawaiian shirt, said, “You two guys brothers?”

Hess glanced to his right and met the gaze of the man next to him. He looked older from this angle, but there was a definite resemblance. He could have been related, Ernst’s cousin or older brother.

“Max Hoffman,” the guy said, hint of a German accent, offered his hand.

Hess said, “Harry Levin.” They shook, manly grips from both of them.

Hess said, “You’re German. I can hear the accent.”

“Born in Berlin. Five generations. What about you?”

“Bavaria,” Hess said. “Schleissheim, just north of Munich.”

“Maybe we’re related after all.”

Max Hoffman set his drink down and placed his left hand flat on the bar top, and now Hess could see the faded vertical sequence of numbers tattooed across the top of his forearm. “You were at Auschwitz,” Hess said, knowing it was the only camp where the Nazis tattooed prisoners. More than four hundred thousand inmates had been assigned serial numbers.

Max nodded. “We were rounded up and packed into a cattle car. Rode three days without food, water or bathroom facilities. Arrived May 12th, 1942.” He sipped his drink. “The door opened and I saw the electric fence and the towers and a line of SS guards with machine guns, standing next to the train. I stepped over the bodies of those who had died during the travel, climbed out of the car and stood in a long line, walking toward a man in a white physician’s coat, standing on a platform, a German shepherd sitting next to him. The man studied each of us with detached indifference, directing the fittest among us to the right and those who were going to die in the gas chamber to the left. I found out later he was Dr. Mengele. With his arms outstretched, wearing the white medical coat he looked like a white angel. The Jews in the camp called him the Angel of Death.” Max Hoffman paused. “There was a putrid stench in the air. I said to Wineman, a friend who was in front of me, ‘What is that awful smell?’ A guard standing nearby heard me and said, ‘Your parents.’ I was strong in those days. I had been an athlete. I wanted to grab the guard and break his neck.” Max Hoffman picked up his drink. “I was there till the 26th of January, 1945, the day Russian troops liberated us.”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty-eight when I got out.”

“I was at Dachau,” Hess said. “November 1942 till I escaped in May of’43.”

Max said. “How’d you do it?”

“The Nazis said we were being transferred to a sub-camp to work in a munitions factory. It was believable, prisoners were transferred all the time. And I wanted to believe it. Any place had to be better than where I was.” Hess sipped his whisky. “Fifty of us were packed into the back of a truck and driven a few kilometers from the camp. When the truck turned into the woods I knew the real purpose of our journey. SS guards in kubelwagens were following us, but there was a stretch where we lost sight of them and I jumped off the back of the truck.”

“That took guts. How old were you?”

“Sixteen.” Hess took a swallow of whisky. “I followed the truck to a clearing, stood behind a tree and watched the SS guards direct prisoners to a pit that had been dug. Twelve at a time were brought to the edge and shot in the back of the head, the velocity of the rounds blowing the bodies into the hole. More trucks came and more prisoners were executed. At some point the SS murderers started drinking schnapps to calm their nerves. Late in the afternoon when it was over many of the guards were drunk. But someone saw me. I was brought to the edge of the pit, hit on the side of the head with the butt of a carbine and thrown on top of bodies, some still alive, and burrowed down under the dead while the guards were shooting at me.” That was Hess’ recollection of what happened to the real Harry Levin. He could see Max hanging on every word. Hess finished the whisky and signaled the bartender. “A refill?”

“I better,” Max said, “if I am going to hear any more of this.”

“Another round,” Hess said to the bartender, then glanced at the Jew. “I awoke hours later, feeling the weight of the bodies on top of me. I couldn’t see or breathe. The pit had been filled in with dirt. I clawed my way out. It was dark. I ran to a farmhouse and hid in the barn.”

“Where was your family?”

“Killed by the Nazis.”

Max Hoffman shook his head.

The bartender put fresh drinks in front of them.

Hess picked up his whisky, waited for Max to pick up his and clinked his glass. “To us, the survivors.”

“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Max said. “How can we celebrate our lives when so many others have died? It’s arrogant. Any way you look at it, we were lucky.”

“You’re right.” Hess hadn’t considered it from a Holocaust survivor’s point of view. But then, how could he? “To the six million who were murdered.”

The Jew gave him a sympathetic nod.

“What about you, Max? What else happened?”

The Jew drank some of his drink that looked like a Manhattan, staring into the glass as if the answer were floating next to the cherry.

“I was in the
Sonderkommando
.”

“What was it like to be so close to death every day?”

“Worse than you can imagine.”

“But at least you were well fed.”

“Well fed? You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Better than the others, and you had your own quarters.” Hess was enjoying himself, but had to be careful not to go too far.

“What are you saying?” Max’s face was flush with anger. “You think it was special treatment? Let me tell you how special it was.” He paused, glancing down at the bar. “We were outcasts, isolated from everyone, hated, despised. I remember looking across the yard at the Jewish girls, wishing I could talk to them. The Nazis were very clever to put us in charge of the gas chambers and the ovens, making us their accomplices.”

The Jew drank his drink. “We planned the division of labor based on the size of incoming transports. The Jews would arrive confused, agitated, exhausted after spending days packed in a cattle car. We would take them to the undressing hall, try to keep them calm as we searched for valuables. Deceiving our own people, telling them they were going for a shower as we led them to the gas chamber.”

Hess said, “How did you know when they were dead?”

“When the screaming stopped.” Max took a breath. “There were fingernail scratches on the walls and ceiling.”

“What choice did you have?”

The Jew met his gaze but didn’t answer, paused for a few seconds and said, “We had to carry the bodies out and pull the gold teeth from their mouths with pliers. Then we sheared off the women’s hair. Later it was washed and stuffed in sacks and used to make clothing.” The Jew paused again. “You still think it was special?”

“Forgive me, Max.” It was getting good. Hess had struck a nerve.

“And we were the stokers,” Max said. “Operating the furnaces, sliding bodies into the ovens. We would be covered with ashes. I couldn’t get the smell of death out of my nostrils.” Max cleared his throat, pinched the bridge of his nose and inhaled.

“One day I picked up an emaciated body, a woman that looked familiar. It was my wife, Faga.”

“What did you think?” Hess said.

“I was numb, paralyzed. Or maybe hypnotized. The world I knew had been turned upside down.”

“I am sorry for you,” Hess said, with as much sincerity as he could muster. “How many Jews were cremated at Auschwitz?”

“I don’t know, a million, maybe more. I didn’t count them.”

“What did you do with all the ash? You must have had mountains of it.”

“We dumped it around the camp. We loaded it on trucks and dumped it in the Vistula River and also the Sola.”

Hess could see it, the dust of one million Jews, polluting the water table of southwestern Poland. “Did you feel guilty?” he said, rubbing Max’s face in it now.

“Of course I did. It was a moral dilemma. But I wanted to live. I was obsessed with living. For an hour, a day, a week.”

“I understand,” Hess said. “It was all that mattered.”

Max said, “What did you miss the most?”

“My family. And food. My mother was a wonderful cook. And also the Symphony, the Philharmonic,” Hess said, trying to sound like a survivor.

They finished their drinks and Hess invited Max to have dinner with him. He wanted to learn more about this man who bore a striking resemblance to him. In the dining room over plates of sweet and sour chicken, beef chow mein and egg rolls, Max told him he had been a school teacher in Cleveland, Ohio, taught history and accounting for twenty-five years and had retired after his wife died of cancer a year earlier. He had purchased a house in Pompano on the Intracoastal. “I sit outside next to the pool and watch the boats.”

Max had no children. No relatives. No pets. Hess told his new friend he was a scrap-metal dealer from Detroit, down for a week to relax, staying at a motel on North Ocean Boulevard. He was married and divorced and had a seventeen-year-old daughter. When they finished dinner Hess paid the bill and they walked outside and stood in front of the restaurant sign that said
Mon Jin Lau
in red neon. It was cool and dark, the sky lit up with stars. Not only did he and Max look alike, Hess noticed, they were about the same height and weight.

“Harry, thanks for everything. Why don’t you come by tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have a swim and a drink.” Max wrote his address on a piece of paper and handed it to him. “It’s that way,” he said, pointing west. “Over the bridge and down five streets north, last house, on the Intracoastal, vacant lot next door.”