The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin (12 page)

And boy, did I have a lot of thinking to do.

FIFTEEN

I was cold and thoroughly soaked by the time I got home. My hair was plastered to my head and my clothes were pasted to my body.

I leaned my bike against the metal railings outside my building and gave the saddle a friendly pat, as if I was thanking a loyal steed for good service. I didn’t expect it to still be there the next time I stepped outside. I had no lock and chain to secure it, and to be perfectly honest, I was beginning to suspect there were one or two untrustworthy types living in Berlin.

I trudged toward my front door, and then I turned and scanned Kollwitzplatz. The middle of the square was dark and unlit, but there were plenty of street lamps around the edges, and I didn’t spot any town cars with diplomatic plates or any shady types watching me from the shadows. I guess I should have felt relieved, but as I swiveled back around and fitted my key in the lock on the front door, I couldn’t ignore the way my shoulders tensed and my scalp tingled. Something felt wrong. I spun quickly and checked behind me once again. Nobody there. Just darkness and stillness and the steady, pelting rain. Weird. Perhaps my preoccupation with fictional hoods and crooks was coming home to roost, turning me into a nervous wreck.

Or perhaps not.

Because as I pushed open the door and stepped inside the foyer, I found that I wasn’t alone. A man was slouched at the bottom of the stairs, his head resting against the half-tiled wall. He was holding a paperback novel in his hand, the pages rolled back over the spine. He had on a black leather jacket over a black turtleneck sweater and black jeans. His dark hair was studiously gelled and combed to one side.

I recognized him. How could I not?

Oh, I suppose I should have been surprised, but I was running a little low on surprises, as it happened.

“You as well?” I said, and threw up my hands. “But you’re the guy from the hotel bar.”

He worked a sly grin. “You remember me? I am flattered, Monsieur Howard.”

There was a braying, husky quality to his voice, and an unmistakable Gallic accent. He sounded French. He looked French. Hell, in a minute I was going to go out on a limb and assume he actually
was
French.

The weak yellow light in the hallway cast ghoulish shadows across his face. He seemed to relish the effect.

“I like your book very much,” he told me, though he leered as he showed me the jacket design. It was a French edition. A translation of my fourth Michael Faulks mystery,
The Thief on the Run.
Not my finest work, perhaps, though every sale helps. “I find it very interesting, this thief you write of. You are convincing, yes? Experienced, perhaps?”

“Save it,” I told him. “I’ve heard this routine before. Why don’t you just skip to the part where you tell me who you are and what you want?”

He tapped the book with his fingernail and smiled crookedly. “But this is something your burglar would say, don’t you think?”

I glanced past him, up the stairs. I was trying very hard not to let him unbalance me, but fear was beginning to prickle all over my skin, like a rash.

“You worry for your friend.” He shook his head and clucked his tongue, as if I’d insulted him badly. “She is very beautiful, I admit, but she is quite safe. My name is Henri. I wish only to talk.”

“So talk,” I said, pinching the rainwater from my eyes. “What are you? Some kind of spy?”

He laughed. A show laugh. But the guy was no actor. At least not a good one.

“Listen, can we get this over with?” I asked. “I’m tired. I want to sleep. And in return, I assume you want the secret object. The one the British embassy hired me to find.”

His smile grew a little. It was in danger of becoming genuine.

“Then prepare to be disappointed,” I told him. “I don’t have it. You’re too late. Some other guys already beat you to the punch. Literally.” I unbuttoned my soggy raincoat and lifted up my shirt. I showed him the bruising and the welts that had bloomed around my stomach. “They were Russian, if that helps.”

He took a moment to absorb what I’d said. He was having trouble accepting it. The muscles in his face were getting a terrific workout. His square jaw was clenching and unclenching, the skin around his eyes tightening and relaxing. “When was this?”

“A few hours ago. While you were trawling the bar. You should have stopped me when you had your chance.”

“And the item?”

“It’s a file,” I said, weary now. “That’s all I know. There were coded pages inside. I don’t know what the information relates to. And I honestly don’t care.” I straightened my clothes and dropped my hands by my sides. “Now, can I get to bed? I’m cold and I’m wet, and to be brutally frank, I’m a little fed up with dealing with strange men wanting to run a half-baked shakedown on me.”

I moved as if to pass him on the stairs, but he gripped the tail of my coat and yanked me around. He pushed me hard against the wall, flattening my face against the crackled tiles. He patted me down roughly. He found my torch. He found my spectacles case and my burglary tools. He found the crumpled note from Officer Fuchs of the Berlin constabulary. But he didn’t find the file or anything else that particularly interested him.

“If you lie to me,” he warned, then left the consequences unspoken and pressed my belongings into my chest.

“Yes?”

He leaned close to my ear. Dug his fingers into my bruised stomach and squeezed hard. “I will watch you, Monsieur Howard. Know this. Remember it.”

He grunted and shoved me sideways. I fell and grazed my knee on a stair edge.

“How could I forget?” I said, pressing my hand to my gut. “But hey, knock yourself out. At least you have a good book to keep you company.”

He was out the door and gone before I turned my head, but he’d had a final insult up his sleeve. He’d dropped my novel on the floor behind him and stamped on it for good measure. The pages were splayed and ripped, and I could see the muddy imprint of his shoe treads on the jacket.

Terrific,
I thought.
Another satisfied reader.

*   *   *

I sucked down a lot of oxygen on my way upstairs with my woebegone book. It helped to calm my nerves but it didn’t do a lot for my throat. I’d smoked too many cigarettes during my bike ride home, and when I inhaled deeply, it felt like I’d swallowed a cheese grater. My trousers clung to my thighs. My fingers were pale and bloated and stiff. The cold and the wet were a terrible combination so far as my arthritis was concerned. I held out my hand, palm down. It was shaking badly. So was the rest of me.

Hell, was I getting too old for this game? Maybe it was time to rethink my lifestyle and adjust to a safe, law-abiding existence. Maybe now was the moment to settle down in my writing chair and put my life of real crime behind me.

Or maybe I just needed a good rest.

I slowed my footsteps as I approached my apartment. The locks were still engaged, and there was no sign of forced entry. I used my keys and slipped through the door as quietly as possible, placing the French edition of my book inside a rarely used drawer in the hallway cabinet, peeling my coat from my shoulders and plucking my shoes from my feet. I sneaked into my bathroom, where I lay on the floor and heaved my trousers off my legs as if I was struggling out of a wet suit. Then I toweled myself down and crept along the hallway toward Victoria’s bedroom in just my boxer shorts and my damp shirt.

Victoria wasn’t snoring anymore, but I could hear her breathing, soft and regular. I checked my watch. Four-thirteen
A.M.
We weren’t due to meet Freddy until ten. If I was lucky, I could snatch a few hours’ sleep.

Victoria was facing away from me, wrapped tightly in her duvet. I could see the covers rising and falling in the blue-black light. I went down on my hands and knees and crawled across the floor to the blankets I’d abandoned just a few hours before. I pulled them over me. I stretched. I yawned. I uttered a small sigh of contentment.

And then the telephone started to ring.

It was shrill and it was jarring.

Victoria gasped and reared up in bed like she’d been punched in the gut.

“Whaaa?”
she mumbled, and looked around wildly. Her mouth was wide open, her eyes a swollen, glittery black.

“Easy,” I told her. “It’s just the phone.”

She raised her hand to her head. Her hair was sticking out at all kinds of crazy angles, like she’d been sleeping with her arms wrapped around a Van de Graaff generator.

“What time is it?” she asked.

I told her. I was able to be very exact.

The phone kept ringing in my living room. The ringing seemed to be getting louder. I could almost picture the phone shaking itself loose from the wall and skittering along the hallway toward me. I swear, it was the only way I was going to answer it.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” Victoria asked.

“Nope,” I said, yawning.

“But it could be important.”

“Then I’m sure they’ll call back later.”

“What about your neighbors?”

“Don’t worry about them. They have their own phones to answer.”

The phone kept ringing in the darkness. It sounded as loud as a fire alarm. As urgent as an air-raid siren.

I lifted my blankets over my head and clamped my palms over my ears.

“Charlie,” Victoria said, “I really think you should answer the phone.”

I groaned. “I know you do, Vic. But trust me. They’ll give up soon enough.”

And they did. Right then. Almost as if I’d willed it to happen.

There was a pause of at least five seconds.

Then the phone started to ring again.

“It doesn’t seem like they’re going to stop,” Victoria said. She was helpful like that.

I growled at my misfortune, then yanked back my covers, hauled open the door, and stormed down the hallway. I snatched the phone off the hook.

“What?”
I snapped.

There was a long beat of silence. Just the faintest trace of breathing on the end of the line.

“Who is this?” I demanded.

More silence. More breathing.

Then, finally, a voice.

“Herr Howard? Herr Charlie Howard?” The voice was male. My caller’s English was good, but I’d spent time with enough locals in the past few months to recognize a German accent when I heard it.

“Do I know you?” I asked. And meantime, what I was actually thinking was,
Do I want to know you?

“No, you do not know me. But you will know me soon, I am thinking. I fear you may trust me on this.”

I opened my mouth to say more, but just then I heard a click, followed by a long, flat note. The guy had hung up. I wasn’t sure his call had been worth answering. It certainly didn’t make me feel any better.

I turned to find Victoria shuffling into the room, clenching her duvet around her shoulders.

“Who was it?” she asked.

“Wrong number.”

“Oh,” she said, and stifled a yawn. “That’s a pain.”

I grunted, then placed the phone on the cradle and staggered past her along the hallway.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Bed,” I told her. “My own, this time.”

It was cold inside my room. The wet breeze through the broken window had cooled the temperature considerably. But I didn’t care. I collapsed on my mattress and dived beneath my covers and tucked myself into a tight ball. Then I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. I wanted to drop off straightaway, to plunge into absolute nothingness.

But in that, as with so much else that day, I didn’t have the best of luck.

SIXTEEN

I didn’t sleep. I barely dozed. And as I thrashed around in bed, growing grumpier and more resentful all the while, my drowsy brain fired questions at me that I couldn’t begin to answer. The questions multiplied. So did my concerns. It didn’t do a lot to improve my mood. But it was a wonderful way of becoming agitated.

I gave up on sleeping before eight, hauled on my dressing gown and stomped through to my living room. I collapsed onto my writing chair, lit a cigarette, and sucked on it hard, trying to kindle some kind of mental spark. It didn’t work. It just hurt my ravaged throat. I scowled at the telephone on my wall. I scowled at my laptop. I scowled at my sorry copy of
The Maltese Falcon,
with its charred jacket and flaking pages. Then I groaned and twirled around in my chair and scrambled to my feet and gazed out my window at the scene below.

The rain had finally stopped and the sky was beginning to lighten from wet slate to dry asphalt. Office workers were climbing inside their Volkswagens and BMWs, throwing their legs over old bicycles, or walking stiffly with briefcases clasped tight. A woman wheeled a child in a stroller toward the soaked and leaf-scattered playground beside the table-tennis tables. I didn’t see any kids shuffling to school. No doubt they’d already be in class by now, thinking clearly and precisely about the problems that had been set for them. Unlike yours truly.

I coaxed more smoke into my lungs. The soreness in my throat wasn’t easing at all, but I wasn’t about to stub my cigarette out. This was what I did when I was blocked on a novel. I could be a stubborn fellow when I set my mind to it. I could smoke and stare out my window for hours until I understood my next move. And all I had to do now was apply the same technique to the situation I’d found myself in. If I marshaled all the information I had to hand, if I ordered it and analyzed it, probed it and poked at it, there was no reason why I couldn’t develop a better understanding of what was going on.

Except it wasn’t working.

I didn’t know where to start. I couldn’t figure out which problem to tackle first. Was it the blonde I’d seen murdered, in what appeared to be an abandoned apartment? Was it the peculiar assignment Freddy had handed me and the way it had gone spectacularly right, only to go spectacularly wrong when the coded file was taken from me under duress? Was it my surprise visit from Henri, the bibliophile spy, or the abrupt and unsettling phone call I’d received in the dead of night?

Hell. That was the problem with trying to think your way forward in somebody else’s plot. I hated the feeling of having a story imposed on me. It was a terrible way to work. Over the years, there’d been times when Victoria had tried to sell me on the idea of ghosting some mystery novels for more famous writers, but I’d always turned the opportunity down flat. Figuring out my own puzzles was tough enough. Trying to construct a book from somebody else’s premise was no kind of fun.