‘Sure I did. My mom and dad gave me a fingerprint set for Christmas last year. A real
one, not just a toy. It had the powder and three brushes for three different surfaces and
special paper for lifting them. My folks know I want to be a PI when I grow up. Of
course, they think I’ll grow out of it’ He dismissed this idea with a disinterested lift and
drop of his shoulders. ‘The book explained all about whorls and lands and points of
similarity. They’re called compares. You need eight compares for a fingerprint to get
accepted in court
‘So anyway, one day when you were at the movies, I came here and dusted your
mailbox and doorknob and lifted all the prints I could. Pretty smart, huh?’
Dussander said nothing. He was clutching the arms of his chair, and his toothless,
deflated mouth was trembling. Todd didn’t like that. It made him look like he was on the
verge of tears. That, of course, was ridiculous. The Blood Fiend of Patin in tears? You
might as well expect Chevrolet to go bankrupt or McDonald’s to give up burgers and start
selling caviar and truffles.
‘I got two sets of prints,’ Todd said. ‘One of them didn’t look anything like the ones on
the wanted poster. I figured those were the postman’s. The rest were yours. I found more
than eight compares. I found fourteen good ones.’ He grinned. ‘And that’s how I did it.’
‘You are a little bastard,’ Dussander said, and for a moment his eyes shone
dangerously. Todd felt a tingling little thrill, as he had in the hall. Then Dussander
slumped back again.
‘Who have you told?’
‘No one.’
‘Not even this friend? This Cony Pegler?’
‘Foxy. Foxy Pegler. Nah, he’s a blabbermouth. I haven’t told anybody. There’s nobody I
trust that much.’
‘What do you want? Money? There is none, I’m afraid. In South America there was,
although it was nothing as romantic or dangerous as the drug trade. There is – there was –
a kind of “old boy network” in Brazil and Paraguay and Santo Domingo. Fugitives from
the war. I became part of their circle and made a fortune in minerals and ores – tin,
copper, bauxite. Then the changes came. Nationalism, anti-Americanism. I might have
ridden out the changes, but then Weisenthal’s men caught my scent. Bad luck follows bad
luck, boy, like dogs after a bitch in heat. Twice they almost had me; once I heard the Jew-
bastards in the next room.
‘They hung Eichmann,’ he whispered. One hand went to his neck, and his eyes had
become as round as the eyes of a child listening to the darkest passage of a scary tale –
Hansel and Gretel, perhaps, or Bluebeard. ‘He was an old man, of no danger to anyone.
He was apolitical. Still, they hung him.’
Todd nodded.
‘At last, I went to the only people who could help me. They had helped others, and I
could run no more.’
‘You went to the Odessa?’ Todd asked eagerly.
‘To the Sicilians,’ Dussander said dryly, and Todd’s face fell again. ‘It was arranged.
False papers, false past. Would you care for a drink, boy?’
‘Sure. You got a Coke?’
‘No Coke.’ He pronounced it Kok.
‘Milk?’
‘Milk.’ Dussander went through the archway and into the kitchen. A fluorescent bar
buzzed into life. ‘I live now on stock dividends,’ his voice came back. ‘Stocks I picked up
after the war under yet another name. Through a bank in the State of Maine, if you please.
The banker who bought them for me went to jail for murdering his wife a year after I
bought them … life is sometimes strange, boy, hein?’
A refrigerator door opened and closed.
“The Sicilian jackals didn’t know about those stocks,’ he said. Today they are
everywhere, but in those days, Boston was as far north as they could be found. If they had
known, they would have had those as well. They would have picked me clean and sent
me to America to starve on welfare and food stamps.’
Todd heard a cupboard door open; he heard liquid poured into a glass.
‘A little General Motors, a little American Telephone and Telegraph, a hundred and
fifty shares of Revion. All this banker’s choices. Dufresne, his name was – I remember,
because it sounds a little like mine. It seems he was not so smart at wife-killing as he was
at picking growth stocks. The crime passionnel, boy. It only proves that all men are
donkeys who can read.’
He came back into the room, slippers whispering. He held two green plastic glasses
that looked like the premiums they sometimes give out at gas station openings. When you
filled your tank, you got a free glass. Dussander thrust a glass at Todd.
‘I lived adequately on the stock portfolio this Dufresne had set up for me for the first five years. But then I sold my Diamond Match stock in order to buy this house and a
small cottage not far from Big Sur. Then, inflation. Recession. I sold the cottage and
one by one I sold the stocks, many of them at fantastic profits. I wish to God I had
bought more. But I thought I was well-protected in other directions; the stocks were, as
you Americans say, a “flier”…’ He made a toothless hissing sound and snapped his
fingers.
Todd was bored. He had not come here to listen to Dussander whine about his money
or mutter about his stocks. The thought of blackmailing Dussander had never crossed
Todd’s mind. Money? What would he do with it? He had his allowance; he had his paper
route. If his monetary needs went higher than what these could provide during any given
week, there was always someone who needed his lawn mowed.
Todd lifted his milk to his lips and then hesitated. His smile shone out again … an
admiring smile. He extended the gas-station premium glass to Dussander.
‘ You have some of it,’ he said slyly.
Dussander stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending, and then rolled his
bloodshot eyes. ‘Gruss Gott!’ He took the glass, swallowed twice, and handed it back. ‘No gasping for breath. No clawing at the throat. No smell of bitter almonds. It is milk, boy.
Milk. From the Dairylea Farms. On the carton is a picture of a smiling cow.’
Todd watched him warily for a moment, then took a small sip. Yes, it tasted like milk,
sure did, but somehow he didn’t feel very thirsty anymore. He put the glass down.
Dussander shrugged, raised his own glass – it contained a large knock of whiskey – and
took a swallow. He smacked his lips over it.
‘Schnapps?’ Todd asked.
‘Bourbon. Ancient Age. Very nice. And cheap.’
Todd fiddled his fingers along the seams of his jeans.
‘So,’ Dussander said, ‘if you have decided to have a “flier” of your own, you should be aware that you have picked a worthless stock.’
‘Huh?’
‘Blackmail,’ Dussander said. ‘Isn’t that what they call it on Mannix and Hawaii Five-O and Barnaby Jones? Extortion. If that was what-‘
But Todd was laughing – hearty, boyish laughter. He shook his head, tried to speak,
could not, and went on laughing.
‘No,’ Dussander said, and suddenly he looked grey and more frightened than he had
since he and Todd had begun to speak. He took another large swallow of his drink,
grimaced, and shuddered ‘I see that is not it … at least, not the extortion of money. But,
though you laugh, I smell extortion in it somewhere. What is it? Why do you come here
and disturb an old man! Perhaps, as you say, I was once a Nazi. Gestapo, even. Now I am
only old, and to have a bowel movement I have to use a suppository. So what do you
want?’
Todd had sobered again. He stared at Dussander with an open and appealing frankness.
‘Why … I want to hear about it. That’s all. That’s all I want. Really.’
‘Hear about it?’ Dussander echoed. He looked utterly perplexed.
Todd leaned forward, tanned elbows on bluejeaned knees. ‘Sure. The firing squads.
The gas chambers. The ovens. The guys who had to dig their own graves and then stand
on the ends so they’d fall into them. The …’ His tongue came out and wetted his lips. ‘The
examinations. The experiments. Everything. All the gooshy stuff.’
Dussander stared at him with a certain amazed detachment, the way a veterinarian
might stare at a cat who was giving birth to a succession of two-headed kittens. ‘You are a
monster,’ he said softly.
Todd sniffed. ‘According to the books I read for my report, you’re the monster, Mr
Dussander. Not me. You sent them to the ovens, not me. Two thousand a day at Patin
before you came, three thousand after, thirty-five-hundred before the Russians came and
made you stop. Himmler called you an efficiency expert and gave you a medal. So you