Read Online Voices of the Dead by Peter Leonard - Free Book Online Page A

developments.”
    “Doesn’t this strike you as a little odd, a German politician with diplomatic status coming here for personal gain?”
    “What’s good for Ernst Hess is good for Germany,” Stark said. “I’ve looked into it. You want to sue him? Say the word, I’ll file charges.”
    “What’s that going to do?”
    “Bring attention to what happened to Sara, public outrage.
    “I don’t want to start a crusade,” Harry said. “This is personal.”
    “It might get you a settlement.”
    “I don’t want money.”
    “What do you want?”
    Harry said, “Where’s he live?”
    “I don’t know,” Stark said. “Somewhere in Bavaria would be my guess. What do you have in mind?”
    Harry looked at him but didn’t say anything.
    “You want to find out more about Hess, I can call Fedor Berman. Private investigator, lives in Munich. He’s a survivor like you.”
    Harry went to the gun range on Grand River. Took the .357 Mag out of his pocket and pushed in his earplugs. He held the revolver with two hands. Fired six rounds at a paper target from thirty feet, putting all of the shots, perfect cylindrical holes, where he wanted them, mid-chest on the black outline of a man. Reloaded and did it again.
    After, he went to his office where he hadn’t been for almost two weeks, sat at his desk, shuffled through the mail, opened a letter from the IRS. According to their audit findings, S&H Recycling Metals underpaid on its 1970 Federal Tax return and owed $17,500, payment due by September 15, 1971. Harry paid all the bills and signed a dozen blank checks. Picked up the phone and told Phyllis to come in.
    She knocked on his door and opened it. “Need something, Harry?”
    “Sit down,” Harry said.
    She sat in a chair across from his desk.
    “I’m going to take some time off.”
    “Harry, you just got back.”
    “I’ll be gone for a while, couple weeks, a month.”
    “If you don’t mind my asking,” Phyllis said, “where’re you going?”
    “I’ll call you when I get there,” Harry said. He handed her the checks he’d just signed. “Keep these in the safe till you need them. There’s also plenty of cash, sixty grand. Don’t take it and run off to South America.”
    Phyllis gave him a dirty look. “Harry, I wouldn’t do that.”
    “I’m kidding.”
    Harry called Pan Am and booked a flight to Munich with a stopover in London. He called the Free Press and told them not to deliver the paper till further notice. Called his niece, Franny, and asked her to bring in the mail and water the plants while he was away. He’d left two hundred dollars and a key to the house for her in an envelope in the garage.
    Upstairs, Harry put his American Tourister suitcase on the bed, the one that had been tested by a four-hundred-pound gorilla in a TV ad. He folded clothes and fit them in. Grabbed his shaving kit from the bathroom. When he was finished he went to the desk, opened a drawer and took out a dog-eared, sepia-tone photograph of him posing with his parents in front of their house on Sendlinger Strasse. Harry in a wool cap, standing between his parents in stylish hats and overcoats. He’d turned thirteen a few weeks before, on October 7, 1941.
    He slipped the photo in his passport and put it in the inside pocket of his sport coat. He closed the suitcase and took it downstairs. Turned on a light in the foyer, walked into the den and stood at the window. An airport shuttle pulled up in front and drove him to Metro.
    He picked up his boarding pass at the gate in the international terminal. Flew first class to London on a 747, had a couple drinks upstairs in the bar, and a filet and baked potato at his seat. He slept for a couple hours, arriving at Heathrow at 8:36 in the morning. He had a two-hour layover, and took a Lufthansa flight from London to Munich, arriving at 12:17.
    Harry took a taxi from the airport to the Bayerischer Hof hotel on Promenadeplatz, seeing Munich for the first time in thirty years, the