I made a new attempt. “Would you like to have your daughter back?” When she didn't answer I became more generous. “Would you like to have your daughter and your husband back?”
She looked at me and for an instant her eyes were awake and clear before they became rigid and stared through me. “My husband's dead.”
“But your daughter is alive, Frau Salger, and needs help. Doesn't that interest you?”
“It's been ages since my daughter needed any help. What she needed was a good spanking. But my prick of a husband…my limp prick of a husband…my …”
“How long has it been since you've heard from Leo?”
“Leave me alone. Everyone's left me all alone. First he went, then she did. Why don't you go, too?”
The rain had become heavy, and our hair stuck to our heads. I tried again.
“When did she go?”
“Right after he went. And that's just what the other guy had been waiting for. I guess she wanted to …”
“What?”
She didn't answer. She'd fallen asleep in midsentence. I gave up, rolled the awning back down, and listened for a while to her snoring and the rain rustling on the sailcloth. I left her the TV set.
20
Stopping up holes
“If you want some insider information about the comings and goings of the Bonn political scene, then go talk to Breuer. He's your age, has been living in Bonn since 1948, writes for various small newspapers, and used to do Interfactional, a TV show with politicians about the first to cross party lines. He brought together backbenchers from all the parties and talked politics with them as if they were interested in politics or knew anything about it. We all had a good laugh, but the party leaders saw to it that the show was canceled. Breuer's a clever and funny guy.” I got this lead from Tietzke, an old Mannheim friend who used to write for the Heidelberger Tageblatt and was now at the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung. I gave Breuer a call. He agreed to meet me early in the morning the following day.
So I stayed over in Bonn. I found a quiet hotel behind the trees and the pond around Poppelsdorf Castle. From there it wasn't too far to Breuer's office. Before going to bed I called Brigitte. The strange sounds of a strange city, the strange room, the strange bed—I did feel homesick.
The following morning Breuer greeted me with bubbling loquacity. “The name's Self, right? You're from Mannheim? An old friend of Tietzke's? Who'd have thought the Heidel-berger Tageblatt would have folded, just like that! With every passing day I find myself thinking more and more…Ah, well, it's the same old story. Come in, come in!”
The walls of his office were lined with books, the view through the large window was of backyards with old trees and beyond them two tall smokestacks. His desk by the window was covered in papers, a small green triangle was blinking insistently on the screen of a word processor, and water was hissing in the coffeemaker. Breuer offered me an armchair, sat on the swivel chair at his desk, reached under the seat and pulled a lever, and he and the seat went down with a clang. Now we sat facing each other at the same height.
“Shoot! Tietzke says I've got to help you any way I can. I'm ready and willing. The ball's in your court. Are you a detective?”
“Yes, and I'm working on a case that involves a young woman by the name of Salger, whose deceased father must have been a big shot here in Bonn. That's if being the undersecretary in one of the ministries means being a big shot. Does the name Salger mean anything to you?”
He'd been watching me attentively, but now was looking out the window, lost in thought. He massaged his left earlobe with his left hand.
“When I look out the window…Do you know why I like those two smokestacks over there? They're harbingers from another world. Perhaps not a better one, but a world that's more complete, where, unlike here in Bonn, you don't just have officials, politicians, journalists, lobbyists, professors, and students, but people who work, who build something— machines, cars, ships, whatever—who establish, run, and ruin banks and companies, who paint pictures and make movies, who're poor, panhandle, commit crimes. Can you imagine a crime of passion being committed here in Bonn? Passion for a woman, for money, even for becoming the next chancellor? No, you can't imagine that, and believe you me, neither can I.”
I waited. Does it speak for a journalist if he asks questions and then answers them himself? Does it speak against him? Breuer massaged his earlobe again. A high forehead, sharp eyes, a weak chin—he looked intelligent. And I liked listening to him; there was a pleasant twang in his voice, and what he said about Bonn sounded appealing. Yet at the same time I felt that I was privy to a routine performance. He had probably expounded on the smokestacks and Bonn a thousand times.
“Salger…yes, I remember him. I'd have thought you'd have remembered him, too. What newspapers do you read?”
“Nowadays the Süddeutsche, but I used to read all kinds, the Frankfurter—”
“Maybe the Süddeutsche didn't write much about Salger. Less than the other ones. He made headlines in some of them.”
I looked at him, puzzled. He enjoyed toying with my curiosity. But I was glad to humor him. If people give me what I want, I don't care what detours and diversions there are.
“Some coffee?”
“Please.”
He poured me a cup. “Salger was, as you yourself said, an under-secretary. He was in acquisitions at the Ministry of Defense, the way anyone who was anybody was back then. Remember the fifties and sixties? Life, politics—everything was about acquisitions.” He took a slurping sip from his cup. “Remember the König scandal?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “In the late sixties?”
“That's right. König was an under-secretary and the president of a fund that could be used to bypass the federal budget to finance large public construction projects of the armed forces. It was a peculiar setup, what with the under-secretary also being president of the fund. But that's how it was, and Salger was an under-secretary and also a board member of the fund. Is it all coming back to you?”
Nothing was coming back to me, but I had got one guess right and tried my luck again. “Embezzlement?” How else could the president of a fund and a board member cause a scandal?
“Biafra.” Breuer reached for his earlobe again, as if he wanted to milk from it the continuation of the story, and looked at me meaningfully. “König had speculated with loans to Biafra. If Biafra had managed to secede from Nigeria, he would have made millions. But as we know, Ojukwu lost, and so did König. I don't know if he embezzled the money from the fund in the legal sense of the term, or misappropriated the money, or what. He hanged himself before the verdict was announced.”
“And Salger?”
Breuer shook his head. “That was one crazy guy. I guess you don't remember. Suspicion first fell on him. He was interrogated and arrested, but kept his mouth shut. The way he saw it, there was nothing that he could be reproached for. He got in a huff and saw the whole thing as a personal insult. When it finally came out that König …”
“How?”
“König was drowning in debt, and when the Biafra money he was counting on didn't materialize, he tried to stop up the holes in other ways, with more and more building grants and credits from the fund, and the whole thing blew up on him.”
“How long was Salger in prison?”
“About six months.” He stretched out his arms. “That's a long time. And all his colleagues, superiors, and political buddies turned their backs on him. They were sure he was the culprit. When it became clear that he wasn't, they tried to pin dereliction of duty as a board member on him. But that didn't stick either. A report surfaced showing that he had drawn attention to all the irregularities. So he was rehabilitated. There was even a promotion in the works. But he couldn't deal with the fact that the same people who had suspected and already convicted him were now patting him on the back and acting as if nothing had happened. He dropped everything and broke off contact with everyone: with his colleagues, s
uperiors, and political buddies. He was barely fifty and had ended up retired and totally isolated. It's a crazy world.” He shook his head.
“Does the story go on?”
Breuer poured us another cup of coffee and reached for a pack of Marlboros on his desk. “My first one today. Would you like one, too?” I fished my yellow pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and offered him one, and he took it with great aplomb. A smoker of filter cigarettes who at the sight of a Sweet Afton doesn't say “Oh, but those don't have a filter!” and takes one with interest. I like that.
“There's more. Salger joined the Free Democratic Party, put himself up as a candidate for parliament, and mounted a futile campaign with a fervor that he would have done well to invest in a better cause. He wrote a book into which he poured all his experiences, a book that nobody wanted to publish and nobody wanted to read. He got sick, cancer, was in and out of hospitals, you know. He died a few years ago.”
“What did he live on?”
Breuer milked his earlobe. “He had a private fortune, quite a large one. That just goes to show—money doesn't guarantee happiness.”
21
Very clear indeed
On my trip back home the train was diverted through Darmstadt and along the Bergstrasse route. It was the first time I noticed the many quarries at the edge of the Odenwald Range. They made the mountains look like red Jell-O covered in green mint sauce, of which God had taken a few bites with a spoon.
In Bonn I had again dialed 41-17-88 and let it ring a long time in vain. The answering machine remained silent. But I'd barely set foot in my office when the phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Herr Self, Salger here. Have you tried reaching me over the past few days?”
So he, too, had noticed that his answering machine wasn't reacting. Had one of his friends turned the machine off by mistake?
“I'm glad you called, Herr Salger. I have a lot of information for you and would like to give it to you in person. I'd be happy to come see you in Bonn, but perhaps you will be passing through Mannheim one of these days? I take it you're back in Bonn, you see, your answering machine …”
“It must be broken, or the maid turned it off by mistake. But no, we're not back in Bonn, and as I can't arrange a meeting in the foreseeable future, I must ask you to give me the information over the phone. Have you found Leonore?”
“I'd rather not discuss the whereabouts of Leonore on the phone, since—”
“Herr Self, you took on this case and are obliged to report your findings. You accepted the case from me over the phone, and you must also make your report over the phone. Have I made myself clear?”
“Very clear, Herr Salger, very clear indeed. But I will not make my report over the phone, only in person. Furthermore, you did not commission me over the phone, but by letter. I am quite happy to make a report, but it will have to be in person.”
We continued haggling back and forth. He had no reason to refuse to meet me, and I had no reason to insist on it. He argued that his wife was close to a nervous breakdown, that she needed him constantly at her side, him and him alone. “She cannot bear the presence of strangers.”
I wedged the receiver between my chin and shoulder, got out my bottle of sambuca and poured myself a glass, lit a Sweet Afton, and explained to Salger in no uncertain terms that first, I always made my reports in writing or in person, and second, I always made a point of meeting my clients. “That is how I have always worked.”
He changed his tactics. “In that case, how about providing me with a written report? In the next few days I shall be taking my wife to see a doctor in Zurich, and we could pick up your report at the Baur au Lac when we get there.”
It had been a long day. I was tired and had had enough of this absurd conversation. I'd had enough of the Salger case. On my way home on the train I had admitted to myself that right from the start the case had stunk to heaven. Why had I even taken it on? Because of the hefty fee? Because of Leo? And, as if I felt that I wanted to close this case just as unpro-fessionally as I had undertaken it, I heard myself say: “I could also send my report to Niebuhrstrasse 46a in Bonn, care of Helmut Lehmann.”
For a moment there was silence on the line. Then Salger slammed down the receiver. Resounding in my ear was the hoarse tak-tak-tak with which sound waves mark time when they have nothing to transmit.
22
Pain, irony, or heartburn
For two days nothing happened. Salger didn't call me, and I didn't call him. I didn't give the case much thought. I opened a special account at the Badische Beamtenbank in order to deposit Salger's ten thousand marks, which I had initially locked up in my desk drawer. To these ten thousand marks I added the interest that would have gathered had I deposited it right away.
One afternoon, as I was repotting my palm, I had a visitor.
“Don't you remember me? Well, I guess you were quite shaken up at the time. My name's Peschkalek. We met on the autobahn.”
This was the man, in a green loden coat—midforties, bald, with a thick mustache and a pleasant, wry smile—who had walked me over to the embankment and given me a cigarette after the furniture truck had crashed. I thanked him.
“You're welcome, you're welcome. We should thank our lucky stars that the accident wasn't serious. The paintings also seem to have come out of it unscathed—do you want to come along to the Mannheimmer Kunsthalle to see the exhibition that nearly cost us our lives?”
He turned out to be a photographer, a photojournalist, and had quite a few clever things to say about the composition of the photo-realistic pictures on show. I noticed details on the pictures that had eluded him. “Aha, quite a detective!” he said. It was a pleasant afternoon, and we said good-bye and hoped we would soon meet again.
There have been times when I've had the feeling of calm before the storm. But I've never known how to make provision for the storm. Furthermore, feelings can be misleading, just as thoughts can be.
On the third day, I was in the mood to go out for breakfast. Since the Café Gmeiner has been replaced by a restaurant serving foie gras in Jurançon gelée and monkfish slices in mustard seed and similar fripperies, I go instead to the Café Fieberg in the Seckenheimer Strasse. The waitress there is a boisterous but kind soul who has taken me under her wing and has made sure the kitchen knows how I like my eggs— fried eggs flipped over just before being served.
She brought pepper and nutmeg. “Another pot of coffee?”
“I'd like one, too, please.” He pulled up a chair and sat down opposite me. I recognized his voice even before he introduced himself as Salger. I only nodded and looked at him. A full face, high forehead, heavy frame, an aura of bourgeois ponderousness. I could imagine him in the gray flannel of a teacher, the dark blue pinstripes of a banker, or even the robes of a judge or pastor. Now he was wearing a leather jacket, flannel pants, and a sweater. He must have been in his midforties. If I had been able to see his eyes, I could have decided if the expression around his mouth indicated pain, irony, or heartburn. But his eyes remained hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.
“I owe you an explanation, Herr Self. I knew you were a good detective, and I should have known that you'd be able to see through my little game of hide-and-seek. I hope you won't hold it against me. It would be terrible if you took all this as a lack of confidence in your competence and integrity. It was more a matter of…” He shook his head. “No, let me put it differently…” The waitress brought two pots of coffee, and he asked her to bring him some honey. He silently added cream and honey to the coffee, stirred it, and sipped it with delight.
“You see, I've known Leonore Salger for many, many years. I can't really say that we grew up together, because of the difference in our ages. It was a kind of big-brother and baby-sister thing, far apart in age but inwardly close—you know the connection I mean? A bitter father, a drunken mother,” he shook his head again. “That made Leo look for the kind of stability in an older brother that one would us
ually look for in one's parents. Do you know what I mean?”
I didn't say anything. I could take a look in Leo's album later on. If his story was true, I would find pictures of him.
“You could say that I didn't lie to you about my paternal concern for her. I felt, and still feel, the way you experienced me on the phone. Leo disappeared at the beginning of the year, and I'm worried that she has ended up in bad company and a bad situation. I think she needs help, even though she perhaps doesn't know it. I'm really, really worried that—”
“Is it your help she needs?”
Salger demonstrated a penchant for dramatic effect. He leaned back in his chair, slowly raised his right hand, took off his sunglasses, and looked at me calmly. Pain, irony, or heartburn? The look beneath his heavy eyelids didn't tell me more than the expression about his mouth.
“My help, Herr Self, my help. I know Leo, and I also know”—he hesitated—”the situation she might have gotten herself into.”
“What situation?”
“Some of it you know, some of it you might suspect—that is enough. I haven't come here to give information but to get information. Where is Leo?”
“I still don't understand what you want from her. You have also not clarified why you lied to me. You haven't even introduced yourself. Herr Salger? No, that you are not Herr Salger we already know. Herr Lehmann? The grandson who wants to open a gallery where his grandmother barely had enough space to lay out her buttons and threads? And what am I supposed to know or suspect about Leo's dangerous situation? I've had enough of your tactics and lies. I am not demanding when it comes to the extent of the trust between my clients and myself. I don't expect all-out openness. But you will either lay the facts on the table or we will go to the Badische Beamtenbank where you can take back your ten thousand marks and we can say good-bye.”
First he closed his eyes tightly. Then he raised his eyebrows, sighed, smiled, and said: “But Herr Self.” His hand slipped into the pocket of his jacket and reappeared with a business card that he placed before me on the table. Helmut Lehmann, investment consultant, Beethovenstrasse 42, 6000 Frankfurt am Main 1. “I want to speak to Leo. I want to ask her if I can help her, and how I can help her. Is that so difficult to understand? And why the high horse?” His eyes had narrowed again, and his voice was low and sharp. “You accepted my assignment and my money without too many questions. A lot of money. I'm willing to offer you a bonus for the successful completion of the assignment, let's say another five thousand. That's all I can offer. Where is Leo?”