Camille shook her head.
“Why not? A good-looking woman like you,” Hess flirting with her. Would have guessed her age at thirty-five.
She smiled. “I don’t find the right man.” It was obviously something that was on her mind, something she thought about.
“It is only a matter of time.” Hess paused. “Do you know what happened to my clothes?”
“The police have them.”
Of course. He was the victim of a shooting. The clothes were evidence. “Can you get me something to wear? I do not have money here, but if you trust me I will send it to you. Inspector Johnson said I might be the missing person who was staying at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, and if this is true I must be wealthy. The Breakers is a very expensive hotel.”
“I believe you.” She smiled. “The condition you’re in though, I don’t think you’re going to be leaving any time soon. Can you even stand up?”
“Let’s find out.”
She dried him and pulled down his gown. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, sat up, feeling weak, light-headed, Nurse Camille holding on to him. He slid off the bed, feet touching the floor. He tried to stand and his knees buckled, leaning into the bed until Nurse Camille reached him, pressing her body against his, trying to hold him up. “Want to dance?” Hess said, their faces inches apart.
She smiled. “I’m gonna dance you right back in the bed.”
Day four. Detective Conlin from Palm Beach handed Hess a GERD KLAUS, MIDWEST SALES MANAGER business card and said, “This company you say you work for has never heard of you.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Don’t you?”
Conlin was sitting next to the bed in the chair where the slave inspector had been the day before, Hess propped up on pillows, studying him. Conlin was tall and lean, with receding hair combed straight back and a sunburned nose. He wore a light blue short-sleeved shirt and a blue tie with food stains on it, khaki trousers and brown shoes that needed polish.
“What were you doing in Florida?”
“I don’t know that I was.”
“Sure you were,” Conlin said. “Staying at the Breakers. Positively ID’d by half a dozen employees.” He paused. “Selling weed? Coke? Got in over your head. Got shot, dumped in the ocean. It’s a miracle you’re alive.”
Hess glanced up at the fan.
“You’ve got another problem. Fingerprints that are all over your rental vehicle match the prints on the dead security guard’s car, his weapon and flashlight.” Detective Conlin placed his briefcase on the bed, touching Hess’ leg. “You want to tell me what happened?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Quit playing dumb. We know you’re our guy.”
Conlin opened the briefcase and brought out a fingerprint kit. Picked up Hess’ left hand and inked his thumb and fingers, rolling them onto a blotter. Did the same to Hess’ other hand and when he was finished he showed the prints to him. “Not bad. See there–” He pointed. “All that good ridge detail. This should be a piece of cake.” Conlin placed Hess’ fingerprints in the briefcase, closed the top and placed it on the floor. “Same type and caliber weapon used on the security guard, killed a high-profile realtor a few hours earlier. And guess whose prints we found?”
Hess closed his eyes for a couple seconds. He was tired and weak.
“Don’t fall asleep on me, Gerd.”
When he opened them Conlin was on his feet, holding the briefcase. In his discount shirt and trousers Conlin reminded Hess of a man who sold carpeting or linoleum flooring.
A couple days later Hess could see a policeman in the doorway at the far end of the ward, a young black man wearing the official uniform. The white tunic, blue peaked cap, and blue trousers with red stripes down the sides reminded him of a Royal Navy uniform.
Once the policemen arrived, sitting in the hall outside the ward around the clock, all of the nurses, including Camille, were less friendly, more businesslike. Nurse Camille had stopped flirting with him. She continued to check on him, take his temperature, bring him food and medicine and sponge-bathe him, but she seemed standoffish and distant. Hess was sure her sudden change in attitude was due to the fact that he was a suspect in two Palm Beach homicides. Word had undoubtedly spread.
Hess kept track of when the nurses made their rounds and when the police guard stepped outside to smoke, and when the guard walked down the hall to visit the nurses. He could hear them talking and laughing.
After the nurses made their late rounds, he would wait for the guard to walk outside, unhook the IV bag from the metal stand and carry it over his shoulder, walking around the dark ward, trying to get his legs back. At first he could only take a couple of steps before he had to go back to the bed. Now he could walk to the hall and back to his bed without feeling tired. Hess believed he had a few more days, a week at the most, before the doctor pronounced him fit, and he was transferred to the island jail.
He had been trying to think of a way to escape, somehow slip by the police guard and the nurses, when it occurred to him that the simplest, most direct route out of the hospital was right there. The window. If he could open it far enough, he could squeeze through and disappear. Hess could see cars parked lining the streets of Freeport. The hospital had been a clinic until recently, and Hess’ ward was on the first floor.
Dr. Hubert W. Sparks studied the wound in his chest. He was a Negro, fit and trim like all of them, late thirties, calm demeanor. The doctor sat him up and placed his stethoscope on Hess’ chest and back and told him to breathe.
“Lungs are clear.”
Hess had had water in his lungs. Now the doctor inspected the gunshot wound in his chest, poking and prodding. “Stitches can come out tomorrow,” he said, studying the sutured incision. Hess said, “Where did you attend medical school, Doctor?” Sparks looked at him quizzically. “What’s this? You want to make sure the island doctor is qualified, has the proper credentials?” He paused. “I would say a man in your position should feel fortunate you’re here. Don’t worry, you won’t have to suffer this inferior healthcare much longer. I understand you’re going to be leaving us soon.”
Sooner than you think, Hess wanted to say.
Two
“I want you to find Ernst Hess,” Gerhard Braun had said when they were sitting across from each other in armchairs in the salon at Braun’s estate, a room the size of a gymnasium. “He’s disappeared. I would have too if an article like this had been written about me. Have you seen it?”
Braun was strange looking: long face, big nose, eyes bulging out of their sockets, boring into him. He tossed an issue of Der Spiegel on the coffee table in front of Zeller.
Zeller nodded. “Quite an exposé. I have to say, I was surprised.”
“About what in particular?” Braun blew a cloud of cigar smoke into the open room that drifted and disappeared.
“His alleged war crimes, although after seeing the photograph of Hess smiling in front of the mass grave, his guilt seems a foregone conclusion.”
“Ernst Hess’ orders were to kill Jews. He did it and did it well.” Braun paused, placed his cigar in a crystal ashtray, and sipped his whisky. “His political career is finished. When, and if, Hess is caught, he will be prosecuted. But there is more to it than that.” There usually is, Zeller was thinking. He wondered what Hess had on Gerhard Braun. He knew Braun had not served the Reich in any military capacity other than supplying the German army with weapons and ordnance. But whatever Hess had on him, Braun was concerned.