At 12:15, Hess crossed the bridge, went north on NE 26th Avenue to 5th Street and went right through a residential neighborhood of single-storey houses painted soft pastel colors and built on small treeless lots.
Max’s house was at the end of the street on the Intracoastal. To the north was a vacant lot with a For Sale sign on it. To the south was a house, Max’s nearest neighbor. It was a hot day and Hess was perspiring when he arrived at Max’s front door, holding a bag of groceries against his chest, and rang the bell.
Hess watched former Sonderkommando Max Hoffman floating on an orange vinyl pool raft. Max was in good shape for a man fifty-four years old, barrel chest and flat stomach covered with grey hair that looked like a dove-colored sweater. He would drift around, eyes closed, occasionally pushing himself away from the side of the pool. Or he would slide off the raft into the cool blue depths, and come back up wiping water out of his eyes, saying, “Harry, come on. You don’t know what you’re missing, get in here.”
“I’m fine,” Hess would say from his chair on the pink patio, watching the endless parade of boats move past on the waterway. “Perfectly content right here.”
There was an apartment building with a swimming pool directly across the Intracoastal, thirty meters away, retirees lounging under wide-brimmed hats and umbrellas, two couples at a table, playing cards. Hess, expecting quiet and seclusion, was surprised by all of the activity. Max, in the shallow end, climbed out of the pool, grabbed a striped beach towel off a chair, dried himself and took a seat next to Hess.
“What I tell you? Not bad, uh?” Max said, swinging his arm open like an impresario, indicating the pool, the house, the property.
Hess nodded, the nod answering both questions in the affirmative.
“I wish Ellen, God bless her, had lived long enough to enjoy it with me. If my fellow teachers at Rocky River high could see me now.”
Hess didn’t think the modest house built on a treeless lot on the busy polluted Intracoastal warranted such praise.
“I taught history, I think I told you, and also accounting. I used to say to the kids: ‘Assets equal liabilities plus proprietorship. What? Assets equal liabilities plus proprietorship. What are you going to say to me on the street in thirty years?’” Max was beaming. “I have to tell you, I miss it.” He paused to reminisce. “How about a dividend?” Pointing at Hess’ empty cocktail glass.
“Only if you’re having one.”
“Twist my arm,” Max said, getting up and grabbing Hess’ glass off the round plastic table that had an umbrella through the middle, and disappeared in the house.
Max was a lot more personable and outgoing on familiar turf. That, or he was getting more comfortable with Hess. Ernst was standing at the edge of the waterway, admiring a seventy-foot pleasure yacht, two shapely blondes in bikinis sunbathing on the aft deck, when Max returned with the drinks. Three fingers of Macallan’s for Hess and a dark lowball cocktail for himself.
“I remember this feeling of freedom when we were liberated. I remember being in Krakow, walking through the town square shouting, ‘I’m a Jew. I’m a Jew.’ Finally able to say it and proud that I was.”
“I know what you mean,” Hess said. “The stigma was finally gone.”
Hess saw a woman in a bathing suit standing by the pool next door. She glanced at them and waved. Max saw her and waved back.
“Who’s that?”
“My neighbor, Lois Grant. Lost her husband eight months ago. We’ve gone out a couple times. Nothing serious.”
“How old?”
“Forty-eight.”
Hess said, “You like the young ones, huh?”
Max grinned. “I’ll introduce you if you want. Nice lady.” He sipped his drink and got up. “Harry, relax, I’m going to take a shower, wash off the chlorine. I’ll light the grill when I come back. You hungry?”
“I’m always hungry.”
The afternoon sun had dipped over the house. Hess, sitting in shadow, felt a slight chill. The retirees across the way, he noticed, had disappeared, gone back to their apartments. Hess knew he had to seize the opportunity. He went inside, locked the patio door and closed all the windows.
Hess walked down the hall to Max’s bedroom, went in and stood listening at the bathroom door. He could hear the shower, and heard the doorbell ring. He moved to the front of the house, looked out and saw a maroon Ford parked in the driveway and a tall man with dark shoulder-length hair at the front door. Hess watched him press the doorbell again and heard it echo across the foyer to the patio doors. When no one responded, the man knocked impatiently. Hess waited him out, saw him go to the car, glance back one more time, get in and drive away.
Hess returned to the bathroom door, heard the shower turn off and the rattle of the shower curtain being pulled open. He drew the revolver and knocked on the door, heard Max say, “Just a minute.”
The door opened, steam floating through the crack, Max visible now with a towel wrapped around his waist, wet hair dripping water on his chest.
“Someone is at the door,” Hess said, holding the gun down his leg, pillow on the floor against the wall.
Max opened the door halfway. “Who is it?”
“Some guy wants to talk to you.”
“Tell him to hang on.”
Hess raised the revolver and shot Max point blank in the chest. Max glanced down at the little spot of blood just above his right nipple, and charged through the doorway. Hess stepped back and shot him again, lower this time, center chest, and still he charged, Hess retreating, firing two more times from the hallway, the .38 jumping, and now Max staggered and fell face down on the white tile, blood running out from his body in crimson streams following the level of the floor. Hess glanced at himself in the hallway mirror, spatter from the gunshots on his face, shirt and khaki trousers.
Hess dragged Max into the bathroom and lifted his wet naked body, first his legs, then his torso, into the tub. He found a bucket and mop in the laundry room and a bottle of ammonia and cleaned the floor, coughing at the toxic fumes. When he was finished, Hess went in the guest bathroom, wiped the blood off his face and arms with a washcloth, and changed into one of Max’s Cleveland Indians tee-shirts and cap and a pair of his madras Bermuda shorts. Hess looked in the full-length mirror on the bedroom wall and barely recognized himself in the borrowed clothes.
Hess planned to stay there for a few days until his money arrived. Max had said he didn’t have any friends in the area. And since they looked somewhat alike, Hess thought, as long as he maintained a low profile, he could become Max Hoffman, assume the Jew’s identity. Wear his clothes, drive his car. But what was he going to do with Max’s body? He could weigh him down and dump him in the Intracoastal. But what if a fisherman snagged the body and brought it up? That wasn’t out of the question. Not in a fishing community such as this. No, dumping a body in water was dangerous. Hess himself was proof of that.
In a flashback, maybe triggered by the blood spatter, Hess recalled the scene in the forest outside Dachau, the pit dug, the bodies shot and thrown in, and saw the solution to his problem. He would bury Max Hoffman somewhere on his own property.
In the garage Hess found a shovel and walked around the house, trying to find an area that wasn’t visible to the neighbors, which didn’t leave many options. The only possibility was the north side of the house adjoining the vacant lot. There was a flowerbed that was roughly eight feet long by three feet wide.
Hess sunk the shovelhead and pulled back, lifting a shovelful of dirt and pieces of flowers that had yellow and white petals. He dug down three feet and hit the water table, but for his purposes it was deep enough. The sun was hanging on the rooftops, red highlights subdued by heavy clouds. He could see a woman down the street, walking her dog, and hear the low rumble of boats moving by on the waterway. Hess was exhausted, sweat-soaked and filthy but he had to finish the job. He found garbage bags in a drawer in the kitchen and a roll of duct tape. He cut the bags in half, taped the sections together and laid out a canvas of plastic on the bathroom floor. He grabbed Max’s legs and pulled his body half over the side of the tub and then all of him, wrapping sections of plastic around him and securing the sections with silver duct tape.