Code name edelweiss, p.13
Code Name Edelweiss, page 13
He knew a little about these young men. Most had been kids when their fathers went to war. Some of those fathers came home; most ended up as telegrams on the mantel. These boys had grown up wanting to be heroes, just like their fathers had been—to make a difference for their country. Then men like Winterhalder had come in and given them something to fight for—trouble was, it was something evil.
It was these kids who kept him awake at night.
As he figured, the doughnuts made him pretty popular. He sat down and asked the kids their names. Where they were from. Some of them didn’t answer—those were the smart ones. Others told him everything he wanted to know and then some. He didn’t blame ’em. They were just kids. And the more he knew, the more he’d be able to help them.
“How often do you come up here?” Thirteen asked a sunburned redhead called Lenny with shoulders like coat hangers. The kid had wolfed down two doughnuts in thirty seconds.
“Every weekend, sometimes during the week. There’ll be more men here by afternoon,” he said, spitting crumbs. “But we’ve been here from the start.”
Not good news. “That guy—” Thirteen jerked his head toward the shed where the other men had gone. “Monroe. You like him?”
“Sure,” said a kid called Kurt. He and the younger boy beside him had the same white-blond hair and Aryan features. Had to be brothers. “A real tough guy.”
“Talks funny,” Lenny added.
A yellow-headed blackbird made its presence known, one bright eye on the doughnuts. Thirteen pushed the bag closer to the younger blond brother and shooed off the bird.
Kurt spoke up. “He says he was supposed to be Tarzan, but they hired Weissmuller instead.”
“Wilshire Boulevard Jews stick together,” Lenny said. The others nodded, mouths full. “Said he’ll be glad when he sees ’em all dead.”
Thirteen wanted to slap the kid and ask him what his mother would think of that kind of talk. Instead, he worked over the new information. It figured. Monroe had missed his chance in film and blamed Irving Thalberg and Mayer and the other big shots of the studio systems.
“He’s what they call a marsh-all arts expert,” Lenny said in a slow way that made it clear he didn’t know what that meant.
Thirteen wouldn’t want to get in a hand-to-hand with Monroe, that was for sure. The man outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. “They don’t really expect you to fight, do they? You’re just playing around, like the Boy Scouts?”
The kid frowned and took the bait. “No sir. We’re going to be fighting. Communists and Jews and all that.”
He put a disbelieving look on his face. “Says who?”
Kurt chimed in, “Monroe. And the other guy—what’s his name?”
“Winterhalder,” said a kid who had been quiet up to then, eating a doughnut with care, keeping the sugar from falling on his uniform shirt. He had glasses and carefully combed mouse-brown hair. Looked like he should be doing math problems, not learning to fight. “They’re just waiting for the right timing—”
“Eldrich!” An older recruit approached the table. He had blond hair, filled-out shoulders, better skin. His uniform was clean and pressed; even his shoes were shined. “Don’t go jawing about it.”
But Thirteen needed to hear more, and so he pushed it with the bookish kid. “Come on, pal.” He put disbelief in his voice. “They’re jerking your chain.”
Eldrich shook his head and insisted, “No, I heard ’em. They call it der Angriff—”
“Shut it, Eldrich,” the clean-cut blond growled.
Eldrich did, but Thirteen had heard some of what he needed. Der Angriff. The attack. That didn’t sound good. Thirteen made a mental note to watch the clean-cut kid the others seemed to listen to.
He saw the door to headquarters open and Schwinn sauntered out, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun. Looking for him. He was out of time.
Thirteen shook hands all around and told them to finish the doughnuts, but inside, he was churning. It was coming, whatever it was, and he needed to stop it—stop these dumb kids from doing something they’d regret the rest of their lives. These boys were too young to die, and no matter what they thought to the contrary, they sure as shooting didn’t want to kill.
CHAPTER 22
AGENT THIRTEEN
Thirteen stood in a doorway across from the meeting place, lit a cigarette, and watched the rain shine the dirty street.
As a rule, he stayed out of Chinatown.
The alleyways were too narrow for an auto and poorly lit. The ramshackle buildings were cockeyed in a way that made him nervous, like he might get trapped in their labyrinth of side streets and dead ends. What’s more, he didn’t speak the language, and that was hard to get past. Not that he wanted to eat what was on offer in the restaurant windows—dried fish, shriveled roots, ducks plucked naked and hanging from their paddle-like feet.
No thank you.
Still, it was a shame the whole place would be gone soon, what with the construction of the Union Passenger Terminal. All of it—the shops, herbalists, opium dens, and fishmongers—torn down by this time next year. Kind of felt sorry for the people here, losing everything they knew. He took one last puff of the cigarette. Progress. It was rarely the rich men who bore the brunt of its cost, but they sure did reap the rewards.
Thirteen had called Lewis and set up a meeting as soon as he got back from the excursion to the hills. He’d fixed it so he drove Winterhalder and Schwinn home, then compared notes with Seventeen. They’d decided Thirteen would meet Lewis alone. Safer that way. Thirteen couldn’t help feeling responsible for the new agent. He was sticking his neck out and with what Schwinn said about reprisals . . . he had too much to lose, what with a family and all.
Chinatown was within walking distance of the Biltmore and it was a cool night, so he couldn’t complain about the venue. The thing was, he needed to talk to Lewis. If he didn’t get this new trouble off his chest, he’d never be able to sleep. He dropped the rest of the cigarette, the sparks flaring, then drowning, on the wet sidewalk. Might as well get it over with.
He opened the gilt door of Man Jen Low’s Chinese restaurant. He didn’t appreciate the chime of bells when he entered. Every face turned to look at him, then kept looking as he walked past booths lit by hanging lanterns. The sound of a foreign language in his ears, the smell of exotic spices. No, he didn’t like this spot at all, but he was hungry. And the smell of food—even unfamiliar food—was making him hungrier.
“Boss.” Thirteen lowered himself on the other side of the table in a private booth. Once he was seated, nobody could see him. Problem was, he couldn’t see the door and that made him jumpy. Lewis had a teapot on the table in front of him. He figured it wasn’t Scotch Lewis poured into two cups missing their handles. “Thanks for coming out.” He raised one eyebrow at the surroundings.
“Not your kind of place?” Lewis asked with a hint of a smile. He passed one of the cups across the table.
Thirteen shrugged. “It’s not the duck pond.” Even if it did have ducks.
Lewis looked around meaningfully. “I imagine it isn’t somewhere your Nazi friends would frequent.”
So it wasn’t the chop suey that brought Leon Lewis to Chinatown. He was always smarter than Thirteen gave him credit for. He should have remembered that.
The waitress, a tiny lady as dried up as an old mushroom, came to the table and said something Thirteen didn’t catch but he figured she wanted their order. He looked at Lewis and shook his head.
Lewis asked for fried chicken—Thirteen liked the sound of that—and egg foo yong. That didn’t sound so appealing. Thirteen waited for the old woman to move away. She might not speak English, or then again she might. What he had to say was for Lewis alone.
He took a drink of tea and grimaced. It tasted like dirt. Then he told Lewis about the trip to the Hollywood Hills. The Silver Shirts. That kid with the red hair, he couldn’t get him out of his mind. Something about the way he’d gone after those doughnuts, like he’d been hungry his whole life.
“They’re planning something, calling it der Angriff.”
Lewis rubbed his chin, the only indication of his concern at this development. Thirteen liked that about him. No drama. He took the news and immediately filed it away for reflection instead of getting riled up. It was the sign of a good leader, like the men he’d known in the war. “No idea of what they will do or when?” Lewis asked.
“Nope,” he answered. “Seventeen got another look at the control room, out on the training grounds. There’s a map. He couldn’t see much, but it looked like all of Los Angeles, some of Culver City.”
After Thirteen finished his report, he drank more of the dirt-flavored tea, let the silence stretch while Lewis did some thinking. Thirteen wasn’t dumb enough to think Lewis told him every angle he was working, but he trusted the man. Leon Lewis was intelligent, honest, and worthy of respect.
At one of the Nazi meetings he’d endured, he’d heard that the Jewish race was guided by the forces of evil—a tool of Satan, they said. Lewis was more like a dry-witted angel if Thirteen wanted to be fanciful about it.
The mushroom-lady brought out two platters of food that threatened to tip her over. The chicken was coated in a sticky sauce but it smelled darn good. The egg foo yong looked like a cross between a pancake and scrambled eggs, but he dug in.
“Good?” Lewis asked, nodding at the chicken.
Thirteen believed in giving credit where it was due. “Delicious.” It was gonna be hard to save some for the dog.
After they finished eating, Lewis asked for the check. “How are they set for funds?”
“Not sure.” He forked the egg pancakes into the paper bag the little waitress brought him. “They have guns, but not many. The kids buy their own uniforms, and they don’t get fed.”
“So they’re low on money, at least for now,” Lewis finished. “We have that in common.”
Thirteen lit up a cigarette, took a puff, and let out a cloud of smoke. “Your other agent, anything there?”
Lewis shook his head. “Nothing we didn’t already suspect or know.”
He didn’t elaborate on the other agent. It was the kind of thing that Thirteen didn’t like about the spymaster.
Lewis leaned forward. “How are you doing at getting them fighting among themselves?”
Thirteen snuffed out the half-smoked cigarette. “Setting it up for Schwinn and Themlitz.” Neither of them trusted the snaky Winterhalder, so stirring that pot wasn’t hard.
“Good,” Lewis said. “That should slow them down. And what about Mr. and Mrs. Schwinn? Marital discord would help our cause.” He took a sip of his tea. “As you know, we are best served not by foiling a plot but by impeding its development.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Thirteen said. It would be easy enough, the way Hermann Schwinn was already moving in on the new secretary. She was pretty. Beautiful, not that it mattered. Friendly with Thekla—didn’t take offense at their talk of Jews and spouted the same herself. She was a real kraut, what with her Aryan looks. A shame, really.
Yet there was the story about her husband. It wouldn’t take much to run that lead down, but he’d keep it to himself. He didn’t want Lewis thinking he was taking too much notice of a pretty woman. If he found something of interest, then he’d bring it to Lewis.
Lewis took out a few bills and put them down on the table. “Keep in touch, Thirteen.” He stood, put on his hat. “We’re on the right side of this, have faith in that.” Then he was gone.
On the right side. Since when did that matter? He’d been on the right side of the Great War, and good men had died. He’d been on the wrong side of what happened in Monterey. Have faith. Thirteen didn’t buy that either. No matter how much faith you had, bad things still happened to good people. His mother had been a faithful woman. His sister had said her prayers every night. Faith hadn’t saved either of them.
It seemed like whatever they did—whatever progress they made—the Nazis progressed further. They had no idea when or what der Angriff was, and everywhere they turned, the threat was growing. How were they supposed to fight what was becoming an army with just himself, a Jewish lawyer, and a couple of amateur detectives?
Thirteen waited a good ten minutes, drinking the rest of the tea and wondering if what he was doing—what Leon Lewis was doing—would make any difference. Then he walked into the dark city, the bitter taste of the tea still in his mouth.
CHAPTER 23
AGENT THIRTEEN
Thirteen knocked on Winterhalder’s door at seven thirty on Sunday morning.
The man answered in his boxer shorts and a ribbed cotton undershirt, smelling like a distillery. “Come on in.” He swept his arm out like some kind of king in his castle.
Thirteen didn’t go in. From the door, he could see enough. A dirty place, clothing on the floor and smelling like an ashtray and gin. “I’m just here for the keys.”
He’d balked when Winterhalder telephoned last night, begging to borrow his auto. The Cadillac was temperamental and he didn’t like anyone else driving her. Winterhalder wanted to take some floozy out for a night on the town, and much as the thought disgusted him, he had to keep in the man’s good graces. This morning, he took the red line trolley to the place Winterhalder kept on Green Street. A place his wife didn’t know about.
If the Cadillac looked anything like this apartment, he’d have something to say to the man.
“Sure, got the keys here somewhere.” Winterhalder rubbed his hair, sticking up on one side like a badly trimmed hedge. “What you doing up so early on a Sunday, anyway?”
Thirteen spotted the keys on the floor beside the hall table. He ducked in and retrieved them.
A woman appeared in the doorway, blonde and dressed in little more than a scrap of fabric and some lace. Thirteen looked away before he saw more than he wanted to.
Winterhalder turned on her, his voice hard. “Beat it, Ida.”
The dame disappeared into the back room, then came out in a ratty coat, carrying a paper bag. “Thanks for nothing, Hans,” she muttered, passing him by and scurrying out the door.
Thirteen left right behind her, wishing he could wash his hands. He drove directly to a service station, cursing Winterhalder all the way. The gas tank was empty and cigarette butts with crimson lipstick smears littered the floor. He cleaned the auto, filled the tank, and was at the Hall of Justice by eight. He had some digging to do.
He parked on the street in front of the marble fortress—nobody around but the street cleaners and the bums. Inside, he went directly to the police archives. He’d once known a woman who worked there nights and weekends. He figured she might have the same shift and he was right.
“Donna, you’re looking good,” he said.
Donna was a brunette with a pretty face and a quick wit. She raised one brow. “Haven’t seen you in an age.” She went back to a slow pecking at the typewriter with bloodred fingernails.
Thirteen leaned against the desk. “Been outta town a couple years.”
The carriage dinged and she pulled the paper out. “Still hanging out on street corners and taking pictures?”
“I’m doing some different work now, but I could use your help.” He didn’t try to charm her; she was too smart for that. Told her what he wanted straight out.
She frowned, rolled another paper onto the spool, and shook her head. “You trying to get me fired?”
“I think you owe me one, at least,” he said mildly. He’d done a few favors for her over the years. One had been to get proof that her boyfriend—a real bum—was cheating on her with her own cousin. Hadn’t even charged her a fee.
“Everybody in this town owes you at least one. That’s how you operate,” Donna grumbled. She sashayed off to the file storage room, where she was gone for a good long time. Finally she brought him what he needed, sliding the paper across the desk after making sure nobody was looking.
“Thanks, Donna.” He glanced down at the report and the signature at the bottom.
She resumed typing. “Just don’t show your ugly mug here again.” By the way she said it, he knew she didn’t mean it.
He was turning to go when he saw a familiar face—the clean-cut kid from the Silver Shirts. Instead of the light-gray shirt and Nazi armband, he wore the blue-and-black police uniform and a police cap with the City of Los Angeles emblem.
“It’s Fritz, right?” he asked, although he knew it was. He carefully folded the report from Donna and tucked it in his jacket pocket. “Didn’t know you were on the force.” He should have guessed, though. The kid had training—he’d seen that right off.
Fritz stuck out his hand and greeted him with a firm handshake. “Just a cadet,” he said. “Hoping to make officer by Christmas.”
Thirteen made himself smile. Fritz was no doubt a good recruit. Polite, smart, probably from a decent family. Thirteen looked at his wristwatch. “You getting off soon?”
“Just punched out,” Fritz answered.
“I was about to get some breakfast.” He hadn’t been but he could. “You hungry?”
Thirteen and Fritz settled into a booth at Lucy’s Café, a place most of the force liked to frequent because they had good coffee. “Eggs and bacon?” he asked Fritz and ordered for them both. A waitress with iron-gray hair and downy cheeks poured their coffee. He had plenty he wanted to ask the kid. Figuring out how to go about it was the trick.
He started easy. “You always work nights?”
As much as the kid was closemouthed at the training ground in the hills, he seemed to open up this morning. Fritz was one of Hynes’s men and joined the Silver Shirts after the police chief encouraged it. The waitress delivered the eggs and bacon with thick slabs of toast and a bottle of ketchup.
“What does your father think of you being on the force?” He’d bet his last cigarette the kid didn’t have a father, and he was right.
“The war,” Fritz said and shoveled the eggs in his mouth. That said it all.
