J.C. Amberger: “Moth and Gravel”

Submission Number Two in our Palsgraf vs. Long Island Railroad Challenge:

It seemed like a win-win for everyone. Especially for Victor and Tony:

To re-rout the champagne from the Germany-bound passenger ships, you only had to re-rout those who’d paid in advance for drinking it. Re-rout them, say, into some British concentration camp, before they could pop open the first bottle. 

Too bad there were people with a long memory—and were about to present the bill…

by J. Christoph Amberger

Victor rose from behind his desk and shuffled over to the cabinet with as much gravitas as his soft, calfskin slippers allowed. He pulled a key from his quilted satin robe. Antique hinges squeaked like tiny mice. Inside, next to a loaded .45 and a crystal carafe of medicinal Scotch, was a single bottle of champagne. Moët Chandon, vintage 1905, with a custom label right below the gold foil of the neck.

Norddeutscher Lloyd, it read, with a small vignette of the SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm under full steam.

It was the keystone to Victor’s wealth. History.

The only other living person who knew his story was Tony Vozzella, his one-time partner. He, too, was rich as Midas these days and lived, no, resided, in a palatial mansion near Rockaway Beach, adding to his not inconsiderable bootlegging income by fleecing the gullible attracted to the amusement parks and resort hotels.

Mind you, even here, in his plush study, far, far removed from the Hoboken docks, Victor was unashamed of his past. No, sirree! He was a self-made man. He’d created his destiny, his wealth, his fortune out of nothing. He’d started out as a stock boy for a supplier of liquors, wines, and spirits to the North German Lloyd, one of the grand German passenger lines based in Hoboken. By age 15, Victor had it made. Now, at 28, he was a pillar of the business community. He owned trucks, gasoline stations, and several storehouses full of barley, wheat, and hops way up in Canada. Not to mention a string of speakeasies in New York City, Rochester, and, of course, Jersey: To a wine and liquor man, Prohibition had been a godsend. Just as the Great War had been years before.

His good friend Tony Vozzella, for old times sake and a considerable monthly consideration, provided reasonable protection against certain vicissitudes of life and free-market competition. Victor didn’t mind. In his line of business, you had to spend money to make money. Tony, after all, had given him his first big break.

So life was good.

Victor also had a beautiful wife. Blond, great in bed—and not at all curious just where the money came from that kept her dolled up in Parisian silks and Italian satins. Even better, Hedy came with no in-laws attached! Her mother had died in ’17 of the Spanish Flu. And her father and brother had shipped out for Germany in August of ’14. Stupid Huns, the two of them. Two weeks after the Kaiser declared war, they’d joined thousands of other German-American “hyphens” dumb enough to fight for a country that was no longer theirs.

Suffice to say they didn’t return.

The only problem with her was her cousin, who’d arrived by ship just a month ago.

To Victor, family was family, even Hedy’s poor relatives from the old country. But did they really have to stay that long? Sure, Hauke was a silent man, whose presence was felt rather than seen inside their posh, spacious digs on Park Avenue. He kept to himself, ate and drank little, and disappeared for hours at a time. It was like he wasn’t even there. Victor’s butler, a model of discretion, was intrusive by comparison.

But from the moment Hedy and Victor had picked him up from the Ellis Island ferry in their Prussian blue Locomobile (Hedy had insisted!), Victor knew that Cousin Hauke was trouble. He felt like he’d been talked into adopting a schnauzer from the pound—and brought home a timber wolf instead.

Still, even with the elusive house guest, things had been smooth as silk until about a week ago. Until Victor went to inspect a truckload of Canadian lager down in Jersey.

The booze was fine, none better (he made sure of it!), and “Izzy” Einstein and Moe Smith and their prohis virtually guaranteed he’d sell it for top dollar. That’s when he saw his wife’s cousin leave the re-opened offices of the North German Lloyd.

At first, Victor was pleasantly surprised. Had Hauke decided to return to the Fatherland earlier than expected? The very thought spelled relief: Goodbye and good riddance and don’t let the door hit you in the back, you skulking Hun!

But then he recalled: Hauke had come on a HAPAG steamer, the Lloyds’s big competitor. He’d seen the HAPAG return ticket, dated two weeks from now. So what was he doing here, at the Lloyd’s headquarters? Why was he walking over to a public phone now? And who was he calling?

Victor couldn’t quite put his finger on why Cousin Hauke rubbed him the wrong way. He was neither much older nor considerably taller. He spoke softly, in barely accented English. But whereas Victor had put on pounds of prosperity, Hauke was all gristle and ligament. Shaking hands with him was like getting your right caught in a beartrap. And his eyes were the color and temperature of the North Atlantic. They gave Victor the willies: He knew from his youth at the Jersey waterfront what kind of creatures they dredged up from its depths.

Victor’s various businesses may not have been on the up and up, or even legal in the strict sense of the word. But he knew a killer when he saw one.

Being a cautious man of the world, Victor had asked a Pinkerton man on his gratuities list to keep an eye on the German for the last two days. The Pinkie’s first report sounded in line with what you’d expect a German visitor to do in New York, at least if he had undeclared intentions to stay:

“Spent Monday morning 9:43  to 11:57 at the Lloyd headquarters. Beer and sausage at Lüchow’s.”

“Afternoon spent at Staatszeitung office.”

Hmmm. A German-language newspaper? Was Hauke looking for a job? Well, golly, he only needed to ask! Victor always needed a good man with low inhibitions to inflict violence. So did Tony Vozzella. But the next line put a cold dagger into Victor’s intestines:

“Asking about one Friedrich Schmidt at the Lloyd.”

Schmidt! It couldn’t be! Seemed like every other German he met was named Schmidt, and there were enough Friedrichs around to fill in the Hudson river—a thing New Yorkers hadn’t been all that ill at ease considering just a decade ago.

Victor knew he couldn’t take chances, not even with a man dead and buried seven years: He did have a bit of a file with the Feds. And these days, they seemed overly eager to find any chink in the corporate armor that Victor’s shysters had spent countless, well-remunerated hours building: He needed aome renegade Kraut turning up something from the past like a hole in the head.

But then, did he really have to worry? How many Schmidt’s had worked at the Lloyd? Probably a fair number. Victor felt reassured. The Pinkie’d have to dig deeper. What was another ten-a-day in exchange for piece of mind?

Although this was not what the next crisp green 10-dollar-bill bought. Out of all the Friedrich Schmidt’s in the world, it seemed Cousin Hauke was interested in just one. Who’d been fished out of the water at the Hoboken waterfront in late 1917, beaten like a dog and drowned like a rat. Friedrich Schmidt, late head quartermaster of the North German Lloyd’s Europe-bound steamer fleet… in charge of supplies and provisions.

Since he was a German, New Jersey’s finest hadn’t made much fuss about the body. After all, America was at war with the Krauts. If an enterprising soul turned killing them into a cottage industry down home, more power to him!

But now, almost  a decade later, this was getting too close for comfort. What was the Fritz-in-law up to? Why was he interested? Who was he—and who the hell did he think he was?

Luckily, Victor knew who could help. It wasn’t like there was a shortage of Krauts in New York City. And plenty of those he knew had excellent connections back home. To the shipping companies. And to the German crime syndicates, the Ringvereine, who ran both blue- and white-collar crime in Berlin and Hamburg with Prussian efficiency.

In fact, Victor was expecting to hear from them any minute now.

He heard the apartment door open, looked at the mantle clock. Eleven-thirty-five. Cousin Hauke was back from his day-long prowl through the city. At least that’s what he wanted Victor to believe. Who knew for a fact that he didn’t give a hoot about the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building.

The Jersey waterfront was far more likely.

Low bass notes rumbled as a coat exchanged hands from Hauke to the butler. Then Hedy’s happy soprano chimed and giggled and gushed. Fast, excited exclamations in German followed as she pulled her cousin into the salon, from where the clitter-clatter of the grand piano began to fracture the silence.

Just knowing that Hauke was back in the apartment gave Victor the chills. Like a hiker in the woods who feels, rather than sees, the flick of the big cat’s tail—and suddenly realizes that he’s being stalked. That he’d been turned into prey.

Victor became aware that he was sweating. He suddenly realized the family resemblance, just how closely Hauke resembled Hedy’s brother. Or at least that one photograph of a tall, angular man Hedy kept in the bedroom—the only thing that still bore witness that he’d ever existed. Same eyes, same mouth, same gristle. A hyphen if there ever was one! Victor had never liked the picture, which Hedy displayed in a silver frame on her dresser. Whenever he could, he put it face-down or turned it so that the North Atlantic didn’t look at him. Because despite destiny and fortune, Victor felt a pang of guilt whenever he saw it.

After all, he’d killed Hedy’s brother. And her father as well…

Of course, she didn’t know—and never would. Heck, even he didn’t know at the time. It was business, plain and simple. Tony’s business, to be exact. If he hadn’t done it, others would. The two hyphens might’ve croaked anyway, in the filth of Verdun or the gas clouds of Ypres, or starved, bled, gagged, screamed themselves to death alongside thousands and thousands of others.

The only difference would’ve been that he wouldn’t have made any money. And where would Hedy be then?

Victor placed the bottle of Moët Chandon back in the cabinet. He jumped when his desk phone rang, then dove for the receiver

“Yes,” he barked, ashamed of his nerves. “Put him on.” The mantle clock ticked loudly as he waited. Then: “Alright, spit it out! What did he find?” He picked up a gold-plated pencil and began to scribble furiously.

Hauke Hayen, he wrote. Bremen. Enlisted ’15. Iron Cross. Verdun. Ehrhard Brigade.

“What was that last? Fry-core? Spell it! F-R-E-I-K-O-R-P-S. Oh. What does that…? Oh. Kicked the Commies out of Munich? No shit!”

He listened intently, eyes getting wider, wrote two more words: Organization. Consul. 

“Thanks,” he said finally, much more quietly. “No, that’s all for now.”

There was nothing wrong with his instincts. He’d known it all along. A killer. In his home!

Victor went back over to the cabinet and took out the Scotch. He peered into the ceiling light through the pale amber, then removed the crystal stopper. Not bothering with a glass, he lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank like a man drowning. When the whisky exploded in his stomach, he reached for the pistol, put it in his pocket.

He just about made it back to his overstuffed chair before he passed out.

***

“What’s wrong, honey,” said Hedy with a pretty pout as they sat down for a late breakfast. “You barely said a word all yesterday!” She daintily slipped a piece of buttered toast between her lips, then swirled a glass champagne with a sterling silver swizzle-stick. She’s one of them, too, thought Victor bitterly, pain behind his eyes. A goddamn hyphen. Well, at least she was easy on the eyes. A bit too perky, at least to a man with a hangover.

“Nothing,” he said, his pounding head giving him the lie. Then, after a hung-over pause: “Where’s your cousin?”

“He left early. As they say, the early bird catches the worm.” She leaned over so Victor could smell the sweet mix of mint and champagne on her breath and kissed him right on the tip of his nose. “Thank God we don’t care much for worms around here.”

Even the smile hurt.

“What do you really know about your cousin,” Victor asked, listlessly spooning sugar into his coffee. “I mean, what kinda name is Hauke for a Fritz?”

Hedy crinkled her ivory forehead. “Oh, it’s a North German thing. Some book my uncle liked. The main character’s name is Hauke Hayen. And since Hayen was my mother’s maiden name…”

“What’s the book?”

“Schimmel-Reiter-shmershmer-or-other.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Let me think… Schimmel means white horse, Rappe means black horse, Brauner means, guess what, brown one. Hauke Hayen was the rider on a white horse. But don’t ask me what he did, other than ride along the sea shore in the fog. Why do you ask?”

Hedy’s carefree prattle pounded nails into his quivering brain, straight through his eye sockets. He almost felt the pounding of hooves in his temples. “Nothin’ really. So what did he do during the war?”

“Fight, of course.”

“And after?”

“Oh, I don’t know, fight some more? Why are you suddenly so interested in him?” Hedy put down her glass and plucked her silk stockings until the seams traversed the exact centers of her calves.

“Just making conversation, dear.”

With a shaky hand, Victor downed his coffee. Then he reached for the dark green bottle chilling in a silver ice bucket. Moët Chandon. Or “Mott’ und Schotter,” as the hyphens riding First Cabin on the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm jokingly had called it. Sure, if you ship out to kill the French, you have to Germanize their booze.

“What does Mott’ and Schotter mean in German,” he asked.

“A Motte is a moth and Schotter’s gravel. Vic! The questions you’re asking today! Hey, waitadarnminnit, aren’t you going to freshen up my glass?”

Victor poured the sparkling gold into the crystal. Maybe he should have some too. Hair of the dog that bit you. Hair of the wolf…

***

Even over the phone, Tony Vozzella sounded annoyed rather than alarmed. “So what if some Kraut’s asking around? Have the lawyers take care of him. Who cares about what business we had ten fuckin’ years ago? You and I are the only ones who know. Schmidt’s dead and nobody else’d give a damn. ”

“He may,” said Victor.

“You tellin’ me that after ten years an all those millions of stiffs, some damn Hun’s out to off us, for ‘re-routing’ a few crates of booze?”

“French champagne. And yes, everything’s possible.”

“Vittorio, you’re nuts. Why?”

Well, Victor thought. To re-rout the champagne from the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm and the other Germany-bound passenger ships, you had to re-rout those who’d paid in advance for drinking it. Re-rout them, say, into some British concentration camp before they could pop open the first bottle. Color me pink but there may still be someone left who’d take offense…

“Forget it,” Victor said. “Thought you might wanna know. If you think it’s nothing, it’s probably nothing.”

He hung up, feeling just a tad better. Maybe Tony was right. Anything they could be blamed for paled in comparison with the horrors of the war. In fact, one could argue that what they’d done had actually saved lives: When the Kaiser declared war, there were thousands of German-Americans—hyphens!—who felt compelled to ride the wave of Teutonic patriotism back to Europe. Fight for Kaiser, die for the Fatherland, and all that jazz.

But to get there, the Fritzes had to cross the Atlantic. Which meant buying passage on an ocean liner. Will all those men shipping out, the shipping lines made money hand over first: HAPAG, the Lloyd, even some of the non-German companies. So did the suppliers of fuel, of food—of liquor. Because any respectable German drinks like a fish when in the company of other Germans. The Second Cabin and Steerage drink beer. The “von und zu’s” and money nobility prefer wine and champagne. Especially champagne. Especially the best champagne, like Moët Chandon.

Mott’ und Schotter.

And they drink even more when they’d purchased tickets that included room, board—and booze.

So if you had 100 upper-class German males aboard an all-expenses-paid German liner for the seven to eight days it took to cross the Atlantic, a good quartermaster would calculate that each of them might average two bottles of wine and maybe two bottles of champagne a day. Two times 100, times eight makes 1,600 bottles of champagne, meaning roughly 140 cases at 12 bottles each, each bottle at a wholesale price of $7: $11,200 dollars worth of champagne—the equivalent of an upscale home in New York City. Or the latest custom Locomobile luxury limousine. Or 40 Ford Model-T’s, vintage 1926, for every 100 Germans!

And a ship like the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm held almost 300 First Cabin passengers on each and every outbound trip. The Bremen, the George Washington, the Grosser Kurfürst, the Kaiser Wilhelm II held even more…

But what the homing Germans didn’t know was that, a day out at sea, two bottles down the hatch, the Brits lurked. Their cruisers stopped every Europe-bound steamer, and took each able-bodied hyphen prisoner. Since President Wilson considered the British a better risk, arms and munitions sales to the United Kingdom and France were worth considerably more than a few thousand hyphens like Hedy’s father and brother. Even if they ended up in British concentration camps somewhere in the colonies. Where thousands of them died of typhoid fever, pneumonia, dysintery, influenza.

Just like Hedy’s father and brother.

But heck, it was war! These dolts were volunteering to get killed! Someone had to make money on this insanity! Someone with an innate grasp of numbers—like Victor, and Antonio Vozzella, and the square-headed German Schmidt, chief quartermaster of the North German Lloyd, who accounted the bottles of Moët Chandon not drunk by battle-hungry, camp-bound Germans as a total loss and resold them for 10% of the wholesale price back to Victor the stock boy and Vozzella the longshoreman, who in turn sold them back to the Lloyd’s supplier of liquor, wine and spirits at a slight discount.

It was a win-win, for everyone, even the Lloyd!

And the math magic just started there. Because as soon as the war had begun, the prices for French champagne shot up. A bottle whole-selling for $7 in June of 1914 could be sold for $9 in August and for $12 by December. At which point the same bottle had been sold, liberated, resold, liberated again for a cumulative total of over $30—before it was sold to New York restaurants at 15% off market price.

Provided they kept the Krauts from drinking it.

It worked like a charm. The sooner the Brits got the Germans, the more champagne would be left to sell. And the better the information was that the Brits obtained regarding the route and timing of the ships, the sooner they stopped the Germans from drinking. And the sooner the Germans stopped drinking, the richer Tony and Victor got.

Since the Brits had cut the Trans-Atlantic cable, the hyphens back home took months to find out. By then, Tony and Victor were rich enough to branch out into the paper business, supplying fake Swiss, Swedish, South African passports to Germans hoping to escape the Brits at sea.

Rumor even had it that the British attaché paid well for names of high-net-worth Germans traveling with forged papers, although nobody could ever prove it. At the point when the Enemy Alien Office surpassed even the Brits with their haul of hyphens, and Wilson replaced America’s covert warfare against the Kaiser with a declaration of war, Victor and Tony had followed the money to far more lucrative pastures. Only Schmidt was left behind. His startled expression when they hit him in the head with their blackjacks had remained with Victor over the years. Now, checking the catch on his brand-new 1911-model .45 Colt, Victor was overcome with grim resolve: Restore peace and ease of mind to his household.

There was only one thing left to do to make sure.

***

Victor recognized the man despite the dim light of the speakeasy. He was pale, scrawny, with glasses as thick as the bottoms of beer steins. The dead giveaway were his fingers, which were dyed black from decades of handling newsprint. Victor waved him over to his booth, invited him to sit, and, with an imperial gesture, had the waiter deliver two foaming glasses of bootleg lager to the table.

“What can I do for you,” the scrawny one asked after a first cautious sip. Foam clung to his thin mustache.

“They say you’re the best for information on Germany,” Victor stated, his voice flat and emotionless. The scrawny one shrugged: “You hear things when you publish a German paper.”

“I need to know just two things. What’s Freikorps? And what’s Organization Consul.”

The scrawny one reflexively straightened and looked around.

“Yikes, look at the time” he said and downed the glass in front of him in one gulp. “It’s been nice meeting you.” And he rose to leave. But Victor grabbed him by the threadbare sleeve.

“Hold it! You stay right here.” The scrawny one hesitated. Victor let the sleeve go, reached for his wallet, and began laying out ten-dollar bills on the table: “I make it worth your while.” After the fifth green rectangle, the scrawny one sighed and sat. “Alright,” he said, pocketing the money. Victor motioned for another round as the scrawny one melted into the back of the booth. He waited until the waiter was out of earshot, then leaned across the table.

“One doesn’t discuss these things out in the open. Not even in New York.”

“Why?”

“You asked about Consul. Organisation Consul.”

“I did.”

“They’re trouble. Ultra-nationalists, recruited from the most hardcore members of the Freikorps. Paramilitary units of combat veterans, run by de-commissioned officers—warlords, really. Their aim is warfare against all anti-nationalists and internationalists; warfare against the Jews, the Social Democracts and leftist radicals. They want to overthrow the Weimar constitution. Get even with the Frogs and the Tommies. And they kill people. Hundreds of them. Politicians, even government ministers, right out in the open. Everyone they consider traitors of the German cause.”

The cold current in Victor’s stomach wasn’t caused by the beer. He tried to laugh it off. “Sounds like Snorky Capone up in Chicago.”

But the scrawny one shook his head. “Worse, believe me. In their day, they’ve taken entire cities by force.”

“What would they be doing in America?”

The eyes behind the thick lenses widened. “Here? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard about them operating overseas—at least not on official business. Poland, yes. Silesia. France.” He downed his beer. “Then again, anything’s possible.” He rose. “I don’t know why you ask. But if you want my opinion, stay as far away from this as you can. These guys mean business. There’s plenty of them in Germany. They’ve survived the war, they’ve survived the revolution. They’ve seen death—all kinds of death—and they don’t fear it. And,” he bent down to Victor, “they don’t forget. Ever.”

Before Victor could respond, the scrawny one was scurrying out the door as fast as his scuffed brogans would carry him.

Victor remained staring after him. His right hand instinctively reached for the grip of his .45 beneath his coat.

***

What can you do with a stick of dynamite?

All Victor knew about high explosives came from the luxury edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica that glowed from the mahogany barrister book cases in his study. Which was that dynamite consisted of three parts nitroglycerin and one part of diatomaceous earth or kieselgur.

He had no idea what that was, but it sounded too German for comfort.

Victor also knew that you could by it by the case, in farm or quarry supply stores, if you didn’t mind or had the time for a drive upstate. If you needed less, say, a single half-pound stick, you might  steal it from a careless farmer. Or you could pull some strings, cash in a favor, pick it up in the back room of one of your warehouses at the Hoboken waterfront, say, from a nervous rat of a man with more stubble than face. Just follow a shaky index finger pointing at a wooden box about 15 inches long and 6 inches high, containing sawdust, an 8-inch stick of dynamite wrapped in waxed paper, and more sawdust.

“Don’t drop it,” the rat had quivered. “Whatever you do with it, don’t drop it.”

Victor agreed: That stick could blast a boulder into smithereens or collapse a house in the blink of an eye. He’d seen the former and feared the latter, at least as far as his warehouse and Park Avenue apartment were concerned.

Because neither was of any interest to him. He just needed to blow up his past.

Like most things in his life, it turned out to be a matter of life and math.

If Hauke Hayen was indeed a member of Organisation Consul, he was just one of several killers with an interest in the champagne business. There possibly were more. More silent stalkers with eyes that stripped you down to the lowlife you were when they looked at you. Who’d not forgive. Never forget. And next time, Victor wouldn’t be warned, because what where the chances of Hedy having another cousin like Hauke? Kill him and another Kraut might replace him a month, a year, five years from now, asking questions about Schmidt, maybe finding out about Vozzella, maybe managing to get another name out of him. Like Victor’s.

Then there was Tony. Head of a well-established local syndicate, to be sure. But a single head. In fact, the only head in the world other than Victor’s that stored information how Victor’s life was built on selling Germans to the Brits for champagne.

Plus, Victor knew everything about Tony’s summer home. Knew about the well-disguised emergency exit from the boiler room in the basement, where a well-placed stick of dynamite, equipped with a blasting cap and a healthy bit of fuse, would bring the house down.

Tony was an old friend. But biz is biz and schnapps is schnapps, as Hedy used to say, only in German. As a friend, Victor could get close to Tony. Close enough to make sure Tony’s memory was erased…

Victor reached for this morning’s copy of the Wall Street Journal. He was wrapping the wooden box with the dynamite when the phone rang. He picked up, instantly realizing that Hedy, in the salon, had beaten him to it. He was about to quietly hang up when he heard Hauke’s voice.

“Hedy,” Hauke said. “Wie komme ich am besten nach Rockaway Beach?”

“Rrroehkaveh Biihtsch,” Victor heard Hedy mimick her cousin’s Kraut pronunciation of English. Which, strangely enough, only came through when he was speaking German. Victor could almost see her lovely red lips forming a perfect “O”. “Depends on where you are now.”

“Hoboken,” said Hauke and Victor’s heart dropped.

“Hoeh-boeh-ken to Rrrroekaveh Biihtsch,” Hedy laughed. “I crack myself up! Well, considering it’s Sunday, just take…”

But Victor had placed the receiver on the desk and was heading out the door, the newspaper-wrapped package cradled in his arms. Rockaway Beach! Hauke knew about Tony. He’d be at Tony’s summer house in a few hours. If math was to work its magic, Victor had just two hours or so: Turn Tony, Tony’s house, and Tony’s memory of so many bottles of Moët Chandon into Moths and Gravel…

Can you blame Victor that he didn’t notice that Hedy was watching him from the window as he hailed a cab?

***

Numbers are unforgiving, Victor thought as he looked at his watch. The cab he’d hailed—you really couldn’t take a conspicuous Prussian blue Locomobile for a delicate task like this!—was stuck behind an upturned carriage, just ten minutes away from the East New York station of the Long Island Railroad. What kind of traffic was this for a Sunday morning!

He leaned out of the window and felt his heart beat synchronizing with the merciless beat of the second hand.

He saw a pale mare lying on the cobblestones, a mounted policeman on a dappled white horse directing traffic around the wreckage. “Schimmelreiter,” popped into his mind. Rider on a white horse. He didn’t like even fact that he remembered the word.

Victor looked at his watch again, felt his heart stumble: The Jamaica express train to Rockaway was leaving in exactly ten minutes.

Energized by the power of numbers, he threw a wad of bills at the driver. “Keep the change,” he shouted as he slammed the door shut. Holding the newspaper-wrapped package like a colicky infant, he began to trot, then run toward the station, sweat dripping from his face, pouring from his palms and arms, until his hands looked like those of the scrawny man and the paper was as soft and mushy as Tony’s brains would be in, oh, say an hour or two.

The train was moving and crowds were milling as he raced down the long, wooden platform, elbowing past a middle-aged woman who stood slack-jawed, head tilted back, studying the departure tables. He ignored her squalling, almost bumped into a large penny weight machine.

A penny to get your correct weight? What a gyp!

Victor poured the rest of his strength into one last scrum after the departing train. The conductor standing in the open door of the last carriage extended his hand. Victor jumped across the crack between platform and running board, clutched the conductor’s hand at the wrist. A porter had run up behind him. Pushed from behind and pulled from above, Victor swung his body onto the rolling carriage.

He’d done it! He’d…

The Wall Street Journal, soaked with Victor’s sweat and fear, tore, no, parted, no, disintegrated beneath his left arm. The package slipped, slid, bounced off the last step and, with a thud drowned out by the screams of Victor and the iron wheels, landed on the rails.

But nothing happened.

Victor’s desperate attempt to leap after it was thwarted by the vise grip the conductor had on his coat.

“Let it go, laddie,” the man said in the thickest Irish brogue Victor had ever heard. “Ye’ll break yer silly neck!”

Mouth open, eyes wide as saucers, Victor watched in horror as platform and package moved out of his field of vision. With the agility of a serpent on fire, he twisted out of the Paddy’s grip, leaving him with a torn rag of fabric in his fist, twisted his foot on a railroad tie, then hurried, limped, ran. Then flew when he heard the explosion.

***

But the sky was blue and the sun continued to turn New York into purgatory. Dejected, slouching, shirt sticking to his body, Victor stumbles down the street. The current of pedestrians pushed against him, then, as the commotion faded in the distance, movement became easier.

Damn it, that stick of dynamite had cost him a mint! Victor ran the numbers again. It would take Hauke hours to get to Rockaway Beach from Hoboken, hours to locate Tony, hours to jog his memory. If he was able to get to Tony at all. And so far, Victor had seen nothing that would’ve pointed at Hauke being more than just a lone wolf.

If he killed him, it might take weeks or months until another Kraut would pick up where Hauke left off. Enough time to take care of Tony—if Hauke didn’t rub out Tony himself!

Why hadn’t he thought of it before!

It was so obvious! He could’ve saved himself all that trouble! His relief almost turned into euphoria, but was held in check when he felt for his .45. It wasn’t there! Had he lost it? In the cab? During his mad dash to the station?

No, he remembered. He’d forgotten to pick it up when he left home. Left it smack dab on his desk.

Victor suddenly felt dog tired. He hailed a cab and slumped into the back seat. He almost fell asleep, barely hearing the claxons of the police cars and ambulances that suddenly were streaming in the opposite direction. All he wanted was a bath, a fresh set of clothes, and a glass of iced champagne with Hedy.

***

The door was open when he entered his apartment, and despite several loud harrumphs, neither the butler nor the girl came to relieve him of his coat. The nerve! Or had Hedy given them off?

Miffed, he simply dropped his coat on the floor, kicked off his shoes, and turned toward the bathroom. A bath would be great now. He was almost at peace with the butler’s impudent absence when he heard the clinking of crystal.

It came from the study.

His study.

Angrily, he stomped across the hallway and threw the door open. But the tirade that was ready to bellow from his throat was cut off after “What the…”

Hedy was sitting in his chair, behind his desk. The .45 was in front of her, as was an open bottle of Möet Chandon. Vintage 1905, with a custom label right below the gold foil of the neck.

Norddeutscher Lloyd, it read, with a small vignette of the SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm under full steam.

It was the keystone to Victor’s wealth. Victor’s story.

“Vic,” Hedy said in an quiet alto voice utterly devoid of girlish giggles. “I have good news.”

Victor froze. She picked up the gun and, with with a negligent flourish, waved it at the ramrod-straight figure standing in front of the opened cabinet. Victor looked into a face that he’d turned toward the wall a hundred times. Hauke, dressed in the fieldgrey uniform of a German officer, the silver emblem of a Viking ship embroidered on his sleeve. He was holding a tumbler of medicinal Scotch in his right hand.

“I’d like you to meet my long-lost brother.”

Victor looked from Hedy to Hauke, and from Hauke back to Hedy. With the evening sun on their faces, the two hyphens looked at him with the passion or emotion of a gun barrel.

Goddamn it, how could he’ve missed that?

Victor noticed their eyes were identical. He’d never realized it in Hedy before, what with his eyes drawn elsewhere. But hers, too, were of the color and temperature of the North Atlantic.

They gave Victor the willies: He knew exactly what kind of creatures he’d dredged up from its depths.