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  “Mel.”

  Griffin remembered that in their brief conversation, Mel’s son had not asked to be called by his first name. Griffin was certain the briefness of the conversation had nothing to do with it; they could talk until the Apocalypse and Tom Morton would never make that request.

  “Mel, do you know how or where during the war Hans was wounded?” Griffin’s default plan was to at least learn what he could about Hans’ unit. That, he sensed, might explain why the teenaged Hans was a member of the Nazi party. “Do you know which unit he served in? Did he ever say?”

  “Hans lost all of his little finger and half the ring finger of his left hand. He never talked about getting wounded, but I couldn’t exactly miss that.”

  “His unit, Mel?”

  “He didn’t say and I didn’t ask. You got t’understand, Griffin. The war was a huge unspoken between us. I joined up in 1944. Lied and said I was 18; I was 16. I got to Europe in time to be in the battle for Hurtgen Forest.” His voice took on a sudden, unexpected ferocity. “My Christ, it was awful. The cold. The killing.”

  More softly, he went on. “I didn’t want to know what Hans’d done in the war. He didn’t want to know what I’d done. Easier for both of us that way. So, no. I couldn’t tell you what unit of the German army Hans served in.”

  The rain pounded more quickly through the downspout. Griffin knew he was not going to learn from Mel anything about Hans and Mozart or why Hans Baeder joined the Nazis. Griffin knew he shouldn’t even ask about the Nazis. Mel wouldn’t know and the question would unnecessarily hurt him, who so clearly respected Hans.

  *

  “Help me up, Griffin.”

  Griffin did. There was a hollowed out feel to the man. It occurred to Griffin that Mel Morton was quite possibly dying. Did Mel know? If so, he wasn’t especially troubled by the fact.

  “Where was I?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  A half minute of silence followed. The rain continued to push noisily through the downspout.

  “There’s a picture on the shelf behind the desk, Griffin. Would you bring that over?”

  Griffin did and handed to picture to Mel. Mel brought the picture very close to his eyes. A smile filled his face and left him looking much younger.

  “This picture was taken late fifties. See those two men standing close together?”

  Griffin saw a pair of black men, broad shouldered and wearing overalls.

  “Joe and Tom Robinson. Cousins. Great workers. You could not wear those guys out. That’s me next to them.”

  Griffin could tell it was Mel Morton, the better part of a lifetime ago. Looking first at the man in the picture and then at the man holding that picture, Griffin had never felt the briefness of life so sharply.

  “And that’s Hans to my right.”

  Hans Baeder would have been early thirties when this picture was taken. Griffin thought Hans looked much older. He was so sickly thin he made Mel Morton and the Robinson cousins look as wide as linebackers.

  “Hans had pleurisy,” Mel said. “That’s why he’s so skinny.”

  “Pleurisy is an inflammation of the lungs,” Griffin stated. “Pleurisy typically leaves its victims with a chronic, painful cough.”

  “Which Hans had. He contracted pleurisy at age ten. While he worked here, and after he retired, I drove him to the doctor’s four times a year. Codeine helped some. Some days the coughing was so bad he’d ask me to wrap his ribs in adhesive tape. That helped some too. He never complained and he never stopped working. But the cough was always there.

  “Hans liked to work alone. He preferred the solitude. He was a wonderfully skilled carpenter. Tommy is wrong about that – carpenters like Hans are not a dime a dozen.”

  “Why did Hans prefer to work alone, Mel? His cough?”

  “More than that, Griffin. He escaped into the quiet. But Hans didn’t always work by himself. I loved working alongside Hans. Hours would pass without the need for either of us to say anything. We knew what we were doing and we knew each other that well. It was a true pleasure working with Hans.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “Let me tell you. During the war Tom Robinson had served on a destroyer sunk by a kamikaze off Okinawa. Joe Robinson was in the Coast Guard, making the run to Murmansk through the U-boats and the Arctic cold. None of us minded silence.”

  Griffin looked again at the photograph. It was not a posed photo, with smiles encouraged for the camera. The men had been captured on film while loading lumber into a truck. It’s a sunny morning. There is an almost tangible sense of the men looking forward to the workday.

  “They’re all gone,” Mel said. The youth-inducing smile had left his face completely. “Nate, Joe, Hans. My wife took this picture and she’s gone too.” He shivered. “Won’t be all that long til I’m gone as well.”

  “Mel, by any chance do you remember Hans mentioning a New York company named Future-Ride?”

  “New York? I don’t think Hans went to New York in his life. Was Future-Ride a construction company?”

  “No. An investment firm.”

  “An investment company!” The surprise in Mel Morton’s voice led to a brief coughing fit. Once he recovered, he told Griffin, “I can’t picture Hans having anything to do with an investment firm. What would he have to invest?”

  Neither man spoke for a while. The silence was so sharp Griffin nearly jumped when it thundered outside. For a while he stared at a file cabinet, dented and, he was willing to bet, empty. He walked over to Mel’s desk. He picked up the pad of paper there. Other than an old rotary phone, which Griffin figured was disconnected, the pad was the only item on the desk. On each page appeared, in oversized letters: THINGS TO DO TODAY. Every page was completely blank.

  On the top page Griffin wrote his name and home phone number. “If you remember Miriam’s last name – Hans’ girlfriend - call me, please.”

  Griffin had not learned anything about Hans Baeder and the wall of music. Nor had he learned anything about Hans and the Nazis. Still, he felt his time well invested. He was starting to get a sense of Hans Baeder as a person, and to like the man.

  “I spend my day here, Griffin. Maybe someone from the old days will stop by. It happens. Not as often as it used to, but it happens.”

  “Mel, I hope it happens today,” Griffin told him and two minutes later was back outside in the rain.

  *

  No sense in running to the car, Griffin decided. After 50 rain-thick feet Griffin felt like a load of wash in the rinse cycle. He stopped running. At some point you just can’t get any wetter; might as well walk.

  He mentally replayed the conversation with Mel Morton. Not only hadn’t Griffin learned why Hans Baeder was a Nazi, the fact seemed more improbable than before. A fifteen year old, even one weakened by pleurisy, serving in the German army, that Griffin could understand. The demand for manpower in those times must have been desperate. But why would the Nazi Party want Hans?

  Griffin’s phone rang as he was reaching for his car keys.

  “Mr. Gilmore? This is Sergeant Ahearn, Baltimore County PD. Our mutual friend Grace asked that I give you a call.”

  “A pleasure to hear from you, Sergeant,” Griffin truthfully said.

  “May I inquire? Were the results of my tutoring on picking locks worthwhile? I realize you can’t get into specifics. Was your evening – some sort of fundraiser, I believe you said it was – a success?”

  “You’re a skilled teacher, Sergeant. That part of the evening went fine,” replied Griffin, referring to his breaking into the display case of keys at the Baltimore Museum of Art fundraiser. “Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the entire night.”

  “This may or may not be connected. There has been a development Grace said would be of interest to you. Can you stop by the Towson station right away, if you’re not too busy, sir? Should be entertaining. If you’re available.”

  “I am available, Sergeant. But do I have time to change out of we
t clothes?”

  SEVENTEEN

  June 15

  12:27 pm

  “Mr. Gilmore,” Sergeant Ahearn said, “I want you to meet a young woman with all the makings of a fine cop. Not even twenty weeks out of the academy and she’s got the instincts of someone on the streets for twenty years. Officer Felice Fernandez, this is Griffin Gilmore.”

  Griffin had read someplace that you can tell you’re getting older when the cops start looking younger than you are. Shaking hands with Officer Fernandez, Griffin thought she looked to be in middle school.

  Speaking to the other cop, Sergeant Ahearn explained. “First time I worked with Mr. Gilmore, it was right before this past Christmas and snowing. He went into a residence at night, unarmed and alone, to help us capture an armed felon – who had killed someone only hours before.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Officer Fernandez, and Griffin could tell she was.

  “No need for that,” he corrected her. “I was hardly selfless. For doing what I did the charges against me were dropped. What have you got for me, Sergeant?”

  “Officer Fernandez, why don’t you tell us about your morning?”

  She was short and stocky, with the blocky upper body of someone who enjoyed her time in a weight room. Her black hair was kept bristling short. Her cop shoes were brightly polished.

  “This happened just after eight this morning. I was in my cruiser on Perring Parkway. No rain yet and rush hour traffic heating up.

  “Everybody else is barreling down Perring Parkway, usually over the speed limit, hurrying to get into work. I notice this one car is keeping precisely to the posted limit. The car stops at a light that just turned yellow, when everybody else plows through. Nobody drives that defensively, not without a reason. I’m thinking, this is the behavior of somebody with reason to be cautious.”

  “Who was the driver?” Griffin asked, wondering why he’d been called here to the police station for this.

  “The driver is a Caucasian male, early twenties. Blond, well dressed. I’m two lanes over and I can see this guy’s head swiveling every which way, looking around. Nervous, drugged up, or both. No passengers.

  “I notice a rear light is out. That’s reason enough for a stop. When the light changes I put on the cherries and siren, pull the car over. My partner stays in the cruiser, calling it in. I approach the vehicle, ask for license and registration, all very standard procedure. When the driver reaches for the registration, the glove compartment slides open up wide enough I spot a handgun in there, a Glock.

  “He knows I’ve seen the gun. He hops out of the car and dashes off into traffic. I arrest him, probably saving his life in the process, by yanking him out of the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler. Haven’t gotten a thank you note yet.”

  “You might be waiting a while for that,” Sergeant Ahearn warned. “Don’t let it keep you up nights.”

  Office Fernandez continued. “On the floor of the back seat of the car, in gloriously plain view, is a shoe box. The box is filled, not with shoes, but with cocaine. A righteous bust,” she concluded.

  “A truly righteous bust,” Sergeant Ahearn agreed. His sleepy-eyed look never changed, but Griffin could tell he was delighted with Officer Fernandez’s performance. She, Griffin could also tell, was thrilled with her sergeant’s praise.

  “While I’m seizing the Glock I have me a look around in the glove compartment. I find a whiskey bottle. A receipt from 1996, believe it or not. I find road maps, precisely folded. Can’t remember the last time I saw road maps.”

  Why am I hearing this, Griffin asked himself.

  “Also in the glove compartment, I find this.”

  Officer Fernandez handed Griffin a business card.

  “I’ve got one of those,” Griffin said, surprised.

  It was a business card from Future-Ride.

  “Does yours smell like this? Take a sniff,” Sergeant Ahearn invited.

  Griffin did. “Whisky.”

  “Not the expensive stuff, either. I’m getting another smell in there, but I can’t place it.”

  Griffin sniffed again. “That’s Aqua Velva, Sergeant.”

  “My God, you’re right,” Sergeant Ahearn almost shouted. To Officer Fernandez he said, “Told you this guy was good.”

  “Not good enough to understand what’s going on or why I’m here.”

  “Maybe this’ll help you. Turn over the card,” Sergeant Ahearn ordered.

  Griffin flipped the business card over and read what was printed on the back in blue ink: 5722 GIST AVENUE

  *

  “Wait a minute,” Griffin said. He was disappointed in himself for not realizing this earlier. “This car you stopped, Officer? Was it a 1996 Buick Riviera? Registered to a Miss Andrea Platts, deceased, formerly of Oakecrest Village retirement community?”

  “All correct. How did you know?”

  “Lucky guesses,” Griffin told them. Obviously neither cop was fooled. “License plate, Maryland tags DNR 187?”

  “No, different plates. The perp admitted in my earlier questioning the plates had been switched,” Officer Fernandez informed Griffin. “He says he didn’t do it, switching the plates.”

  “He say who did switch the plates?”

  “Not yet.”

  “That 5722 Gist Avenue address,” Sergeant Ahearn broke in, “is presently unoccupied. It used to belong to someone named-”

  “Hans Baeder. He died last summer.”

  “5722 Gist Avenue is in the city, Mr. Gilmore. I contacted some folks I know in the Baltimore PD. That house had been burglarized. I spoke to the cop who investigated the burglary. I wasn’t sure he’d remember it, but he did. As best he can tell, the burglary occurred during Hans Baeder’s funeral last July. That is the sort of detail a cop is likely to recall.”

  “Did the Baltimore City cop say what was stolen? Is it possible to tell?”

  “Usually you can tell, sure. This cop, name of Bob Brown, says he’s pretty certain nothing was taken. There was something somebody was after, definitely, but they didn’t find it.”

  “What makes him say that? How can he tell they didn’t find it? Whatever it was someone wanted to find.”

  “The house wasn’t just tossed – thoroughly searched – it was absolutely trashed. Cabinets left open. Drawers scattered on the floors. Bookcases thrown to the floor so hard they broke; chairs broken, too. Glass shattered all over the place. Someone was good and mad. Bob Brown guesses the burglar was paid to find something and got enraged when he couldn’t. Folks in the duplex next door probably would have called the cops for all the noise, but they were at Hans Baeder’s funeral.

  “Grace sent me a request to keep an eye out for anything we came across involving 5722 Gist Avenue. She seems to view me as your guardian angel. Based on your performance in December, I am more than willing to oblige. She did not explain why I should watch out for that address. She doesn’t even seem terribly upset that the address is in Baltimore City and I’m a County cop. Grace never was a stickler for jurisdiction. When Officer Fernandez showed me the business card – with the address on the back – from the glove compartment, I called you. Thought you might like to watch Felice question the driver about the card.”

  “Who’s the driver?”

  “The perp’s name is Timothy Dean,” Sergeant Ahearn answered. “Twenty two. From Worthington Valley. Father a surgeon, mother a banker. They have a condo in Ocean City and one in Colorado for the skiing, with a sauna for the après-skiing. A cabin on the coast of Maine. Ocean City isn’t good enough for the family, of course. He attended private high school. Dropped out of Princeton. Pushed out is more accurate.

  “That’s the great thing about this country, isn’t it?” Sergeant Ahearn kept on, his voice rising with the sarcasm. “Even those born to every advantage in the world can throw it all away to drugs.”

  “About the Glock you seized from the glove compartment?” Griffin asked.

  “Ballistics tells us the gun has never been fire
d at all. We’ve traced it. The Glock was stolen from a Harford Road gun shop last year. No way of knowing how many times the gun has been sold and resold on the street. Glocks are popular with bangers and thugs. Those guys don’t give receipts. The Glock’s a dead end, I’m afraid.”

  “How about the business card? Fingerprints?’

  “It’s been dusted for fingerprints. Yielded nothing. Judging by your face, that doesn’t surprise you.”

  “It doesn’t,” Griffin replied, reminded of the man in white slipping on surgical gloves in the museum and later in the Arazzo Castle surveillance tape.

  “Can you ask Mr. Dean if he knows who wrote on the back of the card? How’d it get into the glove compartment? Whatever you can learn about that card, I’d appreciate.”

  There was some link between Timothy Dean and Future-Ride; the business card proved that. And there was a link between Timothy Dean and Hans Baeder; the Gist Avenue address on the back of the business card showed that. Did that mean there was a link between Timothy Dean and the man in white? If so, what was at the center of these links?

  “We know one thing about the card already,” Sergeant Ahearn said.

  “We do?”

  “Look at the seven in the address.”

  Griffin caught his point immediately. “The seven has a horizontal line through it,” he observed. “That’s the European style, not American.”

  Did that, Griffin asked himself, mean the man in white had written the address? Could the man in white have an interest in Hans Baeder?

  Officer Fernandez started walking toward the interrogation room.

  “And, Officer?” Griffin called after her. “Can you find out if he got this card from a Spaniard?”

  *

  Griffin looked again at Sergeant Ahearn. He hadn’t noticed the cop’s effort at growing a mustache since their last meeting in December.