Shark and Octopus Read online

  “You expecting anyone?” Griffin asked Annie.

  Annie said she wasn’t.

  “Anyone expecting anyone?”

  No one said yes.

  “It’s too late for the Fed Ex guy,” Griffin said. “I’ll go see who it is.”

  He walked to the front door, figuring he’d open it on a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses or a neighbor.

  On the porch stood a very attractive woman in her mid-to-late twenties, wearing pale blue medical scrubs. She had the dark skin of an Asian Indian, but by her confident manner Griffin could tell she’d been raised in this country. There was absolutely nothing submissive about her. He had never seen her before.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Have I got the right place?” She glanced at a piece of paper in her hand. “Dr. Venkatesan’s handwriting isn’t the best.”

  “If you said Venkatesan, then you’re in the right place,” Griffin answered. “You here to meet Saif?”

  She nodded, embarrassed.

  “Did his father send you or his mother?”

  “He did. He’s one of the docs I work with.”

  “You’re at GBMC then.”

  “For my residency. Dr. Venkatesan gave me this address, but I think his wife put him up to it. I met her once. She was definitely checking me out.”

  “Ever had her samosas?” Griffin inquired. “Simply killer.”

  “You didn’t think they were too spicy?”

  “Is it possible for food to be too spicy? I’ll get Saif.”

  “Wait.” For the first time uncertainty crept into her voice. “I’ve got all of twenty five minutes more for my dinner break. I’m just doing this as a favor. I don’t want to waste my time or Saif’s. He’s probably busy.”

  “He is busy. But, no, I don’t think this will be a waste of time. In fact, I know it won’t be. Let me go get him.”

  Griffin hurried through the house to the back porch.

  “Someone here to see you,” he told Saif.

  “Here? To see me here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Didn’t catch her name. But you’ll want to see her.”

  “What about-”

  “Just go, would you? She’s on the front porch, waiting for you.”

  Saif gave Griffin a puzzled look, but got up from his chair.

  Less than two minutes later, he was back. Griffin had suspected that might happen, so he stood in the kitchen blocking the doorway to the back porch.

  Saif tried to step around him. “I need to get something on the back porch. I left my laptop-”

  “No you don’t,” Griffin said. He crossed his arms and continued to block Saif’s path. “You’re looking for a chance to back out. What’s her name?”

  “Janice Singh.”

  “And that’s as far as you got, I bet.”

  “Didn’t you see her, Griffin? She’s gorgeous.”

  “I noticed. And what did you tell the gorgeous Janice?”

  “I told her I’d be right back.”

  Everyone edged into the dining room to look through the bay window at the woman on the porch. She was checking her watch.

  “You’re being rude, Saif,” Annie told him. “Get back out there.”

  Saif looked Griffin full in the face and his panic was nearing melt down. “What do I say to her?”

  “Thank her for coming by.”

  “Right.”

  “And whatever you do, don’t forget to tell her you’ll see her again.”

  “Right.”

  “And, Saif?”

  “What? What?”

  “Try not to let her see you drool.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  June 20

  4:00 pm

  Miriam Freitag lived on the fourth floor of a Tudor-ish apartment building on Park Heights Avenue, just outside the Baltimore City line. Griffin and Annie knocked on Miriam’s door on a humid Saturday afternoon precisely at four o’clock. Griffin’s sense of Miriam was that she was a woman who expected punctuality.

  She must have been lurking behind the door because she answered the knock immediately, letting loose a demanding, “Who is it?” There was nothing frail or demure about Miriam Freitag’s voice.

  “It’s me, Ms. Freitag. Griffin Gilmore,” he called back. “You remember, Ms. Freitag? You and I spoke on the phone. I’m with Estate Evaluators. I want to ask you some questions about the estate of Hans Baeder. Can we come in?”

  What if Miriam changed her mind about seeing him? Griffin had no idea what he’d do if she kept the door closed. She didn’t; the door slid open. But she kept the chain latched.

  “Who’s this then?” she asked, waving a thumb in Annie’s direction.

  “This is my associate, Ms. Anne Knaack.” Griffin had requested Annie wear an outfit designed to put an elderly woman at ease. Everything Annie had on was varying shades of beige and brown. Griffin thought there was absolutely nothing dowdy about the way she looked. “Can we come in, please?”

  Miriam unlatched the door and Griffin and Annie started into the apartment. She asked to see Griffin’s license, which he provided. Without warning, Miriam then grabbed a chunk of Griffin’s hair and tugged his face down close to hers. Since Griffin was about a foot taller, this required a serious tug. She compared the face on the license with the one yelping with pain in her foyer. Annie coughed into her palm to hide her giggle.

  After ten seconds, which seemed much longer to Griffin, she released him. Without apology she said, “You’ll have tea with me? Mr. Gilmore? Ms. Knaack? Tea? On the porch? Both of you? Please?”

  Miriam Freitag was tiny and grey haired. She stood with her back bent slightly forward, as though carrying a great weight.

  Annie and Griffin agreed tea would be delightful. They followed Miriam as she stepped briskly through the living and dining rooms and onto the glassed-in porch, hands out as she went. She’s nearly blind, Griffin realized. Only years of familiarity with the apartment allowed her this mobility. Griffin assumed she seldom if ever left this place. The apartment had the claustrophobically stale smell of the elderly.

  “Lovely music,” Griffin said, to make conversation as they walked. A classical music CD was playing in the living room. He guessed, “Is that Mozart?”

  “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik,” she answered.

  Griffin and Annie exchanged a glance. That was the music Hans Baeder had scored on his bedroom wall – with changes of his own.

  As the three of them settled into chairs, Miriam said, “This silver tea set is my grandmother’s from Dresden. It’s my last connection left to that time and place.”

  She poured the three cups of tea without spilling any. The tea pot gleamed in the afternoon sun. Griffin had a very precise mental image of Miriam sitting alone of an afternoon, polishing the tea service, impatient for the day to end.

  They sipped in uncomfortable silence, uncomfortable for Griffin at least, until Miriam spoke. “You want to ask me about the estate of Hans Baeder? You’re just following up today? That’s what you said on the phone. These are just routine questions about Hans for your company?”

  “Estate Evaluators. Yes, ma’am.”

  She sipped her tea while considering what Griffin had said. Griffin got the clear sense she wasn’t taken in.

  “You want to ask about Hans?” she asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “But first,” Annie slipped in, “we’d like to know about you.”

  *

  Annie and Griffin had prepped their questions but Annie’s question was one they hadn’t planned. He worried it might prove a tactical mistake until Miriam replied, pleased to be asked, “Me? Very different and very much the same as Hans.

  “I was born in Dresden, March 18, 1932. My father was an economics professor at university there. As the Nazis gained power his position became less secure. He was not only Jewish but a socialist. Two of his faculty colleagues, men he’d invited to our apartment for schnapps, informed on hi
m to the Nazis. We left Germany in the middle of the night, 1936. All I remember of the world outside our apartment was a cherry tree I liked to climb.”

  She smiled at the memory. As Griffin watched the smile dissolved.

  “We escaped to America. My father taught at Columbia and Chicago and Carnegie-Mellon. He became progressively disillusioned with the socialists and by his death had become a Reagan Republican.”

  The look on her face remained distant and impassive. She stopped speaking, sipped some tea, continued.

  “I did not marry until I was 38. An old maid, I was called, after I left the room. Then I met a doctor who stunned everybody by asking me to marry him. I wasn’t convinced. My friends thought me a fool for hesitating. This was my last chance to grab the gold ring. Did I want to spend my life as ‘Aunt Miriam’ to everyone else’s children?

  “So, foolishly, I agreed. He drank most nights, my husband the doctor. And most nights when he drank, he beat me. Once again, I escaped in the middle of the night. This time from Scarsdale. This time with my husband passed out on the bathroom floor. I chose Baltimore because it was the one place my husband announced he had no desire to visit. His grandmother had cut him out of her will and he was angry at her. Good for her. She lived in Baltimore.

  “I wound up as an office manager for a firm of architects downtown. That’s how I met Hans.”

  “Hans Baeder?” Griffin burst out. His interruption seemed to hang in the air, the way a car door slamming in the night lingers. He knew he needed to throttle back a bit. More normally, he said, “That’s the Hans you’re referring to.”

  He doubted Miriam noticed. She held her tea cup airborne, forgotten, a foot above the table as she began her story of meeting Hans Baeder. They met at a dinner where Bow Saw Construction was given an award for renovating an old Quaker meeting house on Charles Street.

  Griffin was grateful Annie was along because Miriam was facing her, offering Annie the story. Miriam likely would not have been as talkative with Griffin alone.

  To keep the words flowing, Annie asked, “So Hans was a carpenter?”

  “Hans was a first rate carpenter. Beautiful craftsmanship. He had great patience and a gentle touch.”

  “Not all carpenters do,” Annie offered. The comment pleased Miriam greatly. “Miriam, weren’t you and Hans a couple for many years?”

  At first Griffin feared his question had offended her. Rather than answer it, she ordered him, “Step over to the porch railing, Mr. Gilmore. Tell me what you see.”

  *

  “Miriam, starting from your apartment building, looking out I see a parking lot and pine trees nearly as high as the building.”

  “Past the trees, Mr. Gilmore. Can you read the name on the building on the far side of Park Heights?”

  “Temple Oheb Shalom.”

  “And you can’t see it from here, but the building to our right is the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. Now, it’s a little after four on a Saturday afternoon. Are there any people on the sidewalks?”

  “Quite a few.” Griffin went on to describe the people he was seeing, since that seemed to be her point. “The men are all wearing skull caps. Black slacks, sports coats, all black. The clothes look thick and woolen-y. They can’t be all that comfortable in this heat. There’s some fringe sticking out from underneath their suit coats.”

  “That’s the prayer tallis.”

  “Some of the men are wearing those wide brim hats. The men are all bearded.”

  “And the women?”

  “White jackets, black skirts, many ankle length. Hair pulled back. Shoes that would be called sensible, though perhaps not stylish.”

  “See any children?”

  “Lots of kids. Large families. All the kids are dressed in black and white like their parents. Walking along like miniature adults.”

  “This, Mr. Gilmore,” Miriam explained, “is the place I have lived since escaping to Baltimore all those years ago. When I met Hans my friends were…”

  “Disappointed?” Annie suggested.

  “Disgusted. ‘How can you date a Nazi?’ they accused me.

  “How did they know Hans had been in the Nazi Party?”

  “They didn’t know, Mr. Gilmore. He’d been in the Wehrmacht. That they knew. For them, that made Hans a Nazi. Hans never denied serving in the army. He was just a child! That was bad enough for them. If they’d known he actually was in the Nazi Party, I can’t imagine how they would have reacted. Just being with Hans was such a shonda – such a scandal.

  “I had a friend, died last year, wonderful woman. She’d been in the concentration camp at Treblinka. She would touch the number tattooed on her forearm whenever she heard I’d been spending time with Hans. She was too decent to say anything, but that touch was a knife to my heart.”

  “How long were you and Hans together?” Annie asked.

  “Forever, Ms. Knaack. Forever and no more than an instant, it seems now. Then Hans got sick. Sicker, I should say.”

  “He had pleurisy,” Griffin said, still standing by the porch railing.

  “Over the years it got worse. When he got so very sick I moved him here.”

  “Forgive me, Miriam. When did you move Hans here?’

  “June of last year.”

  “Did you happen to check his phone messages after he was gone from his house?”

  “There were no phone messages, Mr. Gilmore. Hans never wanted an answering machine.”

  Griffin now had the answer to why the phone calls from Future-Ride to Hans Baeder’s house stopped. Hans had moved in with Miriam and was not there to pick up the phone. Without an answering machine, no more calls could have been completed. Why the calls were made and who was making them remained unanswered questions.

  “Hans died here. In my bedroom down the hall. He never expected to survive the war. He told me that many times. He told me that during the war his dream was to die in a warm bed. Hans may have survived the war, but he never escaped it. At least he died in a warm bed. Mine.

  “The afternoon of Hans’ funeral I went to his house. He wanted me to have a few items. The house had been broken into. I called the police. Furniture was moved, chests searched, cabinets opened, glass broken and bookcases smashed. The policeman figured the thief was looking for money. Brown, the officer’s name was. If the thief was looking for money, he was wasting his time. There was none to take.”

  It wasn’t money Dude was looking for, Griffin had known that for a while. Dude was after something else. For what and who sent him there to look, Griffin still couldn’t say.

  “After the policeman left, I couldn’t stop crying. I cleaned up his house a little, in tears the entire time. Poor Hans, even in death he found no peace.”

  *

  Griffin returned to his seat and pretended to take a sip of tea. Now was the time to ask the questions no one but Miriam Freitag could answer.

  “Miriam? Miriam, do you know why Hans joined the Nazi Party?”

  “He was forced to. He’d have been shot if he didn’t.”

  Griffin’s assumption – his hope, truly – about Hans being forced to join the Nazis had been confirmed. In his relief Griffin brought his cup down too quickly, banging it with a thonk against the table.

  “Hans was the quietest man I ever met,” she replied, in unstated rebuke to Griffin’s clumsiness. “He preferred carpentry projects where he could work alone hours at a stretch. No memories to chase him. The war was awful for Hans. Surely you can understand. His dream growing up was to play the violin. As a child he was a prodigy. But after the war he could not play the violin or even bear to listen to music like this.”

  She waved a hand in the air to indicate the CD playing.

  “Mozart. Growing up, Mozart was his idol. This joy was taken from him. He even refused to speak German.”

  The Mozart suddenly seemed very loud. Griffin thought of the wall in Hans’ bedroom, covered with a mixture of Mozart and his own composition.

  “Are you sure, Miriam
?” Griffin insisted, he hoped not too aggressively. “About Hans not listening to Mozart? Say, at his house.”

  “Usually we met here, Mr. Gilmore. But I know Hans never owned records or CDs or even a radio. When he wasn’t working he liked to swing on his porch glider. He enjoyed the peace. Hans was entitled to that peace. I hope I brought him some in our years together.”

  “I’m sure you did,” Annie reassured her.

  “Thank you, dear. After my disastrous marriage I wasn’t merely happy with Hans, I was grateful for him. You know, he seldom spoke of the war.”

  For the first time Miriam hesitated and Griffin and Annie could tell that what was to follow was painful for her to admit.

  *

  “One night I asked him about it. The war. This was the first night we slept together. Do I shock you, Mr. Gilmore? A divorced woman in her sixties having sex?”

  “I, uh, well-”

  “Good for you, Miriam,” Annie said, speaking over Griffin’s stumbling.

  “When I asked, Hans tried not to answer. Oh, why wouldn’t I leave him alone?”

  The anguish in her voice was so shattering Annie gasped.

  “I wish so desperately now I had. He was entitled to his peace. But I persisted. Eventually he talked about his work in the war, the trips he took to Amsterdam. To Leipzig. To Brussels, to Belgrade. Paris and Italy-”

  “Where in Italy?” Griffin interrupted. Annie sent him a slow down, Griffin glance. “Did Hans say?”

  “Rome and Florence, of course. He stayed a few days in a town called Arazzo. The castle there. Arazzo was not long after he was wounded.”

  Griffin and Annie shared a glance. Miriam never noticed. She resumed her story.

  “They traveled always at night, for fear of the American and British planes. Always back to Berlin to the Music Office. At least at first. Later, when the bombing became too great, the stolen instruments were taken to Bavaria. That’s where Hans was wounded, when his train was attacked by the planes one morning. This was outside Ulm, August 1944, the last summer of the war.