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  “This number is for calls made from Future-Ride? Not calls received?”

  “Exactly. The calls were always made after seven at night, which is late for clients to be around and in need of a phone.”

  “Still, it could be a client, say in an earlier time zone.”

  “Except that the calls were made to a residence, not a business. And it’s this time zone. The address is 5722 Gist Avenue. In your town.”

  “In Baltimore?”

  “Yes. The home owner’s name was Hans Baeder.”

  “Was? As in, Hans moved away or died?”

  “He died last year. All the information we could compile on Mr. Baeder is in the package I sent you. One last thing, Mr. Gilmore. The calls stopped in June of last year. This could all be irrelevant. And what, if anything, it has to do with your man in white, I cannot say. But it’s well worth your checking out. Of that, I am certain.”

  “Why are you so certain? Who was Hans Baeder?”

  “Someone in the Nazi Party.”

  “You mean the American Nazi Party?” Griffin responded. “The white supremacists? The skin heads? Lots of tattoos? Those clowns?”

  “No. I mean a German Nazi. Hans Baeder was one of the real Nazis, the ones who worked for Adolph Hitler. Call me when you’ve made some sense of that.”

  Reaching for the Fed Ex package, Griffin agreed he would.

  *

  Griffin dumped the contents of the Fed Ex package onto the bed. Annie went back downstairs, leaving Griffin to the materials Grace had sent.

  Griffin looked first at the blueprint. The Future-Ride space was unexpectedly small, only eight rooms: Alexandra Webb had an office, as did De-BOR-ah Miller; there was a kitchen and the alcove with the phone; there was the conference room where Griffin and Bobby had met Alexandra and De-BOR-ah; and there were two other rooms, barely larger than cubicles, for analysts. The biggest room was Alexandra Webb’s corner office.

  Griffin heard banging noises coming up from the living room. The sound was barely audible over the chunka, chunka, thunk of the bedroom air conditioner. To Griffin the air conditioner and the banging combined to sound a little like a disco struggling to get airborne.

  Next Griffin turned to the three lists of phone calls. Alongside each number called was information Grace had compiled: the frequency that number had been called; who the phone called was registered to; whether that location was a business or a residence; and the dates of the calls.

  The lists for calls made by Alexandra Webb and De-BOR-ah were dozens of pages each. That, Griffin concluded, was to be expected. Busy executives would make many calls every work day over the course of three years.

  The banging noises continued from the living room. What was Annie doing down there?

  Griffin looked next at the calls made from the alcove phone. This third list was no more than a few pages. One number on the alcove phone list caught his attention, as it had caught Grace’s. The number had been called 19 times over 19 months. The calls ended in June 2016 after starting in November 2014. The calls were always made after seven at night. To a residence in Baltimore. As Grace had said, the phone at that residence was registered to a man named Hans Baeder.

  The noise continued to drift up from downstairs. The AC kept up its chunka, chunka, thunk refrain.

  Next he picked up the information on Future-Ride personnel. The company had undergone heavy staff turnover. Perhaps it was the lingering recession. Perhaps, Griffin reflected, it was the unpleasantness of working with De-BOR-ah Miller.

  He looked at the dates of employment for each individual. He compared these dates with the dates when the calls had been made to Hans Baeder. Only two people had been at Future-Ride the entire 19 months during which the calls to Hans Baeder were made: Alexandra Webb and De-BOR-ah Miller. One of the women kept calling Hans, though Griffin had no idea why.

  Griffin picked up the last document Grace had sent. It was two pieces of paper, stapled. Who staples pages anymore, Griffin asked himself; Grace apparently. On the top of the first page, in sixteen font letters appeared:

  BAEDER, HANS CHRISTIAN

  The first line below that was:

  BORN: Stuttgart, Germany, October 29, 1927

  Then,

  JOINED WEHRMACHT: September 1943

  Poor soul, Griffin thought. Hans joined – had to join, Griffin assumed – the German Army at all of fifteen.

  RANK ENTERING WEHRMACHT: Private

  RANK AT TIME OF GERMANY’S SURRENDER: Private

  JOINED NAZI PARTY: September 1943

  From his reading Griffin knew that the vast majority of German soldiers were not Nazis, they were German soldiers. Why would the Nazi Party take or even want a fifteen year old? Especially one who never rose above the rank of private?

  EMIGRATED TO UNITED STATES: September 4, 1954

  PROFESSION: carpenter

  A carpenter in Baltimore? What would someone at a Manhattan investment firm possibly want with a Baltimore carpenter, and an elderly one at that?

  EMPLOYER: Bow Saw Construction Company/ Catonsville, Maryland

  HOME ADDRESS: 5722 Gist Avenue/Baltimore, MD

  DURATION OF RESIDENCE: 1964-2016

  More than half a century in the same house! Griffin thought to himself. There’d been stretches of his life when Griffin lived three different places in the same year.

  CITIIZENSHIP STATUS: Uncertain at this time; he may have been denied citizenship due to his Nazi Party membership

  DIED: Baltimore, July 4, 2016

  CAUSE OF DEATH: Pleurisy

  PLACE OF BURIAL: Woodlawn Cemetery, Baltimore

  Griffin smiled at the irony of the German immigrant who fought against the Unites States in the Second World War dying in America on the Fourth of July.

  *

  Griffin walked over to the air conditioning and switched it off. The silence was momentarily deafening, replaced by what he now recognized as hammering in the living room. Griffin walked downstairs, into the living room, and stopped at the source of the hammering. Annie was putting together a bookcase. He was still holding the pieces of paper with the skeleton of Hans Baeder’s biography.

  “Nice bookcase,” he said to Annie, his mind very much elsewhere. “It’ll be a nice addition.”

  “It’s not just an addition, Griffin,” Annie corrected him. “This will be the first bookcase for your books in our house together.”

  “Annie, I’m sorry, it’s just that-”

  “It’s just that you won’t really be able to enjoy the bookcase until this is over.”

  He did not bother to wiggle away from her observation. “Yes.”

  “Unless of course you want to finish this?”

  Griffin’s lack of skill with home repair was an ongoing joke between them.

  “Uh, sure,” he said. “Which end of the hammer do you hold again?”

  By way of answer, Annie hammered in another nail with three quick, well placed strokes.

  “Is Kit in his garage apartment?” Griffin asked, as Annie reached for the next nail.

  “He stopped by when you were asleep.” She started hammering again. Over the noise she said, “He said to tell you he’s available if you need him. Until then, he’s watching a M*A*S*H* marathon.”

  “I’ll go get him. While I’m getting Kit? Can you do a MapQuest for me? 5722 Gist Avenue, in Baltimore. A man name of Hans Baeder lived there.” He summarized for her the biographical details he’d learned about Hans Baeder. “Why was Hans of so much interest to someone at Future-Ride? Maybe seeing the house he lived in will give me some idea.”

  She pointed the hammer at him again, this time the business end. “Sure. I’ll MapQuest.”

  “Thanks. You are aware you shouldn’t use the hammer on the computer.”

  “I’ll use it on your head if you don’t clear out of here.”

  TWELVE

  June 12

  6:27 pm

  Kit, designated navigator, consulted the MapQuest directions Annie had
run off.

  “Stay on this until we get to Park Heights. Couple more miles. Then hang a right. If you’d of let me drive the Triumph I’m leasing, we’d be there now. Now that is one sweet ride.”

  “Thanks,” Griffin replied, shuddering at the thought of Kit behind the wheel. “But we’ll be there soon enough.”

  They crossed over I-83. The car radio played “Call Me Maybe.” For whatever reason, Griffin thought of the man in white and knew he would wince with displeasure at the song. They started up the long hill toward the Pimlico race track on their left. A bit later they turned onto Park Heights.

  “Quick left, first street you see,” Kit ordered.

  They made a few turns in a neighborhood of one way streets and battered houses down on their luck for decades now. They parked in front of 5722 Gist Avenue.

  “Tell me again what we’re doing here at Hans Baeder’s house?” Kit said. “What’s Hans Baeder got to do with the man in white?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  “Because someone at Future-Ride phoned Hans Baeder, here, at his house. Called every month for 19 months. Remember the surveillance tape Grace sent? First thing the man in white did coming up from the Arazzo dungeon empty handed was call Future-Ride. Why would he do that? We know Hans Baeder is connected to Future-Ride, the calls every month show that. Is Hans connected to the man in white?”

  “Is he?” Kit asked.

  Getting out of the car, Griffin said, “Why don’t we have a look around, maybe that will enlighten us.”

  *

  He stood on the sidewalk to 5722 Gist waiting for Kit to catch up. Kit wore an Army green tee shirt and camo pants, attire inspired by the M*A*S*H* episodes he’d been watching. Griffin pulled out his phone.

  “Who are you calling?”

  Griffin pointed his phone at a FOR SALE OR RENT sign, with agent’s name and number, attached to the front porch railing.

  “Let’s see if we can get inside Hans Baeder’s old house.”

  The agent was in his office on Reisterstown Road. He promised to be by in fifteen minutes to show them the place.

  “In the meantime,” Griffin said, “let’s have a look around out here. See what we can learn about Mr. Baeder.”

  5722 Gist Avenue was a brick duplex. Griffin guessed the house was two bedrooms and built in the late 1940s. The brick was an exhausted looking red. The three second story windows were the old style of 16 tiny panes of glass. The houses on both sides of 5722 had gotten their windows upgraded, but Hans Baeder had not.

  Eyeing the tired house from the sidewalk, Griffin said, “Hans Baeder got 19 calls in 19 months from someone at Future-Ride. Why in the world would a New York investment company, with a minimum $750,000 investment, repeatedly call the carpenter who lived here? Kit, does this look like the residence of a man with that kind of money to invest?”

  Kit agreed it didn’t, not even close. They started across the uncut front yard, grass knee high in places. Kit was hurrying to keep pace with Griffin and tripped over something hidden in the grass.

  “What’d you find?” Griffin asked.

  “It found me,” Kit replied. He pushed the grass to one side with an investigatory toe.

  “Metal base of something.”

  Griffin looked as well. “From an old flagpole,” he concluded.

  “They really should cut this grass sometime this century,” Kit complained.

  The two men walked up a short flight of brick steps to a small, rectangular cement porch. Much of the porch was taken up by an old fashioned wooden glider, needing painting. Kit asked, “What’s with the pillow on the glider? The glider’s too small for me to lay down on. Had to be too small for Hans.”

  “Hans lived here well into his eighties, almost ninety. He may have needed the pillow for a bad back.”

  They stared through the picture window to the living room, empty except for a battered recliner. On the recliner rested another pillow.

  Kit and Griffin walked around to the back of the house. They looked in through the back door at the tiny kitchen. A single frying pan with broken handle sat on the stove. The cabinet drawers had been left open and they could see the shelves were all empty.

  They returned to the front yard to wait for the real estate agent.

  Griffin and Kit killed time playing Give Me a Word. It was a game they’d started playing in first grade.

  Griffin would say to Kit, “Give me a word,” and Kit would write a word on a piece of paper. Kit would read the word aloud and Griffin, within seconds, would alphabetically arrange all the letters in that word.

  Waiting for the real estate agent they went through instantaneously (a,a,e,i,l,n,n,n,o,s,s,t,t,u,y) and stupefy (e,f,s,t,u,y). Kit was about to read Griffin foreshadow (a,d,e,f,h,o,o,s,w) when the agent arrived.

  *

  The real estate agent turned out to be a tall, impeccably dressed – black slacks and dark purple shirt open at the collar that Kit noted approvingly – and constantly smiling black man named Charles Johnson. The man had rounded cheekbones and a wide, welcoming face. Shaking hands with Kit and Griffin, the agent insisted they call him CJ.

  CJ apologized as he unlocked the front door.

  “Sorry about the dust,” he said. Griffin was reminded of the man in white trudging back through the dust of the Arazzo Castle dungeon, bitterly disappointed. Would this effort turn out the same?

  “The place has been empty since the prior owner died last summer. As I understand it, his only surviving relative lives in Germany and it took time to track her down. Meanwhile, this place sat empty.” CJ’s smile never flagged. “This is the living room. Nice afternoon sun through the picture window here.”

  They moved into the dining room. A chair with three legs filled one corner. Along the wall were shards of glass, suggesting someone had swept up broken glass with less than a thorough broom.

  “Who was the previous owner?” Griffin asked. He looked away from CJ as he did. Griffin knew he was not the actor Bobby was. Griffin could not look at someone as affable as CJ and lie.

  “German gentleman, Mr. Baeder. He lived here for-ever. Kept to himself. Did you notice the porch glider outside? He sat on that for hours, I understand. He had a flagpole out there in the front yard. Love to sit here and watch the flag in the breeze. The flagpole came down in a storm. By then Mr. Baeder was too sick to put up another one.

  “Neighbors say he didn’t talk much. When he did, Mr. Baeder had a noticeable accent. Never lost it. I suppose some parts of your past are so strong you can’t escape them. In his late eighties and he had a lady friend, believe it or not.” The smile, if anything, brightened. “Slap a coat of fresh paint on these walls and this room would sparkle.” They entered the kitchen. There was more broken glass in here. Griffin picked up the frying pan with the broken handle.

  “CJ? Any idea why this pan was left behind? The living room recliner and chair in the dining room too.”

  “Left behind is right.”

  The smile kept going. Griffin was well aware the smile was a salesman’s smile from a talented salesman in full sales mode, but, still, you couldn’t help but feel good with CJ.

  Who explained: “After the owner died – as I say his name was Baeder – his will said that his possessions should all be donated to charity. There was nothing else to worry about – no money in the estate. They left behind the stuff so old and beat up the charity couldn’t sell it at auction.”

  They started up the stairs to the second floor. Their steps echoed loudly – and sadly, Griffin thought – throughout the empty house. Some broken furniture and a pan with the handle snapped off? Is that all that’s left of a man living here more than 50 years?

  “CJ, any idea which charity it was the Hans Baeder left his stuff to?”

  CJ’s smile slipped a little.

  “How’d you know his name was Hans?”

  “I didn’t know,” Griffin said, eyes downward in the general direction of the top s
tep. “I just guessed. Hans is such a common German name.”

  The smile popped back onto CJ’s face.

  “Some charity that sponsors music for inner city children,” he explained. “The charity operated through the Peabody Institute, you know the music school downtown? The furniture, pots and pans and whatever else he left behind was auctioned off to raise funds for instruments and lessons. What’s still here today wasn’t up to auction standards.

  “As you can see, two bedrooms up here. The bathroom has all original fixtures. You could rehab if you’re interested in buying. Some folks prefer the original.”

  They went into the smaller bedroom. It was empty except for a broken bookcase on its side.

  They left that room and went into the other bedroom. “Here’s the master bedroom.”

  Griffin’s eyes went instantly to the far wall.

  “Oh, that,” said CJ. “Shown a lot of properties in my time, never seen anything like that.”

  Floor to ceiling, the far wall was musical notation, the lines and notes all done in pencil. The music started with a cleft in the upper left corner and covered the entire wall, a total of six lines of music. Griffin estimated there must have been a couple hundred notes in there.

  “Incredible,” Griffin said, without need of acting. “I’ve never seen anything like it either.”

  He pulled out his phone, which he pointed at the wall.

  “CJ, any reason I can’t snap some pictures of that wall?”

  “Snap away.”

  Griffin took twelve pictures, making sure every note was captured.

  Griffin knew only Hans Baeder could have done this. As surely as he knew that Kit would soon turn up in CJ-inspired black slacks and deep purple shirt open at the neck, Griffin knew this was Hans Baeder’s doing.

  Griffin could also tell that as Hans had worked his way across and down the wall his hand had gotten shakier. The precision of the carefully drawn ovals of the first notes steadily gave way to the sprawling, lopsided notes of the sixth line of music. Hans was probably dying by the time he finished this, Griffin realized.