Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon Page B

talking, Frank was thinking of old Vilmos’s watches; he could see old Vilmos again in that room, always dimly lit, where the sunlight trickled in through the closed blinds, winding up the watches one by one, putting them to Frank’s ear, making them strike, making the tiny automata move.
    â€œWe could get anything we wanted out of him,” sighed Kromer, “considering his position, you understand … It’s his passion. He practically drools over them. Somewhere he read that the king of Egypt has the finest collection of watches in the world, and now he’d give anything for his country to declare war on Egypt.”
    â€œFifty-fifty?” Frank asked bluntly.
    â€œYou know where to find watches?”
    â€œFifty-fifty?”
    â€œHave I ever tried to cheat you?”
    â€œNo. But I’ll need a car.”
    â€œThat’s more difficult. I could ask the general, but that might not be a smart thing.”
    â€œNo … A civilian car. Just for two or three hours.”
    Kromer didn’t ask for details. He was a lot more prudent than he liked people to think. Since Frank was offering to get the watches, he preferred not to know where they came from, or how Frank was going to get them.
    Still, he was curious. What he was even more curious about was Frank himself, the way he had of making a decision so calmly.
    â€œWhy don’t you just pick one up in the street?”
    Naturally that would have been the simplest thing to do, and at night, for the fifteen or twenty miles he would have to drive, there’d be practically no risk. But Frank didn’t want to admit he couldn’t drive.
    â€œJust find me a car and someone you’re sure of, and I’m almost positive I can get the watches.”
    â€œWhat did you do today?”
    â€œI went to a movie.”
    â€œWith a girl?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œDid you feel her up?”
    Kromer was a letch. He chased girls, especially poor ones because that was easier, and he liked them very young. He loved to talk about it, nostrils twitching, lips thick, using the crudest terms, relishing the most intimate details.
    â€œDo I know her?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWill you introduce me?”
    â€œMaybe. She’s a virgin.”
    Kromer wriggled in his chair and moistened the end of his cigar. “Do you want her?”
    â€œNot particularly.”
    â€œThen let me have her.”
    â€œI’ll see.”
    â€œIs she young?”
    â€œSixteen. She lives with her father. Don’t forget about the car.”
    â€œI’ll give you the answer tomorrow. Meet me at Leonard’s around five.”
    That was another bar they went to, in the Upper Town, but because of where his place was, Leonard had to close at ten every night.
    â€œTell me what the two of you did at the movies … Timo! A bottle. Go on, tell me.“
    â€œThe usual. Her stocking, her garter, then …”
    â€œWhat did she say?”
    â€œNothing.”
    He was going home. There was a chance his mother had kept Minna in. Lotte didn’t like to let them go out the first few days, because some of them never came back.
    He would go to her, and, after all, it would be just like it was Sissy. In the dark he wouldn’t know the difference.

4
    H E WALKED with his hands in his pockets and his coat collar turned up, his breath visible in the cold air, along the brightest street in town, but even here there were great patches of darkness. The meeting was in half an hour.
    It was Thursday. It had been on Tuesday that Kromer had spoken to him about the watches. Wednesday, when Frank had joined him at five o’clock at Leonard’s, Kromer had asked him, “Do you still want to do it?”
    To older people, it must have seemed strange to see them, so young and talking together so seriously. God knows they were deciding serious things! Frank caught sight of himself in one of the mirrors of the café, calm