The One From the Other by Philip Kerr Page B

couple of glasses. Before I could ask if he wanted any water with his whiskey, the American had filled both glasses to the brim. He held his glass against the light and said, slowly: “You know, I wish I could remember who it is that you remind me of.”
    I let that one go. It was a remark only an American, or an Englishman, could have made. In Germany today nobody wants to remember anything or anyone. The privilege of defeat.
    “It’ll come to me,” he said, shaking his head. “I never forget a face. But it’s not important.” He drank his whiskey and pushed the glass to one side. I tasted mine. I was right. It was good whiskey, and I said so.
    “Look here,” he said. “It so happens that your hotel suits my purposes very well. As I said, I need two rooms for one or two nights. Depends. Either way I have money to spend. Cash money.” He took a fold of very new deutschmarks from his back pocket, slipped off a silver money clip, and counted five twenties on the desk in front of me. It was about five times the going rate on two rooms for two nights. “The kind of money that’s a little shy of too many questions.”
    I finished my drink and allowed my eyes to drift to the passenger still seated in the Buick outside and felt them narrow as, a little shortsighted these days, I tried to size him up. But the American was there ahead of me.
    “You’re wondering about my friend,” he said. “If perhaps he’s the lemon-sucking type.” He poured another couple of drinks and grinned. “Don’t worry. We’re not warm for each other if that’s what you were thinking. Anything but, as a matter of fact. If you ever asked him his opinion of me, I should imagine he would tell you that he hates my guts, the bastard.”
    “Nice traveling companion,” I said. “I always say, a trip that’s shared provides twice the happy memories.” I took my second drink. But for the moment I left the hundred marks untouched, at least by my hand. My eyes were on and off the five notes, however, and the American saw it and said:
    “Go ahead. Take the money. We both know you need it. This hotel hasn’t seen a guest since my government ended the prosecution of war criminals at Dachau last August. That’s almost a year, isn’t it? No wonder your father-in-law killed himself.”
    I said nothing. But I was starting to smell the rat.
    “It must have been tough,” he continued. “Very tough. Now that the trials are over, who wants to come and take a vacation here? I mean, Dachau’s not exactly Coney Island, is it? Of course, you could get lucky. You might get a few Jews who want to take a stroll down memory lane.”
    “Get to the point,” I said.
    “All right.” He swallowed his drink and palmed a gold cigarette case from the other pocket. “Herr Kommissar Gunther.”
    I took the offered cigarette and let him light me with a match he snapped into life with a thumbnail while it was still only halfway up to my face.
    “You want to be careful doing that,” I said. “You could spoil your manicure.”
    “Or you could spoil it for me? Yes?”
    “Maybe.”
    He laughed. “Don’t get hard-boiled with me, pal,” he said. “It’s been tried. The krauts who tried it are still picking pieces of shell out of their mouths.”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “You don’t look like a tough guy. Or is that just this season’s look for tough guys?”
    “What you know is of incidental importance to me, Bernie, old boy,” he said. “Let me tell you what I know, for a minute. I know a lot. How you and your wife came here from Berlin last fall, to help her old man run this hotel. How he killed himself just before Christmas and how she cracked up because of that. How you used to be a Kriminal Kommissar at the Alex in Berlin. A cop. Just like me.”
    “You don’t look like a cop.”
    “Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment, Herr Kommissar.”
    “That was ten years ago,” I said. “Mostly I was just an inspector. Or a private