Your Perfect Year(98)
“Are you okay?” Lisa asked.
“Yes. Fine.”
“Excellent. So, where shall we go?”
Hannah thought for a moment. “We could pay a visit to Little Rascals,” she suggested. “Maybe our mothers could use a little help.”
Lisa looked at her in amazement. “Are you sure?”
Hannah thought again, then nodded. “Yes. Totally sure. I suddenly have a burning desire to be with some lively kids.”
Lisa grinned happily. “That sounds more like the old you!”
53
Jonathan
Friday, March 16, 3:11 p.m.
“That can’t be true! You’re taking me for a ride, aren’t you?”
“Not at all. It was just as I’ve told you.” Leopold leaned back in his chair and stirred his coffee, clearly delighted to have rendered Jonathan speechless with his story.
“Yes, but who on earth would do such a thing?” Jonathan asked again, still unable to believe what he’d just heard. “Who, for God’s sake, would park a car right there in the red-light district with the keys in the ignition? And the ownership papers on the seat?”
“I have no idea,” Leopold replied. “And to be honest, I don’t care. I’ve simply accepted this nice gift handed to me by fate, and I don’t intend to concern myself with the whys and wherefores.” He speared a piece of strawberry flan with his fork and pushed it into his mouth.
“What kind of car was it?”
“An old Ford Mustang,” Leo replied through a mouthful of flan. “A classic, still in excellent shape.”
“A Mustang?”
“Yes.”
“Not a red one, by any chance?”
Leopold nodded in surprise. “Yes, a beautiful, gleaming dark red. What makes you ask that?”
“Well, I . . .” Jonathan tried to get his confused thoughts in order. “That’s so weird.” He tried again. “A few weeks ago, I saw a woman drive up the Reeperbahn in a red Ford Mustang.”
“Uh-huh,” Leopold said. “So maybe that was our good Lady Bountiful—who knows?”
“What did the documents say? The owner must have been named on them.”
“I’m not sure,” Leo said.
“How come you’re not sure?”
“Well, it’s not like I wrote it down. It was a man’s name, I can remember that much. Blank, maybe?”
“Blank?”
“Something like that. Stefan Blank, I think.”
“Hmm.”
“But it doesn’t matter in the slightest.”
“Didn’t you try to track down the owner?”
Leopold looked at him in incomprehension. “Why should I?”
“Well, I just think it would have been the right thing to do. You can’t keep a stranger’s car!” He couldn’t help but think of the diary, which he had in his jacket pocket as he always did, guarding it like a precious treasure. But that was a completely different matter; there was no comparison between a Filofax and an expensive car. And Jonathan had started out by doing all he could to search for the owner.
“I didn’t keep it, in any case,” Leopold went on. He didn’t look quite so casual as he had at the start of the cozy little chat; a deep crease had formed between his eyes.
“You can’t just sell a stranger’s car either.”
“I think you can, if it’s handed to you on a plate.”
“But—”
“Listen, my friend,” Leo interrupted brusquely. “I can understand someone like you having their qualms about it. But if you were in my shoes, you’d clutch at any straw that was handed to you. Wouldn’t you?”
Jonathan lowered his eyes in shame and murmured, “I guess so.”
“There you are. So that’s what I did. If someone parks their car complete with keys and papers in full view of the world on the Reeperbahn, I take that as an invitation for whoever finds it to take it and do what they want with it. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes,” Jonathan said, looking back up at him.
“I should say so.”
“Did you contact the police to check everything was aboveboard?”
Leopold laughed out loud, slapping his hands on his thighs. “The police? Are you crazy?” He snorted with mirth. “What do you think they’d have done with someone like me? They’d have immediately accused me of stealing the car and thrown me in jail.” He shook his head with an indulgent smile. “No, of course I didn’t go to the cops. I grabbed the car and made sure I got rid of it at the first possible opportunity.”
“And how, if I may be so bold, does one get rid of a car like that?”
“Well, you don’t take it to the Ford dealer,” Leopold said helpfully. “I took it to the Billhorner Brückenstrasse in the Rothenburgsort district. It’s a massive commercial strip, one dealer after the next.”
“I don’t know it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. It’s full of shady characters. You know—imports and exports, scrap yards that look more like car graveyards except for the colorful flags strung along the chain-link fences.”
“Chain-link fences?”