Different Seasons(105)

“What slips did he make?”

“The phone calls. That’s the main thing. When I slipped him the idea, I could see his eyes light up like a pinball machine.” Richler turned left and wheeled the nondescript Chevy Nova down the freeway entrance ramp. Two hundred yards to their right was the slope and the dead tree where Todd had dry-fired his rifle at the freeway traffic one Saturday morning not long ago.

“He’s saying to himself, ‘This cop is off the wall if he thinks Dussander had a Nazi friend here in town, but if he does think that, it takes me off ground-zero.’ So he says yeah, Dussander got one or two calls a week. Very mysterious. ‘I can’t talk now, Z-five, call later’—that type of thing. But Dussander’s been getting a special ‘quiet phone’ rate for the last seven years. Almost no activity at all, and no long distance. He wasn’t getting a call or two a week.”

“What else?”

“He immediately jumped to the conclusion that the letter was gone and nothing else. He knew that was the only thing missing because he was the one who went back and took it ”

Richler jammed his cigarette out in the ashtray.

“We think the letter was just a prop. We think that Dussander had the heart attack while he was trying to bury that body ... the freshest body. There was dirt on his shoes and his cuffs, and so that’s a pretty fair assumption. That means he called the kid after he had the heart attack, not before. He crawls upstairs and phones the kid. The kid flips out—as much as he ever flips out, anyway—and cooks up the letter story on the spur of the moment. It’s not great, but not that bad, either . . . considering the circumstances. He goes over there and cleans up Dussander’s mess for him. Now the kid is in f**king overdrive. MED-Q’s coming, his father is coming, and he needs that letter for stage-dressing. He goes upstairs and breaks open that box—”

“You’ve got confirmation on that?” Weiskopf asked, lighting a cigarette of his own. It was an unfiltered Player, and to Richler it smelled like horseshit. No wonder the British Empire fell, he thought, if they started smoking cigarettes like that.

“Yes, we’ve got confirmation right up the ying-yang,” Richler said. “There are fingerprints on the box which match those in his school records. But his fingerprints are on almost everything in the goddam house!”

“Still, if you confront him with all of that, you can rattle him,” Weiskopf said.

“Oh, listen, hey, you don’t know this kid. When I said he was cool, I meant it. He’d say Dussander asked him to fetch the box once or twice so he could put something in it or take something out of it.”

“His fingerprints are on the shovel.”

“He’d say he used it to plant a rose-bush in the back yard.” Richler took out his cigarettes but the pack was empty. Weiskopf offered him a Player. Richler took one puff and began coughing. “They taste as bad as they smell,” he choked.

“Like those hamburgers we had for lunch yesterday,” Weiskopf said, smiling. “Those Mac-Burgers.”

“Big Macs,” Richler said, and laughed. “Okay. So cross-cultural pollination doesn’t always work.” His smile faded. “He looks so clean-cut, you know?”

“Yes.”

“This is no j.d. from Vasco with hair down to his ass**le and chains on his motorcycle boots.”

“No.” Weiskopf stared at the traffic all around them and was very glad he wasn’t driving. “He’s just a boy. A white boy from a good home. And I find it difficult to believe that—”

“I thought you had them ready to handle rifles and grenades by the time they were eighteen. In Israel.”

“Yes. But he was fourteen when all of this started. Why would a fourteen-year-old boy mix himself up with such a man as Dussander? I have tried and tried to understand that and still I can’t.”

“I’d settle for how,” Richter said, and flicked the cigarette out the window. It was giving him a headache.

“Perhaps, if it did happen, it was just luck. A coincidence. Serendipity. I think there is black serendipity as well as white.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Richler said gloomily. “All I know is the kid is creepier than a bug under a rock.”

“What I’m saying is simple. Any other boy would have been more than happy to tell his parents, or the police. To say, ‘I have recognized a wanted man. He is living at this address. Yes, I am sure.’ And then let the authorities take over. Or do you feel I am wrong?”

“No, I wouldn’t say so. The kid would be in the limelight for a few days. Most kids would dig that. Picture in the paper, an interview on the evening news, probably a school assembly award for good citizenship.” Richler laughed. “Hell, the kid would probably get a shot on Real People.”

“What’s that?”

“Never mind,” Richler said. He had to raise his voice slightly because ten-wheelers were passing the Nova on either side. Weiskopf looked nervously from one to the other. “You don’t want to know. But you’re right about most kids. Most kids.”

“But not this kid,” Weiskopf said. “This boy, probably by dumb luck alone, penetrates Dussander’s cover. Yet instead of going to his parents or the authorities ... he goes to Dussander. Why? You say you don’t care, but I think you do. I think it haunts you just as it does me.”