Part 33 (1/2)

'I find it gives me consolation,' said Parker.

'So you have faith?'

'No.'

Werner looked confused. 'But why wear it if you do not believe?'

'That wasn't your question,' Parker replied. 'You asked if I had faith. I don't. Faith is belief based on spiritual conviction instead of proof. You could say that the nature of my convictions has changed recently. Faith is no longer an absolute requirement.'

'If that's true, I would not wish to be you,' said Werner. 'I don't want proof, not of what I now believe through faith. If I had proof, I would have no need of faith, and it is faith that sustains me. And, in my experience, people may say that they want proof, but the last time G.o.d gave it to them, they nailed it to a tree.'

They shook hands, and Parker left. Werner returned to his desk and switched off the lamp.

He would have to move Oran Wilde's body.

Werner's soup supper was well attended, and everyone stayed on for the short prayer service. Afterward, as he was making his farewells, he noticed a bottleneck at the door of the hall, and went to investigate.

The detective was there, handing out business cards.

'My name is Charlie Parker,' Werner heard him say. 'I'm a private detective. I found Ruth Winter's body out at Green Heron Bay. If you think of anything that might help in the investigation, anything at all, please contact me or Detective Gordon Walsh at ...'

Werner turned away.

62.

Demers arrived at Engel's bedside. As antic.i.p.ated, the Magistrate had reversed his decision and granted bail. Nyman had filed a new appeal against Engel's deportation based on health grounds. At the very least, deportation would now be delayed further.

Engel's wife and daughters were still on their way down to Manhattan from Maine, but their arrival was imminent. Demers didn't have much time.

Engel's left eye was half closed, and his mouth hung open. His face resembled a rock formation that had collapsed on one side. His right eye swiveled toward her.

'How are you feeling, Mr Engel?' she asked.

His reply was slurred, but it wasn't hard to pick out the words 'Like you f.u.c.king care.'

'I spoke with Isha Winter,' she continued. 'She denied that Baulman and Kraus are the same man. You lied to me.'

Engel started to gurgle, and the gurgle became a laugh. His body shook with the effort.

'Don't care,' he said. 'Going home. To Augusta. You lose.'

He stank, she thought. He reeked of vomit and corruption and old sins. He had partic.i.p.ated in murders untold, and was about to cheat the law at the last.

She leaned in closer to him. She had intended to ask him about Hummel, but she knew she would get nothing out of him now.

'I've spoken to the doctors,' she whispered. 'You're dying. You can expect another stroke in the next six to twelve hours. If it doesn't kill you, it'll leave you in a vegetative state, but even that won't last very long. You're never going to see your home again, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You lose.'

And his howls of rage followed her all the way down the hall until the elevator doors closed and silenced them.

63.

Werner visited Theodora Hummel the next day to offer his condolences on the sad death of her father. She was a modestly unattractive woman who had never married, and was her father's only child. Some work colleagues were with her in the family home when Werner called. She seemed surprised to see him. Her father had been a member of his congregation, but she had not set foot in his church any church in many years. She introduced Werner to her friends and offered him a drink. He then partic.i.p.ated gamely in the commemoration of the foul old man who was her father, although he did not struggle to come up with anecdotes to amuse them, for whatever his past Bernhard Hummel had been something of a character, even if much of his wit, and many of his pranks, came at the expense of others, and were underpinned by petty cruelty.

Eventually the friends began to drift away, until Werner and Theodora were left alone. He helped her clean up, and saw that she had done a lot of work on the house since her father was s.h.i.+pped off to Golden Hills. The kitchen, once dark and oppressive, with oak closets stained almost to black, had been extended and modernized, just as the living room was less forbidding than he remembered. Yet the changes were strangely characterless, and Werner felt as though he had wandered into the pages of a design catalog, and a cheap one at that. It wasn't that Theodora Hummel had bad taste: rather, she appeared to have no taste of her own at all.

Finally, Werner resumed his original seat, and waited for Theodora to join him. They sat on uncomfortable chairs, and pretended that they were celebrating the memory of a man who, in reality, would not be missed. It seemed about time to shed the pretense.

'It must be hard for you,' said Werner, 'living here surrounded by so many memories of your father.'

He didn't even try to disguise his sarcasm. No trace of Bernhard Hummel remained in the house, as far as he could see, not unless the first floor was a trap to fool the unwary and Theodora had preserved the second as a kind of mausoleum, all set to receive her father's ashes.

'What do you want, Pastor?' asked Theodora.

'To ask what you knew of your father's past.'

'I knew enough.'

'Enough?'

'Enough not to speak of it to him, or to others.'

So there would be no games, Werner realized. Good.

'I take it that you wish me to conduct the funeral service,' he said.

'I'm sure that's what my father would have wanted.'

'We have to be careful at such times,' said Werner. 'We are consigning a soul to its maker. There is, in the view of some, the requirement of an honest accounting. We cannot speak ill of the dead, yet we cannot whitewash their failings either. But perhaps, in this case, a private acknowledgement of them between ourselves may suffice.'

'My father was a n.a.z.i war criminal.'

'So it might be said.'

'He was helped to make a home in the United States by your father.'

'My father, like yours, made mistakes in his life.'

'But that was not one of them.'

'I couldn't comment.'

'I thought we were acknowledging sins.'

'We are: the sins of Bernhard Hummel. We need not trouble ourselves with those of others.'