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  “Any papers or memoirs that exist should be in the study.” Schnelling leads Kramer past a closed door that was once their bedroom.

  Kramer stops, turns the knob, but the door is locked.

  “The body was found in there,” Schnelling says, and Kramer jerks his hand away as if burned. “Nothing of interest, I assure you. The police surveyed it thoroughly at the time.”

  Kramer nods and feels his stomach flip-flop. He wants to get this over with, get away from the smell of disinfectant, the black-and-white memories on the walls. It is claustrophobic; it is her life since leaving him, and he wants no part of it. He is a stranger to it, an interloper.

  “I suspect the papers will be in the file cabinets,” Schnelling says as they reach the study.

  The first room to be converted after Reni bought the old farm, this study has not changed over the years. The old rolltop desk is still there along with the Olivetti portable he wrote some of his first stories on. He immediately determines to take this with him: a reminder of better days. The Schiele nude they bought in Vienna still hangs on the wall along with a red-and-black woven bag from Crete. Memento of their first visit there.

  On impulse, he reaches into the bag and feels at its bottom the rough edges of pottery shards they gathered at Phaistos in 1972.

  Schnelling is squinting at him from the wooden file cabinet, and Kramer sheepishly withdraws his hand from the bag, palming several of the shards as he does so. More keepsakes from a forgotten time.

  “Perhaps you could check the drawers, Mr. Kramer.”

  They go about their searches for several minutes, neither speaking. For Kramer, the contents of the room are like a leap into the past: this was the Reni he knew and loved, not the collector of rustic housewares.

  In the second drawer of the desk, under a rubber-banded collection of tax returns, he finds an old photo. He and Reni at the ruined palace of Phaistos, snowcapped Mount Ida behind them repeating the silhouette of the palace ruins. They look so young in the photo, young and trusting. The world is theirs as they squint into the strong winter sun, arms around each other. Kramer’s hair is worn long, and his beard is just filling in. Reni wears her blonde hair braided and coiled on top of her head. The Cretans loved her hair; the children in villages would come up to her to touch it, giggling and frightened.

  Kramer remembers the day this photograph was taken. They stayed at the government-run Xenia Hotel the night before, walked in the ruins under a full moon, collected shards in its shadow, and told each other stories of what life must have been like four thousand years ago. And back in the room, they had made love with the moonlight streaming in the open window, caressing their naked skin with its blue light. Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms, reading D. H. Lawrence by the strong moonlight.

  A perfect moment; Kramer realized it even then. He wanted to stop time, to keep them forever encapsulated in that perfect moment.

  “There’s nothing here.” Schnelling closes the last file drawer. “Have you had any luck?”

  Kramer quickly slips the photo into his coat pocket, remembering now something else about that perfect moment. Gerhard came to join them the next day at Phaistos. He was the one who took the photo.

  “Nothing yet,” Kramer says.

  Another half hour of looking turns up nothing. If there are files for a memoir, they are not in the study. Kramer finishes with the scattering of papers on top of the desk. Jottings for a proposed newspaper article on skinhead violence, a shopping list, some scratched-out figures of a failed household budget. But no memoirs.

  “Lumber room next, I guess,” Kramer says.

  Schnelling looks confused.

  “A storage room off the kitchen. At least it was when I lived here. Maybe it’s been turned into an herb room by now.”

  Kramer leads the way toward the far wing of the house away from the study. More improvements here: the kitchen floor has flagstones now, covered in rag rugs. More pine and country kitsch. But the lumber room remains as it was, a larder never used as such by Reni. Here boxes are piled on top of one another like the skyline of a miniature city.

  “Oh my,” Schnelling says.

  Kramer nods in agreement. “None of these are labeled. I guess we just start digging through them.”

  The lawyer checks his watch.

  “Late for a very important date?” Kramer says.

  “I do have other clients.”

  “Take off, then. I can handle this alone.”

  Schnelling seems mightily relieved. “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.” Kramer shoots him his competent, likable grin.

  Schnelling departs, giving Kramer the keys to the house and an admonition to be sure everything is locked up upon leaving.

  It takes him two hours to sort through the boxes of old clothes, books, and memorabilia. Most of it is Gerhard’s. No sign of memoirs, but another photo to add to his collection: the Magnificent Seven taken in the courtyard of the Palais Forster in Vienna, where they all went to school together in 1968. Unbeatable, unstoppable they had declared themselves. He, Reni, and Gerhard form the center of the group in the photo. Then Randall in back, clowning as always, fingering rabbit ears over Kramer’s head. Rick, the artist, with paint-smeared jeans kneeling in front. Helmut, with his Trotsky glasses and notebook in hand, the Wittgenstein buff, standing a few feet separate from the rest. And Maria, the refugee from Prague. God, how he has tried to forget Maria over all the years. How he has wanted to erase all memory of her. She is fragile and beautiful like a pre-Raphaelite waif, a flower in her hand as she stands on Kramer’s right. Reni is in the middle, as always; the focus of the picture, so sure looking, so in control.

  A sudden noise from the front of the house jolts him into the here and now. A heavy footfall or something being tipped over. He freezes for a moment, then calls out, “Anyone there? Wer ist da?”

  No answer. He leaves the tiny lumber room and crosses the kitchen. Another clunk, like a heavy footstep coming from beyond the living room.

  Schnelling’s come back, he tells himself, taking a deep breath. You’re just spooked by being in Reni’s house alone.

  He keeps going toward the study and, as he passes the locked bedroom, he hears a distinct sound coming from inside. As if somebody is blundering around in there, knocking against the walls. A cold fear grips him.

  Don’t be an ass, Kramer, he tells himself. Just check it out. Find the key and open the door. He pulls out the ring of keys Schnelling left with him, tries three before finding the right fit, then turns the lock. He looks around momentarily for a weapon, something to wield. Nothing is handy, and he forces himself to open the door.

  A rushing in his face almost knocks him over: the beating of wings and a frantic clawing at his cheek. He throws his arms up over his face, and the bird flies back into the bedroom. Kramer looks quickly into the room: the lace curtains billow in from an open window, and a large crow finally manages to find its way out again.

  Kramer’s heart is pounding. Someone obviously left the window open to get the smell out, allowing the bird in. Mystery solved. He looks at the bed, at the pink mattress with no sheets. Is that where Reni was lying dead all those days? he wonders. Is that where they found her?

  The cross draft caused by the open door suddenly blows the window shut with a bang. He goes to it, bolting it closed. There is no more of Reni’s spirit in here to set free.

  She has gone.

  Taking her memoirs with her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I’m not sure this is a job for the criminal police, Herr Kramer. After all, we have no proof such memoirs existed.”

  Kommissar Boehm of the Bad Lunsburg Police Bureau leans back in his desk chair, making the springs groan. He is a large man, taller than Kramer, and thick-set. A caricature of a New York Irish cop, Kramer thinks.

  “It is a long shot
, I agree,” Kramer says. “But you found no signs of illegal entry at the Müller house?”

  “Oh, there were signs, all right. The neighbors, after being alerted by the mailman, had to force their way, remember? Through the solarium, I believe.”

  “I mean other than that.”

  Boehm shakes his head, pouting his lips as he does so to show how stupid the suggestion is.

  “I suggest you contact Frau Müller’s friends. Perhaps she deposited the memoirs elsewhere. If they ever existed.”

  Kramer says nothing, beginning to feel a damn fool for wasting Boehm’s time. But his instincts tell him something is wrong. He has made a living from following these instincts for the story. Why the addition of his name to Reni’s will if there was no literary estate to execute? And why a full month before her death? If she was feeling despondent, suicidal, wouldn’t the addendum have been closer to the actual time of her death? A small thing to others, maybe, but Kramer knows the way Reni thinks … thought. And even more, if she were suicidal, why would she care about such worldly matters as memoirs?

  He says none of this to Boehm: A police Kommissar, Kramer figures, does not make his living from following instinct. Boehm is obviously the empirical sort; give him hard and fast clues to follow, not a tingling of the hairs at the base of the neck, which motivates Kramer.

  “I spoke with her father after examining the house,” Kramer says. “According to him, Reni once mentioned memoirs, but he never saw them.”

  Boehm squints at him perceptively. “And?”

  Kramer reassesses the man’s acumen. “Yes, there was something more. Herr Müller also says that Reni, Frau Müller”—he grits his teeth as he uses the title—“was under considerable strain. That she increasingly invented reality of late.”

  Boehm folds massive butcher’s hands over his blue suit coat. “There you have it, then. Perhaps these memoirs were merely in Frau Müller’s mind. Something she intended to do one day, but never got around to. You’ll excuse me for saying so, but she was a rather eccentric sort.”

  It is the logical conclusion: a woman prepared to take her own life was far from what one would call stable.

  “As I said,” Boehm goes on, “ask her other friends. Check further. If something turns up, feel free to get in touch once again.”

  Kramer, a professional at interviewing and better at ending interviews, is impressed with the ease with which Boehm hands him his hat. He feels like an hysteric, running to the police at the slightest bump in the night. But if there are memoirs …

  “Herr Kramer?”

  Boehm is standing, waiting for Kramer to do likewise. He gets hurriedly to his feet.

  “I am sure it has been a shock for you. Your friend’s death and the responsibility laid upon you by her will. She would certainly appreciate how seriously you are taking that responsibility. Perhaps too seriously?”

  Kramer leaves the police station and heads for his hotel. There is nothing more to be done in Bad Lunsburg. Kommissar Boehm is probably right, Kramer decides. I am taking this too seriously. The curse of the newspaperman: always looking for the hidden story. Sometimes there just isn’t one.

  Kramer arrives at the hotel just as the day clerk is putting a note into his box. He sees Kramer and looks relieved.

  “This is for you, Herr Kramer. It is already the second message from this person today.”

  There is only one man he knows who could answer to the description “this person.”

  “He sounded somewhat impatient,” the clerk continues.

  Kramer can just imagine.

  “Thanks. I’ll place the call from my room.” Kramer takes the note, opens it. Blunt, to the point: Call Marty.

  Kramer gets to his room, splashes some water on his face, then sits on his bed and places the call. It’s lunchtime, but Marty, with all the restaurants of the Latin Quarter available to him, usually takes food in his Rue Vaugirard office. The call is answered on the third ring.

  “Hey, Marty.”

  “Jesus, Sam. Where are you?”

  “You know where. You called me here twice.”

  “I called some number that secretary of yours gave me. You could be in Outer Mongolia for all I know.”

  “She’s a reporter, Marty, not a secretary. Just happens she answers the phones, too.”

  Marty chooses to ignore this. “Where’s the goddamn Belgrade story, Sam?”

  “I got involved in Germany. Kate didn’t tell you?”

  “She tells me your number. I’m supposed to interrogate her?”

  Great. Kramer asked her to make excuses. Excuses aren’t in Kate’s fine print, obviously.

  “An old friend of mine died, Marty. Renata Müller.”

  Quiet for a moment. Rumination from Paris. Then: “The German peacenik? Somebody kill her?”

  “Suicide. Reuters carried it. You must have seen the clips.”

  “I see lots of clips. There a story in it?”

  “She was my friend, for God sake.”

  “Great. How was the funeral? Over? Fine. You get flowers, put ’em on her grave, and get back to Vienna.”

  “I’ve been named her literary executor.”

  “Sam, I don’t give a shit what they call you. I need you back in Vienna. Now.”

  “There were supposed to be memoirs, but I can’t find them.”

  He knows it sounds weak, but it’s all he can think to say.

  “Sam, this Müller. She might have been a friend, okay? I’m truly sorry she’s dead. I grieve, okay? But she’s not news. You understand. She’s olds. She’s from the dark ages of the 1980s. I need your ass back in Vienna.”

  Kramer says nothing for a time, thinking one day he would like to stick a kosher dill in Marty’s mouth and shut him up, friend or not.

  “Sam. You still there?”

  Kramer tells him he thinks so. Hard to tell anymore.

  “No haiku today, Sam. Okay? I got a belly on fire up to my ears. People crawling all over me from head office in London, and you’re not helping any, you know that?”

  “How can I help you, Marty?”

  From the other end, Kramer hears the clatter of antacid tablets being shaken out of a plastic bottle. A pause as Marty chews a couple. “You can get me that fucking story out of Belgrade, is what you can do for me.”

  “These things take time. You want quality or quantity?”

  “Quantity, for shit’s sake. Or haven’t you figured things out yet? This isn’t the old days, Sam. Not the old foreign correspondent in a trench coat pounding out the story on a portable Underwood. Today, you don’t have a laptop computer and a fancy mobile phone, you’re out of luck. We’re competing with the TV, Sam, with this new Internet, too. We’ve got a TV on paper, for Christ’s sake. Four-color, upbeat stories. You get it? I don’t need quality when I got four-color. I went to bat for you when you wanted out of the field a couple of years ago. Fine, I said. Take the Central Europe desk. Our man in fucking Vienna. But I need product, Sam.”

  “It takes time.”

  But Marty’s not interested in excuses.

  “Look, I’ll get you the story,” Kramer says to Marty’s sudden silence. “I got to go now. There’s a call waiting. It could be from Belgrade.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Sam. You can do that to the others, but we go back. There’s no call waiting. Hell, I don’t even know if you’ve got an angle on a story. But you just get me one. Quality or not. Or start looking for gainful …”

  “Good-bye, Marty. Hope the fire abates.” Kramer hangs up, stopping Marty mid-sentence.

  The rain has turned to snow flurries by the time Lufthansa Flight 382 lands at Vienna Schwechat Airport. It’s a polka-dot dusk, and the heavy smell of snow is in the air as Kramer and the rest of the passengers on the half-full plane descend to catch the ground transport into the terminal buildi
ng. They gather their luggage—Kramer’s got only his carry-on and the Olivetti he rescued from Reni’s—and pass through bulletproof glass, past elite Cobra antiterrorist troops with machine pistols strapped around their necks. A plump hausfrau in an out-of-fashion Loden coat is waiting with three blond boys. The kids run to their dad, the guy who was sitting in front of Kramer on the plane sneezing nonstop into a filthy handkerchief. He gathers them up in his arms. Suddenly, he’s a hero, not a sniffling businessman riding coach.

  It’s too late for the office today. Kramer catches the Schnellbahn into the middle of the city, to the Landstrasse, and takes the number two line underground from there to the Josefstädter Strasse. He prides himself on using public transport, keeping an old Deux Chevaux garaged on the Lenaugasse only for the occasional outing to the country.

  Through the glass in the front door to his building, Kramer sees Frau Kulahy lumbering up the stairs. He waits outside, not wanting to have to exchange pleasantries with the old porter.

  Viking, her Alsatian, has obviously just finished adding another pile of his crap to the city streets, for he moves sprightly up the stairs. But the dog senses Kramer at the door and turns his head to growl at him as he always does. The Frau jerks his lead and labors up the last two stairs on heavily wrapped legs. Kramer got a look at those legs unwrapped one day and still regrets it: a tortured relief map of blue varicose veins from a life of too much pork. Kramer is convinced that all of Austria will one day succumb to pork fat clotting up various veins in their bodies. The piggies’ revenge.

  He waits like a criminal until she and the dog go into their apartment, then unlocks the large front door and quickly passes along the tiled entryway. He does not bother to check his mail in the row of brass boxes to the right of the door, hurrying up the stairs before Frau Kulahy can take up position at her sitting room with its curtained windows letting off onto the landing.