Field Gray
FIELD GRAY
ALSO BY PHILIP KERR
THE BERNIE GUNTHER BOOKS
The Berlin Noir Trilogy
March Violets
The Pale Criminal
A German Requiem
The One from the Other
A Quiet Flame
If the Dead Rise Not
A Philosophical Investigation
Dead Meat
The Grid
Esau
A Five-Year Plan
The Second Angel
The Shot
Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton
Hitler’s Peace
FOR CHILDREN
Children of the Lamp
The Akhenaten Adventure
The Blue Djinn of Babylon
The Cobra King of Kathmandu
The Day of the Djinn Warriors
The Eye of the Forest
The Five Fakirs of Faizabad
One Small Step
FIELD GRAY
A BERNIE GUNTHER NOVEL
Philip Kerr
A MARIAN WOOD BOOK
Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons
a member of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
New York
A MARIAN WOOD BOOK
Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2011 by thynKER Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kerr, Philip.
Field gray: a Bernie Gunther novel / Philip Kerr.
p. cm.
“A Marian Wood book.”
ISBN: 978-1-101-51381-1
1. Gunther, Bernhard (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6061.E784F54 2011 2010045006
823'.914—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
“I don’t like Ike.”
—GRAHAM GREENE, The Quiet American
This book is for Allan Scott.
FIELD GRAY
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Author’s Note
1
CUBA, 1954
That Englishman with Ernestina,” she said, looking down at the luxuriously appointed public room. “He reminds me of you, Señor Hausner.”
Doña Marina knew me as well as anyone in Cuba, possibly better, since our acquaintance was founded on something stronger than mere friendship: Doña Marina owned the largest and best brothel in Havana.
The Englishman was tall and round-shouldered, with pale blue eyes and a lugubrious expression. He wore a blue linen short-sleeved shirt, gray cotton trousers, and well-polished black shoes. I had an idea I’d seen him before, in the Floridita Bar or perhaps the lobby of the National Hotel, but I was hardly looking at him. I was paying more attention to the new and near-naked chica who was sitting on the Englishman’s lap and helping herself to puffs from the cigarette in his mouth while he amused himself by weighing her enormous breasts in his hands, like someone judging the ripeness of two grapefruits.
“In what way?” I asked, and quickly glanced at myself in the big mirror that hung on the wall, wondering if there really was some point of similarity between us other than our appreciation of Ernestina’s breasts and the huge dark nipples that adorned them like mountainous limpets.
The face that stared back at me was heavier than the Englishman’s, with a little more hair on top but similarly fiftyish and cross-hatched with living. Perhaps Doña Marina thought it was more than just living that was dry-etched on our two faces—the chiaroscuro of conscience and complicity perhaps, as if neither of us had done what ought to have been done or, worse, as if each of us lived with some guilty secret.
“You have the same eyes,” said Doña Marina.
“Oh, you mean they’re blue,” I said, knowing that this probably wasn’t what she meant at all.
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that you and Señor Greene look at people in a certain way. As if you’re trying to look inside them. Like a spiritualist. Or perhaps like a policeman. You both have very searching eyes that seem to look straight through a person. It’s really most intimidating.”
It was hard to imagine Doña Marina being intimidated by anything or anyone. She was always as relaxed as an iguana on a sun-warmed rock.
“Señor Greene, eh?” I wasn’t in the least bit surprised that Doña Marina had used his name. The Casa Marina was not the kind of place where you felt obliged to use a false one. You needed a reference just to get through the front door. “Perhaps he is a policeman. With feet as big as his, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
“He’s a writer.”
“What kind of a writer?”
“Novels. Westerns, I think. He told me he writes under the name of Buck Dexter.”
“Never heard of him. Does he live in Cuba?”
“No, he lives in London. But he always visits us when he’s in Havana.”
“A traveler, eh?”
“
Yes. Apparently he’s on his way to Haiti this time.” She smiled. “You don’t see the likeness now?”
“No, not really,” I said firmly, and was pleased when she seemed to change the subject.
“How was it with Omara today?”
I nodded. “Good.”
“You like her, yes?”
“Very much.”
“She’s from Santiago,” said Doña Marina, as if this explained everything. “All of my best girls come from Santiago. They’re the most African-looking girls in Cuba. Men seem to like that.”
“I know I do.”
“I think it has something to do with the fact that unlike white women, black women have a pelvis that’s almost as big as a man’s. An anthropoid pelvis. And before you ask me how I know that, it’s because I used to be a nurse.”
I wasn’t surprised to learn this. Doña Marina put a premium on sexual health and hygiene and the staff at her house on Malecón included two nurses who were trained to deal with everything from a dose of jelly to a massive heart attack. I’d heard it said that you had a better chance of surviving cardiac arrest at Casa Marina than you did at the University of Havana Medical School.
“Santiago’s a real melting pot,” she continued. “Jamaicans, Haitians, Dominicans, Bahamians—it’s Cuba’s most Caribbean city. And its most rebellious, of course. All of our revolutions start in Santiago. I think it’s because all of the people who live there are related in one way or another.”
She twisted a cigarette into a little amber holder and lit it with a handsome silver Tallboy.
“For example, did you know that Omara is related to the man who looks after your boat in Santiago?”
I was beginning to see that there was some purpose behind Doña Marina’s conversation, because it was not just Mr. Greene who was going to Haiti, it was me, too, only my trip was supposed to be a secret.
“No, I didn’t.” I glanced at my watch, but before I could make my excuses and leave, Doña Marina had ushered me into her private drawing room and was offering me a drink. And thinking that perhaps it was best that I listen to what she had to say, in view of her mentioning my boat, I replied that I’d take an añejo.
She fetched a bottle-aged rum and poured me a large one.
“Mr. Greene is also very fond of our Havana rum,” she said.
“I think you’d better come to the point now,” I said. “Don’t you?”
And so she did.
Which is how it was that I came to have a girl in the passenger seat of my Chevy as, about a week later, I drove southwest along Cuba’s central highway to Santiago, at the opposite end of the island. The irony of this experience did not escape me; in seeking to escape from being blackmailed by a secret policeman, I had managed to put myself in a position where a brothel madam who was much too clever to threaten me openly felt able to ask a favor that I hardly wanted to grant: to take a chica from another Havana casa with me on my “fishing trip” to Haiti. It was almost certain that Doña Marina knew Lieutenant Quevedo and knew he would have held a very dim view of my taking any kind of a boat trip; but I rather doubted she knew he had threatened to have me deported back to Germany, where I was wanted for murder, unless I agreed to spy on Meyer Lansky, the underworld boss, who was my employer. Either way, I had little choice but to accede to her request, although I could have felt a lot happier about my passenger. Melba Marrero was being sought by the police in connection with the murder of a police captain from the Ninth Precinct, and there were friends of Doña Marina who wanted Melba off the island of Cuba as quickly as possible.
Melba Marrero was in her early twenties, although she hardly liked anyone to know that. I suppose she wanted people to take her seriously and it’s possible that this is why she had shot Captain Balart. But it’s more likely that she had shot him because she was connected with Castro’s communist rebels. She was coffee-colored with a fine gamine face, a belligerent chin, and a stormy-weather look in her dark eyes. Her hair was cut after the Italian fashion—short, layered locks with a few wispy curls combed forward across her face. She wore a plain white blouse, a pair of tight fawn trousers, a tan leather belt, and matching gloves. She looked like she was going riding on a horse that was probably looking forward to it.
“Why didn’t you buy a convertible?” she asked when we were still a way short of Santa Clara, which was to be our first stop. “A convertible is better in Cuba.”
“I don’t like convertibles. People look at you more when you’re driving a convertible. And I don’t much like being looked at.”
“So are you the shy type? Or are you just guilty about something?”
“Neither. Just private.”
“Got a smoke?”
“There’s a packet in the glove box.”
She stabbed the lock on the lid with a finger and let it fall open in front of her.
“Old Gold. I don’t like Old Gold.”
“You don’t like my car. You don’t like my cigarettes. What do you like?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I took a sideways glance at her. Her mouth always seemed to be on the edge of a snarl, an impression that was enhanced by the strong white teeth that filled it. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t imagine anyone touching her without losing a finger. She sighed and, clasping her hands tightly, pushed them between her knees.
“So what’s your story, Señor Hausner?”
“I don’t have one.”
She shrugged. “It’s seven hundred miles to Santiago.”
“Try reading a book.” I knew she had one.
“Maybe I will.” She opened her handbag and took out a pair of glasses and a book and started to read.
After a while, I managed to sneak a look at the title. She was reading How the Steel Was Tempered, by Nikolai Ostrovsky. I tried not to smile, but it was no good.
“Something funny?”
I nodded at the book on her lap. “I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“It’s about someone who participated in the Russian Revolution.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“So, what do you believe in?”
“Not much.”
“That’s not going to help anyone.”
“As if that matters.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“In my book, the party of not much beats the party of brotherly love every time. The people and the proletariat don’t need anyone’s help. Certainly not yours or mine.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Oh, I’m sure. But it’s funny, don’t you think? Both of us running away to Haiti like this. You because you believe in something, and me because I believe in nothing at all.”
“First it was not much you believed in. Now it’s nothing at all. Marx and Engels were correct. The bourgeoisie does produce its own grave diggers.”
I laughed.
“Well, we’ve established something,” she said. “That you are running away.”
“Yes. That’s my story. If you’re really interested, it’s the same story as always. The Flying Dutchman. The Wandering Jew. There’s been quite a bit of travel involved, one way or the other. I thought I was safe here in Cuba.”
“No one is safe in Cuba,” she said. “Not anymore.”
“I was safe,” I said, ignoring her. “Until I tried to play the hero. Only I forgot. I’m not the stuff of which heroes are made. Never was. Besides, the world doesn’t want heroes. They’re out of fashion, like last year’s hemlines. What is now required are freedom fighters and informers. Well, I’m too old for the one and too scrupulous for the other.”
“What happened?”
“Some obnoxious lieutenant of military intelligence wanted to make me his spy, only there was something about it I didn’t like.”
“Then you’re doing the right thing,” said Melba. “There’s no disgrace in not wanting to be a police spy.”
“You almost make it sound like I’m doing something noble. It isn’t that way at all.”
> “What way is it?”
“I don’t want to be the coin in anyone’s pocket. I had enough of that during the war. I prefer to roll around on my own. But that’s just part of the reason. Spying is dangerous. It’s especially dangerous when there’s a good chance of being caught. But I daresay you know that by now.”
“What did Marina tell you about me?”
“All she needed to. I kind of stopped listening after she said that you shot a cop. That pretty much brings the curtain down on the movie. My movie, anyway.”
“You speak like you don’t approve.”
“Cops are the same as anyone else,” I said. “Some good and some bad. I was a cop like that myself once. A long time ago.”
“I did it for the Revolution,” she said.
“I didn’t imagine you did it for a coconut.”
“He was a bastard and he had it coming, and I did it for—”
“I know, you did it for the Revolution.”
“Don’t you think Cuba needs a revolution?”
“I won’t deny that things could be better. But every revolution smokes well before it turns to ash. Yours will be like all the others that went before. I guarantee it.”
Melba was shaking her pretty head, but warming to my subject, I kept on going: “Because when someone talks about building a better society, you can bet he’s planning to use a couple of sticks of dynamite.”
After that she remained silent and so did I.
We stopped for a while in Santa Clara. About 180 miles east of Havana, it was a picturesque, unremarkable little town with a central park faced by several old buildings and hotels. Melba went off by herself. I sat outside the Central Hotel and had lunch on my own, which suited me fine. When she reappeared, we set off again.
In the early evening we reached Camagüey, which was full of triangular houses and large earthenware jars filled with flowers. I didn’t know why and it never occurred to me to ask. Parallel to the highway, a goods train moving in the opposite direction was loaded with timber cut from the region’s many forests.