She had turned her head, searching for something, and he followed her look out onto the patio, to the tall Mexican in a denim jacket leaning against the adobe wall. Her right hand. Ajax. A classical name. No, Hector. The constant companion. As if he were taking snapshots, Connolly looked from the patio to Hannah, then again to the Mexican, his mind back at the blackboard. Connect everything. The workboots. Hector’s job on the Hill. Of course he’d be with her, just in case. Strong enough to carry a man. Strong enough to kill one. Two people, one to drive the car back. A wrench, some tool. Had she watched? Had she turned away, like Eisler, or had she watched? Eisler was meeting her, the person off the Hill, but Hector had to return. He worked there now. The car. The back gate.
When he turned back to Hannah, he saw that she had been following his eyes, watching him fill in his crossword. “There’s no mistake,” he said. “Eisler’s dead. He talked to me before he died. I know.”
And then he did know. It was in her eyes. One look, one unguarded point of recognition. “Who are you?” she said softly.
He didn’t answer.
“ ‘I know,’ ” she said. “What does that mean?”
“I know what information Eisler gave you. All of it, every detail. I know about the meeting at San Isidro. I know what happened to Karl.” For a second her face held a question, and he realized she had never known Karl’s name. “The man you killed there. You and your friend.”
She looked at him closely, then shook her head. “Phantastische,” she said. “Poor Friedrich. A delirium. Why would he say such things? But it’s often like that at the end. The fantasies, the paranoia. And you believed him? All this nonsense in his sleep.”
“He was wide awake,” Connolly said flatly. “I interrogated him.”
“Ah,” she said, her voice wry with scorn. “So now we have the Gestapo too. Like the movies. The rubber hose. The castor oil. Some drug? Is that how he died?”
“No. He killed himself.”
She looked up at him, interested. “Why?”
“Remorse, I think.”
“Remorse.”
“Not about you. He was loyal to the end, Eisler. A good party man. But Karl-that was something else. I don’t think he’d ever seen a man killed before. That shook him. I guess he didn’t know your lover was the hot-blooded type.”
“My lover,” she said, her voice cold with contempt, and Connolly thought of that day at the ranch. Something had happened between them. Not a lovers’ quarrel. No. She’d been angry with him for putting them at risk.
“Maybe he just didn’t know his own strength,” Connolly said.
“Enough foolishness.” She turned slightly to go.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice hard.
She froze, looking up at him.
“That’s right. You don’t want to make a scene. Not here. Not in front of the customers. We’ll go somewhere else. Then we can talk some more.”
“You must be crazy. You come up to me here, in this place, with these-what? Accusations? The rantings of a dead man. ‘I know.’ ‘I know.’ You don’t know anything. Leave me alone.”
“I have a gun,” he said quietly.
She stopped. “Now the melodrama too?”
“It’s over, Hannah. There was a witness at San Isidro,” he said. “He’s identified your friend. And you.”
She looked at him again, assessing. “It’s a lie.”
“Is it?”
“Then why wait so long? All this-” She spread her hand toward the room.
“We wanted to see if they’d send someone else. But they didn’t, did they? Your friends. What if it’s a trap? Send Hannah. She’s expendable. Now that Eisler’s dead. They’re closing you down too.”
He had touched some anger. “You fool,” she said, glaring at him. “Do you think that matters? There’ll be someone else. Always. That’s why we win. Yes, we,” she said, catching his look. “Who do you think won this war? The baby GIs with their Hershey bars? We won it. Communists. Such a dirty word to you. But we knew. We stopped them. You think politics is about elections? No-bodies. So, one more, one less? What difference?”
“Then we’ll start with you.”
She tossed back her head. “Yes, start with me. Take your time. You think you have so much time? Idiot,” she said in German. “It’s already too late. What did you think? We could sit by and watch you do this? And not protect ourselves? Children-you’re all children here. Do you think we would give a gun to a child?”
“Do you think we’d give one to a gangster?”
She paused, a flicker of a smile on her face. “No. He would have to take it. While the child was playing, perhaps.”
“For his own good.”
“Yes, for everybody’s good. But very carefully. So he wouldn’t know. We had to be very careful.”
Connolly paused. “And yet here you are.”
