A Quiet Flame

The younger man by the door unfolded his arms and pushed himself off the wall. He glanced at the man with the beard for a moment. “If the police have no objection?” His German was every bit as fluent as his master’s.

The man with the beard shook his head.

“I’ll ask Ramon Carrillo to look into it, shall I, sir?” said Rodolfo. From the pocket of his beautifully tailored pinstripe suit he took out a small leather notebook and made a note with a silver propelling pencil.

Peron nodded. “Please do,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder a second time.

In spite of his declared admiration for goose-stepping, I found myself liking the president. I liked him for his motor scooter and his ridiculous plus-fours. I liked him for his slugger’s paw and his stupid little dogs. I liked him for his warm welcome and the easy way he had about him. And-who knows?-maybe I liked him because I badly needed to like someone. Maybe that’s why he was president, I don’t know. But there was something about Juan Peron that made me want to take a gamble on him. Which is why after months of pretending to be someone else who was pretending to be Dr. Carlos Hausner, I decided to level with him about who and what I really was.

3

I PUT OUT my cigarette in an ashtray as big as a wheel hub, which lay on the president’s uncluttered desk. Next to the ashtray was a Van Cleef Arpels jewelry box-the leather kind that looks like it would make a swell gift on its own. I figured the contents of that box were pi

“Mr. President, sir,” I said. “I think there’s something I should tell you. Since this is a Catholic country, maybe you can call it confession.” Seeing all their faces blanch, I smiled. “It’s all right. I’m not about to tell you about all the terrible things I did during the war. There were some things I’m not happy about, sure. But I don’t have the lives of i

“So who the hell are you? Really?” It was Carlos Fuldner, and he sounded a

“My real name is Bernhard Gunther. I was in the SD. Working for intelligence. I was captured by the Russians and was interned in a camp before escaping. But before the war I was a policeman. A detective with the Berlin police force.”

“Did you say a detective?” This was the man with the small beard and the tinted glasses. The one I’d marked down as a cop. “What kind of a detective?”

“I worked in Homicide, mostly.”

“What was your rank?” asked the cop.

“When war was declared in 1939, I was a KOK. A Kriminal Oberkommissar. A chief inspector.”

“Then you’ll remember Ernst Ge

“Of course. He was my mentor. Taught me everything I know.”

“What was it that the newspapers used to call him?”

“The Full Ernst. On account of his bulk and fondness for cakes.”

“What happened to him? Do you know?”

“He was deputy chief of the criminal police until his death in 1939. He had a heart attack.”

“Too bad.”

“Too many cakes.”

“Gunther, Gunther,” he said, as though trying to shake a thought like an apple from a tree growing in the back of his head. “Yes, of course. I know you.”

“You do?”

“I was in Berlin. Before the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Studying jurisprudence at the university.”

The cop came closer, close enough for me to smell the coffee and the cigarettes on his breath, and took off his glasses. I guessed he smoked a lot. For one thing, there was a cigarette in his mouth, and for another, his voice sounded like a smoked herring. There were laugh lines around the gray iron filings that constituted his mustache and his beard, but the walnut of a frown knotted between his bloodshot blue eyes told me that maybe he’d got out of the habit of smiling. His eyes narrowed as he searched my face for more answers.

“You know, you were a hero of mine. Believe it or not, you’re one of the reasons I gave up the idea of being a lawyer and became a policeman instead.” He looked at Peron. “Sir, this man was a famous Berlin detective. When I first went there, in 1928, there was a notorious strangler. His name was Gorma

“Yes, sir.”

“His name was in all the newspapers. I used to follow all your cases, as closely as I was able. Yes indeed, you were a hero of mine, Herr Gunther.”

By now he was shaking my hand. “And now you’re here. Amazing.”

Peron glanced at his gold wristwatch. I was begi

Eva Peron’s was a good figure, if you liked women who were interesting to draw. I never yet have seen a painting that convinces me those old masters preferred women who were ski

“So, we have a famous detective, here in Buenos Aires,” she said. “How very fascinating.”

“I don’t know about famous,” I said. “ ‘Famous’ is a word for a boxer or a movie star, not a detective. Sure, the police leaders of Weimar encouraged the newspapers to believe that some of us were more successful than others. But that was just public relations. To give the public confidence in our ability to solve crimes. I’m afraid you couldn’t write more than a couple of very dull paragraphs in today’s newspapers about the kind of detective I was, ma’am.”

Eva Peron tried a smile, but it didn’t stay long. Her lipstick was flawless and her teeth were perfect, but her eyes weren’t in it. It was like being smiled at by a temperate glacier.