The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [54]
In the jeep Leo said to him, “Where do we go?”
“Okay, for Christ's sake, take me to the guy's house.” Mosca shook his head. “You and her give me a big pain in the ass.”
“I don't give a damn,” Leo said, “but it is on the way to the club. And besides I know what it is to ‘sweat,’ as you say. That is a very accurate word.” He turned his big-boned face to Mosca and smiled with a touch of sadness.
Mosca shrugged. “I don't even want to see the bastard. How about you going in the house, Leo?”
“Not me,” Leo said with a grin. “You took it away from him? You give it back.”
They had no trouble finding the house, a private, two-family home cut up into a tenament to provide much-needed housing. On the vestibule door was a list of all the tenants, including every member of the family, and what apartments they occupied. Mosca looked at the identity pass and compared names. Then he went up to the second floor. He knocked sharply and the door was opened immediately. He realized that he had been seen from the window and his knock waited for. The man at the door had the same bullethead and stern features but his face was set in a constrained mask and softened by the now naked baldness of his skull. The German stood aside and Mosca went in.
He had interrupted the evening meal. The table in the large room held four dishes filled with black gravy in which floated dark, shredded vegetables and large pasty white potatoes. In one corner was a bed, farther along the wall a sink hung awkwardly, above it a great framed painting in dark greens and browns. A woman, light hair drawn against her skull, was trying to bring two small boys through the door to the other room of the apartment. But as she turned to see Mosca she let the children escape her. They all looked at Mosca and waited.
He handed the German the blue identity card. The man took it and said falteringly, “Yes?”
Mosea said, “You don't have to go to the police station. Forget about everything.”
The blunt, stern face turned ghastly white. The relief from fear, the shock of the day, the jeep screaming to a stop in front of his house, all combined now—a poison disintegrated his blood. He trembled visibly and his wife hurried to his support, helped him to one of the four empty wooden chairs surrounding the table. Mosca, alarmed, said to the woman, “What's the trouble, what's the matter with him?”
“Nothing,” the woman said, her voice dead, completely empty of emotion or any life. “We thought you came to take him away.” Her voice wavered slightly.
One of the children began to cry with quiet fright, as if the strength and walls of his world had been destroyed. Mosca, thinking to quiet him, took a few steps forward and brought out a bar of chocolate. The child was terrified and began to scream great hysterical screams, so high pitched they were barely audible. Mosca stopped and looked at the woman helplessly. She was bringing her husband a small glass of schnapps. As the man drank, the woman ran over to the child, slapped him full in the mouth and then picked him up in her arms. The child was still. The father, still terribly agitated, said, “Wait, please wait,” and almost ran to the cupboard for a bottle of schnapps and a small water glass.
He poured Mosca a drink and forced it into his hands. “It was all a mistake, you see, all a mistake, I thought the children were annoying you. I did not mean to interfere.” And Mosca remembered the man's angry tone when he had scolded the two boys in front of the Glocke, the angry shame and guilt, as if its owner were himself the cause of the children's degradation.
“It's all right,” Mosca said. He tried to leave the drink on the table but the German kept hold of his arm and forced the drink on him again.
Forgetting his wife