XPD

Chapter 11

On the Ventura side of the county line, tucked between the mountains and the freeway, Westlake is a ‘planned community’ landscaped tastefully round a man-made lake. It is replete with countless pools and jacuzzis, tennis courts and stables, and there is a country club where, from the large picture windows of the restaurant, members fresh from the whirlpool baths can look across the tops of their cocktails and anticipate with satisfaction the completion of the second eighteen-hole golf course.

Max Breslow turned off the Ventura Freeway at the Westlake intersection. He turned into the shopping mall’s huge parking lot, passed the realtors, Swensen’s ice cream, Joe’s Photo and the hairdressers. He noted his wife’s yellow Chevette and the ‘Small is beautiful’ bumper sticker outside the supermarket and parked his Mercedes 450 SEL outside Wally’s Delicatessen.

‘Good evening, Mr Breslow,’ said the manager.

‘Good evening, Wally,’ he replied, accepting the common fiction that the manager was the proprietor.

‘Your order is just about ready to go. Can I fix you a drink while it’s packed?’

‘The usual, Wally.’

‘A Bloody Mary with all the fixings coming up, sir.’

Max Breslow noted with approval that the manager must have had a cold can of tomato juice ready and waiting for him, for the drink arrived almost as soon as he had ordered it. He sipped it while the manager waited for his reaction.

‘Excellent,’ said Breslow. The manager smiled and moved away to get the pickled herring and Westphalian ham which had been ordered on the phone. Breslow realized that he had been manipulated into having a drink. The food was probably not even prepared yet, but he didn’t mind that at all. He was always happy that men – and women too – should find him easy to manipulate, for in that way he was able to read their motives more easily and retain for himself the final control over any situation. That was the relationship he had contrived with Charles Stein. If that fat fellow thought that he was exploiting Max Breslow, well and good. Max would not wish to deprive Stein of that satisfaction. Even years later, long after this delicate business was settled, Max Breslow would allow Stein to brag and bluster about the Hitler Minutes, should he wish to do so. Max would be happy to go to his grave with his share of the secrets. But Kleiber was different. Breslow had the uncomfortable feeling that nowadays Kleiber had gained control.

‘Hello, darling.’

Max looked up and smiled. His wife had changed her hair style and he knew it was important that he comment upon it. ‘You look wonderful, my dear,’ he said. The Italian silk jacket and the matching skirt were cut in a design exported only to the USA. Her afternoon at the beauty salon, the faint tint in her hair, the professionally applied rouge and eye shadow, the bright scarf at her neck, all provided her with that healthy outdoor look which made Californian women so attractive to him, and made her look so much younger than her true age.

And Marie-Louise had adapted to this part of the world with a zeal that still surprised her husband; she went to classes in Japanese flower arrangement and low-calorie Mexican cooking, and even played sitar music on the quadrophonic hi-fi. And yet, despite all her time in America, Marie-Louise had not been able to eliminate from her speech the traces of her Berlin upbringing. Max Breslow dismissed it from his mind and gave his wife a decorous kiss that did not smudge her make-up. She would, he thought resignedly, say ‘darlink’ for the rest of his life, and for the rest of her own life too, probably.

‘You haven’t forgotten that we have visitors for dinner?’ she reminded him.

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ he said. He had been thinking of this man Boyd Stuart while driving home through the canyon. Willi Kleiber, who knew much more about such things, guessed that Stuart must be an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service. It would be an interesting evening, thought Breslow. Stuart’s organization was one which Max Breslow held in high esteem.

Marie sat down beside her husband but would not have a drink. She was still trying to lose another five pounds. It was absurd that she should wait for him, since they would both have to go home in their separate cars, but she preferred to do so. The manager brought the ham and herring wrapped in heavy moistureproof paper bearing the name ‘Wally’s Deli’ and a card that said, ‘We are sorry you cannot join us but please call again soon – Wally.’

Max toyed with the parcels. He was pleased that his wife had asked him to get these items. He had worried lest once again the meal was going to be vichyssoise followed by quenelles, puréed vegetables and a Bavarian cream. And his wife was not the only one obsessed with these new food-processing machines. Nearly every dinner party they went to nowadays served machine-mashed baby food. Max detested it.

‘Will you write the name cards, Max darling? I always get the spellings wrong.’

‘And what line of business are you in, Mr Stuart?’

Boyd Stuart was sitting next to his hostess but Max Breslow interrupted a conversation about the gasoline shortage to answer down the length of the table, ‘Mr Stuart is considering putting some of his company’s money into a film I’m making.’

There was a silence and then Marie Breslow offered second helpings of her lemon mousse round the table. Max Breslow’s response was a fixed smile of displeasure. Sometimes he wondered whether his wife enjoyed provoking him.

‘Mr Stein was actually there,’ announced Max Breslow suddenly in the silence. He nodded to where Charles Stein was upending a large cut-glass bowl of mousse and scraping the last of it on to his plate.

‘Actually where?’ said the bearded man sitting opposite Stuart. He was a psychiatrist who lived – together with his wife, who taught the art of relaxing to east Los Angeles delinquents – in a split-level town house almost next door to the Breslows.

‘Merkers, Thuringia … a place in Germany. I’m making a film about it.’

‘Oh, that place,’ said the bearded man. ‘Would you think me rude if I poured myself a little more of that German wine? You must be the last people in Westlake holding out against the Californian whites.’

Max Breslow smiled but made no comment.

Stuart said, ‘I’m interested to hear that you were at Merkers, Mr Stein. Did you go into the mine itself?’

‘The place where the treasure was found,’ explained Mrs Breslow to the psychiatrist’s wife.

‘Can’t say I did,’ said Stein. ‘More’s the pity. I would have liked to get my hands on some of that stuff they found in there.’

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