Hess flew first class Munich-London, London-Detroit with a passport identifying him as Gerd Klaus from Stuttgart. Going through United States customs, a dark-skinned agent-Hess would have guessed was Hispanic-studied his passport, taking his time, in no hurry even though there were many people in line behind him.
“What is your purpose for coming to the United States, Mr. Klaus?”
“Business,” Hess said, friendly and polite even though it was demeaning to be interrogated by this Mexican.
“What type of business are you in?”
“Automotive parts.”
“Do you have a business card?”
“Sure do,” he said in his best American English. Hess had come prepared, handed the man one of his freshly printed cards that said he was Midwest sales manager. He had been speaking English for thirty years. He loved American cinema and had even perfected a Southern accent.
“Welcome to America,” the Mexican said, stamping his passport and handing it back to him.
He had reserved an automobile at Avis, waiting for a bus outside the terminal with the other salesmen in suits and ties. He rented a silver Chevrolet Malibu, two doors and a long hood, that drove like a truck, the steering sloppy and loose. If this car was any indication of American innovation, they had a long way to go before they would catch up to the Germans.
He drove to Detroit. He had booked a room at the Statler Hotel on Washington Boulevard, handed his car keys to the valet, checked in and was escorted to a room on the seventh floor. He made an overseas phone call to his secretary, Ingrid, asking if Rausch had phoned. Rausch had gone to Bergheim the day before to dispose of Colette Rizik and her mother.
“No, I am sorry, Herr Hess, he has not.”
That was unusual. But lately, Arno had seemed to lose his concentration. Hess gave her his phone number at the hotel.
At 4:00 p.m. Hess drove to a bar in a town called Allen Park, a gray single-storey cinderblock building, paint peeling, pickup trucks outnumbering cars in the parking lot. The inside was dark and crowded, men lining the bar, loud rock music playing. He was approached by a man in his mid-thirties, long hair pulled back and tied in a ponytail, muscular arms exposed in a sleeveless denim jacket.
“You Mr. Klaws?” he said, pronouncing the name wrong.
Hess nodded. He could see Sieg Heil tattooed on his right forearm.
“How was your flight over? I’m Buddy.” He extended his hand and Hess shook it. “So you’re the genuine article, huh? Never met a real Nazi before. Sir, this a real honor, I mean it.”
He reminded Ernst of the Blackshirts, his own neo-Nazis, a generation that was missing something, a generation that would never measure up to the high standards or the high achievers of the Third Reich.
“Ever meet Adolf Hitler?”
“I was fortunate enough to make the Fuhrer’s acquaintance, yes.”
“What was he like?”
“Charismatic, mesmerizing, a born leader.”
“I’ll bet. He’s one of the greatest men that ever lived. I read Mein Kampf. Talk about a page-turner, I couldn’t put it down.” He glanced at the bar. “Want a beer or something?”
“Do you have the weapon?”
“Well, you bet. No time like the present, huh?”
Hess followed him outside to a red pickup truck parked in the lot.
“Step into my office,” Buddy said, grinning.
Hess opened the passenger door and sat on the bench seat. Buddy got in and reached for the glove box, opened it and took out a blue steel semiautomatic with a suppressor on the end of the barrel.
“Here she is,” Buddy said. “Silenced Walther PPK, exposed hammer, double-action trigger mechanism. Reliable and concealable. Magazine release button is on the left side of the frame, but as a former military man I bet you knew that. Holds seven plus one in the throat. And a box of extra rounds like your man Mr. Rausch specified. I myself prefer a higher-caliber weapon, something with knockdown power. What’re you huntin’, small game?” Buddy smiled again. “Extra ammo’s in the glove box. Total for everything’s eight hundred dollars.”
More than twice what the gun was worth, the American Nazi taking advantage of him. Hess reached for his billfold in the inside pocket of his sport jacket, opened it, counted eight hundred-dollar bills out of a thick stack and handed the money to Buddy. He slid the gun in his right side pocket and put the box of cartridges in his left pocket. “Do you know a secluded area where I can fire the weapon?”
“Sure do. Tell you what, you can follow me or ride with me. Your choice.”
Hess followed him out of Allen Park on a two-lane road to a rural area with farms on both sides of the road. Buddy turned left on a dirt road that went straight into woods, slowed down and parked on the side of the road. They walked through the trees, reminding him of the Vonderer Forest in Bavaria, big mature trees, high canopy of leaves. They walked in deeper and came to a clearing, a stretch of open grass that was fifty meters wide.
“Here you go. This is about as secluded as you’re going to get.”
Hess was going to try the Walther out on Buddy. Kill anyone who could identify him. But he might need another weapon or even the man’s assistance with something. Keep your options open, Hess said to himself.
Buddy’d read about the Blackshirts this neo-Nazi organization in Munich, Germany and wrote a letter: To whom it may concern, saying he would like to start a Blackshirt chapter in Detroit, Michigan, USA. And if any of them were ever planning a visit to the…f A‚ he’d be honored to show them around. He’d even put some Blackshirts up at his house in Hazel Park, a suburb of Detroit.
He didn’t hear anything for months, then got a letter from some guy named Arno Rausch saying a famous Nazi, Gerd Klaus, was coming to town and he could use some help procuring a firearm, a Walther PPK fitted with a suppressor.
Buddy knew just where to get it. He’d met Ed Stannard at the Gun amp; Knife Show at the Light Guard Armory a few years back. Ed, who everyone called “Ed the Head,” dealt guns both legally and under the table. Buddy’d called him, told him what he needed and drove out to his farmhouse in Saline that had tall bushy marijuana plants growing around the outside, looking like overgrown shrubs.
The inside smelled like weed and Ed had guns spread out across the carpet of the empty living room. Ed’d screwed the silencer on the end of the barrel of the Walther and handed it to him.
“Here you go, bro.” Ed’d said. “Don’t get caught with the suppressor, they give you like ten years.”
“Don’t worry,” Buddy said.
“Need any assault rifles? I can give you a real good deal.”
“I’m all set,” Buddy said. “But how about some ammo for the Walther?”
“No problem.”
Buddy’d been a member of the Viking Youth Corps and the Imperial Aryan Alliance but was between organizations at that time. He had 88, neo-Nazi code for Heil Hitler tattooed on his left shoulder, and Arbeit Macht Frei on his right biceps, German for: “work makes you free.” What was on the gates at concentration camps. And Seig Heil on his right forearm.
Buddy’s dad, Herb‚ had been a member of the American Nazi Party and used to goose-step around the house in his Nazi uniform: brown shirt, black tie and pants, red, black and white swastika arm band, peaked cap with the Totenkopf emblem on it. His dad preached racial purity to Buddy and his sister Tanya. He’d said, “Immigrants, homosexuals, nigs and Jews were polluting our society.” His dad and his buds would burn Mexican flags they called buzzard rags, and Israeli flags they called kike Kleenexes.
His dad used to get in arguments with the other Nazi Party higher-ups, and they even tried to kick him out. His dad had said, “I am a member of the American Nazi Party in perpetuity until voluntarily, or by natural or unnatural means I am so relieved.” Whatever that meant.
In truth, Buddy thought his dad looked like a clown walking around, saying Seig Heil! And Heil Hitler! But Buddy liked the Nazis. Had read everything he could get his hands on about them. He loved the swastika and their uniforms and their cool black boots. He agreed with their ideology too about Aryan purity.
The next morning Hess drove by the scrap yard, a mountain of metal behind a warehouse and a small cinderblock building. He stopped on the side of the road and watched a crane with a grapple hook load metal scrap into the back of huge semi-trailers.
Hess turned around and drove through Hamtramck, a predominantly Polish town. He didn’t have much respect for Poles. Germany had invaded Poland in 1939, taking over the country in a couple weeks. He remembered seeing newsprint photographs of German troops goose-stepping through Warsaw. He stopped at a pay phone, dialing the number for S amp;H Recycling Metals, getting ready to use a Southern accent and a name he had seen in the Detroit News.
A woman’s voice said, “S amp;H, how may I direct your call?”
Hess said, “Is Harry there?”
“Who’s calling please?”
“This is Ray Meade.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Levin’s out of town. Sir, what did you say your name was?”
“Ray Meade, darlin’. When do you expect him?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. He’s driving back from Pittsburgh.”
Hess hung up the phone.
Fifteen minutes later he was parked on Lothrop near 14th Street in front of a brown two-storey brick house, the address Rausch had received from their contact at police headquarters in Munich. Hess was looking at a black-and-white photograph of Cordell Sims taken the night he was arrested. A big American sedan passed by him, moving slowly, three Negros in the front seat all turning, studying him.
He opened the door, stepped out of the Malibu, walked to the house and knocked on the door. Hess waited several seconds and knocked again. He peered in one of the front windows on the left, saw the decrepit condition of the interior and wondered if anyone was living there. He knocked on the door again and this time it opened. A hostile black woman, whose age he would have guessed at fifty, stared at him before she said anything.
“What do you want, get me out of bed I’m trying to sleep?”
“I’m looking for Cor-dell,” Hess said. The Southern accent to his ear sounding effortless, authentic.
“Ain’t here. You the dude he met over to Germany?”
“I am,” Hess said, using the information to his advantage. “Do you know where I can find him?”
“No, but he gonna come back later get his things and go.”
“Tell him Harry Levin stopped by, will you?”
“Yeah, you the dude he was talking about. Jewish fella, huh?”
“That’s me,” Hess said, smiling.
“Where you from with that accent?”
“Chattanooga, Tennessee originally.”
“Dint think they had no Jews livin’ down there.”
“There are a few of us.”
“Man name Harry Levin come by lookin’ for you,” Cordell’s momma said, wearin’ her stained light-blue robe, curlers in her hair.
“Harry Levin, you sure?” Harry didn’t know where he lived.
“That’s what the man said. You think I’m making this up?”
“What’d he want?”
“Asking for you. Did I know where you was at?”
It was strange. They’d only been back a few days, why would Harry be lookin’ for him? Cordell opened his wallet, took out Harry’s card, went in the kitchen, called the number and got the answering machine. A lady’s voice said, ‘You have reached S amp;H Recycling Metals. Our office hours are Monday through Friday seven a.m. to four p.m.’ He left a message.
Cordell went upstairs, got his things, put the shoebox in his duffel, told his momma he was leavin’. He’d picked up a Dodge Dart at a used car lot on Gratiot earlier that afternoon. Paid cash. $1,500. Ran like a top.
She said, “Leavin’ for where?”
“Don’t know that yet.” But in the morning he was going to head toward Chicago. Start over.
The Negro, Cordell Sims, got out of a dark-blue automobile at 6:30 that evening. He entered the house on Lothrop and came out ten minutes later carrying a green military duffel. Hess followed him on Woodward Avenue to the Pontchartrain Hotel. Sims went in with the bag and appeared thirty minutes later. It was 7:20 p.m.
The next stop was Sportree’s Bar. After that, a nightclub called the Parizian on Linwood. Hess parked across the street, watching the blacks, reminding him of an African tribe with their bright-colored clothing, high Afros, neck chains and jewelry. He watched them strut around like peacocks. Groups of them standing outside, men and women, smoking and talking, shaking hands in some ritual motion. A parade of automobiles stopping, two or three at a time, Negros getting out, moving toward the door, and when it opened he could hear the high-pitched scream of a trumpet or the thumping of drums.
Cordell Sims entered the club at 9:30 and came out at 11:15, escorting a woman with an Afro, short dress accentuating her long legs. Hess opened the door and got out of the Malibu, waited for traffic to clear, crossed the street and followed them, the sidewalk deserted. He saw them get into Cordell’s dark-blue Dodge. Hess drew the weapon, holding it at arm’s length down his leg, approaching the car from behind, crouching along the driver’s side, looking through the window. Cordell and the woman were kissing. He brought the Walther up and fired five times through the windscreen, shattering the glass.
Headlights were approaching. He slid the gun in his pocket and crossed the street.