Slumped, the old producer sighed, his hands over his eyes. «Why, why, why are we going to the hospital? To visit that — monster?»
The director nodded.
The old man groaned. «Crazy world. Mad people. I never saw such biting, kicking, biting. That mob almost killed you.»
The director licked his swollen lips and touched his half-shut left eye with a probing finger. «I'm okay. The important thing is I hit Adolf, oh, how I hit him. And now ―» He stared calmly ahead. «I think I am going to the hospital to finish the job.»
«Finish, finish?» The old man stared at him.
«Finish.» The director wheeled the car slowly around a comer.
«Remember the twenties. Arch, when Hitler got shot at in the street and not hit, or beaten in the streets, and nobody socked him away forever, or he left a beer hall ten minutes before a bomb went off, or was in that officers' hut in 1844 and the briefcase bomb exploded and that didn't get him. Always the charmed life. Always he got out from under the rock. Well, Archie, no more charms, no more escapes. I'm walking in that hospital to make sure that when that half-ass extra comes out and there's a mob of krauts to greet him, he's walking wounded, a permanent soprano. Don't try to stop me. Arch.»
«Who's stopping? Belt him one for me.»
They stopped in front of the hospital just in time to see one of the studio production assistants run down the steps, his hair wild, his eyes wilder, shouting.
«Christ,» said the director. «Bet you forty to one, our luck's run out again. Bet you that guy running toward us says ―»
«Kidnaped! Gone!» the man cried. «Adolf s been taken away!»
«Son of a bitch.»
They circled the empty hospital bed; they touched it.
A nurse stood in one comer wringing her hands. The production assistant babbled.
«Three men it was, three men, three men.»
«Shut up.» The director was snowblind from simply looking at the white sheets. «Did they force him or did he go along quietly?»
«I don't know, I can't say, yes, he was making speeches, making speeches as they took him out.»
«Making speeches?» cried the old producer, slapping his bald pate. «Christ, with the restaurant suing us for broken tables, and Hitler maybe suing us for ―»
«Hold on.» The director stepped over and fixed the production assistant with a steady gaze. «Three men, you say?»
«Three, yes, three, three, three, oh, three men.»
A small forty-watt lightbulb flashed on in the director's head.
«Did, ah, did one man have a square face, a good jaw, bushy eyebrows?»
«Why… yes!»
«Was one man short and skinny like a chimpanzee?»
«Yes!»
«Was one man big, I mean, slobby fat?»
«How did you know?»
The producer blinked at both of them. «What goes on? What―»
«Stupid attracts stupid. Animal cunning calls to laughing jackass cunning. Come on. Arch!»
«Where?» The old man stared at the empty bed as if Adolf might materialize there any moment now.
«The back of my car, quick!»
From the back of the car, on the street, the director pulled a German cinema directory. He leafed through the character actors. «Here.»
The old man looked. A forty-watt bulb went on in his head.
The director riffled more pages. «And here. And, finally, here.»
They stood now in the cold wind outside the hospital and let the breeze turn the pages as they read the captions under the photographs.
«Goebbels,» whispered the old man.
«An actor named Rudy Steihl.»
«Goring.»
«A hambone named Grofe.»
«Hess.»
«Fritz Dingle.»
The old man shut the book and cried to the echoes.
«Son of a bitch!»
«Louder and runnier, Arch. Funnier and louder.»
«You mean right now out there somewhere in the city three dumbkopf out-of-work actors have Adolf in hiding, held maybe for ransom? And do we pay it?»
«Do we want to finish the film. Arch?»
«God, I don't know, so much money already, time, and ―» The old man shivered and rolled his eyes. «What if — I mean — what if they don't want ransom?»
The director nodded and grinned «You mean, what if this is the true start of the Fourth Reich?»
«All the peanut brittle in Germany might put itself in sacks and show up if they knew that ―»