People believe Mengele escaped to South America,” Ms. Coontz says.

I stifle a sigh. Actually, I know that he lived, and died, in Brazil.

“He’s alive,” she whispers. “He’s been reincarnated, in the form of my cat. And I can’t turn my back on him, or go to sleep, because I think he’s going to kill me.”

Good God,” I mutter.

“I know,” Ms. Coontz agrees. “I thought I was getting a sweet little tabby from the shelter, and one morning I wake up to find scratch marks bleeding on my chest—”

“With all due respect, Ms. Coontz, it’s a little bit of a stretch to think that Josef Mengele is now a cat.”

“Those scratch marks,” she says gravely, “were in the shape of a swastika. ”

I close my eyes. “Maybe you just need a different pet,” I suggest.

“I had a goldfish. I had to flush it down the toilet.”

I am almost afraid to ask. “Why?”

She hesitates. “Let’s just say I have proof that Hitler was reincarnated, too.”

I manage to get her off the phone by telling her that I’ll have a historian look into her case—and it’s true, I will pass this off to Genevra the next time she does something to piss me off and I want to get back at her. But no sooner do I have Miranda Coontz off my line than my secretary buzzes me again. “Is your moon out of alignment or something?” she asks. “Because I’ve got another one for you on line two. Her local FBI office referred her here.”

I look at the piles of documents on my desk—reports that Genevra has turned in. Getting a suspect to trial is a slow and laborious expedition and in my case, often a fruitless one. The last case we were able to bring to prosecution was in 2008, and the defendant died at the end of the trial. We do the opposite of what police do; instead of looking at a crime and seeing “whodunit,” we start with a name, and pore through databases to see if there’s a match—a person who’s alive with that name—and then to figure out what he did during the war.

We have no shortage of names.

I pick up the receiver again. “This is Leo Stein,” I say.

“Um,” a woman replies. “I’m not sure I have the right place...”

“I’ll let you know, if you tell me what you’re calling about.”

“Someone I know may have been an SS officer.”

In our office, we have a category for these calls: My Neighbor’s a Nazi. Typically, it’s the neighbor from hell who kicks your dog when he crosses the property line, and calls the town when the leaves of your oak tree fall in his yard. He’s got a European accent and wears a long leather coat and has a German shepherd.

“And your name is?”

“Sage Singer,” the woman says. “I live in New Hampshire, and so does he.”

This makes me sit up a little straighter. New Hampshire’s a great place to hide, if you’re a Nazi. No one ever thinks to look in New Hampshire.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-21