"I told you, Milton, I don't know what Ettinger was doing there," Steven-son protested. "I never heard his name before you walked in here tonight!"
You call him by his first name, do you, Stevenson? That means that (a) you are probably seeing more of him than Wild Bill Donovan would like you to, (b) that you like him, and (c) Leibermann likes you, or else he wouldn't have made a point of telling me he came to see you to keep him out of trouble with me.
"What does this mean, Colonel?" Leibermann asked sarcastically. "That the OSS not only doesn't talk to FBI, they don't talk to each other, either?"
"I think the word is 'compartmentalization,'" Graham said. "Nobody knows anything more than they have to."
"Of course, all I am is a simple accountant, not a secret agent, like you two, so I may be missing the big picture on this, but my word for that is 'stu-pid.'"
"When did this happen?" Graham asked.
"According the local cops, he'd been dead about thirty hours when they found him."
"Where did they find him?"
"There's a sort of a seaside resort here called Carrasco. They found him in the sand dunes about a mile north of the hotel-actually it's a gambling casino and hotel-where he was staying. His car is in the casino garage. No signs of a struggle in his room."
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"How did they kill him? How was he mutilated?"
"Ice pick in the ear," Leibermann said. "And, postmortem, they severed his penis and placed it in his mouth. That's what we were talking about when you showed up."
"Why would they do that?" Graham asked.
"Are we talking to each other to the point where we agree that probable bad guys are the Germans?" Leibermann asked. "OK, why would the Germans do that?"
"I don't think the Germans would," Leibermann said. "They might do something imaginative, like hang a gasoline-filled tire around him and set it on fire, but I don't think they'd cut off a Yiddisher's schwantz. and stick it in his mouth. They'd have to touch it."
He mimed lifting the penile member erect and then sawing on it with a knife.
"Isn't that sort of thing, the penis in the mouth, associated with gangs in the United States?" Graham asked.
"The true indication of somebody else's intelligence is how much he agrees with you," Leibermann said. "My own theory of what happened is that the lo-cal branch of Murder Incorporated was hired by parties unknown but who prob-ably have offices in the German Embassy. The reason for the contract was that Ettinger knew too much and talked. The local cops tell me that's what happens down here, too, to people who talk too much."
"You say Frade asked for your help?" Graham asked.
Leibermann nodded.
"When was that?"
"A little after noon today."
"Do you know where he is now?"
"Hey, I'm the FBI. I'm supposed to ask the questions. You guys are sup-posed to blow things up."
"Very funny, Milton," Graham said. "You don't mind if I call you Milton, do you?"
"Not if I can call you Alejandro," Leibermann said.
Christ. He even knows my first name.
"I would be honored if you called me Alejandro, Milton," Graham said. "And very grateful if you would tell me where Frade is."
"He told me he was invited to a party and couldn't turn down the invitation. Clever fellow that I am, I think he was telling me the coup d'‚tat has started."
"Did he happen to mention anything about an airplane?"