Franz laughed, “You see, you see what kind of guy this guy is. It is true. You didn’t cheat. And I would have made less. But it feels like you tricked me. But it was a good trick. I missed you, Rick.”

A few drinks later, he said, “The winter of ‘89, ‘90, that was a crazy time. Their whole world collapsed…” he waved, vaguely, to the north and the east. “It was going to be paradise. Well, maybe it is. Look around, how well we are doing.”

Lukas said, “We are doing well. Old men always think the old days were better.”

“No,” Franz said. “We don’t. We know plenty of old days…that were bad. Very bad. So, yes, this is better. But that year…And the things you did,” he meant me. He looked at Allison, “There was this girl, American, nice enough, too many boyfriends maybe. She died. In an avalanche. Her mother shows up…”

“You know that I tried to stay out of it, you know that Franz.”

“You would not believe the things that happened. His mother showed up.” He gestured with his bier glass toward me. My mother. “And a priest. She was dating a priest, the serious kind, Catholic. And his girlfriend’s mother, she wasn’t his wife yet. There was the Japanese guy and the other Japanese guy and two Bulgarians…Rick, here, shot two Bulgarians, and there was the CIA guy…”

“We were never sure about that,” I said. “And I only shot one Bulgarian. The other one was stabbed by the mother.” “Your mother?” Allison asked.

“No, no,” Franz and I said together, “the girl’s mother.”

“It was crazy. It was not my fault,” I said.

“Back then,” Franz said, “Austria was perfect. We had the lowest murder rate in world.” It wasn’t true. But it was close. “Except for those little places that aren’t even countries, and some others that lied about it.” OK, that fudged the numbers enough. “They were all dead, I couldn’t hide the bodies, but I blamed it all on foreigners.”

“But wasn’t…” Allison hesitated over the name. “…Rick a foreigner?”

“Of course,” Franz said. “But it was different. We were in business.” Directly to me, he said, “And I was the witness at your wedding. Under your real name.” Back to Allison, “Do you know what his passport said, not the real one, the fake one he was living here under? It said he was a Catholic priest, another one, from Ireland.” Franz and Lukas thought that was hysterically funny and laughed so hard that even the Polish woman joined in.

—