Free Triple Identity by Haggai Carmon Page B

simple but clever. I had designed the application myself on an existing software platform.
    I started with the tedious work of typing in the numbers I'd first highlighted on the invoice. Some of them were local German numbers, but many were international. An hour later I had finished logging them all. I plugged into my room's telephone line and uploaded the data into my office computer in New York. I attached a note to Lan. “Please do a reverse lookup for these numbers.”
    It was late, and I was tired. I shut off the laptop and lay down, satisfied that promising results awaited me the next day and that my investigation was progressing nicely. I fell asleep then and there, street clothes and all.
    Next morning I went back to the Grand Excelsior, avoiding the reception area. I took the elevator to the third floor. A housekeeper was hard at work on the carpet.
    “Excuse me,” I spoke in German over the hum of her vacuum cleaner, “Where is the Bavarian Suite?”
    “It's on the seventh floor,” she replied in strongly accented southern German, and went calmly back to work.
    I took the elevator to the seventh floor. Another housekeeper's service cart was in the hallway, and the door of the Bavarian Suite was open. I walked in. A young waiter was checking the minibar.
    “Excuse me,” I said nonchalantly, “I think I must have left something in the room before I checked out.” He did not respond.
    I looked around. The two-room suite was empty of any personal belongings and already made up. The police must have removed Raymond DeLouise's stuff. I opened the closets and went through the walnut chest-of-drawers, but I couldn't find anything unusual. Finally, I knelt beside the bed and looked under it. There I saw a small yellow Post-it. I grabbed it, put it in my pocket, and left the suite. The waiter never even looked at me.
    In the elevator I checked the note. There was a handwritten telephone number without an area code and a name written in Hebrew: Hans Guttmacher, and a scribble that looked like 2: 00 P.M .
    I returned to my own hotel room and called the hotel operator.
    “Excuse me,” I said apologetically, “I received a message to call a Mr. Guttmacher, but I don't know who he is, and I don't want to offend him by calling him back and asking him all sorts of questions. I may have simply forgotten him, and it's quite embarrassing.”
    The operator listened and responded immediately with “No problem, sir, let me have the number. I'll call and see if it is a private residence or an office. Maybe that would help you remember.”
    I gave her the number and a few minutes later she rang me back.
    “Well,” she said, “I think I can help you. Mr. Guttmacher is the manager of Bankhaus Bäcker & Haas. This is a bank here in Munich.” Sometimes luck is better than smarts, and this time I was lucky. I'd done a research job on this very bank in connection with another case.
    She gave me the address, which I wrote down on the pad on my night table. I hung up and removed the three blank pages under the sheet on which I'd written. Another old, hard-to-break habit for preventing others from finding out what you'd written on the top sheet by rubbing the one underneath with a pencil. Although I didn't think I had any rivals in this game, caution was never a bad thing. I picked up Peled's Grand Excelsior Hotel bill, scanned through it quickly, and nodded in satisfaction as I spied Guttmacher's number.
    Bankhaus Bäcker & Haas, located in the heart of Munich's business district, occupied a three-story office building. I went directly to a counter and asked the teller to exchange a hundred dollar bill. Without comment, she passed the bill through a machine to check its authenticity. I suppose she was checking to make sure I wasn't offering her a banknote I'd printed earlier in my basement. She must have been satisfied with the result because she quickly and efficiently handed me 156.77 German marks. I looked around. The place