A War Criminal's Toast

9:15 pm.

“Should we serve dinner now, sir?”

Dr. Franz Metzger ignored his butler, losing himself instead in the Argentinian tango that wove like silk through the crowded banquet hall. Quivering guitar notes dipped alongside mellow accordion song, the two instruments weaving in and out in a seductive dance.

Franz Metzger’s gnarled hands tapped against his wheelchair’s polished armrests. For a moment, the black and gold ballroom vanished, and he was transported back to the days of his youth – when he’d floated across the dance floor as a blue-eyed Adonis, his arms wrapped around the lithe body of a black-haired siren.

“Sir?” Marcos’ nervous tenor served a poor addition to the music, with his nervous tenor striking a discordant chord.

Franz sighed. The memory, like all good things, had to end. That fact had been clear since he’d fled Europe crammed in the back of a plane’s fuselage avoiding capture by the Red Army. Even so many years ago, he could still remember the musty stink of his uniform, rumpled and disgraced from so many days in hiding.

“Not yet.” Franz scrutinized the crowd in the banquet hall.

Marcos cleared his throat and nervously fingered the sparse hairs on his upper lip. He opened his mouth to speak until two figures at the edge of the room caught Franz’s eye, flanked by Franz’s housekeepers.

Franz frowned at the two brown-suited estate lawyers. They approached, their hunched bodies and broad necks reminding Franz of the palmetto bugs he frequently squashed in his garden.

“Dr. Metzger. A pleasure, as always.” The first one – a withered man in his seventies whose name Franz hadn’t bothered remembering – stepped forward and tipped his hat.

Not that the man should’ve been wearing a hat indoors, Franz grumbled to himself, but there was a time and a place to point out such things.

           The other man wasn’t so subtle. “Dr. Metzger, forgive my bluntness, but you haven’t yet filed or even signed your final wishes.” His mouth squirmed and his fingers played with the top button in his ill-fitting suit jacket. “In light of recent news, we implore you to finalize your will.”

           Parasites, the lot of them. No doubt hired by his no-good sons.

           Franz Metzger laughed.

           “My final wishes,” he said, savoring each word like a delicacy. “Yes. There will be time to finalize my wishes after the party.” Franz adjusted his tie. He’d ordered the sleek black tie from Italy for the occasion. “The doctors gave me three months, gentlemen – hardly an excuse for disrupting an old man’s one-hundredth birthday celebration, would you agree?”

           He fixed both lawyers in his unblinking gaze. He smelled their discomfort. Not as heady as that from the condemned prisoners at Buchenwald, but all the same, fear was fear.

The two men dropped their gazes. “Of course. Our apologies.”

           “Mmm.” He gestured to his housekeepers. “Please show these gentlemen out. They won’t be joining us.”

“Sir?” Marcos turned to Franz once the lawyers disappeared. “It’s nearly half-past nine. Do you think –”

Franz raised a curt hand and Marcos fell silent. The butler’s dark eyes reflected the glittering lights of the chandelier in the center of the ballroom’s ceiling.

“Not yet.” Franz waved off Marcos’ question. “Amelia hasn’t arrived.”

“Sir –”

Franz sat up, assuming the same commanding role from his earlier days as easily as donning a glove. “Are you questioning my orders, Marcos?”

The butler visibly shrank. “N-No, sir.”

“Good.” Franz retrieved his cane from beside the wheelchair and laid it across his lap. The silver handle – fashioned in the shape of a wolf’s head – was one of the few relics he’d had from his old life. A gift from the Fuhrer himself.

Eyeing the crowd in the ballroom, Franz made a mental note of each family member who was present. Children, in-laws, grandchildren, a few great-grandchildren, most of them in their late teens yet bold enough to guzzle brandy like their alcoholic parents.

Franz frowned. His bloodline wasn’t necessarily a fruitful one. His late wife, Maria, had borne him just three children before running off with a traveling vaquero for a quiet life in the Andes.

There’d been no reason for Franz’s name to be associated with the double homicide, when Maria and her lover’s burned corpses were recovered from their roach-infested hotel room.

Franz still smiled at the memory. What could he say? He was a professional.

His two sons, Ernest and Vincent, had each emptied a bottle of champagne (at least) and were getting louder by the second, much to their wives’ chagrin. Both men’s bodies were a testament to years of easy living, their suits tailor-made for portly shapes nursed on deep-fried empanadas and top-shelf tequila.

Ernest was relaying the glory days of his time in an Argentinian TV show: El Extraño de Ojos Azules – or The Blue-Eyed Stranger – as about a dozen other family members grouped around to listen.

Franz sighed. Of course, Ernest glossed over the scandal that had ended his tenure on the show – when he’d been discovered in bed with not one, not two, but three of the leading actresses from the show.

Vincent wasn’t much better. A disgraced doctor, still paying off the many malpractice suits that had come against him when one too many breast augmentation surgeries went awry.

If it were an ordinary family gathering, Franz would have kicked the two of them out on their asses an hour ago – them and their insufferable wives.

But tonight was no ordinary occasion. The white banner above his head, stretched across the stage and flanked by black and gold balloons, drove this point home: Happy 100^th Birthday, Franz Metzger.

9:30 pm

“Sir, your blood sugar.”

“Fuck my blood sugar.” Franz didn’t even bother looking up at Marcos as he spoke, polishing his wolf’s head cane with a cloth he kept in his front jacket pocket.

He’d be lying if the chefs’ spread of delectable delights didn’t make his mouth water. Roast beef, filet mignon, and steamed lobster served as a heady foreground against the sweeter notes of herbs and spices. Gleaming silver chafers reflected the dim lights.

“Grandfather.”

The voice triggered such distaste that Franz had almost forgotten the years of military training to keep his emotions from reaching his face.

He laid his cane across his knees and neatly folded the polishing cloth. Heinrich sauntered up the dais, a cocktail (a mint julep, no less) in hand and his too-long tie poking out from the hem of his blazer. Franz exhaled through his nose.

“Heinrich.” Franz raised his gaze. Heinrich smiled, showing all his teeth. No doubt a tactic he’d learned in law school to get one over on the feeble-minded.

Not that Franz cared about the feeble-minded. His disdain only came from the implication that Heinrich counted his grandfather among them.

“Grandfather. I was wondering if I could have a word with you…about school.” Heinrich rested his mint julep on the lacquered table.

Without a coaster.

“As my father has probably told you, I’ll graduate law school in the spring.” Heinrich frowned at a blot of cocktail sauce on his shirt sleeve and dabbed at it with his fingers. “But here’s the thing – he promised me an apartment in downtown Buenos Aires. I guess he didn’t think about the required deposit.”

Franz stifled a yawn and beckoned his grandson closer. Heinrich readily obliged, crouching down so he was at eye-level with his grandfather. Franz wrinkled his nose. The boy had bathed in cologne.

Franz snatched the mint julep from the table and poured it over Heinrich’s gelled hair. The sticky green liquid ran in rivulets down Heinrich’s forehead and cheeks, soaking into the pale gray suit his idiot father likely spent three months’ salary on.

Heinrich’s mouth hung open as Franz poured the last drop atop his head and pushed the empty glass into his hand.

“Close your mouth, Heinrich. You’re catching flies.” Franz adjusted his cufflinks. When he looked up across the banquet hall, a figure in the doorway caught his eye.

Amelia arrived, her blond hair streaked with gray and coiffed in an elegant updo, her pudgy body squeezed like a bratwurst into a glittering navy blue dress designed for women half her age.

Now the family was complete.

“Marcos, it’s getting quite late,” Franz said with a smile. “I think it’s time we served dinner.”

9:45 pm

Heinrich hadn’t said anything since the mint julep fiasco. He sat at one of the tables arguing with his dreadful fiancée (whose name Franz hadn’t bothered to learn). Franz sat back and chewed his filet mignon. Of all the things he was grateful to have invested in over the years, his teeth were at the top of the list.

10:00 pm.

It was time.

Franz sighed as he unfolded the napkin from his lap and laid it on his empty plate. The music stopped, programmed to end precisely at the tenth hour.

“Marcos, the wine.”

The butler signaled to the wait staff, who dutifully rushed forward and stood beside each table, bottles of vintage 1945 Bourdeaux in hand. In unison, the staff uncorked each bottle and started pouring the dark liquid into each guest’s waiting glass.

Franz gestured to Marcos, who wheeled him to the podium. He switched on the microphone and a single note of feedback wove through the air. He brought the microphone to his lips.

“To my children, grandchildren, and all their respective spouses.” Franz managed a smile. His descendants all looked to him, like hungry vultures at a half-dead antelope on the savannah. Any other day, the mental image would’ve made him angry. But today, it only made him laugh.

Did antelopes have teeth, he wondered? Today was the day they’d all find out.

“I want to thank each and every one of you for attending.” Franz gestured to the very back of the room, where his daughter sat alone at the back table. She hadn’t aged gracefully – not like her late mother. Time had worn rivers at the corners of her mouth and her eyes, and silver peppered her roots despite the best blond dye job money could buy. “Even you, Amelia – though you arrived an hour and a half late.”

Subdued laughter. Vincent and Ernest guffawed, already half-drunk from the previous festivities.

“When I came into this life, half a world and a whole century ago today, never would I have believed I’d be standing here. For more than sixty years, Metzger Industries has thrived, and my family has grown.”

Like nettles among roses, he thought.

Franz watched as each glass was filled. Down to the last drop, had been his instructions. Don’t miss a single glass.

La Cumparsita kicked back on, as it had been programmed to do two minutes past the hour. A little overdone, but nothing could beat the 1916 Uruguayan classic.

“And now,” he said, just as Marcos brought him his own glass, “a toast – to a world where Metzger Industries – and the Metzger family – will be remembered.”

But Franz didn’t drink. He brought the glass to his lips and inhaled the scent. A shame the poison dulled the flavor.

As the first bodies fell, discordant cries rose. Screams tore through the banquet hall, and a few of his wretched bloodline – Amelia among them – dropped their wine glasses and scrambled for the doors, only to collapse after a few panicked footsteps.

As Franz watched his bloodline die in shameful heaps on the banquet hall’s floor, he felt a pang of sadness that none of his descendants would ever fully experience the Bourdeaux’s famed richness.

Despite having designed the poison himself, their deaths took longer than expected. He’d forgotten how tedious death could be. It had been a long time since Buchenwald.

Yet Franz patiently watched the clock, eyes flicking from the slumped bodies on the hardwood floor to the minute hand. The now-dead Heinrich had spilled the wine all over his white shirt, the Schweinhund.

When it was all done, Franz released a long sigh. Finally. He beckoned to Marcos, who stood, open-mouthed, at the scene.

Franz searched under his jacket for his hip holster. The narrow black barrel of his Luger shone beneath the chandelier lights, like the forgotten smile of an old friend. The chamber held just a single bullet. German efficiency at its finest.

 “Marcos, wheel me to the vault.” He cocked the Luger just as La Cumparsita swelled to a climax. “And please, won’t you seal the door?”