I feel Varg tense.
“I won’t. Can I have my license back?”
Candy hands it to him.
Varg puts his wallet away. He looks at me.
“You know what this place is, right?”
“Yeah. Hitler’s bachelor pad. What of it?”
“Well, some of the people, including Sigrun, they were speaking German.”
“Too bad. I don’t suppose you’re bilingual, Varg.”
“Yeah. I am. My grandma’s from Düsseldorf. That’s why I remember what they said.”
Julie comes over.
“What did they say?”
“When they were wrapping the one guy up, the one they liked, one of them said, ‘Get wormwood’ or ‘Get the wormwood.’ I figured they were going to go and get high.”
I’m guessing pretty much everything means getting high to Varg. I’m surprised he remembered as much as he did. If I let Vincent loose on him, I bet he’d remember all the state capitals and the names of Santa’s reindeers, but Julie would never let me do that.
“We done here?” I say to Julie.
“Yes. Let him go,” she says.
I take my arm from Varg’s shoulder.
“You’re free to go. We’re releasing you back into the wild.”
“For real?”
“Scoot, Varg.”
He hesitates.
“Can I have my weed back?”
The joint is still lying where he dropped it.
“Sure.”
Varg runs over, scoops the joint into his pocket, heads for the entrance. He stops and points back at Vincent.
“That guy’s a freak, man.”
“It’s not smart to be mean to Death. He has a long memory.”
“That asshole’s not Death,” says Varg. “The other guy is. That’s what the blond chick said. Er ist der Todeskönig. ‘He is the death king.’ ”
I turn to him.
“Why didn’t you mention that before?”
“ ’Cause fuck you, that’s why,” says Varg. He holds up his hands, flipping us double birds, and runs off into the trees.