City of Shadows (49 page)

“No,” she said, “I don’t. I just want him dead.”

“Quietly shoved in a hole somewhere. I’m told they have a nice little killing ground.”

“Yes.”

“Then you might as well shove all his victims in with him. They’ll be as faceless as he is. They might have had revenge. They haven’t had justice.”

“But you’ll be safe,” she said.

He looked up, realizing. “Is that what’s worrying you, Mrs. Noah?”

“All the time.”

He got up and went around the table to kiss her. “None of us would be safe,” he said.

The next morning, on his way to work, he made a diversion to the home of Joe Wolff, stopping off to pack up his Anastasia file and put on the requisite stamps.

“Look after this, Joe. If anything happens to me, I want you to send it to the editor of the
Berliner Tageblatte.
” It was a newspaper he’d al
ways trusted.

“Why should anything happen to you, Siegfried?”

“You never know. And, Joe, do it anonymously.” If trouble came to his old friend, Ikey’s shade would never forgive him. He’d never forgive himself.

Continue to be afraid,
Eisenmenger had said.

He was.

The next night,
returning late from dinner at a restaurant, he and Es
ther found the door to 29c hanging open. For a second, Schmidt thought a grenade had been thrown inside. The big table in the living room had
been smashed, books scattered from the shelves, cushions ripped open and thrown on the floor....

“I’ll kill ’em.” Schmidt stomped over broken glass to the phone and then stopped. “What’s the fucking use? At least they didn’t get what they came for.”

He looked around. Esther was still standing in the doorway, her eyes large and remote. “He’s been here,” she said.

For a moment he didn’t understand; then he did. “My love, it’s not him. Did you think it was him? He’s not a burglar. Darling, I know who did this. They won’t do it again.” He kept talking as he righted a chair, fetched her to it, and held her.

She drew in a deep breath to stop herself from shaking. “Who was it, then?”

“Oh, just some little friends from Department 1A. They were look
ing for a file I won’t let them have—the wreckage is their way of show
ing they were miffed because they couldn’t find it.”

She took in another breath. “And that’s all right, is it?”

“It’s better than the bastards getting it,” he said. “I’ll have a couple of my boys around in the morning, help clear up. And I’ll get you nice new furniture, some chintzy material, how’d that be? Red and black. Nazi colors.”

He was sorry for the damage, he was angry, but the thought that he’d thwarted Busse buoyed him up.

“Look at it as an interdepartmental dispute,” he said.

Marlene, it turned
out, had not only been the scion of an English Roman Catholic family but on most Sundays had tottered on high heels to mass at the tiny church near the Charlottenburg Rathaus, where, Schmidt thought, her confessions must have enlivened the day for the priest now conducting her burial service.

Schmidt had attended reluctantly and more as a policeman than a mourner, feeling that the best he could do for Marlene was to find her killer—and find him before the gentlemen of Department 1A did.

He’d never had much time for the Roman Church, even less since most of its bishops had begun hailing Hitler as a new messiah who’d
sweep the German Temple of its Jewish money changers. But Esther had asked him to come.

Marlene’s friends were there, in droves. The nave of the church was almost full, and sunlight coming through stained glass cast daubs of color here and there on lavish widows’ weeds and veils, some of them concealing the faces of real women while others emitted deep, mascu
line sobs. The Pink Parasol boys were there, most of them in sober, well-cut lounge suits, recognizable by the bandages, sticking plaster, and arm slings they wore like campaign medals.

The priest, a wizened little man, was unexpected. He referred to Marlene as a sinner, “but a loving sinner, killed by the fiends of a god
less organization,” a declaration that led Schmidt to shake him by the hand after the committal.

Esther had arranged transport for the journey back to her apartment and the wake, an unnecessary expense, Schmidt had thought, since the distance between the church and Bismarck Allee was short.

But she’d been rightly cautious; the queens especially became outra
geous on exposure to the public, waving and shrieking abuse from the cab windows as they passed a couple of storm troopers sticking up bills on a hoarding.

“Behave yourself,” he had to tell one of them, dragging her back in.

“They’ve got to be stood up to, darling.”

“But not antagonized.” Bad as the bloody Reds, he thought; couldn’t resist confrontation and lost public support by doing it.

The flat had been restored as well as possible in the time available. The front door had been mended and provided with new locks. Chairs and the table had gone to the dump, and guests would have to sit on hastily bought cushions, but the place looked tidy. Busse’s men had wreaked no havoc on the bedrooms, bathroom, or kitchen, merely searched them. The message had been the damage to the living room. Frau Schinkel had heard nothing—she slept like the dead—and the flat below was empty.

Esther had covered a table borrowed from Frau Schinkel with canapés and cocktails and hung her walls with photographic portraits she’d taken of Marlene, some in Dietrich mode—with top hat, tails, and fishnet stockings, seated provocatively on a stool—others in pen
sive mood. The queens wept.

A blond young man touched Schmidt on the shoulder. “Inspector?”

“Yes.”

“Can we talk?” Walking stiffly, he led the way out onto the balcony that Esther’d had built outside the French windows, adding a fire es
cape that led down to the garden into which she’d transformed Frau Schinkel’s former backyard.

The last time Schmidt had seen him, the youth had been hanging from the light fixture at the Pink Parasol. “How’s your back?” he asked him.

“All right,” the boy said. The bad match of sallow skin and bril
liantined, peroxided hair—almost pink in a November sunset—aged him.

He had the hopeless eyes that Schmidt had seen in the faces of long-term prisoners, and he turned them away, putting his hands on the balustrade to look down at the garden.

Ottmar Keysterling, Schmidt remembered. Age nineteen. YMCA, Sophienstrasse. Four convictions for soliciting. Waiter and part-time dancer at the Pink Parasol. Statement taken by Sergeant Hoffner while the boy was still in the hospital having his back stitched together. Said he didn’t know any of the storm troopers who’d attacked him, wouldn’t recognize any of them again.

“I liked Marlene,” Ottmar said.

Schmidt prompted him: “Did she happen to show you a photograph?”

“No. I knew she was flashing one around, but I didn’t see it.”

Schmidt rested his arms companionably on the balustrade and joined the boy in looking down. Esther had planted the little garden so that there would be color even in winter, and the bare boughs of a small willow showed russet against a whitewashed wall. He waited.

The boy sighed. “But ...I think once upon a time ...I think I met the man who took Marlene away.”

“Which one? There were two of them.”

“Yeah. I didn’t know the other one. This was the big one.”

Thank you, God.

“He didn’t notice me,” Ottmar said. “They all came rushing in, yelling. It was some others roughed me up—one of them had a whip. But the one I’m telling you about, the big one, him and another one went straight for Marlene. He had a scarf around his face
.. . .
” He squinted
sideways, either to see if Schmidt believed him or to make sure he un

derstood.

Schmidt nodded.

“It was jumbled,” the boy said. “They were yelling and hurting me, and I couldn’t remember anything, like I told the other policeman, but now it keeps coming back.” He lifted his hand, opening and closing it to indicate illumination and darkness. “Must have been just a glimpse, but I keep seeing this face, his face, among all the others. I guess the scarf slipped off, or Marlene pulled it off him.” For the first time, Ottmar smiled. “She was a big girl. She put up a fight.”

Schmidt nodded again. Keep going, keep going.

“And I knew him,” Ottmar said simply.

“His name?”

“No. Well, it was at a party. In Munich. I was in Munich then—must be a year or more ago—and there was this party. Me and a friend... and some other friends, we were the entertainment, if you know what I mean. We’d been asked along by a man called Stratz. Wilhelm Stratz. Know him?”

Schmidt shook his head. Munich, he thought. R.G.

“Big shot, Stratz is,” the boy said in American. “Very big shot around Munich. Friend of Röhm’s.” He glanced at Schmidt as if trying to en
lighten a yokel. “You must’ve heard of Röhm. Head of the SA?”

Yes, Schmidt said, he’d heard of Ernst Röhm.

“Yes, well, him and Stratz are like that.” The boy crossed his third finger over his forefinger. “Lives in a fucking huge schloss, Stratz does. Anyway, we all went. There was this big limo that came to get us. And he was there, a guest, like.”

“The big man? The one who took Marlene?”

“Yeah, him.” Ottmar’s voice had lost its energy, and he looked down at the garden again. “He’s not a nice person.”

“And you can’t remember a name?”

“They don’t have fucking introductions at that sort of party,” the boy said, “just fucking.” He frowned. “I think they called him Reinhardt. Yeah, that was it. Reinhardt. Any good to you?”

Reinhardt: Ryszard. Yes. Ryszard Galczynski of Bagna Duze had be
come Reinhardt G-something of Munich.

“Was he in uniform?”
“Wasn’t that sort of party. He wasn’t in anything.”
“And you’ll swear to this? I’m going to get him, Ottmar. Not just for

Marlene. He’s killed before, and I’m going to bring him in, and when I

do, I want you to identify him.” “He’s a Nazi, a big one, you could tell. They were all Nazis at that do.” “I’m still going to get him.” The boy sneered. “You and whose army?” “Just me.” The boy shrugged. “Won’t do any good. You don’t know ’em.” “Yes I do, and yes it will.” “Didn’t do Marlene any good.” “Which is why he’s got to be stopped. You see him again, you come

and tell me.
Run
and tell me.” “Suppose so,” Ottmar said drearily. “All right.” Schmidt put out a hand to clap him on the back, remembered just in

time, and put it over the boy’s for a moment. “You won’t be sorry.” “That’ll be a fucking change,” Ottmar said.

Washing up
the glasses when they’d all gone, Esther said, “Don’t get

him killed, too.” “Who?” “That boy you were talking to on the balcony. Ottmar.” “Reinhardt. He says the bastard’s first name is Reinhardt. He’s Rein

hardt G. Of course, he may not be in Munich anymore. He could be anywhere—in Berlin, in bloody Bremen, anywhere. How many SA are there now? Hundreds of thousands. How many with the initials R.G.? Oh, God, don’t let Department 1A find him before I do.”

There were ways, he thought. Find someone to infiltrate the SA, maybe. Or get one of the burglars from Wrestlers to break into head
quarters and steal its army list. Or blackmail someone on the staff.

He’s not hearing me, Esther thought; he’s looking beyond me. The only face he wants to see is the one in the photograph. Everyone’s ex
pendable. He’d tether himself like a goat if he thought it would attract the tiger.

She was angry enough with him to bring up another complaint. “And what are you going to do about Anna?”

“Nothing,” he said. “She’s tucked up nice and safe where she belongs.”

“It should happen to you,” she said. “She can’t stay in an asylum for
ever. You’ll have to get her out.”

“It has nothing to do with me.”

“You’re so keen on the law,” she said. “But you’ll let a woman be caged up like an animal. There must be somewhere else she can go.”

“I thought you wanted her safe,” he said.

“I didn’t want her in Bedlam.”

It was their first quarrel, and he won it. “It’s up to the doctors now. She’ll be all right. You said yourself she’s as tough as old boots.”

“I’m afraid for her.”

“Well, stop it. I’ve told you and told you. He hasn’t gone after her in nine years, and he’s not going to now—he knows she’s no threat to him.”

You
know it, she thought. I just hope he does. But in one way he was right: the killer was part of a greater darkness. Cower from it and it would overwhelm them all.

The November election results suggested they didn’t need to cower. The economic situation was improving, and the Nazis had lost seats— aggressive, grandiose electioneering had begun to fail in impact.