The Bridge of Sighs (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

*******************

W
ilhelm Strasse 14 was one of four buildings that survived on its block. It rose three floors, noticeably tall and skinny amid the ruins scattered around it. On the steps, three children blocked Emil’s way.

“Pay the toll,” said the tallest one, maybe twelve.

“Yes yes,” said a smaller one. Eight, or nine. “Money.”

Emil considered their grimy, open hands a moment. “Listen,” he said. Their faces wrinkled as they tried to place his accent. “You clean these steps, and I’ll pay you. I mean it—will you look at them? They’re filthy.”

The tall boy cocked a head that had been shaved bald to rid him of lice. “You’re Russian?”

“Close enough.” He stepped past them into the foyer, where the mailboxes placed a κ.
messer
on the second floor. He looked back at the children and made a swirling motion with his index finger. “Clean!”

Hardly any light leaked into the stairwell, only the buzz of planes, and he had to feel his way up. There was something foul- smelling here, turpentine or urine; he couldn’t place which. On the landing, he had two doors to choose from. One had been struck repeatedly until the wood around the handle had shattered. When he pushed it open, dusty sunlight from the empty apartment illuminated the other door behind him. He knocked and waited.

“Yes?” came a thin voice.

Emil knocked again. “Konrad Messer?”

The door opened a few inches. A tall man with dark hair swept over his brow stared at him. “The very same. Who the hell are you?”

“Emil Brod. I’m a homicide inspector.”

Konrad Messer nodded. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Noon,” said Emil.

“Smartest Slav I ever met.” Konrad showed straight, clean teeth when he smiled, then licked his lips, and at first Emil thought from these gestures that the man was scared, really terrified, then he wasn’t sure.

“I need to ask some questions.” Emil took off his hat. “I’ve come a long way.”

Konrad opened the door. He wore a short, rose-colored silk robe and Oriental slippers. “Do I look
ready
to answer your questions?”

Emil was out of words. He shrugged.

“Where are you from, then?”

Emil told him. “I’m here about Janos Crowder.”

Konrad judged him a moment more. His thin, arched brows were almost sculpted, and his skin looked soft. But his thick nose was as bent as a boxer’s. He sighed finally. “Then come
on.
I need to get ready for work anyhow.”

The bright apartment was fully furnished. Konrad pointed beside the sofa to a large radio set.

“Put something on. And don’t touch
anything
.” He disappeared behind a door.

When the radio warmed and the dial glowed, Emil heard a voice speaking in German with a heavy American accent. “
Operation Vittles, the goodwill of the Allies toward the German people.”

“Something
lighter
⁷
.”
came Konrads annoyed voice.

There was big band music on another station, Duke Ellington, and Emil tapped his foot, remembering the music he’d heard in Helsinki. It was fast music, good for dancing, but when he returned home there was none of that business anymore. Stravinski, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky. No Ellington, no Mercer, no Basie. He’d almost forgotten the world còuld produce such fine music.

At the window, Emil hummed beneath his breath and looked out over the field of rubble that surrounded them. Red Army trucks navigated the crumbled hills, and Berliners waited at corners for busses he didn’t see. To the west he could just make out Allied planes descending through the haze.

“Quite a view,” said Konrad, dressed now in tan slacks and a red cravat folded inside his open collar.

“Janos Crowder came here in February, didn’t he?”

“All business.” Konrad sat down and took out a cigarette. “Just don’t start talking ill of the dead.”

Emil pulled up a small cushioned chair and opened his own cigarettes. Despite a fine covering of white powder, he could make out the thick black follicles on Konrads jaw line. Konrad lit both their cigarettes with a heavy glass lighter.

“Are you working for the Russians?”

Emil shook his head. “I’m just trying to find out why Janos was killed.”

“How’s that wife of his? Liza?” Konrad picked tobacco from his lip.

“Lena.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Someone’s after her.”

“Someone?”

“To kill her.”

Konrad bit the nail on his little finger, and thought. “Fair enough,” he said finally, as though something had been decided. He held Emil’s gaze. “Janos Crowder was a beautiful man, you know that? Intense eyes, statuesque. Did you ever see him?”

“Only in the morgue.”

Konrads mouth hung open a moment, then closed. “Janos Crowder was a genius. A real one. You’ve heard his songs?”

Emil nodded.

“Then you know. He wasn’t the kind of man who can keep track of the mundane side of life. Money, taxes, friendships. He kept losing it all. It wasn’t his fault. No one understood him. Do you follow?”

Emil said he did.

“But I understood him,” he said, settling back in the chair. “I think Janos knew that. We were what you would call
very
close.”

It was in the enunciation of “close”—
intim
. That, and the robe and all the dramatic sighs. Emil understood completely. He cleared his throat, and knew he was blushing.

Konrad smiled at his discomfort. “This is not so strange. Difficult to prance around in public, maybe, but always a large, unspoken clan. Before the Kristallnacht it was different. We
ran
Berlin. But like everyone, we learned to shut up. Or go join our Jewish friends.”

Emil nodded brusquely. “This is why he visited you? You were…”

“This is how we knew each other,” said Konrad. “We saw each other when we could, usually once a year or so. Keep the fire burning, and so forth. Does that surprise you?” He sculpted the edge of his cigarette ash, rotating it in the ashtray. “But this is not why Janos Crowder visited me in February.” He tapped his forehead and smiled. “This time he loved me for my mind.”

Emil waited. Duke Ellington had ended, and someone he didn’t know played a sappy waltz.

Konrad crossed his legs at the knee. “We’d been in contact for weeks before he came to Berlin. Telephone. A friend of his was in trouble. Was being blackmailed for a lot of money. And the incriminating evidence, it seemed, was here in Berlin. He didn’t know what the evidence was, or where. But, knowing of my
extensive
contacts, he asked for my help.” Konrad frowned. “I could never say no to him.”

Both their cigarettes had gone out, and each offered the other his own. Emil accepted the American tobacco, but Konrad shook his head. “No offense,” he said as he lit another one.

He described how he talked with Soviet colonels and lieutenants who frequented his nightclub. “Even the Slavic soul has room for liberal love,” he said, toying with Emil. “They come for the stage shows, and stay. All rather wonderful.”

Emil realized his arms were clenched uncomfortably, so he crossed them over his stomach. “Go on.”

In the mist of their blissful intoxication, the Soviet officers listened to Konrad s subtle inquiries and smiled, clapped their hands, and told him everything. “Janos’s friend, it turned out, was very well known to all of them.”

“Jerzy Michalec?” Emil tried.

Konrad s eyes swelled. “You really are exceptionally bright for a Slav. You should be proud.”

“I am,” he said.

“Well, the Russians had no real dirt on this Michalec character—some war hero, they said. But they didn’t call him Michalec. Something like—Smerrykov?”

“Smerdyakov. It’s from Dostoyevsky,” said Emil.

Konrad winked, ever more impressed. “Exactly. So I talked more to my friends—my
German
friends, of which I still have a considerable number. This Michalec—or Smerdyakov—apparently has even a
third
name. Do you know this one as well?”

Emil shook his head.

“Graz.”

“Like the city?”

“It’s where they first made contact with him.”

“The Russians?”

Konrad leaned so close that Emil could feel his warm, moist breath cross the distance between them. “The Gestapo.”

Emil blinked.

Konrad waved his surprise aside and leaned back again. “This is long before we marched on Stalingrad. Back when Uncle Josef was still a friend to the Reich. Jerzy Michalec was a Hungarian clerk or something-or-other working out of Vienna, and after we marched into that impeccably tidy country in ‘thirty-eight, his Jewish wife became a problem for him.” He raised an eyebrow, and stopped.

The dramatic pause was driving Emil crazy. “Well? What happened?”

“The details are hazy. One friend says he spied in Budapest before we marched in, another says he went as deep as Stalingrad, just before that debacle. The only agreed-upon story is that he was one of the Gestapo’s men in the East.”

“Do the Russians know this?”

Konrad stubbed out his cigarette. “If the Russians made him into your country’s war hero for the Great Red Cause, do you think they’ll want to hear the opposite is true?” He smiled and tapped Emil’s cheek with a hand, like a mother. “Not without evidence they won’t.”

Emil inhaled when he realized he hadn’t breathed for a while. It cleared his head. “Is this what Janos was looking for in Berlin? Evidence?”

Konrad looked very pleased with himself. He had Emil’s complete attention. He leaned back, glanced at a wall clock, and said, “I’ve got a job to see to. Why don’t you come along?”

The children had put considerable effort into brushing off the steps, so Emil dropped some change into the eldest one’s dirty hand and spoke loud enough for the others to hear. “Share, Comrade. You’re running your very own soviet.” This brought a look of nausea to Konrads face.

They walked back into the city in silence. Emil began to understand just how much Janos had betrayed his friend and sometime- lover. In order to collect blackmail material, he had sent Konrad into what could have been a fatal investigation. And Konrad, made stupid by love, couldn’t see any of it. He remembered Lena:
Women get stupid for the men they’ve married, it’s a fact.
Not only women.

Around them, a couple new buildings were ringed by shells of old homes and a few unscathed ones. They passed through many black markets, Konrad pausing long enough to consider some used shoes. “Makes me shiver to think where they got those,” he muttered, then bought a carton of Lucky Strikes. He knew half the old men standing around, opening their trench coats like flashers. Russian soldiers stood on the sidelines, charging sellers for the right to sell, and pawning off their excess rations and ammunition. Emil used his cane to keep up.

“How long have you been in Berlin?” Konrad asked once they had left a square.

“Since last night.”

“It’s an amazing bit of fortune you came across me so quickly, don’t you think?”

Emil lowered his voice as they passed more soldiers. “There’s a file on Janos. The Russians watched him come to your house, then go into the American sector. Where did he go in the American sector?”

Konrads smile disappeared, and his lips formed a vague sneer. “They saw him?” he said finally. “Come to me?” He was wide-eyed as the implications became clear. “And that warranted
afile?”

“Everything warrants a file,” Emil said and, perhaps for the first time, realized that Michalec had access to all the same files he did. All it took was the inclination, and he would know everything Emil knew.

Around another corner Germans stood in a loose crowd by a building with two hissing speakers blasting news at them. The Soviet sector was prospering despite all the westerners’ efforts. Next week in the Tiergarten, on the western side, the Socialist Unity Party would hold a rally against the opportunist mayor, Ernst Reuter. General Sokolovsky promised that the hugely successful Moscow dance troupes would return regularly for the Berliners’ enjoyment.

A motorcycle buzzed by, and when its noise faded it was replaced by far-off planes.

“Hurry up,” said Konrad. He grabbed Emil by the elbow.

*********

Die Letze Katze
was on a pockmarked block, and Konrad used one of ten keys on a ring to open the door to the basement level. Two more locks on the inner steel door. The club smelled of sour liquor. Konrad used a key to open his office—no more than a closet, a table covered with a telephone and slips of paper, photos taped to a mirror on the far wall that gave the illusion of space— and another key on the liquor cabinet behind the bar. Emil climbed onto a stool and grunted.

Konrad filled two glasses with tonic water and held his up. “Janos.”

Emil drank. It was sticky in his mouth.

Konrad nodded at the cane lying across the next stool. “So what happened to you?”

“Bullets.”

“The war?”

“At home. Recently.”

“Nothing to do with Janos?”

Emil shrugged.

The room was long and narrow and a lot like Helsinki cellar bars, where dingy workers chain-smoked and fought and broke bottles. At the far end was a small stage framed by cheap satin curtains tied up with yellow rope. Stale smoke was in everything—the carpet, the chairs, the walls—and only lighting a fresh cigarette helped dispel it. “Your place is nice.” He didn’t know what else to say.

“My place? I own nothing.
Manage
is the word.”

“The Russians think you own it.”

“Well, they do me an
honor”
he said, and raised his glass to toast again.

“Tell me,” said Emil.

Konrad set his glass down.

“Where did Janos go? Who did he see in the American sector?”

Konrad held up an index finger, then pointed at the front door. “Outside again? You mind?”

They walked the length of the block, slowly, as though they were in another Berlin, one where they could admire the flowers. In the middle of the street, two very clean children pushed a rusty, rattling baby carriage filled with coal. “I’m sure of my own apartment,” said Konrad. “But the bar? I don’t know. People I don’t know are in there all the time. A friend of mine says I’m paranoid, but he was arrested last week.”