The Shadow Man (2 page)

She looked helplessly at Simon Winter. ‘He will kill me, too,’ she said, gasping. Simon Winter steered Sophie Millstein into his living room, depositing her on the sagging couch.

‘No one’s going to kill anyone, Mrs Millstein. Now, let me get you a drink of something cold and then you can explain what has you so frightened.’

She looked wildly at him: ‘I must warn the others!’

‘Yes, yes. I’ll help you, but please, have a drink and then tell me what is the matter.’

She opened her mouth to reply, but then seemed to lose her grip on the words, so no sound came out. She put a hand to her forehead, as if taking her temperature, and said, ‘Yes, Yes, please, iced tea if you have it. It’s so hot. Sometimes, in the summer, it seems as if the air is just burning up.’

Simon Winter swept up his suicide letter and pistol from the coffee table in front of Sophie Millstein and hurried into the kitchen. He found a clean glass into which he poured water, ice cubes, and instant tea mix. He left his letter on the counter, but before taking the glass back into Sophie Millstein, paused and reloaded his weapon with the five bullets in his pocket. He looked up and saw the old woman staring blankly in front of her, as if watching some memory. He felt an odd excitement, coupled with a sense of urgency. Sophie Millstein’s fear seemed thick and choking, filling the room like smoke. He breathed hard and hurried to her side.

‘Now, drink this,’ he said in the same tones one would use to a fevered child. ‘And then take your time and explain what has happened.’

Sophie Millstein nodded, seizing the glass with both hands, gulping at the frothy brown liquid. She swallowed hard, then put the glass to her forehead. Simon Winter saw her eyes fill with tears.

He will kill me,’ she said again. ‘I don’t want to die.’

Mrs Millstein, please,’ Simon Winter said. ‘Who?’

Sophie Millstein shuddered, and whispered in German: “Der Schattenmann.’

Who? Is that someone’s name?’

She looked wildly at him. ‘No one knew his name, Mr

Winter. At least, no one who lived.’

‘But who—’

‘He was a ghost.’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘A devil.’

‘Who?’

‘He was evil, Mr Winter. More evil than anyone could think. And now he’s here. We didn’t believe, Mr Winter, but we were wrong. Mr Stein warned us, but we didn’t know him, so how could we believe?’

Sophie Millstein shuddered hard.

‘I’m old,’ she whispered. ‘I’m old, but I don’t want to die.’

Simon Winter held up his hand. ‘Please, Mrs Millstein, you must explain yourself. Take your time and tell me who this person is and why you’re so frightened.’

She took another long pull at the iced tea and set the glass down in front of her. She nodded slowly, trying to regain some composure. She lifted her hand to her forehead, her fingers stroking her eyebrows gently, as if \ trying to loosen a hard memory, and then she wiped away the tears that were gathering in her eyes. She took a deep breath and looked up at him. He saw her hand drop to her throat, where, for just an instant, she fingered the necklace she wore. It was distinctive; a thin gold chain that held a stamped replica of her first name. But what separated this necklace from the same type worn seemingly by teenagers everywhere was the presence of a pair of small diamonds at either end of the S in Sophie. Simon Winter knew her late husband had dipped into his modest pension funds and given her the necklace the birthday before his heart failed, and like the wedding ring on her finger, she did not remove it.

‘It is such a difficult story, Mr Winter. It happened so

long ago, sometimes now, it seems like a dream. But it was no dream, Mr Winter. More a nightmare. Fifty years ago.’

‘Go on, Mrs Millstein.’

‘In 1943, Mr Winter, my family - Mama, Papa, my brother Hansi - we were still in Berlin. Hiding out….’

‘Go on.’

‘It was such a terrible life, Mr Winter. There was never a moment, not one second, not even the time between heartbeats, Mr Winter, when we thought we were safe. There wasn’t much to eat, and we were always cold, and we thought every morning when we awakened that that would be our last night together. Every second, it seemed, the risk grew. A neighbor might grow curious. A policeman might demand your papers. Would you step on the trolley car and spot someone who recognized you from before the war, before the yellow stars? Maybe you would say something, any little thing, Mr Winter. A gesture, a tone, some slight nervousness, something that would betray you. There are no more suspicious people in the world than the Germans, Mr Winter. I should know. I was one of them once. That would be all it took, just a tiny hesitation, maybe a frightened look, anything that indicated you were out of place. And then it would be over. By 1943 we knew, Mr Winter. I mean, perhaps we didn’t know it all, but we knew. Capture was death. It was that simple. Sometimes at night, I used to lie in bed, unable to sleep, praying that some British bomber would drop their load short, Mr Winter, right on top of all of us, and so we could all go together and end all the fear. I would be shivering, praying for death, and my brother Hansi would come over and hold my hand until I fell asleep. He was so strong. And resourceful, Mr Winter. When we had nothing to eat, he could find some potatoes. When we had no place to stay, he would find us a new flat, or a basement

somewhere, where there weren’t any questions and we could spend a week, or maybe more, still together, still surviving.’

‘What happened to—’

‘He died. They all died.’

Sophie Millstein took a deep breath.

‘I told you. He killed them. He found us and they died.’

Simon Winter started to interject another question, but she held up a quivering hand.

‘Let me just finish this, Mr Winter, while I still have the strength. There were so many things to be frightened of, but I suppose the worst were the catchers.’

‘The catchers?’

‘Jews like us, Mr Winter. Jews that worked for the Gestapo. There was a building on Iranische Strasse. One of those awful gray stone buildings the Germans love so much. The Jewish Bureau of Investigation was what they called it. That was where he worked, where all of them worked. Their own freedom depended on their hunting us down.’

‘And this man you think you saw today…”

‘Some were famous, Mr Winter. Rolf Isaaksohn, he was young and arrogant, and the beautiful Stella Kubler. She was blond and pretty and looked like one of their Nordic maidens. She turned in her own husband. There were others, too. They took off their stars and moved about the city, just looking, like birds of prey.’

‘The man today…’

‘Der Schattenmann. He was in all our nightmares. It was said that he could pick you from a crowd of people, just as if he alone could see some, glow to your skin, some look in your eyes. Maybe it was the way you walked, or some smell you had. We didn’t know. All we knew was if he found you, death would come knocking at your door. People said that

he would be there in the darkness when they came for you, and he would be there when they shipped you out in the morning gloom on the transport train for Auschwitz. But you wouldn’t know, you see, because no one saw his face and no one knew his name. If you saw his face, they said you would be taken to the basement at the Alexanderplatz prison, where it was always night and everyone knew that no one came out of the basement, not ever, Mr Winter. And he would be there, to see you die, so that the last eyes you saw on this earth would be his, Mr Winter. He was the worst. The worst by far, because it was said that he enjoyed what he was doing, and because he was so good at it…’

‘And today.’

‘Here. Here on Miami Beach. This cannot be so, Mr Winter. This must be impossible, yet, I believe. I truly believe I saw him today.’

‘But—’

‘Just for a few seconds. There was a door left open and they were moving us through the offices because there was paperwork. Paperwork! The Germans even had paperwork when they were going to kill you. And so the Gestapo clerk finished with us, and stamped his documents and we were being taken down to the cells to wait for transport and I happened to look in for only the tiniest time, Mr Winter, but he was there, between two officers wearing those horrid black uniforms. They were all laughing over some joke and I knew it was him. His hat was tipped back on his head and he looked up and shouted something and they slammed the door closed and I thought it was the basement for me, for sure, but instead I was put on a train that day. I suppose he thought I would die in the camp. I was so small, I was sixteen, but hardly bigger than a child, but I surprised them all, Mr Winter, because I lived.’

She stopped, catching her breath in a rush.

‘I didn’t want to die. Not then. Not now. Not yet.’ Sophie Millstein was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, even with the lifts that she wore in her orthopedic shoes, and slightly overweight. She was dwarfed by Simon Winter, who, even with age, still stood nearly six and a half feet tall. She wore her white hair teased into a bun, to further add to her height, an effect that usually seemed to touch the ridiculous, especially when she emerged from her apartment in brightly colored polyester pedal pushers and flowered shirts, dragging a two-wheeled cart behind her on the way to the grocery. Simon Winter knew her mostly to nod hello and dodge any lengthy conversation, which invariably centered around some complaint or another, about the city, about the heat, about teenagers and loud music, about her son who didn’t call frequently enough, about growing old, about outliving her husband, all of which he preferred to avoid. But if his usual opinion of his neighbor up to this moment was one of distance and studied politeness with little shared concerns, the fear she wore in her eyes on this occasion slid him away from the usual and into a different place altogether.

He did not know precisely what to believe, feeling the detective’s hesitation within him; nothing was true until he himself confirmed it.

And, he realized, the only thing he could confirm was Sophie Millstein’s fear.

As he looked at her, he saw a shudder crease her body. She turned toward him with a questioning look.

‘Fifty years. And I just saw him for that moment. Could I be wrong, Mr Winter?’

He decided not to answer this question, because, in his experience, the likelihood of Sophie Millstein being correct was nearly nonexistent. He thought: This person -this Schattenmann - must have been young, no older than

his early twenties fifty years ago. And now he would be an old man. His hair would have changed; the tone of his skin, the shape of his face would have sagged and loosened with age. His walk would be different, as would his voice. Nothing would be the same.

‘Today, did this man say anything to you?’

‘No. He just stared. Our eyes met, it was late afternoon and then the sun seemed to glow right behind him and he was gone, just like that, as if he’d disappeared into the glare - and I ran, Mr Winter, I ran. Well, not like I could run once, but it felt the same, Mr Winter, I was so glad to see the lights on in your apartment, because I was so afraid of being alone.’

‘He said nothing?’

‘No.’

‘Did he threaten you, or make any gesture?’

‘No. He just looked at me. Eyes like razors, I told you.’

‘And what did he look like?’

‘He was tall - but not as tall as you, Mr Winter, but thickset, strong. A young man’s arms and shoulders.’

Simon Winter nodded. His skepticism was gaining momentum within him. To recognize a man you saw only for seconds after fifty years was not within what he used to call the homicide detective’s realms of possibility, even though these realms were very far-reaching. What he guessed was this: Sophie Millstein, whose loose grip on the ways of the world had been eroded further by her husband’s death, had been walking beneath a sun that was too strong on a day that was too hot, lost in memories that were too painful, when some person had caught her eye in the midst of one of those recollections and she had become disorientated and frightened because she was old and because she was lonely. And he thought too, ruefully: Would I be that different?

But instead of saying this, he stated firmly: ‘I think, Mrs Millstein, that you’re going to be okay. What you need is to get some rest.’

‘I must warn the others,’ she said quickly, her voice racing ahead. ‘They must be told. Mr Stein was right. Oh, Mr Winter, we should have believed him, but what’s to do? We are old. We didn’t know. Who would you call? Who would you tell? I wish Leo were here.’

‘What others? And who is Mr Stein?’

‘He saw him too. And now he’s dead.’

Simon Winter instantly checked his doubts when he heard these words. He spoke slowly: ‘I do not understand this, Mrs Millstein. Please explain.’

Instead, she looked wildly at him. ‘Is that your gun? Is it loaded?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank goodness. All those years as a policeman, same gun?’

‘Yes.’

‘You should keep it close, Mr Winter. My Leo, he wanted to get a gun, because he said the Negroes -actually, he used a different word, he wasn’t prejudiced, but he was scared and that made him use that terrible word - he said they liked to come over to the Beach and rob all the old Jews that are here, and that’s what we were, just old Jews, and I suppose, if I was a criminal, that’s what I would be thinking too. But I wouldn’t let him get one, because I was too scared to have a gun around the house, because Leo, he wasn’t a careful man. He was a good man, but he was, I don’t know, what? Careless, sometimes. And that’s not a wise thing to be around guns, and I thought he might hurt himself with it, so I wouldn’t let him have a gun and now I wish I had because I would have it, and I could protect myself. I mustn’t hesitate any longer, Mr Winter.

I must call the others and tell them he’s here and that we must decide what to do.’

‘Mrs Millstein, please, calm down. Who is Mr Stein?’

‘I must call.’

‘There will be time for that in a moment.’

She did not reply.

Sophie Millstein was now sitting rigidly, eyes straight ahead, staring intently into the space in front of her. He remembered suddenly a shootout he’d been a part of, years earlier, a bank robbery that had erupted into a tangled flurry of bullets, over in thirty seconds. It had not been his own shot that had stopped the robber, but he had been the first to reach the man, kicking his pistol away from an outstretched hand, then looking down and seeing the man’s eyes widen as he felt his life’s blood bubbling through the hole in his chest. He was a young man, in his early twenties, and Simon Winter had not been much older, and he had looked at the detective and wrapped within that look were a cascade of desperate questions, ending, of course, with the one that mattered: Will I live? And before Simon Winter could respond, he’d seen the man’s eyes roll back, and he’d died. It was that moment of losing grasp that Simon Winter thought he saw in Sophie Millstein’s face, and he could not prevent some of her panic rushing through his own veins.