The Shadow Man (31 page)

‘Is this man a war criminal, Miss Weiss? It would be easier if he was.’

She stopped. ‘Of course he is,’ she said briskly.

‘Are you certain?’

‘He collaborated. He helped. Without him…’ She looked at Simon Winter sharply. ‘Surely that must constitute a war crime.’

‘I wonder.’

Esther Weiss exhaled slowly. ‘I think I see your point. And where would the evidence be? The proof?’

‘I suspect the proof is mostly dead.’ She nodded. ‘I see,’ she said. She leaned back, rubbing her hand across her forehead. For a moment she turned toward the window, then she swiveled back around, facing him.

‘What is going on here, Mr Winter? Please tell me what is going on?’

But that was a question he wasn’t yet prepared to answer.

Simon Winter left the Holocaust Center with the promise of assistance and the names of some two dozen scholars who had specialized in studying the survivors. Mostly they were academicians and sociologists, with university listings. Some were associated with legitimate and well-known Jewish organizations. A few were independent, authors working on various accounts of the Holocaust. The problem was, as Simon Winter looked at the list, his hand by the telephone in his apartment, they could tell him much about the past, while he was trying to probe the present and divine the future. He stared at his list and checked off the three that lived in South Florida.

A secretary at the European Studies Department at the University of Miami took his name and number, but sounded extremely skeptical that any professor would return the call of a retired detective purposely vague about the nature of his inquiry. The second man was a writer, living in Plantation, working on a book about the collaboration of the Vichy government in shipping out thousands of French Jews to die in Germany.

‘I can tell you about the south of France,’ the man told Winter regretfully, ‘but Berlin, no.’

The man hesitated, then added, ‘Of course, like everyone who studies the Holocaust, I can tell you about death. Deaths by the hundreds, thousands, murder as commonplace as the sun rising in the morning or setting at night. Murder as a train schedule, regular and routine. Is that what you’re interested in, Mr Winter?’

Simon Winter hung up, understanding that he needed something different, something unique, some observation or some connection, something that would pitch him out

of the darkness of all the memories into the specifics of finding the Shadow Man. He thought: There must be some conjunction between the past and present that I can grasp. Something physical. Something palpable.

He could see none. He slammed a fist against the table.

Impatience filled him.

Taking a deep breath, he dialed the third number. He almost slammed the receiver down when the mechanical sound of an operator informed him that the number had been changed. He noted the new listing, and then called that. He almost hung up on the fifth unanswered ring, only to hear a gruff ‘Hello?’ on the seventh.

‘Is this Mr Rosen? L. Rosen?’

There was a hesitation, then a reply. ‘Louis Rosen. Who is this? If you’re selling subscriptions or insurance and seeking a donation, forget it.’ The man spoke sharply.

‘No,’ Winter said. He quickly introduced himself and explained, ‘I got your number from the Holocaust Center.’

Again the speaker paused. ‘Those numbers are supposed to be confidential.’

‘I believe they are, but these are unusual circumstances.’

‘Unusual? What could be so unusual that they would break a promise of confidentiality?’ The man’s voice didn’t soften, but gathered an edge of curiosity.

‘I have reason to believe that a man who operated in Berlin as a catcher is living in South Florida.’

Rosen hesitated. A silence clung to the line before he answered in a steady, cold, but compelling tone.

‘That is intriguing. A catcher? Only a few survived. Same as the Kapos in the camps. If you could find this man, it would be truly interesting. There are so many questions.’

‘What sort of questions?’

‘All questions that begin with the great Why, Mr Winter.’

‘What do you suppose the answer to that might be, Mr Rosen?’

‘I would be speculating. My area of study is Poland. The Warsaw Ghetto.’

‘You had family?’

‘Of course. And I too.’

‘I see.’

‘But that is a different story, is it not, Mr Winter?’

‘Yes. But could you speculate what sort of personality I am looking for?’

Rosen seemed to be gathering his thoughts before he replied. ‘That is a fascinating question, Mr Winter. What sort of personality? Do you truly think you want to open that particular door, Mr Winter?’

‘I need to know. I need something to grasp hold of.’

‘This, of course, is the great How at the bottom of all questions about the Holocaust,’ Rosen continued, his voice sinking a bit deeper. ‘It stands only a step closer to the surface than the great Why.’

‘I’m only beginning to understand,’ Winter said.

‘No one ever really understands,’ Rosen said coldly. ‘No one who was not there. The numbers were so immense. The cruelty so common. The evil so complete.’

Simon Winter was silent. He could sense the man on the other end thinking.

‘And so you want to know about a catcher? Not a fanatic. Not a Nazi. Closer to what the papers like to think of as a criminal psychopath. Remorseless. Relentless. Do you not think they would first excuse themselves by arguing they did what they did in order to save themselves and their own families?’

‘That would be reasonable.’

‘But it is of course untrue. Most didn’t save anyone, including themselves. Only the truly clever ones, I suppose. And they would be a special breed, would they not? To survive? High odds.’ ‘Yes.’

‘So, right away, you know you are dealing with a systemology of lies, are you not, Mr Winter? A person who cannot be self-delusional, because only someone who saw clearly what was happening could take the necessary steps to remain alive. But someone comfortable with distortions. Someone who embraces deception. But that would not be all, would it?’ ‘I’m listening.’

‘There would have to be something beyond simple expediency, would there not? A ferocity. A steel will to live. The catcher would be someone who would never find anyone’s life to be even remotely as important as their own. So, perhaps, you will be looking also for a man of some ego. A man who thinks he has done great things. This will not be a stupid man. Not like some dull-witted, hulking camp guard. Not even the accountant’s mentality of some S.S. bureaucrat that made certain the transport trains ran on schedule. For a catcher to survive required true genius. Creativity. Do you not see that?’

‘Yes. But how would I find this person? Here, among all the survivors?’

Rosen paused again, then laughed briefly. ‘Oh, this would be impossible, Mr Winter. Like a needle in the proverbial haystack. Among thousands, one is not precisely who he says he is. But still, he would be expert. He would know everything that all the survivors know. He would have all their own terrors memorized, because he participated in them. He would have access to all the same nightmares, but not wake up in the middle of the night

shouting the name of some long-lost relative who went to the gas. You see, Mr Winter, he would be completely intact, completely authentic. Yet intrinsically wrong. And somewhere within him a hatred so virulent… It would be fascinating. Fascinating.’

‘I must find him.’

‘It is a him? Some of the catchers were women. You have a name?’

‘Only a nom de guerre. Der Schattenmann.’

The name didn’t seem to register.

‘And you believe he is here?’

‘Yes.’

Rosen’s voice maintained an evenness as he spoke. ‘And you want desperately to find him? Why would that be?’

‘I believe he has killed.’

‘Ah, now that is interesting. Killed whom?’

‘Someone who might have recognized him.’

‘This makes perfectly reasonable sense. And your involvement?’

‘The victim was my neighbor.’

‘Ahh, this too makes sense. Revenge?’

‘I want to stop him.’

Rosen again grew silent on the other end of the line, and Winter thought for a second or two that he should say something, but did not, and into that space the man finally spoke quietly, deliberately, saying: ‘I do not think you will be able to.’

‘Why is that?’Winter asked.

‘Because he must be an expert in death. All kinds of death.’

‘So am I’

‘So is Time, Mr Winter. And Time has a better chance than you.’

Simon Winter rose from his table and walked to the window. Late afternoon sunlight filled the courtyard of the Sunshine Arms. The trumpeting cherub seemed inanely pleased, basking in the end-of-day heat, before the oppressive night humidity settled on the city. For the first time since Sophie Millstein had knocked at his door, Simon Winter felt a sense of defeat. All he’d heard, from every voice, was the same thing: death and impossibility. He lifted a hand to his forehead and rubbed hard, turning the skin red with frustration. This will kill me, he thought. I will die from impotent futility. This thought made him smile ruefully to himself when he recognized that that was precisely what he had been preparing to do when Sophie Millstein knocked on his door.

He decided that he would take a walk to see if movement could spur loose some idea for a productive avenue of inquiry, and so he turned and grabbed his battered Dolphins baseball hat and had his hand on the doorknob when behind him the telephone rang. He paused, wondering whether he should let the machine take it, then decided this was wrong, and bounded across the room, sweeping the receiver off the hook just as the machine went into its recorded message.

‘No, I’m here, hang on,’ he said over his own metallic taped voice.

‘Mr Winter?’ It was Frieda Kroner.

‘Yes, Mrs Kroner, what is it?’

‘Irving,’ she said. Her words were iron-hard. ‘The lifeguard station at South Point. The very last one before the jetty. We will meet you there.’

He saw a trio of police cars parked on a sandy strip next to the entrance to the beach. Off to the side was a small park, with a meandering exercise course wandering

through it. The park had a half-dozen picnic areas and a set of swings and seesaws; it was a popular place on weekends; many of the immigrant families that clung to the tip of South Beach in narrow, low-slung apartments, used the spot for parties. It was a favorite park for the homeless as well, because it wasn’t well-patroled at night, and a favorite too for fashion photographers shooting magazine layouts, because the park abutted Government Cut, the wide channel used by the cruise ships to head out into the open ocean. It sometimes had little moments of theater, where some man whose hopes and clothes were in tatters watched hungrily as chicken and plaintains were grilled and children played, a few feet away from where a model wearing thousands of dollars worth of evening wear and jewels pranced and preened for a cameraman.

From the long jetty one could see for miles out to sea, or look back toward the clear skyline of the city. Across the Cut was Fisher Island, a condominium complex serviced by its own ferry, populated by the wealthy, the very wealthy, and the obscenely rich. The jetty was also popular with fishermen, although the beach itself received less attention than the other spots at South Point. By virtue of being at the tip of Miami Beach, it gathered the roughest water and the most dangerous riptides. Some surfers liked it. The tourists were usually warned to move a mile or so up the expanse of sand. There was a boardwalk that led out to the jetty. Once he was on that, he quickly spotted the solitary lifeguard station at the end of the beach.

He saw a half-dozen blue-uniformed police officers milling about the faded green wood of the lifeguard stand. At the same time, he spotted Frieda Kroner and Rabbi Rubinstein standing apart, perhaps twenty feet away, watching the policemen, who seemed unsure what to do. A single crime scene technician, in a jacket and tie despite

the heat, was bent over the sand, but he could not see what the man was examining. There was another man in a suit, leaning over, but his back was to Winter, who couldn’t make out what the man was searching for.

He hurried forward, his basketball shoes making a clopping sound on the wooden boardwalk, like a horse trotting on pavement.

The rabbi turned as he approached, but Frieda Kroner kept watching the policemen.

‘Mr Winter,’ he said slowly, ‘thank you for coming.’

‘What is it?’

‘They called us. Frieda, actually.’

‘Did they find Mr Silver?’

‘No,’ Frieda Kroner said, not taking her eyes off the policemen. ‘They found his clothes.’

‘What?’

The rabbi shook his head. ‘The policeman called her. Apparently some kid, a teenager, tried to use a credit card at a shopping center, and the clerk selling the video games didn’t think this child, whose name turned out to be Ramon or Jose or Eduardo, looked much like an Irving, and so she summoned a policeman. And the teenager says this, and then says that, and lies this way and that, but soon enough gets around to telling the truth when someone gets a bit tough with him, and he says he finds this wallet with the credit card. They do not believe him, but he insists, and so the police bring him down here and he shows them.’

‘What?’

‘Irving’s clothes. Right on the beach, as if he left them there.’

‘And the wallet?’

‘It was on top.’

Simon Winter nodded.

‘This is where he killed him,’ Frieda Kroner said quietly.

The old detective took a deep breath, thinking, Idon’t think so, and stepped away from the rabbi and Mrs Kroner and started to pace across the sand. With each step he grew increasingly angry, raging away within himself, once again feeling the same incompetence and stupidity. And within each step of anger, another voice within him tried to calm him, tried to force himself to stay alert, because, he thought, perhaps there is something here to learn, and he knew that frustration, perhaps better than anything else, could serve to blind him to knowledge.

Two of the uniformed officers peeled away from the group and stepped in front of him.