The Sleepwalkers (8 page)

“This is in regard to a former roommate of hers, an American named Gina Mancuso.”

The sauce evaporated. “You didn’t find her?”

She quickly offered up whatever she had on the subject, which wasn’t much. Gina had lived upstairs with Paula for more than a year, a lovely girl. Nice. Neat. Stunned by her disappearance, they were. Paula loved her like a sister. Used to be in a chorus line together. Which club? She couldn’t say. But she’d started hanging out with the wrong crowd, Paula used to tell her about that. Which crowd? She had no idea. He’d need to speak with Paula personally.

“Where might I find her, Frau Hoffmeyer?” Willi was writing everything down.

“I can tell you where she works. Where you’ll find her, who the hell knows. Try Tauentzien, between Marburger and Ranke.”

For a moment their eyes met.

Go on,
hers seemed to say.
Make something of it. Shouldn’t I be ashamed? Humiliated? No, Herr Inspektor-Detektiv. Humiliated am I only when I haven’t food to put in an empty stomach.

“Is there some way I could recognize your daughter, ma’am?” he asked, knowing that dozens of girls worked that block, just down from one of Berlin’s main train stations. He walked past them every morning on his way to work.

“Yeah, sure. You can pick her out in a second.” Frau Hoffmeyer dropped back to her knees with a grunt. “The one in the purple, lace-up boots.”

The boots radiated even across the avenue.

In Berlin, a city whose main industry some said was sex, the Boot Girls of Tauentzien Strasse were a virtual brand name, elite among the many layered cultures of prostitution thriving here. Ten thousand women were registered with the Berlin city government, certifying them as disease-free professionals. Countless
tens of thousands more competed on an amateur level, at lower cost/higher risk. Boot Girls were in a category all their own: professionals of the most highly specialized type, for a boot on Tauentzien Strasse was no mere footwear. It was carefully coordinated advertisement.

Of the kinkiest variety.

“Mud bath?” the girl in the brown anklets might whisper as you pass; her friend in hip-high yellow counters, “Better yet, how about a nice refreshing shower this morning, huh,
Bübchen
?”

Entire guidebooks were devoted to interpreting the color codes.

Before crossing the street Willi observed Miss Paula Hoffmeyer. Quite a creation. Waist up she was in full men’s formal attire: black tails, bow tie, white carnation in the lapel. Every detail perfect down to the leather riding crop under her arm. Her brown hair, blunt at the neck, was oiled into tight marcel waves, her hands wrapped in fingerless black gloves. The eyes were covered in almost as much dark makeup as the Great Gustave’s. Waist down she was femme fatale. Black silk short-shorts revealed the garters and straps holding up her stockings. And those boots. Extra-high-spike-heeled, pointy-toed, purple patent leather with flaming red laces up the front.

Without a guidebook Willi was helpless to decipher the meaning. Only that unlike the other girls, who walked almost exclusively in teams, Paula strut the sidewalk alone, holding her body erect, fiercely almost. He darted behind two passing streetcars across the busy avenue.

A truck honked.

A motorcyclist roared around him.

On the far corner a newspaper vendor shouted the early evening headlines: “Hitler—
Nein
to Vice Chancellorship! Hindenburg—
Nein
to Hitler!”

“Fräulein.” Willi tapped Miss Hoffmeyer on the shoulder.

She turned around with a brash smile. “Craving discipline? Why, you must have been a very naughty—” The smile dropped
as she saw the badge. “What? I’m up-to-date. So now I have to show my permit card?” She started fishing through her jacket. “
Mein Gott,
this place is turning into a real police state.”

“I’m not interested in your card, miss. I’m with the Kriminal Polizei.”

He could see the color flush from her face.

“Might I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“It’s a joke, right? You want to buy
me
coffee. Well, this must be really bad. Just tell me, Inspektor. Come on. I can take it. Who got it this time?”

“Please. Let me buy you a coffee. Anywhere you’d like.”

“Anywhere I’d like? Hmmm. Let me think . . .” She tapped her half-gloved hands on her chin. “How about the Romanische then.”

Willi had to hand it to her. She could have said the Kaiserhof or Adlon. But this girl clearly knew how to dish out as well as she got. Of all the many hundreds of cafés in Berlin, the one he’d most
not
want to be seen with someone like her was the Romanische. Not that it was fashionable or even terribly expensive, but it was just the sort of place everyone was sure to know him. “Okay then,” he said. “Come.”

Luckily for them it was practically around the corner, because the moment they began walking, the sky opened up with an absolutely frigid rain. “You saved me from a miserable fate!” Paula cried, holding her hands over her head as they passed below the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The enormous bells overhead began pealing five o’clock. Willi took her arm as they darted amid traffic across the Breitscheidplatz.

On one of the busiest corners of Berlin-West, with its multiple rooms of high-arched ceilings and countless comfortable wicker chairs, an intoxicating blend of coffees enriching its already rarefied air, the Romanisches Café was home to Berlin’s many artistic and intellectual giants. Not that Willi belonged to this crowd certainly. But Fritz did. The journalist and distant relative of the ex-kaiser was best friends with positively everyone
here. And positively everyone knew Fritz’s oldest friend, his war pal/lifesaver, formerly the Detektiv, now the great
Kinderfresser
catcher, Willi.

Max Reinhardt, the illustrious theatrical impresario, and Bertolt Brecht, the brilliant young playwright, in his trademark black leather cap, both looked up from their table and waved hellos, noticing with curiosity the Boot Girl Willi’d brought along. Thomas Mann, Germany’s most famous modern novelist, rose to shake Willi’s hand and was introduced with fascination to his companion. And who else could that head of wildly orbiting hair have belonged to other than the most famous German of all, Albert Einstein, who put down his newspaper long enough to grab Willi’s sleeve and whisper intensely, “I’ve decided to leave for America, Willi. Right after New Year. This climate’s getting menacing. You ought to consider going, too, while the going’s still good.”

Willi squeezed the great scientist’s hand and wished him all the luck in the world.

The moment he and Paula got a table, he felt a hard slap against his back.

“You old dog.” Fritz grabbed his shoulder, shaking him with manly approval. Running a finger up and down his mustache, Fritz took in Paula from head to purple toes. “And here I thought you were languishing away in loneliness.”

Willi was about to explain, but the girl cut him off.

“Paula.” She held out her demi-gloved hands. “
Enchanté.
Sorry to have kept this such a state secret, but now that we’re certain, we can tell the whole world. Inspektor . . . what’s your name again,
Liebchen
? Willi. Willi and I are going to be wed!”

Fritz stared as if she were positively mad, the long dueling scar across his cheek flaming bright red as he burst out laughing. “You old dog,” he reiterated, wagging a gleeful finger at Willi.

Backing away, Fritz pretended to dial and mouthed vociferously, “Call me, bloody hound, you!”

Paula and Willi looked at each other.

“Sorry.” She shrugged, barely bothering to suppress her delight. “You must admit it was funny though.”

It was hard to tell exactly how pretty she was under all her makeup, although Willi suspected it was more than she let on. Her figure however made her face almost irrelevant. At least for business purposes. The fulsome breasts beneath her men’s shirt pushed up hard against the white cotton, straining the buttons almost to the breaking point. Where the shirt ended, the curves of her thighs made the black silk shorts sparkle, the inch of rosy white flesh peeking out before the garter almost irresistible. And those legs—Willi noticed her slowly crossing them under the table—surely the Great Gustave’s Ideal.

When their orders arrived, she dug into her Black Forest cake as if she hadn’t eaten in days. But when she sipped her coffee, she extended her pinkie delicately, as she’d no doubt seen in the cinema. Despite himself Willi was enchanted. He felt as if something terribly real and poignant was trying to break through the aura of a dream she wore as resolutely as her costume.

She swallowed, putting down her coffee cup. “Okay. So let’s have it, Willi. What’s the deal?”

“Gina Mancuso.”

The last crumbs of cake fell off her fork.
“Mein Gott.”

“We’re not certain it’s her we found. But we think so. We want you to help us make certain.”

“I don’t suppose she’s . . . alive?”

“No.”

Paula sat motionless except for the tears that burst down both cheeks, carrying away the mask of mascara in thick black swaths.

“I really didn’t think she could be. After all these months. Oh, her parents will just be devastated. They came all the way from Schenectady, New York, looking for her.” She buried her head in her napkin and wept. “I loved that girl. The only real friend I ever had. Poor kid. Came here because she heard it was the only place to be. Everybody’s gotta see Berlin! God, she loved life. Lived it
like there was no tomorrow. Which there wasn’t for her, was there?”

“Where did you two meet?”

“A nightclub on Kleist Strasse. Could that child ever dance. You think I have legs? Don’t be stupid, Willi: I saw you staring before. Gina’s would have knocked you out.”

Willi’s throat tightened at the thought of how those legs looked now.

“Fräulein, when I spoke to your mother earlier, she said you’d mentioned to her that Gina had gotten into the wrong crowd. What did you mean?”

Paula’s eyes, so green and sparkling but strangely distant all this time, now clouded completely over. “Ever hear of Gustave Spanknoebel?”

“The Great Gustave?”

“Yeah, Great.”

Willi had to strain to keep from shouting,
Eureka!
Gina Mancuso, the Mermaid, and Princess Magdelena Eugenia had
both
fallen into the same hands. Not only Dr. Meckel but the Great Gustave,
both
were involved. What kind of sick, sinister circle was this? But then again, hold on a second. Logic took him back a step or two. How is it possible that I should so conveniently stumble on this, as if some higher power had so nicely set it all up?

“I saw the Great Gustave’s stage show recently. It seemed perfectly harmless.”

“The show, sure. It’s what goes on behind the curtains, Willi. Behind. Gustave has this yacht, see. Takes it out on the Wannsee and Havel, weather permitting. Has parties. If you want to call them parties.”

“How do you know? You ever go?”

“Gina told me plenty enough. Gustave’s a big Nazi. Well, maybe not really, but hangs around with all the Party big shots. Predicted Hitler would come to power next year.”

“So I heard.”

“They all come to his yacht for these . . . getaways. He always has the most beautiful girls in Berlin on hand. And hypnotizes them. Lets the men do whatever they want with them. It was all fun and games, until Gina.” The green in Paula’s eyes almost faded away. “She was the first who never came back.”

“There have been others?”

“I don’t know. I hear things.”

“Fräulein Hoffmeyer, when Gina went missing, did you report what you knew about the Great Gustave to the police?”

“Did I. To anyone who’d listen. Ask me if they cared. I told you, this guy has friends. Big friends.”

“Fräulein—”

“For Christ’s sakes, stop calling me that. Only my customers call me Fräulein, and only once I order them to. Please. It’s Paula.”

“Okay, Paula. Let me ask you this. Do you think there’s any way to arrange it so I might get invited to one of Gustave’s ‘getaway’ outings?”

She looked at him and burst into laughter. “Forgive me, Herr Inspektor-Detektiv. Willi. Really. But you don’t exactly look like a Nazi.”

“There are ways to disguise yourself, Paula. I believe you know that.”

She stopped laughing. “I suppose there are.”

A new respect suddenly gleamed in her eyes. She smiled, with some trepidation. “I do know people. I could try to arrange something.”

“I’d really appreciate that. I want to put a stop to this nightmare. Before any more Ginas go missing.”

“You know, I honestly believe you do.”

Outside, the freezing rain had turned to sleet. A thick layer of slush already covered the ground.

Willi couldn’t just dump her on the sidewalk. “Come on. I’ll hail you a cab home.”

“But I haven’t made any money.”

He reached in a pocket and yanked out a fifty, for her a half month’s salary. “I used enough of your time.”

A long, black cab pulled up. Willi opened the door, and as she got in, her green eyes lit with a gratitude that penetrated right through the armor he’d carefully riveted around his heart.

He tried to close the door.

“Please.” She blocked him, sounding more like a lonely young woman than a boot hooker. “Not for you. For me,” she whispered. “I promise.”

Despite every logical impulse still at work in his brain, he slid in.

And they drove off together.

Detektiv and whore.

The attic room, two flights up from her mother’s apartment, was not much bigger than a prison cell and pretty much as drafty. A small coal stove in the corner served as both heat and kitchen. The single bed had an eiderdown cover of faded red roses. A window with a box of dead geraniums looked deep into a courtyard crisscrossed by laundry lines.

That was about as far as he saw before she pulled him into bed.

His own need shocked him.

In an irresistible explosion, the libidinous animal in him leapt awake from its hibernation, and with a primitive ferocity he’d forgotten he even possessed, he ravished her, heedless of all but his own overwhelming hunger. When he released, it seemed to never end.