Garden of Beasts Page 10

  "Come, Janssen!" Kohl and the inspector candidate rushed out the side door and through an anemic garden typical of the tens of thousands throughout the city; Berliners loved growing flowers and plants but land was at such a premium that they were forced to use any scraps of dirt they could find for their gardens. There was only one route out of the patch; it led to Rosenthaler Street. They trotted to it and looked up and down the congested street. No sign of their suspect.

  Kohl was furious. Had he not been distracted by Krauss they would likely have had more of a chance to intercept the large man in the hat. But mostly he was angry with himself for his carelessness on the patio a moment earlier.

  "In our haste," he muttered to Janssen, "we've burnt the crust, but perhaps we can salvage some of the remaining loaf." He turned and stalked back toward the front door of the Summer Garden.

  Paul, Morgan and the skinny, nervous man known as Max stood fifty feet up Rosenthaler Street in a small cluster of linden trees.

  They were watching the man in the white suit and his younger associate in the garden, beside the restaurant, looking up and down the street, then they returned to the front door.

  "They couldn't be after us," Morgan said. "Impossible."

  "They were looking for someone, " Paul said. "They came out the side door a minute after we did. That's not a coincidence."

  In a shaky voice, Max asked, "You think they were Gestapo? Or Kripo?"

  "What's Kripo?" Paul asked.

  "Criminal police. Plainclothes detectives."

  "They were some sort of police," Paul announced. There was no doubt. He'd suspected it from the moment he'd seen the two men approach the Summer Garden. He'd taken the window table specifically to keep an eye on the street and, sure enough, he'd noticed the men--a heavyset one in a Panama hat and a slimmer, younger one in a green suit--asking diners on the patio questions. Then the younger one had stepped away--probably to cover the back door--and the white-suited cop had walked to the posted menu, examining it for far longer than one normally would.

  Paul had stood suddenly, tossed down money--paper bills only, on which fingerprints would be nearly impossible to find--and snapped, "Leave now." With Morgan and a panicked Max behind him, he'd pushed through the side door and waited at the front of a small garden until the cop had gone inside the restaurant, then walked fast down Rosenthaler Street.

  "Police," Max now muttered, sounding near tears. "No... no..."

  Too many people to chase you here... and too many people to follow you, too many people to rat on you.

  I'd do anything for him and the Party....

  Paul looked again down the street, back toward the Summer Garden. No one was in pursuit. Still, he felt an electric current of urgency to learn information of Ernst's whereabouts from Max and get on with the touch-off. He turned, saying, "I need to know..." His voice faded.

  Max was gone.

  "Where is he?"

  Morgan too turned. "Goddamn," he muttered in English.

  "Did he betray us?"

  "I can't believe that he would--it would mean his arrest too. But..." Morgan's voice faded as he looked past Paul. "No!"

  Spinning around, Paul saw Max about two blocks away. He was among several people stopped by two men in black uniforms, whom he apparently hadn't seen. "An SS security stop."

  Max looked around nervously, waiting his turn to be questioned by the SS troopers. He wiped his face, looking guilty as a teenager.

  Paul whispered, "There's nothing for him to worry about. His papers are fine. He gave us Ernst's photos. As long as he doesn't panic he'll be all right."

  Calm down, Paul told the man silently. Don't look around....

  Then Max smiled and stepped closer to the SS.

  "He's going to be fine," Morgan said.

  No, he's not, Paul thought. He's going to shank it.

  And just at that moment the man turned and fled.

  The SS troops pushed aside a couple they'd been speaking with and began running after him. "Stop, you will stop!"

  "No!" Morgan whispered. "Why did he do that? Why?"

  Because he was scared witless, Paul thought.

  Max was slimmer than the SS guards, who were in bulky uniforms, and was beginning to pull away from them.

  Maybe he can make it. Maybe--

  A shot echoed and Max tumbled to the concrete, blood blossoming on his back. Paul looked behind him. A third SS officer across the street had drawn his pistol and fired. Max started to crawl toward the curb when the first two guards caught up to him, gasping for breath. One drew his pistol, fired a shot into the poor man's head and leaned against a lamppost to catch his breath.

  "Let's go," Paul whispered. "Now!"

  They turned back onto Rosenthaler Street and walked north, along with the other pedestrians moving steadily away from the site of the shooting.

  "God in heaven," Morgan muttered. "I've spent a month cultivating him and holding his hand while he got details on Ernst. Now what do we do?"

  "Whatever we decide, it's got to be fast; somebody might make the connection between him"--a glance back at the body in the street--"and Ernst."

  Morgan sighed and thought for a moment. "I don't know anyone else close to Ernst.... But I do have a man in the information ministry."

  "You have somebody inside there? "

  "The National Socialists are paranoid but they have one flaw that offsets that: their ego. They have so many agents in place that it never occurs to them that somebody might infiltrate them. He's just a clerk but he may be able to find out something."

  They paused on a busy corner. Paul said, "I'm going to get my things at the Olympic Village and move to the boardinghouse."

  "The pawnshop where we're getting the rifle is near Oranienburger Station. I'll meet you in November 1923 Square, under the big statue of Hitler. Say, four-thirty. Do you have a map?"

  "I'll find it."

  The men shook hands and, with a glance back at the crowd standing around the body of the unfortunate man, they started their separate ways as another siren filled the streets of a city that was clean and orderly and filled with polite, smiling people--and that had been the site of two killings in as many hours.

  No, Paul reflected, the unfortunate Max hadn't betrayed him. But he realized that there was another implication that was far more troubling: These two cops or Gestapo agents had tracked Morgan or Paul or both of them from Dresden Alley to the Summer Garden on their own and come within minutes of capturing them. This was police work far better than any he'd seen in New York. Who the hell are they? he wondered.

  "Johann," Willi Kohl asked the waiter, "what exactly was this man with the brown hat wearing?"

  "A light gray suit, a white shirt and a green tie, which I found rather garish."

  "And he was large?"

  "Very large, sir. But not fat. He was a bodybuilder perhaps."

  "Any other characteristics?"

  "Not that I noticed."

  "Was he foreign?"

  "I don't know. But he spoke German flawlessly. Perhaps a faint accent."

  "His hair color?"

  "I couldn't say. Darker rather than lighter."

  "Age?"

  "Not young, not old."

  Kohl sighed. "And you said 'companions'?"

  "Yes, sir. He arrived first. Then he was joined by another man. Considerably smaller. Wearing a black or dark gray suit. I don't recall his tie. And then yet another, a man in brown overalls, in his thirties. A worker, it seemed. He joined them later."

  "Did the big man have a leather suitcase or satchel?"

  "Yes. It was brown."

  "His companions spoke German too?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you overhear their conversation?"

  "No, Inspector."

  "And the man's face? The man in the hat?" Janssen asked.

  A hesitation. "I didn't see the face. Or his companions'."

  "You waited on them but you did not see their faces?" Kohl asked.

&
nbsp; "I didn't pay any attention. It's dark in here, as you can see. And in this business... so many people. You look but you rarely see, if you understand."

  That was true, Kohl supposed. But he also knew that since Hitler had come to power three years ago, blindness had become the national malady. People either denounced fellow citizens for "crimes" they hadn't witnessed, or else were unable to recall the details of offenses they actually had seen. Knowing too much might mean a trip to the Alex--the Kripo headquarters--or the Gestapo's on Prince Albrecht Street to examine endless pictures of known felons. No one would willingly go to either of those places; today's witness could be tomorrow's detainee.

  The waiter's eyes swept the floor, troubled. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Kohl pitied him. "Perhaps in lieu of a description of his face, you could give us some other observations and we could dispense with a visit to police headquarters. If you happen to think of something helpful."

  The man looked up, relieved.

  "I'll try to assist you," the inspector said. "Let's start with some specifics. What did he eat and drink?"

  "Ah, that's something. He at first ordered a wheat beer. He must not have ever drunk it before. He only sipped it and pushed it aside. But he drank all of the Pschorr ale that his companion ordered for him."

  "Good." Kohl never knew at first what these details about a suspect might ultimately reveal. Perhaps the man's state or country of origin, perhaps something more specific. But it was worth noting, which Willi Kohl now did in his well-thumbed notebook, after a lick of the pencil tip. "And his food?"

  "Our sausage and cabbage plate. With much bread and margarine. They had the same. The big man ate everything. He seemed ravenous. His companion ate half."

  "And the third man?"

  "Coffee only."

  "How did the big man--as we'll call him--how did he hold his fork?"

  "His fork?"

  "After he cut a piece of sausage, did he change his fork from one hand to another and then eat the bite? Or did he lift the food to his mouth without changing hands?"

  "I... I don't know, sir. I would think possibly he did change hands. I say that because it seemed he was always placing his fork down to drink the beer."

  "Good, Johann."

  "I am happy to aid my Leader in any way I can."

  "Yes, yes," Kohl said wearily.

  Switching forks. Common in other countries, less so in Germany, like whistling for taxis. So the accent may have indeed been foreign.

  "Did he smoke?"

  "I believe so, sir."

  "Pipe, cigar, cigarette?"

  "Cigarette, I believe. But I--"

  "Didn't see the brand of the manufacturer."

  "No, sir. I didn't."

  Kohl walked across the room and examined the suspect's table and the chairs around it. Nothing helpful. He frowned to see that the ashtray contained ash but no cigarette stubs.

  More evidence of their man's cleverness?

  Kohl then crouched and struck a match over the floor beneath the table.

  "Ah, yes, look, Janssen! Some flakes of the same brown leather we found earlier. Indeed it is our man. And there are marks in the dust here that suggest he set a satchel down."

  "I wonder what it contains," Janssen said.

  "That does not interest us," Kohl said, scooping up these flakes and depositing them in an envelope. "Not at this point. The importance is the bag itself, the connection it establishes between this man and Dresden Alley."

  Kohl thanked the waiter and, with a longing glance at a plate of wiener schnitzel, he walked outside, Janssen behind him.

  "Let's inquire around the neighborhood to see if anyone saw our gentlemen. You take the far side of the street, Janssen. I'll take the flower vendors." Kohl laughed grimly. Berlin flower sellers were notoriously rude.

  Janssen removed his handkerchief and wiped his brow. He seemed to give a faint sigh.

  "Are you tired, Janssen?"

  "No, sir. Not at all." The young man hesitated then added, "It's just that it seems our work sometimes is hopeless. All this effort for a fat dead man."

  Kohl dug his yellow pipe out of his pocket, frowning to see that he'd put his pistol into the same pocket and had nicked the bowl. He filled it with tobacco. He said, "Yes, Janssen, you're right. The victim was a fat middle-aged man. But we're clever detectives, aren't we? We know something else about him, as well."

  "What's that, sir?"

  "That he was somebody's son."

  "Well... of course he was."

  "And perhaps he was somebody's brother. And maybe somebody's husband or lover. And, if he was lucky, he was a father of sons and daughters. I would hope too that there are past lovers who think of him occasionally. And in his future other lovers might have awaited. And three or four more children he could have brought into the world." He rasped a match on the side of the box and got a smolder going in the meerschaum. "So, Janssen, when you look at the incident in this way we don't have merely a curious mystery about a stocky dead man. We have a tragedy like a spiderweb reaching many different lives and many different places, extending for years and years. How sad that is.... Do you see why our job is so important?"

  "Yes, sir."

  And Kohl believed that the young man did indeed understand.

  "Janssen, you must get a hat. But for now, I've changed my mind. You take the shady side of the street. It will mean, of course, that you must interview the flower vendors. They'll treat you to some words you won't hear outside of a Stormtrooper barracks but at least you won't return to your wife tonight with skin the shade of fresh beetroot."

  Chapter Eight

  Walking toward the busy square to find a taxi, Paul glanced behind him from time to time. Smoking his Chesterfield, looking at the sights, stores, passersby, once again searching for anything out of kilter.

  He slipped into a public rest room, which was immaculate, and stepped into a stall. He stubbed out his cigarette and dropped it, along with the cigarette butts and wad of pulp that had held the address of Kathe Richter's boardinghouse, into the toilet. Then he tore the pictures of Ernst up into dozens of tiny pieces and flushed everything away.

  Outside on the street again, he put aside the difficult images of Max's sad and unnecessary death and concentrated on the job ahead of him. It had been years since he'd killed anyone with a rifle. He was a good shot with a long weapon. People call guns "equalizers." But that's not completely true. A pistol weighs perhaps three pounds, a rifle twelve or more. To hold a weapon absolutely still requires strength, and Paul's solid arms had helped make him the best shot in his squadron.

  Yet now, as he'd explained to Morgan, when he had to touch off someone, he preferred to do it with a pistol.

  And he always came in close, close as breath.

  He never said a word to his victim, never confronted him, never even let him know what was about to happen. He would appear, as silently as a big man could, behind the victim, if possible, and fire the shot into his head, killing him instantly. He would never think of behaving like the sadistic Bugsy Siegel or the recently departed Dutch Schultz; they'd slowly beat people to death, torment them, taunt them. What Paul did as a button man had nothing to do with anger or pleasure or the gritty satisfaction of revenge; it was simply about committing an evil act to eliminate a greater evil.

  And Paul Schumann insisted on paying the price for this hypocrisy. He suffered from the proximity of killing. The deaths sickened him, sent him into a tunnel of sorrow and guilt. Every time he killed, another part of him died too. Once, drunk in a shabby West Side Irish bar, he concluded that he was the opposite of Christ; he died so that others might die too. He wished he'd been too smoked on hooch to remember that thought. But it'd stuck with him.

  Still, he supposed Morgan was right about using the rifle. His buddy Damon Runyon had once said that a man could be a winner only if he was willing to step over the edge. Paul sure did that often enough, but he also knew when to stop walking. He'd never been suicidal. O
n a number of occasions he'd postponed the touch-off when he sensed the odds were bad. Maybe six to five against was acceptable. But worse than that? He didn't--

  A loud crash startled him. Something flew through a bookstore window onto the sidewalk a few yards away. A bookcase. Some books followed. He glanced inside the shop and saw a middle-aged man holding his bloody face. He appeared to have been struck on the cheek. A woman, crying, gripped his arm. They were both terrified. Four large men in light brown uniforms stood around them. Paul supposed they were Stormtroopers, Brownshirts. One of them was holding a book and shouting at the man. "You are not allowed to sell this shit! They're illegal. They're a ticket to Oranienburg."

  "It's Thomas Mann," the man protested. "It means nothing against the Leader or our Party. I--"

  The Brownshirt slapped the bookseller in his face with the open book. He spoke in a mocking voice. "It's..." Another furious slap. "Thomas..." Another, and the spine of the book broke. "Mann...."

  The bullying angered Paul but it wasn't his problem. He could hardly afford to draw attention to himself here. He started on. But suddenly one of the Brownshirts grabbed the woman by the arm and pushed her out the door. She fell hard into Paul and dropped to the sidewalk. She was so terrified she didn't even seem to notice him. Blood ran from her knees and palms where the window glass had cut her skin.

  The apparent leader of the Stormtroopers dragged the man outside. "Destroy the place," he called to his friends, who began to push over the counters and shelves, rip the pictures from the walls, slam the sturdy chairs onto the floor, trying to break them. The leader glanced at Paul then delivered a powerful blow to the midsection of the bookseller, who gave a grunt, rolled over on his stomach and vomited. The Brownshirt stepped toward the woman. He grabbed her by the hair and was about to strike her in the face when Paul, out of instinct, grabbed his arm.

  The man spun around, spittle flying from his mouth, set in a large, square face. He stared into Paul's blue eyes. "Who are you? Do you know who I am? Hugo Felstedt of the Berlin Castle Stormtrooper Brigade. Alexander! Stefan!"

  Paul eased the woman aside. She bent and helped up the other bookseller, who was wiping his mouth, tears falling from the pain, the humiliation.