“They really are tourists, you know,” he said. “Not demi-castors, or half-silks, or whatever you cops call them. Just three girls on holiday from Stockholm, who felt like being true Berliners and taking off their clothes for the sheer hell of it.” He sighed. “I think it will be a real shame when this kind of thing is gone. But things have to change. It can’t be allowed to go on like this. The vice, the prostitution, the drugs. It’s corrupting us.”
I shrugged.
“You’re a cop,” he said. “I thought you would surely agree with me about that, at least.”
Two of the band came back and started to play gently, for the benefit of the impromptu floor show.
“You’re not from Berlin, are you, Herr Diels? In Berlin we say that you should leave another man’s mustache alone, even if it droops into his coffee cup. That’s why the Nazis will never do well in this city. Because you people can’t leave another man’s mustache alone.”
“That’s an unusual attitude for a policeman. Don’t you want to make councilor, or director? You could, you know. The minute this election is over. Everyone is going to want to help us then. But you’re in a position to help us now. When it really counts.”
“I told you. I’m not interested in being a part of your expanded political police.”
“I’m not talking about that. I mean that you could stay on, in Department Four. That you could keep doing what you’re doing now. It’s not like you’re a Communist or anything. We can easily overlook something like the Iron Front.” He shrugged innocently. “No, all you would have to do is a favor for us.”
“What kind of favor?” I asked, intrigued.
“We want you to drop the Schwarz case.”
“I’m a police officer, Herr Diels. I can’t do that. I’ve been ordered to investigate a murder, and it’s my duty to carry out that investigation to the best of my abilities.”
“You were ordered to do it by people who won’t be around for much longer. Besides, we both know that in this city there are lots of cases that remain unsolved.”
“I go slow, is that it? So Goebbels can accuse Grzesinski and Weiss of sparing the horses because the victim’s old man is a big noise in the SA?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. The Schwarz girl was disabled. She had a bad leg. Like Goebbels. It’s a little embarrassing for him to have this kind of issue in the public eye. It magnifies it, somewhat. Anita Schwarz had a bad leg. That reminds people that Goebbels has one, too. Dr. Goebbels would be greatly in your debt if the Schwarz case could be driven into a sand dune, so to speak.”
“Is Joey’s foot the only reason he’d like this case to go nowhere?”
Diels looked puzzled. “Yes. What other reason could there be?”
It seemed imprudent to mention just how much I knew about the true extent of Joey’s current disabilities. “And what if another girl gets murdered? In similar circumstances. What then?”
“So you investigate it. Just lay off the Schwarz case. That’s all I’m asking. Just until after the election.”
“To spare Joey’s feelings.”
“To spare Joey’s feelings.”
“You make me think that maybe there’s a lot more to this case than I realized before.”
“It might be unhealthy to think that. For you and your career.”
“My career?” I laughed. “That really keeps me awake at night.”
“At least you’re still awake at night, Herr Gunther.” He grinned and blew on the end of his cigar. “That’s something, isn’t it?”
I’d heard all I wanted to hear. I reached for the fruit bowl, picked out a nice golden apple, and stood up.
The three naked women were now too caught up in themselves to pay me any regard, and it was looking like a proper floor show that Berliners would have paid good money to sit and watch.
“Hey, you,” I said. “Aphrodite.”
I tossed the apple and one of them caught it. Naturally she was the best-looking of the three Swedes. “My name is not Aphrodite,” she said dully. “It is Gunila.”
I didn’t say anything back. I just walked away with my clothes and my sense of humor and my classical education. It was a lot more than she had.
Outside I crossed the road and bought some cigarettes. In front of the tobacconist’s were six men wearing placards for the forthcoming election. One was for Bruner and the SDP, two were for Thalmann and the Communists, and three were for Hitler. All in all, the prospects for the republic were looking no better than my own.
IN 1932, I didn’t go to the cinema very much. Maybe if I had, I might not have been tricked so easily. I’d heard about Fritz Lang’s film M, because there was a detective in it who was supposedly based on Ernst Gennat. Certainly Gennat thought that was the case. But with one thing and another, I’d missed the film when it came out. It was still showing at my local Union Theater, but in summer, there always seemed to be something more important to do than to spend an evening watching a movie. Like investigate a murder. The night before it happened, I’d been up all night checking out political killings in Wedding and Neukolln. The descriptions given by witnesses were predictably vague. But then, all murderers look the same when they’re wearing brown shirts. That’s my excuse. One thing was for sure. The people who ambushed me must have seen the movie.
As I walked out of my apartment building, a small boy ran up to my car. I wasn’t sure if I’d seen the boy before, but even if I had, I’m not sure I’d have recognized him. All boys in the Scheunenviertel looked much the same. This one was shoeless, with short blond hair and bright blue eyes. He wore gray shorts, a gray shirt, and sported a number eleven of snot on his upper lip. I guessed him to be about eight years old.
“A girl I know just went off with a strange man,” he said. “Her name is Lotte Friedrich and she’s twelve years old and the fritz isn’t from around here. Creepy-looking dad he was, with a funny look on his shine. He’s the same schlepper who tried to give my sister some sweets yesterday if she’d go for a walk with him.” The boy tugged my sleeve urgently and pointed west along Schendelgasse until I agreed to look. “See them? She’s wearing a green dress and he’s wearing a coat. See?”
Sure enough, crossing Alte Schonhauser Strasse were a man and a girl. The man had his hand on the girl’s neck, like he was steering her somewhere. Wearing a coat seemed just a little suspicious, as the day was already a warm one.
Ordinarily, I might have been more suspicious of the boy. But then it wasn’t every month that an adolescent girl turned up dead with half of her insides removed. Nobody wanted that to happen again.
“What’s your name, sonny?”
“Emil.”
I gave him ten pfennigs and pointed in the direction of Bulowplatz.
“You know that armored car outside the Red HQ?”
Emil nodded and wiped the snot onto the back of his shirtsleeve.
“I want you to go and tell the SCHUPO in the armored car that Commissar Gunther from the Alex is following a suspect onto Mulackstrasse and requests them to come and give him support. Got that?”
Emil nodded again and ran off in the direction of Bulowplatz.
I walked quickly west, unholstering my Parabellum as I went, because as soon as I had crossed onto Mulackstrasse, I would be in the heart of Always True’s territory. I might have lacked caution but I wasn’t stupid.
The man and the girl ahead of me were walking briskly, too. I quickened my pace and came onto Mulackstrasse just in time to hear a scream and see the man pick the girl up under his arm before ducking into the Ochsenhof. At this point, I should probably have waited for the Twenty-first Battalion and its armored car. Only I was still thinking about Anita Schwarz and the girl in the green dress. Besides, when I looked back at where I had come from, there was still no sign of the cavalry. I took my whistle, blew it several times, and waited for some sign that they were coming. But nothing happened. Either the Twenty-first didn’t care for the idea of chasing a suspect into the most lawless part of Berlin, or they just didn’t believe the story Emil had told them. Probably it was a combination of the two.