The Good Cop

by Peter Steiner

  FEBRUARY 24, 1920

  Sophie and Maximilian found their way through the winding streets of the old city. The night was cold and snow was falling lightly. The bells of the Frauenkirche chimed seven-thirty just as they arrived at the Hofbräuhaus. The huge vaulted beer hall could hold over a thousand people. It was noisy and the heat was rising as others were arriving and finding places at the long oak tables. ‘They can’t fill this place, can they?’ said Maximilian.

  They sat down at an empty table just below the stage not far from a table surrounded by determined-looking men. They had on coats and jackets, despite the heat, under which there were probably knives, clubs, and worse. Their caps were pulled low on their foreheads and their faces stared forward in grim anticipation. A great rosy blonde waitress in a dirndl put liters of beer on the table in front of them which they seized, clinked joylessly together, and drank from deeply.

  By eight o’clock, the table where Sophie and Maximilian sat had filled up, as had all the other tables. People crowded onto benches wherever they could. The hall was packed. Most were supporters of the German Workers’ Party, but there were also socialists and communists like the men at the adjoining table – communists, Sophie decided, whose purpose was to disrupt the evening and break some heads.

  Finally a collection of Workers’ Party officials filed onto the stage and took their seats behind the podium. Hitler was among them. Sophie didn’t recognize the others. Johannes Dingfelder, an elderly doctor, was the first speaker. He read from a paper he had written about the historical origins of the current economic distress throughout Germany. ‘In medieval Germany …’ he began. A collective groan rose from the crowd. He was booed and jeered and heckled, but he went on with his speech to the bitter end even though no one was listening, finally shuffling back to his seat. Then Hitler rose and walked to the podium. He looked out at the crowd, then down as though he were embarrassed. He clasped, unclasped his hands, shifted his feet. He passed one hand through the shock of hair hanging over his forehead. He lifted his chin and thrust it forward, gazing into the distance. He might have been an athlete preparing for a race.

  The crowd was slow to quiet down, but he began to speak anyway in a soft voice that seemed almost gentle and was all but inaudible in that vast hall. At first there were catcalls and hoots of derision. Someone threw a bottle that landed not far from where Maximilian and Sophie sat. A fight broke out. The men at the next table shouted obscenities and shook their fists in Hitler’s direction. They swung their legs over their benches, ready to storm the stage. But before they could even stand up, twenty men in brown shirts, including Hermann Gruber, were on them, swinging beer mugs, clubs, and fists. Similar fights broke out all over the hall. Those who had come to disrupt the meeting were badly outnumbered. After twenty minutes they had been driven from the hall, bloodied and carrying their unconscious comrades.

  Hitler had been speaking the whole time, laying out his Party’s platform. And as he spoke his voice had risen and had reached a fiery pitch, as though he drew sustenance from the mayhem. The pitched battles were his oxygen. He pounded his hand with his fist and demanded a strong central government in Berlin. He wanted nothing to do with this wishy-washy socialist republic. He jammed his finger toward the ceiling as he promised that Jews would lose their citizenship and all the rights that went with it when the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was in power (Hitler had changed the Party’s name). Everybody cheered. Many were on their feet now. And the terms of Germany’s surrender, that filthy, deceitful Treaty of Versailles, would be torn up and thrown in the trash. His voice became a shriek, a wail, an incantation that seemed the direct expression of the collective will of the people in that hall. His voice was their voice, his will their will. And his greatness had become their greatness. They were cheering and stamping and pounding the tables so that they couldn’t even make out his words. It didn’t matter. Words didn’t matter. Germany would be great again. The crowd erupted and spilled into the streets. Crowds of men, many of them drunk, swept this way and that, breaking windows and beating up passers-by.

  Sophie and Maximilian rode in stunned silence on the platform at the back of the streetcar. Even the streetcar was filled with celebrants. They cheered, ‘Deutschland! Deutschland!’ as though they had just left a soccer match and their team had won. They laughed at nothing at all, just out of exuberance, in jubilation at having found something to cheer about. Their lives had been hard, but that was going to change. Someone had understood their sense of oppression and helplessness and confusion, and he was going to do something about it. Their wide eyes glittered. Yes, they were drunk, but their intoxication didn’t only come from the beer.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ said a small man with glasses. ‘Isn’t he great? Hitler?’ He looked up into Maximilian’s face with a great, happy grin that, you could tell, was foreign to his face.

  ‘Great,’ said Maximilian.

  The man took Maximilian’s hand and shook it enthusiastically. ‘Great!’ he said and turned to someone else. ‘So, what do you think?’

  Instead of riding all the way home, Sophie and Maximilian got off at City Hospital and went into the emergency ward, where injured people – men mostly – sat or lay wherever they could find a spot, waiting to be attended to by the unprepared staff. Sophie interviewed some of the injured and some of the staff. Maximilian drew the injured with their heads wrapped in improvised bandages or lying on the floor with their arms over their faces, hurt and defeated.

  Finally, exhausted, he and Sophie walked to Tristanstraße. ‘What have we just witnessed?’ said Maximilian.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Sophie. They both fell silent. She took his arm.

  Sophie had a small room in a fourth-floor apartment. It was just large enough for a bed and a dresser, but it was cheap, and it suited Sophie. The rent included bathroom and kitchen privileges. Elizabeth Grynbaum, the owner of the apartment, was happy for the company. Her son, a German professor, lived across town with his wife. But his health was failing and he didn’t visit often. ‘My son is getting old,’ she said.

  Madame Grynbaum, as she liked to be called, still gave violin lessons. She was old and tiny and walked on thin bird legs with the help of a stick. But in defiance of her age and infirmity, she dyed her hair the color of raspberries. Whenever she went out, she wore a brooch that she had had made of her husband’s one and only service medal. He – Leonhard Grynbaum – had been killed leading a cavalry charge in the Franco-Prussian War fifty years before.

  Young people came to the apartment most afternoons, where Madame Grynbaum listened intently as they sawed away on their small instruments, murdering Bach and Mozart. ‘That was excellent, Trude,’ she might say. ‘But wouldn’t it be even better if you did it this way?’ Then she would tuck Trude’s violin under her chin and play. Rich, warm sounds would fill the room, even from the most inferior instrument, and Madame Grynbaum would sway and dip, almost dancing as she played. Trude would then try it again, and Madame Grynbaum would hold her shoulders and make her sway as she played. She would sing in her ear. And, in fact, Trude would play better than she had before.

  All Madame Grynbaum’s students, children of all ages, loved her. They inevitably improved under her patient and excellent instruction, and many went on to populate the violin sections of orchestras around the city.

  Madame Grynbaum was fond of Sophie, and she had grown fond of Maximilian too since he had been visiting. That he sometimes stayed the night didn’t bother her. He was quiet and unobtrusive. You never knew he was there. Maximilian was respectful of her, and helpful too, running to a shop for this or that, or doing small repairs around the apartment.

  In truth, Maximilian was a little afraid of her. He hadn’t spent much time around old people. His grandparents had died before he was born. They lay in family plots in the cemetery up toward the lake above Bad Stauffenheim where Wolfs had lived and farmed for generations. As a child he had gazed at the fading photos on the
graves without any sense that he was connected to these people. Whenever Maximilian spent the night in Sophie’s narrow bed, it was Sophie who rubbed salve on his back in the morning.

  DETECTIVE GRUBER

  Willi Geismeier looked up as Hermann Gruber came into the squad room carrying his kit. So this was his new partner. The two men shook hands, and Willi pointed Hermann toward a desk by the door. Hermann put his box on the desk and looked around.

  Willi was tall and thin, with thinning hair and thick glasses that made his eyes look tiny. He wore ill-fitting wrinkled suits that were shiny at the knees and elbows. His shirts were often untucked or had ink stains below the pocket where his fountain pen had leaked. When his tie wasn’t askew, you had the sense that he had tied it correctly by accident. His desk was a mess, like he was, covered with folders and envelopes and stacks of paper. On top of one stack were pages of photos, which he picked up and leafed through over and over while the newly minted Detective Hermann Gruber settled in.

  Hermann spent the rest of the morning at his desk going through the precinct’s Standard Procedures Handbook and the current case log. At twelve o’clock Willi said suddenly, ‘Time for lunch.’ They walked to Zum Schwabinger Bach, the Gasthaus around the corner. ‘One pea soup and Bratwurst,’ said Willi to the waitress, ‘and a half liter of Hofbräu dark.’

  ‘The same for me,’ said Hermann.

  ‘Who’s this then, Willi?’ said the waitress.

  ‘Hermann Gruber,’ explained Willi. ‘My new partner.’

  ‘I’m Elsa,’ she said with a smile, and shook Hermann’s hand.

  ‘The canteen is cheaper,’ said Willi when she had gone. ‘But sometimes I like to eat out. Just for a change.’

  ‘She’s pretty,’ said Hermann, watching Willi for a reaction. He got none.

  Hermann put brown mustard on the sausage in his soup and cut it in pieces. He ate a spoonful of soup and sausage and sipped his beer. ‘This is good,’ he said. ‘So, how long have you been a detective?’

  Willi explained he had been a rookie detective before the war. Then he had spent a year in the trenches near Ypres in Belgium until a gas attack damaged his eyes and left him unfit for combat. He had spent the next three years in military intelligence, coding and sending messages. After the war, the police had taken him back, but on probation, as though he were just starting out.

  Then Willi said, ‘What’s your story? How did you get here?’ Hermann explained his years as a patrolman and that it took him several tries to pass the detective’s exam. Hermann did not admit that he might have had help from Captain Reineke or that he was counting on a quick promotion.

  ‘Was your father a cop?’ said Willi.

  Hermann said he was.

  ‘I thought so,’ said Willi, but he didn’t say any more about that. ‘Let’s get back.’

  Willi showed Hermann the folder for the case he was working on: weapons and ammunition stolen from a government armory. Someone had attacked the oak and iron door to the arms room with sledgehammers and crowbars. They had left the tools behind. But Willi suspected it was an inside job and the damage and the tools were for show – someone with access to the arms room trying to make it look like a break-in.

  ‘What makes you think so?’ said Hermann.

  ‘First of all, how did they get into the building? Then, look at the photos. Doing that kind of damage would take a long time and make a tremendous racket. The guards do their rounds every hour. They would have heard something.’

  ‘Maybe it was the guards themselves.’

  ‘There are six guards all together. The two night guards are both recent hires.’

  The night guards had been interviewed once already. They had reported the break-in. They didn’t seem surprised to see the police again. Willi pulled them aside one by one and asked them to explain their routine, what they remembered from the night of the theft, how and when they made their rounds. There was no disparity in their separate accounts. ‘Take us through your rounds,’ Willi said. ‘Don’t leave anything out.’ He and Hermann followed them up and down the halls, up and down the stairs. Their steps rang as they walked through the empty corridors.

  ‘If someone was banging on the door here with a sledgehammer, wouldn’t you hear it upstairs?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said the guard.

  ‘What would it depend on?’ said Hermann.

  ‘I just don’t think you would hear them,’ said the guard. ‘It’s a long way away and on a different floor.’ Willi had Hermann bang on the damaged door with a hammer while he listened upstairs. He couldn’t hear a thing.

  ‘How would someone get past you to break in down there?’ said Willi to the guards.

  ‘They couldn’t. We’re stationed at the only way in. One of us is always here.’

  ‘And how would someone get sixteen carbines, two machine guns, and six boxes of ammunition past you and out of the building without being seen?’

  ‘They couldn’t,’ said the guard again. ‘Maybe they’re still in the building.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Willi.

  ‘Well, there’s a lot of keys floating around here. And this is an armory with a lot of rooms. Many of these guys have access to different rooms, rooms that aren’t used. They could have moved the weapons there, and then taken them out of the building little by little or at times when no one would notice.’

  ‘Is that what happened?’

  ‘I’m just saying, it could have happened that way. I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘But what makes you say that?’

  ‘Look, I’ve only been here six months. I don’t want to get in trouble and lose my job.’

  ‘We need to see who has entry to what rooms. There must be some logs showing who has what keys. Who would have those logs?’

  ‘You’ll have to get authorization from the security officer to have access to those logs.’

  ‘Who would that be?’ said Willi.

  Back at the desk the guards looked through the organization manual. ‘Captain Steifflitz is the security officer.’ Hermann filled out a request to interview Captain Steifflitz with regard to the key security for the armory.

  They did not hear anything back, until one dismal, rainy morning. They were each looking over other, less urgent cases with an eye to closing some files, when Captain Reineke came into the office. He stamped his boots to shake off the water. He shook Hermann’s hand. ‘Congratulations on your promotion, Gruber,’ he said. ‘I see you’re settling in.’ He then shook Willi’s hand. ‘Geismeier,’ he said, looking as though he just eaten a piece of rotten fruit.

  ‘Herr Captain,’ said Willi.

  ‘Gentlemen, we’re closing the armory case,’ said Reineke.

  ‘Closing it, sir?’ said Hermann. Willi didn’t say anything.

  ‘We’ve arrested the two night guards,’ said Reineke. ‘They’ve confessed. They took the weapons and gave them to their Communist confederates. They’ll be tried and severely punished. I just wanted to let you know and thank you for your excellent work.’

  ‘How could they close the case?’ said Hermann after the captain had left.

  ‘You heard the captain,’ said Willi. ‘They solved it. They caught the perpetrators.’

  ‘Those two mugs?’ said Hermann.

  Willi didn’t respond.

  Hermann tried another tack. ‘Do you think they did it?’

  ‘I don’t think one thing or another. The case is closed.’

  THE EDITOR

  ‘Damn it, Czieslow, I’m amazed I have to bring this up yet again.’

  ‘I understand your concern, Herr von Plottwietz. But we’re a newspaper, and Sophie Auerbach is a journalist. Her job – our job – is to report …’

  ‘Her job, Czieslow, and your job, is what I say it is. You seem not to have noticed the times we live in. They don’t call for journalism. What the hell is journalism, anyway? Some elite version of things, some shitty pretense at objectivity.

  ‘The ti
mes call for leadership; they call for action. The old idea of newspapering is dead. Look at the Münchener Post or the Morgenzeitung or any of the other old papers. Nobody wants that Socialist claptrap any more. They’re good for lining birdcages, that’s all. We need action newspapers and that’s what Das Neue Deutsche Bild is going to be: an action paper.’

  ‘The public wants …’

  ‘I don’t give a shit what the public thinks they want. The public needs motivation. They need hope. They need to know that their suffering will end. They need to know their lot will improve. That Germany will be theirs again.’

  Von Plottwietz stood up to go, and Erwin stood too. The publisher leaned across the desk and shook his finger in Erwin’s face. His own face was now red with anger. ‘Here’s the long and short of it, Czieslow. Your little Miss Auerbach has one more chance to toe the line – my line – or she’s gone. I don’t give a shit how good a journalist she is. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Erwin.

  ‘And get rid of those damn pictures too. What is that shit doing in my paper? Just so there’s no mistaking what I’m telling you, Czieslow, your neck is on the line. This is my paper, and, goddamn it, it’s going to be the paper I want it to be. Or you’re all out on the street, the whole sorry bunch of you.’

  Von Plottwietz stormed through the newsroom. He stopped by the door, picked up a copy of the latest paper, and looked at it in disgust. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said and flung it across the room. It came apart in the air and fluttered to the ground in pieces.

  Maximilian was told the next morning that he would no longer be working for Das Neue Deutsche Bild. ‘It’s von Plottwietz’s call,’ said Erwin. ‘I’m sorry. Your work is good, Maximilian. Something else will come along. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Thanks for saying that,’ said Maximilian.