Then there was Gottfried Büchner, the theater and book critic. He had also fallen in line with the Nazis, publishing the most ridiculous movie reviews, criticizing the ‘decadent Jewish tone’ of one movie, or praising the ‘Germanic grandeur’ of another. He was no longer invited either. Presumably neither man had known that the Steins, who had sat beside them at the Horvaths’ on more than one occasion, were Jews. Or maybe they did know and liked offending them. That sort of cowardice was common these days. In any case the Steins had sat there silently and let it pass, and Benno and Margarete had both apologized profusely afterwards for their uncouth guests.
In the old days Willi had sometimes come to the Horvaths’ Sunday evenings. He had mostly kept his opinions to himself. But then, once in a while, he had a way of unexpectedly and yet artfully skewering an ignorant remark so that the culprit could tell he had been skewered but couldn’t quite put his finger on how it had been done. Neither Riegelmann nor Büchner liked Willi and wondered to one another why a simple police detective was even invited to an intellectual evening. Of course, Willi could no longer be there anyway, now that he was a fugitive.
Edvin Lindstrom was back in Munich after a few years in Tokyo and then Stockholm, posted once again at the Swedish Consulate. He had Ella, his new wife, with him. Edvin was a friend of Willi’s. They had first met at the Horvaths’ and had stayed in touch after that. Edvin and Ella were welcome back at the Sunday evenings, although Edvin was no longer as outspoken or as interesting about politics as he had been in earlier times. Now when the conversation turned in that direction, Edvin and Ella listened but did not join in. They talked about how beautiful the summer in Stockholm had been, or about starting a family, or the lovely apartment they had found overlooking Munich’s English Garden. But even when someone asked directly about Hitler, or the new race laws, or the struggle against Bolshevism, Edvin demurred. ‘It would not be appropriate for me as a diplomat to comment about your politics.’ Ella just smiled when she was asked and didn’t say anything.
This evening the guests – they were ten – were subdued. Someone brought up the new production of Schiller’s Wallenstein at the Deutsches Theater. Then, of course, someone brought up the Olympics. Everyone was eager to see the great American Jesse Owens run. But inevitably every topic they touched – even a foot race – turned into a political discussion. The evening ended early.
The Lindstroms were the last to leave. ‘I would like to see Willi Geismeier,’ said Edvin. ‘Do you think you could put us in touch?’
‘You know he’s no longer with the police?’ said Benno.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Edvin. ‘We wrote each other for a while. We had to break it off. But do you think you could arrange a meeting?’
‘I can get a message to him,’ said Benno.
‘And we, Benno, you and I, we have to talk as well,’ said Edvin.
‘Yes,’ said Benno. ‘We do.’ Benno knew enough about international diplomacy these days to understand that, while Edvin might be the Swedish cultural attaché, he probably had other, more sensitive duties as well. Back in the 1920s Edvin had already revealed an interest in matters beyond his diplomatic purview. He had warned and briefed his German friends – Benno and Willi among them – about Hitler, well before anyone believed he could ever come to power. Outsiders could sometimes see things Germans couldn’t.
Now, as a senior diplomat, Edvin found himself in a particularly advantageous position for conducting extra-diplomatic activities. Since the Nürnberg race laws had come into being, many consulates and embassies had been helping people whose lives were in danger to leave Germany – mainly Jews, but others as well. The Swedes in general, and Edvin and Ella in particular, were part of that effort. They also had other, more clandestine duties.
Josef and Marta Stein, while still invited to the Horvaths’ evenings, had not been there for several months now. Then one day – not a Sunday – they called on the phone and made an appointment to stop by.
‘We’ve come to say goodbye,’ said Josef. Marta burst into tears.
The Steins said they were emigrating to the United States. Marta had cousins there who had agreed to sponsor them. Armed with the signed affidavits and all the other required papers, they had gone to the American consulate and gotten visas for themselves and their two children. They had had to wait in line.
That line, however, was nothing compared to what it would become. By late 1938, just two years from now, the deportation and murder of Jews had begun, and leaving legally became very difficult. Every consulate and embassy of every country had long lines of desperate people snaking around the block trying to get out of Germany. By then, just standing in such a line made you an easy target for harassment. At first it was the SS and storm troopers who harassed you, but eventually it was your former friends and neighbors.
For now, Hitler’s government was happy to have Jews leave voluntarily. All they had to do was turn their worldly goods – their property, their wealth, including the proceeds from the sale of Josef’s law firm, family jewelry, art – over to the Reich. They could get their passports – imprinted with a big red J for Jew – with relative ease. Of course, often enough the official issuing the passport demanded a bribe. Why not? He was a poor office drudge who was paid a pittance for doing tedious and distasteful work. Why shouldn’t he get his little piece of a Jew’s money? The Führer said it wasn’t even theirs to begin with; they had stolen it from real Germans.
The official looked the Steins up and down, saw their nice clothes, their proper manners. No jewelry was showing, but that didn’t mean anything; by now all Jews knew not to wear jewelry when they went to get their passports. But the official had been doing this long enough to be a pretty good judge of what a Jew could afford to pay. He just had to be careful not to get too greedy or he’d get in trouble with his boss. ‘A hundred Reichsmarks,’ said the official, and held out his hand. ‘Each.’
Josef Stein had known this was coming. He reached into his pocket several times until he had pulled out four hundred. The official wiggled the fingers of his outstretched hand impatiently. He knew there was more money in there. But he didn’t have the right to order Josef to show him. So he settled for the four hundred and regretted not asking for six.
When the Nürnberg Race Laws had been passed, Josef had been outlawed from owning the law firm he had founded – in fact, from practicing law at all. Marta had also been forced to dismiss their children’s nursemaid, Frieda Schultze, who had been part of the family for many years. As a young woman she had been Marta’s nursemaid. But it was now against the law for an Aryan woman to be working for a Jewish family. Frieda couldn’t stop crying.
‘The writing is on the wall,’ said Josef. ‘Thank you, Benno and Gretl, for your friendship, your kindness and hospitality. It means the world to us. But we can’t stay in Germany any longer.’
‘How can we?’ said Marta. ‘Our families have been here since the middle ages. But we’re no longer thought of as Germans. How can we stay here? How can we raise our children here? There is no future for us or for them.’
Josef’s parents were dead, but Marta’s were still alive and, to her distress, they refused to leave. ‘This is our home,’ said her father. ‘We are Germans. I am a war veteran.’ He was more than a war veteran. He had retired as a colonel after the Great War ended, a renowned fighter pilot, an ace with thirty-six air victories to his name. He had ended the war with one eye, one hand shot away and a chest full of medals. He was sure that would protect them from Hitler’s wrath.
It didn’t.
Lili Marlene
‘Here are the files you asked for, Sergeant.’ Bergemann held a thin packet in Gruber’s direction. Gruber looked puzzled. ‘The Willi Geismeier files from Central Records,’ said Bergemann.
‘That’s all there is?’ said Gruber.
‘Yeah,’ said Bergemann. ‘I thought there’d be more.’
‘There has to be more,’ said Gruber.
‘This is all I could get.’
‘Anything useful?’
‘No. Mostly old official complaints, Sergeant. And a few papers about his suspension. But nothing about the arrest attempt back when he went missing. And nothing recent. Whatever there was is gone.’
‘Gone? What do you mean, gone? Signed out maybe?’
‘Could be. Nobody would say. They wouldn’t even show me the logbooks.’
‘Do we have any of his old case files here?’
‘Everything should be in Central Records.’
‘But it isn’t.’
‘Maybe somebody else is interested in him too,’ said Bergemann.
‘Somebody else …’ Gruber thought for a moment. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know, Sergeant. Gestapo maybe?’
Gruber took the packet of documents into his office and sat down. Bergemann watched him frowning at each page before turning it over to study the next. He stopped once in a while to write something down. After a while he got up and closed his door. Bergemann could hear him talking on the phone but couldn’t make out what he said. Gruber put on his hat and coat and came out of the office.
‘I looked again, Sergeant,’ said Bergemann. ‘There aren’t any records here. Did you learn anything useful?’
‘No, not really,’ said Gruber, and headed for the door.
‘Where’re you off to, Sergeant?’
Gruber stopped and studied Bergemann for a moment. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be working on something, Bergemann – that robbery case or something like that?’
The sun had just set when Bergemann met Willi to warn him about Gruber. The clouds turned crimson around the edges and then went black, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees at the same moment.
‘That doesn’t sound like Gruber,’ said Willi. They sat on a park bench looking out at the Isar. The ice had mostly melted except along the banks. Some ducks were swimming around, diving under the water and bobbing back to the surface.
‘No, this isn’t the Gruber we know,’ said Bergemann. Gruber was lazy and uncurious. Except now he was running off to Central Records to do research. ‘Could I have missed anything?’
Willi shook his head, but he looked worried. ‘What’s he up to?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you think something has come his way?’ He thought of Heinz Schleiffer and his earlier snooping around. Frau Schimmel was sure he had filed at least two complaints against Karl Juncker. And there were the two men, Weber and Meier, who had gone into his apartment and rummaged around. These things could have worked their way through the system and finally found their way to Gruber.
‘If he’s on to anything, he’s not giving it away,’ said Bergemann. ‘And that’s not like him either. I’ll keep looking, though, and I’ll let you know what I find out.’
‘Be careful, Hans,’ said Willi. ‘You know, if you try to drag your feet or get in the way of whatever he’s doing, he’ll know it. If he’s paying attention, you could be in a lot of danger. So do whatever he expects of you. Help him out if you have to.
‘We shouldn’t meet again for a while,’ he said finally. The two men stood and shook hands. Willi turned away, swung his leg over his bicycle, and rode off into the night.
Gruber’s determination, a quality that had mostly been missing from his character until now, continued unabated. He spent hours each day going through papers he dredged up from who knew where. ‘SS files,’ said Gruber.
‘Can I help?’ said Bergemann.
‘No. It’s on a need-to-know basis,’ said Gruber.
Bergemann got busy on the robbery case. Someone had been holding up businessmen, three so far, all late at night, all claiming to be on their way home from work. Two admitted to having stopped for a drink. Well, maybe a couple of drinks. All three surmised they had been followed. Then a man grabbed them from behind and held a pistol against their cheek while they fished out their wallets. He instructed them to face the wall and count to ten slowly while he disappeared. None had seen the robber or could say anything useful about him.
The trouble was, Bergemann was pretty sure all three were lying about why they had been in the locations where they were robbed. There were plenty of decent bars and restaurants along the routes they would normally have taken home from work, while the bars where they had stopped and the sites of the robberies were far from any such route. Moreover, the bars they named were seedy establishments in a seedy neighborhood, not the sort of places a well-heeled businessman would be likely to stop. Unless he was trying to cover up something illicit or embarrassing. Since these were married men, a sexual adventure came to mind. And sure enough, Bergemann found a well-known whorehouse on Pfortzheimgaße, not far from where the men had been robbed.
Werner Deutlich was the eldest of the three victims. His wife answered the door when Bergemann knocked. When Werner recognized Bergemann, he quickly stepped past her and into the hall. ‘It’s business, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right back.’ He steered Bergemann down the hall and around a corner.
‘You lied to me, Herr Deutlich,’ said Bergemann.
Werner Deutlich pleaded with Bergemann not to disclose what he had discovered. Yes, he had visited the whorehouse. Yes, more than once. ‘My wife is not well, Herr Detective.’ He confessed he was a sometime client of a voluptuous blond who called herself Lili Marlene. ‘Just like the song.’ For some reason Werner sang the first lines:
Vor der Kaserne, vor dem großen Tor
Stand eine Laterne und steht sie noch davor …
A dim red light illuminated the door at number seven Pfortzheimgaße. Bergemann knocked and the door was opened by a man with slicked-back hair, a pencil mustache, and a complexion that looked sallow even in the red glow. He wore a suit that may have fit him once, but now made him look like a scarecrow.
Bergemann showed his police ID and asked to see Lili Marlene. She was with a client, said the man. Bergemann said he would wait. He was shown into a dimly lit room with pink wallpaper, a badly worn Persian rug, and plush chairs and a sofa in various states of decrepitude. Some awful perfume had been sprayed around the room. The skinny man disappeared. Bergemann took a seat and waited.
Women and girls in various stages of undress wandered through from time to time, mostly ignoring Bergemann. Thirty minutes passed before Lili Marlene – her real name was Ingeborg Lützmann – swept into the room. Her chubby face was framed by a cloud of platinum-blond hair. She wore a filmy, flowered shift that revealed more than it concealed. Despite her near nakedness, she had an air of authority about her. Bergemann wondered whether she was the proprietress of this establishment, and she assured him she was. She produced a folder with permits and health exams for all her girls. ‘It’s all in order and up to date,’ she said.
Bergemann explained that none of that concerned him now. He wondered whether she herself still saw customers.
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she said, tossing her platinum locks and allowing her shift to open even wider. She received only men she favored. ‘Only gentlemen,’ she said, giving Bergemann an appraising look.
‘And is Werner Deutlich one of those gentlemen?’
She said he was. Bergemann named the other two.
‘Yes, them too,’ said Lili Marlene. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘And were they with you on these particular evenings?’ He listed the dates and she checked them against her calendar. They had been there then, yes.
‘All three of these men were robbed after they left you on those nights, Frau Lützmann.’ Lili Marlene looked startled, then thoughtful. ‘What can you tell me, Frau Lützmann, about the man who works your front door?’
‘Jacky? Jacky Prinz. He belongs to one of the girls, Liesl. He’s been on the door about two months now.’
‘Do you know where he was before that, Frau Lützmann?’
‘Liesl told me he was down on his luck, that he needed the work. He seemed all right, so I didn’t ask too many questions. But I had my suspicions.’
&nbs
p; ‘And what were those suspicions, if I may ask?’
‘He looked to me like somebody just out of prison. Herr Detective, I don’t …’
‘Do you have any other men in your employ, or are there other men – I’m thinking tradesmen – who come by on a regular basis? Delivery men, cleaners, anyone like that?’
‘There are occasional delivery men, but nobody regular.’ Lili Marlene pulled her shift tighter around her again, like she suddenly wanted to hide her nakedness.
‘Frau Lützmann, I’m going to insist you not talk to anyone about our conversation.’
She nodded her head adamantly.
‘Certainly not to Jacky Prinz,’ said Bergemann. ‘Or to Liesl – I’ll need her full name.’
Jacky Prinz had done two years for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. He had come out of prison a few months back with a raging drug habit. Liesl had pleaded with Frau Lützmann to give him the doorman job, and had told Jacky which of Lili Marlene’s clients were worth robbing. Jacky followed them a few blocks, held the pistol up to their faces, and took their money. Bergemann went with two uniformed policemen to arrest the two of them.
‘Nicely done, Detective,’ said Hermann Gruber after listening to Bergemann’s summary of the case. Bergemann handed him the paperwork and Gruber leafed through it. ‘What was the whore’s name? And where’s the house?’
‘Number seven Pfortzheimgaße, Sergeant. Lili Marlene.’
‘Don’t know it,’ said Gruber, a little too quickly.
The Logbooks
Gruber was momentarily distracted from his pursuit of Willi Geismeier. While he didn’t know Lili Marlene well, he had met her, and he knew a number of her girls and had enjoyed their services – of course, only after his divorce from Mitzi. Still, if it was discovered that he had been diddling local whores, his closure rate would be the least of his worries. He saw the girls’ faces go by in his mind’s eye, one after the other. This imagined parade of faces suddenly made him think of someone else.
The Constant Man Page 8