1636: The Devil's Opera
Page 53
“I heard. Well, are you?”
Gotthilf stopped and looked down at him. “If she will have me.”
“Good.”
They resumed walking, and after a while, Simon spoke up. “Ursula is special.”
“I know she is.”
“And she’s been hurt a lot, so you’d better take really good care of her.”
They stopped again, and Simon stared up at the detective with all the fire he could muster. Gotthilf didn’t laugh; he just considered Simon, soberly and carefully. After a moment, he nodded.
“Understood.”
“All right then.”
* * *
Ursula leaned back against the closed door. The book was clasped in her arms and held to her bosom. She bent her head and smelled the rich leather of the binding.
A courting gift. From Gotthilf Hoch.
If only Hans could have seen it.
The tears welled up, but she managed a tremulous smile at how her brother would have ranted.
* * *
Marla’s eyes got wide when Franz announced the arrival of the first royalty check from Trommler Records for “Do You Hear the People Sing?”
“How many zeros?”
Her eyes got wider when she grabbed the check from his hands and read it for herself.
* * *
“I quite despaired of you, you know, for some time,” Johann Möritz Hoch said to his son Gotthilf as they walked home from church on a Sunday after services. He was taller than his son, but otherwise they looked very much alike, walking side by side with their hands clasped behind their backs.
“How so?” Gotthilf asked. “I mean, you had made it clear that you thought I lacked initiative, that I was lazy. But what occasioned despair?”
“I thought that you had no will, no spine, no inner fire to excel,” the elder Hoch said matter-of-factly.
“I didn’t.”
“Mmm, no,” Johann disagreed. “I was wrong then, and so are you now. I would say now that you did not lack the fire, but rather that you had not found the matter that would awaken it.”
Gotthilf considered that. “Point,” he responded.
They walked some distance before the elder Hoch spoke again. “I was not happy to see you join the city watch,” he said. “I did not consider it a service that would add to your reputation. And this new Polizei which took its place seemed at first like more of the same.” Gotthilf looked over at his father, who held up a hand. “I have spoken with Otto Gericke—or, I should say, he has spoken with me. He made it clearer to me the nature of the work that you do. He is quite your champion, the mayor is.”
Gotthilf felt some inner warmth at that thought. Before he could respond, his father spoke one last thought.
“It is not the work I would have chosen for you, Gotthilf. But you are a man, and you have chosen for yourself. And in the end, considering all, it is a worthy work. It occurs to me that I have reason to be proud of you. And so I am.”
That thought was one that Gotthilf stored away in his heart, for it had been long indeed since he had last heard those words from the elder Hoch.
“Thank you, Father,” he managed to reply.
Herr Hoch seemed to hear what Gotthilf was trying to say. He nodded gravely, and they continued to pace side by side, enjoying the sun, the afternoon, and the new aspect of their relationship in companionable silence.
* * *
Gustav looked at one of the Marine guards in his fancy dress uniform.
“Hmm. It has a certain style, I think. I wonder what it would look like in purple velvet.”
Caroline Platzer rolled her eyes.
“I want one too,” Kristine insisted, bouncing.
Ulrik rolled his eyes.
* * *
“Once we promised to keep him away from Achterhof and the CoC, Burckardt started singing like a canary,” Byron said.
“Spilling his guts, huh?” Bill Reilly asked.
“Yah,” Honister responded. “He seems to be proud of what he had done, pitting Schmidt and Schardius against each other, and maneuvering the two Italians to eventually take both of them down.”
“Although he thought One-Eye was going to shoot Schardius for him,” Byron said. “He was surprised that Gotthilf and I got him instead. It was apparently his idea to kill One-Eye all along.”
“He had some grandiose idea of taking over both men’s businesses,” Gotthilf added, “both the licit and the illicit. He had picked up a pretty good understanding of what Schardius was trying to become: one of those crime bosses you described way back when. If he hadn’t gotten nervous about how we were closing in fast, he might have gotten away with a lot of money, and maybe even a foothold in the crime boss racket.”
“He does know he’s going to hang for this, doesn’t he?” Reilly asked.
“Yah,” Gotthilf responded. “He just wants to stay out of Achterhof’s hands. He has no desire to experience the Old Testament, ah…”
“Up close and personal,” Byron concluded.
“So, good job there at the end of it all,” the captain acknowledged.
That was the end of the meeting about the Schmidt/Schardius/Burckardt mess. Honister left, but Reilly motioned for Byron and Gotthilf to stay.
“We never did nail anyone for the Delt murder, did we?”
“No,” Byron said. “We have three potential witnesses…”
“That would be the men in the hospital?” Reilly asked.
“Right,” Gotthilf responded. “And we have talked to them, but they tell conflicting stories, and with all the other potential witnesses and suspects dead, well…”
“We may never be able to take the Delt case to a magistrate,” Byron finished. “But these three do agree enough with what Metzger told us that it’s pretty certain that Schardius and his warehouse manager were the ones who orchestrated the murders, even if they were perhaps carried out by underlings.”
The police captain stared at the table for a long moment, then sighed. “Right. Put the Delt file and the other cases in inactive status. We won’t pursue them any further, but we won’t close them either. Maybe something else will come up someday.”
He closed the folder in front of him.
“And now for one last piece of business. Sergeant Hoch?”
Gotthilf looked at him. The captain sounded awfully formal, and there was a very serious expression on his face.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Turn in your badge.”
Gotthilf was stunned. He shot a glance at Byron, but his face was like stone.
“Captain, I…”
Reilly held out his hand. “Give me your badge.”
Mind whirling, wondering what he had done, Gotthilf pulled his badge wallet out of his pocket and handed it to the captain.
Reilly took it in his left hand, then slid something across the table to Gotthilf with his right. Gotthilf looked down at another wallet, then looked back up at the captain.
“Go on, take it,” Reilly said.
Gotthilf picked up the wallet and opened it. Inside was another badge; a snarling lion’s face cast in brass staring at him, with Magdeburg Polizei engraved above and the word Inspector and a number engraved below. He looked up to see both up-timers grinning at him.
Reilly stood up and leaned across the table to offer his hand.
“Congratulations on your promotion, Inspector Hoch. And congratulations on becoming the first detective inspector of the Magdeburg Polizei.”
Gotthilf shook his hand, mind still whirling, but this time in a daze.
Byron held out his hand as well, saying “Good going, partner.”
“Thank you,” Gotthilf stammered. “I didn’t expect…thank you both.”
“You earned it,” Reilly said, “especially during the last few weeks. But the reward for a job well done, of course, is…”
“More work,” Byron said, rising. “Come on, partner. Let’s go encourage the good citizens of Magdeburg to keep on being good
citizens. And the first round’s on you tonight.”
Gotthilf followed his partner out of the conference room, smiling down at his new badge.
* * *
“That will be all, then,” Gustav said, concluding the meeting. Otto Gericke began gathering his papers and stuffing them back into their folders.
The emperor had wanted an update on the status of the rebuilding of Old Magdeburg. They had spent over an hour poring over plans and drawings. Gustav had seemed almost like a child in his glee at how many of the projects were either completed or nearly so. The one sour note had been the state of the hospital expansion, but even that was recovering after the explosion.
Gustav turned at the door and looked back at Gericke with a mischievous grin.
“And by the way, Otto; you can now start styling yourself Otto von Gericke. The Holy Writ says to not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain. You’re not an ox, but you get the point.
“Go home and tell your wife. We’ll save the formal announcement for later.”
With another flash of that grin, the emperor left a dumbfounded Otto.
* * *
Gotthilf looked up from his desk when Byron walked in, and whistled. “You are looking rather well-dressed today,” he commented. Indeed, Byron was wearing an up-time suit, complete with white shirt and up-time style long tie. “What is the occasion?”
“Jonni got tickets to the opera from Marla, and we’re going this evening.” Byron’s face displayed an expression that could only be described as long-suffering.
“But I thought you said you didn’t like the opera, that you didn’t want to go see it,” Karl Honister observed from his desk.
“You remember what I told you about sometimes doing things to make Jonni happy because of what she has to put up with because I’m a cop?” Byron asked.
“Yah,” Gotthilf nodded.
“Well, this comes under that heading.”
Byron sat down in his chair and leaned back. “And let me introduce you boys to a piece of gen-u-ine hillbilly wisdom: if Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”
Gotthilf considered his family; particularly his own mother.
“Point.”
* * *
Simon left Frau Zenzi’s with his usual roll. He didn’t need the rolls now like he used to. Between his improving earnings as a messenger and the money that Ursula had, neither of them went hungry anymore. But Frau Zenzi insisted, and to make her happy he did it. Besides, he thought as he took another bite of the roll, it was still some of the best bread around.
Schatzi appeared from around the corner of a building, and stopped close to him, tail wagging slightly. Simon took one last big bite, then tossed the rest to her. She caught it out of the air, and wolfed it down before he could even chew his piece twice. He laughed around the bite. She looked at him with her head tilted for a moment, then turned and headed back the way she came.
Simon was still chuckling when he started back down the street. He wasn’t quite ready to go back to the rooms yet, so he just wandered for a while.
In the days since Hans’ death, he had passed through what Pastor Gruber assured him was a cycle of emotion that almost everyone encountered. He had gone from being numb, to angry, to questioning, and he was finally arriving at acceptance. Oh, he still had days where he was angry with Magdeburg, with the Polizei, with himself. But he had come to see that Hans had made the choices that took him to that end. And like it or not, at that end, Hans had willingly paid that price.
Consequences.
That word had been rolling around in his mind ever since that night. But now, instead of thinking about Hans and his consequences, he had started thinking about his own.
He could see that he had choices to make. And he wanted to be wise in making those choices. He had no desire to come to the same end as Hans. At the same time, he had no desire to remain a crippled orphan. For the first time in his life, he had developed an ambition to do more than just stay alive another day.
There were four men who had recently made a difference in his life. Four men representing four choices. He had been considering them for days now, and he was still considering them.
Before long he found himself standing outside St. Jacob’s church. The evening light made the front of the church almost seem to have a golden glow. Small and old and shabby it might be, but at that moment it was a beautiful building.
At that moment, Simon made a decision; one that he had been weighing for some time. He went to the small side door and knocked. There was the sound of movement behind the door, then it was opened. Pastor Gruber stood in the opening.
“Yes, who is…Oh, it’s you, Simon. Come in, my boy.”
The old pastor ushered him back into the same crowded little room they had last used.
“Well, what can I do for you, Simon? Do you have an interesting question today?”
The pastor’s gnarled hand reached into the breast of his coat and pulled out his old worn Bible, in expectation.
Simon leaned forward on his stool.
“I need to make a choice, Pastor, about what I want to do with my life, now that Hans is gone.”
“I see,” Gruber stroked his beard. “And what are you considering?”
“You know what I have lived through, what I have felt, over the last few months. You know the men who I have been around.” Simon waved his hand in an all-encompassing gesture. “You know what has happened.”
The pastor nodded. “Go on, lad,”
“Hans was my first friend,” Simon whispered. “And for long, he was my only friend. I learned how to be a friend from him. And I miss him.”
Simon swallowed. “But I don’t want to be hard like him. I can’t fight. I can’t work like he could. I don’t want to be a Samson. I want to be something other, something more.”
“I understand,” Pastor Gruber murmured.
“Andreas Schardius.” Simon’s eyes narrowed to slits as he hissed that name, feeling the anger flare in his soul. “From him I learned what an enemy truly was. I learned how to despise people, and look on them as prey. From him I learned the kind of person I definitely do not want to be.”
“Commendable.”
“Gotthilf Hoch.” Simon sat back and held his hand palm up before him. “A good man, a just man, a fair man. I like him, and I’m glad he’s going to marry Ursula. From him I learned that every person is worth something. Even me. And if it wasn’t for this,” he shrugged his right shoulder, “I might want to be one of the Polizei like he is. But they would never take me with only one arm. And I’m not sure I would want to be in a job where I might have to shoot someone.”
The pastor pursed his lips and nodded.
Simon took a deep breath, and said, “And finally, there is you.”
Pastor Gruber’s eyebrows flew up and his eyes opened wide.
“Me?”
“Our talks here, beginning when I was scared to even come in the building, to when you talked to Ursula and me after Hans was killed…that meant a lot to me.”
“Just doing what I could to help,” the pastor said.
“I know. But I learned from you, as well. I had to ask Ursula for the word; I never heard it before. From you I learned compassion.”
Pastor Gruber cleared his throat, and said softly, “Thank you, Simon. That means a lot to this old pastor.”
They sat in companionable silence for several moments. At length, Pastor Gruber spoke.
“You know, lad, I’ve heard trained men two or three times your age who couldn’t have laid out your situation and your learnings that clearly or simply. But you said you had a decision to make?”
“Yes,” Simon said. “And I have made it.”
He stood from his stool, crossed the room, and knelt before the pastor. He held his hand out to him.
“Pastor Gruber, I want to be a man of compassion. How can I become a pastor? Like you?”
Cast of Characters
To come
Table of Contents
Part One Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part Two Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part Three Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Part Four Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Table of Contents
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7