by Richard Wake
“So, what do you got?”
“We don't have an ID yet,” Freddy said. “No wallet. There were some keys in his pocket, nothing to identify them, and 11 marks. But that's it.”
I managed to mutter the words “fucking great” at about the same time that Kleinschmidt joined us. And he was, in fact, fuming.
“Why did I get this goddamned no-hoper? Where the hell were you?”
“Out.”
“This was your damn call.”
“Okay, I'll take it,” I said.
“You can't, idiot. You know it doesn't work like that. I got called. My name's in the book. It's mine. Mother—”
“Enough, okay? It's done,” Freddy said. He didn't like Kleinschmidt, and the feeling was mutual, and that gave both of them the ability to be blunt in conversation. The fact that I was Kleinschmidt's clear junior, and the other key fact — that he scared the hell out of me — left me standing there silently with my hands in my pockets most of the time when I was around him. At best, our relationship consisted of him telling the jokes and me laughing at them. This was not the best, though, and there were no jokes.
I broke the silence somehow and looked at Freddy and croaked out, “Cause of death?”
“Two gunshots — one to the face, one to the gut, looks like,” he said. “Hard to tell which one was first, not that it mattered to him. He's a damn mess. For what it's worth, it looks like it happened here, too.”
“And any, uh—”
“Nope,” Freddy said. “Hands and feet and everything else still attached where it should be.”
“So it's not like my case at all,” I said. “The body's intact. The cause of death is different. The site of the murder is different. And even where the body was discovered is a little different.”
“What are you, a child?” Kleinschmidt said. “Different site? It's the same goddamned Soviet memorial.”
He stopped. He cursed. He stared at me.
“Proximity is primary,” Kleinschmidt said. Actually, he kind of yelled it. And, really, it was more than kind of. The gawkers heard him, I could tell — not that they could have any idea what he was talking about. Proximity is primary. It was just one of his truisms. It meant that the answer to most investigative questions was best found near the scene.
Just then, a stretcher on wheels emerged from the trees, along with a couple of coroner's helpers, for want of a better term. I didn't know what you called them — they just lugged stiffs around all day. A few seconds behind them, someone carrying a doctor's bag came off the same path. It wasn't Bauer.
“Where's Nick?” Freddy said.
“A little early in the day for Nick,” the doctor said. He gave Freddy a pretty theatrical wink. On most days, I would be interested in the inside joke, but that wasn't one of them.
Freddy offered him the highlights, and then they waited another minute as the just-arrived uniforms from the precinct physically moved the bystanders from the small knoll upon which they had been perched.
Then they removed the sheet that covered the body. Freddy was right — it was a mess. The body was covered in blood, and there were several pools of the red stuff staining the dirt, turning it into a horrific mud. The face below the nose was a raw slab of hamburger, the whole jaw area gone on the right side. And when I experienced a sudden, and likely audible, intake of air — kind of like a gasp — I hoped that the others took it for a still-young detective's natural reaction to a rather grotesque bit of homicidal business.
From the dismissive look on Kleinschmidt's face, I was pretty sure that's what he thought. He probably hadn't gasped since Hindenburg. Which was good for me. He thought I was an idiot, I usually was an idiot, and I wanted it to stay that way, at least for a little while longer. Because I had no intention of telling him — at least not yet, anyway — about what I noticed about the body. Specifically, that a few inches above the slab of hamburger, and the missing jaw, there was the thickest, most luxurious head of coal-black hair that I had ever seen.
34
I drove straight to Normannenstrasse. I didn't know what I was going to say, or how I was going to say it, but I needed to get back into Hohenschonhausen to see Kurt Braun, and this was the only way I knew to ask. I guess I could have gone straight to the prison, but that seemed less of a possibility. Guards at prison gates did not make decisions — they followed orders. I needed an order. If Grundmann wouldn't help me, I would try to fraud my way through at the Hohenschonhausen gate, but this was by far the better option.
At the front desk at No. 1, I gave my name and asked for Grundmann. A corporal — a man — was tending the desk, and told me pretty quickly that my name wasn't on the list, and that Grundmann was a busy man, and, well…
“I was here last week,” I said.
“And?”
“He arranged for a mission, an interview, and I feel the need to report back on what I discovered. It won't take five minutes, and I am certain he will be interested in what I have to tell him.”
The corporal opened a desk drawer, reached in, and pulled out a small tablet and a sharp pencil.
“Your report,” he said. “You can write—”
“Not that kind of report.”
“Meaning?”
“You work at Stasi headquarters and seem bewildered why certain information might be best not committed to paper? What is your name?”
He mumbled something that I didn't understand, not that it mattered. I had managed to flip the leverage in our conversation — which might have been the most skillful thing I had done in a week. I stared at him, and he stared back, and then his eyes dropped to the telephone console in front of him; I knew I had won.
“Sit,” he said, pointing to the leather-padded bench next to the Lenin statue. That was his attempt to reassert some authority. I sat on the bench next to the Dzerzhinsky statue instead. That was my parry.
For some reason, I was confident that Grundmann would see me — although I wasn't exactly sure why. It wasn't as if I believed he was a Stasi officer with a heart — I mean, come on — but he hadn't had to help me the first time, and he did. Also, it wasn't as if this was a ridiculous request, given what I was about to tell him.
Still, five minutes became 10, and 10 became 20, and there was still nothing but a self-satisfied smirk on the face of my friend, the corporal. As I sat there, amid my crushing anxiety, I was still able to be struck by how different the vibe in the building was compared to my previous visit. Then, the Minister had been out of town — presumably in Moscow — and it seemed as if the class was enjoying a day when the teacher called in sick. And this was not that.
The staircase was open, and I could see officers in twos and three and fours shuffling back and forth from the Minister's wing of the second floor to the worker bees' side. They all seemed to be carrying thick binders and talking intently in low voices about this or that. At one point, a younger officer pushed what appeared to be a large map on wheels — the whole thing covered with a speckled painter's drop cloth — toward the Minister's suite of rooms.
Two of the binder-carrying officers came down the steps and walked across the lobby to check something with the corporal behind the desk. All I could hear them say as they passed Dzerzhinsky's bench was, “…One night? Are they fucking kidding?”
Meanwhile, the corporal's phone rang a dozen times, and I looked up every time, but he never looked my way after he hung up — until he did.
“Captain Grundmann says you have five minutes,” the kid said.
I got up and started walking toward the staircase in the center of the lobby.
“And where do you think you're going?”
“I know the way.”
“You will be escorted,” he said. And with that, he acted as if he was still in the superior position for the next 30 seconds, until another corporal came and brought me up to Grundmann's office. He knocked, the door was opened, and I was inside.
“Do you still not have shit? Is that what this is about?” G
rundmann said.
And hello to you, too, sir.
I explained to him the latest. That is, that a source in the black market — I didn't tell him it was Bernie's source — had told me about Braun's lookalike being his partner in currency crime, and that it could be his brother, and that there was a chance the killing was about a turf battle that I could maybe help the Stasi with if given another chance to talk to Braun. And if I made up the part about the turf battle, I still thought it was a real possibility, maybe the best possibility.
I also told Grundmann about the second dead body at the Soviet memorial. He had been barely listening until then, scanning some papers in front of him, but that stopped him mid-scan.
“So, Captain,” I said, and he stopped me.
“Enough,” he said. He picked up the phone, dialed a number from memory, and asked for the gate. Ten seconds later, he identified himself and barked that Under Lieutenant Peter Ritter from Berlin Kripo would be there in 20 minutes to see prisoner Kurt Braun. Then he hung up.
“We're done — and I mean, for good,” he said.
“Yes, Captain.”
Then Grundmann yelled out to my escort, who was sitting at the small desk outside the office. “When's my next one?”
“Map finalization, Minister's conference room, 10 minutes,” the corporal said.
At which point, I was hustled down the stairs and pointed toward the door. I gave the corporal at the phone console a mock salute as I passed.
35
The first guard at the perimeter fence had my name and waved me through in five seconds. At the inside wall, the second guard greeted me by name when I walked through the door. The Stasi were nothing if not efficient.
The same kid walked me to the same room where I interviewed Braun the first time. Seeing as how I wasn't in need of the five-pfenning tour, he didn't have much to say after, “Under Lieutenant, an unexpected pleasure. We don't get many return visitors.”
“I imagine,” I said.
“The ones who can come back don't want to, and the ones who can't come back, well…”
He stopped himself. He chuckled quietly. Torture and murder had never been such a hoot.
It was the same as the first time, the game of red light/green light turning a five-minute walk into about double that. On one corridor, a worker on a step ladder had removed one of the red light fixtures from the ceiling for a repair. The result was a different system. My guide yelled, “Moving forward,” and a prisoner being escorted by his minder forced his shackled charge to face the wall and shouted repeatedly, “Nose on the cement. Nose on the cement.” We scurried past, and he never flinched. They weren't kidding about the prisoners not being allowed to see anyone else.
“There really is science to it,” my escort said. “I could show you the papers if you are interested. The latest is from the university in Leipzig. It is very impressive, the effects of isolation on prisoners under interrogation. I mean, we don't just do it for fun.”
“Even if you do think that it is fun.”
He didn't laugh at that one. Instead, I received a shake of the head and silence, which was fine. I needed a minute to go over my line of questioning. It had all happened so fast that I was flying by the seat of the pants — and the seat of my pants happened to be covering a reasonably sorry ass.
The escort opened the door to the same room, looked at his watch, and said, “Three minutes. And then 15 minutes for the interview.”
I had mapped out maybe half of a plan by the time the door opened. The guard unshackled Braun and asked me a non-verbal question by pointing at the door. I nodded, he left, and I started right in by removing the same picture of the dismembered stiff from my jacket pocket.
“Who is he?” I said, in as even a tone as I could manage.
“I already told you, I don't know,” Braun said.
I picked up the photo, returned it to my pocket, and then backhanded Braun with the same left hand. Hard. Braun was stunned and fell off the chair, kicking the table a foot or so on the way down. The door opened, and the guard looked in. He surveyed the damage, smiled, and shut the door again.
This physical blow was the centerpiece of my half-assed plan. I had done it before to two prisoners, back in the cells of a couple of different precinct houses. Both of them were wife beaters, and I didn't regret either one for a second. But it had been years, and this was different — but I had little time and less of a clue. So, bam.
Braun got back into the chair, and I just stared at him for maybe 30 seconds, which was time I did not have to waste. So maybe I cut it to 25 seconds, and then I pulled the picture out of my pocket again and placed it carefully in front of him.
I didn't know what I was going to do if he kept saying he didn't know who it was. So it was a joyous moment for me when Braun said, without me even asking, “He's my brother. Was.”
“Name?”
“Michael.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-one.”
Braun was crying. I offered him a handkerchief.
“Tell me why, Kurt,” I said.
“I don't think I know.”
“Take your best guess.”
Braun sat there for a second, considering. He was in Hohenschonhausen for black market currency dealings, so he could admit that much without telling the Stasi — through me — anything they didn't already know. But he was calculating something else — what, I had no idea. But I didn't have any time for calculating and again, without another prompt from me, Braun started talking.
“He already moved, about six months ago,” he said.
“And by moved, you mean—”
“Really moved. A job washing dishes in a restaurant just off the Ku'Damm. A little apartment in Kreuzberg. He was set. I was going to join him. I was already doing it, bit by bit.”
He stopped for a second. Sighed deeply.
“I was really careful,” he said. “I'd wear a second shirt and a second sweater on a cold day, take the S-bahn over, and leave the extra clothes with Michael. I took a lamp in four pieces. I took a radio in five pieces in a school knapsack.”
“I saw your apartment — there's barely any shit left,” I said.
“I know. I was just about ready.”
Kurt blew his nose and went on to talk about the black market currency deals. A few times, he mumbled, “If I wasn't so goddamned greedy,” but he managed to get the story out.
“Most of the guys on the street are trying to balance their books every day,” he said. “You know what I mean? But they're, you know, professionals. We really weren't doing that. I just wanted to trade my East marks for some tourist's West marks. If I sensed a really desperate guy trying to trade me some East marks, I wouldn't ignore a good deal. But I just wanted West marks. I just wanted to build up some real savings before I went over.”
He stopped again, sobbed again.
“If I just hadn't been so goddamned greedy,” he said. “But it was such easy money. I hated to give it up.”
And then he just completely broke down. I looked at my watch — six minutes left. I let him cry for maybe 15 seconds, but no more.
“Tell me about the identification card,” I said.
“It was just another part of the leaving plan,” Braun said. “My brother was already over there. He had a job, and he had a West Berlin identification card. You've seen them, right? The ones with the green covers?”
I nodded. They were special papers for West Berlin residents, different from the West German identity cards because people who lived in the city were just… different. They lived on an island.
“So we wanted to get everything over there that we could. And Michael, he wanted to try to arrange a job for me before I jumped. So he was looking, and I was moving the last of my shit, and I was making all the money I could on the street. But just in case — I mean, who knew if they were going to change the rules? — we wanted duplicate ID cards.”
“East and West?” I said.
“Yeah.
We figured, why not? But getting the extra West identification for me was the most important thing. I mean, we looked enough alike that nobody would question the photos.”
I nodded. There was little doubt about that.
“So he reported his West ID lost and gave it to me, and I reported my East ID as stolen and gave it to him. When the replacements came through, we'd both have one of each. if the borders closed for whatever reason, or we needed to talk our way out of a situation while carrying our shit back and forth, we would have an appropriate identification card to get us out of the jam.”
So what happened?
“I guess he was carrying my identification, when—”
He stopped. I looked at my watch again. Three minutes.
“And where is his West ID?”
“Hidden in the apartment,” Kurt said. “Taped inside the toilet tank, under the lid. So I was carrying no identification when I was arrested. But I told them right off who I was, and that my identification card had been stolen.”
I looked at my watch again. Two minutes.
“How about the money?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on. Do you want me to find Michael's killer or not?”
He thought, but just for a blink.
“There's a loose floorboard under the bed, near the head,” he said. “Pull it up, and you'll find a little bundle, a folded oilcloth. The money's inside.”
“How much?”
“Exactly 212 marks. The plan was always for 250, and then I would go. We always said it when we said goodbye. '250 and out.'“
Braun began to cry, just outright bawl. I had no time for consolation. Literally.
“So what do you think?” I said. If the question was imprecise beyond believe, he still knew what I meant.
“I've been thinking about it since you showed me the picture the other day,” Kurt said. “I mean, it has to be something with the black market, right? What else could it be?”