by Richard Wake
“Come on,” Elke said. I didn’t think she was beckoning me as much as she just wanted to get out through the window.
I personally didn’t know anybody who had left — Bernie and Elke would be the first two. But I knew plenty of names second-hand — smart, educated people who hopped on the U-bahn at Nordbahnhof and never looked back.
I thought about all of that, and then I thought about Red Rolf. What did he say? I could almost hear his voice:
“But what is perfect? Perfect is when we die. Until then, everything is a compromise. The acceptance of that makes us stronger.”
I just looked at them.
“Well,” Elke said.
“Go,” I said.
Then, “No, wait.”
I looked at Bernie.
“Do you have any money in the bank?” I said.
“What? Yeah. I think about 1,100 marks. That’ll be gone, but—”
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the oilcloth bundle, and handed it to him.
“There’s 212 West German marks in there,” I said. “Write me a check for 1,000 East marks. Like, right now.”
He opened a drawer and began scrawling.
“But, what—”
“I’ve been holding it for a friend,” I said. “He’s not going to need the West marks anymore, not after this. But I’m hoping he might need the East marks again.”
“Hoping?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“And we really don’t have time,” Elke said.
And then there was a crash behind us. And then there was shouting. It had to be the Vopo, or whoever was wearing those uniforms. It sounded as if they turned left upon coming in the back door of the building, the opposite way from Bernie’s apartment. We only had a minute, and only maybe.
“Bernie, you first — and then you catch her,” I said. It was only about an eight-foot drop. He hung on the ledge, and given his height, his feet almost touched the ground. Then I tossed out the bags, being as careful as I could be with the camera and the radio. Bernie fumbled the other two but reached up and caught that one cleanly.
The footsteps and the voices in the hallway grew closer.
“Ready?” I said, and Elke nodded. I held her arms and dangled her out the window. Bernie grabbed her legs and eased her down. They had made it.
Bernie looked back at me.
“Come on,” he said.
I shook my head.
“This won’t last three months,” I said. “A barricade across the whole city? There’s no way. The people won’t allow it. The Americans won’t allow it. You’ll see. We’ll both be drunk and throwing up in a gutter on the Ku’Damm by December. A Christmas drunk. Put it in your calendar. Three months. Book it.”
“You don’t know that,” Bernie said. “You work for those people, but you’re blind to what they’re capable of. Come on — out the window with you. Come on.”
I shook my head again. And then there was a loud bang on the apartment door, and a shout to open up.
“Fucking baby,” Bernie said. And then both of us burst out laughing simultaneously. That’s when it really hit me. He had been calling me that since I was about 12. I wondered if that would be the last time.
And then Bernie turned away, and he and Elke conferred for a second. They crossed Bernauer Straße and began walking away on the far sidewalk — just in case, I guess, that the border was in the middle of the street after all. But it wasn’t. Bernie looked back at the window one more time. Elke didn’t.
I closed the window. There was more banging on the door. I shouted, “Just a second.”
The banging stopped. I looked at Bernie’s bookshelf. I picked up his copy of Gulliver’s Travels — the title just jumped out at me somehow, and it seemed about perfect — and took it with me, using the check he wrote as a bookmark. I opened the door for the uniforms, and they burst in and rushed past me. I left without saying anything.
I was out the back door, still in East Berlin, and walked the block or so to my car. As I was getting there, another small squad, four more uniforms, were running in the direction of Bernie’s back door.
52
The routine police calls and crap usually bypassed our teleprinter in the murder squad. But for some reason, we were getting all of the updates about the barbed wire contraption that was now ruling our lives. All of the detectives gathered around the machine when it began to spit out more paper, and took turns reading the dispatches. Kleinschmidt, though, read the most. He put on a movie newsreel voice that was, like most of his theatrical work, quite good. The man was a born performer.
And so:
“Mitte information: a provocateur was arrested, who was in Brunnenstrasse. Had provoked in front of 'Rita's Dance Palace.' No details yet.”
And then Kleinschmidt dropped the announcer voice, looked around at the squad, and said, “Rita's Dance Palace? Anybody? Come on, one of you clowns must know.” And when the laughter died down, he kept reading:
“On the S-Bahn stations at Schönhauser Allee and Friedrichstrasse. Some of the travelers remain on the platform heading for the western sector and discuss that the border is now being closed. No provocative statements or hostile attitudes towards the measure have so far been found. Education continues at both stations.”
And then Kleinschmidt pounded a right fist into the palm of his left hand and said, “Education continues.”
There were a few more — an escape at Treptower Bridge, and two civilians being cited for making a record of the location of the wire locks, and like that.
Then the finale:
“Wait, wait. A new bulletin from Mitte. Supplement to the arrest in Brunnenstrasse: The perpetrator, born in 1943 in Berlin, against 20 people who stood in front of 'Rita's Dance Palace,' made inflammatory statements against First Secretary Ulbricht and against the measures taken by our government.”
Long pause.
“Rita,” Kleinschmidt bellowed. “Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiita. One of you has to know Rita.”
For some reason, the people in charge of the barrier had found a use for just about every living and breathing person employed in Keibelstraße — and probably in every precinct house in the city — but not the Kripo murder squad. The rest were all working double shifts, mostly assisting with crowd control and security and whatnot. But not us — and nobody was questioning our good fortune. The operation began on Saturday night, and by Monday, we were all sitting around the office, reading the teleprinter, waiting for Looby to open the pint bottle of Romanian rye that I had replaced that morning before he arrived.
I had received congratulations from everyone that day, except Greiner — who wasn't in the office, again. Even Kleinschmidt said something. “Hell of a job, kid,” was his one sentence, and I accepted it as if it had been a thousand-word oration. But the barbed wire and the sawhorses and the rest dominated everyone's thoughts. It was just my luck to be overshadowed — but still understandable. I mean, it was a goddamned wall, after all.
Then, about 3 p.m., before Looby had even managed to reach into his drawer, Kleinschmidt said, “Given the boss's absence, and given my seniority, and given that we're all probably going to get roped into this business pretty soon, I am making an executive decision. Kerner's in 15 minutes to celebrate Peter Ritter's big day.”
We all had one in Kerner's, which was near headquarters on Alexanderplatz, and then the toast came with the second one, and then it was my moment to perform, to tell the story of catching the Treptower Park killer.
I had considered a Kleinschmidt imitation but settled for a Peter Ritter imitation. I just told it my way — pretty honest, pretty self-deprecating. I made sure to mention my initiative and to jab Kleinschmidt by implication, but I even couched that in modesty. I said, “Yeah, it was a Saturday morning, and I figured a re-canvass after the second body was as good a use of my time as anything. Besides, it's not like I have a fucking life.”
They all roared. They were mostly three drinks deep at that poin
t, and I had them. And while the reality was that I just saw the wheelbarrow while playing with Lottie, and the official report said I found it during a search, I went with a third version for the bar crowd. I said, “So there's a wheelbarrow full of dried blood about five feet away from the dollhouse. If the little girl hadn't bumped into it and started pushing it around the basement, I never would have seen it.”
Another roar. “And the super's apartment,” I said. “He had more pictures of Ulbricht than Mrs. Ulbricht did. And when he showed me the Tokarev — just showed me — I swear, he got a boner. Deranged, but a boner.”
It was the best story I ever told. It was the first time I ever really felt a part of the squad. And when I was done, Kleinschmidt put his arm around me and whispered in my ear, “Your first big one is almost always pure luck.”
I thought he was being supportive, but I just wasn't sure.
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I hope you enjoyed A Death in East Berlin. The second installment in the Peter Ritter thriller series will be available in the fall of 2020. What follows is the first three chapters of the first book of my other series, Vienna at Nightfall. The protagonist is Alex Kovacs, a traveling salesman caught up in a case of murder and intrigue with the imminent takeover of Austria by the Germans as the backdrop.
The book, as well as the rest of the series, is available for advance purchase now. You can find the link, along with the links to my other books, at https://www.amazon.com/author/richardwake.
Thanks for your interest!
The American Bar on Kärntner Durchgang was where we often began the night. It was all sharp angles and geometric patterns and dark wood and a green-and-white marble checkerboard on the floor. Masculine. It was a tiny place, a bar and three tables and not much else, including women. But it was where we drank Manhattans and got fortified for our pursuit of the aforementioned women, albeit somewhere else.
"The starting blocks," was what Leon called the place.
We hadn't gotten together, the three of us, in nearly two months, mostly because I had been traveling so much but partly because Henry had been occupied with a certain Gretchen, a porcelain doll, and a clingy one—until, that is, she got a better idea of how Henry's family made its money. It wasn't the first time this had happened, and he shrugged it off in what had become for him the time-honored fashion: a bottle, a 48-hour monastic sulk, and then, all better. Anyway, there we all were, two Manhattans deep.
"So where was this trip?" Leon always asked, mostly because he said he found my life in Vienna so dull by comparison.
"Dresden, Koblenz, and Stuttgart," I said, trying to suppress a smile. Trying and not succeeding.
"Koblenz? Isn't that . . .?"
"Yeah, the Gnome." I couldn't help but grin.
I was a magnesite salesman, which was about as exciting as it sounds. My family owned a mine in Czechoslovakia. My father ran the business, and my shit of a younger brother sat at his elbow. I lived in Vienna and serviced 24 of our clients in Germany and Austria, visiting twice a year, about 120 days on the road altogether. My Uncle Otto, who taught me the business, kept a half-dozen clients in his semi-retirement.
Most of our clients were steel mills, because of their blast furnaces—they used magnesite in the lining—and in those days, in Germany, the furnaces were working overtime. The Little Corporal had been very good for business. Most of the trips followed a familiar rhythm. I got to the place early in the afternoon, and most of the owners liked me to tour the plant while they chatted and joked with their workers. As if I cared whether they hated him to his face or only behind his back. Then we would go back to the office, where I listened to the owner complain about deliveries and such. Then I tried to get him to up his order by 5 or 10 percent. Ten percent had become my standard ask of our German clients—10 percent every six months—and I was getting it; Heil, etc. And then, when the work part was over, I took the owner out to dinner, followed by whatever, all on my expense account. Some were more interested in the whatever than others.
In Koblenz, Ewald J. Gruber owned the local steel mill. He was five-foot-nothing and stooped over besides, 70 years old, impressively unattractive, and truly believable as something you would put in your garden to ward off evil spirits and for nervy squirrels to piss upon. The Gnome.
But here was the thing about Ewald: He liked them young, and blond, and tall—really tall. I handled the introductions and, in exchange, I got my 10 percent order increase, plus the funniest thing I would see on the whole trip: little Ewald and his six-foot Brunhilda, hand in hand as they left the café.
"This time was a little different," I said. "This time he wanted two of them—12 feet of blonds, five feet of Gnome, no stepladder to help. I managed to make the arrangements with the girls, and when they left the café, I told them they had to do something for me. He was walking between them, holding each of them by the hand, and just at the door, they lifted him up and swung him through the air, both feet off the ground."
At which point, I reached into my breast pocket and pulled out the photograph that the bartender had snapped: the blonds, the Gnome, both feet off the ground. Leon spit out a stream of his Manhattan.
“Alex Kovacs, I can't believe you do this for a living," he said.
"Somebody has to."
We grabbed our coats and got ready to head to the Stardust, where there would be a band and some women and some dancing. It was a 10-minute walk, give or take, which was almost pleasant in November in Vienna if you were adequately fortified. Very quickly, though, we saw what looked like trouble ahead. In the late autumn of 1936, trouble in Vienna tended to be accompanied by a swastika, and it was this time. Well, a little swastika; the government had banned the party a couple of years earlier, which drove the Nazis underground, but they were still scampering in the dark. They didn't wear the full brown shirts with the red armbands anymore, just little buttons with the hooked cross.
Henry and Leon walked a little more quickly in the direction of the scrum on Lisztstrasse. Four or five knuckleheads, one holding a bottle, surrounded a single man, pushing him, yelling at him, taunting him. He was probably a Jew, or at least he probably looked like one. Leon was a Jew, and even though we were still a hundred yards away, I could see where this was headed.
"Leon, let this one go. There's five of them," I said.
"Fuck no."
"The police station is two blocks down—let's just go get a cop."
"Fuck that—the cop will probably help beat him up."
Leon was running now, Henry right with him, me a step behind. We got there, and there was a lot of yelling. Thankfully, no one was armed—especially after Henry de-bottled the one guy and smashed the schnapps against the wall. Leon was soon swinging with both fists, and Henry was whaling on this one fat Nazi. I managed to identify the guy on the other side—in bar fights, or any kind of group fight, there is inevitably at least one—who had no interest in fighting, either. It goes unspoken, but you both know that neither of you is going to throw a punch. What tends to happen is that you each grab the other guy by the lapels, and shout a few indignant fuck yous at each other, and if you play it just right, your jacket is minus a button, or maybe has an easily mended tear along one of the seams. So no real damage is done, but you have a small sartorial badge of honor.
Which was how this one was going to end, that is, until one of the Nazis pried a loose paving stone up out of the street and brained Leon. It staggered him, and it cut him above the eye, and blood ran down his face and dripped into the gutter as he tried to steady himself on one knee. Henry found a stone
of his own, and, as he picked it up, a police wagon careened around the corner. Four cops piled out.
The Nazis ran. The cops did not pursue them. Instead, they stood there—shiny helmets, green capes, superior attitudes—and questioned us. Particularly this one scowling giant who smelled of beer, among other things.
"Let's see some identification, gentlemen."
"You've got to be kidding me," I said.
"Does he look like he's kidding?" said his sidekick, who was more normal-sized except for his smirk, which was as enormous as it was well practiced.
"They were beating up this kid, and we were rescuing him," Leon said, "and my head is bleeding, and you're—"
"You're a Jew, yes?" It was the smirker.
"Listen," Henry said, taking a step.
"Identification, now," the giant said, taking a bigger step. It was not a request.
So, identification it was, followed by our names getting copied into one of those little leather-covered cop notebooks, followed by a lecture about brawling in the streets, followed by a warning that it had better not happen again. Within five minutes of talking, the smirker managed to use the phrase "the Jewish element" five different times. He looked at Leon the entire time, never even once acknowledging the kid who was still on the ground, head between his knees, cowering against a building. The cop probably couldn't tell that I had grabbed Leon from behind by the waist of his pants and his belt, to reinforce the importance of not taking a swing at these guys. Leon knew this drill well—every Jew in Vienna did—but a little reminder never hurt.
Then it was over, the cops piling into their wagon and speeding off, their fun for the night now complete. As we got him to his feet, the Jew we’d rescued finally had a chance to thank us. He was just a kid, not 20 years old. He could barely get the words out, he was so shaken. He had pissed himself but seemed fine physically. He said he was okay to get home.