Really the Blues

by Joseph Koenig

  Before the tri-motor stopped rolling, a Mercedes cabriolet pulled out of the formation and followed it to the end of the runway. The ground crew wheeled stairs to the left side of the fuselage and arranged them under the door. A delay of several minutes ended when the hatch was flung open and flight attendants emerged, chill blondes with swastika clasps holding brown ties against shirtfronts. They were followed by the captain, co-pilot, several businessmen from Berlin, four honeymooners, and a stout, sweaty man whose blue button eyes were distorted by Coke-bottle lenses. Stepping down onto the macadam, the man surveyed the skyline. From Orly it was possible to make out the Eiffel Tower disappearing into the clouds. He was looking there when the Mercedes pulled up.

  It was Major Weiler who called “Herr Colonel.” The man on the runway, intent on the horizon, didn’t acknowledge him. It seemed he would never have his fill of the view.

  “This is all ours now,” Weiler said. “Its acquisition is Germany’s greatest achievement to date.”

  The man turned his head, evidently displeased with something he saw. “What do you propose we do with it now that we have it?”

  Weiler held himself stiffly, and saluted. Then he took the colonel’s bag and walked alongside him to the open car.

  “Other than your close call on landing, Colonel, how was the flight?”

  “How does it matter? What have you found out about the corpse in the river, Janssen?”

  Colonel Heinz Maier was notorious for answering questions with questions of his own, a Jewish trait. Behind his back it was whispered that the colonel was Jewish himself, at least in part, a part sufficiently large to put him in Dachau, or one of the camps less conducive to a good outcome for a Jew. There was to be considered the chance that he was not a Jew, but had Jewish friends while growing up near the old ghetto in Frankfurt am Main, and had acquired his bad tics there, and that if suspicions about his origins reached him, it would not be Colonel Maier who landed in a place not conducive to good outcomes. So, the whispers were never voiced.

  “From his fingerprints we determined that he is a Danish national, one Borge Janssen, forty-one, from Copenhagen, a Heidelberg graduate in political science.”

  Maier was distracted as the road passed one of the sixteenth-century palaces that littered the city. Perhaps an extreme fascination with French architecture and historic locales was also a Jewish trait.

  “The identification was confirmed through Borge Janssen’s dental records. The dead man is him.”

  “You didn’t know that his fingerprints also are on file in Heidelberg, where he was arrested in 1934 while a graduate instructor, and again three years later for the bombing of the National Socialist party headquarters?”

  Weiler was hot. The atoms in his cells went into motion; he felt them crashing into one another.

  “A year ago he was sentenced to beheading for a similar outrage in Hamburg. Sentence delayed when he escaped from Santa Fu Prison.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard. But why is the investigation ours, and not the Gestapo’s?”

  “Janssen’s record of political intrigue and of direct assaults on the organs of Reich power is as long as your face is now. You believed that the killing of a drummer in a jazz band would bring me to Paris?”

  “Until yesterday all we had were the facts of his death, and those were disguised to look like something else.”

  “To look like what?” Maier said.

  “Suicide, sir. His body was thrown off the Pont Neuf into the Seine after he was stabbed.”

  “Suspects?”

  “None.”

  “Promising witnesses, or clues?”

  “The other musicians and the owner of the club where he worked on Place Pigalle deny knowing his true identity. They are assumed to be lying until proven otherwise.”

  “They were his primary acquaintances here?”

  “A girlfriend. But she—”

  “But she is believed to have been killed in a gas explosion at the building where she resided with Janssen.”

  “Yes, Colonel, that is correct.”

  Weiler doubted that he could present a single fact about Janssen that the colonel didn’t already have. Maier had come from Germany with more information about Borge Janssen than anyone on the scene had been able to obtain, and enjoyed making him feel like an idiot.

  “Do you wish to refresh yourself at your hotel?”

  Weiler was curious as to how Maier would turn a simple courtesy into an interrogatory.

  “I am perfectly comfortable,” Maier said. “There is nothing as refreshing as beginning a complex investigation, wouldn’t you agree, Major?”

  Weiler nodded. So that was how it was done.

  Swastika pennants fluttering from the cowlings of the Mercedes cleared sparse traffic to the former Musee du Jeu de Paume at the northwest corner of the Tuileries Gardens. Across the classical façade an enormous banner flapped like wet wash in the breeze. DEUTSCHLAND SIEGT AUF ALLEN FRONTEN GERMANY VICTORIOUS ON ALL FRONTS. The Eiffel Tower was cloaked in a banner like it. Weiler began to believe that it was the city’s celebration of German war aims more than its landmarks that caught Maier’s eye.

  “Why are we here?” Maier said.

  “Military Intelligence for the Paris district is headquartered in this old museum, along with much of the army administration. Your office is on the second floor, with a splendid view of La Place de la Concorde. Across the river you will see the Palais Bourbon, the former home of the chamber of deputies, the French lower house, which voted the Third Republic out of existence after we took the city. I will be pleased to show you to your office and introduce you to the staff.”

  “Did I ask to be brought here?”

  No, Maier wasn’t a Jew, but something worse, the member of a race, species, or genus deserving to top the Jews on Germany’s list of despised elements. Weiler had been acquainted with him for half an hour, and already the colonel merited consideration for that rating on his own list.

  “I assumed—”

  “I will make the assumptions, Major Weiler. I did not travel all this way for you to do my thinking.”

  “Very well, Colonel, where would you like to go?”

  “To see the place where Janssen lived.”

  “It was destroyed in the gas explosion after his death. Nothing remains.”

  “Then the inspection shouldn’t take much of our time,” Maier said.

  Our time? Does he think I’m to be his Paris coat-holder? Weiler kept his thoughts to himself as they started in the direction of the eighth.

  “Initially, it appeared that Janssen wrongly thought the Sûreté was closing in on him for illegal residency, and chose to end his life rather than submit to arrest and interrogation,” Weiler said. “The post-mortem examination revealed he had been murdered. Berlin believed the Gestapo had killed him in the course of an investigation about which it knew nothing other than that his name appeared on a list. It would be keeping in character for those sadists to have their pleasure from him and make it seem like suicide, rather than arrange an intelligent inquiry into what he was doing in Paris. They never troubled to find out if we might be interested in speaking to him.”

  Maier nodded. “That is how the case became ours,” he said. Amazing, thought Weiler, the colonel not only agreed with him, but didn’t respond with an interrogatory. “The Gestapo chief here promised an investigation into the machinations of his bureau, and an investigation into his investigation is under way to determine if it is a cover-up. He will be the first to say that it is not advisable for anyone to point our work in a particular direction in an effort to make himself look good.”

  “No, Colonel,” said Weiler, deciding it was also not advisable to investigate who was secretly a Jew.

  On the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Maier ordered the driver to stop beside a crater ringed by heaps of broken brick. Scummy water had pooled in the bottom, well below the level of the sidewalk. The building that had stood here, to judge from wha
t remained, wasn’t old, but had gone up not long after the Great War, an example of the modern residential blocks that had revived a decaying neighborhood.

  “The girlfriend lived in this corner?” Maier asked.

  “On the second floor.”

  “How do we know?”

  “The structure is collapsed here,” Weiler said. “Her apartment was the nullpunkt, the ground zero of the explosion.”

  “If so, why is the apartment house damaged from the ground floor up?”

  “It was a very powerful explosion.”

  “It was,” Maier said, “but without defying physical laws, which direct the force of a blast upward. For her apartment to have been the site of an explosion that brought down the building, she would have to have lived on the lower floor, and you say she lived—?”

  “On the second floor,” Weiler said, “on and off with Janssen. This has been established beyond doubt.”

  “You’ve identified her remains?”

  “Victims and body parts are still being sorted out. None have been conclusively proven to be Mlle Cartier—Janssen’s girl.”

  “So the evidence that she was a suicide—?”

  “Comes from what is left of the neighbor who apparently entered her apartment after smelling the gas and turned on the light, triggering the explosion.”

  “No better theory?”

  “What better one can there be?”

  “That the building was destroyed intentionally in the detonation of a bomb built by Janssen and his woman, or by enemies of theirs, or was the result of the ignition of explosive materials stored in the ground floor or basement,” Maier said. “I count three, no?”

  “Everyone smelled the gas,” Weiler said. “The police, firemen, and rescue workers reported noticing it as soon as they arrived.”

  “As well they would have,” Maier said. “The blast completely tore apart the apartment, gas lines included. It’s a good thing the walls came down, or someone lighting a cigarette would have triggered a real gas explosion, and—” He made a blowing sound between puckered lips. “Poof, no police or firemen.”

  Weiler stepped out of the Mercedes and held the door open for Colonel Maier, who sat tight.

  “Two distinct suicides that were not suicides. What would be learned about them by setting foot on the rubble?” Maier pushed his sleeve over his watch. “It’s time for lunch.”

  “May I recommend a restaurant?” said Weiler. “The food in Paris is uniformly excellent. But we—the officers of the general staff—have found a bistro not far from headquarters that is beyond anything else in the city.”

  “I will take my lunch at the hospital.”

  “Hospital, sir?”

  “. . . where the victims of the explosion were taken for treatment.”

  At L’Hôpital des Soeurs de Saint Hubert the radiators made angry spitting sounds, and the windows were sealed against the hint of fresh air. Major Weiler untied the sash around his coat, and was unbuttoning it when Maier grabbed his arm.

  “Leave it on.”

  “I’m already drenched in sweat,” Weiler said.

  “It projects the personage of a formidable investigator. No one will mistake you for a bleeding heart when they see you in shiny leather.”

  Maier took him past signs pointing to the cafeteria to a nurses’ station, where they were intercepted by a nun in a gray habit and starched wimple who looked aghast when Maier told her what they were here for, repeatedly shaking her head as if she were refusing a lewd suggestion while the colonel walked ahead onto the ward and to a bed farthest from the windows.

  Madame Ruth Sarle, grievously burned in the explosion and resulting fire on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, was swathed in bandages oozing the yellow unguent that eased the pain of injuries that otherwise would be unbearable. Major Weiler was immediately reminded of a mummy, not from an Egyptian sarcophagus, but by way of Hollywood, trailing the loose wrappings of its shroud as it pursued the living. Patches of charred hair were rooted among running sores on the top of her head. Stubs ending at the knuckles remained of the fingers on her right hand. She gave no indication of being aware that she had visitors as Maier pulled up a chair.

  “Madame?”

  The woman didn’t answer, although her eyelids fluttered.

  “Madame Sarle?”

  The fluttering became agitated.

  Maier reached around to the foot of the bed and cranked her into a sitting position. “I am Colonel Maier,” he said. “This is Major Weiler. We have a few brief questions about the incident at your apartment house.”

  The colonel’s French was flawless, colored by a slight accent from the Alsace region. It surprised Weiler, who felt intuitively that bigger surprises were in store.

  Maier turned the crank again. When they were face to face, he said to the patient, “I would like you to tell me about the lamentable girl who lived in the apartment where you were injured.”

  The woman shook her head as insistently as had the nurse on the ward. It seemed strange to Major Weiler that a man who seemed to generate this reaction from everyone would choose detective work for a career.

  “There, there, there,” Maier said. “You have nothing to fear from us. We want only to get to the cause of the accident to prevent others from occurring.”

  The woman raised her hand. Weiler glanced over his shoulder to see the nurse step near. He kept her away as Maier captured the hand and pressed it against Madame Sarle’s side.

  “Whatever you need from the sister will be waiting for you after we have your answers.” Maier turned his head sharply, and took a deep breath of air. Weiler was puzzled until he began gulping air himself. Madame Sarle had defecated in bed.

  Maier squeezed her hand tight. “Your neighbor—”

  “Anne Cartier,” Weiler said.

  “Mademoiselle Cartier, she lived alone in the apartment?”

  Weiler was about to correct Maier, a highly intelligent man with a short memory. Moments ago he’d mentioned that the Cartier woman lived with Janssen, and already the colonel had forgotten.

  The nurse had pointed out that the patient had inhaled flames, losing her voice, and scarcely could make herself understood. Weiler heard her whisper, “With her boyfriend. He was there most nights.”

  Colonel Maier seemed delighted. “Isn’t it easy? A few questions more, and we will be gone. The boyfriend’s name was Janssen?”

  “I need the nurse.”

  “A loving couple, no doubt. What did the young man do for a living?”

  “. . . musician.”

  “Did Mademoiselle Cartier work?”

  The woman started to shrug, but was brought up short by the pain.

  “Don’t worry if you don’t have answers for every question,” Maier said. “We want honest answers, those are what we want. Did you see Mademoiselle Cartier in the company of other men besides Monsieur Janssen?”

  “Never.”

  “Ever see Monsieur Janssen with friends?”

  “No.”

  “Take a few seconds to think about it.”

  “Please let go of my hand,” the woman said clearly. “My burns—You are hurting me.”

  Maier stroked her arm, petted it, squeezed her hand.

  Madame Sarle shook her head.

  “. . . In the company of other women?”

  Maier squeezed her hand again, must have squeezed it hard, Weiler thought, because Madame Sarle’s mouth twitched. Maier put his ear next to her lips, and Weiler watched them move as if they were lovers; she was nibbling at him affectionately while he smiled and nodded, encouraging her with soft words, never releasing her hand. After nearly five minutes, her head fell back. Maier looked at her. Where her shoulder curved into the left side of her throat was a place the flames had missed. Maier leaned close again, kissed the healthy skin, and then turned away with Weiler at his heels.

  “I’m famished.”

  “I’ve lost my appetite,” Weiler said. “What did she tell you?”
/>
  “Lies.”

  “You seem pleased.”

  “A lie is something to work with. Before, I had nothing. A lie is usually founded in truth to give it the ring of believability. What we must do now is strip away the untruthful aspects of her story and concentrate on the useful information.”

  “Where do we begin?”

  “She began by telling me that Janssen and the Cartier woman fought like cats and dogs, she heard them shouting through the walls. Another young couple, newlyweds, had lived in their apartment previously. With them it was the sounds of love-making that kept her up all night.”

  “Did she say what the harsh words were about?”

  “Anne Cartier accused Janssen of seeing women behind her back. If his infidelities didn’t cease, he was going to end up with his throat cut. At the time his body was pulled from the Seine, she told Madame Sarle that Janssen was a cad who must have treated his other lovers with the same disdain he had for her, and that it was another lover, or perhaps another lover’s other boyfriend, or husband, or brother, or even a murderer for hire, who killed Janssen. She had begun to hate him till she learned of his death, when she forgave everything and grieved for him. That is why Mrs. Sarle believed she killed herself.”

  “Did she tell you what prompted her to enter the apartment?”

  “She smelled gas,” Maier said.

  “You said the explosion wasn’t caused by gas. She changed your mind?”

  “I suggested she was mistaken and had become confused after being injured. She conceded I was probably right and changed hers.”

  “Probably?”

  “Allow the woman her dignity, Major Weiler. She had been caught in a fib.”

  “After you challenged her, did she give a different account of why she went in?”

  “She confessed to worrying constantly about Mademoiselle Cartier. It was her way of admitting she is an old busybody. When I asked why she was worried, she told me again that she thought the girl had become despondent over the loss of her boyfriend.”

  “But she heard them fighting. It hardly seems either woman would have been displeased if he walked out.”