“You really think so?” Vicki squeezed his shoulder.
“I wish I could say it wasn’t.” He patted her hand. “But I’ve never seen anything like what’s going on now.”
The lingerie magnate’s eyes skipped out the window to the horizon, it seemed, and over a precipice no one else could quite fathom.
“Maybe because things were so damned good these last few years,” he said as one of the retrievers nudged him for affection. “Like we’d reached a plateau—stability, progress.” Gottman absently scratched Mitzi’s neck. “Now, the loss of confidence is so total.” The dog panted happily. “Everyone’s panicking. Hoarding. Too afraid to spend a dime. Prices are collapsing. Bankruptcies snowballing. It’s really … calamitous.”
They all sat still, not sure what to say.
“Really, Max, I’ve never heard you so glum.” Bette straightened on the couch, fidgeting with her beads. “After all we’ve been through. Whatever lies ahead, we’ll weather it as we always have, as a family, heads held high.”
“Everybody,” Erich called from the radio. “Chancellor’s on.”
“Chancellor! Chancellor!” Stefan jumped up and down.
They gathered around.
“My fellow Germans—”
Hermann Müller was giving his New Year’s Eve address from the Reichs Chancellory. A Social Democrat, he headed the Grand Coalition of liberal and centrist parties that had seen the republic through its years of greatest growth and stability. October, however, had rained duel blows on his government. Foreign Minister Stresemann, winner of the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize for steering Germany into the League of Nations, had dropped dead at age fifty-one, leaving a major vacuum. And then the Wall Street crash. Müller was hardly an inspirational speaker, as Stresemann had been. But everyone leaned toward his voice.
“In his address from the White House tonight, American President Herbert Hoover has assured his people that the worst of the economic predicament is now behind us. That industrial output and world trade are positioned for a healthy rebound. I wish to assure our people likewise: Germany is poised for recovery.”
Willi could see that Max wasn’t buying it. But Bette paid him no attention.
“You see?” She opened her hands. “I say we have a toast! Willi, break out the champagne.”
Willi obliged with a little bow and poured them all a round. Then he took the lead in raising his glass to a happy and healthy 1930.
Nine
The new decade did not bear good tidings.
On January 2, on an icy shore of the Spree near Treptow, a trio of children’s leg bones washed up, bound together with an unnamed substance. Two days later, on the banks of Museum Island, right next to the National Gallery, a group of nuns stumbled upon a child’s skull.
Berlin reeled in collective shock.
If tainted sausages had caused fear, Der Kinderfresser unleashed horror. From one end of the city to the other—the swankest neighborhoods off the Tiergarten to the poorest in Neukoln—parents put children on tethers. Schools ordered doors and windows bolted, guards at all entrances. Children could travel only in groups. Since Willi regularly walked his boys to school and Vicki walked them home again, they soon found themselves escorting a convoy that included not only Heinzie Winkelmann but half a dozen other kids from the block whose parents couldn’t thank them enough.
The tension and stress were matched only by the wild speculation about who the bloodthirsty fiend could be. Neighbor looked upon neighbor askance, nobody above suspicion. With so few clues it could be anyone. And what about the boys? Why had no one reported them missing? Willi was sure his sister-in-law, Ava, had gotten it right: nobody reported them missing because nobody missed them. They had to be street kids, of which Berlin had no shortage. With the financial crisis, there were sure to be more. Whether Freksa was pursuing this angle, Willi had no way of knowing. And little time to find out, since he was still all tied up with Listeria. Kommissar Horthstaler, though, had gotten wind of the advice to Freksa about the storm canal and didn’t like it one bit.
“I warned you to keep your big nose out of this, Kraus. I’m not warning you again.”
Although Willi had begun to prepare his report, the case would be difficult to complete without Dr. Riegler, and Willi couldn’t seem to find her. Hourly he phoned but got no answer. Heilbutt also didn’t pick up. Several times he went to the ministry and had no luck there, either. After days of this, he lost his temper and stormed into the office of Riegler’s superior, Dr. Knapp, insisting to know where Riegler and Heilbutt had vanished. The news was rather shocking: Riegler had been hospitalized, he was told. Werner had no idea where or why, only that he had received a phone call from her several days ago. She sounded quite ill and he didn’t want to press her. He hadn’t heard from her since. As for Herr Heilbutt, on December 31 he had retired. Was there anything else he, Dr. Knapp, could help the Sergeant-Detektiv with?
Willi was too perplexed to respond.
Outside, he put on his hat and looked down Wilhelm Strasse. All the granite ministry buildings were lined up as if on parade. The Foreign Ministry. The Finance Ministry. The Chancellory. The Presidential Palace. It didn’t make sense. Werner didn’t know which hospital she was in, or why.
Something really was fishy.
Part of him wanted to forget it, just do the best he could on the damn report and wash his hands of it. He never wanted to be on this case to begin with. Riegler’s report had recommended no criminal charges be made. He should just follow her lead. Only he couldn’t. He needed to find the Frau Doktor.
The dead demanded it.
Back at his office he called every medical center in Berlin. Riegler was not at any of them. Heilbutt was right, Willi realized, tilting backward in his chair. Something definitely stank here. And his suspicions about Riegler’s cheek had been justified. That twitch was trying to tell him something. Only what?
First thing next morning he went back to the ministry, upstairs to the lab, and requested copies of the reports showing the presence of Listeria in Slaughterhouse Seven. The clerk came back half an hour later and said they weren’t there.
“That’s ridiculous.” Willi had to contain himself. “They were only filed two weeks ago. This is a major criminal investigation.”
He invited Willi to look for himself, which Willi did.
The lab reports had vanished.
Rushing downstairs to demand the truth from Knapp, he learned the senior administrator hadn’t come to work today. His secretary refused to divulge information such as Dr. Riegler’s home address even under pain of arrest. Willi was just in the mood to haul her down to the Alex too, when he flashed on a conversation he’d had with Riegler during the sausage ban—about how her cat missed her favorite bratwurst from Schlesinger’s on Kant Strasse, around the corner from where she lived.
He dropped the secretary and hurried there.
The waiters knew exactly whom he was referring to, and the precise address—since the nice lady doctor often ordered food delivered up. It was a prestigious building with a doorman and concierge.
No, no, he was told, the Frau Doktor had not been seen for at least three days. Although someone thought she might have left her garbage out because there was a real—
Willi demanded to be taken up immediately.
The concierge fumbled to unlock her door. “Mein Gott. Such a nice lady. I hope she’s all right.”
When they stepped inside, though, the stench hit like a sledgehammer. Frau Doktor Riegler was about as all right as a three-day-old corpse could be. Stiff as a board. Purple-faced. Bloated. But peaceful in bed. Clutching a small glass vial stamped with a skull and crossbones. No note. Nothing. Just a hungry brown cat meowing on the windowsill. Willi stood there, overwhelmed with pity and then, gradually, anger. Surely it didn’t have to happen this way.
Only one person, he figured, knew why it had.
* * *
Heilbutt’s address was in the phone book, but he lived al
l the way out in God-knew-where. From the U-Bahn station Willi had to walk through a gale hunting for Heilbutt’s street. The ferocious wind brought him back for a second to that desperate winter of 1917, in the trenches. It was worse then, naturally. He was younger, true, but he didn’t know whether he’d be alive ten minutes later. Whereas now, he was pretty sure he’d find who he was looking for, get to the bottom of this, and survive.
Pounding on the buzzer marked HEILBUTT, though, nobody answered. The tips of his fingers were frozen numb. He hustled down the block to a tobacco shop. At least it was warm inside, but the guy had never heard of Heilbutt. And Willi had no photo. Not wanting to face the cold, he lingered, perusing the afternoon headlines: Hansa Auto laying off a third of its workforce … unemployment expected to spike … children reported missing across Berlin mostly turning up by the end of the day. He gulped down some heated air and forced himself back through the door.
Persistence, luckily, didn’t take long to reward this time. Just across the street at Schmidt’s Tonsorial Parlor, both the barber and his assistant claimed to know Heilbutt many years. They broke into an argument about where he’d said he was going.
“Bremen.”
“Bremerhaven.”
“Perhaps Bremerhaven, but on the Bremen.”
“The Bremen?” Willi was trying to grasp this. “You mean, the ocean liner?”
“What other Bremen is there?” The barber looked at him. “Herr Heilbutt said it was costing him a fortune, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, to visit his sister in America. So he’d cashed out on his pension and was happy to spend it.”
“This was when?”
“The day before yesterday.”
“No, it was Tuesday.”
“That was the day before yesterday!”
Willi checked his watch: a quarter past four. It would take a miracle, he realized, but yanking his collar he hurried back out into the pelting wind, breathless by the time he made it back to the U-Bahn station. A train was just pulling in, and even with two transfers he managed to arrive at the passenger service desk of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line on Unter den Linden with ten minutes to spare, where he got a bit of good news. If Heilbutt was leaving Germany on the Bremen, the man was still in the country, he was informed, because the ship wasn’t sailing until tomorrow night. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the passenger lists here. But they could call Bremerhaven.
“If you’d be so kind.”
Willi waited.
“Are you positive?… H-e-i-l-b-u-t-t.… Okay, thank you.… Sorry, sir. No, it doesn’t appear any Herr Heilbutt will be sailing with us tomorrow.”
The man was scared, Willi realized. Whatever had driven Dr. Riegler to kill herself was causing Heilbutt to flee. He might easily be waiting to purchase a last-minute ticket so he couldn’t be traced. Or even traveling under an assumed name, with false papers. It was a long shot. But in seven years Willi’d learned one thing: if anyone got the story straight from the horse’s mouth, it was usually the barber.
* * *
Next morning he was out of Berlin on the eight o’clock train. The going proved painfully slow. Track work. Delays. Not until two did the giant Becks brewery pass outside the window, then another hour through redbrick suburbs to the mouth of the Weser River and one of Germany’s great ports. Even as they pulled into the station, he could see the huge black-and-white superstructure towering over the berth across the road and the famed twin orange funnels of the SS Bremen.
Flagship of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line, Bremen had ushered in a whole new era in ocean travel last year. Her sleek profile and slender smokestacks exemplified “streamlined” every bit as much as the Mercedes SSK. Her revolutionary bow, bulbing just below the waterline to reduce drag and increase speed, had proven a stunning success. On her maiden voyage in July she deposed the Cunard’s famed Mauretania, crown-holder for twenty years, beating the old Brit by half a day to become the world’s fastest ocean liner. On her return from New York, she broke the record again by another three hours, thrilling the whole of Germany.
At the pier, noisy crowds already bunched around the boarding ramps, the elegant ship scheduled to depart in less than three hours. There were mountains of luggage. Stevedores shouting. Children jumping. Willi wondered how he was going to find somebody in all this. Looking up at the graceful white bridge, he realized there was only one possibility: help from above.
His Kripo badge gained him access. From the first-class gangway he was taken directly to the chief purser, whom he soon enough learned was a big fan of the Berlin Kriminal Polizei. “The whole country applauds the victories of our capital’s famed detectives,” he informed Willi while thumbing through the passenger lists. “For instance, that fellow who chopped up his wife and shipped her to the department store where she owed all that money. Was that you who brought him in?”
“No,” Willi answered. “My colleague Hans Freksa.”
“Ach ja, Freksa! A real sleuthhound. The name Heilbutt, however, is not on my register, I’m afraid, Herr Sergeant-Detektiv.”
Since Willi had no photo of him, the case was taken directly to the highest levels.
“Descriptions of the man will be sent to all officers at all ramps,” the captain assured, even though the ship had of course been boarding for several hours now. Perhaps, Willi suggested, the best thing would be to observe things from right here. “Yes, with our new high-powered binoculars, the bridge will be the just the place for you to keep an eye on things.”
It proved a spectacular perch. The whole ship, a quarter of a mile long, came into view. And all around, the great dockworks, steel cranes, and brick warehouses of Bremerhaven. The wide, green Weser estuary all the way to the sea. The sky so vast. So promising. The air so sweet. The whole panorama, it seemed, beckoning.
Willi was amazed by how powerful the binoculars were, far stronger than anything the Zeiss company had made during the war. And far lighter. He could see distinct expressions on couples strolling halfway down the ship on the forward promenade. The hand signals of sailors on the boat deck. What he wouldn’t have given for these behind French lines. At the first-class gangway he spied the irritated scowl of a woman toting two Pekinese dogs and her husband. Further down in tourist—a well-scrubbed family excited to leave on holidays, the children hardly able to contain themselves. For an instant he fantasized about taking his family on a trip to America. How the kids would love it. How wonderful it would be sailing into New York harbor on a grand ship like this, past that lady lifting her lamp, Vicki on his arm.
They would do it someday. Soon.
He aimed at the third-class boarding desk. Several young people in worker’s caps and kerchiefs were lugging heavy canvas bags, clutching tickets to what they no doubt hoped was a better tomorrow. For seventy-five years Bremerhaven had been one of the main ports of emigration to America, not only from Germany but all across Central Europe. Many millions of people had set off for the New World from here.
Heilbutt apparently intent on joining them.
Which class might he be traveling in? For a man of his rank, tourist would be logical. But the barber had specifically said Heilbutt mentioned it was costing a fortune, so maybe he’d splurged on a better ticket.
There was nothing to do but watch.
For the next two hours Willi stood on deck, scanning, scanning.
Evening fell. All along the hulk of the ship portholes illuminated, turning the water below shimmering silver. The cargo ramps were drawn in. A series of bells announced an hour left until departure. He grew uneasy. He couldn’t stay on the bridge forever. It would be pure luck to spot Heilbutt at this point anyway, so he decided just to wander around and let fate take its course.
The ocean liner was huge. Magnificent. He passed luxurious dining rooms, card rooms, smoking lounges, and indoor pools, boutiques, and theaters. The long hallways were crowded with people coming in and out of staterooms, saying farewell to those not sailing. Everybody in the world seemed on board
but Heilbutt. Finally uniformed stewards began walking about hitting three-tone xylophones announcing only twenty minutes until departure. All guests needed to head toward the exit ramps.
Which is when Willi spotted him.
Halfway down the hallway. There was no mistaking that ill-tempered face. Or the intense fear on it when he recognized Willi. He may have been over sixty, but with all the agililty of a mountain goat Heilbutt pivoted and disappeared down the third-class staircase.
He had a good head start. People trying to get off the ship obstructed Willi’s progress. He had to make his way down narrow corridors filled with hippolike hausfraus and beer-bellied burghers, feeling more than one blow against his back as he pushed past. In the third-class reading room, he thought he caught sight of Heilbutt leaping from the rear door, but hall after hall, room after room, he couldn’t find him again.
Finally, furious, he exited onto the third-class promenade deck and found himself staring at the tricolors of the republic on the stern flagpole, flapping in the wind. He’d reached the end of the ship. It was freezing out here. He could hear stewards calling the fifteen-minute warning. What to do? Go to the captain? Delay departure? Have everyone in third class paraded past him? Or let the old man flee in peace? Let whomever cover up whatever they were covering, and just go home to his wife and—
There he was.
Left of the flagpole. Willi’d cornered him. There was no way to get by and nowhere to go, except overboard. When Heilbutt realized this, he peered from the guardrail, then turned around ashen-faced, panting.
“Okay, so you got me. Proud, Kraus? A man twice your age. What are you gonna do now, toss me in?”
After the run the old fellow had given him from Berlin, Willi kind of felt like it.
* * *
It was a clear, cold night. Stars studded the sky. Somewhere up near the bow of the Bremen, bells were clanging.
“You know she took poison,” Willi said furiously.
Heilbutt’s head dropped.
“Three days before I found her. Not a word of explanation. Now, you are going to tell me why.”
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