Children of Wrath

by Paul Grossman

  Flying, he could only pray the High Priestess’s door was unlocked. Please, knob, turn! Abracadabra. It did.

  Helga’s private quarters dispensed with the spiritual, everything chrome and mirrors. A white couch. White carpet. Big bouquets of flowers. Seated at a dressing table, Helga was changed into a white silk robe, smoking a cigarette.

  Soon enough she spotted him in the mirror.

  “Couldn’t you even wait until—” She spun around, her eyes doubling in size. “What the—?”

  Her whole torso shivered, and for a second Willi saw she was really afraid, as if something from her past had finally caught up to her. And what a past it must have been. From up close, Helga looked as if she’d been around the block. Plenty.

  Willi pulled off his hood. “Sergeant-Detektiv Willi Kraus, Berlin Kriminal Polizei,” he said to calm her. “Just here to ask a few questions.”

  She breathed again. But not happily.

  “You’ve got some nerve busting in like that.” She reached for the cigarette and took a long drag, disappearing behind a veil of smoke. “Aren’t you supposed to identify yourself with a badge or something? And why are you wearing one of our robes?”

  “It was the only way I could get in to speak to you. Sorry. My badge is in the changing room. With my clothes.”

  “I see.” A light rose in her eyes as she turned back to her mirror and began tugging at her face here and there. “What’s so urgent you had to sneak in here like a fox, Sergeant? How’d you get past Zoltan, anyway?”

  Just then the door swung open and Brigitta entered. “Helga, I—” Instantly she recognized Willi. “You.” She snorted.

  “You know him?” Helga turned, intrigued.

  “Sure. A private dick. Came around a couple of months ago … sniffing after your ass. Braunschweig sent him.”

  Now both of Helga’s eyebrows arched with real amusement. She took another long draw on her cigarette and shot smoke through her nose.

  “He’s not a private dick, Brigitta Liebchen. This is Sergeant Kraus. Of the Berlin Kriminal Polizei. Don’t worry. I can handle him. Leave us a while.”

  “But, Helga—”

  “I said go.”

  Brigitta’s bony face crumbled before she slammed the door behind her.

  “Jealous cunt.” Helga crushed out her cigarette, then smiled at Willi, loosening her robe slightly, showing more cleavage. “So. My ex-husband sent you. How fascinating. He’s never been able to forget me. How is the dear?”

  “Stone drunk.”

  “You’re kidding. I’m shocked.”

  “Look, it’s imperative I speak to you about someone named the Shepherdess.”

  The High Priestess lost a shade of color.

  Slowly she opened a silver case and pulled out another cigarette, knocking it hard against the metal before sticking it in her mouth. “What do you want to know about her?”

  Despite the coolness, Willi could see her hand trembled slightly as she lit a match.

  “I need to find her.”

  “Why?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’m asking the questions.”

  She shrugged, rolling her eyes slightly. “I have no idea where she is. It’s been a long time.”

  “How long?”

  She smiled coyly, pursing her Kewpie-doll lips. “I believe it was Einstein, Sergeant, who said time was relative. That in some cases—”

  “Look, if you prefer to continue this downtown—”

  “Well. You needn’t persecute me. I told you I have no idea where the bitch is. I haven’t seen her in years.”

  “How many years?”

  “I don’t know. Two. At least two years, if not more.”

  “But you do know who I’m referring to?”

  “Yes of course I do.”

  “What was her real name?”

  “Ilse.”

  “Ilse what?”

  “I’ve no idea. She never told me and I never asked.”

  “You must know someone who can find her. Think.”

  Helga stared at the smoke curling from her cigarette. “No. Not a one.”

  “Where did you and Ilse meet?”

  “Tell me, Sergeant, are you always so brusque? Why don’t you sit and have some tea. You don’t mind if I put on a little face cream while we chat? I know I’m not supposed to, but I put a premium on staying young.”

  “I asked how you met Ilse.”

  “It just so happens I’m an idealist.” She began rubbing cream on, making circles with her fingers. “I tend to paint the world in pastel colors, see only the best in everyone. As a result I befriend all sorts of people, some of whom I shouldn’t.”

  “Is there a reason you’re evading my question?”

  “You’re so perceptive. I feel naked in front of you. I guess I’m embarrassed because I met her at church. There, I said it. My husband’s church. Funny, huh, looking back? Ilse was a congregant. When I left, she came with me.”

  “What was the nature of your relationship?”

  Helga shrugged. “Close, for a while. Until I moved on. She got jealous. It’s the Hydra I’m always up against. My desire for harmony’s such that I generally avoid confrontation. But this girl, well, I finally had to lay down the law. She had a mean streak.”

  “How mean?”

  “Ugly mean.”

  “Why was she called the Shepherdess?”

  “Because, Sergeant, she used to bring us animals. For rituals. Although we don’t do that anymore.” She seemed anxious for Willi to understand this.

  “Did she have connections at the Viehof?”

  “The Viehof?” Helga stopped rubbing and stared at Willi in the mirror, her face a ghostly mask. “What an odd question. Why do you ask?”

  “Because that’s where you’d get live animals from in Berlin.”

  “Oh, I see. Yes, how clever. Could you turn on that light for me, darling?”

  He switched on a nearby lamp, noticing the little red Indian stamped on the shade.

  “Now that you mention it”—she ran her hand along her side—“I do sort of recall a family business involving the Viehof.” She stopped at the waist, pinching herself. “But don’t bother asking me what. You don’t suppose I’m getting fat, do you, Sergeant?”

  She grabbed Willi’s hand and placed it on her.

  He pulled away. “I’m happily married.”

  “Oh?”

  “What about Ilse was so violent and ugly?” he pressed.

  Helga’s eyes darkened, her expression growing faint. “I just don’t think she had a very happy childhood, that’s all. God forbid you made her feel unwanted. She practically ran amok.”

  “Amok? Explain.”

  “Explain?”

  “Yeah. An example, Helga. A specific time you made her feel unwanted and she practically ran amok.”

  Helga gave him an almost gut-wrenching look, then shrank in her chair as if really afraid of something.

  “A specific time. Well, let’s see. For instance, there was the day I told her I’d reached a new plateau of spiritual understanding.”

  “Yes.”

  “That I wouldn’t be needing live animals for rituals anymore.”

  “I see. And what did she do?”

  “What did she do?”

  Helga’s eyes began fluttering, her fingers twitching in her lap. “You want to know what she did?”

  She jumped up and spun around, staring at Willi, her face still half-covered in cream.

  “I’ll tell you what she did.” Her voice careened up what seemed a full octave as it flooded with hysteria. “She threatened to skin me alive. Can you believe it? Skin me alive! I hardly think you can blame me, Sergeant, for deciding the time had come to terminate our friendship.”

  Thirteen

  For the dozenth time Willi looked at his watch. Sweat dripped down his forehead. Afternoon sun baked his car. If he ever made Inspektor, he’d be entitled to use a department vehicle. In the meantime the family Opel would h
ave to do. One way or another he was determined to find the home base of the fellow he’d officially dubbed the Ox. The big, bald steer who’d pulled a knife on him last autumn seemed best friends with just about everyone in the market. If anybody, he’d know who was chopping up kids.

  Two men trudged by lugging a crate of slop. Willi hunched in his seat and lowered his hat. It would have been nice to find a more secluded spot—in the shade. But this was where he needed to be right now: across from the market entrance, the Ox’s black van square in his rearview mirror. Three hours he’d been sitting here. He could use a trip to the toilet about now. Except that yesterday when he’d gone, he’d missed the son of the bitch. Times like these he sorely lacked backup. Only the image of those six Gypsies languishing in prison made him feel less sorry for himself.

  At least, though, finally, he was on the trail of Der Kinderfresser. He was sure of it. Who’d have imagined—a woman. It seemed impossible. But the instant Helga’d described that threat to skin her alive, he was certain it had to be her—this Ilse, the Shepherdess—he was after.

  Just her, though? Could it possibly be? One woman kidnapping, killing, boiling the bones, and making designs of so many children? Selling their flesh? It’d be hard enough for one man. A woman’d have to have accomplices, wouldn’t she? Even if they weren’t aware of what they were doing. Unless he was really selling this one short. As High Priestess Helga warned against.

  “I’ll do what I can to help, Sergeant. But trust me,” Helga’d insisted, “whatever the crime, don’t think this bitch isn’t capable of it.”

  What sort of crazed being was he up against?

  The next morning, first thing, he hurried across Alexanderplatz in pursuit of the other lead he had on the Shepherdess.

  “Kai!” He found the boy at his haunt near the base of Berolina, the giant female warrior looming near the Tietz department store. The dozen or so members of his gang, all wearing eye makeup and painted fingernails, whistled as he walked toward Willi in his Mexican poncho and bush hat.

  “Never mind them.” Kai’s earring sparkled as they moved to the busy area near the store so no one could hear them. “Fine to see you again, Sarge.”

  “You told me kids in Neukoln were talking about a lady.”

  The boy’s mascaraed eyes widened. “You mean she’s real—the Shepherdess?”

  “I need to speak to those kids. Can you arrange it?”

  “I could take you right away.”

  The Black Knights, largest of the Wild Boys groups in working-class Neukoln, had a permanent residence in a basement off Hermannplatz, right across from the giant new Karstadt store. Unlike Kai’s group, who stuck together for survival, this gang was a tough lot of pickpockets and shoplifters, boys who liked girls and grew into men who made a career of crime, a sort of school for the adult Ringverein, which regularly recruited from them. Yet a score of these gangsters-in-training managed to overcome their aversion to law enforcement when they heard a Kripo detective had come to hear about the Shepherdess.

  It was standing room only in the smoke-filled basement. The few females on hand looked tougher than the guys. The leader, a pimply-faced veteran of seventeen who called himself Friedrich the Great, sat in the center of a busted-up Biedermeier couch, a big-bosomed girl under each arm. He started things off with a real tirade about how the cops didn’t care if they lived or died.

  “Eight of our boys, all under fourteen, have vanished around here since the beginning of the year. Two more just last week, after the supposed criminals were in jail. No matter how many times we try to talk to you guys, nobody listens. It’s like we don’t exist.”

  “Yeah!” the other kids started shouting. “No wonder we turn to crime!”

  “I’m here,” Willi’d assured them, “to find out everything.”

  He might as well have tossed a grenade, so raw was the explosion of anger and fear, everybody talking at once.

  “She lures with money!”

  “She’s got a knife!”

  “She works with a man!”

  “She works alone!”

  “Has anybody actually seen her?” Willi tried to bring some order to it.

  “She’s tall with short red hair.”

  “Short, with long red hair.”

  Everyone was certain it was a red-haired woman—yet not a soul had seen her. The boys vanished either alone or in pairs. Yet where she took them, how she got them there, or even how anyone came to call her the Shepherdess, no one had a clue.

  Whoever she was, Willi realized, this lady had talent.

  “From now on,” he instructed, “travel only in groups of three and four. Spread the word. And keep your eyes open. If anyone actually sees this Shepherdess, I want to be told. Immediately.”

  He was taking a huge risk here, he realized. If word got back to the Kommissar he was involving himself in Freksa’s case after all, he didn’t want to imagine. Nor did he want to imagine if Vicki found out. At least, though, Wild Boys across Berlin would be organizing for protection. And on the lookout for the Shepherdess. So was the High Priestess and her entourage, Brigitta, the bodyguard. Eventually someone would spot her. He prayed.

  * * *

  In the meantime he continued his reconnaissance at the peddlers’ market, sitting in his little black Opel, waiting. If the missing boys were ending up as sausage filler, he figured, it might be possible to work the trail backward, trace his way to where the cutting and grinding were done. Had to be some god-awful place.

  On the overhead tracks the electrified S-Bahn slid into the Landsberger Allee station. Part of the ring of railroads responsible for so much of Berlin’s industrial might, these commuter trains shared the lines that split off and ran into the Viehof a quarter mile farther. The very same rails that shuttled people by the hundreds of thousands brought livestock from across Europe to feed them. The sound echoing off nearby buildings, he could hear the conductor warn, “Zuruck bleiben!” and see people trampling down to the street. When the train slid out, he glanced at his rearview mirror.

  There he was. The Ox’s massive arms were hustling along two lanky boys who looked exhausted but relieved to be out of the hellish market. Throwing in some empty crates first, they climbed in the back of the van, which the Ox then slammed shut before lumbering up front.

  The man really was the size of a small steer. His limbs twice the width of Willi’s, solid muscle. Amazing he could even fit behind the wheel, Willi thought, taking a deep breath and waiting for him to pass before turning on his own motor. And how’d he get away with having no license plates? In this town they pulled you over for a dirty windshield. Keeping a car’s distance behind he was glad he didn’t have to give chase. The Opel didn’t do more than 50 mph. Fine for taking the kids to Grandpa’s. But it’d be nice to get a faster car one of these days. Of course, given this traffic, speed was the last thing he needed to worry about.

  Inching along Thaer Strasse onto Eldenaer, he saw the Ox make a left finally through the main gates into the Central-Viehof. Allowing an empty truck to pull between them, he turned in behind. The graveled streets were a tangle of cars and trucks and horse-drawn wagons. The handsome buildings in red and gold brick glowed in the late-day sun. Fifty-seven structures on 120 acres, he remembered Herr Direktor Gruber boasting. Eleven hundred individual firms. Five thousand people who earned their daily bread here.

  And at least one mass murderer.

  Making sure to maintain a vehicle between himself and the van, he followed past the huge, glass-roofed cattle market, then the sheep and swine halls, the acres of outdoor corrals, on through the tunnel that led to the south side of the complex. If they continued beyond the slaughterhouses, he told himself, feeling perhaps there might be a little payoff for all his patience, he’d be heading just as Riegler and Heilbutt had postulated, straight into the by-products zone—which might narrow things down considerably.

  One by one the brick slaughterhouses passed, each with its towering chimney at the far end
belching smoke. He rolled up the window but it made no difference. The odor of fresh blood and burning fat seeped in like poison gas. Willi’d hardly believe people could work in such stench, if he hadn’t spent three years on the Western Front.

  The truck in front decided to stop suddenly and wouldn’t move. He gritted his teeth. This whole area was a warren of little streets the Ox could vanish down in an instant. He honked, receiving an angry gesture from the driver, then stuck his head out praying there was room to pass. To his dismay he saw the road ahead blocked by a herd of cattle trudging by the hundreds onto the slaughterhouse ramps. He couldn’t believe it. After all his patient waiting! He jumped out and climbed on the running board, straining to see if he could spot the black van through the dust, but it was useless. All he could make out were brown-and-white figures clomping toward the butcher’s mallet.

  * * *

  Tired but not dispirited, he headed home. He’d been at the game long enough to know that a fish who slipped away one day wound up a fine fillet the next. In the meantime, hopefully, no more disappearing kids.

  It was dark by the time he reached Wilmersdorf. He parked in front of his apartment building and pulled the brake tight, wondering if his choice for Vicki’s anniversary present was really the wisest. She’d love it, of course. So would he. He was entitled to the days, he reminded himself, getting out and breathing in the neighborhood air. But could he afford it? It’d be one thing if lives didn’t depend on it. On the other hand, he considered, entering the carpeted lobby and starting up the stairs, he didn’t want to end up like so many cops obsessed with their work. Divorced.