Children of Wrath

by Paul Grossman

  Willi stopped short.

  Now he was the one in shock. He couldn’t believe Freksa’d done that. In a single morning he’d compromised everything. From countless hours behind binoculars Willi knew damned well everyone in the market was terrified of the Ox. Now Freksa’d not only tipped the brute off, but sent him stampeding for cover. No wonder the Ox had vanished.

  Freksa was convinced, though, his offer had paid off. Someone’d called in already claiming to have information worth far more than fifty marks, he boasted.

  “We’re meeting tonight, just the two of us. And you’ll never guess where.” Freksa tilted up his chin, his long, pale face still wet with rain, a slight smile on his lips. “You were right, Kraus. The Central-Viehof. Slaughterhouse Seven. Eleven p.m. The section once used by Kleist-Rosenthaler.”

  Willi’s whole back tensed. “You can’t be serious. Don’t do it, for God’s sake. The slaughterhouse? Alone at night?”

  “Awww.” Freksa stretched his neck and brayed. “How touching, Kraus. You’re worried about me?” He patted his trench-coat pocket. “I never travel alone.”

  * * *

  The rain had eased but lightning still cracked the sky as Willi made it home to Beckmann Strasse, shaking out his hat before entering the lobby. On the staircase up, he ran into Otto Winkelmann coming down.

  “Hey, Mensch. How are you doing?” Willi hadn’t seen him since that morning on the landing.

  “Yes, yes. Much better. You remember my brother-in-law, Klemper? He’s gotten me in at his firm.”

  “Well, congratulations!”

  “Naturally it’s not what I’d prefer.” Otto’s head shook severely. “A clerk in the mailroom. Plus, I had to make certain other involuntary adjustments, I can assure you. But at least I’ll be able to pay my bills, yes?” He seemed both immensely relieved and in a hurry. “So bye-bye, Willi.” He waved as though he wasn’t sure when they’d see each other again. “Felix is taking me to fill out some paperwork.”

  Probably making him join a union, Willi figured. A mailroom clerk. How sad.

  Vicki was in the kitchen making salad.

  “Thank heavens.” Her eyes glistened when she saw him. “I was afraid you might have gotten washed away.”

  She shook her bangs back and lifted her face, waiting for his kiss.

  He came around from behind instead, nibbling her neck.

  “Daddy’s biting Mommy!” Stefan shouted from the hallway.

  “Because I’m Nosferatu.” Willi made his fingers into claws and started chasing him. Erich joined and the three of them had a screaming rumble before Vicki put a stop to it.

  That night, when the kids were in bed and he and Vicki were listening to Furtwängler conducting Brahms’s Seventh, she caught him staring into space.

  “Kathe asked about Passover,” she said softly, as if not to disturb anyone. “I told her I had to check with— Willi?”

  “What? You needn’t check, Vic. Of course we’ll have them.”

  “I mean now … what’s wrong? Is it that awful Freksa again?”

  Not the way she thought.

  Nothing he’d said had been able to dissuade Freksa from going to the Viehof tonight. And the more Willi’d considered it, the less he liked it. The guy wasn’t in his right mind. What harm could there be in a little covert backup? But what was he supposed to say to Vicki, lie to her straight-faced? He picked up a newspaper and tried to read, only the words wouldn’t form in his head.

  “Sweetheart.” He finally threw the paper aside, figuring a half-truth was better than none. “I’m really concerned about a colleague. I know you hate when I go out at night—”

  “Oh, Willi.”

  “Sometimes I put myself in your shoes and I think, God, if anything ever happened to her…”

  But the idea of Freksa out there alone unnerved him.

  * * *

  Graveyard shift. In another few hours, waves of workers would begin pouring into the Viehof to prepare for the busy day ahead. But now, only lonely horse-drawn wagons clomped here and there, hauling trash. Willi drove past the empty administration buildings and vast glass market halls, which he could hear being hosed down inside. Even the acres of corrals filled with cows and sheep and pigs were quiet. All deep in one final sleep.

  The storm had ended. The clouds, when they broke, allowed beams of moonlight to tumble down. At the end of the tunnel when he emerged at Slaughterhouse Row, all the long buildings and chimneys were cast in a silver pall. It was nearly eleven. Why would an informant want to meet in such a place? he kept asking himself. None of the answers came up reassuring.

  At Slaughterhouse Five he pulled into the shadows and turned off the motor. His time behind enemy lines made stealth second nature. He navigated the rest of the way by foot without making so much as a crunch on the gravel. The night was dank, chilly. But the storm had chased away the stench, and for the time being the air was almost sweet. He halted at the sight of Slaughterhouse Seven. A lone Horch was parked out front. Next to it, the building entrance, he saw, was ever so slightly ajar. He went up to it and peeked through. It was dark as hell in there. Absolutely silent. He slipped inside.

  Barely breathing, he stood a moment and let his eyes adjust. A shock of ammonia pinched his nose. It had to be twenty degrees colder in here, the two-story arcade and stone floors designed to keep temperatures down, he remembered Gruber telling him. For sanitary purposes.

  The clouds opened, sending moonlight pouring through the grime-covered skylights, illuminating the interior like a photo from the kaiser’s time, filtered in rusty sepia. The place was huge. Blocks long. Subdivided into semi-enclosed zones for different types of animals. Some were leased long-term by companies whose names hung from signs: R. J. Hessen, Jinks-Escher. Since partitioning walls were only partial, everything was pretty much visible.

  To Willi’s right he saw Plussgart & Son had dozens of thick chopping tables with sharp hatchets resting on each, and enough stray feathers missed by the cleaning crews to indicate it was a chicken abattoir. To his left, a far larger section leased by Goertner Brothers was filled with ramps and swinging gates through which obviously small quadrupeds were herded. Awaiting them were rows of wooden “cradles” that immobilized them for a swift blow to the head. A lineup of spikes and iron mallets stood against the wall. Running the length of the ceiling, long steel tracks contained numerous hooks, onto which the stunned creatures were evidently bound and yanked up by the legs, then sent down the line for a quick coup de grâce. All the throat-slitting scalpels hung in shiny rows. The slate floors were lined with graded gutters. Farther down, the skin- and fat-stripping areas had enormous vats on tracks, which allowed for easy disposal.

  It was quite the assembly line.

  Willi paused, listening. What was that? Had something just crashed in the distance? Or was it only the creaking of those hooks in the wind? He heard it again. Way at the other end of the building, a definite banging, like thunder. Could that be all it was, the storm returning? He picked up his pace, careful not to make a sound, then clouds blocked the moon and forced him to feel his way through darkness. No doubt, though, something was making a major commotion up there. It was growing in intensity as he neared, until all at once it exploded into the most hideous, bloodcurdling scream he’d heard since the battlefield.

  My God.

  He stopped, senses thrust to full throttle, ears poised like radio receivers, picking up nothing for what seemed eternity, then … running. A door slamming. A motor starting outside. A truck? It revved, then grew louder until it passed on the road outside and disappeared around the block.

  His heart pounded wildly as he hurried ahead, not caring anymore about noise. At the far end of the building his shoulders were so tense it felt as if he’d taken a bullet. The area, he saw with a strange chill, continued to display the name Kleist-Rosenthaler.

  He smelled it first. Sharp. Pungent. Then, scanning desperately, he spotted it: an enormous, almost machetelike cleaver dripping
with still-steaming blood. At his feet, a gutter along the edge of the slate floor flowed red. His eyes followed until they froze in disbelief. A pair of hands, fingers downward, swung an inch off the floor.

  He looked up.

  Suspended upside down from two hooks, blond hair dangling in a pool of blood, eyes wide, tongue out, Freksa was strung up like a side of beef, practically split in two.

  Book Three

  WASTE NOT

  Seventeen

  BERLIN

  JULY 1930

  Distant screams filled the air.

  Swept up by the excited crowds, Willi could barely keep a grip on the boys. It was peak summer. He’d been working relentlessly for months, and it was great taking a day off. But one couldn’t be too careful right now. Especially about kids.

  Past the main gates they descended the terrace staircase, and he recalled coming down these same steps when he was a kid. Luna Park was a Berlin tradition. In the plaza below, the fountain still shot five stories high, beyond which cable cars sailed above the shimmering Halensee and its peddling swan boats. Ferris wheels. Waterslides. Roller coasters and sideshows. There couldn’t have been a starker contrast to the world they’d just stepped out of.

  It had been a terrible summer. And only half over. The economy wouldn’t quit coming apart. Everywhere, revenues were plummeting. Businesses folding. Tent cities popping up. The Reichstag had rejected all the chancellor’s harsh austerity measures, so the chancellor had dissolved the Reichstag and called for new elections in September. The campaign had turned violent. Radical parties of left and right supplemented sloganeering with brass knuckles and truncheons. Brown-shirted Nazis and Red Front Communists clobbered it out in the streets and parks and on the U-Bahn. Schupo, the security police, were unable to put a lid on their turf war, which only added to the public perception that Berlin was spinning out of control.

  That Der Kinderfresser couldn’t be caught only escalated the vertigo.

  Around the central plaza the scent of roasting peanuts hovered in the air. Flags waved. Clowns juggled. People surged in a dozen directions. “Roller coaster! Roller coaster!” The kids, if no one else, presented a united front.

  Willi loathed roller coasters. He didn’t mind speed as long as it was horizontal. But he sure as hell wasn’t letting them go alone. As they waited to buy tickets, he saw how happy Erich and Stefan were to have Heinzie Winkelmann along; they always got on better when their plump, good-natured chum joined in, although Willi wondered about Heinz’s father. Otto had no time to chat anymore, passing in the hall with a curt nod, never once asking about the Kinderfresser case—which was very unlike him. Willi assumed he still was depressed about losing his store and having to accept such menial labor in a mailroom, and embarrassed, perhaps, because Willi’d caught him crying that morning. After all, he’d made such a fuss at Heinz in front of them about how Germans didn’t do such things. Yet Vicki said she’d noticed a slight detachment on the part of Irmgard too.

  Between the boys, at least, all was laughter. On the roller-coaster dock Willi got in with Stefan while Erich and Heinz jumped in ahead. As the cars yanked off on the long climb to the first precipice, Willi’s stomach began to knot. He’d rather slither through no-man’s-land than endure the twists and turns of this thing. But as they reached the peak and swept over, the kids cried with such delight that Willi just clenched his eyes and prayed they didn’t notice him. How would that look: one of Berlin’s top cops more frightened than his children.

  * * *

  With Freksa’s death the spotlight had suddenly fallen on him.

  His reputation had been redeemed.

  Because he’d already pointed a finger at the Viehof and because it had been his to begin with, the Kommissar had finally awarded him command of the Kinderfresser case. “You wanted it, Kraus? It’s yours. Don’t fuck up!” The whole of Berlin was familiar with his name now, and he was treated with a modicum of respect—even by his unit. But the ups and downs of the bloody ordeal remained every bit as nauseating as this ride. As were the complications set in motion with Vicki.

  Whoever’d killed Freksa had gotten away with it. For now. The cleaver used to hack him in half held no fingerprints, nor were any discernible tire tracks found on the road outside. The more Willi recalled the noise of the motor, however, the more he was convinced he’d heard a small truck drive by that night. Maybe the Ox’s. The man had vanished entirely. Multiple raids on the peddlers’ market with their mass interrogations had yielded little and only metastasized the problem. The big market had dwindled but smaller ones sprang up in half a dozen other locations, making it impossible to monitor them all.

  As the roller coaster swung down a steep bend and back up for another precipitous drop, Willi couldn’t help but clutch the seat. Ahead, Erich and Heinz were waving their arms crazily. Up, up, then over— Willi’s stomach bounced into his heart. He really did hate this thing.

  Minutes later he was happier on the Auto Scooter track, which traversed a weird expressionistic landscape of tilted buildings, trees, and mountains designed to induce double vision. Willi, who very much liked fast driving as long as he was the one doing it, tried his best to help Stefan catch Heinz and Erich, but they couldn’t quite make it. Like the Shepherdess, he thought—always just out of reach. Everywhere. Nowhere. For weeks he’d gotten reported sightings of this red-haired abductress, but not a single hard fact. Even High Priestess Helga claimed she’d seen her. And where? In a dream.

  “My sheets were drenched with sweat when I awoke,” she’d told him over the phone. “Positively horrifying. But I can’t remember a thing about it, Sergeant.”

  Great. Even the dreams were vague.

  Sometimes he’d wondered if this Ilse really existed or was just some phantom of the collective unconscious.

  When they got to the fun house, the boys went wild in the hall of mirrors, trying to find each other in the maze of reflections. Even Willi began to get confused about what was real and what only seemed it.

  Like everyone else in Berlin, he’d adopted the term Kinderfresser to describe the perpetrator of a whole set of kidnappings and murders. Whether this Ilse, the Shepherdess, was doing more than grabbing boys off the street, he didn’t know. But this was no one-woman operation, Willi was certain. In the last two months another six boys had gone missing. Even with the whole city on guard.

  And Ilse had certainly not cleaved Freksa in two.

  At lunch the boys ate schnitzel and kraut while Willi stuck to coffee, his mind drifting back to the lengthy conversation he’d had with his cousin at Passover. After seder, he and Kurt retreated to Willi’s little study while the boys went to Erich’s room to work on the Red Baron’s plane. Amazingly, they came running out an hour later to show it off, completely finished. It had only taken a little diligence, and a thing of singular beauty took flight, some odd three-winged bird. Kurt’s theorizing, meanwhile, suggested a criminal even more bizzare, and without the accompanying beauty.

  “Just as the compulsion for order may defend against inner chaos”—he’d taken off his glasses grimly—“this selling the flesh, making designs of the bones, utilizing them, could very well serve to bolster an illusion of usefulness.” He stared at Willi without blinking. “More than likely to compensate for some equally deep-seated belief in his or her own uselessness.”

  Poverty might play a role.

  Certainly there had to be some experience in leather making.

  * * *

  Luna Park’s famous lane of sideshows contained small cabanas, each offering lurid peeks at circus-style oddities. Sword swallowers. Fire-eaters. The boys begged to see the bearded lady, but Willi put his foot down. He had no intention of letting them gawk at some unfortunate woman.

  Since the peddlers’ markets had dispersed, he’d switched tactics and focused surveillance on the Viehof directly, the by-products zone specifically—where leather makers and bone boilers abounded.

  He’d had a rather strange encounter ther
e.

  After a week of poring over maps and registration papers, he’d gained all sorts of insight into a world he barely knew existed. Dressed in the long white jacket of a Viehof inspector, he was able to poke around for days, speaking to people and getting to know how their operations worked. A web of interlocking streets contained dozens of varying businesses, the largest of which, the tanneries, occupied whole blocks. He’d gotten to inspect the workings of some of these massive facilities, which employed scores of laborers. Truck after truck of freshly skinned cowhides arrived each day from the slaughterhouses. Soaked in huge vats, scraped by hand, tumbled inside drums, and strung out to dry, they were eventually slid between giant rollers, pressed, folded, and shipped to make everything from watchbands to upholstery.

  Not as large but far smellier were the plants for rendering fat into tallow. Barrels full of the stinking stuff arrived after each big slaughter, processed for use in candles and soap, shaving cream, lipstick. The gelatin works were of a similar vein, skin, tendons, ligaments, and hooves boiled down to make liquids used as ingredients in everything from marshmallows to shampoo. Horns. Feathers. Quills. Bristles. Nothing was neglected. Plants even rendered oils from the placentas of cow uteruses for use in cosmetics. Several gut-works spun intestines into thin, tough string for such things as musical instruments, tennis rackets, surgical thread. These interested Willi in particular. As did an entire street full of bone boilers and bone crushers, processing marrow and grinding powder for fertilizers and vitamins.

  The other day, on an especially stench-filled lane shared by a number of small gelatin and bone works, surrounded in a haze of dust and oily smoke, he did a double take at the vision of a man in a white, blood-splattered smock. The fellow, shaded by a black worker’s cap, was spread-kneed on a stool, smoking. For a second Willi was sure it was the Ox. He was almost as big, and practically as fearsome, but the closer Willi looked, the more he felt certain it wasn’t the Ox. In fact, the more he felt certain it wasn’t even a he. Inadvertently their eyes met, and Willi saw a swift black shadow race across the meaty face before it turned away.