It was twilight, businesses already closed. Barefoot kids were playing in the street, adults hunched on stoops and windowsills, clustered on the sidewalks. No one answered at number 139, Markoweitsch Fine Leather. A woman finally stuck her head out an upstairs window: “Vus?”
Willi knew bits of the language of the Ost Juden, Yiddish, because his father’s parents had spoken it. But he hadn’t even a chance to respond when the kerchiefed head seemed to intuit he was not someone Markoweitsch wanted to see.
“Gevalt!” She slammed the window shut.
“You wait here, Gunther. Don’t let anyone in or out. I’m going around back.”
“Yes, sir! But, sir?”
“What?”
“What if someone tries to sell me something?”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, seeing the childish fear in Gunther’s face, Willi couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. “Unless you’re one hundred percent sure it isn’t cheaper around the corner”—he shook a finger at the kid—“don’t buy.”
Almost every building in Berlin was built around a courtyard. Some had courtyards within courtyards. Some even had courtyards within courtyards within courtyards; 139 Grenedier was one of the latter. As Willi penetrated deeper into the maze of brick alleys that opened onto brick yards, he was following his gut until his ears took over. From the upstairs apartments a symphony of clattering dishes and fighting family members was soon superseded by what he was certain was singing. Not just singing, but prayer. A service. He even recognized the song. “Adon Olam.” Master of the Universe. It was coming from the deepest courtyard in the building, inside a doorway over which was painted a small sign in Hebrew letters. Like most Jewish boys, Willi’d done his Bar Mitzvah at age thirteen, and he wracked his memory now to try to translate the sign. M-A-R—
All of a sudden, with a loud “Ah-main,” the song ended and the door was flung open, a pale, bearded face just inches away staring at Willi from under a white shawl. More pale faces under white shawls filled the room inside. Clearly they knew he was coming.
“Which one’s Markoweitsch?” He strained the extent of his Yiddish, breaking out his badge.
He might as well have been a specter from the other world judging by the way their jaws dropped. A cop who spoke Yiddish? A bearish fellow in his forties pulled off his shawl and stepped forward, half astonished, half terrified.
“Papers I’ve got, sir.”
“Not my concern,” Willi switched to German. “My interest is strictly your merchandise.”
Markoweitsch was now really astonished. “You’re here to shop?”
* * *
Half an hour later they were in his apartment upstairs, Gunther accepting second helpings of honey cake from the kerchiefed wife.
“Never,” Markoweitsch insisted over a glass of hot tea. “And believe me I would have noticed. Right here on Grenedier he stops me next to his truck. Such bags he shows. Stolen, I was sure. But, no. On the holy book he swears his sister made them, right in Berlin. Two years’ hard labor, that’s how he put it. How could I resist? These were grade-A goods. I went to the shop, got cash, and paid him on the spot, two hundred reichsmarks for twenty-five. Minute he was gone I shlepped them direct to Schröder. I know my customers. She went after them like a chazzer to stuffed mackerel—you understand me? Because they’re unique. Bags like these you don’t see around, Sergeant. Paid me five hundred. And she’ll make a nice profit, if business picks up.”
“You never asked him what they were made of?”
“Made? What, they’re not calfskin?”
“I don’t suppose you got a receipt?”
“Receipt?”
“No card, any way to reach him?”
“A corner transaction, Sergeant. Hardly uncommon in this neighborhood, you should know.”
“A bald man, you say? Extremely big?”
“Like a golem. A giant. Tell me—he did something wrong?”
Not unless you think kidnapping kids, gassing them, selling their flesh, and using their skin and bones to make handbags is wrong, Willi thought, without saying anything. At least he was zeroing in. Truck without license plates. Big as a giant.
Arms so strong they could stun a man with a single blow and, in seconds, lift him upside down, hang him on meat hooks, and split him in two.
* * *
The moment he’d seen the red Indian tattoo he’d known he’d seen it before—or something almost just like it. At Helga’s. From Markoweitsch’s, he and Gunther hurried directly there. The mansion on Bleibtreu Strasse was dark, but they could hear odd noises inside. It took minutes of pounding before the red turban answered the door. When Willi flashed his badge, Zoltan smiled as if they were dear cousins.
“But Sergeant-Detektiv, she’s meditating. You wouldn’t want to disturb her communion with—”
“I sure would.” Willi brushed past, Gunther covering his back.
There was noise, all right. Coming from downstairs. Like, screaming.
“Oh, no, Herr Sergeant, you—”
Yanking an appropriate-looking door, Willi found himself atop a long, dark staircase, the screaming immediately amplified. There was more than one voice, he could tell. Oddly muffled. A small sign overhead proclaimed STRAFZIMMER. Punishment Room. He took the steps two at a time, Gunther tagging along. Flickering light from what proved to be flaming torches revealed the outlines of chains. Cages. Whipping posts.
Gunther’d seen a lot today. Boys in makeup. Jews in caftans. He’d taken it all in admirably. But this time he let out an audible “Mein Gott.”
Three women in schoolgirl uniforms were tied next to each other on a bed, bare buttocks in the air, some kind of plug stuffed into each mouth covering the shrieks as one by one they received blows from a leather paddle that left their rumps swollen and red. Doing the paddling, Willi saw, a “headmistress” in thick, black glasses and tweed suit, was Brigitta.
“You!” she cried when she spotted him. “What the fuck do you think you’re—”
“Shut up.” Helga rose from a pile of pillows, where she’d obviously been enjoying the show, snacking on cherries. Wiping her fingers, she walked toward them in silver heels and a tight gown with no back. When she reached Brigitta, she cracked her across the face. “How many times must I tell you—authority is to be respected. Always. Now out of here. All of you.”
Grumbling with disappointment, the women untied themselves, pulled out their mouth plugs, and trudged upstairs. Brigitta threw her schoolmarm glasses on the bed and shot an enraged glare at Willi before storming off with them. In the flickering torchlight Willi could see Helga was amused.
“We were just warming up, Sergeant. You ought to have come an hour from now.” She lit a cigarette, raising an eyebrow at him. “You’re welcome to join sometime. Yes, why not? Bring the little woman.” She blew smoke at Gunther. “Who’s your boy? Lanky—”
“Never mind,” Willi interrupted, seeing Gunther’s face go redder than those slapped behinds. “Upstairs with you now too.”
In the chrome-filled room where they’d first met, Helga sat at her dressing table, rolling her eyes but making the best of things by grabbing her silver comb and touching up her coif in the three-sided mirror.
Gunther, sweating, broke out a pad and pencil.
“Describe Ilse for me, physically,” Willi instructed.
“Scrawny. Ugly.” Helga sighed, smoothing out the platinum waves, then seeming to recant. “No, not really.” She squinted, thinking back. “The features were decent. She had a certain charm, actually. But that skin.” She dropped the comb and spun around to Willi. “I always thought it must have been terrible acne when she was a kid, but you never got a true word out of Ilse. I finally taught her how to use a good base to cover it. Guerlain, nothing else. With the right lipstick, a little mascara … for heaven’s sake, what are you staring at, Sergeant?”
“That desk lamp.”
Willi saw the color fade from Helga’s cheeks. “Why?” She cr
ushed out a cigarette and lit another. “Is it so fascinating?”
From touring the tanneries he knew how many different types of leather it was possible to produce. A single cowhide could be rendered strong and inflexible for something such as shoe soles, or soft and pliant for jackets and gloves, turned any color, or cut so thin as to be nearly translucent. The difference all lay in the chemical treatments and dyes.
“That little red Indian head. How unusual. What’s the shade made of?”
“How the hell should I know?” Smoke shot through her nostrils as she deigned to glance at it. “Casts a nice diffuse light, that’s all I care. Gives me a healthy—”
“It’s human skin, Helga.”
The cigarette dropped from her mouth to the floor. “What?”
“Where did you get it?”
“From her!” Helga reached, blindly searching with her hand. “Four or five years ago. A Christmas present.”
As Willi watched her grovel, the carpet starting to smolder, he realized pieces were falling into place.
The Ox and the Shepherdess were in this together.
Twenty
Vienna may have given birth to it, but Berlin quickly adopted Freudian analysis as its own, and in the decade following the Great War the Berliner Psychoanalytisches Institut had grown into the movement’s undisputed international home. Staffed by such luminaries as Karen Horney, Theodor Reik, Wilhelm Reich, and Melanie Klein, the Institut not only furthered exploration of the unconscious but was the first to begin training new generations of analysts. It even provided cost-free clinical treatment to those who couldn’t afford it. Willi could think of more than one anguished soul he wished to God would partake.
Arriving at their building on Wichmann Strasse, he hurtled up the stairs two at a time. His cousin Kurt, bony-faced and ebullient, was one of the rising stars here. In his sun-filled office as Willi brought him up-to-date on the latest horrific twists in the case, his cousin leaned back in a leather armchair, slowly removing his eyeglasses.
“It seems to me, Willi”—Kurt sighed, pulling out a handkerchief—“that by taking these children apart and sewing them back together”—he wiped his lenses diligently—“the Kinderfresser’s probably seeking to bind up his own fractured psyche. You see, a real schizoid has no unified core personality. They chronically teeter on the edge of fragmentation. Even the minutest rejection can completely tear them to pieces.”
God forbid you made her feel unwanted. Willi heard the High Priestess again, describing Ilse. She practically ran amok.
“To ward off such a devastating attack, for example, as an accusation of worthlessness”—Kurt returned the frames to his bony face—“a schizoid might strive to construct a personality of unsurpassed utility. In this case, going so far as to compulsively convert his victims’ body parts into something of value—food, clothing. In all likelihood, it’s a ritualizing reenactment of the tortures he himself once endured. I suspect that as a child, our murderer must have felt as if he were being virtually dismembered. Eaten alive. Although”—he rubbed his chin, concerned—“the fact that more than one person’s involved might undermine my thesis.”
Not necessarily, Willi was thinking. If the people were, for example, siblings.
The Ox had said those bags had been made by his sister.
Two years’ hard labor.
“But these aren’t straitjacket cases, Kurt. They’re out there running some kind of business. Operating under everyone’s noses—for years now. I have a feeling they might even be related: brother and sister.”
“Fantastic.” Kurt’s leather chair squeaked. “But certainly not outside the realm of possibility. And there are plenty of schizoids who present engaging, interactive personalities, Willi. That’s just it. They appear interested. Make normal eye contact. But internally, they’re so cut off”—Kurt leaned forward, squinting behind his clean, clear lenses—“outer reality’s not just frightening to them, Willi. It’s genuinely life-threatening. Their social behavior’s pure survival instinct. Animal camouflage.”
* * *
“Hermann Braunschweig?” Vicki said, putting down the Tage Blatt. “Isn’t that the poor pastor you told me about?” She handed him the page, pointing to a black-bordered announcement. Willi looked. Baden-Baden had evidently failed the reverend. His funeral was Thursday. How sad. He felt oddly obligated to go.
Up in Pankow at the Evangelische Friedhof that day, just as he was getting out of his rickety Opel, a long, white Daimler pulled up. Zoltan’s red turban was visible at the wheel. From the back, High Priestess Helga emerged in a black dress fringed with beads. Even behind dark glasses she seemed relieved to see him, her glossy lips tilting in a smile.
“Kraus, I didn’t expect you.” She let him accompany her down the ivy-laced path through the headstones.
“I might say the same about you, High Priestess.”
“Yes, well.” She cast him a glance, carefully negotiating the vines in her high heels. “Death transcends even divorce.” Her confidential tone implied Willi’d become a dear old friend by now. “I was married to Braunschweig eleven years.” She inhaled with what seemed disbelief. “Six, actually. The rest I was married to a bottle of schnapps.” She stopped, turning to Willi, her rows of beads shimmying. “Listen, Sergeant, I’ve got to say—that lampshade business the other night.” She held her hand over her heart, swallowing. “It was too much. Even for me.”
She took off the dark glasses, and for the first time Willi saw something like authenticity in her eyes. “I don’t feel safe here anymore. Everywhere I turn, I think she’s lurking. So I’m closing up shop. Taking the show on the road, so to speak. Getting as far away from Ilse and Germany as I can—southern California. See if I can’t give that Sister Aimee a run for her money.”
Willi couldn’t say he blamed her.
They walked together down the lane of headstones. Halfway she took his arm.
“Gee”—she shrugged, throwing him a girlish smile—“you’re the nicest cop I ever met; too bad you’re so happily married.”
At Braunschweig’s grave they joined the small crowd, Helga’s dress dancing with the dry summer breeze.
As for man, his days are like grass …
the wind blows over it and it is gone.
When they lowered the coffin, she leaned on Willi for support. He gave her his handkerchief to wipe her face. Each threw a rose into the pit, then they returned together along the viny path. But when a little gray rabbit jumped ahead of them, Helga suddenly gasped and froze solid, as if it were a wolf.
“Dear God.” She held her chest, breathing deeply. Willi kept waiting for a word of explanation, but she seemed unable. Finally she shook her head. “All of a sudden I remember something. And I’ve no idea why.” She turned to Willi. “That town Ilse said she came from.” Her voice lowered. “She went on about it like there was no worse place on earth. Practically foamed at the mouth when she told us about it. Wanted to rid the world of the slime who lived there, she said. That’s how she put it too—rid the world. Makes me shiver now. But back then—we thought she was just an unhappy kid. Wasn’t eighteen when she joined our congregation. Hermann and I practically adopted her. Didn’t have parents. Only siblings.”
Siblings? Willi felt his heart quicken.
“What were they, Helga? Brothers, sisters?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think. It could be crucial.”
“I have no idea.”
“Then tell me exactly, when did she first come to you?”
“When?”
“The day, the month. Anything.”
“Oh, why do you torture me?” Helga clutched her throat. “I can barely remember what year we’re in now.” She balled her fists, sighing, then popped her eyes wide. “Wait a minute, the end of the inflation. What year was that, ’24, right? That must have been it. I’m sure now. They’d just introduced the reichsmark—and Ilse brought us steaks to celebrate. We’d never seen such juicy cuts.”
Memory was indeed inscrutable. Willi scribbled in his book. Everything was down there, somewhere. Called up by the most random things sometimes. Or were they even random?
“Okay, now tell me—what was the name of the town?”
Helga held her stomach, her glossy lips twisting as if her appendix had burst. “I never knew where it was exactly, somewhere in the provinces. Saxony, I guessed from the accent. But whenever she mentioned it she used that same creepy windup doll’s voice—like she was casting a curse … Niedersedlitz … Niedersedlitz. The devil himself, she told me once, had moved there straight from hell.”
Clenching her bosom, Helga reeled, stumbling into Willi with a muffled yelp, as if she saw Ilse right there in the cemetery, wielding a bloody knife. “Keep her away!”
Willi had to help her back to the limousine, Zoltan holding the door. Before she climbed in, she grabbed one of Willi’s lapels. “God, Kraus.” Her voice was hoarse with fear. “If that crazy bitch ever found out I talked to you— You’ve got to get her!”
* * *
There was indeed a town in Saxony named Niedersedlitz—just south of Germany’s beautiful city of art and music on the Elbe River, Dresden, and Willi and Gunther set off there by train first thing next morning. Vicki’d hardly been thrilled to hear he was leaving her with the children, even though she wouldn’t be alone because her sister was coming. When he’d gone to kiss her, she’d turned a cheek. He got angry and asked if she preferred he arrange for armed protection. She didn’t reply, and he left. She had a melodramatic streak, he knew. Like her mother. She was overacting, but he felt lousy anyway, getting her upset. Not enough to make him stay, though.
Entering Saxony, fertile farmland rolled past the dining-car window.
“Needle in a haystack,” Gunther mumbled, dropping bits of a roll from his mouth. “Worse. We don’t even know it’s a needle we’re after.”
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