With this hope Vicki and Willi entered the school they’d both attended as children, where their own child now went, and joined the queue to cast ballots.
* * *
Later they drove out to Fritz’s for dinner and to await the election results. Vicki’s father had lent them his Mercedes for the week, since he’d gone abroad on business, a Type 260 Stuttgart, the company’s most solid family car. After Willi’s rickety Opel it was like a magic carpet, floating them down busy avenues and out into the deep-green forests, landing them in Grunewald in record time. Fritz’s three-story villa was a riot of historical styles, built during the Wilhelmian period. He’d been bitching for years about how out-of-date it was and had just weeks ago commissioned one of Germany’s most avant-garde architects to build him a new one up the road.
Helping Vicki out of the car, Willi flashed on the dark, miserable hovel he’d seen a few days back, where Axel Köhler had lived, careful not to let his wife in on his thoughts. Like the rest of the world, Vicki felt relieved to think the case of Der Kinderfresser had been put to rest, which for expediency’s sake he preferred. In fact, though, after the tidal wave of news reports following Magda’s capture, people had come forth with all sorts of new information, including the superintendent of a lightless, airless basement apartment a mere two blocks from the Viehof.
“I knew there was something wrong with that guy,” the man said when he’d taken Willi in a few days ago.
The place was sparse, depressing. A bed and several chests of drawers. A thorough search, however, revealed plenty: not only half a dozen forged identity cards bearing Axel’s photo under various aliases, but also a leather account book at the bottom of a pile of dirty underwear. In meticulous pencil, starting in 1924, Axel had kept an exact record of all the boys delivered to something called Tower Labs, no address, phone number, or any other information. Only that for each child he was paid 150 reichsmarks. It was a fortune. Especially for otherwise “worthless” street urchins.
And then, for each “Pickup and Disposal,” another fifty marks.
In six years the total number delivered and disposed of, according to this ledger, was 244 boys.
If correct, it would be by far the largest mass murder in German history.
“By-Product” and “Leather Goods” sales, depending on the year, had increased Axel’s income handsomely. He probably took in as much as Viehof Direktor Gruber. But he hadn’t spent it. From the layers of crap under his bed they’d exhumed a cigar box stuffed with banknotes. Twenty-five thousand RMs.
The man should have worked for the government.
Approaching the high brick wall around Fritz’s property, Willi’s heart raced as he pictured the name in the ledger entered over and over in thick block letters, so similar to the ones on that wall of names in the dungeon under Bone Alley. TOWER LABS.
Whatever it was, it had to be found.
As did Ilse.
Holding Vicki’s arm as they entered the front gate, they saw a gray hare pop its head from the flower bed. “Don’t tell me you’ve developed fear of rabbits?” Vicki laughed, feeling him tense. “What do they call that, leporiphobia?”
His wife read more psychology than his cousin Kurt.
“A little stitch in the side is all.” He pretended to smile.
He knew he’d nearly given himself away, though.
The maid let them in and Sylvie greeted them in a shimmering, low-cut cocktail gown, clearly having had a head start on the wine. Kissing them profusely, she ushered them in, complaining they never came to see her anymore.
The only other guest was Count Oldenburg, a veritable dinner party unto himself, one of the brightest stars in Fritz’s galaxy. A gap-toothed bon vivant clearly hyped up on some kind of stimulant this evening, he distracted them for hours with anecdotes about worlds they otherwise only read about in Sunday supplements. Tea with Virginia Woolf. Dinner with André Gide. Tonight he went on about how theater architecture in London and Paris was a quarter century behind Berlin’s. And then of course the Gropius Werkbund Exhibition at Le Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, German design light-years ahead of everyone else’s.
“Personally, I think Germany’s entering a sort of modern golden age of Greece.” The count’s face glittered in the candlelight. “Have you noticed, for example, how much more beautiful young people are than before the war? The whole national physique has toned up since people embraced nudism.”
After a while Willi retreated to the kitchen for some water. Fritz trailed him and cornered him by the sink. “Hey, what’s this I hear about a Shepherdess?” He was practically slurring his words. “Old blabbermouth Woerner let it slip over cocktails. Said the bitch was the most dangerous Köhler of all. That you were keeping it hush-hush so she wouldn’t know you were on her trail. Shhh!” He put a finger to his lips. “I won’t tell.”
But he had.
Halfway through a tall glass of water Willi saw Vicki walk in. She’d overheard Fritz and lost all her color. In a look that tore at Willi’s heart she seemed to wonder how he could betray her this way. Then before he could even finish swallowing, she strode back out crossing her arms and pretended to listen with fascination to Count Oldenburg.
By the time the election results were due in, the count had portrayed a dazzling odyssey of the nation’s future—not only the Depression reversing in ’31 but Germany soaring above all the other democracies, economically, scientifically, culturally.
If only the vote supported his prophetics.
All the experts, the straw polls, even Fritz, were completely wrong.
After hearing the numbers and listening to the breakdowns, nobody even moved.
“My God.” Sylvie finally threw back the rest of her drink, then stumbled over and switched off the radio. “What a horrible day for Germany.”
“For Europe.” Fritz fingered his mustache.
The center had held, but only barely. Social Democrats, still the largest party, had been anemically weakened, while KPD, the German Communists, had bulked up with another 23 seats in parliament to 77. It was the NSDAP, though, the Nazi Party, formerly one of the smallest in the Reichstag, that had seized the body politic like a fever, swelling nearly 800 percent, from a mere 12 to 107 seats—to become the second-strongest party. Whole districts had swung to Hitler. Eighteen percent of the electorate; 6.5 million votes. Huge numbers of the unemployed, women, and, most tellingly, youth. The Nazis themselves had never imagined such a show of support. Overnight, shrieking, delusional Adolf Hitler—who didn’t even have German citizenship—had gone from circus sideshow freak to one of the most powerful men in the nation.
“The impression abroad will be catastrophic,” the count stammered, turning to them all as if to confirm he wasn’t hallucinating. “I don’t even want to imagine the repercussions on foreign and financial affairs.”
“Not to mention here,” Fritz added.
If governing Germany had been purgatory before, Willi understood, it would be real hell now. The cauldron, rather than simmering down, had only started boiling. One-third of the legislature’s seats were in the hands of radicals—left and right—bent on dismantling the whole republic and replacing it with a dictatorship. The future, all of them with it, seemed thrust beneath a shadow.
“Here I’ve been sticking my head in the sand all this time.” Fritz stared as if seeing those hysterical mobs at the Sportpalast all over again. “Even after witnessing it, I didn’t want to acknowledge the spell this movement cast. Now it’s impossible to ignore.”
Sylvie fell back on the sofa with a whimper.
“What’s bred in the bones will out in the flesh.” She could barely pour straight. “Germans are addicted to tyranny. It’s all because of the way we raise our children. With such brutality. And don’t tell me I’m wrong, Fritz. If you had the least interest in the subject you’d agree. Ask Vicki. She’s read all the latest literature.” Sylvie raised her glass and smiled wanly, then hiccuped. “Dessert, anyone?”
> * * *
“Liar! Stupid. Idiotic son of a bitch!”
Vicki started pounding him as soon as they climbed back in the Mercedes, punching his shoulder as hard as she could with both fists.
“How could you do this to me? To the boys? What if we’d let our guard down and something happened, huh?”
“I didn’t let my guard down.” He tried to block her.
“But I did!” She punched harder. “You don’t want this psychopathic killer to know you’re trailing her—so you keep it from me? What are you, a moron? You think I’d blab it in some bar?”
He felt like saying he simply forgot, but it seemed too absurd.
“I didn’t want to upset you, Vic. You’ve worried so much. I was only trying to—” She tried to smack his face, but he grabbed her hand. “Cut that out, damn it!”
She sat there panting, glaring at him, waiting for an explanation.
He had none. It just seemed easiest. That was all.
“How can I ever trust you again?” She was looking at him as if he were an addict, every idea warped by a single need. “Tell me, Willi. How?”
He swallowed, his entire consciousness striken as if by a sudden thunderbolt. Might she be right? he wondered, overwhelmed with a dizzying dismay. Had this terrible case with its kaleidoscope of horrors somehow transfixed him? Might he have actually put his family in harm’s way? The possibility so mortified him he was almost unable to breathe, and he yearned to throw himself at Vicki’s feet, begging forgiveness. Promising to quit his job. To join her father’s company.
“If you want, I can take you and the boys to your parents’ in the morning, Vic.”
She jolted him with another round of punches. “I don’t want to leave, goddamnit. I want you to tell me the truth!”
Collapsing in his arms, she cried harder than he’d ever seen.
“Oh, Willi, don’t you see? I’m terrified. Not just the Köhlers. The Depression. Nazis. Everything.”
“Shhh.” He tried his best to soothe her. “It’ll all work out one way or another. You’ll see.”
But the next morning it was hard to imagine how.
When he opened the apartment door to pick up the daily papers, Hitler’s face filled the front pages.
Twenty-eight
At breakfast they were surprised by a sharp rap against the terrace window. Opening the back door, still chewing toast, Willi found Otto staring at him grim-faced, Irmgard and Heinz right behind.
“We’d like a word with you all, if you would, out here.”
Willi shrugged—I’ve no idea why—as he and Vicki stepped out with the boys. When he saw the red, gold, and black Hakenkreuz pinned on Otto’s lapel, though, he knew it couldn’t be good.
The two families stood on the vine-covered terrace facing each other.
Willi remembered when the Winkelmanns had just moved in, a few months after he and Vicki. They’d sat with a bottle of cognac right here on a hot summer night, getting to know one another. Two young couples with boys the same age. Otto was saving to open his stationery shop, Irmgard supporting him by working as a seamstress. Vicki, home with Erich, volunteered to take Heinz in, five and a half days a week—for nearly two years.
“As you know”—Otto swallowed—“many things have changed in the past months.” He wiped beads of moisture from his forehead, although it was cool outside. “We’ve all had to make adjustments.” He coughed. “To survive. To secure even the most menial job, I had to join the National Socialists, as you can see. In doing so, much I’d not understood before was made abundantly clear. We’ve been neighbors, I daresay friends, a number of years now, but circumstance will no longer permit that. It’s my duty to inform you, therefore, henceforth, that the Winklemanns are breaking relations with the Krauses.”
Vicki and Willi’d looked at each other as if to decipher if this was a birthday joke or something. “Breaking relations?”
Irmgard’s fingers, Willi’d noted, were digging into the vines along the terrace wall. Once, he recalled, she’d fallen off the stepladder out here fiddling with those vines and dislocated her shoulder. Having faced many injuries like it in the war, he’d quickly gotten it back into place, and she hadn’t stopped thanking him since, especially as she’d never had to pay a doctor.
“If we’ve offended you in some way, Otto…” Vicki rasped.
“No, no.” Otto shook his head. “It’s nothing you’ve done. It’s who you are. Not Germans. Blood-wise, I mean. People are throwing in now with the Nazis left and right, even in this building. We simply can’t afford to associate with you any longer. It’s how it’s got to be.”
Normally Willi would find it impossible to accept that a man such as Otto, who’d only last year rushed Erich in his arms to the hospital gushing blood, could bend so totally to political pressure. But having witnessed that spectacle at the Sportpalast, Willi understood the force at work. At least, he told himself, his neighbor was acting out of necessity, not conviction. A practical compromise might be possible.
“Well, then, Otto”—the pain, though, was no less intense—“what choice have we but to accept your wishes?” Willi, feeling his eyes burn, held his wife with one arm, embracing his children with the other. “Surely, though, you can’t mean the boys?”
“Oh, yes.” Otto nodded definitively, stifling a choke in his throat. “The boys especially. Heinz will be allowed no further contact whatsoever with Erich or Stefan.”
Heinz, who’d grown up almost as much in their apartment as his own, tried to hide the fury raging in his chubby cheeks until he could no longer stand it.
“But I don’t want to.” He raised his head in a grief-stricken howl.
Irmgard turned and smacked him in the face, stunning the boy. “We’ve explained it all to you already, Heinz.”
Erich let out an audible gasp. Stefan started to cry.
Vicki’s chest heaved. “Irmgard”—she turned to her fellow mother—“you simply can’t just—”
But their neighbor’s face had hardened to steel. Whether Irmgard believed or not, wanted or not, thought it fair or not, no longer mattered. This was how it was. And she made her cut as swiftly as chopping off a chicken’s head.
“It’s nothing personal.” She ripped a long strip of vines from the wall, creating a harsh demarcation where for years there’d been entwinement. “Purely a matter of health.” She tossed the clump of leaves over the railing. “We wish to stay away from you”—she wiped her hands with grim necessity—“as we would any harmful bacteria.”
Twenty-nine
Autumn mist draped Alexanderplatz. The afternoon hung thick and cold. Only a few hearty souls braved the open tops of the double-decker buses. As he stepped from the Police Presidium, Willi felt his very bones weighing him down, as if he were getting a flu. More than likely, he reflected, yanking on his hat and tilting the brim, given the sort of week it’d been, it was melancholia.
Almost everyone in Germany was down, except of course Herr Hitler and his masses. A week after the election, aftershocks still rattled, the national parliament reduced to a standstill, a sense of crisis looming, Nazi and Communist militias upping the ante from clubs and brass kuckles to knives and guns, business failures forever expanding the ranks of misery.
Crossing Dirksen Strasse, he was glad at least of one thing: no reporters on his butt anymore. It might have been a lonelier trek, but he preferred going about his business unobserved. It felt a hell of a lot safer. On the far side of the street he turned his collar up, taking a moment to peer into the abyss. Beyond the guardrail the future subway station was a pit of dark, wet slime. Massive pipes had been installed on the lowest levels, but the giant trench still seemed light-years away from its billboard depiction: silver escalators leading down to platforms tiled in beige or aquamarine, passageways lined with vendors. Eventually, he knew, he’d be able to ride from here almost directly home. Until then, though, he still had to hike the whole Alex to get to the S-Bahn.
It was 3:00
p.m. Saturday, the weekend officially under way, the sidewalks packed with the usual bedlam of hookers, pushers, hucksters—all overlooked, figuratively and literally, by the Police Presidium. In front of one of the larger beer halls, a contortionist was drawing a real crowd, his legs completely tucked behind his arms so that when he stood on his hands, his rear end practically jutted under his chin. It was bizarre and almost immediately pulled Willi back to a similar moment from childhood.
He couldn’t have been more than five or six when, walking somewhere right around here with his mother, he’d seen a Gypsy in a headscarf pounding a drum and dragging behind him a huge dancing bear. What fascination and horror that towering, smelly creature had held: its snout muzzled, a thick iron chain around its neck, prods from a pole forcing it on hind legs. Every so often the Gypsy shouted at it, and the beast would swivel its furry hips or wave its paws. The fear, the pity, it evoked in Willi seemed to rise in his heart all over again, along with cruel mental images from this week’s newspapers.
After the Nazi explosion at the polls, something not seen here for centuries had erupted with a vengeance: Jew baiting. Daily reports flooded from the provinces, and sometimes larger cities too, of Jews being pulled from bed, humiliated, beaten, homes ransacked, businesses torched. In town after town, rabbis and community leaders were forced to run gauntlets, pelted with excrement, not merely by neighbors but by local police, who gladly joined in. Berlin papers were filled with stories, and photos, sometimes close-ups of the victims’ faces, their eyes like those of forlorn beasts. In Russia, Poland, Ukraine, these things had gone on for centuries. But here in the most civilized, most modern of all nations?
Nothing could have driven home the rising tide of anti-Semitism, though, more forcefully than the Winkelmanns. Even now, days later, on a crowded sidewalk filled with sausage vendors and organ-grinders and ladies beckoning with painted smiles, Willi could feel the sting. From years in the army and on the police force, his skin had at least had a chance to toughen. But Vicki’d never endured such treatment and hadn’t taken it well. She’d lost her appetite, could hardly sleep. Erich and Stefan were merely sulking, but Willi feared in the long run it might be they who suffered most. People said children got over such things easily, but he wasn’t so sure. To one degree or another it might haunt them the rest of their lives. And as long as he lived, he could never forgive the Winklemanns for inflicting such—
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