Max growled, “What kind of a guy is he, this attorney?”
“I really don’t know. Some kind of a cross between Gandhi and a guy with a chateau in France. For presents, he gives his friends either bottles of wine or the works of Wallraff. I suspect that he is in favor of free elections in South Africa.”
I lit a cigarette, drank champagne.
“How come he’s defending those four?”
“So he can sleep at night.”
“And why are you looking for the fifth man?”
“Probably for the same reason.”
Next door, the señora’s chamois squeaked against the windowpanes. Max sipped his champagne. “What happens if I find a bug?”
“Good question.”
“Or if I don’t?”
“If you don’t, one of the people I met yesterday must have told the cops that I’ve entered the Böllig game. Someone known to Kessler. An informer.”
Half an hour later, we were done. We were back in the car, and Max cranked the engine. Dense and heavy raindrops were falling from the sky and rattling on the roof. The window wiper on my side was out of commission. I couldn’t see anything. Entering the traffic with caution, Max recapitulated. “So, as I told you, unless they’ve come up with something completely new, there are no bugs in that office. Maybe your attorney talked about it with someone in court, and the prosecutor’s office passed it on to the cops? They’re hand in glove, aren’t they?”
“Maybe.”
We stopped at a light. I looked at the window displays.
“Tell me, Max, do you know a joint called Lina’s Cellar?”
“Leftist sort of place, with a touch of bella Italia. I’ve been there. Terrible wine, and the waitress wasn’t so hot either.”
“A buxom blonde?”
“That’s right.”
“Anything else you know about it?”
“They used to deal hash there. Now it’s more the kind of place where male professors take their female students.”
We stopped by my office, made a date to shoot some pool, and said goodbye.
“And how is Anna?”
He made a face.
“She’s going into detox the day after tomorrow. So she’s been really hitting the bottle for a week.”
He turned and drove off. I entered the building and checked my mailbox. The Bilka store wished me a “good morning” and provided me with a lot of wonderful ideas to get shit-faced. Corn schnapps for seven marks, gin for twice that, and if nothing else worked, there was always the liter bottle of methylated spirits to really fry your liver. My office was on the third floor. It was cold and smelled of stale smoke. I turned up the heat and sat down at the desk. There was a dentist’s office on the floor below me. For a while I listened to the faint hum of his drill. Then I picked up the phone book and found the number of Rundblick magazine. After three rings someone answered, and I asked to speak to Carla Reedermann.
“Reedermann speaking.”
“Kayankaya. Could you please tell me exactly what you did yesterday?”
“Why—?”
“This morning the cops worked me over. Because of the Böllig case. I would like to know how they found out about me so quickly. Someone must have tipped them off.”
“Are you implying that—?”
“I’m just wondering. First you show up at Anastas’s, then you drive to Doppenburg, then there’s all that talk about the female and cultural perspective … Not too convincing. But look at it this way: You suggest to Anastas that I might provide a lead for the cops, and then you could keep tabs on me. Then, of course, the cops want to know what I have to do with the case.”
Her breathing sounded labored. Typewriters were clattering in the background.
“So what now? You won’t believe anything I tell you.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway. I promised Kessler to drop the case. In return, he told me who tipped him off.”
“Wha-at?”
While she damned both me and the detective superintendent to the lowest pit of hell, and shouted that this was the worst swindle she’d ever been involved in, I retrieved my half-empty bottle of Chivas from a drawer, jammed the receiver between ear and shoulder, rinsed a coffee cup, and poured myself a drink. When she turned down the volume and her imprecations became more sporadic, I growled, “All right. Calm down. Kessler didn’t tell me anything.” Peace and quiet reigned for about a second, followed by a hoarse “What?” and another tirade. Screaming women give me a headache, unless they’re screaming in Italian, and I hung up.
I took a pencil and a sheet of paper and made a plan. Half an hour later I had a list of names and many question marks. I decided to visit the night watchman again. He had been the least talented liar of all.
3
The small half-timbered house was the most run-down in the street. The plaster was crumbling, the woodwork had not been painted for ages, and the flowerpots below the windows were empty. The curtains were closed. I rang the bell. Above me, someone coughed quietly. A window opened.
“Who is it?”
A head with short, tousled blond hair looked down at me. She was in her early sixties. Her green eyes were alert.
“Is this the Scheigel residence?”
“What do you want?”
Her voice was gravelly from alcohol and cigarettes.
“I’m working for the public prosecutor’s office on the Böllig case. Yesterday I talked to Mr. Scheigel, and I’ve come up with a couple more questions I’d like to ask him.”
“Just a moment.”
She closed the window. A moment later the front door opened.
“Please come in.”
She wore a faded pink robe that must have been very expensive when it was new, a pair of slippers with heels, and a lot of rings and bracelets. I couldn’t tell if the latter were genuine or not. Deep, dark lines underscored her eyes, and her cheeks were pale and puffy. A used-up face that still betrayed its former beauty.
She led me through a dark hallway to a kind of salon and told me to have a seat. The room was furnished with delicate pieces from another era. A heavy chandelier hung from the ceiling, and the place smelled of stale cologne. Here too the curtains were closed, and the faint daylight coming through them created a murky chiaroscuro. I sat down on the couch and watched her light a candle. Then she reached into a pocket of her robe and pulled out a pack of Russian cigarettes with paper mouthpieces. She took one, creased the mouthpiece, and stuck it into a gold cigarette holder. I lit it for her, and she sat down in an armchair.
“What is it you want to ask my husband?”
“I want to know why he didn’t see a doctor after someone whacked him on the head.”
She looked at me through the smoke of her cigarette.
“You don’t work for the prosecutor’s office.”
“I don’t? Why not?”
“Because.” She smiled. “I like liars. They’re romantic.”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“Well, there you are.” She got up and took a bottle of vodka off a shelf. She got some ice from the kitchen.
“Would you like a drink?”
I nodded. She filled two hand-made crystal glasses and said, “Cheers.”
It tasted better than any vodka I had ever had. I told her so. She laughed.
“It’s genuine Russian. Contraband.”
On the wall there was a brown photograph of a small girl with long braids. She was dancing on a dining table for an audience of adults.
“You were raised in Russia?”
“Poland. Warsaw. But that’s a long time ago. When I’ve had a few more drinks, you can tell by my accent.”
I liked her matter-of-fact attitude toward drink.
“And what brought you to Doppenburg?”
“Men. What else?”
We finished our drinks, and she refilled our glasses.
“Have you been living here long?”
“Half a lifetime. Back then, yo
u took what you could get. Now it’s too late. Here I am, and here I’ll stay.”
A convulsive cough shook her whole body. She apologized.
“It is horrible to get old. Old people can’t walk too well anymore, they drool and smack their lips when they eat, they spit and cough … Oh, how I hate it.” She drank deeply from her glass. “All right, that’s better.”
I tried to think of a question to take her mind off her cough and her age. Finally I decided to ask her when she had first met her husband. He was, after all, the object of my visit.
“You really want to know?”
I nodded.
“Don’t ask old people about their lives. Their memory is their life, and the less there was to it, the more they have to tell.”
I said that nevertheless I was interested in her story.
She smiled. “But I have to start from the beginning. It’s no fun for me otherwise.”
She poured us another round and leaned back. Then, believe it or not, she told me her life story.
“In nineteen forty-five, I was seventeen years old. I left home at fifteen to make love to a German officer. Had I been older, I would have guessed that things wouldn’t turn out well with that German, but I was young and thought I was betting on a winner. I hated my parents because they didn’t like him, and were proud to be Poles. I wanted to get out of Warsaw. I wanted to see the world. America, China, Russia. I wanted to live. For me, Warsaw was too provincial, even though I had never been to a bigger city. I wanted to become famous, I dreamed of being a great dancer in Berlin. My parents insisted that I should enter an apprenticeship so I could take over the family tailoring business. Well, then the Russians came, my officer was shot dead, and I had to get by somehow. I was too proud to go back to my parents. Those were hard times. For a bag of potatoes, you’d do just about anything. The young Russian soldiers gave me enough to eat, and I entertained them at night. But even the Russians were poor, and their country was a shambles.
“A girlfriend and I decided to go west, to the Americans. We had heard you could really make some money there. A Polish fellow pawned his wife’s jewelry, bought a car, and drove us the first hundred kilometers in the direction of Berlin. Unfortunately, every couple of kilometers he wanted to be rewarded. We got tired of him and took off. A Russian army patrol picked us up and took us to Berlin. They dropped us off in the American sector. There we realized that the pay wasn’t much better than those old potatoes. The Americans were even worse about paying up than the Russians had been—maybe because their wives were still alive. But we did see our first genuine Negro, and we heard jazz. It was the world we had been looking for.
Then one day I met a dashing sergeant, the son of wealthy parents, and I thought this was my big break. I gave up my wicked ways and devoted myself to him. Days I would drink whiskey and mend his uniform, nights we would fantasize about a ranch in California. Unfortunately, I fell in love with him. I became sentimental and believed him when he said that the letters he received were from his sister. I didn’t even notice his preparations for departure. He left me. I followed him to Cologne and Frankfurt, but finally he got on a plane to America, and I was back on the street. I didn’t know anybody in Frankfurt, but it didn’t take me long to get back into my old profession. I made a lot of money. In nineteen fifty-five I moved to Kronberg, where I worked only for regulars. That was a good time. I could afford everything I wanted, and things could have gone on like that …”
She stuck another cigarette into her holder and inhaled deeply. Then she looked up.
“I warned you. It’s been a long time since anyone shared my vodka with me. What’s your name?”
“Kayankaya, Kemal Kayankaya.”
“I thought so. You’re not a German.” She pointed to herself. “Nina Scheigel, née Kaszmarek.” She laughed. She filled our glasses and continued her story. “Then one of those crazies showed up again, the kind that wanted to make an honest woman out of me. He was handsomer than the others, and he seemed more decent. He had a wife and children, but it was me he wanted. I was twenty-nine at the time, with another good ten years ahead of me. True, it would have been harder as time went on, and there comes a point when you have to pack it in. I didn’t relish the prospect of walking the streets at forty. I accepted his offer. He bought a small apartment for me, here in Doppenburg, and paid me a decent monthly income. His wife knew about the arrangement. He came to see me almost every day. We took little trips, and I began to share his interest in books. I hadn’t become a great dancer, but I had a carefree life. I did not love my patron, and it was better that way. The locals regarded me as a slut. Everybody knew.
“I used to have coffee with his wife, and at some point I got to know his son, a young man of nineteen. We took an instant shine to each other. For me, he was the hope of something new, and I started dreaming about America again. But one night his father caught us in bed together and kicked me out. He sent his son abroad. I followed him, and we had a wonderful time. When his father found out, he no longer sent money to the son, saying he wouldn’t until I was out of the picture. For a while, we had a romantic time in fleabag hotels. But then he went back and entered the university, as his father wanted.
“I still had the apartment in Doppenburg, so I came back here and tried to forget the young man. I wasn’t able to; I ended up spending more time drinking in the taverns than at home, not least because I would meet one of my lover’s friends there. Fred Scheigel. I had first met him on the secret walks I took with my lover. Fred too was young and good-looking, and he had ambitions to leave and move far away from here. Just like me. We moved in together, and finally we got married. We never emigrated. Fred went to work. Then we opened a grocery store, but it didn’t work. We went bankrupt and stopped dreaming.
“My lover returned to take over his father’s business. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Then his father suddenly died. He married another woman. And so I end up here, with an old idiot of a husband. The Polish slut. My social life consists of an old Russian in Frankfurt. He gets me this vodka. I’m fifty-eight, but I look ten years older, and I’ll die in this hovel.”
She got up for a fresh pack. Then she said, with a cigarette between her lips, “Six months ago, my lover was killed. I wanted to go to the funeral, but they didn’t even let me see his grave.”
Rain was drumming against the windows. It had grown dark, and I could see only her outline, and once in a while her face, in the glow of the tip of her cigarette.
“Böllig was your lover?”
She nodded. She lit another candle.
“And your husband worked for him as a night watchman.”
She produced another bottle of vodka.
“You look like you have a good head for alcohol.”
I held out my glass, and she filled it.
“Yes. Fred was out of work, and I wanted to help him. So I asked Friedrich Böllig to help him out, for old time’s sake. He laughed and asked me why on earth I had shacked up with such a nonentity. It was repulsive, but he was right. He gave Fred a job as a night watchman. I cursed him for it, but I still loved him.”
“Do you know his wife?”
“What do you think … A young woman, after his money. She could have had the money, if she’d let me keep the man.”
“Did he know that?”
“I don’t know. The few times I saw him, I tried to make him understand, but he just got mad, yelled at me, called me names. He claimed that I had destroyed his relationship with his father, even accused me of having caused his death.”
“What did his father die of?”
She stared at me for a moment. Then she leaned back in her chair and laughed.
“You think I killed him?”
“I don’t think anything.”
“Even if you did, who cares? Cause of death: circulatory collapse. Quite banal. He was overweight.”
“Was his death convenient to anyone at the time?”
“I don’t
know that it was particularly inconvenient, from anyone’s point of view.”
She got up and started pacing slowly back and forth across the room.
“Otto Böllig wasn’t the type people grieve over. He was a tyrant, but not an intelligent one. He had no charm, he was a bore, almost a simpleton. Friedrich was something else. He was smart, witty, always ahead of the game. He was able to insult people and then placate them with a single gesture. He took them by storm. Besides, he was young, good-looking, and rich. He enjoyed life. For his father, the factory was everything—I think I was the only luxury he ever permitted himself in his whole life. Friedrich did well, until his father died. He was approaching thirty and realizing that charm and youth would soon be over. And there was this factory, and it wasn’t in Munich or Düsseldorf, it was in Doppenburg, and someone had to run it. From then on, the factory became his life. At first he tried to keep up his old lifestyle: nights in Frankfurt or Cologne, days at the factory, but at some point he realized that the factory would lose out under this arrangement. And then he made the biggest mistake of his life. He married his nineteen-year-old secretary, believing that he could hold on to his youth that way! And she was a pretty little thing. Not only that—she knew exactly what she wanted.”
She crossed her arms and looked at me.
“I don’t say that out of jealousy. I admire women who have no illusions. But this girl was a champion of cunning. Friedrich had fallen in love with her, and he believed everything she said, just as I had once believed my American sergeant. She forced the philanderer to his knees. Somehow he then managed to convince himself that he had come out ahead in the deal. After all, he was a successful businessman with a pretty wife, and so on …”
She laughed bitterly. It was time for me to ask a couple of questions. It was also time to admit to myself that I was drunk. I tried to marshal my thoughts, but didn’t come up with anything better than “So you loved him until the end?” And the drama rolled on.
“Call me crazy, go ahead—but, yes. Even after he had turned into an evil person.”
“What does that mean?”
“All kinds of things. Ask his mother what she thought of her son. She did not show up at his funeral.”
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