The Eighth Dwarf

by Ross Thomas

“Who?”

  “The Germans.”

  Swanton thought about it. “I like people. They interest me. I have a hard time blaming Hitler on a six-year-old kid with malnutrition and no place to sleep. No matter how you slice it, it’s really not his fault. But he’s going to be paying for it all his life. So that’s why I had to go back to New York. They had to cut ’em out.”

  “What?”

  “My ulcers,” Swanton said,

  13

  Otto Bodden, the printer, stood in the cold rain across from the ruined Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt and waited for the woman. Out in the middle of the intersection a tall policeman in a long, warm blue coat directed traffic. The policeman had a cheerful smile on his face despite the rain, and Bodden decided that the smile was there because the policeman was fed and warm and had a job that let him order other Germans around.

  It was Bodden’s second day in Frankfurt since his arrival from Hamburg, where he was almost sure that he had lost the yellow-haired man. Last night he had slept in the cellar of a bombed-out Gasthaus whose owner, after a fashion, still followed his innkeeping trade by renting out the cellar’s corners to the homeless. The innkeeper had wanted to be paid in food, but since Bodden had none, he had accepted one of the printer’s razor blades. For another blade he had provided Bodden with a bowl of potato soup and a chunk of black bread.

  It had been cold, but dry, in the cellar. Now Bodden was both cold and wet, and he wished that the woman would appear, although he was not sure that she was really late because he still had no watch. A spy should have a watch, Bodden thought, and grinned in spite of the rain and the cold. The profession demands it.

  Five minutes later the woman appeared, better dressed than most in a long fur coat and carrying an umbrella. She walked purposefully to the steps that led up and into the ruined train station, paused, looked at her watch with the air of someone who knows she’s on time, and glanced around. In her left hand she carried the yellow book. Pinned to her coat was the red carnation.

  Bodden started across the street against the traffic. The policeman yelled at him; Bodden gave him a merry grin and hurried on. When he was a few meters from the woman, he discovered that she was younger than he had first thought—not much more than twenty-five or twenty-six. And pretty, by God, he thought. Well, there was no rule that they couldn’t be pretty.

  The woman, despite the cold and the custom, wore nothing on her head. She had long, thick dark hair that framed a pale oval face with full lips; a small, straight nose; and enormous brown eyes. That one could use a few potatoes, Bodden thought. Their eyes get like that when they don’t eat—big and dark and shiny, at least for a while, and then when the hope goes, they grow dull.

  The woman clutched the fur coat to her throat and nestled her chin into it. Bodden wondered what she wore under the coat. Maybe nothing. He remembered the girls in Berlin last summer who had worn their fur cats in July. That and nothing else. They had sold every last stitch they owned, or traded it for food. But not their fur coats. They remembered the previous winter too well to part with their coats. There would be no coal this winter either, and without their coats they knew they would freeze.

  Bodden stopped before the woman, made a little bow, smiled, and said, “Excuse me, Fraülein, but do you have the time? My watch has stopped.”

  She looked at him for a moment with her enormous eyes and then glanced down at her watch. “It is five past twelve.”

  “Is that midnight or noon?”

  “Midnight.”

  The woman handed him the book with the yellow cover. Bodden thanked her, moved off, and tucked the book away underneath his coat. The woman looked around as though trying to decide which way she should go and then walked off rapidly in the opposite direction.

  Across the street in the right-hand seat of the blue Adler with the CD plates, Major Gilbert Baker-Bates gave his mustache a quick brush and said in German, “The woman, I think, don’t you?” to the yellow-haired man behind the wheel.

  “He’s too good for me,” the yellow-haired man said as he started the engine.

  “How long did it take him to lose you in Hamburg?”

  “Twenty minutes. He knows all the old tricks and perhaps even some new ones.”

  “A yellow book,” Baker-Bates said. “I wonder why the Reds always use a yellow book.”

  “In Bern they liked green ones,” the yellow-haired man said.

  “Both are spring colors. Perhaps that has something to do with it.”

  “Perhaps,” said the yellow-haired man as he let the Adler crawl along the curb nearly fifty meters behind the hurrying woman in the fur coat.

  “You had no trouble with him yesterday?”

  “With the printer? None. He hadn’t counted on our flying down. Since we knew where he was heading, it was no touble to pick him up at the station. This time I stayed far back, though. Very far back. He slept in a cellar last night and paid with razor blades. He must have a lot of them. That’s what he was using in Lübeck.”

  “About here, don’t you think?” Baker-Bates said.

  “I think so,” the yellow-haired man said, and pulled the car to a stop, but left the engine running.

  “You know where I’ll be,” Baker-Bates said as the yellow-haired man got out of the car.

  “I know.”

  Baker-Bates slid underneath the steering wheel of the car and watched for a moment as the yellow-haired man moved off after the young woman in the fur coat. He’s very good, Baker-Bates thought as he noted how the yellow-haired man kept at least five or six pedestrians between himself and the woman. The Abwehr chaps must have trained their people well, at least when they weren’t soul-searching all over the place. Pity about the yellow hair, though. It was like a beacon.

  Baker-Bates watched as the woman in the fur coat rounded a corner. The yellow-haired man waited until he could use a couple of pedestrians as a shield and then turned the same corner. Baker-Bates put the car into gear and realized that he was hungry. That meant either a black-market restaurant or the Americans. Baker-Bates sighed and decided on the Americans, not because they were the lesser of the two evils, but because they were cheaper.

  Three minutes after he left the woman in the fur coat, Bodden ducked into the door of a closed shop and took out the yellow book, which he noted, was a volume of Heine’s saatiric poems. That was good. He could use a laugh. He opened the book and glanced at the slip of paper inside. The name written on the paper was the Golden Rose, which meant either a Bierstube or a Gasthaus. There was also an address with precise directions about how to get there. She was quite thorough, he thought, the miss in the fur coat, which was fine with Bodden because he liked thorough women. You also like easygoing ones with careless ways, he told himself, and grinned. What had the Pole said the Americans called them? Bimbos. That was it. You like bimbos, printer, he thought; grinned again; took out his pipe; and decided to smoke it there in the doorway out of the rain until it was time to start for the Golden Rose.

  Baker-Bates stood at the bar in the Casino, which housed the American officers’ club with its two dining rooms, and studied the menu. It seemed that something called chicken-fried steak was featured that day, along with mashed potatoes and gravy, stewed tomatoes, creamed corn, and, for dessert, tapioca pudding. With raisins, so the mimeographed menu said.

  The Casino was located just behind the seven-story I.G. Farben building, which was headquarters for the United States Forces, European Theater—or USFET, as it was called. After his lunch of chicken-fried steak, whatever that was, Baker-Bates had an appointment with Lt. LaFollette Meyer, whose office was in the Farben building. Meyer was to take him for a look at the house where the black-marketeer had been killed. What was his name? Damm. Karl-Heinz Damm. For a fleeting moment, Baker-Bates felt a small twinge of sympathy for the dead man—not because he had been murdered, but because he had had to bear up under a hyphenated name.

  “Buy you a drink, Major?”

  Baker-Bates turned tow
ard the American voice that had made the offer. It came from a tallish, slim man with a major’s oak leaves on his shoulders and eyes that were more green than blue. About thirty-three, Baker-Bates thought as he debated whether to accept the offer.

  “I’m just celebrating my promotion,” the American said, sensing the hesitation.

  “In that case, I’ll be most happy to join you. Thank you very much.”

  “What’re you drinking?”

  “Scotch and soda,” Baker-Bates said. “But no ice this time, please.”

  “Two Scotch and sodas, Sammy,” the new Major ordered from the Sergeant bartender. “And hold the ice on one.”

  “Two Scotch sodas and hold the ice on one,” the Sergeant echoed. He mixed the drinks quickly with an expert’s minimal motion and slid them across the bar. “Congratulations on your promotion, Major,” Sammy said. “This one’s on the house.”

  The new Major thanked the bartender with a thanks-a-lot and lifted his glass to Baker-Bates. “Mud in your eye, whatever that means.”

  “I’ve never quite figured that one out myself,” Baker-Bates said.

  “Thanks for having the drink with me,” the new Major said. “I’ve been hanging around here in limbo for about three weeks waiting for my orders to come through, and about the only person I’ve gotten to know is Sammy here. Sammy listens to my problems—right, Sammy?”

  “Right, Major,” the Sergeant said with a good bartender’s automatic indulgence.

  “You’re not assigned here, then?” Baker-Bates said.

  “Nope. Just a casual. But my orders came through along with my promotion this morning, and tomorrow I’m off to Berlin.”

  “That should be interesting.”

  “Yeah, I think it might be. Where’re you stationed?”

  “Place called Lübeck, up north.”

  “Don’t believe I know that one.”

  “Not too bad a place. A bit crowded now. We hit it during the raids, but not too much. Where’re you from in the States?”

  “Texas, Abilene, Texas.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t sound much like a Texan.”

  The new Major grinned. “Before the war I was a radio announcer. They sort of like you to talk pretty.” He lapsed into a drawl and said, “But when I’m of a mind to, I can talk Texan prid near as good as anybody.”

  Baker-Bates smiled. “Almost incomprehensible. Not quite, but almost.”

  “Must sound to you like Cockney sounds to me.”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, sir,” the new Major said, finishing his drink, “it’s been real nice talking to you.”

  “Thank you very much for the drink, and congratulations again. On your promotion.”

  The new Major gave the bar a small slap with the palm of his hand. “Appreciate that,” he said with a smile, drawling the words out in a mock-Texas accent, turned, and wandered off into the crowd of lunchtime drinkers.

  At lunch, Baker-Bates discovered that chicken-fried steak wasn’t quite as bad as it looked or sounded, although the gravy that came with it had the texture, the appearance, and possibly the flavor of library paste.

  A German waiter came by and refilled Baker-Bates’s coffee cup without asking. Baker-Bates leaned back in his chair, lit a Lucky Strike, and gazed out over the crowded dining room. They do do themselves well, he thought. The best-paid, best-fed, best-equipped amateur army in the history of the world. And already demobilized. An army totally uneasy in its role of conqueror and slipping now, almost unconsciously, into the more comfortable role of liberator. And why not? Liberators are liked, conquerors aren’t, and the Americans do so want and need to be liked, even by yesterday’s enemies.

  The new Major, for example. Not a bad chap for an American. A bit lonely, a bit overly friendly, but pleasant enough, without being completely overbearing, as so many of them were. All the new Major had wanted was a friendly face to help him celebrate his promotion. A radio announcer. Baker-Bates tried to imagine the life of a radio announcer, whatever that was, in a place called Abilene, Texas, but failed utterly. What did he announce—the news? But one doesn’t announce the news; one simply reads it, in a rather bored manner, as they did on the BBC. Baker-Bates sighed; finished his coffee; ground out his cigarette; watched as the German waiter swooped down on it, removed the butt, deposited it quickly in a small tin box that he took from his pocket, cleaned the ashtray, and put it back on the table.

  Baker-Bates glanced at his watch and thought about his next American of the afternoon, Lt. LaFollette Meyer. Well, Lieutenant Meyer wasn’t one of your overly friendly Americans. Lieutenant Meyer was a very self-contained young man, a bit cool, a bit distant, who had a brain that he didn’t at all seem to mind using. Lieutenant Meyer, Baker-Bates thought with approval, was looking out for Lieutenant Meyer. He would have to tell him about the dwarf this afternoon. That should cause a tremor in all that cool composure. The dwarf, in that one respect at least, was really quite useful.

  The lift in the I.G. Farben building was an open-shaft, endless-belted affair with platforms that had to be hopped onto. Baker-Bates hopped onto one and rode it up to the third floor, where he hopped off. A staff sergeant jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Lieutenant Meyer’s office, and Baker-Bates went in. The Lieutenant was seated behind his desk wearing a very large, but quite humorless, smile.

  “I was looking for Lieutenant Meyer,” Baker-Bates said, “But I seem to have come across the Cheshire Cat.”

  “Meow, sir.”

  “You have something, I take it—something that I don’t have but wish to God that I did.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you are going to share, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m still savoring it, Major.”

  “That tasty, eh?”

  “Scrumptious.”

  “This could go on all afternoon.”

  “A picture.”

  “Well, now.”

  “A photograph. To be more precise, a snapshot.”

  “Where was it?”

  “We finally located someone who knew someone who knew him. And this someone who knew him had managed to hang on to a photo album. In fact, that’s all he managed to hang on to, but there, on the fifth from the last page, was a photograph taken in 1936 in Darmstadt.”

  Lieutenant Meyer reached under the blotter on his desk and flipped a photograph over to Baker-Bates. “Meet Kurt Oppenheimer at twenty-two.”

  The photograph was of a young man with rolled-up sleeves, leather shorts, and heavy shoes. He sat astride a bicycle. His mouth was open as if he were about to say something jocular. He was about six feet tall and, even in the photograph, looked tanned and fit.

  Baker-Bates took only one look at the photograph before he softly said, “Damn!” And then, not quite so softly, “Goddamn sonofabitch!”

  For the face in the photograph, although ten years younger, was the same as that of the new American Major from Abilene, Texas, who had bought Baker-Bates a drink only an hour and thirteen minutes before.

  14

  The Golden Rose was located only a few blocks from the Hauptbahnhof in the old Kneipen district of Frankfurt, which, before the war, had consisted mostly of drinking dives and after-hours joints. Now it was largely rubble—all kinds of rubble: some waist high, some shoulder high, and some two stories high. In several blocks, paths had been cleared that were wide enough for two men to walk abreast. In others, the paths were more like one-way streets, just wide enough for a single automobile. But in many side streets there were no paths at all, and those who, for whatever their reasons, wanted to traverse these streets had to climb up and over the rubble.

  The Golden Rose was the only building in its block that had been spared—partially spared, anyway. It once had been a three-story building, but now the top story was completely gone. The second story was gone too, except for a bathroom, although its walls had also vanished, leaving the tub and toilet exposed. They both looked curiously naked.<
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  Bodden entered the Golden Rose, pushing his way through the inevitable heavy curtain. Inside, several candles had been stuck here and there to help out the weak single electric bulb that hung by a long cord from the ceiling. Under it, perhaps to catch what little heat it afforded, real or imaginary, was the proprietor, leaning on the counter that served as a bar. The proprietor was a thin man with a fire-scarred face and bitter eyes. He looked up at Bodden; muttered “Guté MOR-je” in the Frankfurt accent, despite the fact that it was long past noon; and went back to the newspaper he had been reading. The paper was the American-controlled Frankfurter Rundschau. The bitter-eyed man didn’t seem to like what it said.

  Bodden said good morning back to the man and then waited for his eyes to adjust themselves to the gloom. There were several persons, mostly men, sitting alone at tables with glasses of thin beer before them. All still wore their hats, overcoats—and gloves, if they had them. The Golden Rose had no heat.

  The young woman in the fur coat sat at a table by herself. There was nothing on the table, only her folded hands. Bodden walked back to where she sat, but before he could sit down she said, “Have you eaten?”

  “Not since yesterday.”

  She rose. “Come,” she said.

  Bodden followed her past the proprietor and back to a curtained-off passageway. Beyond the passageway was a flight of stairs that led down to the cellar. It seemed to grow warmer as Bodden and the woman descended the stairs. Bodden also thought he could smell food. Pork, by God.

  He and the woman pushed through yet another heavy curtain and entered a whitewashed room lit by two bulbs, this time, and a number of candles. A middle-aged woman stood before a large coal cookstove stirring a pot of something that bubbled. She looked around at the young woman in the fur coat; nodded in recognition, if not in welcome; and gestured with the spoon toward one of the six tables.

  All the tables were empty except for one. At it sat a heavy, well-dressed man with pink jowls. Before him was a plate filled with boiled potatoes and a thick slab of pork. The man was cramming a forkful of potatoes into his mouth. He seemed to find no pleasure in his food. That one is just feeding the furnace, Bodden thought, and realized that his own mouth was watering.