Shadow and Light

by Jonathan Rabb

  “Trust me,” Hoffner said, “he’s far better at this than I am. So you knew what Vogt was working on?”

  “More or less.”

  “And you knew about Thyssen?”

  “Of course.”

  “And the films?”

  Bagier nodded.

  Hoffner said, “I should have come to you from the start. It would have made things much easier.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. The device would still be missing, and you’d be no closer to finding out why Thyssen is dead. I’m not sure I’m following why this has anything to do with the Fräulein?”

  It was an odd question given the obvious answer. Hoffner said, “The Americans must be as keen to find this thing as we are. Maybe more so. You don’t think that raises questions about the Fräulein?”

  “No,” said Bagier with absolute certainty. “I don’t.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because, like all the Americans, she had no idea it existed.”

  Hoffner had heard this before, from both Vogt and Ritter. “You’re sure of that?”

  Bagier took a long suck on the pipe. “She wanted to know how many sound stages we were planning—the other two weren’t up yet. She wanted to know how much we thought it might cost for the soundproofing, the cylinder cases, the floor dampeners, the microphones, the secondary booths, and on and on and on. It was typical American penny-pinching. Besides, even now the Americans have no idea what Hans was working on. So how could they want what they don’t know exists?”

  Georg said, “Was she ever alone in your office, mein Herr?”

  Both Hoffner and Bagier looked over. Bagier waited before saying, “Scripts and police work. That’s quite a combination.” He turned to Hoffner. “Training him for the future, Chief Inspector?”

  Hoffner tapped out his cigarette. “So—was she ever alone in your office?”

  Bagier thought, then shook his head. “No. I don’t believe so.”

  “You don’t believe so,” said Hoffner. “But you’re not certain.”

  “It was two months ago, Chief Inspector. No, I’m not certain, but even if she had been, what was there for her to find?”

  “You had nothing that might have linked you to Vogt?”

  “No.”

  “No letters, or addresses, or memoranda about the design—”

  “No. No. No. Honestly, you’re the first person who’s come to talk to me about this, Chief Inspector. There must be a reason for that, don’t you think? Maybe because there was nothing to connect me to Hans?”

  Georg said, “Or because there was nothing else you could help them with.”

  Hoffner shot Georg a quick glance. Not that the boy hadn’t said exactly what he was thinking himself, but Hoffner doubted Bagier was finding these interruptions quite so impressive. At the moment, the man was having trouble enough defending himself to himself.

  “There’s nothing she could have found,” Bagier insisted.

  “And yet here you sit with your gun,” said Hoffner. Bagier remained silent, and Hoffner let it pass. “Was she ever in here?” he asked. “In this booth?”

  “Yes,” Bagier admitted.

  “How much of the equipment was here at the time?”

  Bagier shook his head again. “This wasn’t someone who knew the electronics, Chief Inspector. She was a woman from the accounting department—”

  “That’s what she told you?”

  “Yes. As I said, they’re here all the time.”

  Hoffner repeated, “How much of the equipment?”

  Again Bagier hesitated. “Most of it.”

  “And ready for the device?” Bagier looked momentarily lost, and Hoffner said, “The booth. Was it designed with Vogt’s device in mind? Could you install it in here?”

  Bagier stared. It was clear he was trying to find an answer. Finally he said, “No one knew that but me. No one.”

  “So it was designed that way?”

  “Yes,” he said, needing to explain himself. “But the brilliance in Hans’s design was that all it required was a small modification to the input equalizer. Attach a line to the ampere exciter lamps in the camera, run it through the converter, up to the booth, plug it into the device here”—he pointed to a hollow space under the table where a few loose wires were waiting—“and that’s it. No one would have noticed even if they’d come across it, and that’s for someone who knows these things inside and out. That wasn’t your Fräulein, Chief Inspector, accountant or not.” And then, more flippantly: “Of course you’d need a little thing called a sound stage, as well, to make it work. A few thousand square meters. Look, the woman was in here for maybe three minutes. I was with her the entire time. The same in my office. It still doesn’t make any sense if no one knew about the device. And that I can tell you with certainty was the case.”

  Hoffner nodded slowly to himself. He then said, “Except for Thyssen. He knew.”

  Bagier waited. “Yes. You’re right.” He became more defiant. “Absolutely, Chief Inspector. Herr Thyssen knew. And you’re telling me he would have told this woman about it?”

  Hoffner no longer knew what he was telling him. Leni had been looking into God-knows-what as far back as November, and fobbing herself off as some kind of accounting underling. It was impossible to know what she had uncovered. More troubling was why. Maybe she really had been sent here to do the books. Maybe when the girl went missing the men at Metro recognized they already had someone in Berlin to take care of the dirty work. Maybe it was as simple as that. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  Or maybe Hoffner was hearing Leni’s voice in his head rather than his own. Bagier was doing nothing to quiet those concerns.

  Hoffner said, “No, I don’t imagine Herr Thyssen would have done that, mein Herr.”

  Bagier looked pleased with himself at the victory. “Then your young lady seems to be a dead end,” he said.

  There was nothing else to learn here. Hoffner said, “I’m sure you’re right.” He stood. “I can send a patrolman out if you want. Let you keep your gun at home.”

  “And draw attention to myself?” said Bagier. “We might not have enough chairs or drinking water, Chief Inspector, but it’s very comfortable being at the edge of the world. People tend to forget about you. No, you come and find me when all of this is behind us.” He nodded his head in Georg’s direction and smiled. “I’d be more concerned with the detective-in-training here.” He pulled a long lever under the console, and the entire space beyond and below the glass filled with light. What had seemed unnavigable twenty minutes ago was now just an odd assortment of standing lights, broken chairs, microphones, and a few dozen coils of wiring. All of it was dwarfed by the size of the place.

  Bagier said, “I wouldn’t want you stumbling around down there.”

  Hoffner nodded. No amount of light, though, was going to help with that now.

  GEORG POINTED to one of the studio buildings, and Hoffner pulled the car over.

  “So,” said Hoffner. “We’ll have that dinner soon. Just you and me.”

  Georg nodded. “Good.”

  “This was very helpful, Georg. Thank you.”

  The boy nodded again and opened the door. “I’m glad.” There was an uncomfortable silence, and Georg said, “So—what do you do with her now?”

  They had managed not to talk about it. The boy’s empathy evidently had its limits. “Not much I can do, is there?” said Hoffner.

  “Or not much you want to do.”

  This caught Hoffner unawares. “Pardon?”

  “Bagier might not want to see it, Papi, but this Fräulein isn’t someone to trust, is she?”

  “That’s not really the point, Georg.”

  “That seems to be the entire point.”

  Hoffner wanted so desperately not to ruin this. “Georgi, look—you did beautifully. Really. Finding what you did, the questions with Bagier. Brilliant even. But this is a little subtler than that.”

  “Is it?” The boy’s tone was taking them
to the edge.

  “Yes.” Hoffner said it as much to convince himself. “If she’s involved, and I let on, then she knows. And if she knows, I can’t control what happens. My only link disappears. And if she isn’t involved—”

  “And that’s what this is really about, isn’t it?”

  Hoffner could feel it slipping away. “Is there something I’m missing, Georgi?”

  The boy said nothing.

  “What?” said Hoffner.

  “You’re going to do nothing, aren’t you?”

  Hoffner tried not to provoke him. “Yes.”

  “So there was no point in coming out here at all, was there?”

  “I came, Georgi, because you called me. Because you were concerned.”

  A girl emerged from the building, and Georg watched as she walked down the path. He said quietly, “Are you listening to yourself, Papi?”

  Martha had used silences like this. It was uncanny that a boy of sixteen—who had lost her at half that age—could so readily conjure them. It made Hoffner want him to understand all the more. He said, “There has to be room for hope, doesn’t there?” He bit at the words: absurd to hear them coming from his own mouth when they had no business being his.

  The girl walked by the car, and Georg bobbed her a smile as she passed. When she was gone, his smile faded and he said, “Depends on who you want to put your hope in.” He waited and then stepped out. Closing the door, Georg bent over and peered back through the window. He tried another smile, but he had none. Instead, he stood, rapped a hand on the roof, and headed off. The silence became oppressive, and Hoffner pulled out.

  WISSMANNSTRASSE 46

  HE CALLED HER FROM THE LOBBY and told himself he had no reason to go up to the room again. “Five minutes,” she said over the telephone. She had sounded tired.

  She looked the same when she finally stepped from the elevator.

  “Bad traffic?” she asked.

  Hoffner nodded and took her arm. He could smell the booze on her breath. Nothing much, but still, he knew this was taking its toll on her.

  “I thought you were abandoning me,” she said.

  “Not just yet.”

  Leni smiled. “How was he?”

  “Fine.” There was nothing in his voice. “He could have managed without me.”

  They stepped into the revolving door, and the silence seemed to amplify in the space. Outside, the doorman called over a cab, and Leni asked, “We’re not taking your car?”

  Hoffner waited for the cab to pull up. “I’m tired. It could be a long night.” The man opened the door, and Hoffner followed her into the back. “The Double Cup,” he said through the glass. “Off the Kufu.” The driver flipped the lever on the meter and took them out into traffic.

  An hour alone parked in his car had done little to settle Hoffner’s mind: his isolation had never felt so raw; it was a numbness without any kind of refuge. The batterings he had taken in the past—even the discovery of his Martha lying faceup, lifeless, the weight of that unbearable guilt—had always come and gone through pain: acute, unrelenting, but ultimately fleeting. And then nothing. This was something else. This was a sense of loss, for the boy, for Leni, even for Pimm. Hoffner had tried to understand it on the road back. He had even been willing to give himself over to the pain, but it had never come. And then he had seen her in the lobby, and he had known: it was the chance to make things right—to sweep away the imagined deceit and save them all—that was stifling him. This was the burden of hope, and all it did was make him feel pitiful.

  “I talked to Ritter,” she said. “His offer’s still good.”

  Hoffner said nothing.

  She tried again: “If you think he’s someone to trust?”

  Hoffner continued to stare out the window, and Leni knew enough to leave him to himself. She turned and watched as the city raced past.

  The west never comforted under lamplight. The pale-boned smoothness of its walls and the trimmed precision of its branches came across as sleights of hand. Even the garish smiles on the advertising posters—that white, white light, lit from below—looked less inviting than anywhere else in town. It was as if the place took offense at those who strayed in, fearing what they might find if they peered too closely. Hoffner was one of the very few who knew exactly what was there.

  He leaned forward. “Take the next right,” he said to the driver as they sped away from the Tiergarten. “Just after Bellevue. You’ll avoid the traffic on the Kufu.”

  “Can’t do it, mein Herr,” said the man, angling his voice over his shoulder. “One way now. Since January.”

  Was it? thought Hoffner. He waited and then leaned back. “That’s right,” he said quietly. “My mistake.” He watched as the road disappeared. He then shut his eyes. Nothing for it now but to let it all slip by without him.

  TEN MINUTES ON, the cabin filled with light and Hoffner opened his eyes to find the cab pulling up under the DC’s wide awning. It was all potted palms and music-hall bulbs, a thousand little orbs in an enormous rectangle above that gave off more heat than the sun had managed in over a week. The door opened, and Hoffner followed Leni out. He took her arm and headed up the stairs and into the casino’s main hall.

  For some reason, the place always smelled French to him. Not that he knew what made this a particularly French smell—too much cologne, or the trace of garlic coming off the perspiration of the gambling rich—but whatever it was, Hoffner attributed it to his own special distaste for everything and everyone inside. He was suddenly reminded of the great hall at the Château Russe, his mother and all those desperate lives waiting for extinction, except here everything glittered as it was meant to: the chandeliers above at full glow; the tuxedoed and tunic-clad men huddling greasily around playing tables; cigarettes colliding with champagne, medals with women. The sound of laughter hovered above it all like the click-click-clack of the roulette wheels and made any thought of kindness even more remote here than it would have been across town.

  Hoffner kept his badge in his pocket. His suit and hat had announced him well before the first tables.

  A man approached. “Trouble tonight, mein Herr?” The man looked as if he were sliding on ice. “Did someone call?”

  “No,” said Hoffner. “No trouble. I’m here to see Pimm.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “Tell him it’s Nikolai Hoffner. I’ve come for my bacon. I’ll wait.” The man disappeared, and Hoffner said to Leni, “You should give one of these a try.” He nodded toward a table. “I imagine you know your way around.”

  She shook her head. “Not really. It’s such a beggar’s chance of winning, and even if you do, you always stick around too long to enjoy it. What’s the point?”

  “I was talking about the roulette.”

  She curled a smile and said, “What exactly happened to you out at the studio?”

  A woman squealed, and Hoffner turned to see a chip rolling his way. The woman, somewhere past fifty though painted to look anything but, pointed a fat little finger after her recent escapee. Her cleavage jingled in accompaniment as a man half her age darted out to retrieve it. Hoffner bent down to pick it up and the man said, “That’s very good of you.” He held out his hand and Hoffner handed it back.

  “A two-mark chip,” said Hoffner. “We wouldn’t want that to go missing, would we?”

  “Is it?” said the man. The part in his hair looked as if it had been seared into his scalp. “I though it might be a thousand. No difference, really.” He turned and headed back, the prize held high, the woman reaching out toward him, applauding his efforts.

  Leni said, “That’s another reason to avoid these places. Little ticks like that. I punched one of them once—dead on the nose. I think he cried.”

  Hoffner continued to watch the hero’s return: the coy giggles from the bevy of fleshy throats, the raised glasses from the rest of the well-oiled escorts. “Was it worth it?” he said.

  “My hand was sore,” she said. “But he ble
d. Someone paid for the drinks, I think. Someone always paid.”

  The woman eased the chip into her bosom, and a man’s voice behind Hoffner said, “Enjoying the show?”

  He turned to see Zenlo Radek looming in a tuxedo. Evidently even bow ties could look gaunt. Hoffner said, “I thought this part of town was all scum to you.”

  “It’s easy money,” said Radek. “And I look so good in an evening suit.”

  “You don’t.”

  “No,” Radek said with a smile. “I don’t. Not sure what you told him, but he’s eager to see you.” He turned to Leni. “And the Fräulein, as well.”

  Leni extended a hand. “Nice to meet you. Helen Coyle.”

  Radek looked at the hand, then at her face, still with that unnerving smile. “Yes. I know.” He turned again to Hoffner. “He actually has a few boys out looking for you—at the Alex, that place of yours on Göhrener Strasse. You could do better than that, you know. And then here you are. How lucky is that?” Without waiting for a response, Radek motioned to the steps at the far end of the room. “Please.” Leni hesitated before Hoffner nodded her on. She led them through the crowd and Radek said, “You should have kept the chip, Nikolai. What was he going to do? Piss his pants on you?”

  PIMM WAS AT A CARD TABLE near the back, six or seven others around it, chips at the center. Poker, thought Hoffner. Not a game he was terribly familiar with.

  Pimm was staring across at a woman whose stack was nearly twice that of anyone else’s in the game, except of course for Pimm’s. They were the only two with cards in front of them.

  “You have nines,” said Pimm to the woman as Hoffner, Radek, and Leni drew up. “I beat nines.”

  The woman, dressed in a tuxedo, and with short black hair around very red lips, pursed them and threw another handful of chips into the pot. “Then you beat me,” she said.