Lang was doing all he could to keep up. “Is that true, Inspector?”
Hoffner continued to look at von Harbou. It would have been so easy to slap his fist across her face. “No need to be terrified, Madame. The Kripo can protect you.”
Von Harbou said, “I appreciate the offer—”
She suddenly stopped. Pimm was at her side. He had taken her hand and was bending her wrist ever so slightly.
Von Harbou managed to say, “You’re hurting me, Alby.”
“Yes,” said Pimm. “I know.”
Lang stood. “Alby—”
“Quiet, Fritz,” said Pimm. He applied more pressure, and von Harbou tensed in the chair. “It’s very simple to break a bone, Thea,” he said. “Especially a woman’s bone. If you squirm too much, you might do it to yourself.” Pimm looked across at Hoffner. “What is it you need Thea to do, Nikolai?”
Hoffner hadn’t expected this. Then again, Alby had known him too long not to sense Hoffner’s need for it. “Call them,” he said quietly. “Call them and tell them I have the films. Tell them to let this go.”
Von Harbou was managing to keep herself perfectly still. “I can’t,” she said through gritted teeth. Pimm twisted a bit more, and she yelled out, “I can’t! It was always through Alfred. I wouldn’t know how to find them.”
Lang said, “Enough, Alby. Please.”
Pimm looked over at Hoffner, and Hoffner nodded. Pimm released. Von Harbou instantly began rubbing her wrist as Hoffner said, “Then I need names, Madame. Full names. You’re going to help me get these people out from under their rock.”
TWENTY MINUTES ON, Hoffner was running through the final group of uncircled entries in the ledger. Von Harbou had managed to give last names to about half of them, the rest still insulated by the anonymity of an initial.
“That would be Streicher,” she said. “Julius Streicher. Dreadful man. He and Goebbels detest each other. He doesn’t strike me as the filmmaking sort. No wonder they left his canister behind.”
She was recovering from her bout of torture with a bag of ice for her wrist. Hoffner continued to read.
“No,” she said. “No . . . No . . . Yes—that one . . . Huus . . . or Haas. I’m not quite sure.”
Hoffner scribbled something and moved on: “Ernst R.?”
“Oh God,” she said. “Roehm. A homosexual. I think a good many of them are homosexual. I was never part of any of that.”
Lang was back on the sofa. He had given up on his whiskey ten minutes ago. “This is . . .” It was as much as he could get out.
“Yes,” said Hoffner. “It is.” He read the next: “Alexander K.”
Von Harbou thought a moment and then said, “Goebbels’s little friend. Kurtzman. Alexander Kurtzman. Another homosexual, I think.”
Hoffner looked up from the ledger. He saw Pimm staring across at him. Without a thought, Hoffner reached into the bag and dug through for the canister. Luckily, Lang and von Harbou were too preoccupied with themselves to notice the momentary break.
Hoffner found it and pulled it out. He stared at the name for several seconds before twisting off the top and pulling out the reel.
Pimm said, “What’s the point, Nikolai? There’s no reason to look at it.”
Hoffner held the film up to the light. Thirty or so frames in he recognized Sascha’s profile. He quickly rewound the film and slotted it back into the casing. He then slipped it into his pocket.
Pimm said, “That’s not going to help him, Nikolai.”
Hoffner looked over. If he had done it to help the boy, it only now occurred to him. Funny how instinct could make even kindness seem unintended. He turned to Lang and said, “I need to use your telephone.”
Lang looked over. He was barely focusing. “What?”
“The telephone,” Hoffner repeated.
“Oh,” said Lang. “Yes. The hallway. Be my guest.”
Hoffner stood and headed for the doorway. Pimm waited until Hoffner was out of the room. “I’ll take the device now, Fritz.”
Lang was focused on his wife. “This stretches things, even for us, doesn’t it?”
Von Harbou reached for a cigarette. “We’ll survive. We’ve been through worse.”
“Have we?” said Lang. There was an unwilling sincerity in his voice.
She lit up. Her wrist was still bothering her. “It’s who we are,” she said. “There’s no crime in it if you can’t help yourself.” Something struck her. “The script for Lorre. I’ll finish a draft. That should get us through.”
Pimm took hold of the device and said, “Your little actor—will he be talking in the next film?”
Lang looked over. The question seemed to bring him out of himself. “I imagine so.”
“Would he have broken her wrist?”
Lang thought a moment. “Yes. I believe he would have.”
“Good,” said Pimm. “Then maybe there’s hope for the future of film, after all.”
THE ROADS HAD ICED UP, making the drive into town something of an adventure. Pimm had stayed behind. He had wanted to make sure Frau Lang was kept clear of the telephone—not knowing whom she might decide to surprise with an early-morning wake-up call. Pimm had also kept the canisters, all but Sascha’s. In return, Hoffner had been given a car and the crushed remains of Vogt’s sound device. What he intended to do with them was anybody’s guess.
It was nearly seven when he pulled up to the building. Except for an hour or two at the all-night movie palace, Hoffner had been up for nearly twenty-eight hours. There was a chance, then, that he had garbled the address Georg had given him over the telephone, but the street looked grotty enough, the four-floor tenement with just the right touch of decay to make it a safe bet: the absence of a latch on the door—it opened with a nice shove of his shoulder—gave Hoffner even greater hope.
He knocked on the third-floor door and waited. He knocked again, then pounded, before a half-woken voice said, “You get your money tomorrow, Drecker. Now go away and leave us in peace.”
Hoffner continued to pound until he heard the sound of heavy footsteps, followed by some not-so-quiet cursing, heading his way. “I’m telling you, Drecker—”
The door opened and a slim, not overly tall boy stood in his underwear and socks looking slightly confused. Hoffner recognized him from yesterday morning. He had been the one to relieve himself on the beaten boys.
“What the fuck you want?” he said in an accent that had him from somewhere in the south—the long, drawn-out, swallowed vowels of slow thinking. He might even have been Austrian. “You have any idea what time it is?”
“I’m looking for Kurtzman,” said Hoffner.
“Yah? So?”
Hoffner pulled out his badge. The boy looked at it, then turned back to the room, leaving the door wide enough open to show the disaster inside. What light there was spilled in through two drapeless windows. A mattress without sheets lay across the bare floor, with a bowl of yellow liquid at its side. At least the boy could have had the sense to place his piss at the foot of his bed.
“Alex!” he yelled. “Kripo’s here.” He went back to his mattress and looked instantly asleep.
There was a distinct smell of egg and vomit coming from down the hall, which made the piss something of a relief as Hoffner stepped farther in. Sascha appeared from a back room. He was dressed in pants, no shirt, and suspenders.
“Fuck,” he said to himself the moment he saw his father. He stayed by the door to his room. “What do you want?”
“Georg said it was decent enough. Looks like you’re living well.”
“You’ve come to decorate, then? We could use some curtains.”
“I’ll put it on my list.” Hoffner looked for a chair; the walk up had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit. There was none. “I need to talk to you.”
“Yah. You’ve needed that quite a lot recently.”
“You run in very interesting circles, Sascha. You’re a man of influence.”
“You c
an get out. You can also fuck yourself.”
Sascha turned to go, and Hoffner said, “Georg’s in trouble. You can help him.” Hoffner watched the back of the boy’s head, its stiffness giving way to a few short shakes before Sascha turned again and said, “I don’t believe you.” It wasn’t true, but he had to say it.
“There’s snow on the ground,” said Hoffner. “It’s nice. We could walk.” Anything to get them out of this place.
“What kind of trouble?”
“You have a coat?”
Sascha’s gaze was all the more unforgiving for its emptiness. He shook his head again and snorted, “Yah. I might even have a pair of boots somewhere.”
. . .
THEY STEPPED OUT onto the stoop, and Sascha pulled up his collar. “You’re moving up in the world,” he said, nodding at the car as the two took the stairs down. “A little something on the side? I’ve heard that happens at the end of a career.”
“I’ve got a little ways to go yet.”
Sascha ran his hand along the hood as they walked past. “Still hot. You’ve been driving awhile.”
“You would have made a good cop.”
“And how nice that would have been for you. Or not. Might have forced you to take an interest, and we couldn’t have that.”
Hoffner said, “Life was so cruel to you, Sascha—I know. You’re so very brave to be where you are now.”
A milk truck passed, and Sascha laughed quietly. “I think what bothers you is that I don’t even think about it anymore. You actually believe your failures shaped me somehow—made me ‘the man I am.’ What a force of nature you must be in your own mind. You don’t realize how easily dismissed you are.”
Hoffner heard the sound of metal on metal coming from a tinker’s stand somewhere up ahead: someone was getting their knives sharpened. “Your friends with the pamphlets,” he said as they continued to walk. “They were sloppy last night. I’ve got the full names of what they left behind. You need to tell them it’s over.”
Sascha tried to pretend he understood, but he was too long in answering to be convincing. “And why should I do that?”
“If you knew what I was talking about, that’s not the question you’d ask.” A woman appeared in a window a few buildings down and dumped a bucket of something out onto the street. It splashed a dull brown, and Hoffner said, “It doesn’t matter. You’ll do this anyway. I know what’s been going on. I was there yesterday morning.”
Again Sascha tried too hard. “You managed to get yourself a pretty one, this time. Bit old for you, though, isn’t she?”
“She’s dead,” said Hoffner: chilling how easily he could say it. He stopped and waited for Sascha to turn. “Something else your friends managed.”
Sascha hesitated before answering: “I’m sure you’d like to believe that.”
“I’m not talking about the café,” said Hoffner. “Nice spot, Fat Gerda’s. Your friend on the mattress might want to know that pissing in public’s a criminal offense.” When Sascha continued to stare at him, Hoffner said, “Did the sugar cubes get the smell out?”
Even in this cold, the boy’s color had gone from his cheeks. To his credit his voice remained strong. “Odd place to be in the middle of the night,” said Sascha. “Unless it’s where you’re spending your time these days.”
“It wasn’t the location that was disturbing.”
“Really?” Sascha was holding his own.
“You think your being homosexual matters to me in the slightest?”
Sascha’s gaze narrowed. “What?”
“Come on, Sascha. Berlin thrives on it now. It’s part of the tourist trade. Telephone one of the bus companies next time you decide to put on a show and they’ll have a group waiting outside. No, what’s disturbing is where it’s taking you—and whom it’s taking you to. You choose to lead this life”—Hoffner was trying to give the boy something—“Fine. I don’t really care. But you don’t have to find it with them. We both know it’s not their politics that’s drawing you in.”
When Sascha spoke, it was as if he were staring directly through his father. “You think I’m homosexual?”
Hoffner heard it first, then saw it, the utter disbelief. It seemed inconceivable that Sascha could ask the question, and yet here it was, and Hoffner wondered if this degree of self-loathing was possible at only twenty-four.
Yes or no, it was a mountain Hoffner hadn’t the strength to climb; he barely had the strength to get them back to Georg. “Your friends,” he said. He was finding it difficult to look at the boy. “They think Georg is involved with something—”
“It’s the party,” Sascha said with a quiet hatred. “Not my friends. Not something else. Not what you need it to be.” Hoffner continued to search the horizon; he knew there was no going back now. “Yesterday?” said Sascha. “That was a lark. Nothing else. We thrash a few of these people and move on. It’s the bond we share, the commitment to something beyond ourselves. That’s what gives us the freedom to do it. And for those who’ve never had it—who never will have that purpose—they feel the need to demean it, make it perverse, when it’s their own perversions that distort what they see. What is it you think you saw, Nikolai?”
A coal truck took the turn onto the street. It drove slowly, with a soot-faced man hanging off the tail strap. His eyes were red from too much drink or too little sleep, or both. Still, he managed a smile as he passed.
Hoffner looked at Sascha: yesterday morning had evidently been about freedom and commitments and purpose, and nothing so meaningless as the raping of a boy. Sascha was right. There was no way to see beyond the distortion.
“I have the films,” Hoffner said. “With the names attached. Roehm, Streicher. Other members of your—party. You need to tell your little limping friend it’s time to go back and play thug in the south. And to forget about Georg. Your brother has no idea what this is about. He never did. Otherwise those names and films start finding their way onto screens all over Berlin.” Sascha might not have known about last night’s escapade at headquarters, but he knew about this. He said nothing.
Hoffner spoke quietly. “Why, Sascha?” There was something almost plaintive in the tone. “Why make these films at all?”
Even an unintentioned compassion was too much for the boy. The color rose in his cheeks. “And you have the right to judge?” he said with a newfound venom. “They weren’t meant for the likes of you.”
“Thank God for that,” said Hoffner.
“What—you think it was anything more than a game? That any of it was real? You sicken me. Hiding behind some pathetic morality, but only when it suits your purpose.”
Hoffner expected to find his own rage, a need to strike the boy, but there was no hint of the familiar here. Instead, he said, “And I thought I was the one without purpose.” Hoffner slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out the reel.
Sascha looked at it and instantly knew what it was. “Perfect,” he said with even more disdain. “And now you threaten me. You think I need to be threatened to help my own brother?”
Hoffner felt the chill in him now, his shoes soaked through from the snow. All those years believing he had let this one go—this unknown boy—only to find himself gutted by a meaningless defiance. Why was it, he thought, that the discarded always managed to inflict the deepest kind of pain?
“No threat, Sascha,” said Hoffner. He held out the canister. “Take it. Do with it what you want.” He saw the boy’s confusion: there was no place for such gestures in his world. Another half minute and Sascha pocketed the canister with a grudging nod.
Hoffner said, “I’ll be outside the Scherl building. After nine. If you’re there, I’ll know you’ve done this. Why or why not is up to you.”
Hoffner turned and headed for the car. He tucked his hands inside his pockets and drew his coat closer in around himself. Even so, there was no hope of holding the cold at bay now.
THREE RIFLES, A SLINGSHOT,
AND A TUGBOAT
SOMEWHERE a church bell chimed the last of the quarter hour, and Hoffner mounted the steps.
He had put in an appearance at the Alex over an hour ago—a change of shoes, a shave, the use of his telephone—but there was no helping the haggard look on his face. Luckily no one had asked about the paper bag he was carrying filled with odd pieces of metal, shards of glass, and tubing. In fact, no one had paid him any attention. The wall in his office was once again a dull white, only a few drips of paint here and there to give any reminder of last night. For the boys at the Alex, the episode was all but forgotten.
It had been five days, he thought. Five days. It seemed an eternity. Someone should have at least taken notice of him.
Now Hoffner pushed through the doors to the Scherl building and was at once swept up in the clamor of newsmaking. Not that any of these people had access to influence. That was upstairs where the writers and editors and moneymen determined how Berlin should see itself. The boys in the lobby were nothing more than messengers and coffee retrievers—lackeys with grand dreams of the future. Hoffner marveled at how even they could move with such a sense of world-shattering importance. Life and death might be colliding elsewhere—in hospitals, prisons, on the street—but this was the news, judged, packaged, or simply created. It trumped them all.
He wove his way through the darting figures and over to the last of the elevators. There were two stanchions in front of it, with a velvet rope hanging between them. An elevator boy stood behind, his hands clasped firmly at his back.
“Private elevator, mein Herr,” he said with a surprising friendliness. He extended a gracious hand toward the others. “One will be along any moment to take you up.”
Hoffner said, “I’ve an appointment with Herr Direktor Hugenberg.”
The boy’s smile became more strained. “I’m afraid I wasn’t told of this, mein Herr.”
“Neither was he,” said Hoffner as he pulled out his badge. “Chief Inspector Nikolai Hoffner. I’ll wait while you telephone up to tell them I’m coming.”
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