Death in Twilight

by Jason Fields

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 Jason Fields

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0615732097

  ISBN 13: 9780615732091

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-62347-368-6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012922250

  Ars Gratia Pecuniam, New York, NY

  Cover photographs courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  Dedication

  For Martin Spett, survivor and storyteller

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  About the author

  Prologue

  A blow in the dark.

  A body crumples to the pavement.

  Leather shoes scrape cobblestones.

  Stillness returns.

  Chapter 1

  Dawn’s uncertain light reflected off a quickly freezing red puddle next to the head of a man in a threadbare winter coat. A yellow star was crudely sewn onto the coat’s brown wool breast.

  The little pool’s source was the man’s smashed skull, and its contents were a combination of his blood, bone and brain matter. Unstained by the blood, a uniform cap seemed carefully placed a short distance to the left of the body.

  The cause of the blow was not immediately to be seen, though the force of the impact implied a weapon of some heft. No one stood over the body to claim credit for the act, nor was there anyone to grieve for the victim as a gray morning snaked through the narrow streets of the Jewish ghetto of Miasto, Poland.

  At this early hour, only Aaron Kaminski was outside, and he wished he weren’t. He kept to the shadows, hoping to avoid detection and a bullet. Breaking curfew was no small thing.

  Unfortunately, Aaron was drunk and obvious. If there’d been a German observer, Aaron would have been dead.

  Stumbling over his own feet and landing on the cobblestones face-to-face with the corpse didn’t improve his situation. The fall pushed most of the breath from Aaron’s body. The dead man’s unblinking eyes startled him into gasping out the rest. It wasn’t a good combination. Aaron nearly passed out.

  Instead, he recoiled and sat up, examining the tableau with reluctance. He’d seen worse. Everyone in the ghetto had. Men, women and children dead from violence or starvation littered the ground of the enclosed district. It wasn’t unusual to step over more than one body in the morning on the way to queue for rations.

  And then Aaron noticed the dirty white cloth wrapped around the man’s arm, the words Jüdische Ghetto-Polizei picked out in blue.

  Everyone hated the Jewish Police, but nobody killed them. The men themselves weren’t frightening, perhaps, but the Germans who they represented certainly were. To kill a Jewish policeman was to strike a blow against German authority, and that meant death — not only for the murderer, but also for the whole community of which he was a part.

  It was time to go. Aaron struggled to his feet. He knew he didn’t want to be anywhere near a dead policeman when a patrol came by. If breaking curfew brought the death penalty, being discovered anywhere near this body would likely mean torture bad enough to make him beg for the bullet.

  What was your motive? Aaron’s interrogator would ask. Surely, you weren’t acting alone …

  He knew the lines of questioning. He’d followed them hundreds of times with suspects of his own. But his time in the Polish national police — the Zendarmerie — hadn’t given him any desire to be on the other side of the table.

  Aaron backed onto the sidewalk and pulled in tight to the walls. He took one last look at the scene and found himself unmoved. He had his own problems, his own concerns. He had many jobs in the ghetto — everyone did — but the one thing he wasn’t anymore was a cop.

  As the sun climbed and the curfew ended, the streets quickly filled with perilously thin men, women and children, all wearing clothes that would have been rags in another context. The months that had passed since the Jewish District had been walled off from the rest of the city had been cruel.

  Everyone, whether on the street or cautiously peering out behind curtains, ignored the policeman’s body. Curiosity wasn’t a survival trait. Instead, people hoped for bread and dreamed of meat, unsure if their ration cards would get them either that morning.

  The cards entitled each individual to 300 calories per day at a set price from the nominal Jewish authorities, the Judenrat. It was a joke, of course. Three hundred calories worth of food would have been a light snack for most before the war.

  Mothers knew the rations would starve their infants, let alone their husbands. Some of them glared surreptitiously from under their hats as they passed the policeman’s body. It was emaciated, but zaftig when compared with the bodies normally found dead in the streets at sunrise.

  Within minutes, impromptu markets sprang up on sidewalks with people selling everything they had to others who had slightly more. The trade was often in barter. Money was tight and the Judenrat aggressively collected taxes in cash.

  No one chose to haggle near the dead policeman.

  Those who had come out in the cold for companionship or illicit prayer found other places to stand. Even the most fervent wouldn’t say the Kaddish — the prayer for the dead — over the policeman. If anyone was struck by a charitable urge, it wasn’t enough to make him willing to face a criminal charge for an overt act of worship. Not for this fallen man.

  It was often said among the wise that Jews must possess greater powers than even they knew. Apparently, it wasn’t enough for the Germans to wall them off from the world. To be safe, the Germans tried to erect a barrier to God, too.

  Ordinarily, a murdered Jew would be of less interest to a German patrol in the ghetto than a public prayer. They left “justice” largely to the Judenrat and its street enforcers, the Jewish Police. Some of the men who wore the organization’s special armband were forced into it, their lives and families held hostage. Others joined simply for extra rations or the opportunity to bully the people around them.

  There was no way to tell what type of man lay in his own blood on Leopold Street. Was he one of the good ones, trying to arrest a criminal caught in the act? Was he trying to settle a domestic dispute when an angry husband or wife had caught him unaware? Or, perhaps, he’d been attempting extortion or rape when his victim turned on him?

  An hour after sunrise, two shabbily dressed men with their own Ghetto-Polizei armbands and uniform hats walked slowly through the crowd, which ebbed around them. The men were dirty and unshaven. One wore glasses so thick it seemed possible light would give up the trip before it ever reached his eyes. They shambled, yet somehow conveyed a perverse cockiness. They displayed the pride of small men raised nearly an inch above their peers.

  The cops arrived at the little clearing where their comrade’s body lay. The circle around the men expanded as people retreated beyond what they hoped was the range of questioning. No one wanted to come under official scrutiny. No one want
ed to bear witness where others could see them do it.

  “Berson? Berson?” cried the officer with the spectacles.

  The victim was easy to identify. The face was the only part of his head that retained its original shape.

  The second officer shouted at people to stop where they were, but civilians who had barely managed to crawl minutes before suddenly became gazelles.

  Seeing it was useless, the shouter, whose name was Shemtov, turned to his partner.

  “Check him, Finkelstein. Maybe he’s still alive.”

  Hesitantly, the man with glasses moved toward Berson, knowing that the chances of finding anything other than a corpse were slimmer than the body itself.

  Every Jew in the ghetto had become an expert on death and, for many; it had lost its sting. Still, Finkelstein felt reluctant to get closer to this corpse. He wasn’t afraid of it, per se, but the fact that he was wearing the same marks of office as the dead man unnerved him.

  Still, Finkelstein was a semi-professional — though a jeweler’s apprentice before the war — so he leaned in close to the body. His examination started at the feet and was making slow, careful progress up the body when Shemtov brusquely interrupted.

  “Just check his pulse,” he said. “Then see what else you can see.”

  Finkelstein shuddered but reached up and placed his fingers on the corpse’s neck.

  “Yes, he’s dead,” Finkelstein said.

  “Well, what were you doing with Berson’s feet? It’s not an ingrown toenail that killed him. Look at the wound,” Shemtov said snidely.

  Finkelstein hadn’t started with Berson’s shoes simply because he wanted to be thorough. He had no desire to stare into the gaping hole in the dead man’s skull.

  When he did look, he took away no clues. Finkelstein saw blood, bone and nothing else that meant anything to him.

  “It looks like someone hit him very hard on the head,” Finkelstein finally said.

  “A brilliant deduction,” Shemtov replied. “In another life, you must have been Sherlock Holmes.”

  Shemtov considered for a minute as Finkelstein stared down at his own toes.

  “Why don’t you try to drum up some witnesses?” he suggested. “Knock on a few doors, see if there’s anyone we know who lives along here.”

  Anyone known to the police was likely to be either a criminal or a collaborator. Either would be susceptible to pressure, and Shemtov was willing to apply plenty of it. Better him than the Germans.

  Shemtov understood that, revenge aside, no police force can ignore the death of one of its own without the threat of losing all credibility. In Miasto that principle was transitive. Though the Nazis had nothing but contempt for the Jewish power structure they had created, any defiance of it was met with deadly force.

  Shemtov wanted revenge, but he was also a Jew.

  The Ghetto-Polizei would have to take care of this mess quickly and quietly, he decided, otherwise the Gestapo would step in. That would mean bloody interrogations and the deaths of bystanders, even before collective retribution was meted out.

  Shemtov stood staring into the middle distance for quite some time. He was a big man, and looked much stupider than he was. He’d hated that fact as a child, but in his new profession he found it useful — it put people off their guard and sometimes made them afraid. But intimidation wasn’t going to get him anywhere with the Gestapo. This situation called for discretion and subtlety.

  It would be best if the Germans didn’t find out that Berson was dead until his murder was solved. But how could he delay the news from getting to the Germans? If people were willing to give each other up for potato peelings, what would stop them from delivering a whole potato’s worth of information?

  Even if no one talked, police roll calls were held every day and the attendance report was handed to the Germans. There were only so many times a man could be marked down as sick before the Germans would get curious. If Berson was reported dead — from “natural” causes, of course — the Germans might ask to see the body.

  Stare as he might, Shemtov couldn’t think of a way to pull off the necessary miracles. More than that, he had no idea how to handle a murder investigation.

  And that was his best quality, according to everyone he’d ever worked for: he knew what he didn’t know.

  Shemtov nodded to himself. It was time to gift-wrap the problem for someone higher up.

  But first things first. Shemtov called to Finkelstein, who hadn’t gone very far in his timid attempt to find witnesses who would speak to him.

  “Put your coat over him,” Shemtov ordered, pointing to Berson’s body.

  The air was frigid and Finkelstein looked at Shemtov as if he were the devil before doing what he was told.

  “Well, at least the coat gives him a bit of dignity,” a shivering Finkelstein said, though what he really meant was “Fuck him. Give me my coat back.”

  “I’m not worried about his dignity,” Shemtov said. “We need to get him out of sight. Now. So, lift!”

  Berson was light, but they had little strength to spare. Just picking up the body left them both winded.

  “We won’t be able to carry him far,” Shemtov said, looking around.

  “There’s a cellar nearby, buried in some rubble,” Finkelstein said. “My cousin used to live in the building above it before it was hit by a bomb.”

  Curtains twitched behind windows as the men carried their burden one block, then two. The street they turned down had been shelled during the initial German assault on the city. Several buildings had collapsed. One still had a rough staircase that led down to a basement formed from concrete. Finkelstein nodded toward it and the two men shambled over.

  Climbing down into the basement with the body was nearly impossible. Both men were exhausted from the walk. Finkelstein, facing forward and holding Berson’s feet, was the first down the stairs. He tripped twice, but didn’t quite fall into the shallow darkness.

  The space below was filled with shattered odds and ends of the former life above. Cracked china crunched underfoot; a child’s jacks threatened to bring them down hard on their knees; everything was coated in coal dust. An unpleasant place to spend eternity, but Shemtov figured Berson was beyond caring. He found a little ledge, mostly by feel, put down his end of the body and ordered Finkelstein to do the same with his.

  He then fumbled to remove Berson’s symbols of office in the hope that anyone finding the body wouldn’t think there was anything unique about it. Shemtov hid the uniform cap in his layers of clothing, while he concealed the telltale armband in a pocket.

  Finkelstein took his jacket back from Berson and his teeth chattered as he put it back on. Shemtov leaned over and used a palm to shut Berson’s eyes, but they were frozen open.

  The men then bowed their heads and spoke the words no one on the street had been willing to, the Kaddish.

  Finkelstein’s teeth were still chattering. He’d been without a coat far too long. He looked longingly at the corpse’s clothes. He and Berson were the same size — small to the point of petite. Another layer or two would be a wonderful luxury, possibly even a lifesaver.

  “Do you think it would be okay if I took his coat?” Finkelstein asked. “He doesn’t need it now. He can’t get much colder.”

  Shemtov’s face filled with disgust. It was bad enough to bury a comrade under a pile of rubble in an open cellar, but to leave him in his underwear? That was obscene.

  “How warm are you going to feel, knowing where you got the clothes?” he asked.

  “Warmer than I do now,” Finkelstein said, unable to take his eyes off the stretch of wool in front of him.

  “You’re disgusting,” Shemtov said, and headed for the staircase.

  Tradition, propriety and sneering were no match for grim necessity — at least in Finkelstein’s mind. The living must take precedence over the dead. Even the rabbis agreed on that. Fuck Shemtov and his judgment, his squeamishness. Finkelstein began his grim work.

 
When he touched Berson’s skin, he shivered more deeply than he had walking around without his coat. But he kept on, awkwardly pulling on sleeves, forcing the body to sit up with its frozen, bloody head lolling to the side. Finkelstein, a lifelong nebbish, had transformed into an eager ghoul.

  He came away from the “grave” luxuriating in his new coat. The pants were too pocked by holes and covered in nameless grime for even Finkelstein to swipe, so Berson kept them, along with his underwear and soiled shirt.

  Reunited on the street, the little patrol turned toward headquarters, hoping for warm water they could pretend was tea and instructions on how to proceed.

  As they walked, Finkelstein burrowed deep into his new clothes with what Shemtov thought was unseemly relish.

  It was a slow trudge to the station. The wind lashed and flayed, laughing at Shemtov’s old, worn coat. Finkelstein watched him cower against it and couldn’t help a secret smile.

  Icier than the wind were the stares of the people who parted around them. Contempt and fear rippled outward as if the men were stones dropped in a pond. The crowd was made up of people Finkelstein had gone to school with; men that Shemtov had done business with; members of their shuls. Now, a line had been drawn, and Shemtov and Finkelstein were made aware of the side on which they stood.

  Shemtov told himself that he was just doing a job, and that there were damned few of those in the Jewish District. He’d seen the alternatives, aside from starvation. A few thousand Jews found work in “shops” — small factories inside the ghetto that made items useful to the Nazi war effort. The conditions were appalling. Between the short rations, grueling pace, long hours and violent beatings, Shemtov was happy to pass.

  More worked outside the ghetto, in labor camps. Perhaps two thousand marched out of the Jewish District at dawn every day. At most, nineteen hundred returned after dark.

  There were only so many jobs in soup kitchens or in stores with nothing to sell. Neither he nor Finkelstein had enough pull to get a better job in the bureaucracy …

  So he endured the hatred. He pretended to return people’s contempt or ignore it. He showed no reaction when fleet-footed teens made catcalls. He walked gray streets lined with ruined buildings and worked hard to see none of it. He refused to acknowledge any role he played in the misery he saw on the ten-block walk to the Judenrat’s headquarters, which now loomed ahead.