A Night of Long Knives (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  I pressed the elevator button, and it ground into action. A moment later the door opened to reveal a liveried elevator operator. He tipped his hat when I entered. “Fourth floor.”

  I hoped that Jack Ford still kept his offices here, and that Agnes still answered his telephones. The operator nodded and pulled the door closed behind me, white gloves smudged gray from the metal.

  We rode in silence. On the fourth floor I stepped out of the elevator. The operator did not close the door.

  “Thank you,” I said, in a tone of dismissal.

  I waited for him to step back into the elevator before I turned down the hall. Like everyone else in the building, he must be curious about the activities on this floor.

  Alone in the hall, I hurried to a single door at the end. The door had no sign on it, and the frosted glass hid its secrets. Only people who knew what went on behind the door came here.

  I rapped on the wood. Three taps, a pause, and another tap, Peter Weill’s knock. The door lock buzzed.

  “Please come in,” called a mellifluous voice. Agnes.

  I smiled and opened the door.

  The room had not changed much in the past three years. Jack loved modern styles and his office showed it. Black tiles lined the walls, oil paintings arranged above them. At a spotless glass desk sat a dwarf, garbed in a tailored black dress. She spent fortunes on her wardrobe. Every time we met, her perfectly tailored clothing was the apex of current fashion.

  “Agnes!” I rushed across the room.

  She hugged me with her tiny arms and I took care not to disturb her coiffed dark hair. I inhaled the scent of her French perfume.

  “If it isn’t Peter Weill.” Her amber eyes glittered. “We’ve missed you.”

  The telephone burred, and she held up one lacquered red fingernail, admonishing me to silence. I fell quiet. Although little more than a meter high, Agnes Johannson commanded respect.

  Knowing better than to try to rush her, I examined the paintings. One looked like a Tamara de Lempicka. Jack had not suffered under the Nazis. Behind me, Agnes’s sultry voice repeated a customer’s details and assured him that all would be well. The customer had ordered one, for delivery at seven that night. He would pay rush fees, but expected the best. She hung up the telephone and beamed at me, teeth bright white.

  “What is Peter looking for these days?” She gestured to the leather chair next to the desk. I sat, knowing it was an honor. Most were not allowed to sit in this office.

  She had once been one of my best informers. She knew I did not snitch to the police. And she enjoyed the extra money. I had always been as generous to her as my newspaper expense account allowed.

  I leaned forward to drop a gold Swiss coin on the desk. It rang against the glass. “An enforcer. Hired muscle.”

  “You need one?” She dropped her hand on a red book next to the telephone. “I could procure you one. At a discount.”

  I shook my head and gestured to the coin. She slipped it in her doll-sized purse.

  “I am looking for a particular man.”

  “For a story? You haven’t been in here for ages for a story.”

  I nodded, glad I had not revealed her as a source to anyone who would have told Maria, the woman who had assumed my role as Peter Weill, crime reporter for the Tageblatt. “I worked in Switzerland for a while.”

  “That explains the real money.” She tapped her handbag. “Why are you searching for this man?”

  I ignored her question. “Early forties, about one hundred eighty centimeters tall. Large man. I would guess that he works at a factory, or the docks. Blond hair with some gray.”

  “I know a few.” She raised a shapely eyebrow.

  “He might be a pimp. And he specializes in broken ribs.” I tried not to wince and give myself away. “One shot with his elbow. And he has a squeaky voice. His nickname is Mouse.”

  She jerked her head. “I don’t recall having heard of him.”

  I pulled two more coins out of my pocket. I let each clink onto the glass desk. “Maybe you haven’t. Maybe you have.”

  She tucked the coins away like a magpie. I suppressed a grin, glad to be home. “He doesn’t run girls anymore. He works for the SA now. Close to Röhm.”

  “Tell me about him.” I kept my voice neutral. This was supposed to be about a story, not about finding a nine-year-old boy. I could not look too interested. But I was more terrified than ever. If Anton recognized Mouse, then he would try to escape. And I did not dare think what Mouse would do to punish him.

  She gave a deep throaty sigh that sounded as if it came from a blond starlet, not a tiny brunette. “Not much use searching for him. I imagine he’s dead like all the bigwigs there. That’ll cost us. Jack’s livid.”

  I nodded. Jack ran high-class prostitutes out of this office. Agnes took the messages and sent them out with young boys who acted as runners, carrying the notes to the prostitutes.

  “Did you work for Röhm?”

  Her Cupid’s bow mouth turned up only at the corners in a flirtatious smile. “I have no idea what you mean, Herr Weill.”

  I handed her another coin. “It is worth no more to me. I am just curious.”

  She palmed it. “We supplied line boys for Röhm’s parties. A few girls too. A profitable sideline. And Röhm kept the Nazis at bay.”

  The telephone rang again. She repeated the order into the polished black telephone. The customer wanted three prostitutes, immediately, as if they were cakes for a party. She shook a brass handbell, and a boy who looked no more than ten dashed into the office, the sound of his footfalls eaten up by thick carpet. He hopped from one foot to the other, torn singlet half untucked and a dirt smudge on his cheek. The part of me that had been Anton’s mother for the past three years longed to wipe it off. I did not move. In this room, I was not a mother. As far as Agnes knew, I was Peter Weill, hardened crime reporter chasing another story.

  The boy glanced in my direction. His eyes widened when he realized that I sat in the chair. He had probably seen no one but Jack sit there.

  “For Josette.” Agnes handed him an envelope. “No one else.”

  He nodded. She dropped a coin in his palm. He closed bone-thin fingers around it and jammed it into the pocket of his dirty trousers.

  He looked me up and down. Did he think I was interviewing with Agnes for a prostitute job? Jack did the auditions after she passed them along. Shrugging as if it did not matter why I sat there, the boy turned and darted out the front door, closing it softly behind him. Agnes tolerated no slamming doors. I suspected she would make short work of Frau Inge.

  Anton still slammed doors from time to time. And here was a boy, one year older than he, carrying messages to prostitutes, probably to earn money for food. I tightened my lips. If Anton’s prostitute mother had not latched on to Ernst Röhm, or if I had not met Anton, he would have been lucky to get such a job.

  “Still,” she continued our conversation as if we had never been interrupted, “I suppose they’ll keep Röhm out of it. He has too much on Hitler.”

  “Give me back one of those. And I will tell you.”

  She thought for a long moment before handing me a coin. I held it in my palm. If I knew her, I would be giving it back before long.

  “Röhm is dead. Executed at Stadelheim. That is from a reliable source.”

  Her face darkened. “Is Mouse a political concern?”

  I shook my head. “Perhaps you will read about it in the Tageblatt. It is not political.”

  She studied me, coppery eyes calculating. I smiled and waited, as if her answer were unimportant.

  “Mouse used to have a wife.” She lowered her voice and leaned closer. I smelled her flowery perfume again. “They have a little boy; he must be ten. She and the boy live over the Sing-Sing in Neukölln.”

  I remembered the place, a common hangout for ex-convicts. An entire bar decorated like the famous New York prison. Made the ex-cons feel at home. Or maybe they just liked walking out of the barred ro
om free at the end of the night.

  She pursed her lips. “I heard he relocated, but it might be a place to begin.”

  “Does Mouse have a partner? Someone he works with regularly?” If he was not at Sing-Sing, I did not want to have to come back here for another lead.

  “Amsel. Swiss. Speaks like an actor. Wonderful elocution.”

  I nodded. Sounded like Jannings. “SA?”

  “Yes.”

  “I believe he is dead. Anyone else?”

  “Are you certain? He was always so clever.”

  “Fairly certain.” I did not mention that I had seen his body. “But do not pass that along.”

  She nodded. She would pass it along for the right price, but she would not reveal me as a source, nor would she be expected to.

  “Anyone else?” I hoped that she would give me someone besides Santer, who was beyond helping me too.

  “He had one partner who wasn’t with the SA, so he might still be alive. His name’s Gregor Gerber.”

  “Where could I find him, if I needed him?” I would look him up after I found Mouse, if I still needed to.

  She hesitated. The telephone burred, and we both jumped.

  I studied her artful face while she talked to the client. Although as well-groomed as always, her hair was the flat black that comes from a bottle, and I wondered when she had started dyeing it. We were all, I hoped, getting older.

  She replaced the receiver in its black cradle and looked pointedly at my satchel.

  “Here is that last one. Then I am out of funds.”

  She pocketed the money. “I don’t know where Gerber lives, but I will ask around for you. I know he’s often at Wittenbergplatz. Low-class trade when he’s short of funds.”

  I filed that away. I did not have time to stake out Wittenbergplatz today. “And when he is flush?”

  “He calls here.”

  “Where do you send the girls?”

  “Different hotels. I’d tell you more if I knew it.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “About your size, but strong. Dark hair. Lost his right index finger and thumb during the War. Dresses well, black suits and colorful ties.”

  I leaned across the desk and kissed her powdered cheek. “I can always count on you, Agnes.”

  She blushed, but shook her head. “You can’t count on anyone anymore. Don’t forget that.”

  17

  Hailing a taxi outside Agnes’s office building took less than a minute. Jack probably paid one to wait.

  “Sing-Sing.” I repeated the address twice.

  The weathered driver examined my breasts in the rearview mirror. “You don’t want to go there, Fräulein.” Apparently he had decided I was no prostitute. Or at least one who would not do well at Sing-Sing.

  “Oh, but I do. And I will pay the fare to get there.”

  “Begging your pardon, but it’s no place for a lady.” I was flattered that he had not assumed I was one of Jack’s ladies.

  “I appreciate your concern. But I must go there.”

  “Can’t imagine why.” He moved into traffic.

  We drove a few blocks before he spoke again. “I won’t wait. Even if you pay me double fare on the meter.”

  “I am not asking you to,” I said, although I had been planning to ask him that very thing. How would I get out of there? There would be no hailing a taxi. “Is it near Potsdamer Bahnhof?”

  He nodded. “A few blocks away. I’ll pass it on the way there so you can see how to get back to it, in case you need to get there in a hurry.”

  It would have to do. I leaned back, sitting upright to spare my rib. I swung my satchel into my lap. The Luger and ransom money weighed heavy against my legs. I hoped to need neither.

  Should I have asked Anges for hired muscle to talk to Mouse? A trip to Sing-Sing would be safer with a large man skilled in physical violence. But a thug would more likely be a friend of Mouse’s than a friend of mine. The Berlin underworld was not as large as one might think. Whom could I trust? I did not trust the state. I did not trust the criminals, even formerly reliable ones. I was not certain I could trust ordinary people anymore either. I trusted only Anton, and Boris, even if he no longer trusted me.

  The sun had angled across the sky by the time we made it to Sing-Sing. Time slipped by. If Anton was not there, I had no choice but to take the ransom money, and my hope, to Britz Mill and trust that Mouse would keep his word and let us live. I did not have that much trust.

  I had barely closed the taxi door when the driver roared off, leaving me alone on a street that smelled of garbage put out too early on a hot day.

  I stood across the street from the café, studying it. Bars clad the first floor, like a prison. There would be no climbing through them. A square man with a bulldog’s face stood by the front door. His nose, broken at least once, zigzagged down his face. His burly frame bulged against the striped uniform of a convict.

  I circled the bar. Two exits on the first floor. The main one for guests, and one in back that opened into the filthy alley. Crates of empty beer bottles lined the back wall, the smell of stale beer warring with the smell of hot garbage.

  Soot-streaked curtains fluttered in the open second-floor windows. A shadow crossed in front of one. Anton?

  I went back to the front door. The bouncer stared, astonished. Before he recovered his wits at the sight of a woman dressed in middle-class clothing and without the heavy makeup of a prostitute, I opened the dented steel door and walked past.

  I stepped into the yeasty smell of beer, spilled so often that a thin layer of sawdust covered the floor to absorb it. It might have worked, if they ever swept it out. I tried not to think about the sticky grit under my shoes.

  Afraid to tarry by the door and attract attention, I strode across the sawdust. On a platform against one wall sat what appeared to be an electric chair, complete with thick leather straps. Grease blackened the edges of the straps, as if they saw frequent use. I aimed for the bar. The barman was the one most likely to answer my questions.

  “How about a good time?” called a beefy man at a table to my right. His tattoos marked him as an ex-convict. I did not study them long enough to find out more.

  “Perhaps later,” I said with a smile, closing in on the bar stool. “If you can afford it.”

  His friends laughed, but he scowled. Lovely. Ten seconds in and already one enemy.

  The barman, like the doorman, wore a convict’s uniform, complete with numbers and a hat. I wondered if he had worn the same one in prison.

  He trained his yellow-rimmed eyes on me before I sat. “That seat’s reserved. For paying lady customers.”

  I edged away from the stool. I wanted no trouble.

  “If you’re here for customers, we already have two ladies working this patch.” He was loyal to the women who worked the bar, and I liked him for that.

  “I am not here for that. Just a lager.”

  He cracked a smile, revealing four missing teeth on the top of his jaw. “We serve lager. Drink fast.”

  Behind the bar I spotted a tiny framed picture of a little boy on the first day of school. His smile too revealed missing teeth. His tiny hands gripped the candy-filled paper cone that even the poorest parents struggled to give their children on the day they started school. Anton had missed that too, since he had never been to school. And he might never go unless I concentrated on the task at hand and got him away from Mouse. I smiled at the barman. Perhaps he was the proud father of the boy in the picture. Or perhaps he was a pederast.

  A waiter in another convict uniform walked by carrying a metal prison tray holding a viscous green substance. It smelled like pea soup after a long, hot day. In his left hand he held a prison-issue spoon. I was far from Hotel Adlon. The barman slammed a beer in front of me.

  “Handsome boy.” I pointed to the picture and sipped the watery beer. Warm as soup, probably from sitting in the sun out back. No money wasted on glamour at Sing-Sing.

  His lum
py face rearranged itself into a smile. “He’s mine.”

  A proud father. That might save me francs. “Boys are a handful. But worth it.”

  He nodded.

  “I am here about my own son, Anton.” I let worry slide into my voice. “He had a disagreement with his father and ran away from home.”

  “That’s rough.” He swiped the dirty bar with a filthy towel. Prison-issue? If so, it had not been washed since its liberation.

  “He is only nine years old. Loves Winnetou the Apache.”

  “We got some of them books ourselves. The missus is a reader.” He paused in his wiping. “How’s that go? A brave keeps his wits—”

  “And his arrows sharp,” I finished for him. “Words to live by.”

  I took another sip of beer. “One of his friends said that he might have come here, that he plays with a boy who lives upstairs.”

  He smiled again. “It’s your lucky day. I seen two boys going up there, walking side by side like the best of comrades.”

  “Is one blond? He wore a white singlet when he left. His name—”

  “Anton. I heard you. The other kid called him something French like that.”

  “Thank God.” My head spun. I had found him. Anton might be upstairs, meters away. Tears welled up. I sagged against the bar.

  “My missus had a time with mine when I was in jail. He’s straightened out now. Hard, raising boys.”

  “I do not know how we get through it.” I drank a swallow of beer to steady my head. My heart thumped.

  He pointed a thumb toward a door against the back wall. Yellow paint peeled in strips off its surface. “Stairs back there lead upstairs. They keep it locked, but they’ll hear if you pound. I bet your boy’s there right now.”

  “Thank you. Thank you.”

  “Think nothing of it. And don’t punish him too hard. Boys will be boys, you know.”

  “Depends on the boys,” I answered, thinking of my brother, Ernst. “But I will be glad to have him home.”

  I paid and left my unfinished beer with a sizable tip on the bar.