This would work only if I sounded convincing. I needed a good reason to be here. “I work for his wife.”
“Why you need to come here to follow him?”
“Because he has not been home since yesterday morning. She worries.”
“Guess she don’t give him what he needs.” She smiled, displaying rotten teeth.
“Or the other way around.”
She shrugged.
I pulled a banknote from my satchel. “Where was he last night?”
She grabbed for it, but I pulled it out of reach. “And convince me that it is true.”
“Same as tonight. With me until late.”
“When did he pick you up last night?”
“Right after his work, around four, same as always. He had a car then. Some friend borrowed it from the hotel. Interrupted us and all.” She shook her head. “The friend brought his kid. We’ve been using taxis ever since.”
My heart lurched. “What did his kid look like?”
“Like a kid.” She gave me a withering look. “Blond. Skinny. At least he was quiet.”
“What hotel?” I had to keep calm, to get a hotel name out of her, something to double check.
She stared at me. I waved the bill.
“You’re not police?” Her eyes narrowed.
“No.” So she was no control girl, registered with the police as a prostitute, or she would not have asked. Not surprising, as most prostitutes were unregistered.
“Look.” I let exhaustion creep into my voice. I suspected she wanted to go home and go to bed. “I just want to tell the wife that he was with a girlfriend and let her sort it out. I will not tell her where or with whom.”
“Then why you need to know the hotel?”
I smiled and answered honestly, something I love to do. “So I can check for myself whether you are lying.”
“By then I’ll have the money.” She took a deep drag off her cigarette, letting it burn down to her fingers before tossing the still-burning butt into the gutter.
“But I know you work Wittenbergplatz. You will be here if I want a refund.”
She ground out the cigarette and stood in thought, obviously something she did not like doing this early in the morning. I imagine she’d had a long night.
I pulled out another bill. “I need to get home soon. So let’s do this quickly or not at all. And this one is for not telling anyone that we had this conversation.”
She named a flophouse a block from where we stood. I gave her the money.
“Where is he now?”
“He’s like the wind. Never settles long in one place. Could be anywhere.”
I walked straight to the flophouse. Gerber had checked out. For less than I had paid her, the clerk confirmed her story. At around six, a man matching Mouse’s description had walked in with a young boy and headed off to Gerber’s room. Minutes later he and the boy came back through the lobby, and this time the man carried keys.
Gerber had an alibi. He had been in a cheap hotel with a prostitute and had not left. Unless the prostitute and flophouse clerk lied, a possibility, it meant that my only lead was gone.
I was too tired and empty to cry about it. I had to hope that Gerber would give me more information tomorrow. He was one of the last people to see Mouse alive. And one of the last people who I knew had seen Anton. I clenched my jaw. I tried not to think about where Anton might be as I limped to the subway, tired knees still aching from last night’s crawl across the mill platform. The subways had long since stopped running for the night, but the first one of the day would be coming soon.
Sunrise gilded the sky before I finally made it to Boris’s, eyes gritty with exhaustion. I watched him sleep, trying to decide whether to climb in or take a spare blanket down to the couch. Before I decided, he opened his eyes.
He stared at me, then looked over to the window where early morning light glowed on the curtains.
“News?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Are you all right?”
I did not know how to answer that question, so I just nodded.
He pulled the quilt up with one hand and drew me in next to him. I fell into an uneasy sleep in the warmth of his embrace.
I slept until eight, a good three hours. A slamming door nearby woke me. I sat up in bed, heart pounding. Panicked, I looked around the room. I was alone, and at Boris’s. When the bedroom door opened, I jumped.
“Slept in, did you?” said Frau Inge. “Herr Krause left instructions that I was to prepare you breakfast, and I have done so.”
I bet he had also left instructions to let me sleep, and she certainly had not done that. “I will be down shortly.”
Even though I hurried, I sat down to a cold breakfast, including cold coffee. Frau Inge was predictable. But why did she dislike me? Was it because I disrupted her household, or did she have feelings for Boris? It seemed as if she did, but she was married to someone else. I sipped cold coffee. As if being married to someone else changed one’s feelings.
I walked to the telephone booth I used yesterday, nowhere near as nice as the one at the Adlon, and called Bettina. Perhaps Fritz had found Anton, or he had turned up on his own.
“Waldheim.” Her voice sounded strained.
“Good morning. I am calling about my dress.”
“I haven’t had time to get to it, Fräulein. Please check back tomorrow.”
After I hung up I felt lonelier than ever.
I called Frau Röhm again, and this time after I spoke to the maid, Frau Röhm returned my call fairly quickly.
“Do you have him?” she asked, quavery voice brisk.
“No,” I answered, just as short. “You?”
“What went wrong?”
“The big mouse was dead in the trap.” I did not know if her telephone was secure. “But the little mouse was gone.”
Silence stretched out. I wondered if she had any idea what I meant.
“I see.”
“Have you heard anything else?” I hoped she would tell me of a second ransom attempt.
“No. What do we do?” The bossy overbearing woman was gone; in her place was a scared grandmother. I suddenly wondered if she would give him back to me if she got him.
“We wait.” I could not think of a better answer.
I arranged to call the next day and hung up. Where was Anton? If Frau Röhm had not heard of another ransom attempt, then perhaps Mouse’s death had not been for the ransom money. What if it had been the Nazis? What if they had Anton?
I clasped my shaking hands together. I would not let myself think that. I could not. I had to assume that whoever had killed Mouse had Anton, and that he would give him back as soon as he received the ransom money.
23
I took the subway from Dahlem Dorf north to the Zoological Gardens, paid my entrance fee, and walked through the Japanese-style entrance, noticing how much friendlier the concrete elephants seemed than the stone sentries at Lichterfelde. But both the elephants and sentries were large enough to crush me should they topple.
A tiger paced in a cage, bright orange-and-black coat out of place in the concrete-and-straw confines of his enclosure. He rubbed against the bars as if against friendly hands, then turned and snarled. I did not know how to escape from my cage either. And I understood the urge to bite.
I walked through the zoo. Gerber was not due to arrive yet, and I had nowhere else to go. I visited the bison, where Anton would certainly come if he visited the zoo. He would talk of stalking them, ready to kill one with an arrow and use the hide for a teepee. A nanny walked a pram in the early morning sunshine, the only person there so early.
I slid Anton’s pocketknife out of my satchel. He had given it to me to hold for him on the zeppelin, over a week ago. I still had the knife, if not the owner. I leaned against an oak tree next to the bison and carved a feather into the bark. Anton’s symbol. A few months ago he created a lexicon of symbols for coded messages, something he had read that Sioux Indians did. I was a bird
, he a feather. I had suggested he use an egg as his symbol and had been treated to an evening of frosty silence. Apparently, he was much too grown up to be considered an egg, or even a chick, and I should have know better.
I added a full moon and a bird next to the feather. If Anton passed this way, he would see it and know that I had been here near the full moon, looking for him. Ridiculous, I knew. I shot a guilty glance over my shoulder for the zookeeper.
Was the gesture really for him, or for me? Finished, I stepped back and stared at the brave white lines against the gray bark. I felt comforted, even though I knew how futile my actions were. Before I lost heart, I carved a house under the bird. Bettina’s symbol. If Anton came here, he would know to go there and look for me.
With a lighter step I walked across the zoo to the entrance.
“Peter Weill?” said a voice behind me.
I recognized it from the telephone. “Herr Gerber?”
He nodded and grabbed my arm. We strolled through the zoo together as if we had known each other all our lives. He was bigger than he had seemed from the balcony last night, and exactly what one expected when hiring muscle. Only a few centimeters taller than I, but twice my weight. His face was broad and unlined. Scars lined his knuckles, and muscles in his forearms bulged out from beneath rolled-up sleeves. A scarlet tie hung down the front of his shirt like a rivulet of blood.
“Miss Agnes speaks highly of you. Not many folks impress her.”
“Agnes recommended you as well.”
“What will you be needing from me?” He propelled me deeper into the zoo, head swiveling as if taking in the animals and not looking for human followers, as I suspected he must be. A natural predator.
“Protection. And questions answered.”
“Answer mine before I answer yours.” No expression flickered in his gray eyes.
“Let’s see.”
“Mouse.”
I slowed, but his hand under my arm pushed me forward. “What about Mouse?”
“You kill him?” Who had told him about Mouse’s death, or that I looked for him? Agnes knew both men, as did Claire. But, as far as I knew, only Claire knew that he was dead.
“No. Did you?”
He laughed, a quick bark like a seal. “You know who killed him?”
“No. But Mouse had something of mine with him when he died. I want it back.”
“What was it?” We stopped next to the monkey house. Monkeys scampered in grass on the other side of a deep empty moat. The monkeys knew better than to try to jump it. A fall that far onto concrete would kill a monkey. Or a woman.
“My son.” I braced myself against the warm steel railing. We were alone, and he could easily toss me in the moat. No one would hear.
“Short kid, but scrappy? Blond?”
“You knew him?”
“Met him, once.”
“When?”
“Day before yesterday.” That tallied with what the prostitute said.
Was he part of the kidnapping scheme? A mother monkey clambered up a frayed gray rope, baby clinging on her back with long brown fingers. “I want him back.”
“I want Mouse back.” His grip tightened. “He was a good man in a fight.”
I drew in a deep breath and winced at the pain. Mouse had a friend after all. What would he do with the truth? “Not in that last fight. The police report says he stood there and let someone standing right next to him put a bullet in him.”
“He’d have to trust someone to let them get that close.”
“Whom did he trust like that?”
He laughed his seal bark again. “Nobody. Not even me.”
I tried to shrug, but he held my arm down. “Then whom?”
“Someone he didn’t think could hurt him. Maybe the boy.”
I studied his battered face. He thought Anton had killed Mouse? Had Anton? If so, where was he?
“Been checking the orphanages, to make the boy pay if he did it.”
“Did you find the boy?” I struggled to keep my voice level. What if he had been there before Boris? “He is worth a great deal of money to me.” I knew better than to appeal to his softer side.
“Don’t expect to, really.”
“What do you expect to find?”
“Not you. A pretty blonde, looking for a lost boy. I’m looking for someone who’d have cause to hate Mouse.”
“Many had cause to hate him, from what I have heard.” I did not want to implicate Claire.
He leaned his weight against me, loosening his grip on my arm. “But Mouse was always partial to blondes.”
I thought of Claire’s unkempt blond hair.
“He’d do most anything for one, for a while.”
I realized that he thought that Mouse and I had a relationship. I suppressed a smile. “You think we were working together to kidnap my son and collect ransom money from Frau Röhm?”
“Till I saw you. You’re not his kind of blonde.”
“Oh.” I viewed that as a compliment, having met his kind of blonde.
“Don’t reckon you know who killed him either.” He spat a string of brown juice into the monkeys’ moat. Chewing tobacco.
I studied him in silence. I had no idea.
“Don’t reckon you did it, either. Or you’d have nabbed the boy and bolted.”
“The boy is mine.” He was correct about what I would have done. I wondered if I would have had the courage to shoot Mouse, if it had come to that.
“But I can’t figure what you’d hire me for.” He turned flat gray eyes on me again. “You seem like you can take care of yourself.”
“I heard that you and Mouse were in the same Ring. I want to get into the clubhouse, ask around about Mouse. See if someone knows who killed him.”
“I did that myself. Nothing. Not many were man enough to take him like that.”
The monkeys frolicked. From here, they looked safer in their cage. “Who was man enough? You?”
He did not look insulted. “Not me. Not no one. It had to be someone he never would have suspected.”
“Can I hire you?”
He shook his head. “But when you find out who killed Mouse, turn him over to me, and you won’t have to worry about him no more.”
He released my arm and strode off through the dappled shadows.
So, if he had no leads and had not killed Mouse himself, that left Anton, or something political. Was Mouse a traitor to Röhm, and surviving members of the SA had tracked him down? Or was he loyal to Röhm, and Lang and the SS had come for him? If Mouse was loyal to Röhm, he should be on the purge list Wilhelm had mentioned back in the Hanselbauer. That list had to exist, and I had to see it.
I headed back to Wittenbergplatz to see if Gerber’s prostitute was on duty. If so, I planned to slip her money and find out more about him. I climbed the stairs of the subway station, smiling at the lady in the Café Möhring advertisement, auburn hair piled on top of her head and a mole above her knowing smile. She always reminded me of my late brother Ernst; she knew the score and still found it somehow amusing.
The prostitute was gone, probably home sleeping, as anyone who had been up that late should have been. Bedraggled women milled around waiting for the lunch trade, but none would tell me the name of the woman I met last night.
I wandered down Kleist Strasse to Motz Strasse, home of the El Dorado. At the corner I stopped still. Whitewash covered the El Dorado mural. Giant swastikas alternating with Nazi slogans decorated the windows. Wilhelm was right. El Dorado was not in its old form at all.
Peeking out from the corners of a Nazi poster were the words HERE . . . RIGHT. The full sign used to read HERE IT IS RIGHT. It cheered me to see these defiant little vestiges. They had papered them over, but the words were there, and maybe they would be revealed again.
Two black-uniformed SS men conversed on the sidewalk in front. One leaned against the pole that supported the street sign.
I walked to the door and put my hand on the familiar metal handle.<
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“Excuse me,” said the larger SS man. “You can’t go in there.”
“I am sorry.” I sounded as contrite as I could. “I am meeting someone.”
The men looked from one to the other. “Who?” said the second man.
The only SS men I knew were Wilhelm, whom I did not want to get into trouble, and Lang, whom I did not want to know where I was. “Robert Schmidt,” I lied. A common name.
“Why are you meeting him?” asked the first man.
“Personal reasons.”
“I’ll go in with her,” said the second man.
He opened the door, and I stepped through the looking glass. The inside bore no resemblance to the old El Dorado. The coat-check counter was gone, the red curtains that separated the bar from the coat check removed. Whitewash obscured the Chinese murals, round brass gongs vanished as surely as my brother and the other men who had once played here.
In their place men lounged on rickety chairs. A few poked at ancient typewriters, but most sat on the floor playing cards. No one looked up when we entered.
I scanned the room, as if looking for Robert Schmidt. “I guess he is not—”
“Hannah?” I turned. Wilhelm again.
“You know her?” asked the man who had let me in.
“In every sense.” Wilhelm slipped an arm around my waist. The man sniggered.
“Including the biblical?” I hissed under my breath as he led me away. He had cleverly implied that we’d been intimate.
He leaned down and kissed me, a quick stage kiss. When he pulled back I was so shocked, I froze.
“Play along. It’s the only way to keep us both out of trouble.”
“Aren’t I a little old for you?” I gave him a fake intimate smile.
“Better than nothing.” He smiled back. “You’re well preserved.”
Someone whistled from across the room, and I blushed.
I let him lead me into the leftmost dark room. When the El Dorado was a queer club the patrons used these rooms to have intimate relations, and I suppressed a shudder remembering the last time I had been in one.
Although it had no windows, the room had a light, a desk, and a chair. The scene of my terrifying encounter on the sticky floor with Röhm had been transformed into an office much like Frau Doppelgänger’s. If anything, it was more menacing than before.
A Night of Long Knives (Hannah Vogel) Page 21