Basic Law

by J Sydney Jones

  Kramer’s nose twitches. “That’s correct.”

  “We have not yet received her memoirs, Herr Kramer. Our publication deadline is drawing near, you see, and …”

  Kramer feels blood rush to his head. “Hold on. What publication deadline?”

  “For the memoirs.” Pahlus’s voice on the other end of the line no longer sounds so gentle; exasperation is setting in like a low front. “For Frau Müller’s memoirs.”

  “But there are no memoirs,” Kramer says. Randall has come into the kitchen now and gives Kramer a what’s-up look. “I found no notes or manuscript at her place. Nothing.”

  The other end is silent so long that Kramer thinks they have been cut off.

  “Herr Pahlus? You there?”

  “Yes, I am still here.” A weariness to his voice. “Just as I feared.”

  Kramer does not like the last word. “Feared?”

  “Herr Kramer. You were a friend of Frau Müller’s, of Reni’s, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “A good friend, as I understand.”

  Kramer says nothing; his mind is racing.

  “Did you really believe the story of her suicide, Herr Kramer?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  No, Kramer thinks again as the Mercedes taxi takes them into the city from Berlin Tempelhof Airport. Deep down I don’t believe the suicide story. Not Reni’s style.

  They pass along a freeway once resplendent with checkpoints. Now there are no barricades to slow their progress, no border guards to point machine pistols at them while checking passports. High-rise buildings jut out of the cityscape ahead.

  “You must have an idea about what kind of interviews Reni was conducting,” Randall says. He sits next to Kramer on the cold leather of the taxi’s backseat.

  Pahlus’s call did more than intrigue; it also changed Randall’s travel plans.

  “Not a clue,” Kramer says as the taxi exits toward the Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten.

  “But I thought that was why we were paying this visit. Not a social call.” Randall sits forward in the seat, all tension and nerves.

  “I guess so,” Kramer says, trying to rein in his own nerves. “Why don’t we wait and hear what he’s got to say?”

  “And why wouldn’t he tell you over the phone? Who’s he afraid was listening?”

  Kramer looks sideways at Randall. “The bad guys.” He feels laconic today and does not want to draw conclusions before the evidence is presented.

  “I thought they lost. The Wall’s down.”

  “There are always bad guys. Wall or no.”

  They sit in silence while the taxi completes its journey, slowing to park in front of a building that looks like it belongs in south central Los Angeles. Graffiti covers the entire facade; slogans for and against the skinheads, the Parliament, foreigners, God.

  Despite the chill air, kids and adults are hanging out on this Saturday morning in baggy jeans, oversize shirts, sneakers, and baseball caps. Kids with boom boxes under their arms, high-stepping, jerking around. Slumped figures in doorways, nodding out; a speeding Camaro that squeals around the corner. It could be the States.

  They get out of the taxi, pay the driver who looks nervous in this neighborhood, and then ring the bell at number 15. The brass plaque announcing Real Editions in the vestibule has been spray-painted to read “Red Editions.” A voice comes over the intercom: “Wer ist da, bitte?”

  “Kramer,” he says, and a buzzer sounds, the front door opening momentarily.

  Inside, it’s dark and damp. A sign by the stairs points them up three floors to the publishing offices. Mostly businesses in the old building and mostly closed today. Pahlus is out in the hall of the third floor to greet them; tall and plump, hair worn in a ponytail and two rings in his left ear. Old jeans and a baggy sweater.

  “You survived our street?” He speaks English in an easy colloquial manner and gives them no time to answer. A sudden smile. “It’s not as bad as it looks. I mean there are druggies out there, but our government doesn’t force them to crime for their next high. Not yet, anyway.”

  His face is surprisingly animated. Kramer figured from the telephone voice that he would be languid, cool, and laid back. But he’s almost hyper.

  “Come into our meager office, Mr. Kramer,” he says grabbing Randall’s arm and ushering him through a door. Kramer follows with a faint smile on his face.

  On the other side of the door, they enter a different world. Gone is the gloom. Walls are missing here also, opening a huge space articulated by rows of planters built from glass bricks with all sorts of greenery flowing out of them: ivy, palms, philodendrons, ficus, and all sorts of other plants Kramer has no name for. The office is on the top floor of the building, and sky lights have been knocked through the roof to make the space bright, even in the winter darkness. Walls are painted vibrant greens and blues; a diagonal red stripe bisects one, purple another. Furniture is a hodge-podge of flea-marketry; computers on each desk have also been personalized: painted to individual tastes and decorated with photos, plastic toys, worry beads, and other jewelry so that they resemble small shrines.

  Pahlus leads them to a large art deco desk in the furthest corner of the open office space. No one else is about on Saturday, but there is nothing creepy about the place as with other offices when the employees are not there. This space has animation, almost a life of its own, Kramer thinks.

  Randall and he sit on a long, low sofa to the right side of the desk, a window to their back, and Pahlus takes a straight-back chair that does not match his desk.

  “It is good you came,” he says to Randall. “Reni spoke of you.”

  Randall looks amazed.

  “I’m Kramer,” Kramer says. “This is my friend, Randall. He knew Reni in the old days.”

  Pahlus shifts his attention, as surprised as Randall.

  “Sorry.” Checking Kramer up and down as if expecting someone as flipped out looking as Randall to be the friend of the great fem radical Renata Müller.

  “Tell me about the memoirs,” Kramer says.

  Pahlus regains composure, leans back in his chair, fiddles with a wooden puzzle in the shape of a duck on his desk.

  “Reni came to us about six months ago, saying that she wanted to publish memoirs of a different sort. A blend of the past and the present. Of course we were interested. Though her name does not have quite the cachet it once did, we at Real Editions are committed to supporting the political Left. Stalinism may have failed, and rightfully so, but Marxism has yet to be tested.”

  His eyes sparkle as he says this, reminding Kramer of Reni. He suddenly takes a liking to the pudgy editor.

  Pahlus continues, “I, in fact, was personally honored that she should come to us instead of one of the bigger houses like Fischer or Rowohlt. She was one of my heroes when I was growing up.”

  Another smile as he opens a desk drawer, pulling out a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam. “Care for some?”

  Randall and Kramer nod approvingly, and Pahlus fills a couple of cloudy marmalade jars from the same drawer and passes the drinks around.

  They toast one another and Pahlus continues. “I’m sure the bigger houses would have been glad to take on her book, but Reni was adamant about having Real”—he pronounces it with two syllables—“bring it out. She was not prepared to compromise over content, she told us. No punches pulled, I think you say.”

  He looks inquiringly at Kramer.

  “An exposé?” Randall says.

  Pahlus shifts his gaze, smiling at Randall. “Partly. I mean she had many years of political involvement behind her. Knew everybody there was to know in Bonn and the European parliament, and had some pretty interesting things to say about certain of these people. Even some fascinating stories about her years before getting involved in politics—student radicalism and that sort of thing.”<
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  Kramer feels Randall seeking out his eyes, but looks straight ahead at Pahlus, ignoring the attempted communication.

  “It wasn’t going to earn her any friends,” Pahlus says, “writing about these people from an intimate and critical angle, but Reni didn’t care. She was absolutely the most honest human I’ve ever come into contact with. The truth was all that mattered to her, no matter how uncomfortable that might be for others.”

  Kramer takes a long sip of the bourbon, feels it burn down his throat. “And the interviews?” he prompts, for it was the mention of them over the phone that has brought him to Berlin.

  “Yes, of course. Her contemporary history. They were to form the second part of the memoir. Sort of a state of the state address to the German people. They would prove to be every bit as inflammatory as the other material.”

  He stops, beaming at Kramer.

  “And?” Kramer says.

  “And nothing. Reni would not share anything about these. Only that they were political dynamite. She was going to name names, she said.” Pahlus looks down reflectively, then suddenly lifts his head. “It was the way in which she said this, you see. So self-assured. So on top of things. Do you know what I mean?”

  Only too well, Kramer thinks. “What names?”

  Pahlus shakes his head. “Big was all she would say until publication.”

  “And you never got a look at any of this political dynamite?” Kramer asks. “Never saw that part of her memoirs?”

  Another shake of the head. “I never saw any of the memoirs.”

  Kramer and Randall exchange looks.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Pahlus says. “That’s why I wanted to see you in person, to explain to you. I know the memoirs existed. She spoke of them so clearly and in such detail. I refuse to believe I was deluded simply because she was an idol. I trusted her.”

  “You paid for them?” Kramer asks.

  Pahlus goes red. “Eighty thousand marks.”

  Randall whistles. “There’s that kind of money in this operation?”

  “We would have earned it back in the first printing. From the way she described the memoirs, careers would be made and broken. It would be a bestseller.”

  Kramer finishes the bourbon. “Is that what you’re afraid of? That someone got wind of the memoirs, one of those names that would be named?”

  Pahlus nods. “Maybe I’m being paranoid.”

  None of them bother to define what that someone might do to suppress the memoirs: it is like white noise in the background.

  “And without the memoirs?” Kramer asks.

  Pahlus laughs. “I know one career that will be ruined, anyway. It was on my say-so that so large an advance was made. But Reni said she needed the money as a lubricant. Her interviewees were not all public-spirited.” His expression changes, mouth turned down, eyes squinting. “It will ruin Real Editions, Mr. Kramer. That’s the long and short of it. We’ll go bankrupt without those memoirs.”

  If there are memoirs, Kramer once again reminds himself.

  What will Kommissar Boehm say if I go to him with this new information? he wonders. Simple: Where’s the proof the memoirs ever existed? Maybe she just ripped off Pahlus for the eighty thousand marks. Then another thought: absence of proof is not proof of absence. And Reni was not the ripping off sort; not with a show like Real Editions, anyway.

  “Like I said on the phone, Herr Pahlus, there was no trace of memoirs at Reni’s place or in any of the safe-deposit boxes she kept. No evidence at all they existed except in her mind.”

  Pahlus smiles winsomely. “That’s where you’re mistaken, Mr. Kramer.”

  He digs into the top drawer of his desk, finds a red-covered­ address book, and leafs through it until he finds the page he is looking for. Then he runs his index finger down a list of names.

  “Yes. Here it is. One of the men Reni was interviewing. I had to call her once at his flat about the delivery of the advance, so she gave me his number and address.”

  The address of Herr Peter Gorik is in one of the more fashionable neighborhoods off the Kurfürstendamm. Neoclassical buildings along a quiet tree-lined boulevard that miraculously escaped the bombs of World War II. The home of someone with a tidy little sum in the bank, Kramer thinks as he checks the name register next to the doorbell.

  No Gorik.

  “He must have moved.” Randall double-checks the names.

  “Or never existed,” Kramer says.

  “What is it with you, Sam? It’s like you don’t want these memoirs to exist.”

  “Truth is, I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Let’s just buzz the super and find out if the guy ever lived here.”

  But they do not need to, for at that very minute a middle-­aged woman in a white coat comes out, a stack of string-bound newspapers in her arms. Randall helps her with the door; she drops the papers at their feet: recycle day today.

  Kramer smiles at her, “Excuse us, but would you happen to be the porter?” His most polite, stilted German.

  She looks at them both with momentary suspicion; it goes with the job.

  “I might be.”

  “We were looking for a friend of ours. Herr Gorik. Peter Gorik.”

  This makes her look even harder at them.

  “Close friends, are you?”

  Randall smiles winningly; it does nothing to soften her expression. The sun comes out again, brightening the broad, tree-lined street.

  “You might say colleagues.” Kramer hedges his bets.

  She shrugs. “Think you’d know by now if you were colleagues.”

  Kramer has an evil premonition. “Know what?” he says.

  “Herr Gorik is dead. Killed by a hit-and-run driver ten days ago.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “So what do you think this proves, Herr Kramer?” Kommissar Boehm sits like a pontiff in back of his desk in Bad Lunsburg, wearing the same blue suit he had on the first time Kramer met him. It’s Sunday afternoon, but Boehm is the kind of cop whose home is the office.

  “Seems to be a lot of deaths,” Kramer says.

  “Two,” Kommissar Boehm quickly replies. “And no evidence to show they are related. One a suicide; the other an auto accident.”

  “Hit-and-run,” Kramer says. “And Reni, Frau Müller, was interviewing Gorik before her death. Gorik himself gets knocked down and out after Reni’s death but before her body is discovered. Don’t you find that indicative?”

  Boehm sucks in his cheeks, working his lips like a bass breathing.

  “And you say the flat was empty already.”

  Kramer nods. “The porter said that relatives came the day after the death and cleared everything. Not a scrap of paper or the tiniest evidence of former occupancy. I checked on Gorik in Berlin. He had no relatives. A retired bachelor and only child whose parents died in the war.”

  Boehm puffs his lips skeptically. “Everyone’s got relatives. Cousins come in all shapes and sizes. Especially when there may be something to inherit.”

  Boehm casts a glance at Randall who is busy looking at the maps on the walls as if they hold secrets other than geographic.

  “He doesn’t speak German,” Kramer says by way of excusing Randall’s nosiness.

  Boehm slowly nods his massive head, then turns back to Kramer. “You seem to have done your homework.”

  “I think we’re on to something.”

  “You’ve thought that from the beginning,” Kommissar Boehm says, slowly rising to pace the floor in front of the door. Randall turns to watch, slightly amused. Kramer looks straight ahead at the vacated chair, not knowing how to respond, not knowing what Boehm means by his statement.

  “In fact,” Kommissar Boehm suddenly stops, “you seem determined to make this case bigger than it appears.”

  “Not true,”
Kramer says. “I let it go, moved on to other things. It was Pahlus in Berlin …”

  Boehm cuts him short. “I’m not criticizing, mind you. Merely observing. An average citizen off the street comes in with your story, I might listen more dispassionately. But a journalist, and one named literary executor of the deceased’s estate … That’s a bit different now, isn’t it?”

  Kramer feels himself losing his temper; tries to hold himself back.

  “Kommissar, I hope you’re not implying that I want to distort the facts for some personal gain, just to get a story out of all this.”

  Boehm does not respond, but begins pacing again. The floorboards creak under his feet.

  Kramer continues. “What I believe this shows is that lots of people might have wanted to suppress Reni’s memoirs.”

  “If there were memoirs,” Boehm reminds him.

  Kramer ignores this. “Say that our friend Gorik knew something big. Something that a powerful person in Germany would not want to come under public scrutiny.”

  “Vague, Herr Kramer. Vague, vague, vague. ‘Somebody,’ ‘something big.’ All conjecture.”

  But he stops pacing, sucking in his cheeks again, deep in thought.

  “Easy enough to check on, though,” Boehm says. “Let’s ask Guinness if it’s ever heard of Herr Peter Gorik.”

  Kramer’s face shows incomprehension.

  “Our online database.” Boehm nods at a computer in the corner set on a specially designed table. “It’s the national registration. Everyone’s listed here,” he says, going to the machine, sitting down in front of it, and hitting the space bar to awaken it. “We’re quite up-to-date, you see?”

  His tone is humorous, but he is not smiling. The Kommissar deftly enters codes to access the database, and then enters Gorik’s name and address. The amber screen tells them the computer is working on the request, then pulls up a list of names beginning with Go-. Boehm hits the function key to see the next screen. Three screens later, Gorik’s name is highlighted smack in the middle of the list.

  “Interesting,” Kommissar Boehm says.

  Kramer reads over Kommissar Boehm’s shoulder. “So he was for real.”