A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  “Why can’t you do it yourself?” He tilted his head to the side, waiting for an explanation.

  I could give him none. “It is an uncertain world, Herr Keller.”

  “If this Lars isn’t there?”

  “He will be.”

  He studied me for a good long time before nodding. “It’s for Paul, isn’t it?”

  “And for Ruth.”

  “Let’s get started,” he said. “And thank you for coming to tell me that Paul did not commit suicide. It will be a comfort to his mother, as much as anything can be right now.”

  I stared into the older version of Paul’s eyes. He turned away.

  “Anton,” I called softly.

  He turned his head, surprised.

  “Come here.”

  He walked back to us.

  “Herr Keller,” I said, “I would like you to meet Anton.”

  They shook hands and looked at me.

  “I have an errand to run,” I began.

  “No.” Anton shifted his feet wide apart, a fighting stance.

  “Herr Keller will take you to the subway station. I will meet you and Lars there.”

  “I want to go with you.” Anton’s eyes widened. I knew he was afraid.

  “It is nothing dangerous,” I said. “Merely complicated.”

  “Are you at least taking Lars?” he pleaded.

  “No. And try not to worry. It is not dangerous.” No more so than anything else.

  “When I’m older, I won’t let you,” he said.

  “I have to.” I hugged him hard and kissed him on the forehead. “Stay here for at least five minutes.”

  I watched him struggle with his desire to disobey me. In the end, I saw him relent. “All right.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you, too.”

  I dropped my hand to his shoulder and squeezed it before walking out the door.

  I crossed the square and boarded the subway, trying not to cry. I hated to leave him, but I dared not take him with me. It felt good to be on my own again, running risks that affected only me.

  23

  I found an empty bench on the subway. The car held only a few passengers. Most people were at work for the day. I had only a few hours, so I had to plan this carefully.

  A man sat too close to me on the bench. I raised my head to glare at him. Lars.

  “Wouldn’t it be more convincing if you pretended you knew me?” He leaned in close and kissed my cheek. Even such a trivial contact caused my heart to beat faster.

  “Where did you come from?” I whispered, and gave him a faux welcoming smile. He must have followed me. How dare he?

  “Where’s Anton?” He dropped his arm along the back of the seat.

  “Safe. Now, why did you follow me to the cathedral? That seems rather dishonest.”

  “Less so than ditching Anton and, presumably, me so you can strike out on your own?”

  I had no good answer to that. “What did you find out?”

  He looked around the empty car before answering in a hushed voice. “Paul’s death is considered a suicide. No investigation.”

  Unfortunate for Paul, but lucky for us, as our fingerprints were everywhere and who knew how many people had seen us coming and going out of his apartment.

  “If there is no investigation, it means that there is no police guard on his apartment,” I said. That would make things easier.

  “Dangerous ideas are running through your head.” He shifted his arm on the back of the seat to cup my shoulder.

  “I want to find evidence of where Ruth ended up.” I sat very straight. “I promised her mother, and I would have promised her father, too.”

  He tipped his hat up. “I thought you said Paul thought she was better off where she was.”

  “That was only hours after he tried to commit suicide.” I stared out at the concrete wall sliding along centimeters from our window. “I do not know how accurate his assessment was.”

  “And?” He drew out the word as if to indicate that there were many responses to inaccurate assessments.

  “I will feel better if I know for certain that he was correct.”

  He let out a long breath and settled into the seat. He disagreed, but would not argue further. Fine with me.

  “Why did you follow me?” I tapped his knee.

  “I followed you because I wanted to see if anyone else followed you. I did not expect you to come out alone.”

  “Did anyone follow us?”

  “Not so far as I could tell.” He leaned back and crossed his legs. “So, where are we going? Alexanderplatz?”

  “You are going to Friedrichstadt subway station to meet Anton, as scheduled.”

  “I have a bit of time yet.” He tilted his hat forward over his eyes and pretended to sleep, but I knew better. As angry as I was at him for following me, I was glad to have him along.

  We reached Alexanderplatz station and climbed the stairs holding hands. It was the first time we had held hands in years, and I quite liked it. I felt hopeful that we could sort things out in Switzerland.

  As we walked around Paul’s apartment building, hand in hand, I filled Lars in on my conversation with Herr Keller. “He wants Ruth, if we find her.”

  “You won’t take her?” Lars doubled back. He seemed to be counting people on the street.

  “She is not mine to take.” I slowed to keep pace with him.

  He raised his eyebrow.

  “If she had no one else, I would take her,” I admitted. “Who would not?”

  Lars squeezed my hand. “I suppose I should be grateful that you take in strays.”

  “Are you a stray?” I leaned over and kissed his cheek.

  He slid an arm around my waist. “More than you know.”

  We had completed our trip around Paul’s building. Nothing seemed amiss.

  “Windows in the building across the street can look into Paul’s. Anyone could be in there, and we would not know. There is no safe way to do this,” Lars said. “Let me go in alone.”

  “Or you let me do it.” I put my hands on my hips.

  He shook his head. “Which one of us has the most experience with crime scenes? Which one of us has the most training? Which one of us was a policeman and a soldier?”

  He was correct, but I did not care. He read my expression, and his face softened. “Fine, Spatz. You win.”

  “If someone is watching the apartment,” I said. “The most logical place is the front, so we can take the back way in.”

  We used the entrance from the cellar. Once inside, he drew his gun and stuck it under his coat. He insisted on going up the stairs first, with me steps behind. We made it to Paul’s apartment without incident.

  He checked each room. I went straight to the kitchen, drew the curtains, and turned on the light. Paul’s blood still stained the wall. I stared at it, transported to last night. If we had arrived only minutes earlier, he might still be alive.

  I turned my back on the chair where Paul had died and surveyed the room. Nothing had been cleaned up. Someone had kicked a path through the dishes, probably to remove Paul’s body, but otherwise everything was untouched.

  Back to the broken window and chair, I squatted on the kitchen floor and examined broken crockery. A broken plate, a glass. I sucked in a breath in surprise. “Lars!”

  He came in at a run, gun held in front of him.

  I picked two pieces off the floor and fitted them together. It was a child’s plate with a butterfly on it. I held it up for Lars. “A child’s place setting.”

  Lars picked up a tiny bowl, cup, and spoon. The bowl, too, had a butterfly on it.

  “Ruth was here,” I said. “Eating dinner with her father.” I lifted a piece of broken glass in my gloved hand. “And a woman.”

  “A woman?” He took the piece from me.

  “Lipstick stains.” I pointed. “Near the top rim.”

  “He could have had dinner with Ruth and the woman, but they left before h
e was killed,” Lars said.

  “Or he had dinner with them, the woman shot him, and Ruth watched.” My head throbbed. I struggled not to be sick.

  “Or that.” He checked his wristwatch. “We have fifteen more minutes before we need to leave to get Anton.”

  I sifted through the rest of the dishes, but found nothing else of note. In the living room, I could not find the picture of Ruth or her birth certificate. Had the killer taken them? Or had Herr Keller?

  A cursory search of Ruth’s bedroom revealed that her clothes were as they had been when I left, yesterday morning. Whoever took her had not packed any of her things. But if they had just shot Paul and saw us running for the building, they would have known that there was no time.

  When I came out of the room, Lars stood in the living room reading a letter from a pile. I looked over his shoulder. It was in Polish.

  “You can read Polish?” I asked, surprised.

  “Polish is similar enough to Russian that I can make out a bit of it. Nothing seems significant.”

  “How fluent is your Russian?”

  “Fairly,” he said. “I had a great deal of free time to practice it, although considering where I learned it, I doubt that it is drawing room Russian.”

  I touched his back.

  He put the letters back on the desk. “Did you find anything?”

  “None of Ruth’s clothes are missing.”

  As we walked out into the hall to the door, I noticed that the green blanket was gone. I hoped that Ruth had it with her, and that she was still alive.

  We crossed into the rear courtyard where Anton had played football and marbles and into the adjoining building, through it to the street behind. We walked a few blocks before circling back around to Alexanderplatz subway station. I bought the tickets, because Lars kept his gun drawn but hidden by his coat until we were on the train.

  Once the subway doors closed, he stuck his gun into his waistband, put his hand on the small of my back, and directed me to a seat. The subway car was too full to talk, and I had nothing to say.

  The killer had taken Ruth.

  We had to find her. Lars slipped an arm across my shoulders. I dropped my head against him. He stroked my hair gently, over and over. He knew how worried and terrified I felt.

  We arrived at the Friedrichstadt station early. He led us to an empty corner and leaned me up against the wall as if to kiss me.

  “Spatz?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” I said. “Some woman murdered Paul and took Ruth. Who knows where Ruth is, and what they have done to her.”

  He slid his arms around my waist and bent his head close to mine. “We’ll find her, if we can.”

  “The only woman I can think that he might have let in so late is Maria,” I said. “But I cannot see why she would kill Paul, or take Ruth.”

  “Are you going to meet her?” He asked the question, but his taut expression said that he knew the answer.

  “At seven,” I said. “At the Palast am Zoo.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “If she killed him, I want to know,” I said. “If she did not, she deserves to know that he did not commit suicide. That he did not choose to leave her.”

  “Impeccable at logic.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “Terrible at risk assessment.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “that works to your advantage.”

  “Not so frequently as you may think.”

  I glanced once around the bustling station. Everyone seemed to be going about their business and ignoring us. “I am meeting her.”

  “I expected nothing less.” He tucked my hair behind my ears. “If she plans to shoot you, her best chance is while you’re still on the street, so she can run afterwards. If she plans to knife you, however, she’s best going into the theater with you, so she can stab you in the dark and leave before the film is over.”

  “She would not have killed Paul,” I said. “And she will not kill me. She is vicious but cowardly.”

  “Be that as it may,” he said. “How about you get there early and go in? We will follow. I’ll sit in the row behind you. A few seats in. I want you on my left side, in case I need to use my gun.”

  A shiver of fear ran through me. “All right.”

  He pulled me closer. I put my arms around his neck.

  His lips almost touched mine when he spoke. “If I begged you not to go, would you change your mind?”

  My heart hammered so erratically that I had trouble concentrating on his words. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” He kissed me gently on the lips. “I never thought we would spend our wedding night like this.”

  “It is not our wedding night.” Propriety demanded that I move out of the circle of his arms before things became too heated in the subway station. I rested my head on his shoulder.

  He threaded his fingers through my hair, and I nestled deeper in his shoulder.

  “I put the ring on your finger this morning. Or have you forgotten?” he said.

  “I do not think that is legally binding—”

  “It’s binding in every way that counts.” He kissed me on the lips, and I forgot that I was frightened and sad and that we were in a public building. He pulled back and traced my lips with his fingertip. I smiled.

  Behind him, Anton and Herr Keller strode through the door. I slipped out from under Lars’s outstretched arm and hurried toward them.

  Relief flashed across Anton’s face, quickly replaced by a scowl. “Hello.”

  I thanked Herr Keller and promised to tell him what I found out about his granddaughter. I already lied, as I did not tell him what I had discovered at Paul’s apartment and my worries that Ruth was with his murderer. I did ask if he had taken Ruth’s birth certificate. He had not.

  Lars led us aboveground. Rain drizzled, and Lars opened an umbrella. He and I crowded under it, but Anton stayed outside its circle, shoulders stiff with fury because I had left him with Herr Keller.

  “The lorry is a few blocks up,” Lars said. “On the way, Anton, please give me a report on your mission.”

  “Mission?” Anton’s delicate eyebrows lowered suspiciously.

  “Your mother sent you there to see if Herr and Frau Keller would make good parents for Ruth. What is your assessment?”

  Anton’s shoulders relaxed. I could see him thinking that he had not been sent away. He had been sent on a mission. Lars had defused the situation.

  “I liked them.” Anton moved under the umbrella. “They were very sad, but they were kind to me. Frau Keller made me a special dinner, and they had pictures of Ruth up on the walls.”

  “That sounds promising,” Lars said. “Thank you for the report.”

  Anton smiled at Lars. “What’s the next mission?”

  “Protection.” Lars explained how things would work at the theater. Anton listened earnestly. Watching them together, I understood why Lars was a good leader. Anton would follow him anywhere. Even with his ring on my finger, would I? I had never followed a man before.

  I bade them farewell and took the stairs down to the Zoologischer Garten subway station. I threaded through the crowd, taking the exit near the movie theater. Dark came early to Berlin in November. Neon tubes outlining the theater’s arches and roofline glowed eerily through the evening mist.

  The clouds had finally released their store of rain, so I walked across shiny wet cobblestones to queue up. Lars and Anton arrived and queued up, too. Four people were in line between us.

  I pretended that I did not notice them as I scanned the film start times to find the film starting closest to seven. Thirteen Chairs with Heinz Rühmann. How delightful. The film must be based on the similarly titled 1928 novel by the Russian writing team Ilf and Petrov. Apparently the Nazi regime had not noticed that Ilf was Jewish. That thought cheered me. I spoke a little loudly when I purchased my tickets, so that Lars would know what movie I saw.

  I let the usher lead me to an end seat near the back. I did not see M
aria, but I did not expect to. I expected her to arrive late and sit next to me as if by accident. Fortunately, the show had been out for weeks. The half-empty theater would make it easier for us to speak unobserved.

  Lars and Anton arrived and sat behind and to my right, as Lars had said they would. They were so close that I could hear their conversation. I heard Anton list off the Heinz Rühmann films he had seen. Far more than I had taken him to. Did he go with Boris and Nanette, or was he sneaking out with schoolmates?

  While I wondered about that, I studied other patrons. A young couple in the back looked eager for the lights to go down so that they could turn their attention properly to each other. I once sat back there myself with Walter and did not begrudge them. Other seats held more sedate couples and solitary older women like me. Heinz Rühmann, with his cleft chin and ready smile, was a German cinema idol. I had met him in all his charismatic glory once, briefly, when my friend Sarah worked on hats for his film Those Three from the Gas Station. A Jew, she certainly would not be allowed to work on films at UFA today. I caressed the dress I wore, one of hers, and felt grateful that my borrowed papers had got her safely to New York.

  A propaganda reel flickered to life. Preparations were in place for a fifteen-year celebration of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch tomorrow, on November 9. Hitler had taken only fifteen years to go from Stadelheim Prison to the Reichstag. I had certainly accomplished nothing so grand in the last fifteen years.

  Finally the film started. I settled in to watch. Heinz Rühmann’s expressive face filled with dismay when he learned that his rich aunt had left him only thirteen chairs in her will. Be careful, Heinz, I told him. Everyone conceals something. Heinz did not listen to me and sold those thirteen chairs anyway.

  I smelled rain and cigarette smoke. Maria.

  “Excuse me.” She stepped on my feet and took the seat next to mine. She was now between Lars and me. Perfect.

  24

  “Hello,” I whispered to Maria. I glanced at her small leather purse. Too little to hold anything but a small gun or a knife. I felt better.

  She took off her hat and raincoat, showering me with cold raindrops. She still wore her dark hair in a bob, and it still did nothing for her severe schoolmistress’s face.