A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  “What do you want?” Maria could make even a whisper sound angry.

  “Do you know where Ruth is?” I said.

  “Paul knows.” She fiddled with the hat in her lap. “We talked about it yesterday afternoon.”

  So, while I had been visiting Herr Silbert, Paul had been with Maria. Perhaps the glass with the lipstick on it was hers. “Where did you meet?”

  She snorted and watched Heinz discover that one of those thirteen chairs he had sold contained 100,000 Reichsmarks, thus starting the frantic search that would propel the film forward.

  “At a hotel,” she said finally. “And that’s all I’ll say.”

  If true, then it was not her lipstick. But if she had shot Paul, she would lie. “Where is Ruth?”

  “If Paul wants you to know,” she whispered. “I imagine he’ll tell you himself.”

  Once I told her that he was dead, I might get no more information from her. I shifted in my velvet chair. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lars reach into his coat. I forced myself to look more relaxed. “Did he also tell you that he tried suicide?”

  Her mouth dropped open slightly. He had not told her.

  I relayed a quick version of events, ending with bandaging his wrist, and omitting Lars entirely. I downplayed the seriousness of the wound, even as I remembered the blood everywhere.

  “Always there to comfort him, aren’t you?” she hissed.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know exactly what I mean.” She leaned so close that I felt her stale cigarette smoke breath on my cheek. “Even though you’ve moved to Switzerland and are living with some banker getting fat on chocolate, it’s always you.”

  “Paul and I have been over for two decades.” I moved away. “This is about his daughter.”

  “It is, is it?” Her sharp features contorted into a snarl. “When you told him that his wife was dead and his daughter was missing, whom did he turn to?”

  “The sofa, as I recall.” I struggled to keep my voice down. “You left as fast as you could make it out the door.”

  “You,” she whispered. “He turned to you. He’s barely seen you in seven years, but it was still you.”

  “Paul’s like a brother to me.”

  “A brother that you used to sleep with?”

  We had strayed far from my entreaties for Ruth. “Please, Maria, help find Ruth. I will be gone in a few days, and with any luck, you and I will never see each other again.”

  She pursed her too-thin lips. “That would be too much to hope for.”

  “This is more important than the enmity between you and me. This is about a lost little girl,” I said. “Ruth. Did Paul give you a name?”

  She scowled. “I don’t have a name. Paul said he would meet with the people who had Ruth after we parted, but he did not say who or where. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  If she did not know, how would I find out whom he had met with on the night of his death?

  We sat together and watched the film. I struggled to figure out a way to break the news of Paul’s death to her. I knew that I was stalling as I watched the audience laugh when Heinz found and destroyed all the chairs one by one, until he found the final chair in an orphanage. Maria glared at me as soon as Heinz entered the orphanage.

  “You picked the film,” I whispered.

  She snorted again.

  I watched Heinz, but spoke to Maria. The film was almost over. “One more thing—”

  “Good god, isn’t there always?”

  I had to tell her. If I did not, it might be weeks before she learned of Paul’s death. He would not have wanted that. “Maria—”

  “Where’s Paul?” she asked. “I went by his apartment this morning, but it was locked.”

  “Last night,” I began. “Paul—”

  “Did he take Ruth and leave?” She pinned me with her intense gaze.

  “I do not know if he found Ruth.” I turned in my seat to watch her face. “But—”

  “He left without me, didn’t he?” She sounded more hurt than angry.

  How could I tell her that he was dead, here, in the middle of the theater? But the darkness was probably the best place to tell her. Would I tell her that he had been murdered, or stick with the police’s suicide theory?

  My mind raced. She could view a copy of the police report deeming his death a suicide. If I told her otherwise, she might start an investigation. She, too, was a crime reporter. She had her own sources.

  She stopped pretending that she watched the screen. “Enough, Hannah. Tell me where he is.”

  “Last night I went to Paul’s,” I began. “And he—”

  “Stop.” She held up a palm like a traffic policeman. “I don’t want to hear the rest.”

  “All right,” I said.

  She turned her hat around and around in her lap. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “I am sorry, Maria.” I had no better words than that, as much as I wished for them.

  It hurt to see how hard she tried not to cry. In her own way, she had loved him. And I was likely the only one who knew that. Because their relationship had been a secret, she would have to conceal her grief from everyone. I wished that I had picked a better place to tell her. It felt spiteful to have told her here.

  “All that worry over a child that wasn’t even his.” She crushed her hat between her hands. I did not think it would be salvageable. “I never understood it.”

  “Not his? You are certain?” The man in the locket who looked so much like Ruth must be her father. Paul had said that he was no friend or relation.

  “He never told you, did he?” Her tone held satisfaction, even in grief. If she had been in Poland, I could have seen her killing Miriam. But she was with Paul in Germany. “A few years ago we had a fight, and she seduced him away from me. When she told him she was pregnant, he married her.”

  “Who was the father?” Did he have Ruth? Did he kill Paul? And perhaps Miriam as well? Lars moved his hand toward the front of his coat again. I forced myself to sit back.

  “Paul never knew. But he knew enough biology to know it wasn’t his when Miriam gave birth to a beautiful blond baby six months after their wedding instead of eight.” She spat the words out savagely. Poor Paul.

  Paul had raised someone else’s child with a faithless wife. I stopped blaming him for having an affair with Maria, even as I faulted his taste. “Why did he stay married to her?”

  “Are you so naïve?” She jeered. “She asked him to stay married to her, for the baby’s sake, and he did. He thought that his German passport might afford them some protection. That child that wasn’t his was always more important to him than me. The second one probably wasn’t his either, but he would have loved it more than he did me, too.”

  I saw the sorrow behind the anger. “Maria, I—”

  “Save your pity, Hannah,” she said, “and yourself. Get out while you still can.”

  She walked out of the theater, holding herself carefully erect, as if she expected, with every step, to fall. I let her go.

  Hearing the movie nuns describe how they would use the money to help the orphans made Heinz and his partner in crime realize that they could not in good conscience recover the money. The film ended with Heinz becoming rich off a hair tonic he had invented. A random event, but at least virtue was rewarded, and we had a happy ending all around. I should be so lucky.

  I waited for the lights to come up before leaving. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lars and Anton stand to follow me and kept my pace slow enough that they could keep me in sight. I walked through the lobby like a spinster who needed to get home to feed her cat—quick but not suspiciously so. I took the stairs down to the subway, meandered along the platform, and climbed out a different exit. I waited. I knew that Lars would find me. And he did.

  He looked at my face and drew me into a long embrace. “I’m sorry, Spatz.”

  I took a deep shuddering breath, and another. I would not cry here. I stepped
back and hugged Anton briefly.

  “Does she know where Ruth is?” Lars asked.

  “No. But she thinks Ruth might be with her real father.”

  Lars tightened his lips. “Do you have a name?”

  I shook my head. It made no sense. If her father had killed Paul last night and taken her, why was there lipstick on the glass? If he had Ruth, why bring her to Paul’s apartment only to kill him?

  “Let’s get to the warehouse,” Lars said. “I want to start working on the compartment as soon as I can.”

  I had no better suggestion, so I nodded.

  On our way to the warehouse, we drove through the Jewish quarter. Lars pulled over next to a man with a lorry heaped high with household goods. Chairs, boxes, bags, a bicycle, and more were tied in with rope. A FOR SALE sign was tacked to the side of the lorry. What could Lars possibly want to buy off him?

  Lars turned off the engine and went to talk to the man. We followed.

  “Is it all your stuff?” Anton pointed.

  “It is.” The man ran one hand down his curly white beard. “We’re leaving as soon as I have enough money together to buy gas.”

  Crowded in the front seat of the lorry, a woman in a black dress who looked young enough to be his daughter and three children stared glumly at us. I was reminded of the refugees in Zbąszyń. “You are not going to Poland, are you?”

  He folded his hands in front of him. “Holland.”

  Lars examined the man’s bald tires. “You won’t get far on those. Especially if it rains.”

  “So, buy something and pay me extra.” The man chuckled, then grew serious. “We’ll have to buy new tires when they blow out. We must be out of Germany before that diplomat in Paris dies.”

  “Do you expect reprisals?” I asked.

  “I’m a Jewish man living in Hitler’s Germany,” he said. “How could I expect otherwise?”

  Lars pointed to the back of the lorry. “How much for the mattress?”

  I smiled tiredly. He had promised to make sleeping in the warehouse more comfortable.

  The old man and Lars haggled about the price.

  “Just pay him what he asked,” I told Lars. He needed the money to get his family away.

  Lars looked ashamed. He drew out his wallet.

  I walked to the front of the car and peeked in at the woman and children. Anton stayed with Lars. The woman’s dark eyes studied me curiously.

  “Good evening,” I said.

  She answered in Dutch. I had a strong feeling that she also spoke German, but chose not to.

  “Safe journeys.” I hurried back to Lars and Anton.

  Anton untied the tarp so they could load the mattress. He clambered into the back of our lorry and surveyed the mattress’s position, tugging it back and forth as if it were a deadly serious job.

  Lars whispered in my ear. “I’m sorry that I have nothing better to provide for our wedding night.”

  I slipped my arms around his waist. “What could be better than a magical carriage to spirit us out of Germany?”

  “That it shall be. I promise that as soon as we get out of this god-forsaken mess, I will give you a proper wedding night.”

  “I only want a real husband.”

  He kissed me on the forehead. “Soon. Our simple life together will start soon.”

  I look skeptically into his dark eyes. “Do you think we will ever achieve simple?”

  He chuckled. “Simpler?”

  “Simpler would be wonderful.”

  He kissed me on the lips, and I suddenly did wish for a proper wedding night. Immediately.

  Someone coughed. I reluctantly drew back. Lars held me a second longer, then turned to pay the man for the mattress. Together we refastened the tarp and drove to the warehouse.

  The warehouse was dark and looked empty, but again Lars left us in the lorry while he scouted it out. This time he left me the Vis pistol.

  25

  “Clear.” Lars opened the door and helped us out. Cold from the concrete floor seeped through my shoes. The warehouse felt colder than last night.

  I sent Anton to brush his teeth while I crawled around the back of the lorry, making up the bed with the linens and blankets Lars had purchased when he bought the mattress. Lars climbed in next to me, expression impenetrable in the gloom.

  “Are your supplies here?” I spread a blanket across the old mattress.

  “They are. If all goes well, I can get the box built tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll ask Herr Populov to stay late and help me attach it to the lorry.”

  “I can help.”

  “You can’t,” he said. “It’s too heavy. I’ll need at least two other men.”

  I folded the blanket back for Anton.

  “Tell me what happened in the theater,” Lars said.

  I told him.

  “If her father does have her, he has a better claim to her than Paul’s parents.” He tucked the blanket under the mattress at the bottom, cracking his knuckle on the metal bed of the lorry.

  He held it up for me to kiss, and I did. His hand smelled like gun oil.

  “He does have a better claim on her, Spatz,” he repeated.

  I held his hand between mine. “Unless he murdered Paul.”

  “Unless that.” He sat next to me in the dark. “How do you plan to find him, as I imagine you do?”

  “Perhaps he is the doctor that Reuben told Anton about. Or that doctor knows who he is.” I knew I sounded crazy. I had no proof. “Maybe he killed Paul to get to Ruth. After all, he took her before.”

  “How do you know that?” Lars kept his voice gentle, but I heard the skepticism that underlay his words.

  “I will show you.”

  We crawled out from under the tarp that covered the back of the lorry. I took the scrap of white fabric from my satchel and gave it to Lars. “I found this on the hinge of the cupboard where Ruth was hiding. I think it is a piece of a lab coat.”

  He studied it. “Perhaps.”

  “If he wore a lab coat, he must have been an Aryan doctor,” I said.

  Anton walked up and perched on the tailgate. “Why?”

  “Because Jewish doctors in Germany are forbidden from practicing medicine. Some probably still do, but I doubt that they walk around in lab coats.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Lars said.

  “Probably very few Aryan doctors make house calls in the Jewish quarter.” Excited, I spoke more quickly. “And I have a friend, a doctor, who might know their names.”

  “The woman who stitched you up last time?” Lars asked.

  “Yes.” Frau Doktor Spiegel. I thought about visiting her tonight, but knew that she liked to go to bed early and asking her for favors in the middle of the night was a mistake.

  Anton and I bedded down in the lorry while Lars went to work building the compartment. Anton fell asleep easily, but sleep eluded me. I continued to worry about Ruth. Either she was with her father, or with the person who murdered Paul. Perhaps they were one and the same. And how to explain the lipstick on the glass?

  Eventually I fell into a restless sleep. I awoke with my heart pounding. I had dreamed of finding Paul dead. I heard men talking and quickly slipped into my dress and shoes. Not intending to be caught in a state of undress again, I had left them by the side of the mattress the night before. I crept to the end of the lorry and listened through the tarp.

  The voices spoke Russian. Lars and Herr Populov. Lars seemed to be asking for something. Herr Populov seemed reluctant to give it. Was he asking for help to install the compartment when the shop closed again tonight? Whatever it was, Lars pressed him, and he agreed.

  I roused Anton, and we went to breakfast at a different restaurant from the day before. Afterwards, we drove to the Jewish quarter. Lars decided to rest in the back of the lorry while Anton and I went to talk to Frau Doktor Spiegel. First I stopped by her favorite bakery to pick up rugelach. Their cinnamon scent filled the lorry’s cab.

  Anton fixed his best beseeching eyes
on me.

  “One,” I said. “The rest are for Herr and Frau Doktor Spiegel.”

  He fished out a pastry and took a satisfied bite.

  “You just had breakfast,” I pointed out.

  “I’m always hungry for treats.” He spoke around the rugelach.

  He was. I reparked the lorry just outside the Jewish quarter in a sunny spot. Hopefully that would warm up the back a bit for Lars. He had looked exhausted after breakfast, having traded last night’s sleep for finishing the compartment. We would install it after Herr Populov’s shop closed at six and be in Poland before bedtime. As much as I wanted to find Ruth, I dared not endanger Anton another moment.

  That left me only one day for sleuthing.

  I picked up the brown bag of rugelach. Together Anton and I walked into the Jewish quarter. Fresh graffiti jeered from the buildings. Boards covered more windows. I wondered if it was the result of everyday anti-Semitism or if it was in response to vom Rath’s shooting. If he died, I feared much worse than rocks through windows.

  We hurried through unnaturally quiet streets to Frau Doktor Spiegel’s ground-floor apartment. It looked the same as always. The lace curtains were perfectly aligned on either side of her front window. The building’s smooth stone front had been cleaned during the Olympics, and its tan surface was cheery in the morning light.

  Anton brushed crumbs off his shirt while I rang the bell. The blue and white sign near her door that advertised her services as a doctor was gone, but the brass door handle and bell were still brightly polished.

  Frau Doktor Spiegel answered the door herself. Her hair was now more gray than black, and her dark eyes looked tired. She had aged ten years in the last two.

  “Fräulein Vogel?” She scrutinized me. “You look better than last I saw you.”

  Last time I went to visit her, I had just been hit by a car and was bleeding from a head wound. “That is no great feat,” I said. “You, too, look well.”

  She harrumphed. “What a charming liar you make. Who is this?”

  I put my hand on Anton’s shoulder. “Anton. We brought breakfast.”

  She stepped out of the doorway. “Come inside, then. I just made tea.”

  I followed her back to her kitchen and set the rugelach on her long mahogany table. She handed me an absinthe green translucent glass plate, and I arranged the pastries on it.