“Really?” Reles chuckled. “Must be his birthday or something. How about it, Gunther? Did you take a bath today?”
Krempel thought that was hilarious.
“Tell me, did you find my Chinese box yet? Or the girl who stole it?”
“The matter is in the hands of the police, sir. I’m sure they’re doing all they can to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.”
“That’s very reassuring. Tell me, Gunther, what kind of a cop were you, anyway, before you started peeping through hotel keyholes? You know, I’ll bet you were one of those cops who wear that stupid leather helmet with the flat top. Is that because all of you kraut cops have flat heads or because some of you do a little moonlighting carrying trays of fish at Friedrichshain Market?”
“I think it’s both,” said Krempel.
“You know, in the States some people call coppers ‘flatfoots’ because a lot of them have flat feet,” said Reles. “But I think I like ‘flatheads’ a whole lot better.”
“We aim to please, sir,” I said patiently. “Ladies. Gentlemen.” As I turned to leave, I even tipped my hat. It seemed more diplomatic than punching Max Reles on the nose and a lot less likely to leave me without a job. “Enjoy your evening, Fraulein Bauer.”
I strolled over behind the front desk where Franz Joseph, the concierge, was in conversation with Dajos Bela, the leader of the hotel orchestra. I checked my pigeonhole. I had two messages. One was from Emil Linthe informing me that his work was completed. The other message was from Otto Trettin, asking me to call him back, urgently. I picked up the phone and had the hotel operator connect me with the Alex and then with Otto, who often worked late, since he seldom worked early.
“So what’s the story in Danzig?” I asked.
“Never mind that now,” he said. “Remember that cop who got murdered? August Krichbaum?”
“Sure,” I said, making a fist and biting my knuckles, calmly.
“The witness is an ex-cop. Seems like he reckons the killer is an ex-cop, too. He’s been going through the police files and has got himself a short list of suspects.”
“I heard that.”
Otto paused for a moment. “You’re on the list, Bernie.”
“Me?” I said, as coolly as I was able. “How do you figure that?”
“Maybe you did it.”
“Maybe I did. On the other hand, maybe it’s a frame. Because I was a republican.”
“Maybe,” admitted Otto. “They’ve framed people for less.”
“How long is the list?”
“I hear just ten men.”
“I see. Well, thanks for the tip, Otto.”
“I thought you’d want to know.”
I lit a cigarette. “It happens I think I’ve got an alibi for when it happened. But I hardly want to use him. You see, it’s the fellow on the Jew Desk at the Gestapo. The one who tipped me off about my grandmother. If I mention him, they’ll want to know what I was doing at Gestapo House. And I might drop him in it.”
A simple lie often saves a lot of time-consuming truth. I hardly wanted to put sand in Otto’s eye bath, but I didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter.
“Then it’s fortunate you were with me at the time of Krichbaum’s murder,” said Otto. “Having a beer in the Zum. Remember?”
“Sure, I remember.”
“We talked about you helping me with a chapter in my new book. A case you once worked on. Gormann the Strangler. You’d think I know all about it, the number of times you’ve bored me with that story.”
“I’ll remember that. Thanks, Otto.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Trettin’s name and word still counted for something at the Alex. Half a sigh, anyway.
“By the way,” he added. “Your Jewish stenographer, Ilse Szrajbman, had the guest’s Chinese lacquer box, all right. She says she took it on an impulse because Reles behaved like a shit and refused to pay what he owed for her work.”
“Knowing Reles, I can easily believe that.” I tried to gather my trembling thoughts. “But why didn’t she speak to the hotel manager about it? Why didn’t she tell Herr Behlert?”
“She said it’s not so easy for a Jew to complain about things. Or about a man who is as well connected as this Max Reles. She told the Danzig KRIPO that she was afraid of him.”
“So afraid that she was prepared to steal from him?”
“Danzig is a long way from Berlin, Bernie. Besides, it was an impulse thing, like I said. And she regretted it.”
“The Danzig KRIPO is being unusually sensitive about this, Otto. Why?”
“As a favor to me, not the Jewess. A lot of these local cops want to come and work crime in the big city, you know that. I’m a somebody to these morons. Anyway, I got the box back. And to be frank, I can’t see what all the fuss was about. I’ve seen more obvious-looking antiques in Woolworth’s. What do you want me to do with it?”
“Perhaps you could drop it by the hotel sometime. I’d rather not come by the Alex, unless I’m asked to. Last time I was there, your old pal Liebermann von Sonnenberg collared me for a favor.”
“He told me.”
“Although from the sound of things, it’s me who might need to ask him for a favor.”
“It’s me you owe, not him, Bernie.”
“I’ll try to remember that. You know, Otto, there’s a lot more to this thing with Max Reles than some stenographer trying to get even with her boss. Just a few weeks ago that Chinese box was in a museum here in Berlin. Next thing, Reles has the box and it’s being used by him to bribe some Ami on their Olympic Committee with the full knowledge of the Ministry of the Interior.”
“Please bear in mind I have sensitive ears, Bernie. There are things I want to know. But there are just as many things I don’t want to know.”
I put the phone down and looked at Franz Joseph. His real name was Gustav, but with his bald head and muttonchop whiskers, the Adlon concierge bore a marked resemblance to the old Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, and was so nicknamed by almost everyone in the hotel.
“Hey, Franz Joseph. Did you get Herr Reles tickets for the opera tonight?”
“Reles?”
“The American in suite 114.”
“Yes. Alexander Kipnis is singing Gurnemanz in
“I imagine Kipnis has one of the least disagreeable voices to be heard in German right now.”
“They say Hitler doesn’t approve.”
“Where is this opera?”
“The German Opera House. On Bismarckstrasse.”
“Can you remember the seat numbers? Only, I need to find Herr Reles and give him a message.”
“The curtain goes up in an hour. He has a box on the grand tier, stage left.”
“You make that sound like a big deal, Franz.”
“It is. It’s the same box Hitler has when he goes to the opera.”
“But not tonight.”
“Obviously.”
I walked back into the entrance hall. Behlert was speaking to two men. I hadn’t ever seen them before, but I knew they were cops. For a start there was Behlert’s manner to identify them: he looked like he was speaking to two of the most interesting men in the world; and then there was theirs: they looked indifferent to almost everything he was saying, except the part about me. And I knew that much because Behlert pointed my way. Another reason I knew they were cops was their thick coats and their heavy boots and their body odor. During the winter, Berlin cops always dressed and smelled as if they were in the trenches. Backed by Behlert’s rolling eyeballs, they came toward me, flashing their warrant discs and sizing me up with narrowed eyes-almost as if they hoped I was going to make their day and run for it; that way they could have had a little fun trying to shoot me. I could hardly blame them. A lot of Berlin crime gets cleaned up that way.
“Bernhard Gunther?”
“Yes.”
“Inspectors Rust and Brandt, from the Alex.”
“Sure, I remember. You two were the detectives Liebermann von Sonnenberg assigned to investigate the death of Herr Rubusch, in 210, weren’t you? Say, what did he die of anyway? I never did find out.”
“Cerebral aneurysm,” said one.
“Aneurysm, eh? Never can tell with that kind of thing, can you? One minute you’re hopping around like a flea, and the next you’re lying on the floor of the trench looking up at the sky.”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions down at the Alex.”
“Sure.”
I followed them outside into the cold night air.
“Is that what this is about?”
“You’ll find out when we get to the Alex,” said Rust.
BISMARCKSTRASSE WAS STILL CALLED BISMARCKSTRASSE and ran all the way from the western tip of the Tiergarten to the eastern edge of the Grunewald. The German Opera House, formerly called the Municipal Opera House, was about halfway along the street, on the north side, and was comparatively recent in its design and construction. Not that I’d ever really noticed it much before. At the end of a working day I need something a little less bogus than the sight of a lot of very fat people pretending to be heroes and heroines. My idea of a musical evening is the Kempinski Waterland Chorus: a revue of buxom girls in short skirts playing ukuleles and singing vulgar songs about Bavarian goatherds.
I was hardly in the mood for anything that took itself as seriously as opera in German, not after a couple of uncomfortable hours spent at the Alex waiting to be asked questions about the cop I had killed, and then for them to find Otto Trettin-he was in the Zum-and have him corroborate my story. When finally they let me go I wondered if that was the end of it. But somehow I suspected it was not, with the result that I hardly felt like celebrating. All in all it had been quite an experience, which is often the lesson you get from life when you need it least.
In spite of that, I was still keen to see who Max Reles might be sharing a box with. And arriving at the opera in time for the interval, I bought a standing pass that afforded me an excellent view of the stage and, more important, the occupants of Hitler’s usual box on the grand tier. Before the lights went down I was even able to borrow a pair of opera glasses from a woman sitting close to where I was standing, so that I might take a closer look at them.
“He’s not in the house tonight,” said the woman observing where my attention was directed.
