“Schramma, Criminal Secretary Schramma. Look, friend, it doesn’t bother me if you’ve got yourself a new Fritz Schmidt. Lots of people have these days and for all kinds of smart reasons. Believe me, a cop who lives in this town needs two simultaneous telephone directories just to know who the hell he’s talking to. But if you were looking for a job, then maybe I can help you. For old times’ sake.”
“I don’t think you really mean to help me, do you? My impression is that you’re trying to shake me down in the hope that something might fall from my pockets. But I’m a man with two jobs, which means I’m broke, see? That should be obvious. And any apples left on my branches are probably half-eaten or rotten by now.”
Schramma grinned sheepishly. “Knowledge is power, right? I don’t know who said that but I bet it was a German.”
I didn’t contradict him. Nor did he see the irony in his last remark.
“Look, what the hell do you care who I am? I’m so down on my luck I have casinos offering me a job to come and jinx their high rollers. I tell you again, I’m nobody, you big ape. You’re wasting your time. There are blackboard monitors in school classrooms who are more important than me.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I can promise you this. As soon as I figure out who you really are, Ganz, you’re mine. Like you, I have to do one or two other jobs just to make ends meet. Security work. Private investigations. Most of the work is tedious and time-consuming but sometimes it’s also dangerous. Which means I can use an ex-copper like you in all sorts of ways I’m quite sure you can easily imagine.”
I could see that was true. I wasn’t sure what he had in mind but I’d intimidated enough lowlifes as a policeman in Berlin myself to know that none of this was likely to be to my own advantage.
“And don’t even think of disappearing. If you do that I’ll just have to name Christof Ganz as a suspect in some old case that nobody gives a crap about. You know I can make you fit all kinds of descriptions. Probably done that shit yourself.”
I flicked my cigarette butt at the smooth green ass of the angel who was looking out for the soul of the Grand Duke and gave an exasperated sigh, which sounded a lot less exasperated than I was actually feeling.
“Go ahead and do your worst, copper. But I’m leaving now. I’m late for an appointment with my favorite barman.”
It was all a bluff, of course. I might have been possessed of a poker face but I had nothing in my hand.
FOUR
–
I’d finished work at the hospital. I went to the washroom beside the mortuary to clean up but while I was there I examined my face without much enthusiasm. What I had against it was its air of disappointment and its lived-in look, the shifty red eyes and furtive expression, as if it was always expecting the tap on the shoulder that might usher its shy owner to a car and then a prison cell for the next ten years.
I went out the main entrance and walked between two concrete pillars with snakes wrapped around outsized censers on the top; they were much too high up to ask what they were doing there, but I was dimly aware that the ancient Greeks had regarded snakes as sacred, their venom as remedial, and maybe their skin shedding as symbolic of rebirth and renewal, which as an idea certainly worked for me. It might have been early morning but there were still one or two real snakes around and one of them was sitting in a newish BMW in front of the hospital. As I came out the hospital door, he leaned across the passenger seat and, with a cigar still in his face, shouted through the open passenger window.
“Gunther. Bernhard Gunther. As I live and breathe. I was just visiting an old friend in the hospital, and now you turn up. How are you, Gunther? How many years has it been since we saw each other last? Twenty? Twenty-five? I thought you were dead.”
I stopped on the sidewalk and looked inside, debating my choices and discovering what was obvious, which was that I really didn’t have any. Schramma was shouting so that other passersby could hear him and make me feel all the more uncomfortable. He was smiling gleefully while he did it, too, like a man who’d come to collect on a bet he’d won and I’d lost. If I’d had a gun I would probably have shot him or maybe myself. I used to be afraid of dying but now, on the whole, I find I’m looking forward to it, to getting far away from Bernie Gunther and everything to do with him, from his tangled history and uneasy way of thinking, from his inability to adjust to this modern world; but most of all I’m looking forward to getting away from all the people who knew him, or who claim to have known him, like Criminal Secretary Schramma. I’ve tried being someone else several times but who I am always comes back to kick me in the teeth.
“I told you I’d find out who you are. Hey, come on. Don’t be such a sore loser. You don’t know it yet, but I’m here to do you a favor, Gunther. Seriously. You’ll thank me for what I’m going to tell you. So hurry up and get in the car before someone realizes that you’re not who you say you are.
