got on, including a man wearing a leather overcoat and carrying a briefcase. He sat two rows behind Willi. The man had the Nazi haircut. He fit the description they had from Erna Raczynski – mid-thirties, regular features, the right height, etcetera. If only it were that easy, thought Willi.

At the next station, two uniformed policemen got on. They walked down the aisle checking everyone’s identification card. ‘Guten Abend,’ they said. ‘Your ID, please.’ They looked at Karl Juncker’s card, looked at Willi’s face, said thank you, and moved on. At the next stop they got off and moved to the second car.

By the time the streetcar reached the end of the line, Willi and the man in the leather coat were the only two passengers left. Both got off the train. The man gave Willi a nervous look before walking off briskly toward home.

Willi waited for the next tram to go back into town. This time he got off at Karolinenplatz and transferred to a different line – three women had been murdered along this line. By now it was after midnight and both cars were sparsely populated. Two women sat together in the front seat of the first car opposite the driver, and three men were scattered about. Willi sat alone in the last car. After four stops, one woman got off. She was young, dark haired and not pretty, not the killer’s type, he thought. A man followed her off the train. The woman walked off, presumably going home, and the man watched her go, then he turned around and walked in the opposite direction. Willi took the train several more stops and was about to get off, when two policemen got on. ‘Your ID, please,’ said one. Once again, Willi gave the policeman his card.

‘Where are you going … Herr Juncker?’ said the policeman. He studied the ID.

‘Visiting someone,’ Willi answered.

‘Visiting someone?’ said the policeman. ‘At this hour?’

‘You know,’ said Willi, and smiled. ‘A certain someone.’

‘Ah,’ said the policeman. He smiled back at Willi and gave the ID back. ‘Well, have a good night.’

‘And you too,’ said Willi. ‘Stay warm.’ He got off the streetcar and waved at the policemen as the streetcar pulled away.

It was after two when Lola finished tallying the books for the night. She checked with her assistant to be sure everything had been taken care of. She pulled on her boots, buttoned her coat, and wrapped the mohair shawl around her neck. The snow had stopped falling. The night was clear and cold. The ground was covered with a glistening white blanket. Lola took a deep breath of the clean night air, pulled her collar tight around her neck, and set off for home.

The city was even quieter than it usually was this late. Every footstep, the noise of every passing car or bus was muffled by the snow. The stores that weren’t shuttered cast light onto the white sidewalks. Lola stopped at a shop window to admire a dress she hadn’t seen before. The shop changed its display once a week and today, Thursday, was the day. The dress was emerald green, a color that went well with her red hair.

Willi got to Lola’s at about two thirty. She wasn’t home yet, so he made a pot of tea and sat down to wait for her. When she wasn’t back by three, he decided to walk out and meet her. He was sure she was fine. She was often late on Thursdays. Thursdays were always busy. There was no reason to worry. Lola’s route didn’t take her anywhere near the streetcar lines in question.

And yet, what difference did any of that make? What good was a theory? When a murderer is at large, all your most convincing theories about how a murder happens, why it happens, who is doing it, about the orderliness and predictability of the crime, seem like nothing so much as wishful thinking. Willi had quickened his steps and was nearly running when he finally saw her coming toward him.

‘What a nice surprise,’ she said when they met. He kissed her a little more vehemently than usual. ‘I saw a dress on the way home,’ she said. ‘I love it. I’m going to stop tomorrow afternoon and try it on.’

‘I can’t wait to see it,’ said Willi.

Degenerate Art

In the House of German Art, Joseph Goebbels and his Propaganda Ministry mounted Die Große Deutsche Kunstaustellung, the Great German Art Exhibition, a spectacular show of the pompous and heroic painting and sculpture favored by Hitler. There were grandiose bucolic landscapes and portraits of blond mothers clutching children lovingly to their ample bosoms. There were statues of gigantic men with strong jaws and bulging muscles straining forward on their way to save the world. The Führer swept through the exhibition with his entourage following behind, stopping by his favorites and holding forth to his bedazzled acolytes on the works’ aesthetic superiority.

Goebbels had also mounted a second show, this one called Entartete Kunst – Degenerate Art – meant to demonstrate to Germans yet again the utter depravity and sickness of modern culture and art, and thereby the moral bankruptcy of the recently departed Weimar Republic. This exhibition had six hundred and fifty paintings and sculptures, which had been removed from Germany’s great museums, jammed together in small, badly lit galleries. The works had disparaging labels attached decrying the ‘sick Hebraic view that distorts and devalues life’ or ‘the failure of the so-called artist to manage even the most rudimentary representational skills.’ Hitler went through this exhibition too, but as quickly as he could, scowling and snarling and denouncing its appalling horrors.

The crowds that followed, once Hitler had left, were enormous, attracted by the chance to see, one last time perhaps, masterpieces by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Renoir, Duchamp. The great German Expressionists were there too – Ludwig Kirchner, Max Ernst, Georg Grosz, Otto Dix, Emil Nolde, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Barlach. The crowds remained enormous until November 30, the

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