Entwined (47 page)

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Grimaldi was looking for Ruda, he'd not seen her since breakfast. She was late for feeding time; since she always fed the cats herself, he was worried that something had happened to her. When he saw the inspector making his way around the puddles, he hurried toward him. "Is something wrong?"

"No, no, I was just coming to see you, or your wife. I have the bill for Kellerman's funeral costs; you recall she said she would pay it."

Grimaldi shrugged. "I don't know where she is, but come on inside."

Torsen stepped into the trailer, wiping his feet on the grid, noticing the boots weren't there. He sat on the bench turning his cap around and around, as Grimaldi opened the rabbi's envelope. He examined the bill briefly, and delved into his pockets. "I'll pay you—cash all right?"

The inspector nodded. Grimaldi counted the notes, folded them, and handed them over. "Not much for a life, huh?"

Torsen opened his top pocket, asked if Grimaldi required a receipt. He shook his head, and then crossed to the window, lifting up the blind. "This isn't like her, she's never late for feeding, I wonder where the hell she has gone."

Torsen tried to sound nonchalant, but he flushed. "Perhaps she went to Mama Magda's funeral."

Grimaldi stared. "Who the hell is she?"

Torsen explained, embarrassed at his attempt to be a sly investigator. "She was a famous West Berlin madam; she died last night at her club, Mama's…I believe your wife was there."

"What are you talking about?"

"She was at Mama Magda's—I was told about nine, nine-thirty."

"Bullshit! She was in the ring, we had a dress rehearsal. You got the wrong girl!"

Torsen pointed to the newspaper on the table. "It was in the papers this morning, Mama Magda…photograph."

Grimaldi snatched the paper and opened it. "I've never heard of her, and why do you think Ruda was there?"

Grimaldi looked at the paper, but the article had been cut out. He said nothing, tossed the paper back onto the table.

Torsen was extremely nervous, the big man scared the life out of him. "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? I'm sorry to inconvenience you."

Grimaldi sniffed, and rubbed his nose. "She's never late!"

"Do you have a leather trilby, or a similar hat—a shiny black hat?"

Grimaldi turned. "Do I have a what?"

Torsen stuttered slightly as he repeated his question. Grimaldi shook his head. "No, I never wear a hat."

"Does your wife?"

"What? Wear a hat? No, no."

Torsen explained why he had asked, that the suspect in the Kellerman murder wore a shiny black hat. Possibly it was Keller-man's own hat, worn as a disguise.

Grimaldi sat on the opposite bunk, his legs so long they almost touched Torsen's feet. "So you think I had something to do with Kellerman's death? Is that why you're here?"

Torsen swallowed, wished he'd brought someone with him. "I am just following a line of inquiry…an unidentified man was seen leaving Kellerman's hotel."

Grimaldi nodded, his dark eyes boring into Torsen. "So why do you want to know if Ruda's got a trilby?"

Torsen tugged at his tie. "Our witness could be mistaken. Perhaps the person leaving, er, the man with the hat, was in fact a woman."

Grimaldi leaned forward and reached out to hold Torsen's knee, His huge hand covered the entire knee, and he gripped tightly.

"You suspect Ruda? I told you, she was here with me all night, I told you that, and I don't like these insinuations."

Torsen waited until Grimaldi released his kneecap.

"We also have a good impression of a boot, or the heel of a boot. Would it be possible for me to…to check the…if I could look at your boots, and your wife's boots?"

Grimaldi stood up, towering above Torsen. "The only boot you will see is mine—as it kicks your ass out of my trailer, understand? Get out!
Out! Fuck off out of here!
"

Torsen stood up, closed his notebook and stuffed it into his pocket. "I just need to check your boots for elimination purposes. If I am required to return with a warrant, then I shall do so."

Grimaldi loomed closer, his voice quiet. "Get out…come back with your warrant and you'll fucking eat it—get out."

Torsen slipped down the steps as the door slammed shut so fast behind him it pushed him forward. He returned to his patrol car, his legs like jelly. Next time he would get a warrant, but he'd send Rieckert in for the boots.

♦ ♦ ♦

Grimaldi went over to the meat trailer. All the trays were ready, Mike and the other young hands were finishing the preparation of the meat. Grimaldi leaned against the chopping board. "She still not shown up?"

Mike said nobody had seen her, but the cats were getting hungry. Grimaldi glanced at his watch, said to leave it another half hour. Then he looked at Mike.

"Eh, where did you say you put my hat?"

Mike chopped away, not looking up. "Mrs. Grimaldi took it from me, I dunno know where it is."

Grimaldi stood at the open door, cracked his knuckles. "You ever meet that little dwarf, the one that got murdered?"

Mike flushed slightly, because he knew that Mrs. Grimaldi had been married to that dwarf. He covered his embarrassment by carrying the trays out to the waiting trolley. "No, I never saw him."

"I think I did," said another voice.

Mike jumped down, not hearing the other young hand who was running water into buckets. Grimaldi turned, easing the door half closed.

"What did you say?"

The boy turned off the taps. "Day we arrived, I think it was him, I dunno, but he came in here, well, came to the steps, asked for Ruda, she was out by the cages."

Grimaldi leaned on the chopping table. "You told anyone this?"

The boy started to fill another bucket. "Nope, nobody's asked me!" He turned back to Grimaldi.

"I saw him later talking to Ruda, so I presumed she must have said he was hanging around here. Have they caught the bloke that did it, then?"

Grimaldi rubbed the boy's shoulder with his hand. "Yeah, they got the bloke, so don't open your mouth, we don't want those fuckers nosing around here any more than they need to…okay?"

The boy nodded, and Grimaldi went out. "I'll see if I can find that bloody woman."

Grimaldi walked through the alley between the cages, and then he stopped. She had lied, Kellerman had not only been to the circus, but he had talked to her! He shrugged it off; maybe she just didn't want anyone to know she had been married to him. He thought about the hat, and then his heart began to pound. He remembered seeing her in the meat trailer, the night of Kellerman's murder…she had been covered in blood, it was all over her shirt and trousers. Shit! He remembered asking why she wasn't wearing one of the rubber aprons…He stopped again, dear God, he had been so drunk that night he wouldn't have known if she was in the trailer or not!

Grimaldi ran back, slammed the door behind him, and went into Ruda's bedroom. He opened the wardrobe, searching for the shirt, trying to remember what clothes she had worn that night, but gave up, he couldn't remember. He rubbed his head. What did that little prick want to check their boots for?

The sound was half moan, half sob, but low, quiet, it unnerved him. He looked around, heard it again. He inched open the small shower door; she was naked, curled up in the corner of the shower, her arms covering her head, as if she were hiding or burying herself.

"Oh, sweetheart…baby."

He had to pry her arms away from her head, her face was stricken, terrified. She whispered, "No…please…no more, please no more…red, blue, red, red, red…blue, green…"

Grimaldi didn't know what to do, she didn't seem to recognize him, see him. Her voice was like a child's. He couldn't understand what she was saying. Some sort of list of colors, the plinths? Then he heard distinctly:

''My sister, I want my sister, my sister, please…no more…"

He took a big bath towel, gently wrapped it around her, talked quietly, softly, but she refused to move. He tucked the towel around her and closed the door. The cats needed to eat if there was to be a show, their routine had to be maintained. He went back to the trolley, and for the first time in years he fed the cats. They were very suspicious, snarling and swiping at him, but they were hungry and the food was their priority…except for Mamon.

If Grimaldi even went near the bars, Mamon went crazy. He couldn't get within arm's length of the cage to throw in the meat. Grimaldi swore and cursed him, then got a pitchfork and shoved the meat through the bars. Mamon clawed at the fork, his jaws opened in a rage of growls and he lashed out with his paws. He didn't want the meat, he never even went near it, but prowled up and down, up and down, until Grimaldi gave up trying and returned to the trailer.

She was in exactly the same position, curled up, hiding now beneath the bath towel. He knelt down, talked to her, keeping his voice low, encouraging her to come out. He was talking to her as if she were one of the cats. "Come on out, that's a good girl, good girl, give me your hand…I'm not going to hurt you, that's a good girl."

Slowly, inch by inch she moved toward him, crawling, retracting, and he kept on talking, until she allowed him to put his arms around her. Then he carried her like a baby to the bed, held her in his arms and began to rock her gently backward and forward.

"It's all right, I'm here…everything's all right, I'm here."

He wanted to weep, he had never seen her like this.

"Sister, I want my sssssister…"

She felt heavy in his arms as he continued to rock her, and then he eased the towel from her face; she was sleeping. He was afraid to put her down in case he woke her; he held her as he would the child he had always wanted, sat with her in his arms, and said it over and over.

"I love you, I love you, love you…"

Then he saw the box on her dressing table, saw beneath the old ribbon the newspaper clipping, "Angel of Death," and he whispered, "Dear God, what did they do to you? What did they do to you, my baby?"

Helen arrived at Dr. Franks's apartment just as he was on his way out to see a patient. Helen asked if he could direct her to a library. He gave her a quizzical look when she told him what books she wanted to find. "My housekeeper will make you comfortable and bring you some coffee," he said. "I think you will find what you want in my library."

Helen was shown into Franks's living room. The comfortably furnished room was dominated by bookshelves. Helen moved slowly along the shelves, neatly alphabetized, until she found what she had been looking for.

Helen turned the pages slowly, sickened by what she read. At Birkenau Josef Mengele had used shortwave rays in an experiment to deter the rapidity with which cancer cells reproduced. Plates were placed on the female victims' abdomens and backs. The electricity was directed toward the ovaries, the doses were huge and the victims were seriously burned. Cancer invariably developed and subsequently the victims were sent to the gas chamber. The women suffered unspeakable agony as the shortwaves penetrated the lower abdomen. The bellies of the women and female children were then cut open, the uterus and ovaries removed to observe the lesions. Then the victims were left, with no medication or pain relief, to determine how long they would stay alive.

Mengele paid particular attention to women and young girls. His experiments purported to discover the fastest means of mass sterilization, which he would then describe in an impressive report he planned to send back to Berlin. His experiments had no apparent order, no rules. So-called gynecologists used an electrical apparatus to inject a thick whitish liquid into the victims' genital organs, causing terrible burning sensations. This injection was repeated every four weeks, and was followed each time by a radioscopy.

Sometimes the victims, selected women and young female children, were injected in the chest. The physician injected 5cc of a serum—no one has ever discovered what it contained—at the rate of two to nine injections per session. The injections caused swellings the size of a grown man's fist. Certain inmates received hundreds of these "inoculations." Children were often injected in the gums, because Mengele wanted to speed up the reaction.

The Germans experimented with sterilization in other camps too. Once victorious, they could ensure that they would never again be threatened by a new generation of an inferior race.

Typhoid swept through the camp, then malaria. When Mengele realized Greeks and Italians were the carriers, he sent thousands of them to the gas chambers on the pretext of curbing the disease.

Mengele's experiments were of no scientific value, his actions were replete with contradictions. For instance, he would take every precaution during childbirth, only to send mother and newborn infant to the gas chamber.

Helen had to stop reading, she simply could not take in any more. She checked her watch, and began to gather the books. One book she had not had time to read was a slim volume, written by an Auschwitz survivor; it chronicled the work and brutality of Josef Mengele, and Helen was about to put it back on the shelf when she saw the words "Angel of Death." The nickname had been given to Mengele, she read, because he was always charming, smiling as he sent thousands to their deaths. Mengele wore white gloves, and his uniform was specially designed by expert tailors. He was exceptionally handsome, dark-eyed with high cheekbones.

She stared at his photograph. It was very unnerving; Mengele had Louis's haughty stare. But Mengele was a monster with no morals, no feelings; he sent babies to their death as easily as he sent men, women, even pregnant women. No one escaped him, except…twins, identical twins.

Helen looked at her watch again, she could not stop reading. Mengele had one passion, the author wrote, an experiment that he pursued in the privacy of his deathly hospital. Telepathy. He wanted to discover the powers of human telepathy, and he focused his experimentation on identical twins. Twins of both genders were taken from their families and placed in a camp hut. They were well fed and, according to the author, treated kindly.