If the Dead Rise Not (27 page)

Halfway up the stairs we passed a woman who was on her way down. There was a bicycle wheel in her hand and a loaf of bread under her arm. A few steps behind her was a boy of about ten or eleven wearing the uniform of the Hitler Youth. The woman smiled and nodded a little bow in Noreen’s direction or, as seemed more likely, at the sable coat she was wearing. This prompted Noreen to ask if we were on the right flight of stairs for Herr Deutsch. The woman with the bicycle wheel answered respectfully that it was, and we carried on up, stepping carefully around a second woman who was on her knees, scrubbing the stairs with a heavy brush and something noxious in a bucket. She had heard us ask about Joey Deutsch, and as we moved past, she said, “Tell that Jew it’s his turn to clean the stairs.”

“Tell him yourself,” said Noreen.

“I did,” said the woman. “Just now. But he paid no notice. Didn’t even come to the door. Which is why I’m doing it myself.”

“Perhaps he’s not in,” said Noreen.

“Oh, he’s in there, all right. He must be. I saw him go up there a while ago and I haven’t seen him come down. Besides, his door is open.” She went at the steps with the brush for several seconds. “I expect he’s avoiding me.”

“Does he normally leave his front door open?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.

“What? Around here? Are you joking? But I think he must be expecting someone. You, perhaps, if your name is Gunther. There’s a note stuck on the door.”

We quickly went up the last two flights of stairs and stopped in front of a door once painted scarlet but now hardly painted at all unless you counted the yellow star and the words JEWS OUT with which someone had thoughtfully defaced it. There was a blue envelope tacked onto the door frame. It was addressed to me. And the door was open just as the woman cleaning the stairs had said. I put the envelope in my pocket and, taking out Erich Goerz’s pistol, steered Noreen behind me.

“There’s something not right here,” I said, and pushed open the door.

As we went into the little apartment, Noreen reached up and touched a small brass plate on the door frame. “The mezuzah,” she said. “It’s a passage from the Torah. Most Jewish homes have one.”

I worked the slide on the little automatic and stepped into the small hallway. The apartment comprised two largish rooms. To the left was a living room that was a shrine to boxing and one boxer in particular: Isaac Deutsch. In a glass cabinet were some ten or fifteen empty wooden trophy stands and several photographs of Joey and Isaac. I imagined the trophies had been pawned a long time ago. The walls were papered with boxing posters, and piles of fight magazines were heaped around the room. On a table were a very stale loaf of bread and a fruit bowl containing a couple of blackened bananas that were now a world’s fair of tiny flies. A pair of ancient-looking boxing gloves hung from a nail on the back of the door, and a selection of rusting weights lay next to a bar that was leaning against a wall. Above it was a length of rope from which were hanging a shirt and a broken umbrella. There were a disemboweled armchair and, behind it, a full-length mirror with a crack in the glass. Everything else was just junk.

“Herr Deutsch?” My voice sounded tight in my chest, like I had a cuckoo nesting between my two lungs. “It’s Gunther. Are you home?”

We went back through the hallway and into the bedroom, where the curtains were drawn. There was a strong smell of carbolic soap and disinfectant. Or so I thought, anyway. A big brass bed stood opposite a wardrobe the size of a small Swiss bank vault.

“Joey? Is that you?”

In the curtained gloom I saw the outline of a figure on the bed and felt my hair lift the back of my hat. You spend ten years as a cop, sometimes you know what you’re going to see before you see it. And you know that it’s not everyone who can look it straight in the eye.

“Noreen,” I said. “I think Joey’s killed himself. We’ll only find out for sure when I draw the curtains and read that note. Maybe you’re the kind of writer who feels she needs to see everything. Who thinks she has a duty to report everything, unflinchingly. I don’t know. But it’s my opinion that you need to brace yourself or leave the room. I’ve seen enough bodies in my time to know that it’s never—”

“I’ve seen a dead body before, Bernie. I told you about that lynching in Georgia. And my father, he killed himself, with a shotgun. You don’t forget that in a hurry, I can tell you.”

Reflecting that it was interesting how quickly my concern to spare her feelings turned to something like sadism, I yanked the curtains open with no more argument. She wanted to play at being Turgenev, it was all right with me.

Joey Deutsch lay across his bed, still wearing the same clothes I had seen him in earlier. He was half twisted up off the mattress, as if some of the springs had burst out of the material under the small of his back. He was clean-shaven as before—only now it looked as if he were wearing a brown mustache and a small beard. These were corrosive burns and the result of whatever he had swallowed to poison himself. A bottle lay on the floor where he had dropped it, and next to this was a pool of bloody vomit. I picked the bottle up carefully and sniffed at the open neck.

“Lye,” I told her, but she had already turned away and was leaving the room. I followed her into the hallway. “He drank lye. Jesus. What a way to kill yourself.”

Noreen had pressed her face into a corner of the entrance hall like a disobedient child. Her arms were folded defensively across her chest and her eyes were closed. I lit a couple of cigarettes, tapped her on the elbow, and gave her one. I didn’t say anything. Whatever I might have said would have sounded like “I told you so.”

Still smoking, I went back into the living room. On top of a pile of fight magazines was a small leather writing folder. Inside were some envelopes and notepaper that matched the note addressed to me. So did the ink in the Pelikan he’d replaced in the little cylindrical leather sleeve. There was nothing that made me suspect anyone had forced him to write the note. The writing was neat and unhurried. I’d had love letters that were much less legible, although not for a long time. I read it carefully, as if Joey Deutsch had meant something to me. It seemed like the least I could do for a dead man. Then I read it again.

“What does it say?” Noreen was standing in the doorway. In her hand was a handkerchief, and in her eyes were some tears.

I held the note out to her. “Here.” I watched her read it, wondering what was going through her mind. If she actually felt anything for the poor guy who’d just killed himself, or if she was just relieved to have found an end for her story and a good excuse to go home. If that sounds cynical, maybe it was, but the truth was that her leaving Berlin was all I could think about now because, for the first time, I realized I was in love with her. And when you’re in love with someone you think might be about to leave you, it’s easier to be cynical, just to protect yourself from the pain you know is coming.

She offered the note back.

“Why don’t you keep it,” I said. “Although he never met you, I think he really meant you to have it. For your newspaper article. I kind of sold him on the idea that your piece could be a kind of memorial to Isaac.”

“It will be, I think. Why not?” She took the letter. “But what about the police? Won’t they need this? It’s evidence, isn’t it?”

“What do they care?” I shrugged. “Maybe you’ve forgotten how anxious they were to find out what happened to Isaac. All the same, perhaps we ought to get out of here before we have to wait around and answer questions we might not want to answer. Like how come I’ve got a gun without a license, and why I’ve got the mark of a dog leash across my face.”

“The neighbors,” she said. “That woman on the stairs. Suppose they tell the police about us. The note. She knows your name.”

“I’ll square her on the way out. Ten marks buys a lot of silence in this part of Berlin. Besides, you saw the door. These neighbors don’t exactly strike me as very neighborly. It’s my impression that they’ll be glad to see Joey dead and out of this building. And what do you think the polenta would do with a note like that? Print it in the newspaper? I don’t think so. Most likely they’ll destroy it. No, it’s best you keep it, Noreen. For Joey’s sake. And Isaac’s, too.”

“I guess you’re right, Gunther. But I wish you weren’t.”

“I get that.” I glanced around the miserable apartment and let out a sigh. “Who knows? Maybe he’s better off out of it.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“I don’t see things improving for Jews in this country. There are a bunch of new laws coming that will make things even tougher for anyone who’s not properly German, as they see it. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”

“Ahead of the Olympics?”

“Didn’t I mention it?”

“You know you didn’t.”

I shrugged. “I suppose I didn’t want to put a dent in your optimism, angel. That something can be done. Maybe I was hoping that some of your lefty idealism would rub off on me along with your pants and stockings.”

“And did it?”

“Not this particular morning.”

 

 

I
N THE EARLY EVENING I accompanied Noreen back to the hotel. She went up to her room for a bath and an early night. The discovery of Joey Deutsch’s body had left Noreen emotionally and physically exhausted. I had a good idea how she felt.

I was on my way to my office when Franz Joseph called me over and, after some polite inquiries about the marks on my face, told me he had a package for me, from Otto Trettin at the Alex. I knew it was the Chinese box belonging to Max Reles. Just the same, when I got to my desk, I opened it up to see what all the fuss had been about.

It looked like a paper-clip box for a Chinese emperor. I suppose it was quite attractive, if you like that kind of thing. I prefer something in sterling silver, with a matching table lighter. On a black lacquer lid, outlined in gold, was a brightly painted Arcadian scene featuring a lake, some mountains, a handsome weeping willow, a cherry tree, a fisherman, a couple of mounted archers, a coolie carrying a large bag of hotel laundry, and a group of Fu Manchu types in the local noodle house who seemed to be discussing the yellow peril and the finer points of white slavery. I expect you never got tired of looking at it if you lived in seventeenth-century China, unless there was some paint you could watch getting dry. It had the feel of a cheap souvenir from a day trip to Luna Park.

I opened it, and inside were a number of contract-tender letters from companies as far afield as Würzburg and Bremerhaven. I glanced over them without much interest. I put these in my pocket, to irritate Reles with their apparent loss in case they were important to him, and went up to his suite.

I knocked on the door. It was answered by Dora Bauer. She was wearing a light brown gingham pleated dress with a matching cape collar and a large pussycat bow on the shoulder. Her hair had a wave as big as a tsunami that swept all the way across her forehead and down to an eyebrow as thin as a spider’s leg. A bow mouth that was more Clara than Cupid parted in a smile as wide as a welcome mat. The smile turned painful as she noticed the weal on my face.

“Oooh, what happened to you?”

Otherwise she seemed pleased to see me, unlike Reles, who ambled over behind her wearing his usual expression of contempt. I had the Chinese box at my back and was looking forward to handing it over after the usual litany of insults. I had the vain hope I might embarrass him or make him eat his words.

“If it isn’t the Continental Op,” he said.

“I don’t have much time for detective stories,” I said.

“I suppose you’re too busy reading the Leader’s book?”

“I don’t have much time for his stories, either.”

“You want to be careful saying disrespectful things like that. You could get hurt.” He frowned and searched my face. “Maybe you already did. Or did you just pick a fight with another hotel guest? That’s more your level, I’d say. Somehow I don’t see you as the heroic type.”

“Max, please.” Dora sounded scolding, but that was as far as it went.

“You’d be surprised what I’m called to do in the line of duty, Herr Reles,” I said. “Squeeze the eggs of a fellow who doesn’t pay his bill. Flick the ear of some barfly. Slap a garter handler in the mouth. Hell, I’ve even been known to recover stolen property.”

I brought my arm around and handed him the box, as if it had been a bunch of flowers. A bunch of five was what I felt like giving him.

“Well, I’ll be damned. You found it. You really were a cop, weren’t you?” He took the box and, backing away from the door, waved me in. “Come on in, Gunther. Dora, get Herr Gunther a drink, will you? What’ll you have, Detective? Schnapps? Scotch? Vodka?” He pointed out a series of bottles on the sideboard.

“Thank you. Schnapps would be good.”

I closed the door behind me, watching him carefully for the moment he opened the box. And when he did, I had the satisfaction of noticing a small wince of disappointment.

“That’s a pity,” he said.

“What is, sir?”

“Only that there was some money and correspondence in this box. And now it’s not there.”

“You didn’t mention the contents before, sir.” I shook my head. “Would you like me to inform the police, sir?” That was two “sirs” in a row: maybe it was still possible I could hold down a career in hotel keeping, after all.

He smiled irritably. “It really doesn’t matter, I suppose.”

“Ice?” Dora was standing over a bucket containing a piece of ice with a pick in her hand, looking more than a little like Lady Macbeth.

“Ice? In schnapps?” I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so.”

Dora stabbed the ice a couple of times and placed a few shards in a large tumbler glass, which she handed to Reles.

“American habit,” said Reles. “We put ice in everything. But I kind of like it in schnapps. You should try it sometime.”