Metropolis Page 25

  I waited until the remaining wild boy had run off before answering.

  “Working undercover,” I said. “You might say I’m a tethered goat playing the klutz in the hope of ambushing Dr. Gnadenschuss.”

  “Ambush, how? By rolling your wagon wheels over his toes before he can shoot you?”

  “No, I’ve got a gun. At least I had one until this morning. I must have lost it when I was rolling myself over the bridge. I was looking for it when you showed up and saved my hide. Thanks, by the way. You were just in time to save me a beating. Or worse.”

  “Who thought up this crazy scheme? No, don’t tell me. It was that idiot Bernhard Weiss, wasn’t it? Gennat would never have gone along with something as dumb as this. The Big Buddha’s got common sense. But Weiss—like any ex-lawyer, he reads far too many books. Typical Jew, of course. Always got his nose in a book. He should have been a rabbi, not a cop.”

  “You’re a Jew yourself, Kurt.”

  “Yes, but he’s a clever Jew and people don’t like that. I’m not a clever Jew like him. Weiss is the kind of Jew who has a surfeit of new ideas. People don’t like new ideas. Especially in Germany. They like the old ones. The old lies best of all. That’s what Hitler is all about. Says he’s got new ideas but they’re just the old ideas, reheated, like yesterday’s dinner. New ideas, nobody likes that. People are afraid of the new. Look here, we work for the Berlin police force, not a laboratory of human behavior. Jesus, you should never have been asked to do this without some backup. Some other cops to watch over you. One at the very least.”

  “I think we both thought that Dr. Gnadenschuss is too smart not to spot something like that.”

  “I don’t think he’s smart. I think he’s been lucky, that’s all. Probably because there are some people who just don’t want this monster to be caught. Who think he’s doing God’s good work. Cleaning up the streets. You know, respectable window-box folk who like things neat and tidy. And there’s nothing tidy about the way you look and what you’re doing. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I know this city like I know my own prick. Do you ever ask yourself why I’m on the street so much instead of being in the office, Bernie? Walking around like I’m just a citizen? I talk to the meat, that’s why. I’m a social animal. I like to talk. I chat to whores, pimps, thieves, and rapists. Shit, I’ll even speak to cops in uniform. I collect their stories like I’m a writer and, sometimes, I even see a connection. Hell, that’s true detection. When you talk to the meat on the street you hear things. And we both know that there are ways of keeping a man under surveillance without drawing attention to yourself. I wish you’d asked me. I could have helped.”

  “In that outfit?”

  “Listen to Lon Chaney.”

  “Look, we thought we had to do something. Especially with those letters he keeps writing to the damn newspapers. They’re beginning to hit home. We’re no nearer to catching him now after five victims than we were before he killed anyone.”

  “Sure, sure. But still, it’s a risk you’re running here, Bernie. When you play in the street, you risk getting yourself run over. It’s not just klutzes and whores who get killed in this city. It’s cops, too. Maybe you’ve forgotten Johannes Buchholz.”

  “That was other cops who shot him.”

  “If you say so. But those two cops they booked for it were acquitted. All I’m saying is that you need to be more careful. The first law of police work in Berlin is to go home at night without a new hole in your head; everything else is of secondary importance, my friend. So what are you going to do now?”

  “Stick it out here for a while. See if I get a bite.”

  “Really? Surely you’ve scared the fish away with all this commotion. You won’t get a bite now. I can guarantee it.”

  “It’s not even lunchtime. Besides, if you knew how long it takes me to get this makeup on—I have to make that seem like it was worthwhile.”

  “Yes, I can see you put a lot of energy into that disguise. It’s a good look for you. I suppose your legs are folded away inside your cripple-cart. Ingenious. Never seen that before.”

  “I found it abandoned at the site of Eva Angerstein’s murder.”

  “You did?”

  “A yokel catcher had been using it. A burglar’s achtung. That’s what helped to give Weiss the idea.”

  “I see. You know, it strikes me that Weiss looks more like a genuine klutz than you do. He’s small enough. Makes me wonder why he didn’t take on the role himself. But suppose he does turn up—Dr. Gnadenschuss. Without a gun, what can you do? Talk him into surrendering?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “And while you’re thinking he’ll blow your brains out. No, I don’t think that will work.” Reichenbach smiled and put his hand in his side pocket and produced a little pistol, which he handed to me. “Here. Take this. Just in case. Let me have it back when you’re through with this foolishness. Don’t worry. I’ve got another.” He unbuttoned the top button of his jacket to reveal a Walther in a shoulder holster. “Catch me, a Jew, walking around this town without a Bismarck. I should say not. I’ve got a lot of enemies. And not all of them work at the Alex. By the way, have you noticed the number of Nazis there are around the Praesidium these days? There’s something about the warmer weather that brings them out of their holes, like cockroaches. That bastard Arthur Nebe, for one. Not to mention that bastard who took a swing at you on the stairs at the Alex; Gottfried Nass, wasn’t it? Yes, Nass is another cop I’d like to shoot.” He nodded firmly. “Let me know if you need my help. Anytime.”

  “Thanks, Kurt. Listen, one good turn deserves another. The fellow who got himself shot on Friedrichstrasse yesterday.”

  “Pimp called Willi Beckmann. What about him?”

  “I know the name of the Fritz who did it. At least, half his name. Hugo something. Hangs around the Sing Sing Club. Built like a wrestler. The girl who was weeping and wailing over Willi’s body was Hugo’s girlfriend, Helga. At least that’s what he thought. Which is why Hugo put all those coins in Willi’s slot. So it wasn’t ring related. It was a love triangle. You can have the collar. Like I say, one good turn.”

  “Thanks. But how do you know all this?”

  “Long story. But I was there when it happened. Playing klutz. And I saw the whole thing, from the quiet prologue to the fiery finale. Unlike the girl. Whatever she says now, she saw nothing except Willi’s dead body.”

  “And you don’t want the credit, because?”

  “Because I’m the witness. And because I don’t want to come into the Alex and do the paperwork. Not yet. And not dressed like this. I figured that maybe you could pick him up and see if he still has the Bergmann MP-18 that he used to kill Willi. And the car he was driving when he did it. A yellow BMW Dixi, registration IA 17938. If he does, you may not need a witness at all.”

  “You’re wasted as a cop, you know.”

  “How’s that?”

  Reichenbach tossed a coin into my hat. “All that detail? You should have been a scientist. Or a philosopher.” Grinning broadly, he lit two cigarettes and put one in my mouth. “That’s made my day, Bernie. There’s nothing like arresting someone who’s guilty as sin itself to put you in a good mood, is there?”

  “It certainly beats arresting someone who’s innocent.”

  * * *

  —

  I WATCHED KURT REICHENBACH as he walked away, whistling and twirling his cane like Richard Tauber as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He was wearing spats, which I hadn’t noticed before. A cop wearing spats. I almost laughed; I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he’d started to sing and dance. On the other side of Wilhelm-Ufer, he paused by a new open-top Brennabor—the car with the outside trunk and the tool kit on the running board—and opened the gray door. Before he climbed into the front seat, he turned and waved back at me, which did little for my cover, but ma
de me grateful that Reichenbach was a friend. And he’d been right, of course. I should have had some backup. In too many ways I hadn’t thought through what I was doing at all. And I resolved to call Bernhard Weiss and discuss my undercover adventure with him as soon as I was home again.

  But on my way back to the theater and Brigitte, my mission seemed to end when one of the axles on the klutz wagon snapped. For a moment I just sat there; then a taxi driver asked me if I needed some assistance and I was obliged to tell him against all evidence to the contrary that I could manage perfectly well, which left the poor fellow looking both puzzled and irritated.

  It was already clear to me that Prussian Emil hadn’t been using the contraption to get around the cobbled streets of the city but just to sit in, for the sake of appearances. It wasn’t nearly as sturdy as it needed to be and I imagined the burglar he worked with must have transported him to the scene of a crime in a nice comfortable car. For a second I debated taking the klutz wagon to a bicycle shop for repair, but that would have meant carrying it through the streets and risking the contempt and wrath of my fellow Berliners, who would very reasonably have concluded that I was a yokel catcher just like Prussian Emil. The possibility that they might assume the worst about all veteran beggars—even the genuine ones—and stop giving them money was enough to make me throw the thing into the canal, which I did when I was sure no one was looking.

  I took off my army tunic and cap and dark glasses and walked back to the theater on Schiffbauerdamm, relieved that the whole masquerade was very likely over. Rehearsals were finished for the day; the orchestra was already heading out the front door to the beer hall across the road. I went up to Brigitte’s room, and she removed my makeup. She didn’t say much because we had company: one of the stars of the show, the redheaded Lotte Lenya. She was smoking a cigarette, drinking whiskey, humming, and reading a copy of The Red Flag. I didn’t mind that she might have been a communist as much as that she seemed to mind me. It wasn’t that I was a cop: I’m sure Brigitte hadn’t told her. But as Brigitte worked on me and I began to relax, I started to whistle, which drew a look of such fierce hostility from Miss Lenya that I felt obliged to stop.

  “My Viennese mother once told me that she couldn’t ever trust a man who whistles,” said Lotte, looking critically at me over the top of her spectacles. “Not ever. It’s the most damnable noise there is. When I asked her why she thought such a thing, she told me that thieves and murderers use whistling as a way to send each other coded signals. Did you know that even today whistling is banned in the Linden Arcade for this very reason? Oh yes. They’ll think you’re a rent boy and you’ll be asked to leave. But even worse than that, when some evil people wish to summon horrible devils and wicked demons that should not ever be named, they also whistle. This is why Muslims and Jews forbid it. It’s not just the fear of being ungodly; it’s the more ancient fear of calling something evil to your side. A dog that may not be a dog. A woman that may not be a woman. Or a man that may not be a man. A goat that may be the devil himself. The Vikings believed that whistling on board a ship would cause evil spirits to generate storm-force winds and they were quite likely to throw the offending man over the side to placate the gods.”

  Lotte’s wide, heavily lipsticked mouth split open like a large fig in a mischievous smile. “All ignorant superstitions, of course. And much more important than any of these, the fact remains that you should never ever ever whistle in a theater. The stage crews use whistling to communicate scene changes. People who whistle in theaters can confuse the stagehands into changing the set or the scenery and this can result in serious accidents. I know because I’ve seen it happen. Generally speaking, we just call this bad luck. And you know what theater folk are like about that. Just remember that, my handsome friend; the next time you’re tempted to whistle in this place. Please, even when the lovely Brigitte is around, try to restrain your lips.”

  With that, Lenya left. “Don’t mind her,” Brigitte said. “Lotte’s famously cantankerous.”

  “No kidding.”

  “She’s something though, isn’t she?”

  “Not a female I’m likely to forget in a hurry. You’d best fetch some vinegar. I can still feel her sting.” I made a face. “Is she a ladies’ club scorpion, do you think? One of those irregular lilac-hued females who can do very well without men? You know, like Sappho and my old schoolmistress?”

  “I told you. She’s married.”

  “So were you. And look how well that turned out.”

  “I can assure you, Lotte likes men as much as the next woman.”

  “Well, if the next woman’s you, then that’s all right. But if the next woman is a sharper or a garçonne from the Hohenzollern lounge, then I’m not so sure. Besides, Weiss has got a friend called Magnus Hirschfeld who estimates that there are more than two hundred and fifty thousand lesbians in Berlin.”

  Brigitte laughed. “Nonsense.”

  “No, really. He counted them all as they came out of the city’s eighty-five lesbian nightclubs and sports associations. Not to mention all the theaters.”

  “Why would anyone do such a thing?”

  “Hirschfeld is pretty interested in sex. All kinds of sex. But don’t ask me why.”

  “By the way, where’s your klutz cart?”

  “It broke.”

  “You broke it?”

  “I guess I’m a bigger klutz than I realized.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. Call the boss, I guess. See what he wants me to do. But I’ll tell him I’m thinking of throwing in the towel before someone strangles me with it. I had a run-in with a gang of wild boys today and I almost ended up being crippled for real.”

  “That doesn’t sound good. And just as I was getting used to you coming here.”

  “There are other places we can meet. Restaurants. Bedrooms. We might even do something really crazy and go for a walk in the park one day.”

  “Sure. But in here you’re under my control, and I like that. You’re very different from most of the men I meet in the theater.”

  “I guess I must be. Now if I can only learn to control my whistling.”

  “Can you?”

  “Not when a first-division, bubble-bath blonde like you is around, angel. You’re going to make every Fritz you meet inclined to whistle like a castle in winter.”

  * * *

  —

  LATER THAT DAY, when I was looking comparatively normal again, I returned to the house on Nollendorfplatz, where I found that Frau Weitendorf was again worried about Robert Rankin.

  “You know I clean his room,” she said.

  “I wish you’d clean mine.”

  “You don’t pay me what he pays me. Anyway, look, I’m not worried about him so much as the rest of us. I was cleaning his room yesterday and I found this on the floor.”

  She held up a bullet and then dropped it into the palm of my hand. It was a bullet for a .25-caliber automatic.

  “No law against carrying a gun,” I said. “Even a Tommy’s entitled to look to his own self-defense.”

  “I understand that. But he drinks. He drinks too much. My old man used to say guns and alcohol don’t mix.”

  I smiled and restrained myself from telling her that I’d probably drunk alcohol on every day of the four years I’d spent in the trenches. Sometimes being drunk is the only good reason to pull a trigger.

  “A man loading a gun while he’s drinking heavily,” she insisted, “is a recipe for disaster. If it’s done at all, it’s best done well. And best done sober. Besides, I don’t like guns in the house. They make me nervous.”

  “I have a gun.” I remembered that while I might have lost the Walther somewhere, I still had Reichenbach’s little pistol. It felt snug against my abdomen as we spoke.

  “That’s different. You’re a policeman.”

 
“You’d be surprised at the number of complaints the police receive about us shooting innocent people.”

  “It’s not a joke, Herr Gunther. Besides, he’s English. They hate us, don’t they? Not him, maybe. But the rest of them hate us almost as much as the French.”

  “Very well. I’ll ask him about it when I next see him.”

  “Thank you. You might also mention that I don’t approve of his having women in his room at night any more than I approve of his having a gun. Specifically Fraulein Braun. I wouldn’t mind so much but they make a noise, which keeps me awake.”

  “Was there anything else, Frau Weitendorf?”

  “Yes, someone called Erich Angerstein telephoned. Twice. He asked you to call him back. But I didn’t like him. He sounded very common. I asked him for his number and he said you already had his business card, but that if you’d lost it you could find him at the Cabaret of the Nameless every night this week after midnight. Not that it’s any of my business, Herr Gunther, but I’ve heard that the Nameless is a place all respectable people should avoid.”

  “I’m not respectable people, Frau Weitendorf. I’m a policeman and that means I go to evil places so you don’t have to. When I’ve been to the Nameless I’ll tell you all about it and you can thank me then.”

  I telephoned Angerstein’s number but there was no answer. Then I telephoned the Alex. This time I got through to Weiss and told him that nothing much had happened except that I’d broken the klutz wagon. There was a long silence. He seemed to be thinking.

  “That’s a pity.”

  “I was wondering if you wanted me to stay out on the street,” I added, hoping that he would say no. “But without the contraption, I would have to adapt my look. Get myself a crutch and go begging with one leg instead of none at all.”