by Richard Wake
When we had walked in, Elke became excited when she saw someone leaving the store with two tomatoes in their bag. Tomatoes were not an everyday occurrence in the Konsum, or even every month. While I was searching for the herring and the face cream and the pudding, she went straight to the produce section. After she found the banana pudding, I looked in the cart.
“No tomatoes?” I said.
“None,” she said. “Kind of hard to believe that woman got the last two, don’t you think?”
So she had a cart full of different cuts of pork, potatoes, turnips, onions, and carrots. The apples looked like crap, so she had no fruit. It didn’t take long to find the rest, and we were at the counter, preparing to pay.
“No tomatoes left?” Elke said. She went with a sweet, polite voice.
“I guess not,” the man in the apron said.
“You guess, do you?” she said, this time without sweetness.
“If they’re not there—”
“Sir,” I said. I stopped him in mid-sentence with that one word, and also with a flash of my Kripo identification.
“Tomatoes?” I said.
He walked a few feet and opened a drawer at the end of the counter. He reached in and — voila! — two tomatoes. He placed them on the counter with the rest of the order and began to ring it up. If there was a scintilla of shame in the man, he was hiding it well.
Elke seethed as he packed the food. I thought she was going to hit him. She was madder that she got the tomatoes than she was when she didn’t have them. She was so mad that I had to remember the key to East German life.
“Coupons, buddy,” I said, and he tore me out a handful. A minute later, when we were loading the bags into the car, Elke unloaded on me.
“Don’t you see how wrong that is on every level?”
“You wanted the tomatoes. I got you the tomatoes. What?”
“Why should I need your badge to get tomatoes? Why should he have the right to pick and choose who he sells the tomatoes to? Why should he be able to demand bribes before he’ll see you a goddamned tomato?”
I began to interject. The steamroller stopped me before I could get started, though — and it was just as well. It wasn’t as if there was any justification. I certainly didn’t have one.
It wasn’t as if I was a truly deep thinker about any of this stuff. The way I figured it, there was a way to game every system in every country, and that’s all I was doing when I showed the guy my Kripo identification. If I was going to make the argument to her, I would wonder out loud if the people in West Berlin who cheat on their taxes weren’t just as corrupt? Or the factory owners who lived in a house on a hill weren’t taking unfair advantage of the men who ran the machines in their factories?
It was all just a game, with different rules in each jurisdiction. I had said the same thing to Bernie before, probably more than once, when we found ourselves in a deeply philosophical state of mind. You know, shitfaced. Anyway, that’s what I would have said as we put the bags of groceries into the car, but for the steamroller.
“…And in what world does it make sense that bread rolls are five pfennings, and always have been five pfennings, and always will be five pfennings?” Elke said. “That stuff is cheap, always cheap, and we’ll never starve — but tomatoes are hidden under the counter? Seriously, what kind of world is that? It’s absurd. The whole system is — and you’re a part of it.”
The short drive from the store was quiet. People were unemployed in the West, but not in the East. People starved in the West, but not in the East. It could be a gray hell sometimes — maybe a lot of the times — but nobody had to worry about survival. That’s what I told myself, anyway.
Still, anything I said at that point would have just made things worse. Elke took the two sacks from me when we got to the apartment and went inside. The slam of the building door seemed to have been a message. I could be dense sometimes, but I got that one. And those last words of hers rang in my ears long after the door-slam:
“…and you’re a part of it.”
25
Hohenschonhausen was a secret, technically. The typical man on the street in East Berlin had no idea that it existed. The average citizen undoubtedly figured that the Stasi ran a prison, but they didn’t know what it was or where it was. For instance, I didn’t know about it when I was a Vopo beat cop. It was only after I got to the Kripo when I learned, and only unofficially, through out-of-the-side-of-the-mouth asides from the other detectives, or jokes in the bar.
Like: “Who’s the patron saint of Hohenschonhausen? The Marquis de Sade.”
Or: “How do you know a guy has been to Hohenschonhausen? In a restaurant, he’s the one who needs the fingers on both hands to signal for a table for four.”
So Stasi people knew, and police at a certain level knew, and former prisoners knew — but that was really about it. I wondered about the neighbors, though. I mean, the prison was in a Berlin city neighborhood. The tram ran just a couple of blocks from the front gate — which led me through a four-foot fence that stretched for probably 100 yards in either direction. But there were houses both inside and outside the fence. Just outside, there were a dozen kids playing football on a field right next to the fence. There was no doubt in my mind that, once a day, one of the players misfired and had to ask one of the guards inside to throw the ball back over. Those kids must have known something, which meant their parents must have known something. Or maybe they chose not to. Or maybe they were all prison families — guards, cooks, cleaners, whatever — and knew that continued employment meant that this was just going to have to be their little secret.
Once I got inside the fence and parked, there was another guard shack outside the prison buildings themselves, part of a 12-foot stone wall with barbed wire on top. The man on duty found my name on a list almost immediately and then directed a kid in a uniform to take me inside.
“First time?”
He offered me the tour, like a docent at the Pergamon — only happier. In fact, my man was positively ebullient.
“Only open for about a year,” he said. “Prisoners built the place — nice, huh? The old prison was in a cellar beneath a kitchen. That was a real hole — literally. This is much nicer.”
We were inside the building then. We were walking, about to turn down a hallway, but then my guide abruptly stopped. He was watching a red light, waiting, waiting, and when it turned green, we proceeded.
“A hundred and six cells,” he said. His hand swept grandly, the length of the hallway. “They all have toilets, which is better than the old place. Just buckets.” He held his nose and kept walking.
“Each door has an opening to see inside, precisely placed so that a guard even of the minimum allowable height can see inside,” he said. “I’d let you look, but no. There aren’t any windows, but there are glass bricks in the wall to let in some light from the outside. So, 106 cells and 115 interrogation rooms.”
I found that math… well, interesting. We had walked a decent distance, reached the end of another hallway, and suddenly stopped again.
“What’s with the red lights?” I said.
“Part of the procedure,” he said. “The prisoners live in solitary. They see no one other than their interrogators. Food is pushed through a slot in the doors. And these lights, they allow prisoners to be transported to interrogation rooms without seeing any of their compatriots. We find the isolation aids in our questioning — we get quicker answers. The red light means someone is passing in the hallway ahead. The guard flips a switch as he enters the hallway. He will flip another switch at the other end of the hallway when he exits with the prisoner. So we wait.”
Just then, the light changed.
“And now we go,” my guide said.
“But they must try to communicate with each other,” I said. “I mean, the cells are close together. I could see that much.”
“Sometimes. But we make it clear when we catch someone — usually by placing one of our men in an adjacent
cell. They might tap out a code with a stolen spoon or something, and it almost doesn’t matter if we can figure out what they’re saying. We punish for even the attempt to communicate, and when we catch someone, we let the rest know. And then they think, ‘Am I communicating with a fellow prisoner or a guard?’ Or with an informer, one of the prisoners who we recruit. It’s a significant discouragement.”
One more turn down a hallway, my guide pointed to an open door. “Look in,” he said, and I leaned in and saw two men sitting at some kind of electronic console and watching a half dozen television screens. They were looking at different prison hallways, it appeared. I had not seen the cameras.
One more turn and we entered a room that was almost nice. There were a table and two office chairs inside. There was a window, and there were curtains. It was narrow and deep, with a radiator beneath the window.
“We thought this would be better for you than a regular interrogation room,” my guide said. “This is a cell informant’s room. This is where he would come to write a report on one of the prisoners he is watching for us.”
The guide looked at his wristwatch.
“Seven minutes,” he said. “That is when your prisoner will be delivered. They tend to be on time. I’ll close the door now, but it isn’t locked.”
“Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
“I could tell,” I said. It was not meant as a compliment, but that’s how my guide took it.
26
The door opened, and I looked at my watch. Right on time. The guard led Kurt Braun inside and removed the shackles from his wrists.
“I can wait inside or out, your choice,” he said.
“Outside,” I said.
“As you wish. Fifteen minutes.”
The door closed softly behind him. It was made of wood, not secure. There was no familiar clang, the sound the same in every jail I had ever been in, from the handful of cells for drunks in every precinct house to the ones underneath Keibelstraße, which were no picnic.
Braun sat without asking. I took the other chair. He looked like the walking definition of hell, both gaunt and scared, like someone who had already shit himself a half dozen times but was working his way up toward one more attempt. If I scared him — just me in a business suit, without a visible weapon, without a prison guard's hardened features or demeanor — I can only imagine what it was like when the real experts got hold of him.
“My name is Under Lieutenant Peter Ritter, from the Berlin Kripo, the murder squad,” I said.
“I didn't kill anybody.” Braun's voice was just barely above a whisper.
“I didn't say you did.”
“I didn't kill anybody.” Again, almost inaudible.
“You're going to have to speak up if we're going to get through this.”
“I didn't fucking kill anybody.” That time, a shout.
“Better. But let's try it without the attitude from here.”
Braun slumped back into his chair. He folded his hands on the table in a semi-successful attempt to keep them from shaking. His right foot tapped. Other than during the one shout, he made no eye contact. I don't know what he was like before Hohenschonhausen, but Braun was a shell of a person as he sat there across from me.
“You're the first person I've seen in four days,” he said. He looked up at me again. The eyes were just empty.
“Lucky you.”
He half smiled, despite himself. I reached into my pocket and tossed the wallet that the cops found in the woods near the Soviet monument. It hit his hands on the table when I threw it, but he kept his fingers laced.
“Is this your wallet? Is that your identification inside?”
Nothing.
“Pick the damn thing up and look at it.”
He lifted it gingerly, as if it were a fine piece of porcelain. He opened the wallet and looked inside. He acted as if it was the first wallet he had ever seen in his life.
“Look at the identification.”
He pulled it out from its pocket and opened it. He looked at the picture, his face staring back at him.
“I reported it stolen,” he said.
“You what?”
“The wallet. It was stolen — I think maybe I was pickpocketed on the S-bahn, on a crowded train. I got off at Hackescher Market and noticed it was gone. I reported it the next day.”
“To who?”
“The police — the station in my neighborhood.”
“We have no record of that.” I was bluffing. I never asked the locals to check, and they obviously hadn't had an inspiration of initiative on their own. But why would he lie about something so easily verified? He probably was telling the truth, but I wanted to keep him off-balance.
“Well, I did report it,” Braun said.
We stared at each other for a few seconds, and then his eyes dropped again. He really was hollow. I took the wallet back, reached into my breast pocket for a second time, and pulled out my other bit of paraphernalia — the photograph of my corpse. I slid it across the table to him.
“We thought this might be you,” I said.
“Lucky me, I guess.”
“Look at it. Do you know him?”
“No,” he said quickly.
“Look at it. Stare at it. Make a goddamned effort.”
I watched Braun as he looked down at the picture. I wasn't quite sure what to make of his reaction. I mean, the guy was truly a shot fighter — so what would any reaction really mean? I couldn't know for sure. But what I saw, as watched him starting at the photo, was what I thought might have been the slightest hint of recognition. It came, and it went in a few milliseconds, but it was there — kind of a wince, kind of, I didn't know. But it was something — something more than just the natural reaction of someone viewing a dead body. Because there was nothing shocking about the photograph. It didn't show the hands of the feet or the rest that had been chopped off. It was just from the neck up. It looked like the guy was sleeping.
“So you think I killed him?” Braun said.
“I didn't say that.”
“So what are you doing here?”
I was kind of wondering that myself around that time.
“Do you know him?” I said.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I'm sure.”
I really didn't have anything else to ask him, so it was almost a relief when the door opened, and the guard said, “That's 15.”
Braun stood, and the shackles were reattached. I had a question for the guard.
“Alone,” I said.
He walked Braun into the hallway and had him face the wall. “Nose touching the cement,” he said. “And don't move.”
The guard returned.
“Just one question,” I said. “What's he in for?”
“Crimes against the state.”
“Meaning?”
“It is a bit of a catch-all,” he said. “In his case, currency irregularities.”
“Black market, then?”
He just nodded and left the room and began walking down the hallway with Braun. At the end of the hall, and before the two of them turned right, the guard flipped a switch on the wall. A red light suddenly shone at the other end.
Part III
27
For an off-hours consultation, I had learned, Freddy Mann demanded to be fed. But seeing as how he was a bachelor, and likely looking at a tin of soup in his apartment, it didn't have to be very much. And by my way of thinking, Bressler's was the working definition of not very much. Or, as Freddy said, “I've had worse schnitzel, I guess.”
“The quality doesn't seem to be affecting your appetite,” I said. His plate was empty.
“Just being polite, as always.”
We were working through all of the evidence one more time. It was the conversational equivalent of Kleinschmidt looking at a crime scene from multiple angles. You just kept talking about it and talking about it some more, in the hope that some random expression of th
ought would be the first link in the chain that would lead to a solution.
We started at the Soviet monument, and with Freddy's examination of the scene. He had brought the photos of the site with him in a manila folder, and we spread them out on the table in the restaurant while we had our coffee. The waiter was not amused — no hands and no feet was a bit much, granted — but seeing as how there was only one other table in the place occupied at the time, it wasn't as if he would be turning away business. Besides, Bressler's was only three blocks from Keibelstraße. It wasn't as if I was the first Kripo detective who ever tried to get unstuck on a case over a slice of their vaguely stale, entirely forgettable strudel.
“It just is what it is,” Freddy said. “Mutilated body, killed elsewhere, dumped at the base of the statue.” He gathered up the photos. “There's really no other story that they tell.”
We went through the autopsy next, line by line. Again, nothing new. Cause of death was a blow to the back of the head, maybe from a shovel or the like. The stomach contents suggested our victim had had breakfast, likely narrowing the window for time of death — but that was really about it. Nothing else seemed odd, or even noteworthy — except for the obvious.
“The cock and balls —- there has to be a sexual element,” Freddy said. “But we already knew that.”
“But if you can't even identify the victim, it's kind of hard to draw any meaningful conclusions.”
“Other than—”
“What?”
“Well,” Freddy said. “You're likely thinking about a woman as the killer, which is unusual. Now, maybe she could sneak up behind him and hit him in the head. And maybe, in her rage, she could hack off all of the important pieces from — what? — a cheating spouse?”
“Okay,” I said. We had been through this before.
“Like I said, unusual. But then, how does she get the body up to the monument? It just doesn't seem likely she could do it alone. It would be hard enough for a man.”
