A Death in East Berlin (Peter Ritter thriller series Book 1)

by Richard Wake

  “But he wasn't that big. And with the blood mostly drained out, the weight—”

  “True, true,” Freddy said. “Still, my guess is she would need help — another woman or a man.”

  “Really?” I said. “Do I need this now? A second killer.”

  “An accomplice,” Freddy said. “But think of it as a gift. Now you have two guilty people you might hit with a shot in the dark.”

  The whole key, as it had been from the start, was identifying the victim. I was a little reluctant to bring Freddy too far into the discussion about the wallet and the Stasi — and there was no way I was going to tell him I had been to Hohenschonhausen, given what a confidential production it had been for Greiner to arrange it. Still, I needed him to go over it again, with the new facts added in. So I did tell him that the Stasi had informed me that the owner of the wallet and identification card had been in their custody at the time of the murder and for more than a week before. And I did tell him that the wallet had been reported stolen two weeks prior to its discovery — although I didn't tell him that Kurt Braun had told me that fact himself during our interview. I just made it out like the report was discovered by someone in the precinct house near his apartment.

  “So, what do you think?” I said.

  “You might want to talk to…”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, I guess that's not going to happen,” Freddy said, and I nodded. I didn't think my face gave me away.

  “So, our basic assumptions still hold up, I think. If it was stolen two weeks earlier, and the money was taken, and the wallet was tossed into the woods, there is no way it would be dry after all of the rain we had the week before.”

  “So, that sounds right to you?”

  “It does. And the two of them really do like alike — the dead guy and the picture on the identification card. There's something there, I would say.”

  “But what?”

  “I see you are better at the questions than the answers,” Freddy said. And if we didn't really advance the case, not even an inch, it was worth the price of his mediocre schnitzel to hear it all one more time, just to be sure. Him mentioning an accomplice, just for carrying-the-body purposes, was not new but made an impression on my thinking. And that was something, I guessed.

  The whole case came down to identifying the victim. The killing was so ritualistically bizarre that I really felt as if the investigation would bear fruit if I just knew who the hell the dead guy was.

  Which brought me back to the other bit of information that I couldn't tell Freddy without revealing my visit to the prison. I needed to learn more about the black market.

  28

  It wasn’t too late, so I took a shot at our regular spot. Franck’s was barely lit and offered neither ambiance nor music. The only things that recommended it were toilets that weren’t completely disgusting and bottles of Deutsches Pilsner for a mark, the same price as in the stores. There was also the location, right near the Dimitroffstrasse Station, less than a 10-minute walk from my apartment on Lychener Straße, maybe 15 minutes from Bernie’s place on Bernauer Straße.

  As it turned out, Bernie was there, in his customary spot — the farthest table from the front door, the closest table to the toilets. When I tried to encourage a change, he wouldn’t hear of it. It was absurd. I mean, if you leaned back too far in your chair, you could be hit when the bathroom door swung open, not to mention the odors. But what Bernie always said was, “It’s where I feel I belong,” and so we sat.

  I brought us each a Deutsches Pilsner, and we pretty much talked about nothing for the first few sips. When I started in, he said, “So not just a social visit, huh?”

  “Look, there’s something you might be able to help me with. Something you might know.”

  “Know what?”

  “About the black market.”

  “Asked the detective.”

  “I’m not saying you’re involved,” I said.

  “But you are saying that you don’t care if I am involved, right?”

  “Well, are you?”

  “Am I a sentient, breathing adult living in this socialist paradise?” Bernie said. “If the answer is yes, then I have indeed had occasion to dabble in the black market.”

  “Well, I haven’t.”

  “Well, you’re a cop.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Both the big picture and the small picture,” I said. “You know the big picture, right? You’ve written stories about currency traders being arrested, haven’t you?”

  “I have indeed. My overlords don’t want to publish a word about murder in our socialist paradise, but the evils of the black market? I can write about that all day if I want.”

  “So, tell me.”

  “What?”

  “Start with the smallest thing, a transaction,” I said. “And take it from there.”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “I really don’t.”

  “Fucking baby,” he said.

  “I think the first time you called me that, we were 12 or 13 — do you remember?”

  Bernie shook his head. I said, “You were working a scheme — big shock there — to search for used shell casings in a bombed-out building. You were going to trade the shells for cigarettes, and I was afraid a pile of rubble was going to collapse on my head, you know, when I stuck it in to search.”

  “And it didn’t collapse, did it?” he said. “Fucking baby.”

  “Okay, tell me.”

  Bernie told me the story of a simple transaction. I didn’t let on that I knew at least a bit of it from Elke. The rate was usually five East marks for one West mark. If you were getting less than five, you were getting screwed. More than, say, six, you had found a good deal. Maybe you were a regular customer. But that was if you were trading West marks for East marks.

  “Who does that?” I said.

  “Allied soldiers over on a visit — because they don’t have to pay customs on anything they buy and bring back. You’d be surprised how many bottles of brandy those boys can carry.”

  But also, Bernie said, the East Germans who work in the West and who were paid in West marks, like Elke.

  “You can quintuple your salary, and the food here is already cheap. And you have a lot left over.”

  “And nothing to spend it on.”

  “Well, there is that,” he said. “So that’s some of the trade. Most, though, goes the other way — East marks traded for West marks. You can see how it works. If I’m the trader, I’ll sell one guy five East marks for one West mark. Then I find another guy who wants to buy my one West mark. If I can charge him six or seven East marks, that one or two marks difference is the profit. Got it?”

  It was easy enough. It was a trade as old as time. I just needed to hear it from somebody else, to make sure I understood.

  “Okay, where?” I said.

  “What do you mean, where?”

  “Where do you go to do this?”

  “Were you born in this city? Do you live in this city? Are you a lieutenant on the murder squad in this city?”

  “Under lieutenant,” I said.

  “Under-educated,” Bernie said.

  “Just tell me.”

  “Christ. A dozen places, more. But the big one is outside Friedrichstrasse Station.”

  “Which side?”

  “Our side, dope,” he said.

  By the happenstance of postwar geography, the station sat in the East, but right on the border between East Berlin and the other side. It also kind of hugged the Spree on one side. About a dozen train lines must have run through it, with platforms on different levels going down and down. It was reputed to be the busiest station in the city, and I had no reason to doubt it — not that I got off there very often.

  “You come out the east doors,” Bernie said. “You know, from the top level. You come down the stairs, and you’ll see guys standing there. If you’re in a British or American unifo
rm, or you look like a yokel coming over to see a Brecht show or something, they’ll make the approach. If there is an agreement on the business arrangement, they might walk you a block away — maybe into an alley or something — to make the exchange. It happens a hundred times a day, maybe more. Probably a lot more. You, on the other hand, would never be approached.”

  “Because?” I said.

  “Because you look like a cop. You walk like a cop. You smell like a cop.”

  “Said the man who insists on sitting next to the toilets.”

  “It’s a trained nose, brother,” Bernie said.

  29

  My second night with the spectacularly bald Martin Strassmann began where the first night began, outside his apartment at Am Zirkus 30. I spotted his black and silver Horch on the street and parked a few spaces behind it. I was prepared similarly to the first night, although I substituted three bottles of Pilsator for the one bottle of cola. It was going to be a long night, I figured, and what the hell?

  As it turned out, I figured correctly. It was the same deal as the first time. Strassmann came out of his place, jumped into his car, and drove to the east, to the same bombed-out Friedrichshain neighborhood, to the same street, to the same bar — or whatever the place was. As before, I shut off my lights before turning the final corner and coasted into a spot along the curb about 100 yards or so behind my shiny-headed friend. I watched him cross the street and wait outside the door before being allowed in.

  I pissed in the jar, opened the second beer, finished the second beer, pissed in the jar again, dumped the jar in the gutter, and did my best to stay awake. It was over an hour before Strassmann came out with another man — I didn’t know if it was the same man, but it could have been. They got into his car, and I waited some more.

  There were so many things I didn’t know, but I had plenty of time to speculate. I wondered if Strassmann paid the other guy for whatever was happening in the car. I also wondered what he had done to my father-in-law — ex-father-in-law — to get on his radar, and what he was going to do with the information that I brought him.

  The choices would seem to have been either to blackmail Strassmann or to destroy him. My money was on blackmail because it was more elegant and because if I knew anything about Karl Grimm, it was that he wasn’t a fan of getting his fingerprints on anything. He once told his daughter, in a context I couldn’t remember, “Put your name on as few documents as possible.” So, blackmail rather than brute force. That was my guess. And if I felt bad for my bald quarry, I had to admit that it was fleeting. I was just worried about me.

  Maybe 20 minutes after they got in the car, the second man got out, and Strassmann drove off. The unknown man rang the bell at the bar, or whatever it was, and the door was opened a few seconds later. He went inside. I slumped down in the seat and, again, did my best not to fall asleep.

  After a while, I looked at my watch. It was 11.15 p.m., and I wondered if I had fallen asleep for at least a few minutes. I probably had, and as 11.15 became 11.30, and 11.30 became midnight, I seriously wondered if I had missed my man’s exit. I considered walking down the street and ringing the bell but dismissed the idea almost as quickly as I thought of it. I mean, I had no idea what the guy looked like, other than average height and build and a medium-to-light-gray coat. I couldn’t see much more, not from 300 feet away at night. So there was no clear upside and a very clear downside. That is, I had no idea what I would be walking into, or what it was like, or how weird it was — and how I would be able to leave quickly without drawing attention to myself, which is the last thing I needed. What if it was a male brothel or something like that? It wasn’t like you could go in and leave in two minutes, saying you thought it was a hardware store. It was just too risky, and Grimm would have brained me if he knew I had put myself needlessly into that kind of situation.

  So I waited. Finally, at almost 12:30, the medium-to-light-gray coat exited and began walking up the first side street. My earlier prediction had been right, and because he was walking, I had to walk.

  The neighborhood really was shit, and it gave me the willies. It just brought back too many memories of 1945. Back then, after the bomb had killed my mother and my little brother, I hid in Red Rolf’s front room for two straight days during the worst of the fighting. The two of us, by ourselves, sat on the floor, slept on the floor, crawled to the bathroom, as our corner of Berlin seemed to be exploding all around us. It made me physically sick to think about it, even 16 years later. I knew in my head that it wasn’t like that anymore, but I couldn’t control the feeling that washed over me. Some people say that smells can be a big emotional trigger, and I didn’t know about that. I just knew that bombed-out buildings were a trigger for me. They gave me a feeling in my gut that was simultaneously painful and hollow, and it happened every time I was in this kind of beat-to-shit neighborhood. I just couldn’t help it.

  We walked for more than 10 minutes, I figured. I stayed more than a block back, and he never saw me or showed that he had even a hint of a concern about being followed. There was never any pause to tie his shoe and surreptitiously look around, no sudden left or right turns. He didn’t have a clue.

  Finally, he climbed a set of steps and walked into a building that sat between two tall piles of broken bricks and shattered window frames. No wonder there was such a housing shortage in Berlin. No wonder they kept telling Elke’s brother, “six more months.”

  There were no streetlights — hell, there were barely habitable buildings, only three on a block where there should have been nine or 10 — but there was enough of a moon that I could see which door he entered. I wrote down the number and waited a minute, and then a light went on. Second floor, front.

  With that, I called it a night. I had enough for the moment. Trying to find out any more, in the hours after midnight, would again just bring the possibility of unwanted attention. Identifying the man in the medium-to-light-gray coat would have to wait.

  30

  I ended up drinking myself to sleep, the feeling in my gut disappearing somewhere between the third and fourth vodka. If that wasn't the best use for alcohol — as an aid to approaching beautiful women was clearly No. 1 — it was a close second.

  When I woke up, I wanted to see Red Rolf again. I didn't really have anybody else who I ever talked to about the old times, and my old fears — not even Bernie, who lived through the same shit but who seemed to come out of it, if not unscathed, then hardened. I had seen Bernie falling-down drunk and crying about a woman who dumped him, but I had never seen him the least bit upset about 1945 or the terrible years after. He just told funny stories about the stupid scams we tried to pull, ignoring the part about how the success or failure of those scams sometimes determined whether or not we would eat that night. There was just this armor that he wore, and nothing from those days seemed able to penetrate it.

  Anyway, Red Rolf was genuinely thrilled to see me, and didn't hide it. I had fully expected a crack about how the second visit in a couple of weeks was some kind of modern record, but there was nothing like that. There were just a smile and a hug and a tumbler full of something that tasted like blackberry brandy.

  “I was in Friedrichshain last night,” I said, after a big gulp.

  “A case?”

  “Yeah.”

  “An official case, or off the books?” Red Rolf was the only person in the world I had told about my work for Karl Grimm. When I just stared into the tumbler, he knew.

  “Christ, Friedrichshain at night — still for you? I mean, you still get the feelings?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. We had been through this conversation a few times over the years, so I really didn't have to spell it out for him. After a few seconds, he began talking about his feelings — which pissed me off for a second. But then I realized he wasn't minimizing what I was going through, just broadening it. He said his wasn't a feeling in his gut, more just an inability to sleep for more than an hour or so at a time.

  “Nightmares
?” I said.

  “No. I just wake up. And then my mind is busy. I feel like I hear the bombs — actually hear them — for a few minutes. Then I might settle down again, and then I wake up an hour later, and it starts all over.”

  He stopped, then turned it back to me.

  “So, how do you handle it?”

  “You mean, besides drinking?” I said.

  “That's a part of it for me, as you are very well aware,” he said. “I'm not going to lie about that, or pretend, or apologize. I live, I drink, that's it. But that's not enough, either. What I do is, I mostly just…”

  He paused and took a sip. I live, I drink, that's it.

  “Mostly, I just tell myself that it was a worthy fight, against a terrible evil, and that the fight was won,” Red Rolf said.

  “And this is the spoils?” I waved my arm in an arc, pointing out the window.

  “It's not perfect—”

  “You can say that again,” I said.

  “But what is perfect? Perfect is when we die. Until then, everything is a compromise. The acceptance of that makes us stronger.”

  “Is that Marx or Engels, old man?”

  “It's somebody smarter — Rolf.”

  He topped off our glasses. The silence that followed was comfortable, companionable. Day-drinking with the only person I really loved. He took me in, cared about me, guided me, pulled a few strings for me. He wasn't my father, but he was.

  “You're not,” he said suddenly.

  “Not what?”

  “Not thinking of leaving?”

  “Leaving, like, leaving leaving? Like, the big leaving?”

  “You are an eloquent little bastard,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “I mean, I honestly never gave it a lot of thought.”

  And that was the truth. I was busy with work, and trying to climb that ladder, and it was enough for me — that and the fact that I had advantages that about 95 percent of the people in East Berlin did not.