.” She laughed at that. Hedda Adlon usually liked my jokes. “It’s not that long,” she said. “Try telling that to a page boy. Anyway, the jokes in War and Peace
are better.” “Have you read it? War and Peace?
” “I’ve started it several times, but after four years of war I usually declare an armistice and then sell the book down the river.” “There’s someone who’d like to meet you. And it so happens she’s a writer.” Naturally, I knew exactly whom Hedda was talking about. Writers, especially lady writers from New York, were thin on the ground at the Adlon that month. It probably had a lot to do with the fifteen-mark-a-night room rate. This was slightly cheaper if you didn’t have a bath, and a lot of writers don’t, but the last American writer who’d stayed at the Adlon had been Sinclair Lewis, and that was in 1930. The Depression hit everyone, of course. But no one gets depressed quite like a writer. We went upstairs to the little apartment the Adlons kept in the hotel. I say “little,” but only by the standards of the large hunting estate they also kept in the countryside, away from Berlin. The apartment was nicely decorated—a fine example of late Wilhelmine wealth. The carpets were thick, the curtains heavy, the bronze hulking, the gilt abundant, and the silver solid; even the water in the carafe looked like it had extra lead in it. Mrs. Charalambides was seated on a little birch-wood sofa with white cushions and a music-stand back. She was wearing a dark blue wraparound dress, a triple string of good pearls, diamond clip earrings, and immediately below her cleavage, a matching sapphire brooch that must have fallen off a maharajah’s best turban. She hardly looked like a writer—that is, unless she’d been a queen who’d given up her throne to write novels about the grand hotels of Europe. She spoke German well, which was fine with me since, for several minutes after shaking her gloved hand, I could hardly speak German myself and I was more or less obliged to let these two women talk across me like a Ping-Pong table. “Mrs. Charalambides—” “Noreen, please.” “Is a playwright and journalist.” “Freelance.” “For the Herald Tribune
.” “In New York.” “She’s just returned from Moscow, where one of her plays—” “My only play, so far.” “Was being produced by the famous Moscow Art Theater, after a very successful run on Broadway.” “You should be my agent, Hedda.” “Noreen and I were at school together. In America.” “Hedda used to help me with my German. Still does.” “Your German is perfect, Noreen. Don’t you agree, Herr Gunther?” “Yes. Perfect.” But I was looking at Mrs. Charalambides’ legs. And her eyes. And her beautiful mouth. Now, that was what I called perfect. “Anyway, her newspaper has asked her to write an article about the forthcoming Berlin Olympiad.” “There’s been a lot of opposition in America to the idea of our taking part in these Olympics, given your government’s racial policies. The AOC president, Avery Brundage, was over here in Germany just a few weeks ago. On a fact-finding mission. To see if Jews are being discriminated against. And, incredibly, he reported back to the AOC that they were not. As a result of which the AOC has now voted, unanimously, to accept Germany’s invitation and to attend the Berlin Olympiad in 1936.” “Any Olympiad that doesn’t include the United States,” said Hedda, “would be completely meaningless.” “Exactly,” said Mrs. Charalambides. “Since the AOC president returned to the U.S., the boycott movement has collapsed. But my newspaper is puzzled. No, it’s astonished that Brundage could have arrived at the conclusions he did. The American ambassador, Mr. Dodd; the chief consul, Mr. Messersmith; and the vice consul, Mr. Geist, have all written to my government expressing their utter dismay at the president’s report. And reminding it of their own report, sent to the State Department last year, which highlighted the systematic exclusion of Jews from German sports clubs. Brundage—” “He’s the president of the American Olympic Committee,” said Hedda, interrupting, redundantly. “He’s a bigot,” said Mrs. Charalambides, becoming angrier. “And an anti-Semite. You’d have to be, to ignore what’s happening in this country. The many instances of open racial discrimination. The signs in the parks. In the public baths. The pogroms.” “Pogroms?” I frowned. “Surely that’s an exaggeration. I haven’t heard of any pogroms. This is Berlin, not Odessa.” “In July, four Jews were murdered by SS men, in Hirschberg.” “Hirschberg?” I sneered. “That’s in Czechoslovakia. Or Poland. I forget which. It’s troll country. Not Germany.” “It’s the Sudetenland,” said Mrs. Charalambides. “The people there are ethnic Germans.” “Well, don’t tell Hitler,” I said. “Or he’ll want them back. Look, Mrs. Charalambides, I don’t agree with what’s happening in Germany. But is it really any worse than what’s happening in your own country? The signs in the parks? In the public baths? The lynchings? And I hear it’s not just Negroes who get strung up by white people. Mexicans and Italians also go carefully in certain parts of the United States. And I don’t recall anyone suggesting a boycott of the Los Angeles Games, in 1932.” “You’re well informed, Herr Gunther,” she said. “And right, of course. As a matter of fact, I wrote an article about just such a lynching I saw in Georgia, in 1930. But I’m here and I’m Jewish, and my newspaper wants me to write about what’s happening in this country, and that’s what I intend to do.” “Well, good for you,” I said. “I hope you can change the AOC’s mind. I’d like to see the Nazis take a blow to their prestige. Especially now that we’ve started spending money on it. And I’d love it, of course, if that Austrian clown got some egg on his face. But I fail to see what any of this has to do with me. I’m a hotel detective, not a press attaché.” Hedda Adlon opened a silver cigarette box the size of a small mausoleum and pushed it toward me. There were English cigarettes on one side of the box and Turkish on the other. It looked like Gallipoli in there. I chose the winning side—at least in the Dardanelles—and let her light me. The cigarette, just like the service, was better than I was used to. I looked hopefully at the decanters on the sideboard, but Hedda Adlon didn’t drink much herself and probably thought I felt the same way about the stuff. Apart from that, she was doing a fine job of making me look nice. After all, she’d had plenty of practice doing it. “Herr Behlert told me what happened when you went to the Alex,” said Hedda. “About that poor Jewish man and how the police are refusing to investigate his death. Because of his race.” “Mmm-hmm.” “Apparently you thought he might have been a boxer.” “Mmm-hmm.” Neither of them was smoking. Not yet. Perhaps they hoped to make me light-headed. The Turkish cigarette in my mouth was strong enough, but I had the feeling I was going to need more than one to go along with whatever it was they wanted from me. Noreen Charalambides said, “I was thinking that the dead man’s story might be the basis of an interesting article in my newspaper. In the same way I wrote about that lynching in Georgia. It occurred to me that the dead man might have been murdered by the Nazis because he was Jewish. It also occurred to me that there might be an important sports angle that could tie his story in with the Olympics. Did you know that the German Boxing Federation was the first German sports organization to exclude Jews?” “It doesn’t surprise me. Boxing’s always been an important sport to the Nazis.” “Oh? I didn’t know that.” “Sure. The SA has been punching people in the face since before 1925. Those beer-hall brawlers always liked a good fight. Especially after Schmeling became world champion. Of course, when he went and lost the title to Max Baer, that didn’t exactly do the cause of Jewish boxers in Germany any favors.” Mrs. Charalambides looked at me blankly. I guessed that her remark about the German Boxing Federation had probably emptied the spit bucket of what she knew about the sweet science. “Max Baer is half Jewish,” I explained. “Oh, I see. Herr Gunther, I’m sure you must have already considered the possibility that the dead man—let’s call him Fritz—that Fritz was a member of a gym or a sporting association and was expelled because he was Jewish. Who knows what happened after that?” I hadn’t considered the possibility at all. I’d been too busy thinking about what might happen to me. But now that I did, what she said made some sense. Still, I wasn’t about to admit that. Not yet. Not w
hile these two wanted something from me. “I was wondering,” said Mrs. Charalambides. “I was wondering if you might care to help me find out some more about Fritz. Kind of like a private investigator. I speak pretty good German, as you can see, but I don’t know my way around this city. Berlin is a bit of a mystery to me.” I shrugged. “If all the world is a stage, then most of Berlin is just beer and sausage.” “And the mustard? That’s my problem. I’m afraid if I go around asking questions on my own, I’ll run into a large dollop of Gestapo and get myself kicked out of Germany.” “There is that possibility.” “You see, I also plan to interview someone on the German Olympic Organizing Committee. Von Tschammer und Osten, Diem, or possibly Lewald. Did you know he’s a Jew? I wouldn’t like them to find out what I’m about until it’s too late for them to stop me.” She paused. “Naturally, I’d pay you. A fee for helping me.” I was about to remind them that I already had a job when Hedda Adlon took over the sales pitch. “I’ll clear it with my husband and with Herr Behlert,” she said. “Herr Muller can cover for you.” “He resigned,” I said. “But there’s a fellow in the juvenile section at the Alex who can probably use the overtime. Name of Stahlecker. I’ve been meaning to give him a call.” “Please do.” Hedda nodded. “I’d count it as a personal favor, Herr Gunther,” she said. “I don’t want Mrs. Charalambides to come to any harm, and it seems to me that having you alongside her is the best way of ensuring her safety.” I toyed with the idea of suggesting her safety might be better enhanced by forgetting the whole idea; but the prospect of spending time with Noreen Charalambides was not an unattractive one. I’d seen comet tails that were less attractive. “She’s determined to do this, regardless of what you decide,” added Hedda, reading half of my mind. “So don’t waste your breath, Herr Gunther. I’ve already tried to dissuade her. But she’s always been a stubborn woman.” Mrs. Charalambides smiled. “You can borrow my car, of course.” It was clear they had the whole thing worked out between them and all I had to do was go along with it. I wanted to ask about the fee, but neither of them seemed inclined to return to the subject. That’s the thing about people with money. It’s only the absence of money that ever makes it seem relevant. Like having a sable coat. The sable probably paid no attention to it until the day it wasn’t there. “Of course. I’d be delighted to help in any way I can, Frau Adlon. If that’s what you want.” I kept my eyes on my employer while I said this. I didn’t want Hedda thinking that my delight in her friend’s glamorous company might be anything other than rhetorical. Not when her friend was so very beautiful. Not when my own excitement at the proximity of her person seemed to me so very obvious. I felt like a porcupine in a room full of toy balloons. Mrs. Charalambides crossed her legs, and it was like someone striking a match. To hell with the Gestapo, I thought, it’s me, Gunther, she needs protection from. It’s me who wants to strip her naked and to stand her in front of me and then think of some extra things she can do with her sweet behind than only sitting on it. Just the idea of being alone in a car with her put me in mind of a novice father confessor in a convent populated with nuns who were ex-chorus girls. Mentally I slapped myself across the mouth a couple of times and then once more to make sure I really got the message. This woman is not for the likes of you, Gunther, I told myself. You’re not even going to dream about her. She’s a married woman and she’s your employer’s oldest friend, and you’re going to sleep with Hermann Goering before you lay a finger on her. Of course, as Samuel Johnson reminds us, sex is usually what happens when you’re busy resurfacing the autobahn with good intentions. Perhaps it loses something in the translation. But it was true enough in my case.
14 H
EDDA ADLON’S CAR was a Mercedes SSK—the type of car I never expected ever to drive. K stood for “short,” but with its enormous fenders and six external cylinders, the white sports car looked about as short as a castle drawbridge and was just as hard to handle. Like any other car, it had four tires and a steering wheel, but there the similarity ended. Starting the supercharged seven-liter engine was like turning the prop for Manfred von Richthofen, and only the addition of twin 7.92-millimeter machine guns could have made it any louder. The car drew attention like a spotlight in a colony of stage-struck moths. Undeniably it was exhilarating to drive the car—I gained a new admiration for Hedda’s abilities behind the wheel, to say nothing of her husband’s willingness to indulge his younger wife with expensive toys—but it was of less use for private investigation work than a pantomime horse. At least a pantomime horse would have provided two people with a sort of anonymity. And I might have appreciated the intimate practicalities of bringing up the rear behind Mrs. Charalambides. We used the car for a day and then gave it back, and thereafter borrowed Herr Behlert’s rather more discreet W. Berlin’s wide roads were almost as busy as the sidewalks. Trams rattled up the center, their steady clockwork progress invigilated by white-sleeved traffic policemen who prevented cars and taxis from cutting in front of them like so many potbellied linesmen in a metropolitan football match. With the traffic cops’ whistles, the car Klaxons, and the bus horns, the road system was almost as noisy as a football match, too, and the way Berliners drove, you might have believed they thought someone stood a good chance of winning. Things looked calmer inside the trams: sober-suited clerks faced men in uniform like two delegations signing a peace treaty in a French siding. But the injustices of the armistice and the Depression already seemed a long way behind us. The city’s famous air was thick with the smell of gasoline and the smell of blooms from the baskets of the many flower women, not to mention a growing self-confidence. Germans were good about themselves again; at least those of us who were properly, noticeably German. Like the eagle on the Kaiser’s helmet. “Do you ever think of yourself as Aryan?” Mrs. Charalambides asked me. “As more German than the Jews?” I hardly wanted to tell her about my Aryan transfusion. For one thing, I hardly knew her; for another, it seemed rather a shameful thing to tell someone who, as far as I was aware, was one hundred percent Jewish. So I shrugged and said, “A German is a man who can feel enormously proud of being a German while wearing a pair of tight leather shorts. In other words, the whole idea is ridiculous. Does that answer your question?” She smiled. “Hedda said you had to leave the police because you were a well-known Social Democrat.” “I don’t know about well known. If I had been well known, things would be different for me now, I guess. These days you recognize a man who was a prominent Social Democrat by the arrows on his pajamas.” “Do you miss being a policeman?” I shook my head. “But you were a policeman for more than ten years. Did you always want to be a policeman?” “Maybe. I don’t know. When I was a little boy I used to play cops and robbers on the green outside our apartment building, and I wasn’t sure which I enjoyed being most: a cop or a robber. Anyway, I told my father that when I grew up I was probably going to be a cop or a robber, and he said, ‘Why not be like most cops and do both?’ ” I grinned. “He was a respectable man, but he didn’t much like the police. No one did. I wouldn’t say we lived in a tough neighborhood, but when I was growing up we still called a story with a happy ending an alibi.” FOR SEVERAL DAYS WE DOODLED our way across a street map of Berlin with me telling her jokes and keeping her amused while we went visiting the city’s gyms and sporting clubs, and I showed around the photograph of “Fritz” from the police file Richard Bömer had left with me. It’s true Fritz wasn’t looking his best, on account of the fact that he was dead, but no one seemed to recognize him. Maybe they didn’t at that, but it was hard to tell, given their greater interest in Mrs. Charalambides. A well-dressed, beautiful woman visiting a Berlin gym wasn’t unheard of, but it was unusual. I tried to tell her that I might get more out of the men in these places if she stayed in the car, but she wasn’t having it. Mrs. Charalambides wasn’t the kind of woman you told to do anything very much. “If I do what you say,” she said, “how am I going to get my story?” I might have agreed with her except for the fact that it was always the same three-word story
we came upon: NO JEWS ALLOWED. I felt sorry for Mrs. Charalambides seeing that kind of thing whenever we went inside a gym. She didn’t show it, but I guessed it might be upsetting for her. The T-gym was the last place on my list. With the benefit of hindsight it ought to have been the first. In the heart of West Berlin, just south of the Zoological Garden Station, is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. With its many spires of differing heights, it looks more like the castle of the Swan Knight Lohengrin than any place of religious worship. Grouped around the church were cinemas, dance halls, cabarets, restaurants, smart shops, and, at the western end of the Tauentzienstrasse, sandwiched between a cheap hotel and the Kaufhaus des Westens, was the T-gym. I parked the car, got Mrs. Charalambides out, and then turned to gaze in the KaDeWe’s shop window. “This is a pretty good department store,” I said. “No.” “Oh, it is. The restaurant’s good, too.” “I mean, no, I’m not going shopping while you go in that gym.” “How about you go in the gym and I go shopping? There’s a mark on this tie I’m wearing.” “Then you’d hardly be doing your job. You don’t know much about women if you think I’m not coming into the gym with you.” “Who said I know anything about women?” I shrugged. “The one thing I know for sure about women is that they walk along the street with their arms folded. Men don’t do that. Not unless they’re queer.” “You wouldn’t be doing your job, and I wouldn’t pay you. How about that?” “I’m glad you mentioned that, Mrs. Charalambides. How much are you paying me? We never actually agreed on a fee.” “Tell me what you think would be fair.” “That’s a difficult one. I’ve not had much practice at being fair. Fair’s a word I use for what’s on a barometer or perhaps to describe a maiden who’s in distress.” “Why don’t you think of me like that and then suggest a price.” “Because if I ever did think of you like that, then I’d have to charge you nothing at all. I don’t recall Lohengrin asking Elsa for ten marks a day.” “Maybe he should have done. Then he might not have left her.” “True.” “Well, then, ten marks a day plus expenses it shall be.” She smiled, enough to let me know that her dentist loved her, and then took my arm. She could have taken the other one to match, and I wouldn’t have objected. Not that ten marks a day had anything to do with it. Just being near enough to smell her and get the odd snapshot of her garters when she climbed out of Behlert’s car was payment enough. We turned away from the department-store window and went along to the T-gym door. “The place is owned by an ex-boxer called the Terrible Turk. People call him the Turk for short and because they don’t want to hurt his feelings. He hurts people who hurt his feelings. I never used to come to this place very much because it was the kind of gym that was more popular with businessmen and actors than with Berlin’s rings.” “Rings? What are they?” “Nothing to do with the Olympics, that’s for sure. The rings are what we Berliners call the criminal fraternities that more or less used to run this city during the Weimar Republic. There were three main rings: the Big, the Free, and the Free Alliance. All of them were officially registered as benevolent societies or sports clubs. Some of them were registered as gyms, and everyone used to pay them tribute: doormen, bootblacks, prostitutes, toilet attendants, newspaper vendors, flower sellers, you name it. All of it backed up by muscle from a gym. The rings still exist, but they themselves have to pay up now to a new gang in town. A gang with more muscle than anyone. The Nazis.” Mrs. Charalambides smiled and tightened her grip on my arm, which was the first time I realized her eyes were as blue as an ultramarine panel in an illuminated manuscript, and just as eloquent. She liked me. That much was obvious. “How have you stayed out of prison?” she asked. “By not being honest,” I said, and pushed open the T-gym’s door. I never yet walked through the door of a boxing gym that didn’t remind me of the Depression. Mostly it was the smell, and a fresh coat of puke-green paint, and a grimy open window did nothing to hide that. Like every other gym we’d been inside that week, the T-gym smelled of physical hardship, of high hopes and low disappointments, of urine and cheap soap and disinfectant, and above all of sweat. Sweat on the ropes and on the hand wraps; sweat on the heavy bags and on the focus mitts; sweat on the towels and on the head protectors. A valley-shaped stain on a boxing poster for a forthcoming fight at the Bock Brewery might have been sweat, too, but rising damp looked a better bet than any of the muscle-bound prospects who were sparring or working high-speed bags. In the main ring, a man with a face like a medicine ball was washing some blood off the canvas floor. In a little office, in front of an open door, a Neanderthal type who might have been a cornerman was showing a fellow troglodyte how to use a bruising iron. Blood and iron. Bismarck would have loved the place. Two new things about the T-gym since I was last there were signs on the wall next to the poster. One read: UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT; the other: GERMANS! DEFEND YOURSELVES. JEWS NOT WELCOME. “That would seem to cover pretty much everything,” I said, looking at the signs. “I thought you said this place was owned by a Turk,” she said. “No, he just called himself a Turk. He’s German.” “Correction,” said a man walking toward me. “He’s a Jew.” The man was the Neanderthal I’d seen before—a little shorter than I had supposed but as broad as a farm gate. He was wearing a white roll-neck, white gym slacks, and white gym shoes, but his eyes were small and as black as two lumps of coal. He looked like a medium-sized polar bear. “That explains the sign, I suppose,” I said to nobody in particular. And then, to the nobody in the roll-neck, “Hey, Primo, did the Turk sell the place, or did someone just steal it off him?” “I’m the new owner,” said the man, lifting his belly into his chest and poking a jaw as big as a toilet seat toward me. “Well, I guess you answered my question, Primo.” “I didn’t catch your name.” “Gunther, Bernhard Gunther. And this is my aunt Hilda.” “Are you a friend of Solly Mayer’s?” “Who?” “I guess you answered my question. Solly Mayer was the Turk’s real name.” “I was hoping he could help me to identify someone, that’s all. Someone who used to be a fighter, like the Turk. I’ve got a photograph here.” I took the picture of Fritz out of the file and showed it to the roll-neck. “Maybe you’d care to take a look at it yourself, Primo.” To give him credit, he looked at the photograph as if he really was trying to help. “I know, he’s not looking his best. When this was taken, he’d spent several days floating in the canal.” “Are you a cop?” “Private.” Still looking at the picture, he started to shake his head. “Are you sure? We think he might have been a Jewish fighter.” He handed the picture back immediately. “Floating in the canal, you say?” “That’s right. Aged about thirty.” “Forget it. If your floater was a Jew, then I’m glad he’s dead. That sign on the wall isn’t for show, you know, snooper.” “No? It’d be a strange kind of sign that isn’t for show, don’t you think?” I slipped the picture back in the file and handed it to Mrs. Charalambides, just in case. Roll-neck had the look of a man who was building up steam to hit someone, and that someone was me. “We don’t like Jews, and we don’t like the kind of people who would waste other people’s time looking for them. And, by the way, I don’t like you calling me Primo, neither.” I grinned back at him and then at Mrs. Charalambides.“I’ll lay you good money that the president of the AOC never came in this dump,” I said. “Is he another dirty Jew?” “I think we’d better leave,” said Mrs. Charalambides. “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “It does smell kind of bad in here.” The next second, he took a swing at me with his right, but I was ready for it, and his scarred fist whistled past the tip of my ear like a Hitler salute gone awry. He ought to have used the jab first—tested me out with it before throwing the kitchen sink my way. Now I knew everything there was to know about him—as a fighter, anyway. The man was made for the corner, not the ring. When I’d been a criminal commissar, I’d had a sergeant who was quite an accomplished pugilist, and he’d taught me one or two things. Enough to stay out of harm’s way. Half of winning any fight is not getting hit. The punch that had put August Krichbaum on a slab had been a lucky punch; or an unlucky one, depending on the way you looked at it. For that r
eason I hoped I could avoid hitting this man harder than he probably needed to be hit. He swung again and missed again. So far I was doing just fine. Meanwhile, Mrs. Charalambides had the good sense to take several steps back and look embarrassed. That was how it seemed to me, anyway. His third punch connected, but only just, like a flat stone landing on the surface of a lake. At the same time, he growled something that sounded like “Jew lover,” and for a moment I thought he might actually be right. I was damned if Mrs. Charalambides wasn’t very lovable indeed. And it angered me that she should have to witness this close-up display of rabid anti-Semitism. I was also feeling a certain obligation to the small crowd that had stopped what they were doing in the gym to see what happened next. So I let go with a left jab to Primo’s nose. It brought him up short, as if he’d found a scorpion in his nightshirt pocket. A second demoralizing jab and then a third rocked his head on his shoulders like an old teddy bear’s. By now there was blood on his face where his nose had been, and, seeing my client head for the door, I resolved to roll the credits, and I hit him just a little too hard with my right. Too hard for my fist, that is. Even as Primo was going down like a telegraph pole, I was shaking my hand. It already showed a degree of swelling. Meanwhile, something hit the floor of the gym like a coconut falling off a docker’s hoist—his head, probably—and the fight, such as it was, had ended. For a moment I stood over my latest victim like the Colossus at Rhodes, but I might as easily have looked like the outsized doorman at the Rio Rita bar down the street. There was a short murmur of approval, not for my triumph, but for the delivery of a well-executed hook, and, still flexing my hand, I knelt down anxiously to see what damage I had caused. Another man got there before me. It was the man with the face like a medicine ball. “Is he all right?” I asked, genuinely concerned. “He’ll be fine,” was the reply. “You just knocked some sense into him, that’s all. Give him a couple of minutes, he’ll be telling us all how you caught him with a lucky one.” He took hold of my hand and looked at it. “Sure, it’s some ice you’ll be needing on that handle, and no mistake. Here. Come with me. But make it quick. Before that idiot comes around. Frankel’s the boss here.” I followed my Samaritan into a small kitchen, where he opened a refrigerator and then handed me a canvas bag full of ice cubes. “Keep your hand in there for as long as you can bear it,” he ordered. “Thanks.” I put my hand in the bag. He shook his head. “You were looking for the Turk, you said.” I nodded. “He’s not in any trouble, is he?” In the corner of his mouth was a ten-pfennig Lilliput, which he now removed and inspected critically. “Not from me. I just wanted him to look at a picture and see if he recognizes the guy.” “Yeah. I saw the mug. Familiar. But I couldn’t fix him.” He thumped the side of his head as if trying to dislodge something. “I’m a bit punchy these days. Memory’s all screwed up. Solly’s your man for the memory. He used to know every fighter that ever put on a pair of German gloves, and plenty others besides. It was a shame what happened here. When the Nazis announced that new law of theirs, forbidding Jews from all sporting clubs, Solly had no choice but to sell. And because he had to sell, he had to take what he was offered by that bastard Frankel. Which wasn’t even enough to cover what he owed the bank. These days he doesn’t have a pot to piss in.” Finally I could bear the cold no longer and withdrew my hand from the bag of ice. “How’s the hand?” He put the cigar back in his mouth and took a look. “Still swollen,” I said. “With pride, probably. I hit him harder than I should have done. At least that’s what this hand says.” “Nonsense. You hardly hit him at all. Big fellow like you. If you’d put your shoulder into it, you could have broke his jaw, maybe. But relax, he had it coming. Only no one thought it would be gift-wrapped so neatly. A real sweet punch, that’s what it was you dropped him with, my friend. You should take it up. The fight game, I mean. Fellow like you could make a real go of it. With the right trainer, of course. Me, perhaps. You might even make some money doing it.” “Thanks, but no, thanks. Making money might take away the fun of it. I’m strictly an amateur when it comes to hitting people, and that’s the way I want it to stay. Besides, while the Nazis are around, I’ll always be second best.” “Got that right.” He grinned. “It doesn’t look broken. Might feel sore for a couple of days, though.” He gave me my hand back. “Where does Solly live these days?” The man looked sheepish. “It used to be here. In a couple of rooms above the gym. But when he lost this place, he lost his home as well. The last I heard of the Turk, he was living in a tent in the Grunewald Forest, along with some other Jews who’ve lost out under the Nazis. But that was six, maybe nine months ago, so he might not still be there.” He shrugged. “Then again, where else can he go? It’s not like there’s any Jewish welfare agency in this country, is there? And these days the Salvation Army’s almost as bad as the SA.” I nodded and handed back the ice bag. “Thanks, mister.” “Give him my regards if you see him. The name’s Buckow. Like the town, but uglier.”
Philip Kerr Page 10
