He tossed the maps into the crate as a head appeared around the side of his door. “No one’s going to want it, you know.”
Hoffner looked over to see Gert Henkel stepping into the office. Henkel was fortyish and rather dapper in his Hauptsturmführer uniform, the double chevron and braided circle making him someone to be taken seriously, willingly or not. The insignia placed him somewhere between the old Kriminal-Kommissar and Kriminal-Oberkommissar designations—or maybe somewhere above them both; Hoffner had given up trying to follow it all. Oddly enough, for all his Nazi trappings, Henkel was a decent fellow. It was still unclear how much of the party line he swallowed: too good a cop not to see it for what it was, but too ambitious not to keep his mouth shut. Hoffner wondered how long that would last.
Henkel said with a smile, “When was the last time you cleaned the place?”
If not for the glaring shine on Henkel’s boots, Hoffner might even have called him friend. “How old are you, Henkel?”
Henkel kept his smile. “A good deal younger than you.” When Hoffner continued to wait, Henkel offered, “Forty-two.”
Hoffner nodded and went back to the crate. “Then I’d say the last cleaning was just before you set off for Gymnasium.” Hoffner tossed several more scrawled-on pads onto the pile. “You did go to Gymnasium, didn’t you, Henkel? Or are you one of those uneducated but terribly hardworking little butcher’s sons who caught the eye of some well-meaning cop and so forth?”
Henkel’s smile grew. “Never took you for an elitist, Nikolai.”
Hoffner picked up the last of the pads. “I’m not. I just like a bit of schooling. Your uniform can be rather misleading on that.”
Henkel snorted a quiet laugh and stepped farther into the office. “My God, you’re getting out just in time, aren’t you?”
“Too late to turn me in, then?”
“Not my style.” Henkel settled in one of the chairs along the wall.
Hoffner continued to flip through his pad. A photograph of Martha with Sascha at five or six years of age had somehow wedged itself into the pages. It was a dour-looking thing, mother and son both moodily sunburnt, probably taken at the beach one of those summers before Georg had come along. Still, she had been pretty.
Hoffner slid the photo back in and placed the pad in the crate. He looked over at Henkel. “Not your style? You might want to ask yourself why sometime.”
Henkel spoke easily. “That was your generation, Nikolai. It’s answers now, not questions.”
Again Hoffner bobbed a nod. “Is that meant to be clever or charming? I’m never quite sure with all these new rules.”
Henkel looked momentarily less charmed before the smile returned. “I’d never really taken you for a Jew.”
How quickly word traveled, thought Hoffner. “Neither had I,” he said. “But that’s just it. Your boys have left me no choice.”
“Early pension, and at full pay? They’re actually doing you a favor at the moment.”
“It’s not this moment that worries me.”
Henkel snorted another laugh. “Gloom and doom. I was wrong. You really are a Jew.” When Hoffner said nothing, Henkel pressed. “Oh, come on, Nikolai, don’t take it so personally. No one’s going to let an old bull cop like you get caught up in any of this.” The humane Henkel was making an appearance. “It’s just putting things in order. They make a show with a few of the more arrogant types, and then everyone settles in. Better for the Jews to live their own lives, anyway. Probably what they want themselves.” He smiled. “Now, if you happened to own a shop or, God forbid, actually had a little money, then…”
Hoffner tossed another handful of scraps into the wastebasket. “I might need to take it a bit more personally?”
“No, Nikolai, you wouldn’t.” Henkel leaned forward. “This is politics. They’re saying what they know people want to hear. So they’ve taken it a bit far. They’ll pull back. Trust me, six months from now, no one will be talking about any of this.”
Hoffner swept the remaining clips into his hand and deposited them in his pocket. “They,” he said, as he brushed the grit from his palms. “Your friends might not like hearing that from someone wearing their uniform.”
Hoffner thought he might have overstepped the line but Henkel was in too good a mood. “It’s me, Nikolai,” Henkel said, sitting back again. “I’m the one who’s getting it. I’ll probably have to bring in a fumigator, but who wouldn’t want the great Nikolai Hoffner’s office? There was quite a pool for it. Somehow I won.”
For the first time, Hoffner smiled. “Somehow,” he said. He took his hat from the rack. “Then I suppose it’s yours to enjoy.”
He started for the door, and Henkel said, “You’re forgetting your crate, Nikolai.”
Hoffner stopped and looked back. He stepped over and pulled out a pen. Scratching out the word “desk,” he wrote “trash” below it. He then pocketed the pen and moved out into the hall.
MENDEL
It had taken some getting used to, living among the refined. Even now, Hoffner could feel the eyes from across the street with their tidy disdain—sneering at the brown suit, brown hat, brown shoes. Brown was not a shade for the rich, at least not the brown Hoffner was sporting. Still, it was good to have a successful son. Georg’s house was large, his lawn well-kept, and his flowers always a jaunty yellow or maroon, even after too much rain: remarkable how wealth could absorb even the dullest of colors.
The one blemish on the otherwise flawless façade was a tiny streak of fresh paint on the doorjamb. Hoffner stepped up to the veranda, lowered his umbrella, and stared at the spot where the mezuzah had hung. Not that Georg had grown up with anything remotely Jewish—he had grown up with nothing—but the boy had fallen in love with a girl, and such girls demanded these things. She had even gone so far as to demand (ask, hope) that Georg might move himself up on the Judaic ledger from quarter Jew to full-fledged. Only twenty at the time, Georg had submitted without a blink, a year’s worth of preparation happily weathered to make him fit for marriage. Hoffner was now sandwiched between a dead mother and a practicing son, both of whom had returned to their roots without a single thought to the living family tree. Odd how, thus far, Hoffner was the only one to have paid for his lineage.
The mezuzah had come down after the latest spate of street beatings. Until recently, the punch-ups had always taken place in the seedier parts of town or outside synagogues. Even so, all but a few of the houses along the street were now festooned in swastika flags: national pride, they said, the German Olympic spirit on display. Those conspicuously unadorned—the Nazis had forbidden Jews from flying the Reich colors—drew stares enough. Why advertise beyond the obvious?
Hoffner pushed through the front door and into the foyer. He slid his umbrella into the stand and then opened the door to the house. Almost at once the smell of boiled chicken and potatoes wafted out to meet him.
Luckily, Georg’s Lotte was an excellent cook. Hoffner followed the smell past the sitting and dining rooms (too much velvet and suede), along the carpeted corridor (very Chinese), and into the white-white tile of the kitchen. At least here there was something of the familiar. Lotte was at the stove, standing beyond the large wooden table and leaning over a pot that seemed to be sending up smoke signals. Very quietly, Hoffner said, “Hello.”
She was known to jump. Several meals during his early days in the house had spilled to the floor with the simplest of greetings. Hoffner cleared his throat and again spoke in a calming tone. “Smells very nice.”
“I heard the door,” she said, without turning. She continued to stir. “A messenger came with another note. That makes three. It’s on the table.”
Hoffner saw the ripped-open envelope with the now-familiar Pathé Gazette rooster in the top corner. The note was stuck halfway back in.
“And?” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting.
She seemed to take comfort in the heat on her face. “They don’t feel there’s any need for alarm, at this poi
nt.” The last phrase held just the right touch of resentment. “ ‘It’s mayhem,’ ‘what Georg thrives on,’ ‘the only one who can get it on film,’ so forth and so on.” She dug through for a piece of something, scooped it up, and tossed it into the sink. “They’re doing what they always do. They’re being pricks.”
Hoffner liked this most about Lotte. In fact, he liked almost everything about her. She was lovely and fine-boned, very good to Georg, and so clever when it came to seeing things as they really were. Georg had needed a girl like this, a girl just as clever as himself. And while Georg might have had a bit more empathy for the world beyond them—Lotte was never one to suffer fools—it was only a bit. By some miracle, the world had allowed them to find each other.
It was her mouth, though, that Hoffner marveled at. There was an honesty to the way she used words like “prick” and “shit-brain.” They weren’t meant to shock, just define. Hoffner imagined it was her precision that made her so endearing.
He said, “I don’t think they’re doing it on purpose.”
“Of course they’re not doing it on purpose,” she said, stirring again. “That’s what makes them pricks. They know exactly where he is. They just don’t want to tell us.”
Hoffner nodded and asked, “Is the boy about?”
“Still,” she went on, “I imagine they’re expecting some really wonderful reels of war-torn Barcelona, bodies and red flags, rifles in the air. And all by the end of the week. Isn’t that exciting?”
Hoffner had told himself to wait until dinner to bring things up but, truth to tell, he had never been much good at waiting. He said, “I suppose I’ll just have to go and find him, then.”
“He’s up in your rooms,” she said. “Where else would he be? I think he’s got something special planned for you today.”
Hoffner waited and then said, “I wasn’t talking about the boy.”
It took her a moment to follow. When she did, she continued to ladle through the meat.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “You meant Georg. Going to Spain and bringing him back. Yes, that would be very nice of you. And some eggs while you’re out. We’re running low.”
“They’ve given me the sack at the Alex.” He waited for her to turn. “This afternoon,” he said. “It’s a few years early, but they think it’s for the best. After all, I’ve had such a nice career up until now.”
She was still holding the spoon. He noticed a glint of Georg’s empathy register in her eyes: it was nice to see it. She said, “I’m so sorry, Nikolai.”
He shook his head. “No reason. Not much police work going on at the place now, especially for a half-Jew cop.” She tried an awkward nod, and he said, “So I’ll go see this Wilson fellow tomorrow. The one who runs Georg’s office. He’s always seemed nice enough. Let him know what I’m planning to do.”
There was an uncomfortable silence before she said, “What?”
Hoffner continued easily. “I’m sure he knows where Georgi was filming last. No reason to put any of that in the notes. I’ll start there.” The spoon began to drip and Hoffner pointed. “You might want to watch that.”
Her silence turned to confusion. “You’re not being serious?” Chicken stock splattered to the tile but she ignored it. “You know, I don’t find this funny.” When he continued to stare at her, she said, “They may be pricks, Nikolai, but they’re right. He’s followed someone up into the hills. That’s what this is.” She found a dishrag and crouched down to clean up the spill. “He’ll get the footage he wants and come back down. And then he’ll come home.” There was an unexpected frailty in her need to believe what she was saying. “It’s the Spanish. Do they even have telephones?” She stood and turned on the faucet.
Hoffner watched as the dishrag now began to get the worst of it. He said, “We both know Georg’s never gone this long without a wire or a letter.” When she said nothing, he took hold of the envelope, pulled out the note, and—glancing through it—realized she had managed it almost verbatim: “mayhem,” “thrived.”
“ ‘Incomplete communications,’ ” he said, reading. “That’s a dangerous little phrase.” He waited and then added, “If you need me here, I won’t go.”
“Need you?” she said; he heard the first strains of anger in her voice. She turned off the faucet and said, “That’s not it and you know it.”
She continued to stare into the sink, and Hoffner suddenly realized how badly he had missed it. This wasn’t anger. This was fear. It was a cruel sort of stupidity that had let him think she might actually be encouraging, even excited at the prospect. All he had done was to make the danger acutely real for her.
He set the page back on the table. “No one else is going after him, Lotte. No one else wants to think they have to.” And for some inexplicable reason: “There’s probably a better story in it if they don’t.” He was too late in realizing how deeply this had cut her. Instead, he found a bit of grease on the table and began to rub his finger along the wood.
Her eyes remained on the faucet. “So you just get on a train and go to Spain, is that it?”
His fingers had become sticky. He looked for something to wipe them on. “I’ve a friend who can fly me in.”
“A friend?” she said in disbelief, turning to him. “So this has been in the works for some time.”
Hoffner let the silence settle. “Yes.”
“Of course it has,” she said. “And getting the sack from the Kripo—that just makes it easier, doesn’t it?”
“I was going anyway.”
She tossed over the dishrag. “I’m sure you were.”
“As I said, I won’t go—”
“Yes, you won’t go if I tell you I’m too weak to let you. Would that cause some real misgivings, Nikolai, a moment of genuine concern? But then I’ve never played the martyred wife with Georg, so why should I try it with you?”
At twenty-four, she already had more resilience than he would ever know in himself. And courage. It took a kind of courage for bitterness to stand up to fear. It was something he had seen only in women. Or perhaps it was what he provoked in them. Either way, it made him feel small in its presence.
He focused on the rag as he wiped off the grease. “It’s more chaos now than—” He stopped himself. Than what, he thought—killing? How much more could he possibly mangle this? He looked at her. “They haven’t drawn the battle lines. There aren’t any fronts to be held. They’re picking sides, and a man can get lost in that, no matter how noble his intentions. A man like that needs someone to come and find him.” And, perhaps trying too hard to redeem himself, he said, “If it were you, Lotte, I wouldn’t need to go at all. You’d be just fine.”
She held his gaze. It was a strained few moments before he caught the flicker of surrender in her eyes. Another moment and she pointed to the rag. “They’re still pricks,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed, tossing it back. “They are.”
It was enough for both of them.
She turned to the pot and, with one more unexpected kindness, said, “He’ll be impossible if you don’t go up now. Just try not to get him too frantic before dinner.”
* * *
The walk across the back lawn to the carriage house was mercifully dry. Hoffner kept his head down, careful not to notice the tiny pair of eyes following him from the second-floor window. He pulled open the door, mounted the steps, and instantly heard the scurrying of Mendel’s little feet above him. At the top of the railing, Hoffner saw Elena, the boy’s nanny, who was standing behind a lamp. To a four-year-old, a woman of her size—thick in all the right places—could actually be hidden behind such things. There was a stifled giggle from the blanketed lump on the sofa.
“What a long day I’ve had,” Hoffner said. “How nice it is, finally to be alone. I’ll just stretch myself out for a nice rest.”
He tossed his hat onto a chair and began to ease himself down onto the sofa. Instantly, the boy’s hands gripped Hoffner’s shoulders with shrieks of “Not alo
ne! Not alone! Not alone!”
Hoffner went through all the required confusion—“My goodness! Who’s that? The sofa’s alive! Help me!”—as they ran around the room, Mendel clinging tightly to his back. Finally, Hoffner pulled the boy around to the front and they both slumped back to the sofa with a smothering of kisses for Mendy’s neck and belly.
This was, with only minor variations, the routine every day, down to the last few gurgles of laughter before Hoffner finally let go. Mendel quickly leaped to the ground and raced over to the drawing table in the corner.
Elena, well practiced, now stepped out from behind her lamp and said, “We spent a good deal of time on this one, Herr Chief Inspector. A little trouble getting all the letters of your name to fit over your head, but we finally managed it.”
She was always very good with the prompting. Not yet forty, Elena might have been the perfect opportunity for a healthy father-in-law living within arm’s reach, but both of them had been smart enough not to play out that farce. Hoffner nodded, trying to catch his breath as the boy raced back to the sofa and thrust the page onto his lap.
The only thing even remotely familiar on the paper was the drawing of a silver-star badge—or at least that was how it was described. It had recently become Mendel’s signature piece and was about two-thirds the way up on a big black blob, which meant that the blob was Hoffner. A few weeks back, the boy had been given a book on cowboys from Lotte’s father, an insufferable fan of the American West. With very little encouragement, Hoffner had pointed out that a sheriff was a kind of policeman, whereupon Mendel had instantly assigned that role to him. Lotte’s father remained less than pleased.
As to the “letters” Elena had mentioned, there were various scrawled lines and curls above the blob, the nearest thing to German an upside-down A, that looked more like a capsized boat than anything else. Still, it was three little clumps of something, with the A at the end.
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