Nice Girl Does Noir -- Vol. 2 (Intro by J.A.Konrath)

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  “Yes, Frau Hesse. I remember all too well. That’s why I know it was radiation. Not the other.”

  She frowned, the sides of her mouth tightening. “Perhaps you should tell me what it is you remember.”

  He cleared his throat. “What I remember is that your husband was set up by a prostitute in a cabaret. A group of Nazi thugs ambushed and killed him. Unfortunately, incidents like those were all too common back then.”

  She tapped her spoon against her cup. “But Inspektor, that was only part—”

  He rode over her words. “No, Madame. I beg your pardon, but you are wrong. You see, if it were any other way, if it had been radioactive uranium your husband and his colleagues were experimenting with, I might have deduced something quite different.”

  She studied her tea cup.

  “You see, if it had been radioactive uranium, I might have suspected they were trying to create nuclear fission.”

  She jerked her head up.

  “Which would mean they would soon be able to build a nuclear bomb.”

  Her eyebrows arched. “Indeed.”

  “And then, I might also have suspected that word leaked out, as it always seems to in these matters, and that the Nazis demanded he turn over his work to them. Your husband would have refused, of course, but it would have only been a matter of time. They would have blackmailed him, exposed his “activities”, perhaps even tortured him. And not just him. His colleagues. His wife. Perhaps even his children. Your Friedrich would have—”

  She cut him off. “We couldn’t allow that to happen,” she said quietly. “You understand, don’t you? In the end, we had no choice. We had to protect the work. Even at the expense of—” She drew in a long, shuddering breath. “It was decided I should bring the work here.”

  “Where you met with scientists who would later would form the Manhattan Project.”

  She nodded.

  “And you were satisfied to let the Brown Shirts take the blame for his death.”

  “So we hoped.” She shrugged her delicate shoulders. “We didn’t know if it would go. It was all very fragile. Indeed, our biggest fear was you, Inspektor.”

  “Me?”

  “We were certain you knew. Or would discover it soon enough. You made us hasten my departure. Later, we were surprised by your silence. We decided you were a friend.” She paused. “And so you were.” She leaned back in her chair. “But how? How did you figure it out?”

  He hesitated. “His mistress confessed that the Brown Shirts came to the cabaret the night after he was killed. Not the night of his death. The rest was not difficult.” He stared at the skaters. The tall blonde was now partnered with a dark young man. Arms entwined, they skimmed the surface of the ice, skating in perfect synchrony. “But my dear Frau Hesse, I have a question for you. How—how could you let yourself—and your colleagues—how could you do this terrible thing?”

  Swallowing, she stared at her teacup for so long he wondered if she would reply. Then, she looked up and waved a hand towards the children. “There is your answer, Inspector.”

  He twisted toward the children, his and hers. Their eager young faces sparkling as they followed the skaters. Bright new stars shooting across a cold, dark heaven. He looked back at Frau Hesse. Her eyes filled.

  “You see?” Blinking hard, she smiled her tears away. The gentle smile of a friend. “Perhaps you will join me for a Schnapps, Herr Inspektor? It was my husband’s favorite.”

  THE END

  This story begins during World War Two but jumps to Chicago in the 1970’s. The plot and characterst surprised me; I didn’t know it would turn out the way it did. Happily, that’s one of the joys of writing crime fiction. JOSEF’S ANGEL was originally published by Amazon in 2006 and is still part of their Amazon Shorts library.

  JOSEF’S ANGEL

  Sunlight glinted off their black leather boots when they marched. Strutting, goose-stepping, even kicking if you happened to be in their path. Josef learned to scuttle to the other side of the compound when they came his way. At the same time, there was something perversely reassuring about the boots. Seeing them meant another night had passed, and he was still alive.

  He’d kept his stuffed lamb with him from the day he’d come to this place. Just a dirty, scraggly lump of wool, it was the only thing he’d salvaged from his life before. One morning, though, while veering away from the boots, the lamb dropped in the dirt. He bent down to retrieve it, but the boots had already picked it up. Josef gazed past the polished black leather, the gray uniform, the shiny gold buttons, into a face with cold, measuring eyes.

  “Bitte.” He held out his arms for his lamb. Please.

  The face smiled and held out the lamb. Relief coursed through him. Woolig was coming back. Then the boots tossed the toy to a huge, snarling dog straining against its leash. The dog’s jaws clamped down on Woolig, shook it from side to side, and tore it to pieces. Josef heard the boots laugh.

  He was always hungry. Not the kind between breakfast and lunch when Mama gave him a biscuit to take away the empty feeling. Or the kind when he took tea early and ran back outside to play. This hunger scraped his belly so raw that he scrabbled in the dirt, eating roots, nuts, and objects covered with sand just to dull the pain. All the while knowing he’d probably throw it up later.

  He needed the hunger. The hunger meant he was still alive. It was only when your stomach started to bloat like some of the other children that you started to die. Listless, dull-eyed, aimlessly wandering the grounds. All of them smelling like pee. Like him, none of them looked up. But they didn’t look down either, no longer bothering to scrounge for food. When that happened, Josef knew the boots would soon haul their bodies out of the sheds.

  Josef hung on. His mother had promised to come back. Every day he peeked around trees, bent over wooden bunks, willing her to appear. She hadn’t come yet, and he was afraid it was his fault. She’d told him not to lose the scrap of paper she stuffed into his coat the night they took her away.

  “You’ll never be lost,” she’d whispered frantically. “It has your name written down. And where you live.”

  But it must have dropped out of his pocket when they brought him here, and now he couldn’t remember his address. He barely remembered his name. He kept waiting until the hot summer day when he was lying behind the shed in a patch of shade. He was nodding off when a small green leaf gently fluttered across his face and settled on his shoulder like a kiss. His eyes grew wet, and his throat squeezed shut. After that, he stopped looking for his mother.

  Soon after that, on another afternoon that mocked him with its beauty, Josef was trudging back from the latrine when he felt the hurry in the air. Boots marched crisply; a whine rumbled in the distance. Josef looked up. A long coil of trucks snaked into the camp. A man stomped across the compound. His uniform was gray like the others, but it was festooned with ribbons and badges, and his boots were the shiniest of all. An important man, the guards whispered. Close to the Fuhrer. He held a metal cone in his hand, which made his voice loud when he spoke into it.

  Other boots herded everyone toward the gates. Children screamed, guards shouted. The officer lowered his cone and watched. His shoulders sagged, as if issuing the order had sapped all his strength.

  Josef gazed at the trucks. The exhaust from their engines made waves in the air. Some of the children were already boarding. The boots were telling them they were going to see their mothers, but Josef knew it was a lie. He didn’t have his scrap of paper anymore; how would they know where he lived?

  Moving slowly so he wouldn’t be noticed, he crept to the back of the crowd. Behind him and a few paces east was a sleeping shed. There were no boots between him and the shed. Slowly, quietly, he backed up and ducked inside.

  The sun threw rosy shafts of light on the slab of wood they called a bunk. Josef threw himself underneath and started to count. If he made it to ten, he would be safe. He made it all the way to eight before a shadow fell across the threshold. He stopped counti
ng.

  Who was there? He debated whether to peek. Curiosity won, but when he inched his face to the edge of the bunk, he sucked in a breath. The form in the doorway was on fire! Flames shot out around it in a silent frenzy of light. But there were no screams of terror and no cries of pain coming from it. There was no sound at all, except the distant shouts of the boots.

  Josef remembered his mother’s stories about angels who swept down from heaven, adorned in heavenly light. How they visited Jacob, father of the patriarch for whom he was named. Josef’s pulse thundered in his ears. Was this one of those angels?

  The form in the doorway raised its arm and beckoned. Josef burrowed back under the bunk. It must be a trick. If it really were an angel, God would tell him what to do.

  Then it spoke. “I will help you,” the voice whispered. “But there isn’t any time. You must run to the fence post on the side of the compound. Now!”

  Josef rolled to the edge of the bunk. The angel glittered, blinding him with its flames. It beckoned again. Afraid to move, afraid not to, Josef squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the angel was gone. Only the afternoon sun remained, streaming across the floor. He waited for the angel to return, but when he’d counted to ten, and nothing happened, he slithered out from under the bunk.

  Trying to keep himself small, he stole to the door of the shed. Most of the children had boarded the trucks. Standing to one side so he was still hidden, he gazed at the fence. The angel said to run over there, but where? The fence circled the camp, no beginning and no end.

  As his eyes swept across the yard, something glinted in the dirt beside a fence post. He stared at the object, then at the post. Something about the post was different. He studied it. It was crooked! Josef felt his eyes widen. He looked around for the boots, but they were still at the trucks. He sidestepped to the fence. On the other side of the fence was a wide meadow with tall grass, and beyond that was the forest.

  Josef bent down and picked up the object. It was a shiny gold medallion, imprinted with the figure of a man astride a horse. The horse’s front legs were curled as if it were leaping over a fence. Over a fence. Under a fence. Was that what he was supposed to do? Josef’s fist clenched. He palmed the medallion, and tentatively pressed a hand against the fence post. The post moved.

  At the same moment, the trucks revved their engines. Brakes squealed. The air was choked with fumes. The first of the trucks lurched forward. The children’s screams rose to an anguished pitch. The sound of beating wings thumped. A flock of startled geese rose out of the meadow.

  Josef pushed against the fence post. It fell back at an angle, opening a space just wide enough for a small boy to wiggle through. With the fence’s sharp edges pricking his skin, he wedged himself through. As he did, his shirt became stuck in the links.

  Suddenly a shout went up. “Look. The boy. Stop him!”

  Josef heard the stampede of boots, charging, running, closing in. He thrashed and twisted, wrestling the fence to get free. A spit of bullets whizzed by his head. Then, a voice close behind him shouted through the bullets.

  “Achtung! What are you doing? Do you want to kill me?”

  The bullets stopped. But Josef didn’t. He struggled free of the fence to the other side. Staggering to his feet, he plunged into the tall grass and ran as fast as he could. Brambles scraped his skin, insects buzzed his head, but he kept running until he reached the edge of the forest. Only then did he realize the medallion had slipped from his hand.

  Thirty Years Later

  A blistering wind swirled dust in the vacant lots, and the sun-baked sidewalk scorched the souls of his shoes. Sweat soaked the back of his shirt. A faint babble from a television spilled from an open window: “I began by telling the president ‘there’s a cancer growing on your presidency.’”

  Rabbi Joe carried his bag of groceries past the sanctuary and down the hall to the kitchen. Already, it was twenty degrees cooler inside the synagogue. A gift from Hashem. After transferring the bag’s contents to the refrigerator, he took out a cold can of pop and rolled it over his forehead.

  Beth-El was in Lawndale, a south side Chicago neighborhood that had been ground zero during the riots. Five years later, the wounds were still raw. Stores never reopened, windows remained boarded up, vagrants loitered in abandoned lots.

  The shul had deteriorated too. To be honest, most of the congregants had deserted years before. The only ones left were the elderly, the sick, and the poor—the ones who had nowhere else to go. But it was his Joe’s first pulpit since receiving smicha. He wondered if it would be his last.

  He was bent over his desk, lost in the parshah for the coming week when the outside door slammed. Footsteps slapped down the hall, and a young black boy stuck his head into Joe’s office. No older than nine or ten, the boy wore plastic thongs on his feet, shorts, and a shirt so old its red stripes had faded to pink. Edging up to the desk, the boy jabbed the air with his finger.

  “You a honky. You de ohpressor.”

  Rabbi Joe moved his copy of Rashi to one side.

  “You the devil.” The boy went on.

  “Nice to see you again, Clarence.” The boy showed up regularly, especially now school was out. Always around lunchtime. “Who told you that?”

  “My mamma.” Clarence’s chin rose defiantly.

  The rabbi nodded. “What else does she say?”

  “That the white man keep the black poor and beggin’ so’s he won’t rise above.”

  “Your mamma is a Black Muslim, Clarence. Do you know what that is?”

  “‘Course.” The boy glared.

  Joe smiled and pushed himself up from his desk. “Good. Then you’ll understand what I want to show you.”

  The boy hesitated.

  Joe turned around and smiled. “Come on. It’s okay.”

  They walked down the empty hall, past walls with peeling paint, a rack with frayed tallit, a shelf with a few scattered Siddurim. The boy seemed to register the shabby surroundings.

  “Why you stay here, Rabbi Joe? You ain’t got no prayerfuls.”

  Joe laughed. “Good question, son.” Timely, too. Last month he’d been offered a teaching job at the Yeshivah, up north in Rogers Park. He hadn’t turned it down. Yet.

  “I ain’t your son. I Abdal Hakim.”

  “Servant of the wise?”

  “How you know?”

  Smiling, the rabbi opened the door and they stepped inside. Though the rest of the shul was in disrepair, the sanctuary, with freshly painted walls and a gleaming oak Aron Kodesh, was airy and light. Near the top of the walls, on all four sides, were three stained glass windows that sent slashes of red, blue, and green light across the room.

  Joe led the boy to one of the windows. The figure of a man stood over a slab of stone. A smaller figure bound with ropes lay on the slab. The man had his arms raised, holding a knife that glistened in the light. Clarence stared.

  “Each of these windows tells a story, Clarence.” The rabbi pointed to the window. “The man in this story is Abraham. He’s an important man in my religion. But he’s important in yours, too.”

  The boy squinted.

  “You see, Abraham had a son named Isaac.”

  “‘Dat him in the picture?”

  “That’s him. But Abraham had a second son, too, although he’s not in this picture. Can you guess what his name was?”

  The boy frowned.

  “Ishmael. And Ishmael was the founder of your great religion.”

  “I know that.” The boy pointed to the window. “What the daddy doin’ to Izaak? He beatin’ him?”

  Joe shook his head. “Abraham thought God wanted him to sacrifice his son, and he loved God so much he was willing to do it. That’s what you see in the picture. But at the last minute, God told Abraham not to. He saved Isaac. As a matter of fact, God saved Ishmael too. And made sure he grew up to be a famous man.”

  Joe waited as Clarence gazed at the window, neither of them in any hurry to leave. The windows
soothed Joe, relieved his stress, reassured him of God’s presence. Even now a sense of calm and well-being sifted through him.

  Clarence moved to the next window. Three winged angels were walking down a block of steps. At the bottom of the steps lay the figure of a man. “In this story a man named Jacob, Isaac’s son, by the way, had this dream about angels coming down from heaven on a ladder to talk to him.” Joe rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Do you believe in angels, Clarence?”

  The boy looked at the window, then gave it his back. “No way, man.”

  Joe dropped his hand. “Why not?”

  “‘Cuz ‘ifin there be angels, what they be doing ‘round here?”

  “Angels can go anywhere they want, you know. I’ve seen one.”

  Clarence’s eyes narrowed.

  “I wasn’t much older than you,” Joe said softly. “In fact, it’s because of that angel that I’m alive today.”

  “Man, that’s bogus.”

  “I’m serious. The angel I saw helped me escape from—well, he saved my life.”

  “For real?”

  Joe nodded. “When I was a little boy, I was a prisoner. With a lot of other children. All the other children were taken away on trucks, but I hid myself away. That’s when my angel found me. He spoke to me, like this one did to Jacob.” The rabbi gestured towards the window. “He told me to go out and look for a sign. When I finally got the nerve to do it, I found a piece of gold on the ground. Near a fencepost.”

  Clarence’s eyes grew round.

  “The gold piece had the imprint of a horse and rider on it,” Joe said. “And the horse’s legs were up in the air, as if he was jumping. That was the sign, I realized. I was supposed to jump, too. I did, and I got through the fence and ran into the woods. To freedom.”

  “Dag.. you still holdin’ onto that thang?”

  “No. I lost it when I ran. But I really didn’t need it. Somehow I knew I would make it.” He flipped up his palms. “And, you see, I did. The angel did his job.”

  Clarence cocked his head.