Ruda sighed. “And what would you have lived on? You know I would never have parted with the act. I tell you something, you would have had to shoot me to get them. This was just a fantasy on your part.”
He got up and poured himself a glass of water. “I talked to Lazars, spent hours talking to him. We argued and yelled a lot, but he’s changed, too, he’s changed.”
“I don’t follow, can I have a drink?”
He handed her a glass of water, and then stared at the posters. “I tell you the circus, as we know it, it won’t last, it can’t last. You remember Ivan the Russian? He spent fifteen years training his tigers, he’s been in the circus business since he was six years old, but he couldn’t afford to keep them out of season. He shot the poor bastards, all twenty-four of them, so nobody else would have them…said they were of no use to anyone, and he wouldn’t let a zoo have them, didn’t think it was fair. He told Lazars he shot them because he loved them. Now what crazy mind is that?”
Suddenly he laughed his old rumble laugh, leaning back, his eyes closed. “Maybe I should shoot myself, can’t be put out to pasture, can’t get any other work.”
Ruda’s heart was hammering. She had never heard him talk this way, ever. She sat next to him, close to him. “Don’t…don’t talk like this.”
“It’s the truth, I’ve known it for a while. I see them cramped in their cages. I keep on telling myself that it was different when I was working the rings, that it was better, but I know it wasn’t, if anything it was worse. You, we, are living on borrowed time, because the day will come soon when all wild animals will be barred from being used as cheap entertainment.”
“No, no, I don’t believe it. I love them, I care for them, I love every single one of them.”
Grimaldi cocked his head, gave a slow sad smile. “No, you don’t. You love to dominate, you like the danger, the adrenaline, but you don’t love them.”
“I do, you know I do…”
“Caged, locked up twenty-four hours a day, you call that love?” He stretched out his long legs, resting his elbows behind his head. “You know this little Boris, Lazars’ little chimp? Well he got her from a troupe of Italians; spent his savings on her. Boris was too young to work in the ring, she was being trained. Lazars sat in on one of the training sessions, kept on watching the Italian rubbing the chimp’s head…he thought it was with affection. But the little baby was very upset. After the rehearsal Lazars checked her over, Boris’s head was bleeding. This so-called trainer, he’d got a nail sharpened to a point like a fucking razor—he wasn’t patting her, he was sticking his nail into her head…”
Ruda stared at her boots. “Lazars was always a second-stringer, a soft touch. You shouldn’t listen to his bullshit.”
“I haven’t before…I just think what he’s saying may be true, that acts like ours have a short time to go.”
Ruda sprang to her feet. “I won’t listen anymore…I’ve got to go and get ready to rehearse.”
“Yeah, make them jump through hoops of fire—great, they love it…get their manes singed, they fucking love it.”
Ruda paused at the door. “Will you give me a hand in the ring? They’re still nervous about the plinths.”
He looked up at her. “You don’t need me, Ruda.”
“What are you going to do?”
He turned away, unable to look at her. Unexpectedly, the big man’s helplessness touched her. She hesitated, then went and slipped her arms around him. “You’re hung over, go and lie down. I’ll come by later and cook up a big dinner, okay? Luis?”
He patted her head. “Worried I’ll run off, go after Tina?” She wriggled away from him, but he pulled her close. “You are, aren’t you? Is it me you want?”
She tried to get away from him, but he wouldn’t let her go. “Is it me?”
She eased away from him, her face flushed red. “I guess I’d miss you, I’ve got used to you being around.”
He watched her reach for the door, unlock it. He gave a hopeless smile, he knew she didn’t really want him but she didn’t want anyone else to have him. The door closed behind her and he sat down, once again staring at the posters and photographs on the wall.
♦ ♦ ♦
The forensic laboratory had made a plaster cast of the heel taken from the Grimaldi boots. They were good impressions, very clear; but the print off the carpet was not. Even so, they were reasonably sure the impression had been made by the same boots. Torsen asked whether it could be used as a piece of evidence, whether it would stand up in court. He was told that it could not, since the print taken from the victim’s hotel room was only of a section of the heel.
“But you think it was from the same boot?” “Yes I do, but that is just my personal opinion.” Torsen sighed; it had been a long, fruitless day. The second disappointment was that the sawdust taken from the victim’s hotel room matched the fifteen samples taken from the circus, all from different cages. The sawdust was also discovered to be similar to samples brought in from the Berlin zoo, the Tiergarten.
Torsen’s next inquiry was at the bus station. The night duty staff had still to be questioned regarding bus passengers the night Kellerman was killed. The three drivers could not remember any male passenger fitting the inspector’s description; two could not recall anyone getting off from a bus at or near the Grand Hotel; the third driver could only recall a female passenger who had picked up the bus from the depot and gotten off at the stop close to the Grand Hotel; but he could recall little else about her except her long, dark hair. He remembered that it had been a particularly unpleasant journey, the vehicle was mostly filled with Polish women and children who had been greatly disturbed by a group of young punks hurling bricks at the bus, shouting Nazi slogans. The driver spent considerable time berating the police, saying they should provide buses, drivers, and passengers with better security.
Torsen returned to the station, heated up a bowl of soup in the microwave and looked over his notes. He had a motive—the man was disliked by everyone he seemed to have been in contact with, possibly owed money to whoever killed him. But from there on it went downhill; no one person had seen a man fitting the description of the potential suspect.
The inspector sipped his soup…it was scorchingly hot, and he burned his lip. He almost knocked it over when his phone rang. It was Freda, she would be off duty at five, and wondered if she could see him, or if he could come to the hospital. His father had written a note which he had made Freda promise to deliver. Torsen suspected it was a ploy to get him to see Freda. He stuttered that he would try to pass by the hospital. He inquired about his father’s health, and Freda laughed and said he was making snowflakes again. He did not find amusing the vision of his father plucking the bits of tissue, licking them, sticking them on the end of his nose and blowing them off again. He said that he would come by when he had a chance, but that he was very busy investigating a homicide.
“I know, his letter has something to do with it. Would you like me to read it to you? It will save you a journey.”
Torsen fumbled for his notebook.
“Are you ready? Shall I read it?”
“Yes, yes, please go ahead.”
Freda coughed, and then said: ” ‘One’—it’s very much a scrawl—‘no coincidences.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
Torsen muttered that it did, and asked her to continue.
‘Two’—and this is very hard to decipher, it looks like ‘Wise man,’ or ‘wizard’—does that make sense?”
“Yes, yes, it does, please continue.”
“It’s a name, I think…Dieter? Yes?”
“Yes, yes, that was my uncle, is that all?”
Freda said she was trying to puzzle out the next few words. “Ah, I think it says…‘Rudi’…‘R-U-D-I’…Yes, it’s Rudi and then there’s a J. I think the name is Polish, Jeczawitz. Yes, I am sure it’s Rudi Jeczawitz. Would you like me to spell it for you?”
Torsen jotted down
the name, thanked Freda, and apologized for his brusqueness. She laughed and said no matter. She put down the receiver before he could pluck up the courage to ask to see her. He swiveled around in his desk chair to look at the photograph of his father, murmured a “Thank you!” and finished his soup. He had to think carefully how to track down the Jeczawitz records. He would have to go cap in hand to the West Berlin Police with some story in order to get this information.
♦ ♦ ♦
Torsen and Rieckert crossed the old border and drew up outside a new building housing a section of the West Berlin Police. The office was a hive of activity, the reception area alone busier than the entire station the pair had left. They were directed toward the records bureau through a long corridor. Outside the department was a counter at which a stern-faced woman heard Torsen’s request for the records of a Rudi Jeczawitz. She checked his identification and handed him a formal request sheet to fill in.
They did not have to wait long. The station was fully computerized and the gray-haired woman returned with three sheets of paper clipped together.
They hurried back to their patrol car, Torsen skimming the pages as they walked. He got into the car, and continued to read. Rieckert waited patiently, having no idea why they had come to the station in the first place.
“Where next?”
Torsen lowered the paper. “Better head back to the station. I have to speak to the Leitender Direktor.”
“He’s still on holiday!”
“I have to speak to him…just drive.”
Rieckert drove to their station, darting glances at Torsen who read, muttering to himself. His cheeks were flushed. The car had hardly drawn to a halt before he was out and running up the steps.
The records gave details of the dead man. The corpse had been found in a derelict building used for many years by vagrants, and considered “unsafe.” His body had been squashed inside a small kitchen cabinet, not, as Torsen had thought, under floorboards. The body, because of the freezing temperatures, had been remarkably well preserved, yet Torsen was sure his father had described the body as badly decomposed. It was found almost intact, apart from deep lacerations to the left wrist and forearm. The skin had been hacked off with a crude knife with a serrated edge, but no weapon had been found. The victim was naked, apart from the cloak in which he was wrapped.
The police had been unable to identify the body for a considerable time, until a newspaper article requesting information on the identity of the deceased gave a clear description of the strange cloak found wrapped around him. A club owner had come forward, identified the dead man as seventy-five-year-old Rudi Jeczawitz, a one-time magician who had performed in his clubs. The man was an alcoholic, known to deal in forged documents. He had also been a procurer of very young girls, and shortly after the war had run a prostitution ring. The drinking destroyed him, and at the end he worked for little more than free drinks, using his wife as part of the act. His wife, a known prostitute, had disappeared; she had not been seen after the murder. It was supposed that she too may possibly have been murdered. No one was ever charged with Rudi Jeczawitz’s murder; his case remained on file. A few more details were given; informants had said that he had been at Birkenau. He had survived by entertaining the guards with his magic act.
Torsen’s heart pounded as he read and reread the name of Jeczawitz’s wife: Ruda. Coincidence number one. Number two: Rudi, like Tommy Kellerman, had been involved with forged documents. And then there was the third: All three were survivors of concentration camps. He paused, the fourth: Both men had been tattooed, and both had had their tattoo slashed from their arms.
Torsen jotted down a list. He had to find out if they had been legally married, find out Ruda Jeczawitz’s maiden name, see whether there still was anyone alive who had known the magician and could describe him. But most important he had to know whether Ruda Kellerman was Ruda Jeczawitz…
Torsen was sweating, his lists grew longer. Next he wrote “boots”; he had supposed the boots had belonged to a man because of their size, had even asked Mrs. Grimaldi if they were her husband’s boots. But what if they were her boots? Torsen let out a small whoop. He thumbed through his book until he found the page he was looking for. One of the bus drivers was sure no male passenger had gotten off his bus the night of Kellerman’s murder, only a woman, described as…he stared at his scrawl, momentarily unable to read it, then he snapped the book closed. He knew he had to go back and interview the guy; all he had written down was: “female, dark-haired.”
He grabbed his coat, shouted for Rieckert, his voice echoing in the empty building. He stormed through the empty offices and burst into the switchboard operator’s cubbyhole.
“Where in God’s name is everybody?”
She looked up at him in astonishment. “Tea break! They have gone across the street to the cafe for their tea break! It is four o’clock, sir!”
Chapter 6
“I am going to take you back in time now, Vebekka. Can you see the calendar, the years are in red ink…ninety-one, ninety…can you see the date, Vebekka?”
“Yes, I can see it.”
“Go back, eighty-nine, ten years before that, go through the dates…what year do you see now on the calendar?”
Vebekka sighed. “Nineteen seventy-nine. It is 1979.”
Franks looked to the two-way mirror, then turned to Vebekka.
The baron tapped Helen’s hand. “That was the year of the newspapers.”
Franks continued. “Go to the morning in New York when you were reading the newspaper, sitting having breakfast with your husband. Can you remember that morning?”
She sighed, gave a low moan, and then nodded. “I am reading the real estate pages…Louis is reading the main section. I talk to him, but he pays no attention, I tell him…an apartment is for sale, but he doesn’t listen to me.”
“Goon…”
She sighed and her brow furrowed as if she were trying to recall something.
“Go on, Vebekka, you see something in the paper?”
She breathed quickly, gasping. “Yes…yes…Angel, Angel, ANGEL.”
She twisted and turned, shaking. “They have found him…”
“Who, Vebekka? Whom have they found?”
She ran her hands through her hair. “It’s in the paper, it’s in the papers, I have to find all the papers, I have to know if it’s true. Angel, the dark Angel of Death will find me, he put the message in the paper to find me.”
“It’s all right…it’s all right, no need to be alarmed. Who is the angel? Is it the angel who makes you so frightened?”
She banged the sofa with her fists. “They will know what I have done. He knows what I have done…Oh! God help me!”
Franks raised his voice and told her to advance to the next morning. She calmed down, and said that the next day she remained very quiet, and didn’t mention anything to anyone about what she had seen. She had had a nightmare, she had thought the Angel had come into her bedroom to make her tell, but it had been just a shadow, just the drapes.
Franks wrote down on his pad that they must trace the newspaper. He was certain he was dealing with a woman traumatized by an event in her childhood, but when he began to discuss her childhood she became very calm. She seemed relieved. When he asked if she was Vebekka or Rebecca she giggled, told him not to be stupid, she was Rebecca.
She began to talk quite freely. She described her home in Philadelphia, discussed her parents. She said they were kind, but never very affectionate toward her, she said that they were very close to each other, that she had often felt like an intruder.
“Did this upset you?”
“Not really. They always gave me what I asked for, they just seemed more interested in each other. My mother was often unhappy, she used to say she missed her home, her family, but they would never speak to her, they sent back all her letters unopened. She was often crying, and often ill: She used to get bronchial troubles, that was why they ha
d moved from Canada—it was very cold there, and Mama had been very ill.”
Franks asked if she loved her parents. She hesitated, and then shrugged with her hands. “They loved each other, and they fed and clothed me.”
“So you never felt a great affection for them?”
“No…just that they kept me safe, they watched out for me, no one could hurt me while I was with them, they told me that.”
“Who wanted to hurt you?”
“I don’t know.”
Franks asked her to recall her first memory of her mother. She pursed her lips and said, “She gave me a blue dress, with a white pinafore and a teddy bear.”
“How old were you then?”
She seemed to be trying to recall her age, but in the end she shrugged her shoulders and said she was not sure. He asked if she was afraid of her parents, and she said very promptly that she was not. “They were afraid of me! Always afraid, afraid…”
“Had they reason to be afraid of you?”
“Yes, I was very naughty, had terrible tantrums.”
“What did they do when you had these tantrums?”
“Oh, Mama would talk to me, get me to lie down and talk to me, you know, so I would calm down.”
“Did they try and stop you leaving home?”
She laughed. “Oh no…they were pleased, I think they were pleased when I left!”
“Did you miss them when you left?”
“Yes…yes sometimes, but Mama helped me often, told me how to handle Rebecca.”
“What did she tell you to do?”
“Oh, put her in a closet, throw away the key, forget her.”
“So it was not your idea to change your name?”
“Yes, it was, it was all my idea, I never told Mama what I had done, and I never told Papa. I just did what Mama said, put her away.”
“Is the other box inside you?”
She started to twist her hands, plucking at the blanket. “Yes, yes, that is always there.”
“Did your mama put somebody in the box?”
“It’s not a box!”
Franks was growing tired; he rubbed his head, checked his watch. “What is it then?”
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