Leni’s sandwich remained half-eaten on her plate. She waited until he had finished drinking. “Is something wrong?”
Hoffner picked up his fork and scooped up more of the noodles. “No.” He brought them to his mouth. “Maybe. I don’t know. We’ll see in a few minutes.” He barely chewed before swallowing.
“And the Grunwald?” She picked up her glass and took a sip.
“The man I was trying to find—”
“Pimm,” she said. “You keep a file on his whereabouts. Not a nice man, I gather.”
Hoffner swirled another forkful. “Nice enough. He goes shooting in the Grunwald every Thursday afternoon. I should have remembered.” He took a bite.
“For sport?”
“For boar. He’s been doing it since he’s a boy. Then it was to eat. Now—”
“He just likes to kill.”
Hoffner had never thought about it that way. Then again, he had never thought about a lot of things with Alby. “Something like that,” he said.
“And he’ll be back in town after seven?”
Hoffner ripped a piece of bread from the loaf and dipped it in the sauce. Popping it in his mouth, he nodded.
Leni tried some more of her sandwich. They sat in silence until she wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin and said, “So this Pimm. He knows where the Volker girl is?”
It was said so casually, as if any of this should make sense. Hoffner took another drink, swallowed, and set his glass down.
She said, “That’s not something you’d like to believe, is it?”
He continued to fork silently through the noodles.
“So,” she said, “I suppose we’ve got nothing to do until seven. I wonder if the skaters have a four o’clock showing.”
Hoffner finally took a stab at the sausage. He brought one up to his mouth and looked at it. “These aren’t going to be terribly good, are they?”
“He warned me they might be dry.”
Hoffner took a bite. “He was right.” He swallowed and stabbed at another.
“I told him you’d insisted on the white ones.”
“My mistake.” The telephone rang, and Hoffner picked up. “Yes?”
“Papi?” It was Georg. The boy sounded calm, safe. Hoffner swallowed.
“What’s going on, Georgi?”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine but persistent,” said Hoffner.
“Are you alone?”
He heard the first strain in Georg’s voice. “No.”
“Is Fräulein Coyle with you?”
Hoffner did everything he could not to look at her. “That’s right.”
Hoffner waited through the silence until Georg said, “Then probably best if I do the talking. All right?”
Hoffner scooped up the last of the noodles. “Good, good. That should be fine.”
“This morning at breakfast,” Georg said. “You didn’t know she’d been here since before Christmas, did you?”
The boy was really quite remarkable, thought Hoffner. He glanced at Leni, and she raised her eyebrows as if to ask. He shook his head with a smile and said into the telephone, “You’re in the wrong line of work, Georgi.”
“I suppose I’m meant to take that as a compliment.”
“Yes, you are.”
Georg said, “I decided to do a little poking around.”
“That might have been foolish.”
“I wonder where I learned that.”
Hoffner set the fork down. “I’m all ears, Georgi.”
“The visitors’ lists,” the boy began. “They’re meticulous about them out here. No one gets on or off the lot without signing in. Including your American friend.”
Hoffner had scribbled his name on enough of these sheets in the last few days not to need reminding.
Georg continued, “It’s the same with the individual departments. Each one has its own separate sheet. I told them I was looking for an actress. A request from Herr Ritter’s office. Naturally, they just handed the books over. I’ve been through most of them dating back to November.”
“In a film-processing booth?” said Hoffner. “That’s inventive, Georgi.”
There was a long silence before Georg said, “What?”
“No, I understand that, Georgi. It’s just, do you have any of the names? That might be of help.” Again Leni leaned in, and Hoffner cupped the mouthpiece loosely in his hand, making sure Georg could still hear him. “It’s a girl,” Hoffner whispered to Leni. “Something to do with the two of them being where they weren’t meant to be. I’m sure Ritter can straighten it out.” He brought the receiver back up to his ear. “So yes, go ahead.”
Georg said, “That was the best you could come up with? A girl? You’re making me sound pathetic. Thank you very much.”
“No trouble at all,” said Hoffner. “Now, do you have any of the names?”
Again Georg needed a moment. “The names of the people she met with?”
“Yes, yes. That’s exactly right. And I can’t imagine they’d dismiss you over this, especially if the girl was pretty. She was pretty, wasn’t she, Georgi?”
Hoffner heard Georg flipping through several notebook pages. Hoffner laughed for no reason, and Georg said, “December 9, she met with Teicher in accounting. December 10, Sterne in public relations. December 10 again, Pieck in research. December 11, Bagier in music. December 13, Krause in design—”
Hoffner cut in. “Really?” He was doing everything he could to keep his voice steady and his eyes on his plate. Bagier had been Vogt’s link to Ufa, the man behind the sound. “That should be it, then.”
“Krause?” said Georg.
Hoffner kept his breath as even as possible. “No, no. Maybe it would be better if I did come out. Make things easier.”
“Bagier?” said Georg.
“That’s it. You’ll just wait for me, then. No reason to do anything until I get there, all right?”
Georg said, “You want me to meet you at the music department, is that it?”
“Excellent.” Hoffner looked at Leni and nodded, with a smile, the kind only a father manages when mopping up a child’s misstep. “And really,” he said. “Do nothing, Georg. You understand?”
“I’ll see you there, Papi.”
Georg rang off, and Hoffner said, “Excellent. Bye-bye.”
Hoffner had, in fact, never been called upon to mop up either of his boys’ infractions. That would have required some sort of genuine connection. His look of knowing affection had been as foreign to him as had the phrase “bye-bye.” Nonetheless, Leni seemed convinced.
She said, “You’re showing a bit of courage, after all, aren’t you?”
Hoffner did his best with a nod.
“I told you he adores you. He wouldn’t have called otherwise.”
Again Hoffner nodded.
“So,” she said. “Lucky we have until seven. That should be plenty of time to get us there and back if the traffic’s good.”
Hoffner was struggling to wrap his mind around this latest tidbit. She had seen Bagier over two months ago, and as much as he wanted to throw it back in her face, he knew he hadn’t the stamina to weather another explanation or accusation or self-recrimination. Worse, he knew he would hear only what he wanted to hear, and that, above all, was driving the blade deeper in than any betrayal ever could.
“He sounded embarrassed,” Hoffner said. “Getting caught with a girl like that. He doesn’t play the fool very often.”
“You see? You know him better than you think you do.”
“Maybe . . . Look.” He tried his hand again at fatherly concern. “I’m just wondering. If he’s in a spot—I mean, if he’s feeling foolish—”
She nodded. “Then my coming along might embarrass him even more?” The nod became a smile, and she took her purse. “You might actually be getting the hang of this, after all.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be at the hotel. Just pick me up when you get back.”
If he�
�d had the will to stop himself from watching her go, he might have, but there was little chance of that. He called to the barman.
“You have a razor?”
The man nodded.
“And some decent soap?”
The man shook his head.
Hoffner stood and said, “Fair enough,” and headed back to the toilet.
THE AIR WAS HEAVY with the smell of petrol and tree sap as Hoffner took the turnoff for the studio. If the sky had looked any less chalky, he might have expected rain. Even the dust was kicking up without much interest.
The guard at the gate looked equally bored. Hoffner signed the sheet and followed the man’s directions to a remote area of the lot. It was a good ten minutes before he saw Georg waiting outside one more indistinguishable building. All that set this one apart was its virtual isolation, except for the three large warehouses that stood a few hundred meters behind it. Beyond them was nothing but empty fields.
“You can leave the car here,” Georg said as his father pulled up. “No one’s going to care this far out.”
Hoffner stepped down and walked with the boy along a dirt path toward the door.
“Bit desolate out here,” Hoffner said, his eyes in front of him.
“I suppose so.”
“I take it you didn’t care that much for the Fräulein. Going to all these lengths.”
Georg stared ahead as well. “Not that many lengths to go to, Papi. And not really her I was concerned with.”
It was hardly adoration, but Hoffner felt its pull no less strongly. He wanted to say something but found his voice unwilling. Instead, he brought a hand up to Georg’s shoulder and squeezed. The boy said nothing, and the hand quickly retreated.
They walked in silence until they reached the building’s waiting room, where the smell of fresh paint was overpowering.
“The whole area’s new,” said Georg. He pointed to a gap in the ceiling. “They still haven’t put in all the fixtures.”
The reception desk was behind a glass partition, and empty. Georg pressed a button and a bell rang somewhere beyond the wall. He waited, pressed again, and the door at the back opened. A young man in a bow tie quickly made his way over.
“Guido Bagier,” said Hoffner. “Tell him Hans Vogt is here to see him.”
There was something birdlike to the young man. His head twitched as he glanced first at Georg, then at Hoffner. He said, “Herr Bagier is at the sound stage, mein Herr. He’s not to be disturbed.”
If Hoffner had understood what this meant, he might have had a response. Instead, he pulled out his badge and held it up at eye level. The young man glanced at it and said, “You’re not Hans Vogt.”
“No,” Georg cut in. “He’s not. Stop wasting our time. Which stage?”
The young man hesitated. “One, but—”
“You’ll show us,” said Georg.
The head was now at full twitch. “I can’t leave my desk—”
“You weren’t at your desk when we got here,” said Georg with just the right touch of annoyance. “There’s no one in the building. We both know it. You sit in the back reading your magazines all day. I don’t know why you can’t do it out here at the desk, but that’s your choice. And if you’d read the entire badge and not just the name, you’d have seen that this is the Kripo. A Kriminal-Oberkommissar with the Kripo. So you’ll now step outside, take us along the path to sound stage number one, and then you can come back and do all the reading you like. Are we clear?”
Outside, the young man kept himself a few meters in front of Hoffner and Georg as he led them through the grass and up toward the largest of the buildings. His gait brought to mind an angry stork.
Under his breath Hoffner said, “That was nicely done.”
“Thanks,” Georg said. “You just have to imagine you’re in one of those early Fritz Lang films. I think he actually thought I was going to slap him around.”
Hoffner said, “He was in the toilet. Probably does some of his best reading there, but most of the magazines were on a chair behind the desk.”
“Damn,” said Georg with a smile. “That would have made it more fun.”
The Schall-Stadium Eins was a massive box, four stories high and perhaps twice that in length. It might have been any other warehouse except for the look of the front wall, which was covered by an enormous piece of metal sheeting. It was as if the entire thing had been welded together without a single seam. Only one part of the wall was separated from this unbroken unit: it was a wide, movable door at the far end that rose two stories to accommodate set pieces and the like. Even when closed, though, it was slotted into the rest with only the slightest trace of a crack. A very clever piece of engineering, thought Hoffner.
The young man led them to a small access door within the larger door and opened it, and it was here that Hoffner saw how they had managed to keep everything so snug. A long strip of embedded rubber ran the entire way around the inside of the frame. Opening the small door had produced a sucking sound.
The young man remained in the grass. “Herr Bagier will be in the sound control booth,” he said. “It stretches along the back of the top level. There’s a stairwell. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding it. I have to get back now.”
“Don’t worry,” said Georg as he followed his father in. “We won’t tell him it was you.”
The door squeezed shut behind them, and they moved through to a cavernous hall. Its only light was coming from some twenty meters above, where a glassed-in booth ran the length of one of the far walls. It cast enough light to show a series of black wires strung like spider-webs across the ceiling. Theatrical lights also hung from long poles, but within a few meters, everything faded to gray. At ground level, the space was nothing more than a collection of amorphous shapes. It would have been impossible to navigate through them if not for a single bulb that was affixed to a staircase at one of the far corners. Even then, Hoffner and Georg kept themselves close to the walls as they made their way first to one corner, then the next, and finally to the steps. Remarkably, there seemed to be no echo coming from their footfalls.
The last few stairs brought them through a trapdoor and onto a series of metal catwalks. Here the sound picked up again. At first, Hoffner thought it was the buzzing of electrical machinery. A few steps on, he realized it was the sound of a man humming. Hoffner followed it to a doorway, where both volume and light grew stronger. He stepped through.
A tallish figure was stooped over a tabletop console that housed endless rows of dials and gauges. Boxed amplifying speakers sat below and above. Beyond was the glass and the limitless backdrop of gray.
“Herr Bagier?” said Hoffner.
The man nearly jumped. He looked into the reflection and turned. His confusion quickly gave way to hostility. “Who are you? What do you want?”
Hoffner lifted a reassuring hand. “I’m with the Kripo, mein Herr. Hans Vogt suggested I get in touch with you.”
The receding hairline and black-rimmed glasses only accentuated Bagier’s mistrust. “I have a weapon.”
Hoffner held out his badge. “Then you have me at a disadvantage, mein Herr.”
Bagier took it and, without looking up, said, “Who’s he?”
Hoffner glanced back for a moment and then said, “My son. He works here at the studio. In . . .” Hoffner realized he had no idea what the boy did.
“Script research,” said Georg.
Bagier nodded as if this meant something to him. It didn’t. “Hoffner. I was wondering when you were going to pay me a visit.” He handed back the badge. “The device isn’t here, if that’s what you were thinking.”
“I wasn’t. But thanks. Why the gun?”
“That’s a rather stupid question, don’t you think?”
“Depends on who’s asking.”
The two stared at one another until Bagier said, “This isn’t exactly the sort of thing I involve myself in, Chief Inspector. You’ll forgive me. It’s not been a good week.”
Hoffner’s concern was of little solace. Bagier motioned to a chair and watched as Hoffner pulled it over. “I only have the two,” said Bagier. “My apologies again.” He sat. “We just haven’t had the time. They probably should have kept us in the old digs until everything was sorted out, but they’re so panicked about Jazz Singer, and so desperate to get it up and running, that they’ve got us out here in the middle of nowhere.” He seemed to find comfort in the sound of his own voice. “I’d offer you some water, but . . .” He shook his head in mild disgust. “Even so, we should be ready to go by the end of the year.”
“Ready to go where?” said Hoffner.
Bagier’s confusion returned. “Into full sound production, Chief Inspector. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
It was a logical question, just not the one Hoffner had an answer for. “Not exactly, mein Herr.” He pulled out a cigarette. “May I? It’s not a problem in here?”
For the first time, Bagier seemed to relax. “It’s electrical equipment, Chief Inspector, not explosives. Be my guest.”
“There was a woman,” said Hoffner as he lit up. “About two months ago. She came out to meet you. An American.”
“Fräulein Coyle,” said Bagier. He saw Hoffner’s reaction and said, “I’m not likely to have forgotten her, now, am I, Chief Inspector?” He glanced at Georg. “So it’s not just script research the boy is good at.”
Hoffner said, “I’m assuming, then, you’ll remember what she wanted.”
“Naturally. She came to see how far we were in our sound development. Studios, equipment, that sort of thing. What does this have to do with Hans?”
“And you were happy to show her all of that?”
Bagier realized he was here to answer questions, not ask them. “Some of it, yes.”
“But not all.”
“No. Not all.”
“That was very kind of you to show an American from Metro the back rooms at Ufa.”
Bagier reached into his pocket and pulled out a pipe and pouch. He stuffed the pipe with a nice wad. “The Americans have people here all the time, Chief Inspector. They like to keep an eye on their investment.” He tamped down the tobacco and lit it. “So if I’m anything but charming with the charming Fräulein, they begin to look a little harder. I wasn’t about to have that happen, knowing what Hans was working on, now, was I?” Again he glanced at Georg. “You’re sure you don’t want the boy to wait outside?”
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