Basic Law

by J Sydney Jones

  Kramer follows his eyes. From around the corner in front of them, come a dozen youths in black, wielding chains and baseball bats. Kramer checks the other way; another group flanking on them from that end of the street.

  “Move it,” he says, shoving the protesting African into the backseat, jumping into the front himself, slamming and locking the door. Randall is in the driver’s seat fumbling with the key in the ignition when both groups start racing for the car.

  “Start the son of a bitch!” Kramer needlessly yells.

  The engine turns over when both groups are converging on the car, ten, maybe fifteen yards away. Randall’s eyes hold the same lucidity as in the alley. A brick lands on the hood, rattling up to the windshield just as Randall puts it into gear and burns rubber in reverse. The others aren’t expecting backward motion; the rear group is caught off guard as Randall smashes into one of them, a body flying up and over the top of the car. He hits the brakes and spins the wheel, fishtailing the car to head in the opposite direction. There are blows on the trunk as Randall throws it into first. Suddenly, the windshield in front of Kramer explodes in a shower of fragmented glass as a bat crashes into it. Kramer feels hot liquid flow down his face and realizes he’s been cut. Randall smokes tires, his back wheels swerving right and left, as they speed out of the dockside.

  From the back, the African groans again, “You’ve done it now. Ruined it all. Why couldn’t you just mind your own business?”

  “Can it,” Randall says in English and, as if understanding him, the man sinks into stillness. They bump over cobblestones; fly around curves toward the city center.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I thought a smart journalist like you would know when to keep his ass covered.” Kommissar Boehm snicks the last piece of croissant from the plate, examines it as one would a dog for fleas, and then plops it into his mouth. Quick mastication; slow swallow.

  “You want me to order more? Some coffee?” Kramer nods at the full pot. They are sitting on the glassed-in terrace of the Hotel Bad midmorning after spending most of the night in Hamburg; first at the central police station and then at emergency getting fifteen stitches in Kramer’s forehead. He is in no mood for Boehm’s critique.

  Boehm wags his head at the offer. “On a diet.” He pats his broad middle. “The wife says I need to drop twenty pounds.”

  Kramer begins to wonder what all this hail-fellow stuff is about. I couldn’t give a damn about your diet, he wants to say.

  “You look fit enough to me,” he says instead.

  “What were you doing in Hamburg?”

  Kramer sips coffee; it stings tiny cuts inside his mouth. He wonders where he got them. The punks never laid a hand on his face. Were they self-inflicted, grinding his teeth and biting his gums while sleeping on the way back to Bad Lunsburg this morning?

  “Visiting,” he says.

  Boehm glares at him across the table. Randall is asleep upstairs in their room, having done all the driving, looking like a pugilist who lost the fight: a swollen, purple eye and puffy upper lip.

  “Look, Kramer,” Boehm says, “I don’t want to play games with you. If you’re stirring up nests, I should know.”

  “They were just punks. Skinheads. Unrelated to Reni or her memoirs. They were pounding on some poor bastard, about to kill him. Randall and I stopped it. Then they brought in reinforcements.”

  “That’s not exactly the way Hamburg reports it.”

  “You keeping tabs on me, Kommissar?”

  “You bet your ass I am. Loose cannons make me nervous.”

  “I’m just looking for the truth.”

  “I don’t know what kind of truths you expected to find dockside in Hamburg. You might as well walk Harlem at midnight.”

  “Are you a traveler, Kommissar Boehm?”

  “I’ve been to New York. Interesting, good music, but I carried my PPK with me.” He pats the bulge under his left arm, then eyes the coffeepot. “Maybe just a half cup. No cream.”

  Kramer pours out some of the rich coffee. It gives him the jitters, and sometimes the runs, but he loves it.

  “What do they say in Hamburg?” he asks.

  Boehm sips the coffee daintily. The demitasse looks like a child’s toy cup in his massive hand. He smiles at the taste, puts the cup down.

  “According to your African friend …”

  “I never met the guy before. I just didn’t like to see him get killed.”

  Boehm ignores the interruption. “He fell down. Tripped over some piping in an alleyway. These two guys were helping him, and you and your buddy jumped them. They naturally ran to get help after you cleared some cobwebs out of their heads. Then you proceeded to kidnap said African.”

  “Get real, Kommissar. You believe that scenario?”

  “Nobody likes a good Samaritan, Kramer. You save a guy’s life, he owes you. What is it your boy Shakespeare says? Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”

  “Have you come to arrest me?” Kramer finally says.

  “Hell no. You’re my entertainment center. Watching you chase all over Germany after phantoms is better than a Chaplin film.”

  “So to what do I owe the honor of this visit?” Kramer says.

  Boehm spins the tiny cup on the table, sniffs once, and then casts a wry smile.

  “I traced that car number you gave me. I guess that’s why I’m a little interested in your fracas last night.”

  He pulls a sheet of yellow memo paper out of the inside pocket of his worn blue suit coat and hands it to Kramer.

  “Ever hear of him?” Kommissar Boehm asks.

  Kramer reads the name on the paper: Reinhard Vogel. He nods.

  “I interviewed him a couple of years back for an article on the rise of the right. He’s slick. The man who makes Fascism chic.”

  Boehm nods. “How’d you get his license number?”

  Kramer hesitates, decides he has to trust somebody, and tells him Frau Gruber’s story. Kommissar Boehm listens without interruption, sucking on his lower lip.

  “So he was a buddy of Renata Müller?” Boehm says when Kramer finishes his explanation. “Strange company.”

  “I’m not sure how he figures in with Reni,” Kramer says. “When I was going through her effects, I came across a page of notes for an article on neo-Nazi violence. I didn’t give it much thought at the time but, after hearing Frau Gruber’s story, I went back to look for it. Schnelling had burned it along with a bunch of other papers.”

  “Advokat Schnelling is a very thorough man,” Boehm says, smiling.

  Kramer eyes the policeman, sensing something else at work. “You’re interested in Vogel, aren’t you?”

  Boehm finishes the coffee and looks Kramer square in the eye. He then takes a wallet out of his jacket pocket and opens it in front of Kramer’s face. On one side is his Kriminalpolizei identification with his mug shot, on the other side is a photo of a lovely young woman in shorts and halter top, with a bushy head of red hair and freckles on her nose. There is strong sun in the picture, and she is squinting and smiling into the camera. The kid next door, but with that extra special something.

  “She didn’t take after me for looks,” Kommissar Boehm says, flipping the wallet shut and returning it to his inside jacket pocket. His eyes fix on Kramer’s again. “Sweet kid. A real beauty. She was only twenty when she died.”

  Kramer knows the rest of the story; he doesn’t need to be told.

  “Vogel?”

  Boehm shrugs. “His group of thugs. Same thing. Magda was her name—after her mother’s best friend. She thought it was cute to run with the tough boys, the rebels, the skinheads. You know kids; they figure they’re immortal, invincible. Nothing can touch them. She started doing designer drugs at first, and then she got hooked big-time. But that was the setup, wasn’t it? Her so-called ‘friends’ suckered her. She began sell
ing her body for needle money like it was a big joke, like she was just doing anthropological research. Like she was above it. Munich cops busted her once for soliciting and gave me a buzz when they found out whose kid she was. I dragged her home, but she only ran away again. Last time I saw her, she was under a gray sheet at the Munich morgue.”

  “OD?” Kramer asks.

  Boehm nods. “A belly full of crack.” He says nothing for a time, then continues. “So you got business with Vogel, I’m interested. He uses the skinheads for drug dealing to help finance his cause. If there’s anything can be pinned on him regarding Müller’s death, I’m your partner. So we share, okay?”

  Kramer thinks of the picture: Boehm’s daughter had the same invincible, naive look on her face that Reni once had.

  “Okay,” Kramer says. “We share.”

  Randall wakes up shortly after one. This is no day to be traveling; Kramer has a task for them nearer at hand than Munich.

  They take the local train to Bonn instead of driving; Kramer’s good customer rating with Avis has sunk after returning the battered Mercedes this morning. Eva Martok’s flat is a short tram ride away from the station. It feels good not being encumbered by a car; not carrying a bulky metal shell around with you, forever on the lookout for a parking space.

  Randall grabs a hot wurst from a stand outside the station and munches it on the tram, much to the disgust of other passengers. Nobody says anything, though. He and Kramer look like desperadoes with their bandages and bruises.

  They get off at the Prinz-Albert-Strasse and take their time getting to Martok’s building at number 43, pausing before ringing the bell so Randall can finish the last bit of sausage, heavily coated in hot mustard. He tosses the paper plate it was on into a garbage can stuck inside an ornate bit of green-painted circular grillwork.

  They’re in the heart of Bonn’s Old Town; buildings on this street were old when Beethoven was a boy picking his nose. Renovated now; cheery pastel facades, cream-colored lintels. There is no intercom on number 43; the house door is open. It’s a tiny baroque house with a corbeled, vaulted entryway once used for horse and carriage; the stone steps in the stairwell are grooved in the middle from years of wear. Kramer called from Bad Lunsburg before coming. Martok sounded suspicious, but agreed to meet with him. Tuesdays are her day to work at home.

  She’s on the top floor, the third. There’s a brass clapper on her door in the shape of a hand. Kramer knuckles it to wood and the door opens on the second rap. No dead bolts, peepholes, or door chains. Martok’s the trusting sort, he figures. Crime has not yet found its way into this quarter of Bonn.

  “You’re Kramer.” She says it like an accusation, then notices his bandaged forehead and checks out Randall, whose head increasingly looks like a swollen purple balloon, standing in back of him.

  “What the hell happened to you?” She speaks English like she’s studied in the States, and wears Levis that fit her waist and thighs snugly, and a faded black Grateful Dead T-shirt. Barefoot; no nail polish on her toes.

  “We had a difference of opinion with a baseball bat.” He jerks his head backward. “This is my friend, Randall. He knew Reni, too. We’re not as desperate as we look. Honest.”

  Standing in the entrance, she looks as if she’s reconsidering her invitation for a meeting. She’s got one of those strong faces that would look equally good on a man, but that’s all that is masculine about her. She’s wearing some subtle scent that Kramer remembers from his college days, triggering adolescent hormonal memories.

  “Don’t let these bruises alarm you, Ms. Martok,” Randall pipes up. “I am a deeply nonviolent person. I only fight when they’re smaller than I am.”

  Her face brightens at his comment; a double row of very human teeth appear, neither straightened nor overly white. Her nose wrinkles perceptibly as she smiles. “Come on in. I don’t know whether to offer you a beer or a raw beefsteak.”

  It’s not the apartment of a CDU official. Nothing upscale but the address. Simple, clean, uncluttered. Oversize pillows on the floor, Japanese prints on white walls. There’s a low, black, varnished table in the middle of the sitting room to eat from, Japanese style. The place is airy, bright, and warm.

  One piece is out of place, endearing like Martok’s imperfect teeth, because it makes the place more human. Next to two woodblock prints by Ikato is a kitschy cuckoo clock with a female hunter poised for the bird to come out so she can take aim and miss.

  “I don’t force guests to take their shoes off,” Martok says, “but it’s kinder on the downstairs neighbors. I’ll put your coats in the wardrobe.”

  They take off their coats and hand them to her. Kramer tries to remember if he’s got yesterday’s socks on, then figures what the hell. He and Randall both kick their shoes off in the vestibule, leaving them by the door, and follow her to the black table, sitting on the floor around it. Kramer hopes she’ll bring up the offer of a beer again; he can use one to counteract his coffee jitters. She is looking hard at Randall, and he is returning the stare.

  “Do I know you?” she says suddenly.

  Randall shakes his head. “But it could be arranged.”

  Kramer sighs to himself, but Martok lets it go and turns to him.

  “So what do you want to know about Reni, other than that she was a complete bitch?”

  Kramer feels heat rise, waits for it to abate, then speaks. “You had a falling out several years ago.”

  She pulls out a pack of spiced Indonesian cigarettes and lights one, filling the room with the smell of cinnamon and cloves. She exhales a blue flume of smoke from her nostrils.

  “You might call it that. Why the interest? She’s dead. Let it rest.”

  “What came between you?” Kramer says.

  “You doing her biography or you just nosey?”

  He tries on a bright smile; it pulls his stitches. “A little of both.”

  “Let’s just say you didn’t bend to pick up your soap if you dropped it around Reni.”

  Randall snorts.

  “I don’t read you,” Kramer says.

  “Perhaps it’s because I’m so coarse. Don’t tell the chancellor. He thinks I’m a virgin. What I mean is she was a lying, self-serving little harpy who made a Hollywood starlet seem scrupulous by comparison. She swung both ways in bed and in the Parliament. You could never trust her vote or her fidelity. I should know. I was her ally in politics and lover in bed.”

  It takes a moment for this to sink in. Kramer refuses to believe it. Spite talking.

  She jabs the cigarette into a clay ashtray, extinguishing it.

  “You loved her, didn’t you?” she says to Kramer. “Reni mentioned you.”

  He says nothing, merely nods.

  “Lots of us did,” Martok continues. “She was the kind of person who made you want to love her, to please her.”

  Like her father, Kramer thinks. Just like her father.

  “I’d never been with a woman before Reni. You know how it was in the seventies ’70s and early ’80s. All great feminists together. Push the boundaries to the limit. One time through, might as well experience it all. Except that it became more than bed games for me. More than playing doctor with each other’s bodies. You see, Kramer, I loved her, too. I’m just like you, except I finally saw her for what she was. She’d cut any deal, lay any two-legged anthropoid, to get her way. To stay in the limelight.”

  “But she was true to her ideals,” he says.

  Martok clucks her tongue. “Sometimes. Especially when the votes were there. Other times, like with the deployment of cruise missiles, she would suddenly come down with bronchitis. She voted for her own fame and succeeded in splitting the Left apart in the process. All that remains is a fragmented bunch of prima donnas in the Greens and Socialists, while the Right grows stronger daily.”

  “You’re no longer on the left, as I understan
d it,” he says. Tacit implication being: You’re as hypocritical as the others; as divisive as you claim Reni to have been. It’s the only way he can think of hitting back.

  “So you buy it, my conversion?” She smiles knowingly at Kramer, then at Randall.

  “You’re telling me you’re a mole inside the opposition? Come on.”

  “You come on. There’s more I can do as a close adviser to the majority party than I could ever do as a minority critic. Those are the realities of the new Germany. You do what you can, where you can. You don’t see me living the high life, do you?”

  “No,” Randall chimes in, looking about the apartment. “I certainly don’t.”

  They exchange a long look and Kramer feels cut out. He also feels a hollowness, as if a piece of Reni has been carved out of him, for he knows that at least part of what Martok is saying is the truth.

  “And what about Gerhard?” Kramer says. “What was he doing while you and Reni were having it off under the sheets?”

  “Watching, probably. But I’m being crude again. Sorry. They were married in name only, like a cover for Reni. A safety net. And he was always there to catch her when she fell. I’ll give him that. With arms outstretched. She called him her pillow. ‘I left Pillow at Inheritance,’ she would say when coming here to stay overnight.”

  Kramer stifles the desire to ask her if Reni ever talked about him. He looks up to see her peering into his face, compassion in her eyes.

  “You still love her, don’t you? You poor sod.”

  He flexes his hands under the table. Skepticism, Kramer, he tells himself. It’s the first tool of a good journalist. She’s managed to take the interview away from you. Worse yet, you’ve allowed it. So pull it together, suck up your self-pity, and get on with what you know best. “Did she ever talk to you of memoirs?”

  “She never talked to me, period. Not since ’89.”

  But she doesn’t offer what happened then to rip them apart, and he has the feeling she won’t tell, either. He remembers the gossip columns talking about a possible love affair between Reni and a close personal friend of Martok’s, but put it down to small-mindedness and the urgency to sell papers. The sort of story Marty would love. Did Martok have her “pillow,” too? Someone Reni wanted?