McGrave

by Lee Goldberg

  Dieter looks at the photo, blinks hard, and then glowers at McGrave, who smiles and waves.

  The bouncer steps away from the bar and disappears into a back room.

  Maria returns to McGrave, who unwraps the Mentos. "You should leave while you still have a pulse."

  He spills a couple of Mentos on the counter and eats one. "Don't worry, Maria. I know what I'm doing. You can relax, and so can your friends outside."

  She looks at him quizzically, but before she can say anything, Dieter returns with a burly guy in a suit that can barely hold all his muscles. Dieter steps up close to McGrave. Burly sends Maria away with a sharp glance, then slaps the photo down hard on the counter in front of McGrave.

  "What happened to him?" Burly asks.

  "He met me," McGrave says. "Would you like to meet me?"

  "Ja. Very much."

  Burly opens his jacket so McGrave can see the gun shoved under his waistband.

  "That's real terrifying and all," McGrave says, "but what happens if you have to bend over and tie your shoe?"

  "Come with us," Burly says. It's an order, not an invitation.

  Dieter cracks his knuckles for emphasis.

  "Sure," McGrave says.

  He drops his Mentos into his bottle of Diet Coke and walks away from the bar. An instant later, the bottle explodes, spewing an enormous geyser of foam, startling everyone in the place but McGrave, who uses the distraction to take Burly's gun, elbow Dieter hard in the throat, and knock Burly to the floor.

  The dancers stop dancing. Everyone turns and stares. But the music is still playing and it actually isn't a bad soundtrack for what is going down.

  McGrave puts the gun in Burly's face with one hand and holds up his badge with the other for everyone in the place to see, especially Maria.

  "LAPD. Everybody take it easy."

  McGrave glances at Dieter, who is wide-eyed, gurgling, and desperately clutching his throat, and decides the bouncer presents no threat. He looks down at Burly.

  "Who was the dead guy to you?"

  "My partner in this club," Burly says.

  "What was he doing in Los Angeles?"

  "Vacation."

  McGrave shoots the floor next to Burly's head. People drop down and take cover. Others scramble for the door.

  Maria tenses up, but her gaze drifts to a well-dressed man in a perfectly tailored Brioni suit sitting alone and stock-still at a table, holding his glass. He looks like a male model advertising whiskey.

  "Try again," McGrave says to Burly.

  "On a job. With the man."

  "What man?"

  Maria is paying no attention to McGrave. She's watching the well-dressed customer, who is glancing furtively at the back door.

  "I don't know his name," Burly says.

  McGrave presses the gun to Burly's forehead and cocks the trigger. "How do I find him?"

  Burly spits it out in a panic. "You don't. He finds you. He has an agent, Hans Beimler. You meet Beimler. If he likes the job, he sets up a meet with the man."

  "Where's Beimler?"

  "Tequila's. On the beach at Mьhlenstrasse."

  The well-dressed man bolts for the back door. Maria leaps over the bar, no mean feat in her dress, and runs across the club after him, holding her pendant to her mouth and talking into it.

  "Verdammt! Schmidt rennt. Alle Einheiten rein! Los!"

  McGrave runs after her, going out the back door just as Stefan, Heinrich, and dozens of uniformed Polizei in their green uniforms swarm in.

  The well-dressed man gets into a four-door Porsche Panamera parked in the back alley and drives off.

  Marie curses and dashes to a tiny dented Opel Astra that's not half as nice, or as aerodynamic, as the trash Dumpster that it's parked beside. She starts the car and is about to go when McGrave hops into the passenger seat.

  "Detective John McGrave, LAPD." He clips his badge to a chain around his neck and smiles at her.

  She glares at him. "Kriminalkommissar Maria Vogt, Berlin Polizei."

  She floors it.

  The Porsche speeds out onto the grand tree-lined boulevard, the Opel right behind it. The two cars weave through the traffic on the Ku'damm, past the posh shops, the gourmet restaurants, and the wooden kiosks that sell tourist trinkets.

  Maria drives with concentration and skill, using the manual transmission like a pro. The Opel has more guts under the hood than McGrave would ever have guessed.

  "What are you doing in Berlin?" she asks.

  "A takedown crew from here blew a heist in LA. The crew got killed, the leader got away. I think he's back here now," McGrave says, keeping his eye on the Porsche. "So who are we chasing?"

  "Arno Schmidt, an international drug trafficker."

  McGrave nods. "Cool."

  God, she hates this guy. "How did you know I was a police officer?"

  "That's like asking how I know you're a woman."

  "It's that obvious?"

  He glances at her and lets his gaze drift up and down her body. "Abundantly."

  "Arschloch," she says.

  "What does that mean?"

  "It's German for 'thank you.'"

  The Porsche is ahead of them but getting bogged down in the traffic. Maria steers the Opel up onto the sidewalk, leaning on her horn to warn people, who scatter out of her path.

  She gains on the Porsche. "You knew you'd find a cop inside."

  "I spotted the surveillance outside the strip club, so I knew the cop inside would be the woman wearing the most clothes."

  That doesn't make her feel any better. "This undercover operation took six months to set up and you ruined it in sixty seconds. What brought you to the club?"

  "Otto's tattoo. He was one of the thieves in the crew."

  "So that's why he invested in the club. He was using it to launder the money he got from his share of the stolen goods."

  "I showed a picture of the tattoo to my taxi driver and he recognized it as the sign for the club."

  Maria closes in on the driver's side of Schmidt's Porsche. She reaches behind her seat and hands McGrave a white paddle with a red reflector in the

  middle. There are two words on the paddle: "HALT POLIZEI."

  McGrave gives it a look. "Are you inviting me to play Ping-Pong?"

  "It's an Anhaltekelle."

  "Okay," he says. "What am I supposed to do with it?"

  "When I get alongside Schmidt's car, hold it out your window."

  "Why?"

  She looks at him as if he's just asked her why people breathe. "So he'll stop."

  "Why the hell would he do that?"

  "Just do it," she snaps.

  McGrave shrugs and rolls down his window.

  Maria pulls up alongside the Porsche's open driver's-side window. McGrave holds the paddle out the window and throws it at Schmidt's head.

  The paddle hits Schmidt on the temple and instantly knocks him out cold.

  At the wheel of a speeding car.

  Warning: Driving while unconscious is extremely hazardous. Do not try this at home.

  Schmidt's car veers off the road, hits the median, and flips over, spiraling through the air and landing upside down on the street again …

  … and sliding into an unoccupied kiosk of souvenirs, demolishing it in an explosion of wood, glass, concrete, key chains, snow globes, beer mugs, T-shirts, banners, postcards, plates, teddy bears, keepsake chips of the Berlin Wall, and a fine dust of cocaine.

  Maria skids to a stop. The trunk of Schmidt's car has popped open, spilling bags of cocaine onto the sidewalk, where several of them have burst apart.

  McGrave looks at Maria and nods. "What do you know? The paddle works."

  The Polizei Hauptsitz is in an old stone building with turrets that once housed soldiers. The gravel-covered, sparsely landscaped grounds are encircled by tall brick walls topped with razor wire.

  The exterior is colorful, welcoming, and chock-full of curb appeal compared to the soul-crushing interior of the place. The
walls are a faded green, the ceiling covered with water-stained acoustic tiles, and the dangling panels of fluorescent lights cast everything in a piss-yellow hue.

  The little natural light that comes through is filtered through windows that are permanently fogged by decades of snow, rain, and heat that have scratched the surface and baked layers of dirt and bird crap into the glass.

  The metal desks that are crammed into the narrow squad room date back decades and could qualify as genuine historical artifacts from the GDR.

  Kriminalhauptkommissar Torsten Schneider could, too.

  He's in his late fifties, old enough to remember what it was like to live in the East and to dream about the West, but young enough that when the wall fell he was able to deftly adapt to the cataclysmic cultural and political changes that unification wrought.

  Torsten was a very different cop in the GDR then than he is now, but he has no regrets, no hidden shame.

  Although East Germany is gone, he hasn't lost his yearning for the idealized West of his youth, which he imagines still exists across the Atlantic, mostly because he's never left Europe.

  Torsten is a short, stocky man who tries to hide his baldness with a comb-over that fools no one, not even himself. He sits at his desk, reading Maria Vogt's report of what happened at Der Reizvolle Bar.

  Maria stands dutifully and self-consciously in front of him, dressed now in a V-neck sweater over a T-shirt, a leather jacket, and jeans.

  Rather than stare at Torsten while he reads, Maria's gaze shifts from the cowboy hat on his coatrack, to the faded Cahill: U.S. Marshal movie poster thumbtacked on the wall, to his stack of American country-western CDs on top of his file cabinet.

  Torsten turns a page on the report. "He blew up his cola with a mint?"

  She nods and clears her throat. "It's a chemical process known as nucleation, sir. The glazed surface of the mint causes the carbon dioxide in the liquid to-"

  Torsten interrupts her, turning another page. "He threw the Anhaltekelle at Schmidt and caused a major car crash on Kurfьrstendamm?"

  "I'm afraid so, sir," she says. "Schmidt has a serious concussion, but it could have been much worse, which is why I think-"

  Torsten interrupts her again, closing the file. "Astonishing!"

  "Indeed it is, sir." She takes his reaction as a very good sign. It means McGrave is taking the heat for the debacle and not her. "I suggest we put McGrave on the first plane back to Los Angeles."

  But Torsten is not listening to her. "I wish I had ten more like him."

  Marie blinks hard. "Sir?"

  He gets up from his desk and marches out into the squad room. "I have to meet this man."

  Maria follows him, bewildered.

  McGrave is leaning back in a chair, his feet up on Maria's desk, sound asleep and lightly snoring. He's still wearing his badge, and there are the remains of a McDonald's meal on the blotter by his feet: the to-go bags, three Big Mac cartons, a few scattered French fries, some pieces of lettuce, a crushed ketchup packet.

  Stefan and Heinrich are studying McGrave from the vantage point of their side-by-side desks, a few feet away.

  "Why do the American police wear their badges around their necks like jewelry?" Stefan asks in German, just in case McGrave can hear him.

  "Because they are all homosexuals," Heinrich says.

  Torsten and Maria walk up and stand in front of McGrave. Torsten shakes McGrave's foot. McGrave opens one eye.

  "Detective McGrave, I'm Kriminalhauptkommissar Torsten Schneider, but my friends call me Duke." He offers McGrave his hand.

  McGrave sits up with a yawn, swings his feet off the desk, and shakes Torsten's hand. "Why? Are you some kind of German royalty?"

  "I remind people of John Wayne."

  McGrave gives him a once-over, glances at Maria, then says, "I definitely see the resemblance. Not so much in physical stature, but in the confident way you carry yourself."

  Maria groans, but Torsten grins with pleasure. "I run the Schwerstkriminalitat, our Major Crimes Unit. You only arrived hours ago and I'm already stunned by how much you've accomplished."

  "I think you mean demolished, sir," Maria says.

  Torsten gives her a sharp look. "I know what I mean, Frau Kommissar. You didn't have a court order to search Schmidt's car. However, thanks to Detective McGrave's decisive action, we have Schmidt and the cocaine, which we can use as leverage to get him to testify against the rest of the cartel." He turns now to McGrave. "How can we assist you in return, Detective?"

  "You could find my suitcase, for starters."

  Torsten glances at Stefan and Heinrich. "Do you have it?"

  "It's gone, Herr Hauptkommissar," Stefan says. "Stolen in the chaos at the club."

  "Then we must recover it," Torsten says.

  Heinrich takes out a notepad and looks at McGrave. "Were there any identifiable belongings of value in your suitcase?"

  "Just my lucky jockstrap," McGrave says. They stare at him. They have no clue what he is talking about. "Never mind. What can you tell me about Hans Beimler?"

  Maria extracts a file from underneath the McDonald's wrappers on her desk, shakes some ketchup off of it, and opens it.

  "When obscenely wealthy collectors find something they want that can't be bought, they go to Herr Beimler. He finds the right thief for the heist and takes a commission."

  "You got a mug shot on this guy?" he asks.

  She opens the file and hands him a photo, which he glances at, then puts in his pocket. "What do you intend to do with that?"

  "I'm going to the beach to see Beimler and convince him to lead me to the mastermind behind the LA job," McGrave says, then turns to Torsten. "I could use your best man, someone who really knows the streets, to act as my driver, translator, and guide to the Berlin underworld."

  Torsten claps Maria on the back. "Done!"

  Maria is in hell. She'd rather be assigned as bait for the pickpockets and perverts at the train station than spend another hour with John McGrave.

  She's known him only a few hours and already hates him.

  Maria and McGrave emerge from the back of the building into the parking lot, where there is a fleet of green-and-white patrol cars, all of them BMW 5 Series sedans.

  "Damn." McGrave stops and admires one of the patrol cars. "Now, this is a country that truly appreciates their police force."

  "You haven't seen my paycheck," she says.

  "You don't know how lucky you are." McGrave peers in the driver's-side window of the BMW. "Where I come from, a cop can only dream of owning a car like this, and you get to drive one every day."

  "I don't. Only the uniformed patrol officers do."

  "So what's a detective drive?" McGrave asks. "A Maserati? A Ferrari? A Bentley?"

  "I'll show you." She leads him to the other side of the building to a lot containing compact Opel Astras and Volkswagen Passats. "Take your pick."

  "You're kidding me," McGrave says, clearly disappointed. "These aren't much more than golf carts."

  She goes to a Passat and opens the trunk. "Before we go to the beach, there's something you need to understand."

  "Yeah, why taxi drivers have Mercedes, patrolmen have BMWs, and detectives drive soup cans."

  She has no patience for his shit.

  "It has been a long, difficult, and painful struggle to get where I am. Now I have a good chance at being promoted to Oberkommissar and I will not let you or your case ruin that for me. Do we understand each other?"

  She gives him a hard look. He holds up his hands in surrender.

  "I'll be on my very best behavior," he says.

  "Great," she says. "You can begin by giving me your gun."

  "It's in my sock drawer in LA," McGrave says.

  "I'm referring to the one that you took at the club," she says, "and that is now hidden under your jacket."

  "Oh. That gun." He reaches under his jacket, and behind his back, and hands the gun to her. "I thought of it more as a souvenir."

 
"You can have this instead." She puts the gun in a locker in the trunk and hands him a teddy bear dressed in a green Polizei uniform and cap.

  "What's this?" he asks.

  "Bulli the Bear. We keep them in our vehicles to give to children involved in car accidents. You definitely qualify."

  Maria slams the trunk closed and gets in the car. McGrave tosses the bear and gets in the passenger side.

  Mьhlenstrasse is a wide street that runs along the industrial, east side of the Spree River, a waterway that neatly divided Berlin seven hundred years ago and then again when the wall went up along the shore.

  Although the wall fell nearly thirty years ago, the two sides of the rivers are still worlds apart.

  On the western side, there are gleaming new office towers and, just as tall and rising out of the water, there are three enormous statues of male silhouettes riddled with holes.

  By comparison, the eastern shore is lined with empty warehouses, empty lots, and bleak, boxy, Communist-era apartment houses.

  The only cultural contribution the east bank has to offer is a half-mile, mural-covered remnant of the Berlin Wall that separates Mьhlenstrasse from the river. The murals are faded, peeling, and covered with graffiti.

  Maria parks a few yards away from the most famous mural, depicting Brezhnev and Honecker in a lip-mashing kiss. McGrave has no idea who the old men in suits are or why they are kissing, which tells you all you need to know about the state of the education system in California in the 1980s.

  She and McGrave get out of the car. She's thankful for the fresh air. He smells like a homeless person and looks like one, too.

  McGrave surveys the dismal boulevard and the wall that blocks his view of the river.

  "This doesn't look like much of a resort."

  "It's not," she says. "This is the former East Germany. You're looking at the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall. Now it's an outdoor art gallery."

  "So where's the beach?"

  She gestures to a doorway cut into the wall and leads him through it.

  They emerge onto a narrow strip of sand on the riverbank that's littered with cigarette butts and bottle caps and cluttered with folding picnic tables under yellow Corona beer umbrellas. Several ratty canvas-and-wood lawn chairs are scattered about, occupied by a dozen pale people sunning themselves.