McGrave

by Lee Goldberg

  "Don't count on it." He steps past her and continues walking.

  Many of the nineteenth-century apartment blocks of Prenzlauer Berg are covered with graffiti as a design choice and painted in vibrant pastel colors, all part of the latest evolution of the neighborhood, which over the last hundred or so years has gone from working-class tenements to neglected Cold War slum to bohemian artist colony and now to a gentrified bedroom community for educated, well-off, and very horny young couples.

  That horny part is fact, not snark.

  More children are born in Prenzlauer Berg than anywhere else in Berlin.

  That means everyone who lives here needs a car to ferry around all those kids and groceries.

  And that means parking is a bitch. So if you find a spot, no matter how small, you make it work.

  Maria has discovered a space between a Mercedes-Benz and an Audi and is determined to fit her car into it.

  She bumps the cars in front and in back of her as she tries to parallel park between them.

  "We're nowhere near my hotel, are we?" McGrave says.

  "This is where I live," she says, trying to make her car fit with precise, incremental adjustments.

  "What are we doing here?"

  "You need a safe place to stay tonight and I need to keep an eye on you."

  "So stake out my hotel."

  Maria gives him a look. "Believe it or not, McGrave, I have a life."

  She finally parks, her car wedged in so tight that she may not be able to get it out again without a blowtorch and the Jaws of Life.

  Maria is very pleased with herself.

  "No wonder they don't let you drive the BMWs," McGrave says.

  They take the stairs up two flights to Maria's apartment. She unlocks the door and beckons McGrave inside, into the small living room, which is homey but overstuffed with a couch, easy chair, dining table, stacks of books, and a large TV, the kind with a picture tube, which McGrave didn't know they still made. There's a galley kitchen off the living area and a short hallway that leads to two bedrooms and a bath.

  A twelve-year-old boy gets up from the couch, where he has been doing homework, and comes over to greet them. He's a gangly kid, already starting to enter that awkward phase of adolescence where his arms, legs, and neck seem to be growing at separate rates. His hair is thick and overgrown and hides his ears, but not the yellowing skin from a fading bruise around his right eye. He regards McGrave warily, and judging by how the cop looks and smells, it makes sense.

  Maria closes the door and makes the introductions.

  "I know it looks like I brought home a homeless guy, but this is actually a colleague, Detective John McGrave, on assignment from Los Angeles. He's been working undercover. He'll be sleeping on our couch tonight." She looks at McGrave. "This is my son, Erich."

  The boy shakes McGrave's hand. "Do you know the Kardashians?"

  "Who doesn't?"

  "I've got some Kohlrouladen I can heat up," Maria says. "Set the table, Erich, and I'll bring it out in a few minutes. Make yourself at home, McGrave."

  Maria and her son go into the kitchen, leaving McGrave alone. He's glancing at the books, but the titles on the spines are in German and mean nothing to him.

  Erich comes out of the kitchen with the silverware and plates and starts laying it all out on the table.

  "How did you get the shiner?" McGrave asks, but Erich doesn't get it. "Your swollen eye."

  "Axel Sand."

  "Is this the first time he's given you one of those?

  Erich shakes his head sadly. "He's older, bigger, and tougher than I am."

  "Then he'll never know what hit him." McGrave waves Erich away from the table. "Let me show you a couple of tricks."

  Maria is grating horseradish and is about to tend to the boiled potatoes when she hears a grunt and crash from the living room. She rushes out into the living room to see the coffee table tipped over and McGrave facedown on the floor, Erich standing over him, his foot firmly planted between McGrave's shoulder blades, and twisting the cop's arm behind his back.

  Erich is grinning. So is McGrave.

  "McGrave calls this the crippler," Erich says.

  "How nice," Maria says. "The Kohlrouladen is ready. I've boiled some potatoes, too."

  Erich releases McGrave, who sits up and says, "What's kohl-roo-what's-it?"

  "Cabbage stuffed with minced meat."

  "Yum," he says. "Are there any Pizza Huts nearby?"

  It's after dinner. The dirty dishes and the Pizza Hut box are still on the table. Erich has gone to bed. McGrave is sitting on the couch, having a Coke, which he drinks out of the bottle. Maria brings out some bedding and some men's clothes and sets them on the coffee table.

  "I'm sorry you didn't like dinner."

  "I loved it."

  "I meant the Kohlrouladen," she says.

  "I'm not big on foreign foods."

  "Your pizza was made here with local ingredients."

  "But it tastes just like home," he says.

  She motions to the clothes. "Those are clean clothes. They should be about your size. You can keep them."

  "Isn't your husband going to miss them?"

  "If he did, he would have picked them up months ago," she says. "We're divorcing."

  "Any particular reason why?"

  She sits down next to him and sighs. "Over the years, we became very different people. I became a police detective and Karl became a homeopathic doctor."

  McGrave snorts. "You mean he tells people they'll get better if they eat herbs and roots and stuff."

  "More or less."

  "So he's not a doctor," McGrave says. "He's a salad chef."

  Maria tries to stifle a smile and fails. McGrave smiles, too.

  "So where does the kid fit into this?" he asks.

  "In the middle, unfortunately. My ex-husband and I are fighting for custody. Karl says my job 'creates an unstable and violent living environment that's unsuitable for raising children.'"

  McGrave nods. "I didn't fight my ex for custody of my daughter. I knew Maddie would be better off with her. And I was right."

  "How old is your daughter?"

  "Seventeen." McGrave reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet, and shows her a picture.

  "She's beautiful," Maria says. "What's the real reason you chased Richter all the way over here?"

  "It's my job."

  She shakes her head. "Try again."

  "He threatened to kill my family," he says. "And the bastard executed my bulldog."

  "Richter killed your dog?"

  "He was my partner, too."

  McGrave's wallet is still open in his hand. Maria tugs out the photo that's behind the one of his daughter. It's a creased, yellowed picture of McGrave when he was a young uniformed officer astride his police-issue Harley-Davidson.

  "What's this?"

  "A picture from my days as a patrolman before I made detective. Sometimes I really miss them," he says. "How about you?"

  "Miss what?"

  "Don't you ever wish you were back in uniform again, rolling on calls, working the streets?"

  "I was never a patrol officer."

  McGrave stares at her in disbelief. "Then how did you become a detective?"

  "The usual way," she says. "I studied for two years at the Akademie fьr Verwaltung und Rechtspflege and was hired as a Kriminalkommissar upon graduation."

  She gets up and starts clearing the dishes from the table. McGrave gets up and helps her.

  "You didn't spend any time in uniform?"

  "In Germany, the uniformed officers, the Schutzpolizei, are a separate force from the investigators, the Kriminalpolizei. You don't serve as a Schutzpolizei in order to become a Kriminalpolizei."

  McGrave can't believe what he is hearing. "So everything you know about being a cop you've learned from books?"

  "Of course. That's how it's done." She takes the dishes into the kitchen.

  McGrave follows her. "No, it's not. You can't develo
p instincts from a book. You've got to be out there, on the streets, living it."

  "That's ridiculous," she says, taking the dishes from him and putting them in the sink. "Officers prevent crimes and protect people from danger. Detectives investigate crimes and pursue the offenders. They are two entirely different skills. A detective must be highly educated."

  "Where I come from," he says, "the university is the street."

  "Where I come from," she says, "the university is a university."

  "That explains a lot about the police work I've seen from you today," McGrave says.

  He regrets the remark almost the instant he's said it, but it's too late.

  "Likewise," she says. "Good night, Detective."

  She leaves the dishes in the sink and marches off to bed.

  The squad room is busy. Maria is at her desk, reviewing a file. Stefan is working the phones. Heinrich is doing something on his computer and eating chocolate somethings from a yellow bag with a picture of what looks like five pieces of horse crap on the front.

  McGrave strides in wearing the too-small shirt that Maria gave him under his leather jacket. The pants are a little tight, too. He's holding a huge box of Dunkin' Donuts.

  "Look what I found. Some real cop brain food." He sets the box down in front of Heinrich and opens it up to reveal dozens of mixed doughnuts as if they were gold bars. "Feast on this, my friends, and you shall solve all the world's crimes."

  "No, thank you," Heinrich says. "But you are welcome to one of these."

  He offers McGrave the open bag of Zetti Knusperflocken Vollmilch Schokolade mit Knдckebrot.

  McGrave peers inside the bag and shakes his head. "What is it?"

  "Knusperflocken. One of the few treats left from the GDR. I have to order it on the Internet now."

  "You lived there before the wall fell?"

  "I was a Volkspolizist. Duke was, too. In the East, it was different. The people didn't dare break the law. The police were respected and feared. Here there is much lawlessness and they spit on our shoes."

  "Do you miss it?"

  "No, the police should not be feared. But I miss the strict adherence to the law. And the food was better."

  McGrave takes a doughnut. Heinrich has another piece of Knusperflocken.

  Neither of them is ever going to change.

  "What have you got on Richter?" McGrave asks.

  "He goes all over the world staging major heists and doesn't mind killing. He was reportedly trained by the Bundesnachrichtendienst."

  "What's the Bundy-what's-it?" McGrave asks.

  "Our CIA," Heinrich says. "That explains why he's never been caught. Richter probably still does a few jobs for them, so in return they make sure he doesn't show up in the system."

  "Richter said he's prepping a job right now," McGrave says.

  Stefan hangs up the phone. "That fits with what the detectives in the robbery division just told me. There's rumors floating around that somebody is looking for alarm specialists, tunnelers, and a wheelman for a big job."

  "Are Richter's two gun monkeys saying anything?" McGrave asks.

  "Not a word," Stefan says.

  That's when Maria comes over. "They don't have to. Their shoes are talking for them."

  "Their shoes," McGrave says.

  "I had the forensics unit analyze their clothing and the van they used to abduct you," she says. "A soils analysis of the dirt particles found on their shoes and the undercarriage of the van points to one place."

  "Which is?" McGrave asks.

  Maria and McGrave stand on a mound of excavated dirt in a vacant lot in the Mitte, formerly the administrative center of the Third Reich and, after the war, the GDR, too. The office space was, after all, already designed to meet the needs of those engaged in the hard work of censorship and oppression.

  Today there are construction cranes everywhere, and big, elevated blue pipes snake along the side streets and major boulevards.

  "Ever since reunification, there's been a construction boom in Mitte," Maria explains. "The wastelands and abandoned buildings left behind when the wall fell became prime real estate for development and renovation. I think it's finally coming to an end. Thank God."

  The blockish, symmetrical buildings are nearly flush with one another and were designed to reflect Hitler's "Words of Stone" monumental style, espousing a message of rigid order, intimidating power, and enforced conformity.

  They still do, only now they're adorned with polished stone and glass and buffed to a Disney gleam, and they proclaim the enduring and awesome power of money, the virtues of accumulating wealth, and the importance of spending what you have on the priciest material goods you can afford.

  "What are those elevated blue pipes I see everywhere?" McGrave asks.

  "They move the groundwater from the construction sites to the river," she says. "It's the unique nature of that sediment that allowed us to trace the dirt in Richter's van back here."

  McGrave looks around him, trying to get his bearings. But it's not easy.

  All the buildings are the same height and shape and topped by three terraced stories, creating an unbroken roofline down every street, so they appear to be part of an immense wall, broken only by the side streets.

  It's almost like McGrave is standing in the center of an immense labyrinth.

  And within that labyrinth, there are scores of galleries, jewelry stores, banks, and museums. There's even a billboard by the construction site advertising an exhibition in Mitte of Fabergй eggs.

  Any one of those places could be Richter's next target.

  Maria's cell phone rings. She answers it, says something in German, then turns to McGrave.

  "Excuse me," she says. "I need to take this."

  She steps aside, out of earshot. But a breeze kicks up and McGrave's attention is suddenly drawn to something else a half block away.

  He heads across the street, weaving through the traffic and across iron plates laid over trenches cut into the asphalt, and on past several storefronts, until he reaches a gallery with a large, banner draped across the top four floors. He'd caught a glimpse of it fluttering in the breeze.

  The banner is in German, but it depicts glassware and ceramics, including the item that attracted McGrave-a pot that looks just like the one destroyed in the shoot-out in Ernie Wallengren's house.

  Maria marches up to him. She seems angry. "Looking for some souvenirs?"

  "Tell me what the banner says."

  "It's advertising an auction of rare Egyptian antiquities. The auction is tomorrow, but you're going to be-"

  "On a plane back to Los Angeles with Richter handcuffed beside me," McGrave says, interrupting her and pointing at the banner. "Because that son of a bitch is going to try to steal Nefertiti's toilet tonight and I'm going to be there to catch him."

  ####

  Torsten "Duke" Schneider and Maria stand side by side in front of a full house of detectives, briefing them in English, out of deference to McGrave, on the operation that they've hurriedly put into motion.

  On the wall behind Torsten and Maria is a street map of Mitte as well as photographs of the interior and exterior of the auction house, schematic diagrams of sewers, and other blueprints.

  "We believe that Richter and his new team will strike the auction house tonight and use the World War Two-era tunnels beneath Wilhelmstrasse to do it," Maria says. "The construction work in the area provided the perfect cover for him to access the tunnels and dig his way beneath the auction house without raising any suspicion."

  Torsten uses a pointer to indicate spots on the street map.

  "Two-man surveillance teams will be placed here, here, and here," he says, pointing to buildings facing the front and rear of the auction house. "We've also placed fiber-optic cameras into the tunnels and will monitor them in our mobile command unit, which will be parked here." He points to the lot where Maria and McGrave stood earlier. "Our strike unit will be stationed in an empty, unoccupied storefront around the corner
from the auction house. They will move in on my signal. I want everyone in place within the hour. You each have your assignments. Let's get moving."

  The detectives disperse. Torsten and Maria approach McGrave, who is sitting at Maria's desk.

  Torsten helps himself to a frosted chocolate doughnut with chocolate sprinkles from the box on Heinrich's desk.

  "These doughnuts really energize your thinking," Torsten says. "I can see why they are so popular among law enforcement officers in the U.S. This is my third one today."

  "I didn't get an assignment," McGrave says.

  "You'll be observing from the command post."

  McGrave shakes his head. "I don't observe, Duke, I act. I need to lead the strike team."

  "I'm afraid I can't allow it," Torsten says. "You don't have any jurisdiction and you can't carry a weapon."

  "This is all the jurisdiction I need," McGrave holds up his badge. "And I'm a weapon."

  Maria groans.

  Torsten beams. "Say it again."

  "What?" McGrave says.

  "'I'm a weapon.' It's so… so…"

  "John Wayne," Maria says.

  "Exactly!" Torsten says.

  "So I can be on the team?"

  "Absolutely not," Torsten says. "But you will be welcome in the trailer. I'll even provide doughnuts. You're with Kommissar Vogt until then."

  Her cell phone rings. She glances at the caller ID. It's Erich's school.

  Like much of the architecture of the GDR era, the Oberschule looks like a concrete shoe box that's been spray painted with graffiti.

  School has been dismissed and there are only a few kids hanging around.

  Maria and McGrave emerge from the Passat to find Erich sitting on a concrete bench out front. Erich is sitting with a man who is roughly McGrave's height and build, but that's where the similarities end.

  You look at him and see a guy who reads avant-garde novels, not because he likes them, but so he can say he reads avant-garde novels. You look at him and you see a closet full of sweaters and scarves, because he lives in a perpetual winter, needs to be swaddled all the time, and likes having clothes to shed at coffeehouses, where he spends more time than in his own home. You look at him and see a lover who gets tears in his eyes when he makes love because otherwise it would be fucking and because no matter how many times he does it, he's always afraid it will never happen again.