Lee Goldberg: McGrave

"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."