Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

There were plenty of women we could have spoken to, but I was looking for one woman in particular-a whore named Gerda-and, not finding her on the street, I decided we should try inside the Blue Stocking.

The spanner on the door sat on a tall stool in front of the cash office. His name was Neumann and, occasionally, I used him as an informer. He’d once been a runner for the Dragonfly ring that operated out of Charlottenburg, only now he wouldn’t go anywhere near the area, having double-crossed them somehow. For a spanner, Neumann wasn’t all that tough, but he had the kind of beaten, criminal face that made people think he might not care what happened to him, which sometimes amounts to a simulacrum of toughness. Plus (I happened to know) he kept an American baseball bat behind his stool and wasn’t slow to use it.

“Commissar Gunther,” he said nervously. “What brings you to the Blue Stocking?”

“I’m looking for a garter-snapper.”

Neumann grinned a grin so carious his teeth looked more like the discarded butts of twenty cigarettes. “Aren’t they all, sir?” he said. “The fritzes who waltz in here.”

“This one is gravel,” I said.

“I wouldn’t have thought you was the type for that kind of trade.” His grin widened horribly, as he enjoyed what he hoped might be my embarrassment.

“Stop thinking I feel awkward asking about her, because I don’t,” I said. “The only thing I feel awkward about is your dentist’s feelings, Neumann. Her name is Gerda.”

The teeth disappeared behind thin, cracked lips that were all twitchy, like an angler with a hook in his mouth.

“You mean like the little girl what rescues her brother, Kay, in The Snow Queen ?”

“That’s right. Only this one’s not so little. Not anymore. Plus, she’s short of an arm and a leg, not to mention a few teeth and half her liver. Now, is she here, or am I going to have to give the lads in E a call?”

E was Inspectorate E, the part of Department IV that dealt with all matters relating to morals-or more, usually, the lack of them.

“No need to be like that, Herr Gunther. Just having a bit of fun, that’s all.” He lifted a dog-trainer’s clicker off a chain on his belt and clicked it loudly, three times. “What happened to that sense of humor of yours, Commissar?”

“With each plebiscite it seems to get smaller.”

At the sound of the dog clicker, the door that led down into the club opened from the inside. At the top of a steep flight of stairs stood another spanner, only this one was wearing muscle.

Neumann chuckled. “Bloody Nazis,” he said. “I know just what you mean, Commissar. Everyone says they’ll close us all down the minute they get in.”

“I sincerely hope so,” remarked Grund.

Neumann shot him a look of quiet distaste. “Gerda’s downstairs,” he said stiffly.

“How does she get downstairs with one leg and one arm?” asked Grund.

Neumann looked at me and then at Grund, with a smile dancing on the cracked playground of his lips. “Slowly,” he said, and let out a roar of laughter that I enjoyed as much as he did.

Grund wasn’t laughing. “Think you’re a comedian, do you?” he said.

“Forget about it,” I told Grund, pushing him through the door and into the club. “You walked right into that one.”

Gerda wasn’t yet thirty, although you wouldn’t have known it. She could easily have passed for about fifty. We found her sitting in a wheelchair within spitting distance of a small stage where a zither-player and a striptease dancer were having a competition to see which of them could look more bored. By my reckoning, the striptease dancer had it won by a couple of droopy tits. On the table in front of Gerda stood a bottle of cheap schnapps, doubtless paid for by the man seated beside her, who, on closer inspection, turned out to be a woman.

“Go and plaster it,” I told the bubi.

“Yeah.” Grund flashed his warrant disc for good measure. “Try the Eldorado.”

Gerda thought that was funny. The Eldorado was a club for transvestite men. The bubi, sullen and predatory-looking, like someone’s outcast uncle, got up and went away. We sat down on chairs as wobbly as Gerda’s remaining teeth.

“I know you,” she told me. “You’re that cop, aren’t you?”

I put a ten under her bottle.

“What’s the idea, putting a shine on my table? I don’t know nothing.”

“Sure you do, Gerda,” I told her. “Everyone knows something.”

“Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t.” She nodded. “I’m glad you’re here, anyway, Commissar. I don’t like that mon bijou scene. You know? The ladies’ club scorpions. I mean, beggars can’t be choosers, and I’d have done it with her if she’d asked me nicely, you know? But I take no pleasure in a woman touching me down there.”

I put a cigarette in Gerda’s mouth and lit it. She was thin, with short red hair, bluish eyes, and a reddish face. She drank too much, although she could hold it well enough. Most of the time. The one time I knew she couldn’t, she’d fallen down in front of a number 13 tram on Kopenicker Strasse. She might easily have been killed. Instead she lost her left arm and her left leg.

“I remember now,” she said. “You put Ricci Kamm in the hospital.” Smiling happily, she added, “You deserve an Iron Cross for that, copper.”

“As usual, you’re well informed, Gerda.”

I lit my own cigarette and tossed her the pack. Easily amused-I figured that was how he became a Nazi in the first place-Grund was already paying more attention to the show than to our conversation.

“Tell me, Gerda. Did you ever see a snapper with a caliper, age about fifteen? Blond, boyish, carried a stick. Name of Anita. She had cerebral palsy. A spastic. We know she was selling it, because we found a bedroll in her pocket and because the neighbors said she was selling it.”

“Neet? Yeah, I heard she was dead, poor kid.” Gerda poured herself a drink from the bottle and swallowed it in one, like it was cold coffee. “Came in here sometimes. Nicely spoken girl, considering.”

“Considering what?” asked Grund. His eyes remained on the stripper’s teats, which were altogether larger than would have seemed probable.

“Considering she couldn’t speak very well.” Gerda made a noise that came mostly out of her nose. “Talked like that, you know?”

“What else can you tell us about her?” I refilled Gerda’s glass and poured one for myself, just to look sociable.

“From what I gathered, she didn’t get on with her parents. They didn’t like her being a gimp, you know? And of course they didn’t like her being on the sledge. She didn’t do it all the time, mind. Just when she wanted to irritate them, I think. Her dad was something in the Nazi Party, and it used to piss him off that she’d come out and sell it sometimes.”

“Hard to believe,” murmured Grund. “That anyone would. You know. With a disabled kid.”

Gerda laughed. “Oh no, darling. It’s not hard to believe at all. Lots of men do it with disabled girls. In fact, it’s quite the thing these days. I expect it’s something to do with the war. All those terrible injuries some of the men came home with. Left a lot of them feeling quite inadequate, in all sorts of ways. I think that doing it with gravel helps them find the confidence to get it up. Makes them feel superior to the gimp they’re with. It’s cheaper, too, of course. Cheaper than the regular. People don’t have the money for that kind of thing. Not like they used to.” She shot Grund an amused, pitying look. “Oh no, dearie. I’ve seen girls with half a face find a fritz in here. ’Sides, most fritzes aren’t looking at you anyway. Won’t meet your eye. So what a girl’s shine looks like or whether she’s got all her bits is not as important as the fact that she’s got her mouse.” Gerda laughed. “No, darling, you ask some of your mates at work and they’ll tell you the same thing. You don’t look at the whole house when you’re putting a letter in the box.”