Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

I went out the window, returned to my car, and drove quickly away. In Germany, there were things that it didn’t seem healthy to know about. I didn’t doubt for a minute that Joey’s jelly was one of these.

THERE WERE nine technical inspectorates at the Alex. Inspectorate A dealt with murder, and C dealt with thefts. Gunther Braschwitz was the boss of C and specialized in burglaries. He had a younger brother, Rudolf, who was in the political police, but we didn’t hold that against him. Braschwitz was as elegant as your little finger, and a real champagne-pisser. He wore a bowler hat, carried a stick with a sword in it, which he would sometimes use, and, in winter at least, wore gaiters above his boots. He knew all the screens-the city’s professional burglars-and, it was said, could look at a break-in and tell which of them had probably done it.

“Jewface Klein,” I said. “Seen him lately?”

“Jewface? He claims he’s going straight,” said Braschwitz. “Managed to get himself a job at Heilbronner’s on Mohrenstrasse.”

“The antique shop?”

“That’s right. He always had a very good eye, that Jewface. Why? Has he been up to his old tricks?”

“No. But he knows someone I’m looking for. A friend of that widow he used to partner. Eva Zimmer.” Only half of this was true, but I didn’t want Braschwitz asking too many questions.

“Poor Eva,” he said. “She was a good widow, that girl.”

A widow was someone a screen used to get rid of his ill-gotten goods. Not a real widow. Just someone pretending to be one. Some of them, like Eva Zimmer, were professional actresses. They would dress up in black and, with a well-rehearsed hard-luck story, try to sell stolen gold, silver, or jewelry to the high-street goldsmiths. Until I’d arrested Jewface, he and Eva had had one of the best partnerships in Berlin. I knew he was six months out of Tegel Prison, but there was nothing on file of what he’d been doing since.

After Braschwitz had told me all he knew about Jewface, I telephoned the Adlon and asked Frieda what she could tell me about Josef Goebbels. Goebbels was a regular patron of the Adlon, and Frieda was able to give me some information that I thought I might use to help bait Klein.

I walked to Heilbronner’s, but the manager told me Klein wasn’t there. “It’s his lunch hour,” he said. “You’ll probably find him across the street, at Gsellius. The bookshop. He usually goes in there at lunchtime.”

I crossed the street and peered in the bookshop window. Jewface was in there, all right. I saw him straight away. A little older than I remembered, but a year in the cement can put five on your shine. His face wasn’t particularly Jewish, to be honest. He had the nickname from the jeweler’s eyeglass he used to wear when he was appraising something he’d stolen. But he did have a nose, for cops. I hadn’t been there for more than a few seconds when he looked up from the book he held and met my eye. I nodded at him to come outside and, reluctantly, he did. We weren’t friends exactly. But I was counting on his not having forgotten that it was I who’d found the pimp who’d stabbed Eva Zimmer the previous year. A man named Horst Wessel. And the pity of it was that Wessel, who was also a member of the SA, had then been murdered by another pimp, Ali Hohler, in an argument over some whore before I could make the arrest. Because Hohler happened also to be a Communist, Goebbels had managed to turn these tawdry events into a political melodrama, which was how Horst Wessel had achieved his unlikely immortalization in a song that was now heard all over Berlin when the SA went on one of its provocative marches through a Communist neighborhood. Naturally, Goebbels had left out of the story the underworld connections of these plankton protagonists. Meanwhile, Hohler had been arrested by one of my colleagues and sentenced to life imprisonment. Which left Jewface very much aggrieved with Goebbels for having waxed Eva Zimmer’s sordid murder from the Nazis’ canta storia of Horst Wessel’s heroic past.

We went around the corner to Siechen’s on Friedrichstrasse, where I bought us a couple of Nurembergs and took a closer look at him. His face was all sharp angles, thin and pointed, like something Pythagoras had doodled on the corner of his scroll before getting on with his theorem.

“So what can I do for you, Herr Gunther?”

“I need a favor, Jewface. I want someone to break into a doctor’s office at the state hospital. Someone intelligent, who can read and write and not get greedy. I don’t want anything stolen.”

“That’s good, because I’m retired. I don’t steal. And I don’t go breaking and entering. Not since Eva got stabbed.”

“Look, all I want you to do is open a file and do a bit of copying out. A secretary with a key could do it. But I don’t have a key. For a man of your experience, it couldn’t be simpler.” I sipped my beer and let him blow me off like the froth on top of his own untouched glass.

“You’re not listening, Commissar. I’m retired. Prison worked for me. Give yourself a medal.”

“Medals, is it? I can’t give you a medal, Jewface. But you do what I ask, copy out some names from some files at the hospital, and I can give you something else.”

“I don’t want your money, copper.”

“I wouldn’t insult you. No, this is something better than money. It’s even patriotic-that is, if you believe in the republic.”

“I don’t, as it happens. It was the republic that put me in the cement.”

“All right. Call it revenge, then. Revenge for Eva.” I sipped some more of my beer and let him wait.

“Keep talking.”

“How would you like to shove one up Joey Goebbels?”

“I’m listening.”

“Joey the Crip lives at number three Reichskanzlerplatz. Corner apartment, ground floor, eastern end. A bunch of SA men sit out front, so you’ll have to be careful. But they can’t see around the corner to where Joey’s bathroom faces the side street. There’s a rat’s-tail casement stay on the bathroom window that’s broken. You can be in and out in no time. Bread and butter to a man like you, Jewface. I did it myself just an hour or two ago. The man is a fanatic, Jewface. Do you know he’s got a photograph of Hitler on the side of the bath? Anyway, the apartment is owned by his wife, Magda. She used to be married to a rich industrialist called Gunther Quandt, who was very generous with the divorce settlement. He let her keep all her mints. You know? The ones you like. The ones you can sell at Margraf’s? Of course, with an election coming, Goebbels is out a lot. Making speeches, that kind of thing. In fact, I happen to know that Joey’s making a speech tonight, at Nazi Party headquarters on Hedemannstrasse. It will be an important speech. They’re all important between now and the end of July. But maybe this one is more important than most. Hitler will be there. Afterward, Magda’s throwing a little soiree for him at the Adlon Hotel. Which would give a man plenty of time.” I sipped some more beer and thought about ordering some sausage. It had been a busy morning. “So. What do you say? Do we have a deal? Will you copy out these names for me, like I asked?”

“Like I told you already, Gunther. I’m a reformed character. I’m trying to lead an honest life.” Jewface smiled and offered me his hand. “But that’s the thing about the Nazis. They bring out the worst in people.”

THE NEXT MORNING I had a handwritten list of names and addresses from all over the city and beyond. Not as good as a list of suspects, but perhaps the next best thing. Now all I had to do was check them out.

The Residents Registrations Office was on the railway-station side of the Alex, in room 359. From this third-floor office, the address of any resident of Berlin might be obtained, quite legally, by any other resident of the city. The Prussian authorities had meant well: the knowledge that information in the state was freely available was supposed to help buttress faith in our fragile democracy. In practice, however, it just meant that Nazi storm troopers and Communists alike were able to find out where their opponents lived and take appropriately belligerent action. Democracy has its disadvantages, too.