Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“Yeah, and he’d sell her too if you put the money in escrow.” He put the glass down on the table. “Probably runs the goddamn garden club while her boy’s collecting envelopes from American Dye. It’s a great country.”

“None better,” Jake said easily.

“And I can’t wait to get back to it. Figure that one out. Listen, do me a favor. If you come up with anything on Breimer, let me know, will you? Since you’re just nosing around.”

“You get the first call.”

“And don’t reverse the fucking charges. You owe me.”

Jake smiled. “I’m going to miss you, Tommy.”

“Me and your bad tooth. Now what the hell is he up to?” he said, cocking his head toward a drum roll coming from the band.

Ron was standing in front of the combo, holding a glass.

“Listen up. Can’t have a party without a toast.”

“Toast! Toast!” Shouts from around the room, followed by a chorus of keys tinkling against glasses.

“Come on up here, Tommy.”

Groans and whistles, the good-natured rumble of a frat party. Soon people would be balancing bottles on their heads. Ron started in on something about the finest group of reporters he’d ever worked with, then grinned as the crowd shouted him down, held up his hand, and finally gave in just by raising his glass with a “Good luck.” Some airplanes made of folded yellow typing paper floated in from the crowd, hitting Ron’s head, so that he had to duck, laughing.

“Speech! Speech!”

“Go fuck yourselves,” Tommy said, which hit the right note, making the crowd whistle again.

“Come on, Tommy, what do you say?” A voice next to Jake- Benson, from Stars and Stripes, slightly hoarse from shouting.

Tommy smiled and lifted his glass. “On this historic occasion—”

“Aw!” More hoots and another paper plane gliding by.

“Let’s drink to free and unrestricted navigation on all international inland waterways.”

To Jake’s surprise, this brought down the house, prompting a whoop of laughter followed by chants of “Inland waterways! Inland waterways!” Tommy drained his glass as the band started playing again.

“What’s the joke?” Jake said to Benson.

“Truman’s big idea at the conference. They say the look on Uncle Joe’s face was worth a million bucks.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Who could? He actually insisted they put it on the agenda.”

“I thought the sessions were secret.”

“That one was too good to keep quiet. They had five leaks in about five minutes. Where’ve you been?”

“Busy.”

“Couldn’t get him off it. The way to lasting peace.” He laughed. “Open up the Danube.”

“I take it this didn’t make the final agreement?”

“You nuts? They just pretended it wasn’t there. Like a fart in church.” He looked over at Jake. “Busy with what?”

After that, the party grew louder, a steady din of music and voices that kept rising until it finally became one piercing sound, like steam whistling out of a valve. Nobody seemed to mind. The nurses were getting the rush on the dance floor, but the noise had the male boom of all the occupation parties, nearly stag, civilian girls confined by the nonfraternization rules to the shadow world of Ku’damm clubs and groping in the ruins. Liz waved from the dance floor, signaling for Jake to cut in, but he gave a mock salute and went to the bar instead. Fifteen more minutes, to be polite, and he’d go home to Lena.

The whole room was jumping now, as if everyone were dancing in place, except for the poker game in the corner, whose only movement was the methodical slapping of cards on the table. Jake looked down at the end of the bar and smiled. Another pocket of quiet. Muller was putting in a reluctant appearance, more than ever Judge Hardy, silver-haired and sober, like a chaperone at a high school dance.

Jake felt an elbow, then a slosh of beer on his sleeve, and moved away from the bar to make a last circuit around the room. A burst of laughter from a huddle nearby-Tommy at it again. Near the door, a corkboard hung on the wall, cluttered with pinned-up sheets of copy and headlines clipped out of context. His Potsdam piece was there, the margins, like all the others, filled with scribbled comments in code. NOOYB, not one of your best. A story on Churchill leaving the conference. WGWTE, when giants walked the earth. The back-slapping acronyms of the press camp, as secret and joky as the passwords in a schoolboys’ club. How he’d spent the war.

“Admiring your handiwork?”

He turned to find Muller standing behind him, his uniform army crisp in the sweaty room.

“What’s it mean, anyway?” Muller said, pointing to the scribbles.

“Reviews. In shorthand. OOTAG,” Jake said, pronouncing it as a word. “One of the all-time greats. NOOYB-not one of your best. Like that.”

“You men have more initials than the army.”

“That’ll be the day.”

“The only one I hear these days is FYIGMO-fuck you, I got my orders. Home, that is,” he said, as if Jake had missed it. “I suppose you’ll be heading home too, now that Potsdam’s over.”

“No, not yet. I’m still working on something.”

Muller looked at him. “That’s right. The black market. I saw Collier’s. There’s more?”

Jake shrugged.

“You know, every time there’s a story like that, it’s an extra day’s work for somebody, explaining it.”

“Maybe somebody should clean it up instead.”

“We’re trying, believe it or not.”

“How?”

Muller smiled. “How do we do anything? New regulations. But even regulations take time.”

“Especially if some of the people making them are sending money home too.”

Muller threw him a sharp look, then backed off. “Come for a smoke,” he said, a gentle order.

Jake followed him out. A line of jeeps stretched along the dusty broad sweep of Argentinischeallee, but otherwise the street was deserted.

“You’ve been busy,” Muller said, handing him a cigarette. “I saw you in the movies.”

“Yeah, how about that?”

“I also hear somebody’s been making inquiries in Frankfurt about our friend Tully. I assume that’s you?”

“You forgot to mention what a colorful character he was. Hauptmann Toll.”

“Meister Toll, since you like to be accurate. Not that it matters. Comes to the same thing.” Another weak smile. “Not one of our best.”

“The whip’s a nice touch. He ever use it?”

“Let’s hope not.” He drew on his cigarette. “Find what you were looking for?”

“I’m getting there. No thanks to MG. Want to tell me why you’re holding out on me? For the sake of accuracy.”

“Nobody’s holding out on you.”

“How about a ballistics report? On a second sheet that wasn’t there. I suppose that got mislaid.”

Muller said nothing.

“So let me ask you again. Why were you holding out?”

Muller sighed and flicked his cigarette toward the street. “That’s easy. I don’t want you to do this story. Clear enough? Some low-life gets in trouble in the black market and the papers start yelling corruption in the MG. We don’t need that.” He glanced at Jake. “We like to clean up our own mess.”

“Including murder? With an American bullet.”

“Including that,” Muller said evenly. “We’ve got a criminal investigation department, you know. They know what they’re doing.”

“Keeping it quiet, you mean.”

“No. Getting to the bottom of it-without a scandal. Go home, Geismar,” he said wearily.

“No.”

Muller looked up, surprised at the abrupt answer.

“I could make you go home. You’re on a pass here, just like everyone else.”

“You don’t want to do that. I’m a hero-it’s in the movies. You don’t want to run me out of town now. How would that look?”