Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

Paul said nothing for a moment, then: “My grandfather came to America years ago. He’d fought in the Franco-Prussian War and wanted no more fighting. He started a printing company.”

“What was his name?”

“Wolfgang. He said printing ink was in his veins and claimed that his ancestors had lived in Mainz and worked with Gutenberg.”

“A grandfather’s stories,” Webber said, nodding. “Mine said he was Bismarck’s cousin.”

“His company was on the Lower East Side of New York in the German-American area of the city. In 1904 there was a tragedy – over a thousand people from there were killed in an excursion ship fire in the East River. The General Slocum.”

“Ach, what a sad thing.”

“My grandfather was on the boat. He and my grandmother weren’t killed but he was badly burned saving people and he couldn’t work any longer. Then most of the German community moved to Yorkville, farther north in Manhattan. People were too sad to stay in Little Germany. His business was going to fail, with Grandpapa being so sick and fewer people around to order printing. So my father took over. He didn’t want to be a printer; he wanted to play baseball. You know baseball?”

“Ach, of course.”

“But there was no choice. He had a wife and my sister and my brother and me to feed – my grandparents now too. But he, we would say, rose to the occasion. He did his duty. He moved to Brooklyn, added English-language printing and expanded the company. Made it very successful. My brother couldn’t go into the army during the War and they ran the shop together when I was in France. After I got back I joined them and we built the place up real nice.” He laughed. “Now I don’t know if you heard about this, but our country had this thing called Prohibition. You know-”

“Yes, yes, of course. I read the crime shockers, remember. Illegal to drink liquor! Madness!”

“My father’s plant was right on the river in Brooklyn. It had a dock and a large warehouse for storing paper and the finished jobs. One of the gangs wanted to take it over and use it to store whisky they’d smuggle in from the harbor. My father said no. A couple of thugs came to see him one day. They beat up my brother and, when my father still resisted, they put his arms in our big letterpress.”

“Oh, no, my friend.”

Paul continued. “He was mangled badly. He died a few days later. And my brother and mother sold the plant to them the next day for a hundred dollars.”

“So you were out of work and you fell in with a difficult crowd?” Webber nodded.

“No, that’s not what happened,” Paul said softly. “I went to the police. They weren’t interested in helping find these particular killers. You understand?”

“Are you asking if I know about corrupt police?” Webber laughed hard.

“So I found my old army Colt, my pistol. I learned who the killers were. I followed them for a week straight. I learned everything about them. And I touched them off.”

“You-?”

He realized that he’d translated the phrase literally; it would have no meaning in German. “We say ‘touching off.’ I put a bullet into the backs of their heads.”

“Ach, yes,” Webber whispered, unsmiling now. “‘Snuffing,’ we’d say.”

“Yes. Well, I also knew whom they worked for, the bootlegger who’d ordered my father tortured. I touched him off too.”

Webber fell silent. Paul realized he’d never told the story to anyone.

“You got your company back?”

“Oh, no, the place had been raided by the feds, the government, before that and confiscated. As for me, I disappeared underground in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan. And I got ready to die.”

“To die?”

“I’d killed a very important man. This mob leader. I knew that his associates or someone else would come to find me and kill me. I’d covered my tracks very well, the police wouldn’t get me. But the gangs knew I was the one. I didn’t want to lead anybody to my family – my brother’d started his own printing company by then – so instead of going back into business with him I took a job in a gym, sparring and cleaning up in exchange for a room.”

“And you waited to die. But I can’t help but notice that you’re still extremely alive, Mr. John Dillinger. How did that transpire?”

“Some other men-”

“Gang leaders.”

“-heard what I’d done. They hadn’t been happy with the man I’d killed, the way he’d done business, like torturing my father and killing policemen. They thought criminals should be professionals. Gentlemen.”

“Like me,” Webber said, thumping his chest.

“They heard how I’d killed the gangster and his men. It had been clean, with no evidence left behind. And no one innocent was hurt. They asked me to do the same to another man, another very bad man. I didn’t want to but I found out what he’d done. He’d killed a witness and the man’s family, even his two children. So I agreed. And I touched him off too. They paid me a lot of money. Then I killed someone else. I saved up the money they paid me and bought a small gym. I was going to quit. But do you know what it means to get into a rut?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Well, this rut has been my life for years…” Paul fell silent. “So that’s my story. All truth, no lies.”

Finally Webber asked, “It bothers you? Doing this for a living?”

Paul was silent for a moment. “It should bother me more, I think. I felt worse touching off your boys during the war. In New York, I only touch off other killers. The bad ones. The ones who do what those men did to my father.” He laughed. “I say that I’m only correcting God’s mistakes.”

“I like that, Mr. John Dillinger.” Webber nodded. “God’s mistakes. Oh, we’ve got a few of those around here, yes, we do.” He finished his beer. “Now, it’s Saturday. A difficult time to get information. Meet me tomorrow morning at the Tiergarten. There is a small lake at the end of Stern Alley. On the south side. What time would be good for you?”

“Early. Say eight.”

“Ach, very well,” Webber said, frowning. “That is early. But I will be on the moment.”

“There’s one more thing I need,” Paul said.

“What? Whisky? Tobacco? I can even find some cocaine. There’s not much left in town. Yet I-”

“It’s not for me. It’s for a woman. A present.”

Webber grinned broadly. “Ach, Mr. John Dillinger, good for you! In Berlin only a short time and already your heart has spoken. Or perhaps the voice is from another part of your body. Well, how would your friend like a nice garter belt with stockings to match? From France, of course. A bustier in red and black? Or is she more modest? A cashmere sweater. Perhaps some Belgian chocolates. Or some lace. Perfume is always good. And for you, of course, my friend, a very special price.”

Busy times.

There were dozens of matters that might have been occupying the mind of the huge, sweating man who, late this Saturday afternoon, sat in his appropriately spacious office within the recently completed 400,000-square-foot air ministry building at 81-85 Wilhelm Street, bigger even than the Chancellory and Hitler’s apartments combined.

Hermann Göring could, for instance, resume work on the creation of the massive industrial empire that he was currently planning (and that would be named after him, of course). He could be drafting a memorandum to rural gendarmeries throughout the country, reminding them that the State Law for the Protection of Animals, which he himself had written, was to be strictly enforced and anyone caught hunting foxes with hounds would be severely punished.

Or there was the vital matter of his party for the Olympics, for which Göring was constructing his own village within the air ministry itself (he’d managed to get a look at the plans for Goebbels’s event and upped his own gala to outdo the mealworm by tens of thousands of marks). And, of course, there was the ever-vital matter of what he would wear to the party. He could even be meeting with his adjutants regarding his present mission within the Third Empire: building the finest air force in the world.