Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

“Anyway, how could I possibly join?” he asked gravely then offered one of his rare smiles. “Working with you leaves me no time for the rallies.”

Kohl smiled back then asked, “Now what do you have?”

“The postmortem from Dresden Alley.”

“It’s about time.” Twenty-four hours to perform an autopsy. Inexcusable.

The inspector candidate handed his boss the thin folder, which contained only two pages.

“What’s this? Did the coroner do the autopsy in his sleep?”

“I-”

“Never mind,” Kohl muttered and read through the document. It first stated the obvious, of course, as autopsies always did, in the dense language of physiology and morphology: that the cause of death was severe trauma to the brain due to the passage of a bullet. No sexual diseases, a bit of gout, a bit of arthritis, no war wounds. He and Kohl had in common bunions, and the calluses on the victim’s feet suggested that he was indeed an ardent walker.

Janssen looked over Kohl’s shoulder. “Look, sir, he had a broken finger that set badly.”

“That does not interest us, Janssen. It’s the little finger, which is prone to breaking under many circumstances, as opposed to an injury that is unique and might help us understand the man better. A recent break might be helpful – we could call upon physicians in northwest Berlin for leads to patients – but this fracture is old.” He turned back to the report.

The alcohol in his blood suggested that he’d had some liquor not long before he’d died. The stomach contents revealed chicken, garlic, herbs, onion, carrots, potatoes, a reddish-colored sauce of some sort and coffee, all digested to the point that suggested the meal had been enjoyed about a half hour before death.

“Ah,” Kohl brightened, jotting all these facts down in pencil in his battered little notebook.

“What, sir?”

“Here is something that does interest us, Janssen. While we can’t be positive, it appears that the victim ate a very sublime dish for his last meal. It is probably coq au vin, a French delicacy that marries chicken with the unlikely partner of red wine. Usually a Burgundy such as Chambertin. We don’t see it here often, Janssen. You know why? Because we Germans make pissbad red wines, and the Austrians, who make brilliant reds, don’t send us very much. Oh, yes, this is good.” He thought for a moment then rose and walked to a map of Berlin on his wall. He found a pushpin and stuck it into Dresden Alley. “He died here at noon and he had lunch at a restaurant about thirty minutes before that. You recall he was a good walker, Janssen: his leg muscles, which put mine to shame, and the calluses on his feet. So, while he might have taken a taxi or tram to his fatal encounter, we will assume that he walked. Allowing him a few minutes after the meal for a cigarette… you recall his yellow-stained fingertips?”

“Not exactly, sir.”

“Be more observant, then. Allowing him time for a cigarette and to pay the check and savor his coffee, we will assume that he walked on his sturdy legs for twenty minutes before he came to Dresden Alley. How far could a brisk walker go in that time?”

“I would guess a kilometer and a half.”

Kohl frowned. “I too would guess that.” He examined the legend of the Berlin map and drew a circle around the site of the killing.

Janssen shook his head. “Look at that. It’s huge. We need to take the photograph of the victim to every restaurant in that circle?”

“No, only to those serving coq au vin, and of those only the ones that do so at lunchtime on Saturday. A fast look at the hours of service and the menu in front will tell us if we need to inquire further. But it will still be a huge task and one that must be undertaken immediately.”

The young officer stared at the map. “Is it up to you and me, sir? Can we visit all of them ourselves? How can we?” He shook his head, discouraged.

“Of course we can’t.”

“Then?”

Willi Kohl sat back, his eyes floating around the room. They settled momentarily on his desktop. Then he said, “You wait here for any telegrams or other messages about the case, Janssen.” Kohl took his Panama hat from the rack in the corner of his office. “And me, I have a thought.”

“Where will you be, sir?”

“On the trail of a French chicken.”

The anxious atmosphere that hung about the three men in the boardinghouse was like cold smoke.

Paul Schumann knew the sensation well – from those moments as he waited to step into the boxing ring, trying to remember everything he knew about his opponent, picturing the guy’s defenses, planning when best to dance under them, when to rise onto his toes and deliver a roundhouse or jab, figuring out how to exploit his weaknesses – and how best to compensate for your own.

He knew it from other times too: as a button man planning his touch-offs. Looking at maps drawn in his own careful handwriting, double-checking the Colt and his backup pistol, looking over the notes he’d assembled of his victim’s schedules, preferences, dislikes, routines, acquaintances.

This was the Before.

The hard, hard Before. The stillness preceding the kill. The moment when he chewed the facts amid a feeling of impatience and edginess. Fear too, of course. You never got away from that. The good button men didn’t, in any case.

And always the growing numbness, the crystalizing of his heart.

He was starting to touch the ice.

In the dim room, windows closed, shades down – phone unplugged, of course – Paul and Morgan looked over a map and two dozen publicity photos of the Olympic stadium, which Webber had dug up, along with a pair of sharply creased gray flannel trousers for Morgan (which the American had examined skeptically at first but then decided to keep).

Morgan tapped one of the photos. “Where do you-?”

“Please, one moment,” Webber interrupted. He rose and walked across the room, whistling. He was in a jovial mood, now that he had a thousand dollars in his pocket and wouldn’t have to worry about lard and yellow dye for a while.

Morgan and Paul exchanged frowns. The German dropped to his knees and began pulling records out from the cabinet beneath a battered gramo-phone. He grimaced. “Ach, no John Philip Sousa. I look all the time but they are hard to find.” He glanced up at Morgan. “Say, Mr. John Dillinger here tells me that Sousa is American. But I think he is joking. Please, the bandleader is English, is he not?”

“No, he’s American,” the slim man said.

“I have heard otherwise.”

Morgan lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps you’re right. Maybe a wager would be in order. A hundred marks?”

Webber considered then said, “I will look into the matter further.”

“We don’t really have time for music,” Morgan added, watching Webber examining the stack of disks.

Paul said, “But I think we have time to cover up the sounds of our conversation?”

“Exactly,” Webber said. “And we shall use…” He examined a label. “A collection of our stolid German hunting songs.” He turned on the device and set the needle in the groove of the disk. A rousing, scratchy tune filled the room. “This is ‘The Deer-stalker.’” A laugh. “Appropriate, considering our mission.”

The mobsters Luciano and Lansky did exactly the same in America – usually playing the radio, to cover up conversation in the event Dewey’s or Hoover’s boys had a mike in the room where they were meeting.

“Now, you were saying?”

Morgan asked, “Where is the photography session?”

“Ernst’s memorandum says the pressroom.”

“That’s here,” Webber said.

Paul examined the drawing carefully and wasn’t pleased. The stadium was huge and the press box must have been two hundred feet long. It was located near the top of the building’s south side. He could take up position in the stands on the north side but that meant a very long shot across the entire width of the facility.