Faye Kellerman - Street Dreams

“They were not so happy…”

“Before it happened,” Decker said. “What do you remember about your mother?”

“She was very, very beautiful.”

“So you must have looked like her.”

Magda’s smile was radiant at the compliment. “She made beautiful gowns. The most wunderbar fabrics.”

“Silks?”

“ Ja, ja, seide -silk. In such beautiful colors.”

The woman was Hungarian, but when she spoke of her childhood, rudimentary German came back. Decker said, “Who’d she sew the gowns for? Who were her clientele?”

“The rich people-the aristocrats, the bourgeois.”

“You know, Peter and I just came back from Munich,” Rina told her.

Magda was quiet.

“We saw a lot of old Jewish Munich. You lived near Gartnerplatz, right?”

She thought long and hard. “ Nein, not the Isarvorstadt. That is for the Eastern Jews… the poor ones. My father was only a tailor, but my mother made money, enough for us to move. We were middle class. We even had a cleaning lady twice a week-an Austrian girl from Tirol. All the cleaning girls were Austrian.”

She searched the recesses of her memory.

“They used to fight-my father and my mother. He did not want her to work. It did not look nice, like my father was a poor man. But my mother loved to sew.” Magda furrowed her brow. “I used to go with her to visit the women, to the beautiful villas in Bogenhausen. Ach, such splendor, I remember so clear, especially the villas where the Russian aristocracy lived. There were many Russians in Munich… those who fled the revolution.”

She was quiet.

“My father did not think this was good for a woman to visit by herself to the rich goyim. They fought about it. It was not happy times.” She brushed her hand in the air. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t blame you,” Decker said empathetically.

Rina tried to hide her frustration. “But you don’t remember where you lived, Mama?”

“I remember the name of the big street. We lived off of Turkenstrasse.”

“Schwabing,” Rina said.

“ Ja, ja, Schwabing, of course!” Magda hit her head. “I am an old woman.”

“Schwabing was and still is kind of a bohemian area.” Rina kissed her mother’s cheek. “Very sporty of you, Mama.”

“It was probably my mother’s idea. She was very sporty. My father was a good German bürger. A good man, but very strict.” Her eyes started to water. “He would have been so proud of you, Ginny.”

Rina held her hand. Magda brought the free one to her chest. “It is so hard to talk.”

Decker said, “We can move on, Magda.”

She wiped her eyes with her finger and nodded.

Decker said, “Just for the record, do you happen to remember any names of childhood friends? I think that would be neat for Hannah to hear. You know how your granddaughter feels about her buddies.”

Magda gave him a tearful smile. “Let me think. There was Briget and Petra.” A pause. “Oh… there was also Marta. She was Marta number one. I was Marta number two. Marta was my name before we moved to Hungary.”

Rina was surprised. “You changed your name?”

“My father changed my name. So I would fit in better with the Hungarians, yes.”

“All these things I never knew.”

Magda shrugged.

“Last names?” Decker said.

“Of the girls?”

“Yes. Do you remember their entire names?”

“Not the first two, no. The memory is gone. But Marta, yes, because in the schule, I was Marta Gottlieb and she was Marta Lubke. I was the Jew and she was the Protestant, which was not so common in Munich. Bavaria is very Catholic. My sister and I went to a very liberal schule -also my mother’s idea. My father wasn’t happy about that, either.” She sighed. “I remember my father with my mother; then I think about my father with my stepmother. The first marriage… I don’t think it was a happy one. I won’t tell Hannah this, either.”

“I think Hannah would like to hear about how her grandparents met and got married and came to the United States,” Decker said.

“We escaped in ’56 when the Communists came. Another story.”

Decker patted the old woman’s hand. “You’re a real old-fashioned hero.”

“Bah!” She slapped him on the shoulder and stood up. “I go see what my boys are doing in the kitchen. Do you want a piece of strudel, Peter?”

“Only if you serve it with decaf coffee.”

“What you think? Only decaf at this hour. Otherwise I spend the night on the phone with Ginny.” She laughed at her joke.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Rina whispered, “You did a good job of drawing her out.”

“Thank you.”

“But we barely even scratched the surface. We still don’t know anything about her mother’s life.”

“And we’re going to leave it at that,” Decker whispered emphatically.

“Peter-”

“Rina, listen to me. She’s what? In her eighties? It’s a painful memory in a woman who has suffered many painful memories. We’re not going to push her any further. End of discussion.”

Rina sighed. “In my heart, I know you’re right. I just think she… she deserves to know what happened.”

“She’s fine with it. You’re the one who’s curious.” Decker rubbed his temples. “Rina, from what she told us, it could have been her father who murdered her mother-”

“No!” Rina was appalled.

“Yes!” Decker insisted. “By her own recollection, they had a troubled relationship. How would you feel uncovering that?”

She was silent.

“I have a few unsolved cases that still bug me, but I’ve learned to live with them.”

“It’s not your grandmother.”

“Then talk to her when I’m not here. I’m not going to be party to any more subterfuge.”

“All right,” Rina conceded. “You’re the detective, I’ll trust your judgment.”

“Thank you.” Decker regarded his wife. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’ve got an idea. I asked for the full names of her girlfriends for a reason. The memory may be painful for her, but probably not at all painful to Marta Lubke- if she’s not dead, if I can find her, and if she remembers anything.”

Rina looked at her husband with newfound admiration.

“Yeah… I’m good at what I do.” He unbuttoned the waistband of his pants and untucked his shirt. “I ate too much.”

“I’ll make a light supper tomorrow night.”

“For the next six nights, please.”

“Thank you, Peter, for going beyond the call of duty.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He gave her a mock frown, then kissed his wife’s lips. “You’re welcome. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Rina kissed him back.

He stood up. “I’m going to join your father and Hannah and watch Animal Planet. Last time I checked, they were watching a special on Vietnamese potbellied pigs. I should feel right at home.”

Wednesday morning’s e-mailsimply read:

Still working overtime. Talk to you soon.

Koby

He didn’t even bother to address it with my name.

And not even love Koby-just plain Koby.

I could take a hint.

I knew a brush-off when it smacked me in the face.

I didn’t bother to answer.

Another one bites the dust.

“Fuck him,” I whispered as I wiped away the tears.

?

I was exhausted doing paid patrol-officer work and detecting on my own time, but work was a good substitute for a life. I debated making an appointment with David Tyler’s conservator, but decided to show up in the flesh.

Century City is L.A.’s attempt at a business district. The entire area had once belonged to Fox Studios and there still was a mammoth-size location back lot. But most of the neighborhood was dominated by office high-rises with underground parking that charged outrageous rates.