Eric Norden - The Ultimate Solution

“No, it’s done at birth.”

Lotte looked disappointed. “Our customers like them to scream. Oh well, you can’t have everything.” She slithered off down the hall and I returned my attention to the mirror. Penny was through now and the man was getting dressed while she perched on the edge of the bed, fondling a floppy teddy bear. He patted her on the head and headed for the door, a pleased smile on his face, so I stepped to one side.

“Goodbye, sweetheart, I’ll see you next week.” He noticed me and nodded affably. “A little darling, sir, you won’t be disappointed. Just like your own daughter.”

Penny looked up with a bright toothy smile as I came in.

“Hello. Are you next?”

She had dimples, too.

“No, Penny, but Miss Lotte said I can talk to you. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Oh no.” Her soft lips pursed in “a small frown. “She’s funny, Miss Lotte. I don’t think she ever has any fun .”

Lotte wasn’t exactly Miss Conviviality, come to think of it. I closed the door behind me and walked toward her. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“Oh, no.” She patted the bed next to her and I sat down. I wasn’t very experienced in handling kids, but this one didn’t seem to require much ice-breaking.

“This is Peter,” she said, holding out the teddy bear for inspection. “He’s not really a teddy bear, he’s really a prince enchanted into a teddy bear. His real name is Prince Peter.” She added as an afterthought, “I think witches must look a lot like Miss Lotte. Don’t you?”

“I’d put money on it. Look Penny, there was a man who used to come here to see you, an old man with gray hair, you met him in the park and all he wanted to do was talk. Do you remember him?”

“Oh, sure I do.” Her china blue eyes were bright. “He gave me Peter, and he told me all about the enchantment. He knows all kinds of stories like that, about dragons and castles and magic and things. I like him a lot.”

“Did he tell you his name, Penny?”

“Oh yes. His name is Papa, he said to call him Papa.”

Papa. The next one I had to phrase carefully. “How did he talk, Penny. Was there anything… different about his voice?”

“No.” She frowned again. “Oh well I guess so, not that different, but a little different. Like the Captain.”

“The Captain?”

“Oh yes, he talks the same way. He must have looked like a prince when he was young too, he’s still very handsome. He has a scar on his face and everything, from a sword he told me, just like the knights in armor. And he wears a pretty uniform all black and silver with those things like lightning all over.”

I stiffened. God, there might be something here after all. She was describing the uniform of the SS Fuhrerkorps, an elite, all-German division of the Waffen SS. If Papa spoke like the Captain, Papa was German. And Pickett had told me the old man who attacked him in the antique shop had a German accent. God, just maybe. Maybe.

“When was the last time’ you saw Papa?”

She thought about that for a moment.

“I guess it was two weeks ago, yes I think it was two weeks. It wasn’t last week because Mr. Zeelan came and then I was sick till the weekend, so it must have been two weeks.” She smiled brightly at me. “Are you a friend of Papa’s?”

“Yes, yes I am,” I said carefully. “Papa called me, he has another present for you, but he can’t take it himself because he has a bad cold and has to stay in bed for a while, so he wants me to bring it to you.”

She nodded gravely.

“Yes, I have to stay in bed too after Mr. Zeelan comes. That’s no fun at all, is it?”

“No, Penny, it isn’t. But Papa wants you to get your present and I said I’d pick it up. But do you know what I did then, Penny? I did a very silly thing, I lost Papa’s address. So I thought I’d come over and get it from you and then I’ll visit him and bring your present back.”

She looked miserable.

“Gee, I’m sorry, but I don’t know his address. He never told me where he lived, I never asked him. Right here in New York City I guess.”

That was a big help.

“Didn’t he ever mention a neighborhood, a street? In Greenwich Village maybe? Somewhere in Greenwich Village, Penny?”

“No.” She giggled. “He used to say he came from heaven. He’d say, ‘Hilde, I came from heaven and I didn’t know it till I found hell.’ Isn’t that funny.”

“Yes, that’s very funny. Why did he call you Hilde? Isn’t Penny your real name?”

She nodded, her blonde curls bobbing.

“Oh yes. But Papa always called me Hilde. It was funny you know, he’d call me Hilde but then sometimes he’d tell me stories about somebody else named Hilde. She was a little girl too, and Papa said she looked just like me. He always looked funny when he told those stories, like he’d gone far away. And he always looked so sad. So I’d kiss him to make him feel good again. I tried to take my clothes off and make him happy but he wouldn’t let me. Once I tried real hard and you know what he did? He cried .”

One thing for sure, Papa was crazy enough to be our boy. But so far nothing she’d said really proved anything one way or another. There were probably ten thousand elderly eccentric men with German accents walking the streets right now, and only one Jew.

“Did Papa ever talk to you about religion, Penny?”

She nodded eagerly.

“Oh yes, he talked about magicians and sorcerers and all kinds of things, and fairy princesses and all wonderful things. He’s the only one who ever talked about things like that with me.”

I got up and paced the room restlessly. This wasn’t going anywhere, I might as well come right out with it.

“Penny, did he ever talk about Jews? ”

“What are Jews?”

Well, that was it. She was too young and too wide-eyed to be an accomplished liar, so I might as well give up.

“Thank you, Penny. I’m sure Papa will be back to see you soon.”

I’d stake out a few men around the place, just in case, but it was a dead end, I was pretty sure.

“Will he bring my present?”

“Yes Penny, he’ll bring your present. Goodbye now.”

She waved and returned to her teddy-bear and I was halfway out the door before it registered. I froze a minute, then turned around and went back in, closing the door slowly behind me.

“Penny, just one more thing. That picture over the door, what happened to it?” I kept my voice calm, casual, there were a thousand other explanations.

She looked up blankly for a minute, then smiled.

“Oh that was Papa. He hated that picture. He threw it on the floor and kicked it once he was so mad. That was the only time he ever got mad. A lot of people get mad at me, like Mr. Zeelan, but I never saw Papa mad except that one time. He got all red .”

“Thank you, Penny.”

I stood outside in the corridor for a minute, lighting a cigarette with shaky fingers. The picture hanging above the door with its glass shattered, was a 10-mark mass-produced portrait of the Fuhrer.

I didn’t stop to see Lotte on the way out and kept my foot on the gas all the way back to Centre Street. I couldn’t spot my guardian angels anywhere along the way, but they were supposed to be good. It made me feel a little bit better to have somebody friendly at my back, but I hoped those dart guns of theirs were as effective as Kohler said they were.

Beck was tied up with the computer when I arrived so I launched right into the story with Ed. Half-way through, before I even reached the punch line, he picked up the phone and ordered a stakeout at the Crib. “Anybody who’s over sixty with gray hair, I don’t care if it’s the Mayor himself.” And when I reached the part about the portrait he jumped up in excitement.