Eric Norden - The Ultimate Solution

Finally we were through and Pickett, now the soul of cooperation, offered us a schnappes, which I politely declined for both of us. As we left the office, I asked him if he’d mind if I sent two men down to dust for fingerprints.

“It’s been three months, Lieutenant, and you can see for yourself that everything here is constantly cleaned and polished. I don’t see…”

“You’re probably right,” I admitted, “but there’s just a thousand to one chance a latent impression might still be intact somewhere.”

He agreed reluctantly, and we shook hands in the doorway. We were halfway down the street when he came hurrying after us.

“Lieutenant!”

I turned and Pickett’s face was excited, his eyes gleaming…

“All the time we were working on that composite I was trying to remember what the man screamed at me. One word, I’m sure of it, it just came to me as you left…”

“Yes?” My voice was too harsh, but Pickett didn’t notice.

“ Ungeheuer ,” he said, “I’m sure that was it. While we were struggling it didn’t register, but I can hear it now just as clearly as if he were still screaming. Ungeheuer.” He smiled apologetically. “That does sound German, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes it does.”

I thanked Pickett rather abruptly and strode to the car, Macri half-trotting to keep up with me.

“ Ungeheuer ,” he said thoughtfully as I switched on the ignition. “Is that somebody’s name?”

“It’s a word,” I said quietly.

“Yeah? What’s it mean?”

“Monster.”

I dropped Macri off at the I.R.T. station on the island in Sheridan Square, relieving him of his sketch before he got out. He was surprised I didn’t want any dupes, but I wasn’t going to let the original out of my hands. Not that I figured it would be much use.

It was past five now-so traffic was even more snarled and it took me almost twenty minutes to cover the eight blocks to Jane Street. When I finally pulled up in front of Number 25 there were two prowl cars double-parked outside and a knot of people clustered on the steps of the old brownstone. I jackknifed into the curb by a hydrant, flashed my badge to a uniformed patrolman holding back the crowd and hurried up the steps, a tingly feeling of foreboding crawling over my spine.

Another patrolman stood by the door of 2-D, ignoring questions from a couple of tenants on the landing. Inside, three plainclothesmen were talking to one of the police doctors, Zeider I think his name was, and a bored-looking photographer sat on the couch, fitting a fresh flashbulb into his Rolei. I knew one of the detectives, Magnusson from Internal Affairs, and he waved me over.

“Out of your turf, aren’t you, Bill?” He didn’t seem to care much one way or another. “You know Fiske?”

I shook my head.

“I’ve been trying to track down an old file from the 16 thand they gave me his home address, said he was the only guy who could dig it up on short notice.”

Magnusson smiled narrowly.

“You’re going to have to find somebody else. Patrolman Fiske blew his brains out a few hours ago.”

It wasn’t too much of a surprise.

“Did he leave anything?”

“Not a note, but amounts to the same thing.” He reached into his inside jacket pocket and extracted a sheaf of smudged 8 by 5 photos. They hadn’t been done by a Heinrich Hoffmann, but everything showed except the girl’s face.

“No negatives anywhere, which makes it pretty obvious. He was a reserve lieutenant in the SA, a perfect target for that kind of blackmail. You know how they treat closet hetties. I guess the pressure just got too much for him.”

“Yeah.”

They’d done it neatly, I had to give them that. The photos explained the lag between disappearance and discovery; they’d needed time for the set-up and developing the negatives.

“Where is he?”

Magnusson waved me to a closed door.

“In the john. It’s not gonna help your appetite.”

Fiske was sprawled naked in the tub. The bullet looked like it had gone through the roof of his mouth and exited through the left eye, and there wasn’t much left of the face, just a mushy pink paste. There was something else, too. I stood silent for a moment, then shut the door softly behind me.

“We’ll see it’s a closed coffin.” Magnusson had got hold of a cup of coffee somewhere, and he took a desultory sip. “Have to feed a cover to the papers, too, it don’t look good, a cop going out like that.”

“What happened to his prick?”

“Pretty, hah? He took a pair of pliers to himself just before the end, some kind of self-punishment I guess. Jung could explain it better’n me.”

“They told me he had a roommate.”

Magnusson laughed.

“You mean Mrs. Fiske. Yeah, she’s in the bedroom, down the hall. Takin’ it pretty hard.”

“Mind if I see him?”

Magnusson sipped from his coffee before answering.

“I thought you were looking for a file.”

I shrugged.

“Just curious, that’s all. If you’ve got any…”

“Oh, no, of course not.” His eyes were brighter. “Be my guest.”

So he guessed something was up, so what? Fuck him.

The bedroom was done up in. chintzy pink and blue, dominated by a huge swastika-draped photo poster of the latest UFA star, Tony Denck, his hard-on thrusting halfway to the ceiling. A plump young man in his mid-twenties sprawled on the bed, tears streaming down his cheeks. He was totally bald, his skull shaved Streicher-like, the dome glistening in the half-dark like a luminous egg. I pulled up a chair and regarded him silently for a moment until he turned to look at me, his mouth trembling.

“Can’t you leave me alone? Can’t all of you leave me alone?”

“I was a friend of Ernest’s, from the 16 th.” Soft, sincere. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”

Suddenly his flabby body was wracked by great gulping sobs, and he thrashed back and forth on the bed, his hands rending the rosy satin coverlet. I needed a cigarette, but it wouldn’t have fitted my role. After a couple of minutes the weeping subsided and he lay there gasping air for a while, then slowly turned to look at me.

“You really are a friend of Ernest’s?”

“A good friend.” I remember Kohler’s briefing. “We both belonged to the Herrenvolk Bund .”

His eyes fixed mine with a look of desperation and one pudgy hand clutched my wrist.

“They say he killed himself, he shot himself.” The words came in a torrent, tripping over each other. “But it’s a lie, I know it’s a lie. All they care about is covering it up, they don’t want the bad publicity, but I know it’s a lie, it has to be. And those photos, with a woman, Ernest would never do such a thing, never…”

He faltered, and seemed on the verge of another crying jag-

“It certainly is hard to believe,” I said, and he squeezed my wrist gratefully.

“Yes, yes, you knew Ernest, you know he could never do a thing like that. But the others, they don’t care, they just want to sweep it under the rug.” Rivulets of sweat streamed down his naked skull. “But I know Ernest could never have done it, never. Oh, my God! His face, his beautiful face…” His hands ripped deeper into the bedspread, bunching it between his fingers.

“If Ernest was killed,” I said carefully, “it might be connected with something he was working on. Did he mention anything to you?”

His voice was choked.

“No, no I don’t remember, I can’t think straight, I just came home a few hours ago, and there he was, in the tub, lying there— ”

“He never mentioned anything about say, jewelry, anything like that?”

“No, no, we never really discussed his work, there was so much else we had in common…” He started to blubber again. I sat silent, letting him get it out of his system, and finally, snuffling, he looked up at me.