Death in Twilight (18 page)

“Any particular reason you didn’t tell me that Berson’s partner was a big-time smuggler when we spoke, yesterday?”

“Berson didn’t die because of Gersh,” Blaustein said. “All Berson did was shut up and keep his head down. I doubt Gersh even let him know what was going on.”

“That’s not what Berson’s rabbi thinks,” Aaron said sharply. “He thinks Berson was deeply enough involved that he could feed a shul.”

“And who is that?”

“Schmuel Levinsohn.”

“Never heard of him,” Blaustein said, and from what Aaron could tell, he meant it.

“I’m not sure that’s the point,” Aaron said. “The point is that Lev Berson was giving a lot of food to the shul. There’s no way he was doing that on his Judenrat salary.”

“Are you seriously suggesting … ”

Aaron steeled himself for the outburst to come.

“That there is a single person on my force who doesn’t make money from smuggling? Of course Berson was paid off! Everyone’s paid off,” Blaustein said. “What possible reason could there be to take on a job like this — hated by everyone you know, front and center in the Nazi line of vision — without some kind of benefit?

“But just because he took his cut hardly means Berson was a major player. I can assure you, he was not.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Aaron asked.

Blaustein stared at him.

“You’ll have to take my word for it.”

Creak … Clang … and finally, whirr. The gears came unstuck in Aaron’s mind.

“And no chance he was involved in some way you weren’t aware of?”

“None,” Blaustein said. “What else have you found out? Maybe something I don’t know?”

It didn’t seem a time for the whole truth, Aaron thought, but maybe some wouldn’t hurt.

“I spoke to Gersh before he was shot. He swore that Berson wasn’t with him when he was injured, that they’d gone their separate ways.”

“Okay. What else?”

“I also spoke with a roommate, who claimed Berson had no outside interests beyond his synagogue,” Aaron said.

“And that’s when you went to see Rav Levinsohn.”

“Right. That was this morning.”

“That’s it?”

Aaron then told Blaustein about his examination of the body, neglecting to say anything about the note. He also remained silent about having stumbled across the scene of the crime before the Jewish Police.

“Shit. That’s not much,” Blaustein said afterward.

“Not enough. That’s why I want a quick look in the files.”

“What files are you talking about?”

“I’d like to see recent case reports filed by Berson. Maybe something in there will point to who would want to kill him,” Aaron said.

“He wasn’t an investigator, you know,” Blaustein said. “The only reports he filed were from when he picked someone up off the street for something. I doubt one of the vendors he busted for blocking up the road got mad enough to crush his skull.”

“That’s what I’ve assumed so far, but it won’t hurt to look.”

“You know we don’t have much longer before all hell breaks loose, right?” Blaustein asked.

“I understand that. That’s why I need all the information I can get my hands on now,” Aaron said, with exaggerated patience. “I’m not asking for anything extraordinary.”

Blaustein sat for a minute, looking as if he was mustering up reasons to say no. Finally, though, he nodded.

“Fine,” he said, “but be quick.”

“Thank you,” Aaron said with exaggerated irony. “Just one more question. Do you know if Berson spoke German?”

“I have no idea,” Blaustein said. “Done?”

Aaron gave a parade-ground salute, turned on his heels and closed the door firmly behind him.

Unsurprisingly, when Aaron asked where he could find Berson’s files, he was told a clerk would have to bring them. The clerk in question, of course, had stepped out of the office for a minute.

A minute became five. Five became ten. At the fifteen-minute mark on the dot, a man who could only have been a career bureaucrat — slumped shoulders, weak, watery eyes, the air of a man with few friends and many regrets — stood in front of Aaron and asked him what he wanted.

Once Aaron had explained and assured the man that he had Blaustein’s approval, the clerk proved he hadn’t spent all of his time among the files in vain. He quickly returned with a short stack of paper. In the stack was exactly what Aaron had asked for.

Aaron thanked the clerk. The man bowed his head slightly and slumped back to a desk somewhere to gather more dust. Aaron took the files into the police lounge, grabbed himself a cup of the worst imaginable “tea,” and sat down to read.

All the paperwork in the stack had Berson’s name on it, or at least in it, but it wasn’t immediately clear who had written what or what was signed by whom. After a little poking, Aaron felt sure he’d identified which reports were in Berson’s hand and which he had merely signed on to.

Aaron slid his hand into his coat and tried to remove the note of betrayal from his pocket nonchalantly. Two officers were in the room with him, and they were eyeing the man drinking their tea.

Aaron opened the note and held it next to a report that had been filled out by Berson. He sighed. There was no doubt. Berson’s clear, schoolboy hand was nothing like the scribbles on the torn scrap of paper.

Whether Berson had spoken German or not, he wasn’t the author of the note. That left Berson the messenger or Berson the interceptor in Aaron’s scenario.

So, which was it?

How big a step would it be for Berson to go from professional collaborator to outright traitor?

It was more pleasant to believe that Berson had somehow found the note and prevented it from ever reaching its intended destination. Perhaps he’d confronted the author, and the author killed him to keep it quiet.

Maybe.

Better to focus on what facts were available and gather what more he could. Aaron turned his attention back to the files in front of him. He decided to look through them all in order to rule out any other potential motives behind the young policeman’s death. He took another sip of the now-cold unspeakable “tea” and dug in.

The files started back at the very beginning of the ghetto. Apparently, Berson had been an early volunteer. Aaron wondered why he’d been so quick join the force, but found no clue in the files. Nearly all the reports revolved around broken-up brawls and arrests for petty theft.

One told the abbreviated story of a 14-year-old thief who had broken into the home of a neighbor looking for anything he would be able to sell. What had happened to the boy after his detention was nowhere to be found in the report. There was no prison inside the ghetto, just temporary holding cells. He must have been turned over to the authorities beyond the walls.

Another report showcased a domestic dispute, a husband who had beaten his wife badly. The attack was attributed to a missing tidbit of gristle that the woman had apparently taken to feed a cat. The husband had been hauled off and given a chance to cool down before being sent back home with a warning. He was hardly likely to seek revenge against one of the men who had briefly detained him.

A third case was more interesting. The crime had been political. A man had stood on a street corner and railed against both the Judenrat and the Nazis. It wasn’t anything that every person in the ghetto hadn’t said, but most people were smart enough to say it more quietly. The incident wasn’t something that could be ignored, especially as there had been a number of Germans in hearing distance. Their statements were noted in the file. Though it appeared that the man had been drunk during his rant, he had been handed over to the Gestapo for punishment.

Whatever the justice of the case, a man taken away by the Gestapo would make an unlikely suspect in a homicide that occurred months later.

It was an hour and a second cup of tea later that Aaron finished going through all the files. There seemed to be nothing that would help to solve the mystery of the murder, only a listing of human tragedy and villainy. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before, which depressed him a little. Even in the midst of a larger tragedy, people were always happy to make things just that little bit worse.

As Aaron stood up, he saw that there was no one left in the room with him and that he’d stamped out several cigarette butts on the floor with little regard for whoever would have to clean it. He felt no interest in picking them up.

Instead, he dropped the files off on a convenient desk and walked out into the main hall, which he found empty. Some rules remained immutable, office hours among them. The stench of the absent crowd, unfortunately, lingered.

He’d wanted to stop for a minute and talk with his father, but Aaron knew the man as a slave to the clock. If business hours were over, he was gone.

Maybe we’ll talk again, once the case is finished
, Aaron thought.

The front door was locked when Aaron tried it. He knocked to get the attention of the guard outside. When he walked out, he saw there was still a little daylight left.

Offices closed early enough for workers to make it home before the curfew. Judging by the angle of the sun, Aaron would again have to hurry to reach the building where he was expecting his shipment and another chance to see his wife.

Chapter 13

T
he street vendors packed hurriedly, pedestrians knocked into them and each other, unheeding. All were hurrying home. If they made it safely, they would close their doors behind them, hoping to keep out the night and the Nazis. The Jewish District’s curfew was descending on buyers and sellers; thieves and beggars; whores and their pimps; the religious and those who cursed God. All equally, except for the Jewish Police, whose purpose was to enforce the curfew on the rest.

Another hungry day was passing into oblivion.

Some people had been able to find warmth and food while the sun was up.

Some had been able to bathe, though nearly all in cold water.

Some had found loved ones that they had believed lost forever.

Others, that day, had lost loved ones to disease, hunger or overwork. Many of the new ghosts had marched off for the “shops” — small factories set up by German businessmen to help supply the war effort — at first light, but dusk brought them no closer to home. Families and friends would keep watch behind shut doors that the fallen would never pass through again.

Bureaucracy or fate — those who lived in the ghetto learned that there was no difference.

Aaron joined the crowd, walking back to the building where he had spent the previous night, feeling the weight of the evening to come. Every day, there was risk. Every night was darkened by it, but tonight’s plan was enough to rip a man’s stomach apart.

Tonight, Aaron’s little crew would be giving Jews the tools to make choices that had been stolen from them in a flurry of years. With a very few exceptions, Jews hadn’t fought the Nazis as 1933 had become ‘34 and ‘35, eventually reaching the untenable present. Families had resisted alone or not resisted at all. They had trusted to common sense and the good will of the neighbors who knew them so well — whom they had grown up with. They trusted the government and the law, which the Jewish community had been a part of, and which it had obeyed.

They had never learned to trust the gun.

Aaron wasn’t alone in feeling the time had come — had probably come and gone — to say no and to use lead for exclamation marks. Tonight’s shipment had been ordered by men who were in such deep despair that they planned a fight they had no thought of winning. They knew the eventual outcome would be the same whether they fought or not.

So, now a leap from bread to bullets, supplying death instead of life. Aaron had agreed, but what he’d agreed to scared him. He knew the punishment for smuggling an apple was death. He suspected that the penalty for smuggling guns would be the same. Still the whole thing seemed more somber and dangerous.

Every step on the leaden street was harder to take, but Aaron’s feet followed one after the other until his destination was nearly in sight. When he finally lifted his eyes from his boots and saw the door ahead, he also caught a reflection flashing past a window. The shape he’d seen had been small and dun colored and was gone almost before he perceived it.

Instead of turning suddenly, Aaron found one of a hundred stoops and crouched down over his shoelaces. He stayed there for a little while, making the motions of retying while slowly surveying the street.

A bundle in a doorway caught his eye. He pretended to finish what he was doing and walked in that direction. The bundle decided to run, but its timing was off. Though it darted valiantly, Aaron was too close and his arms were too long. The scrap of cloth was caught and transformed itself into a child.

It was the same girl who had stolen his food that morning in the undertakers’ district. She weighed little more than her improvised clothing.

“What are you doing here?” Aaron said, his face inches from hers.

She didn’t reply. Her face appeared a solid, wooden mask of fear. Her body, as he held it, was as stiff as a plank.

Intimidation seemed unlikely to get him what he wanted, so Aaron adjusted his tactics. He put the girl down on the stoop. He kept an arm gently resting on her shoulder to keep her in place when she inevitably decided to run again. He spoke gently to her, hoping to bring to mind the man who had rewarded rather than punished her earlier attempt at theft.