“How do you feel?”
“Scared.”
“Of what?”
“The way I feel, of course. Like you’re driving the car.”
“I am driving the car.” I wiggled the steering wheel for effect.
“At home no one ever drives me anywhere. I like to drive myself. I prefer to decide when to start and when to stop. But with you, I really don’t mind. I wouldn’t mind if you decided to drive us all the way to China and back.”
“China? It’d be enough for me just to have you stay on in Berlin for a while.”
“So what’s stopping me?”
“Perhaps Nick Charalambides. And your newspaper article. And maybe this. That it’s my honest opinion that Isaac Deutsch wasn’t murdered at all. That his death was an accident. No one drowned him. He drowned. Without any help from anyone else. Right here in the center of Berlin. I know, it’s not as good a story if he wasn’t murdered. But what can I do?”
“Damn.”
“Exactly.”
For a moment I was reminded of Richard Bömer and his disappointment at discovering that Isaac Deutsch was Jewish. And now here was Noreen Charalambides, disappointed to discover the poor guy hadn’t been murdered. It’s a hell of a world.
“Are you sure?”
“Here’s what I think happened. After his career as a boxer was outlawed by the Nazis, Isaac Deutsch and his uncle got a job on the Olympic building site. In spite of the official policy about hiring only Aryan workers. Given how much there is to do before the Olympiad starts, in 1936, someone decided it might be best to cut a few corners. And not just with the racial origins of the workforce. With safety, too, I suspect. Isaac Deutsch was probably involved in some kind of underground excavation when he ruptured one of those water chambers Blitz told us about. He had an accident, and he was drowned in seawater, only no one knew it was seawater. Someone figured it might be best if his body was found drowned a long way from Pichelsberg. Just in case some nosy cop started asking questions about illegal Jewish workers. Which is how the body ended up in a freshwater canal, on the other side of Berlin.”
Noreen searched her empty cigarette case for a smoke. “Damn,” she said again.
I gave her mine. “Much as I’m reluctant to admit it, Noreen, this little investigation is over. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to spin this out and keep on driving you around Berlin. But I think honesty’s best. Especially since I’m a little out of practice in that area, what with one thing and another.”
She lit the cigarette and stared out of the window as we came into Steglitz.
“Pull up,” she said, sharply.
“What?”
“Pull up, I said.”
I stopped the car close to the town hall, at the corner of Schlossstrasse, and started to apologize on the assumption that she had taken offense at something I had said. Even before I had switched off the engine, she had got out of the car and was walking swiftly back down the street. I followed.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” I said. “But there’s still a story you can write here. Maybe if you found Isaac Deutsch’s uncle Joey—the guy who was his trainer—then perhaps he’d talk. You could get his story. That would be a good angle. How Jews are forbidden to compete in the Olympics but how one who gets an illegal job building the stadium ends up dead. That could be a great story.”
Noreen didn’t look like she was listening. And I was more than a little horrified to see that she was heading toward a large group of SA and SS men standing around a man and woman dressed in civilian clothes. The woman was blond and in her twenties; the man was older and Jewish. I knew he was Jewish, because, like her, he had a placard around his neck. The man’s placard read: “I’m a dirty Jew who takes German girls to his room.” The girl’s placard read: “I go to this dirty swine’s place to sleep with a Jew!” Before I could do anything to stop her, Noreen threw away her cigarette, produced her Baby Brownie from her capacious leather handbag, and, looking down through the little viewfinder, took a photograph of the somber couple and the grinning Nazis.
I caught up with her and tried to take her by the arm. She pulled it away angrily.
“This is not a good idea,” I said.
“Nonsense. They wouldn’t have put those placards around their necks unless they wanted people to pay attention to them. And that’s just what I’m doing.” She wound her film and once again lined up the group.
One of the SS shouted at me, “Hey, Bubi. Leave her alone. She’s right, your girlfriend. There’s no point in making an example of bastards like these unless people see it and take note.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” said Noreen. “Taking note.”
I waited patiently until Noreen had finished. Until now she’d photographed only anti-Semitic signs in the parks and some Nazi flags on Unter den Linden, and I hoped this rather more candid kind of photography wasn’t about to become a habit with her. I doubt my nerves could have taken it.
We walked back to the car in silence, abandoning the miscegenating couple to their public disgrace and humiliation.
“If you’d ever seen them beat someone up,” I said, “then you’d be more careful about doing something like that. You want to photograph something interesting, I’ll run you over to the Bismarck Monument or the Charlottenburg Palace.”
Noreen dropped the camera back in her bag. “Don’t treat me like some goddamn tourist,” she said. “I didn’t take that picture for my album. I took it for the fucking newspaper. Don’t you get it? A picture like that makes an absolute mockery of Avery Brundage’s claims that Berlin is a proper place to hold an Olympic Games.”
“Brundage?”
“Yes, Avery Brundage. Weren’t you listening? I told you before. He’s the president of the American Olympic Committee.”
I nodded. “What else do you know about him?”
“Almost nothing beyond the fact that he must be a real asshole.”
“Would it surprise you to learn that he’s in correspondence with your old friend Max Reles? And that he owns a construction company in Chicago?”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m a detective, remember? I’m supposed to know things I’m not supposed to know about.”
She smiled. “Sonofabitch. You searched his room, didn’t you? That’s why you were asking me about him last night. I’ll bet that’s when you did it, too. Right after that little scene in the lobby, when you knew he’d be out for a while.”
“Almost right. I followed him to the opera first.”
“Five minutes of
Parsifal
. I remember. So that’s why you went.”
“His guests included the sports leader. Funk from Propaganda. Some army general called von Reichenau. The rest I didn’t recognize. But I’ll bet they were all Nazis.”
“Those you mentioned are all on the German Olympic Organizing Committee,” she said. “And I’ll bet the rest were, too.” She shook her head. “So you went back to the Adlon and searched his room while you knew he was safely otherwise engaged. What else did you find?”
“A lot of letters. Reles employs a stenographer I found for him, and it seems he keeps her very busy writing to companies who are bidding for Olympic contracts.”
“Then he must be on a kickback. Maybe lots of kickbacks. The GOC, too, maybe.”
“I took some carbon copies from his wastepaper basket.”
“Great. Can I see them?”
When we were in the car once again I handed them over. She started to read one. “Nothing incriminating here,” she said.
“That’s what I thought. At first.”
“It’s just a bid for a contract to supply cement to the Ministry of the Interior.”
“The other one is a bid for a contract to supply propane gas for the Olympic flame.” I paused. “Don’t you get it? That’s a carbon. It means that it was typed by the Adlon’s own stenographer in his suite. Contracts are supposed to be for German companies only. And Max Reles is an American.”
“Maybe he bought these companies.”
“Maybe. I think he’s probably got enough money. Probably that’s why he went to Zurich before he came here. There’s a bag in his room containing thousands of dollars and gold Swiss francs. Not to mention a submachine gun. Even in Germany you don’t need a machine gun to run a company these days. Not unless you have some serious problems with your labor force.”
“I need to think about this.”
“We both do. I’ve a feeling we’re getting in over our heads, and I’m kind of attached to mine. I mention that only because we have the falling ax in this country, and it’s not just criminals who get haircuts. It’s communists and republicans and probably anyone the government doesn’t like. Look, you really won’t mention any of this to von Tschammer und Osten, will you?”
“No, of course I won’t. I’m not ready to get thrown out of Germany just yet. Especially since last night.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“While I’m thinking about Max Reles, that idea you had. About looking for Isaac Deutsch’s uncle and basing my story on him. It’s a good one.”
“I only said that to get you back in the car.”
“Well, I’m back in the car, and it’s still a good idea.”
“I’m not so sure. Suppose you did write a story about Jews helping to build the new stadium. Maybe all those Jews will end up losing their jobs as a result of that. And what happens to them then? How are they going to feed their families? It might even be that some of them end up in concentration camps. Have you thought about that?”
“Of course I’ve thought about it. What do you take me for? I’m a Jew, remember? The human consequences of what I might write are always on my mind. Look, Bernie, the way I see it is this: There’s a much bigger issue at stake here than a few hundred people losing their jobs. The USA is by far the most important country in any Olympics. In L.A., we won forty-one gold medals, more than any other country. Italy, which was next, won twelve. An Olympiad without America would be meaningless. That’s why a boycott is important. Because if the games are not held here, it would be just about the most serious blow that Nazi prestige could suffer inside Germany. Not to mention it being one of the most effective ways that the outside world has of showing the youth of Germany its true opinion of Nazi doctrine. That has to be more important than whether a few Jews can feed their families. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Maybe. But if we go to Pichelsberg looking for answers about Isaac Deutsch, we might find ourselves asking questions of the very people who tossed him into the canal. They might not take kindly to being written about. Even if it is in a New York newspaper. Looking for Joey Deutsch could turn out to be just as dangerous as investigating Max Reles.”
“You’re a detective. An ex-cop. I’d have thought a certain amount of danger is written into your job description.”
“A certain amount, yes. But that doesn’t make me bulletproof. Besides, when you’re back in New York collecting a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, I’ll still be here. That’s the hope, at least. I can float in the canal just as easily as Isaac Deutsch.”
“If it’s a question of money.”
“Given what happened last night, I might tell you it’s not a question of money. At the same time, I have to admit that money is always a very persuasive answer.”
“Money talks, huh, Gunther?”
“Sometimes it seems you just can’t shut it up. I’m a hotel detective because I have to be, Noreen, not because I want to be. I’m broke, angel. When I quit KRIPO, I left behind a reasonable salary and a pension, not to mention what my father used to call ‘good prospects.’ I don’t see myself rising to the rank of hotel manager, do you?”
Noreen smiled. “Not in the kind of hotel I’d ever want to stay in.”
“Exactly.”
“How does twenty marks a day sound?”
“Generous. Very. But it’s a different kind of dialogue I’m looking for.”
“Pulitzer Prizes don’t pay that much, you know.”
“I’m not after a slice. Just a loan. A business loan, with interest. What with the Depression, the banks aren’t lending. Not even to each other. And I can hardly ask the Adlons to stake me enough to hand in my notice.”
“To do what?”
“To do this. Be a private investigator, of course. It’s about the one thing I’m good at. I figure about five hundred marks would let me set up on my own.”
“How do I know you’d stay alive long enough to pay me back?”
“That would be an incentive, of course. I’d hate to lose my life. And I’d hate to see you lose your money as a result of that, of course. Fact is, I could probably pay you a twenty-percent return on your investment.”
“You’ve obviously given this some thought.”
“Ever since the Nazis came into power. Human tragedies like the one we just witnessed in front of the town hall back there are happening all over this city. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. A lot of people—Jews, Gypsies, Freemasons, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses—they already figure they can’t go to the cops and get a hearing from anyone. So they’re going to go somewhere else. Which just has to be good for someone like me.”
“So you could end up making a profit under the Nazis?”
“That’s always a possibility. At the same time, it’s just possible I might actually end up helping someone as well as myself.”
“You know what I like about you, Gunther?”
“I sure could use a bit of reminding.”
“It’s that you can make Copernicus and Kepler look so very short-sighted and impractical and yet still cut a convincingly romantic figure.”
“Does that mean you still find me attractive?”
“I don’t know. Ask me later when I’ve forgotten that I’m no longer just your employer but your banker, too.”
“Does that mean you’re going to give me the loan?”
Noreen smiled. “Why not? But on one condition. You never tell Hedda that you got the money from me.”
“It’ll be our secret.”
“One of two, it now looks like.”
“You do realize you’re going to have to sleep with me again,” I said. “To guarantee my silence.”