Most nights, Fichte could be found at the White Mouse, drinking too much and allowing himself to be photographed with any number of popular faces. Last week, the
BZ
had included the young detective sergeant in a candid photo with three of the Haller Revue girls, lots of thighs and teeth, along with a leering grin from Fichte. Fichte had become the new image of the Kripo, vibrant and charming—it was a Fichte whom Hoffner had never known—and Präger seemed only too happy to encourage it. Fichte was now irresistible to the night-crawl crowd. In fact, Fichte could hardly resist himself. Even his knock on Hoffner’s door had grown in stature. Where before, several light taps had signaled his approach, now two rapid-fire raps announced his presence.
Hoffner looked up from behind his desk. Fichte had been given an office of his own down the hall, but the files remained here.
“We’re done with this one, yes?” said Fichte. He placed the pages on Hoffner’s desk: a drunk had stabbed his wife and then confessed; it was hardly a case. Fichte already had his hat in hand.
“New suit?” said Hoffner.
Fichte glanced down at the jacket. One of the shops along Tauentzienstrasse had given it to him as a gift, the least they could do for a hero of the Kripo. Fichte smiled. He had been working on this particular smile for a week now. “Sure. You should get one for yourself. They want to know when you’re coming in.”
Hoffner took the sheets and moved over to the filing cabinet. “You don’t think about it anymore, do you?”
Fichte had trained himself to look mildly amused whenever his old confusion reared its head. A furrowed brow was hardly in keeping with his new image. “Think about what?” he said.
“I sent a wire to van Acker.” Hoffner flipped through the files. “See if they’ve come up with anything on that body. Wouters’s replacement.”
Fichte stayed with amusement. “The man’s dead, Nikolai. That usually means a case is closed.”
Hoffner replaced the file and closed the drawer. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Präger’s satisfied. Why shouldn’t I be?”
Hoffner nodded indifferently. He found something else on his desk. “Off to Maxim’s?”
“White Mouse,” said Fichte as he watched Hoffner shuffle through more pages.
“With your Lina?”
Fichte hesitated before answering. “She doesn’t like the crowds.”
Hoffner was still focused on the papers. “And you’re a magnet for them, are you?”
There was a momentary crack in Fichte’s otherwise effortless stare. Just as quickly the lazy smile returned. “Can’t help it if they want to meet me.”
Hoffner looked up. There was no point in prodding at him; Fichte was too far gone. Hoffner only hoped that the boy would survive the road back. Not that Hoffner was encouraging him to find it any time soon. There was still the pull of Kremmener Strasse, and Hoffner had been taking full advantage of Fichte’s inattention. Lina had become something of a regular indulgence, high times in Kreuzberg notwithstanding. She had even started allowing him to smoke in her flat. It was an intimacy Hoffner had yet to give much thought to. “No, I’m sure you can’t,” he said. “You tell that shop of yours I’ll be coming in for my suit, all right?”
Fichte’s eyes widened. “Naturally.” He spoke with the enthusiasm of a first infatuation. “They’ll be very pleased, Nikolai.”
Hoffner bobbed his head once.
It was all Fichte could have hoped for. “You have a good night, Nikolai.” He placed his hat on his head.
Hoffner kept busy with whatever it was that was on his desk. “Good night, Hans.”
S
he was a “word city.”
Hoffner had heard it, or read it, somewhere. Not just in her newspapers, but in her advertisements, her signs, her schedules, and most important, in her
Litfassulen
—those pillars that appeared on almost every corner of every neighborhood—Berlin breathed as a metropolis of language. It was the pillars, however, that stood apart. They were the modern town criers, filled with the chaos of endless messages: sell a bed, post at the corner; workers’ meeting tonight, post at the corner; find a girl, post at the corner. Capped by their crowns of green wrought iron, the pillars rose two meters higher than anything else on the street, and thus demanded attention. Even the figures in their posters were more garish than anything to be found in a window or on a billboard. Couples decked out in glaring reds and greens screamed out in aggressive poses to passersby: everything angular, sharp, and desperate for recognition. The pillars indulged their own disorder and thus mirrored the life of the streets even as they catered to it.
Find K, post at the corner.
Hoffner had used the Alex’s hectograph to make copies of a single sheet of paper, which he had plastered throughout the Mitte district over the last few days. His two index fingers were still stained with the aniline dye from the ink. It was always something of an adventure using the machine, pressing the sheet to the gelatin pad, waiting the few minutes for the page to absorb the ink, and then hoping not to smear anything in the removal. Hoffner could stomach only forty or so such tries. His patience and the dye usually gave out at about the same time. He was trusting that the simplicity of his note, and not its beauty, would make it stand out among all the more elaborate postings:
Krystalowicz. Café Dalles. 10 o’clock. I’ll bring the brandy this time.
Hoffner had been at the café for the past two nights. Jogiches had yet to make an appearance.
In the meantime, Hoffner had decided to track down the one living link he still had to the diameter-cut: the engineer from the Rosenthaler station, the man who had helped to design the site under the tutelage of the great Grenander himself. In the last week, Hoffner had stopped in at three of the city-run shelters for the homeless. So far, no Herr Tben or his wife and two boys. Hoffner scanned the new map he had hung on his wall. He had been making his way east. Tonight it was Frbelstrasse, and the heart of Prenzlauer Berg.
D
urable and cold was how the red brick of state institutions always announced themselves to Hoffner. Situated next to a bit of open ground, with a few trees planted about—not by nature, but by a bureaucrat’s pen—the shelter and its adjacent hospital showed little in the way of life. Even the long line of huddled bodies waiting for admission gave off nothing that might have been construed as flesh and blood. They were cracked faces, etched by hunger and resentment, and buried beneath the dust of decades. The snow seemed a starker white in their presence. Hoffner moved past them and up to the main door.
Several desks were laid out inside to process the line of applicants. Hoffner showed his badge, and a man motioned him over to one of the far desks. The chief administrator, a Herr Mitleid, was tending to one of his charges.
“You’ve come at our busiest time, Chief Inspector,” said Mitleid when Hoffner had introduced himself. The place reeked of sterility, with the tangy odor of ammonia emanating from every corner. It mixed uneasily with the smells of cooking and drying clothes and digestion. “You see us at our best and at our worst.”
This was not the typical administrator, at least not from Hoffner’s recent experience. Unlike the other directors, Mitleid seemed in tune with his own humanity. It was as if the man knew what it was to carry his life in a small sack on his back, or to feel the weight of a refugee’s thousand-kilometer walk in his legs, or to sense what gives a man a look of both fear and confrontation in his every gaze. Mitleid was a man of pure compassion. Hoffner wondered where they had found him within the ranks of officialdom.
“We open the doors at four, close them at nine. Takes about two hours to fill each of the dormitories. You find us in mid-filling, Herr Inspector.”
Hoffner explained what he was looking for: the name, two sons, a former engineer, sometime in the last month and a half. Mitleid thought for a moment. He seemed to recall something, and then brought Hoffner into his office. The two men sat, and Mitleid began to run through a roll of filing cards on his desk.
Hoffner noticed a stack of empty application documents. He took one and was astounded to see how bad things had gotten:
Case No. ——— P.B.
Was heard by the court in Berlin, on ——— 1919.
Mr. ——— was instructed to find himself alternative accommodation within five days, failing which, notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts on his behalf to do so, he would be punished for making himself homeless. The appellant was further warned that in accordance with #361, subsection 8, of the Criminal Law of the German Empire, such punishment will consist of up to six weeks in prison, and in accordance with #362 ibid., transferred to the police authorities, for placement in a workhouse.
Approved and signed.
Signature of the homeless man in question ———
Signature of the police case worker ———
“Dreadful, isn’t it?” Mitleid was still searching. “Five days to find housing. Can you imagine?”
Hoffner replaced the sheet. “You show me someone who can find a flat that quickly in Berlin these days, I’ll show you your criminal.”
Mitleid tried a smile, but the topic was too close to home. He pulled out a card and said, “Here it is.” He read through it quickly. “I knew it sounded familiar.” His brow furrowed. “You’re sure about the name?”
“Tben,” Hoffner repeated.
Mitleid continued to look puzzled. “This is a Teplitz. A Willem Teplitz. Wife, two boys. I thought for sure.” He shook his head and began to replace the card; Hoffner stopped him and took the card. He read as Mitleid spoke. “Clever man, Teplitz. Helped us rework the placement of the beds. Gave us room for four more each night. Never said he was an engineer, but you could tell.”
According to the card, Herr “Teplitz” had arrived on the night of January 16, the night Hoffner and Fichte had come across Mary Koop.
“Who fills out this card?” said Hoffner.
“I do.”
“Do you have anything Herr Teplitz might have signed?”
Mitleid stood and moved across to a large filing cabinet. He returned with a small folder and handed a sheet to Hoffner. It was a form to request that the family be kept together while inside the shelter. “Another abomination,” said Mitleid. “But the Reichs Ministry insists we have it.”
Hoffner scanned down to the signature, where the lettering was deliberate and uneven. Teplitz had labored with his own name. Hoffner had seen the same hesitation many times before. This was Tben. He had been scared enough to take a false name, and Hoffner was guessing that his fears had had nothing to do with the body his son had discovered at the site. “How long did they stay with you?” he asked.
Mitleid took the card again and flipped it over. “Their last day was the twelfth,” he read. “Last Wednesday.” He looked across at Hoffner. “You believe this is your Herr Tben?”
Hoffner was thinking about the date. February 12: the day Jogiches’s article had appeared. Frau Tben and her boys were five days gone from Berlin: they could be anywhere now. “Was there anyone here that he was particularly friendly with?”
Mitleid again studied the card. “Dormitory three.” He thought for a moment, and his eyes lit up. “Oh, yes. Of course.” He began to get up. “The Colonel.” Mitleid started for the door and then motioned Hoffner through. “Marvelous fellow. A Russian. Fought for the Tsar. You’ll like him at once.”
D
ormitory 3 was like all the others, long and narrow, and with two rows of beds jutting out from the walls, barracks-style. There were also a few stray cots that had been placed down the center aisle, the extras Herr Tben had managed to reconfigure. More than half of the beds were filled with men, flat on their backs, here and there a cocked elbow drawn across the eyes. The few who did look up did so with vacant stares. Hoffner knew they were looking directly at him; he just couldn’t feel their gaze.
Beyond a partition was another hall: here, instead of beds, small wooden cubicles—large enough to accommodate four or five people—appeared at intervals along the walls. These were for families. A gas burner and range stood in each of the corners of the hall, places for the women to do their cooking. Washing hung where it could, the cleverest of the women having placed their lines over the gas burners so as to help with the drying. The clothes might have picked up the sour smell of cabbage broth, but better dry and pungent than damp and fresh.
At the end of the row, Mitleid came to a stop. Unlike the other cubicles, this one had managed to keep its clutter in check. It was also far roomier, with only one bed inside and a little chair: evidently, rank had its privileges. A few photos hung on the inside walls, along with an officer’s cap. Below, a stack of books and papers rose to nearly a meter high, while on the bed, a large man, somewhere in his late sixties, lay stiffly on the tissue-thin linens with his eyes closed. His boots pointed to the ceiling, while his pant legs disappeared into the cracked leather just below the knees. Even in sleep, the Colonel looked as if he were on parade.
Mitleid seemed reluctant to disturb him. “Colonel Stankevich?” he said quietly.
At once, Stankevich’s eyes opened. He peered over, and just as quickly, offered a gracious smile. “Ah, Herr Mitleid.” Stankevich was sitting upright, his feet firm on the ground, before Mitleid could make the introductions. Years of interrupted sleep had prepared the Colonel well.
“May I present Herr
Kriminal-Oberkommissar
Nikolai Hoffner of the
Kriminalpolizei
?”
Stankevich peered straight ahead for another moment. All signs to the contrary, he was still in the last grasp of sleep. With a sudden clearing of his throat, he stood and offered a bow. Hoffner bowed as well, and then insisted that the Colonel retake his seat. Mitleid waited until the two men were seated across from each other before taking his leave.