The Second Son: A Novel (7 page)

Frau Edelbaum was a good deal more pleasant, though without any of the tools necessary to inject some tact into the proceedings. She would smile embarrassedly, say how lovely it was to see him again, and sit quietly with her glass of Pernod while her husband—perched at the edge of Georg’s favorite chair—played trains with Mendy. Hoffner would look on from the sofa and try desperately to time the sips of his beer with any attempts to engage him. And while this was perfectly unbearable, it was Mendy’s departure for bed, and the subsequent dinner conversation, that took them over the edge. In the end, Hoffner was doing them all a favor.

He stood with Lotte in the foyer as he slipped on his coat.

She said, “They won’t be here much past ten,” smoothing off one of his shoulders. “I’ll make sure.”

“Not to worry. Gives me a chance to see a few friends.” He pulled his umbrella from the stand. “It’s not as horrible as you think.”

“Yes, it is. You detest him.”

Hoffner fought back a smile. “Tell him they let me go for being a Jew. That should cause some confusion.”

“He’s more frightened by all this than you know.”

Hoffner shook the excess water from the umbrella. “He has good reason to be.” He buttoned the last of his buttons. “I’ll be sorry to miss the chicken. You’ll save me a piece?”

“It’s already in the icebox.”

He leaned in and kissed her on both cheeks. “They won’t treat me nearly as well in Spain, you know.” He saw her wanting to find the charm in this, but it was no good. “I shouldn’t tell them about any of that,” he said. “I’d hate to have your father pretending concern for me just for your sake.” Not waiting for an answer, Hoffner opened the door and stepped out into the rain.

ÜBER ALLES

Rücker’s bar hadn’t changed in nearly thirty years. Any given night it was the smell of burned sausage and over-sauced noodles that wafted out to the street and made the last few meters to the door so familiar. The sounds from inside came a moment later, old voices with years of phlegm in the throat to make even pleasant conversation sound heated. Hoffner found something almost forgiving about walking into a place where he wasn’t likely to see a face younger than fifty. Even the prostitutes had the good sense not to be too young; teasing the old with what was so clearly out of reach would have been cruel. The new girls learned to steer clear quickly enough; the ripe ones came to appreciate a clientele that preferred to talk, have a few drinks or a laugh, before trundling upstairs for more sleep than sex. To an old whore, a night at Rücker’s had the feel of a little holiday. It might not be much in the purse, but it was easy and quiet and at such a nice pace.

The barman placed a glass in front of Hoffner and pulled the cork from a bottle of slivovitz.

“Let’s make it whiskey tonight,” said Hoffner.

The man recorked the bottle, reached for another, and smiled as he poured. Hoffner took his drink and scanned the tables.

Eight o’clock was still early for the usual crowd. Dinner with the wife, followed by all that endless chatter about a day spent up on the girders or underground digging new track, could keep a man home until almost half past eight. The ones without families knew it best to straggle in even later, keep the rest guessing as to where they might have gotten to in the last few hours. The smartest always had a hint of perfume on the clothes, that watered-down swill a man could buy for himself and spray onto a collar just before coming through the door. It was the surest way to get the conversation going: “What do you mean, what do you smell?” The quick sniff of the shirt, the look of surprise, the overeager laugh, and finally the confession: “Damn me if she doesn’t use the cheap stuff!” Roars of laughter after that, even if everyone knew the game. Still, why spoil a man’s last chance at pride?

Hoffner spotted Zenlo Radek sitting in the back. Two of his men were hunched over a series of plates piled high with beef, potatoes, and sausage, while Radek glanced through one of the newspapers stacked at his side. Radek might still have been somewhere in his early forties—maybe even late thirties—but his face had long ago given up on youth. It was its lack of skin, or rather the stretching of the skin across the bones, that made it so perfect for the surroundings: gaunt and pale blurred even the sharpest of eyes. Then again, it might have been his homosexuality. That aged a man, too.

Radek continued to read as Hoffner drew up.

“The streets won’t be nearly as safe now,” Radek said, flipping the page. He had unusually long thin fingers. “But I’m sure they sent you off with something nice. A cigarette case, a gold watch. Let you listen to the time slipping by.
Tick, tick, tick
.”

Hoffner was never surprised by what information Radek had at his disposal. “Never took you for the sentimental type.”

“Don’t confuse pity with sentiment, Nikolai.” Radek closed the paper and looked up. A taut smile curled his lips, but the eyes told Hoffner how glad Radek was to see him. “And here I thought you might not be putting in an appearance before your trip.” Hoffner looked momentarily confused, and Radek said, “Toby Mueller. He’s got a plane all gassed up out at Johannisthal. Heading off to Spain, I hear, and with you in tow. Daring stuff, Nikolai.”

Or maybe there was room for surprise. Hoffner had to remind himself that as Pimm’s onetime second—and now boss of the city’s most notorious syndicate—Radek was tapped into every conduit in Berlin. Even the Nazis came to him when they needed information. There was talk, of course, that Radek had been the one to give Pimm up to the SS—“Make it quick, painless, a single shot to the head”—but that was absurd. It might even have been insulting. Truth to tell, Radek had never wanted this. He was simply too smart, and too loyal, not to be the one to take it all on in the end.

“Running the Immertreu,” he had once joked to Hoffner, drunk. “Tell me, if I’ve been spending all this time trying to kill myself, isn’t this a much better bet than the needle ever was?”

As it turned out, Radek had proved too resilient even for heroin. It was years now since he had lost himself to the attic rooms on Fröbel and Moll Strassen. The rooms were long gone—who among the war-ravaged was still alive to fill them?—but Radek had given them a good try: veins streaked that deep pumping blue, boys at the ready for whatever was asked of them, and always the empty hope that he might somehow forget he was no longer a man—images of a single grenade rolling through the French mud, skin and trench wood flying everywhere, and his trousers drenched in blood.

The medics had saved him. Of course they had saved him. Keeping death back had become such an easy thing, just as easy as teaching a man how to piss through a tube.

For now, Radek was done with death, or at least his own. Instead, he read his papers, watched his men eat, and dictated every instance of corruption in his city. And who wouldn’t call that a life?

Hoffner pulled over a chair and sat. He took a drink.

Radek said, “He won’t find it noble, you going after him, Nikolai. Georgi knows you too well.”

Hoffner set his glass on the table. “You’re giving me too much credit.”

“Am I?”

Hoffner pulled his cigarettes from his pocket. “So it’s the big ideas tonight—pity and nobility. And here I thought I’d come in just for a drink.” He bobbed a nod at the two large men who were working through their plates. “Gentlemen.”

The larger of the two, Rolf, said, “Sausage’s not so good tonight. You can have ours if you want.”

Hoffner waved over a passing waiter, ordered a plate of veal and noodles, and lit his cigarette. “You should come with me, Zenlo. Spain’s perfect for you these days. Black market and civil war. What could be better?” Across the room a woman started in at the piano.

“And deal with all that chaos?” said Radek, as he leafed through the stack. He pulled out the
“BZ”
. “That’s nice for a man with a truck and a cousin down at the docks. Those of us with a little more at stake have to think differently.” He found the Grand Prix results and folded back the paper. “The desperate never buy for the future, Nikolai. No market stability. Order and fear—with maybe a little strong-arming thrown in—that’s what gives you a future.” He pulled a pen from his jacket pocket. “Berlin suits me just fine right now.”

Hoffner looked over at the smaller man. “So he’s off the Freud and Jung, is he?” The man continued to sift through his plate, and Hoffner said, “Tell me, Franz, what’s he reading now?”

Franz brought a spoonful of potatoes up to his mouth. “Keynes,” he said, before shoveling it in.

This required a moment. “Really?” Hoffner said. “That’s—ambitious.” Franz chewed, and Hoffner said, “He’s getting it wrong.”

“Is he?” said Franz, swallowing. “We should all be getting it so wrong.”

Radek continued to read as he spoke. “It’s the new psychology, Nikolai. Primal urges. Consumer desires. Totted up in columns and graphs. And this time it’s all scientific. Here.” He showed Hoffner the page he was marking. “Rosemeyer and Nuvolari. Auto Union and Alfa-Romeo. Clearly the two best drivers in the world. Barcelona last month—Nuvolari one, Rosemeyer five. Nürburgring two weeks later—Rosemeyer one, Nuvolari two. A week after that in Budapest, and they’re one and two again, only this time reversed. Milan, it’s Nuvolari, and finally Rosemeyer takes the German Grand Prix last week. And on and on and on. We know there are ten other premium drivers out there every week—Chiron, Caracciola, Trossi—yet these are the two who come up with it every time.”

“I’ll make a note,” said Hoffner. “What does it have to do with economics?”

Radek ignored him. “Is it because they have the best cars? No. Half the drivers are with Alfa-Romeo. And I don’t have to tell you what it takes to handle that tank of an Auto Union thing. Sixteen cylinders. Have you seen it, Nikolai? You have to be a beast of a man just to keep the car on the road.”

“So Rosemeyer and Nuvolari are reading Keynes?”

“Shut up, Nikolai. The point is, you’d be an idiot not to put your money on one of these two. And yet, even with the odds, people don’t. Half the money every week finds its way onto Farina or Varzi or Stuck, and these are good drivers, don’t get me wrong. But the chances, if you look at the trends”—he shook his head in disbelief—“almost impossible. So you have to ask, Why do people do it?”

It took Hoffner a moment to realize that Radek was waiting for an answer. “Primal urges?” he offered.

“Exactly,” said Radek. “They buy something with no real possibility of a return because they want to
believe
it can have a return. And the oddsmakers
tell
them to believe it can have a return. ‘This week,’ they advertise, ‘Farina will do it. He has to do it. You have to
want
him to do it.’ And they trust this because they live in an ordered world where, if things go wrong, they can try again the next week and the next and the next. They buy a product they shouldn’t want to buy because they so desperately want it. And that, Nikolai, is economics.”

Hoffner sat with this for a few moments before reaching for his whiskey. He took a drink. “So it’s the oddsmakers who are reading Keynes?” Hoffner expected a smile but Radek said nothing.

Franz, now running his fork through the remains of his beef, said, “I wouldn’t push it on this one if I were you.”

Hoffner smiled and looked at Radek. “We’re taking this latest theory very seriously, are we?”

Radek said, “You enjoy being an idiot, don’t you?”

“Not really a question of enjoying,” said Hoffner. “I think I liked the sex theory better, though. I’ve never bet on car racing.”

“Last I checked,” said Radek, “you weren’t doing much on the sex front, either.”

Hoffner laughed to himself.

Radek set down the paper and took his glass. “You have any idea where he is?” He drank.

Hoffner lapped back the last of his whiskey. “Barcelona,” he said. “Somewhere in there.” He raised his empty glass to a waiter. “I think everything’s happening up on hilltops right about now.”

“And he’s alive?”

“He has to be, doesn’t he?”

“It’ll be hot.”

The waiter appeared and took the glass. “Yes,” said Hoffner. “It will.”

“Georgi’s good in spots like that. He always has been.”

“You’ve met him twice, Zenlo.” There was an unexpected edge to Hoffner’s voice. “You have no idea who or what he is.” It was an awkward few moments before the food miraculously arrived, and Rolf and Franz were forced to stack their plates onto the empties so as to make room. Finally Hoffner said, “He’s always liked you, though. Liked that you never tried to corrupt me.”

Radek was glad for the reprieve. “How much more corruption could you take?” When Hoffner started in on the noodles, Radek said, “You like Gershwin, Nikolai?” Hoffner focused on his plate and Radek said, “I do.”

Hoffner nodded as he chewed.

Rolf said lazily, “It’s not Gershwin.” He was working his way through a mouthful of potatoes.

“What?” said Radek.

“The piano,” said Rolf, swallowing. “It’s not Gershwin. You’re thinking of the wrong thing.” He shoveled in another forkful.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“No,” said Radek. “I’m not.” There was a quiet menace in his tone; Rolf, however, continued to chew. “This is”—Radek became more serious as he thought—“
Crazy Girl
,” he said triumphantly. “ ‘Embraceable You’ from
Crazy Girl
.”