The Shadow Man (11 page)

‘Thank you, Mrs Kroner, but I have.’

The rabbi was nodding his head. ‘You’re saying yes - it could be exactly what it seems. A suicide. A murder by some animal off the street.’

‘Correct.’

Again silence occupied a chair.

‘Do you have an opinion, Mr Winter?’ Frieda Kroner asked.

‘I have questions, Mrs Kroner,’ Simon Winter replied. ‘And, I think, it is wise to remove doubts where there are so many. Regardless of how Sophie and Mr Stein died, I think it will be difficult for the three of you to go about your business if every second you think you are being stalked by this fellow. If he exists.’

She nodded, as did the rabbi.

‘I still want a gun,’ Irving Silver muttered.

They all remained silent. Winter watched tears form in the corner of Irving Silver’s eyes, and the man started to shake his head, slowly, almost imperceptibly, as if trying to loosen and discard all the thoughts that had emerged.

The rabbi leaned forward, pushing the fingers of each hand through his tangled mass of hair. He puffed out his cheeks and let his wind slowly seep through pursed lips. Then he looked up at Simon Winter.

‘You will help us, Mr Winter?’

Winter felt a rigid toughness within him. He looked at

the three faces of the elderly people in the room, and he remembered the shaky hand his neighbor placed on his own, as he’d interrupted his own death to let her enter his apartment. He took a quick glance and saw a similar blue tattoo on the rabbi’s forearm, and suspected that beneath Mrs Kroner’s bulky white sweater and Mr Silver’s loose, checked shirt, he would find the same. He thought: I promised to help her, and then I didn’t. He realized that promise was still lingering about within him, and so he replied:

‘I will try, Rabbi. I’m not certain what I can do…’

‘You know things we do not. Many things.’

‘It has been a long time.’

‘Does one ever forget these things? These techniques?’

‘No.’

‘Then, you will be able to help.’

‘I hope so.’

The three elderly people took quick glances at each other.

‘I think we are in need of help,’ Mrs Kroner said. ‘Maybe even more than we even want to say out loud, Mr Winter.’

‘I still want a gun,’ Irving Silver muttered. ‘If we’d had guns back then—’

“Then the Nazis would have shot us on the spot!’

“Maybe that would have been better!’

‘How can you say that, you old fool! We lived! And now the world does not forget!’

Maybe it doesn’t forget, but what has the world learned?’

Irving Silver and Frieda Kroner glared at each other. The rabbi sighed.

‘They are frequently like this,’ he said to Winter. ‘We Ťre all once, when we were so young, caught up in these

immense events, and now we argue. Even the scholars argue. But we were there, and we were a part of something that is maybe more than just history.’

‘So was he …’ Irving Silver grunted.

The rabbi stopped speaking, and looked at the others.

‘That is true. He was as much a part of it as any of those who either died or survived.’

‘And he hasn’t forgotten either,’ Irving Silver added.

‘No. I think not.’

Frieda Kroner started to dab a napkin at the corners of her eyes. ‘If he is here …”

‘And he finds us …’ Silver joined in.

‘I think he will kill us.’

Simon Winter held up a hand. ‘But why? And why would he kill or want to kill Sophie and this Mr Stein? You haven’t explained this.’

As soon as he asked this question, Winter realized he had entered a realm ruled by history and memory, dark at the edges, pitch-black at its core.

‘Because,’ the rabbi started after a moment’s silence, ‘because we are the only people who can rise up and point him out.’

‘Bring him to justice,’ whispered Frieda Kroner.

‘If he’s here! I don’t believe it! I don’t believe any of it!’ Irving Silver slapped his palm against his knee. The others looked at him sharply, but it was Winter who spoke first.

‘But if he is here, you would recognize him?’

It took Irving Silver several seconds to answer. The old detective saw his chest heave with deep breaths as he struggled with the question.

‘Yes,’ Silver said. ‘I saw his face too. For just a few seconds. He took money from my brother and I.’

‘It was my father,’ the rabbi said quietly. ‘It was my father that he recognized, when we were riding on the

trolley. My father turned my face away, but I saw too. I was so young.’

Frieda Kroner shook her head. ‘I was young too. Like the rabbi and Sophie, little more than a child. He caught us in the park. It was spring, and the city was filled with rubble and death, but still, it was spring and I remember so many people were outside, enjoying the fine day, and so my mother and I, we went out too, because it was so important to behave like all the others. Before the war they called it Fiihrer weather, as if Hitler himself could rule the heavens!’

Again a silence creased the room.

‘It is difficult to speak of these things,’ the rabbi said.

Simon Winter nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘But I think I will need to know more if I am to help you.’

‘That is not unreasonable.’

‘And, there is something I do not understand.’

‘What is that, Mr Winter?’

‘Why would he kill you? Why not simply hide? It would not be difficult. He would not face a risk. Why not simply disappear?’

‘I can answer that,’ Frieda Kroner said quickly.

Winter turned toward her.

‘Because he is a lover of death, Mr Winter.’

The two others nodded in agreement.

‘You see, Mr Winter, what made him different from the others, why we were all so frightened of him, was that we knew he did what he did not because he believed some Nazi lie that by helping he could stay alive! He didn’t do it to protect his family - that was another excuse we heard. He did it because he enjoyed it.’

She shuddered hard.

And because he was better at it than anyone else.’

“Iranische Strasse,’ Rabbi Rubinstein added. This time

his voice did not rise, but remained low and harsh. ‘The Jewish Bureau of Investigation. That was where the Gestapo watched the catchers, who then watched for us.’

‘They took off their stars,’ Irving Silver said. ‘And then they hunted us down.’

‘Berlin, you see, it was Himmler himself who came on the radio and promised that the city would be Judenfrei!’ The rabbi added, his voice gathering momentum. ‘But it wasn’t! It never was! When the Russians came, there were still fifteen hundred of us hiding in the rubble! Fifteen hundred out of 150,000! But we were still there when the tanks thundered in and all the Nazis were swept up in their own fire! Never was Berlin Judenfrei! Never. If there had been only one of us left, it was never Judenfrei!’

Simon Winter nodded. ‘But this man—’

Frieda Kroner spoke quickly. ‘Der Schattenmann covered his tracks better than any other catcher. It was said that if you saw him, then you died. If you heard his voice, then you died. If he touched you, then you died …’

She hesitated, then added: ‘In the basement at Plot-zensee Prison. A terrible place, Mr Winter. A place where horrible death was the norm, and the Nazis created even worse. Racks and meat hooks and guillotines and garottes, Mr Winter.’

‘We were told that his would be the last living eyes you saw,’ Irving Silver said flatly. ‘His breath on your cheek would be your last memory.’

‘How did you know?’

‘A word here, a conversation there,’ Frieda Kroner said. ‘It got around. People would talk. A shopkeeper to a customer. A policeman to a landlord. An idle word overheard at a park or on a trolley. And then mothers told their daughters, as mine did. Fathers told their sons. That

was how we knew of Der Schattenmann.’ She breathed out deeply, as if the very words were painful.

‘But the three of you. And Mr Stein. And Sophie. You all survived …’

‘Luck,’ said the rabbi. ‘Accident? Mistake? The Nazis were so efficient, Mr Winter, sometimes now, in history, we think of them as superhuman. But so many of them were bureaucrats and clerks and little men pushing pencils! And so, instead of the basement, some of us rode the trains to our deaths.’

At that moment Irving Silver burst out in a sob.

They turned toward him and saw his eyes had reddened and he had clapped a hand over his mouth, as if to prevent the words he spoke from tumbling out. He was breathing hard again, battling with his breath.

‘My brother,’ he choked out, behind a clenched fist held to his lips, ‘he went to the basement.’

The others were silent.

‘Oh, poor Martin,’ Irving Silver moaned. ‘My poor brother Martin.’

After a moment, his eyes swept around to the others.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It is hard to remember, but remember we must.’

Irving Silver took a deep breath.

‘This is all remembrance,’ he continued. ‘We remember. And so does Der Schattenmann. He must have thought he had killed us once, and now he will try again. We were all just slightly more than children, then, Mr Winter, and this must have been what saved us from him. My older brother, he was a threat, so…’

‘My father,’ murmured the rabbi.

‘And my mother,’ Frieda Kroner added.

‘Surely, Mr Winter, this cannot be so surprising,’ the rabbi said. ‘Just as Frieda says. If we know no peace

because of what lives on in our memories, why would he be any different?’

Irving Silver reached out and squeezed Frieda Kroner’s hand. She nodded.

Simon Winter felt as if he were suddenly caught in a strong current, pulling him into a deepening sea, dragging him away from the shoreline. He thought: All detectives work from memory; one crime resembles another. A third is reminiscent of a fourth. Even within the most exceptional, there are common threads: a motive, such as greed; a weapon, like a gun or knife; evidence - fingerprints, bloodwork, fiber or hair samples, whatever. And all those threads strive toward a commonality of crime. But this, what the three old people in front of him were speaking of, was a sort of crime that defied characterization.

He paused before replying. Silence swept the air.

‘I think I will need to know more about this man. Who was he? Surely someone knew his name, where he came from, something about his family…?’

There was another momentary silence before Frieda Kroner replied: ‘No one knew anything for sure. He was different from the others.’

‘He was different,’ Rabbi Rubinstein added quietly, ‘because he was like a knife in the dark. The others, people knew, you see. If the catcher knew you, then you might know the catcher too. Maybe from the synagogue, or the apartment building, or the doctor’s office or the schoolyard, from somewhere before the race laws were put in effect. So, if you were alert, you could perhaps stay … what? One jump ahead? You might be able to hide. Or run. Or bribe them. They were traitors, but some, even near the end, some still had some feelings …’

The rabbi breathed out slowly.

‘… But no one knew who he was. It was like the Nazis

just invented this golem. A wraith.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘He was tall, like you—’ Frieda Kroner started, but Irving Silver shook his head and waved his hand.

‘No, Frieda, no. He was a tiny man, like a ferret. And older. More mature …’

‘No,’ the rabbi interrupted angrily. ‘He had to be young in order to survive. Young and strong and smart and ambitious.’

They looked at each other and fell into quiet.

‘We were little more than children,’ the rabbi started. ‘Our memories …’

‘I was small, like Sophie,’ Frieda Kroner said. ‘All men looked large to me.’

‘My poor brother Martin was still strong and tall, and so I thought everyone not like him was short…’

‘You see, Mr Winter?’ the rabbi said. ‘Der Schattenmann was better than any Gestapo. He was like a ghost. Wherever he walked, there was darkness, even in the daytime. Just like a … what is it, Irving?’

‘A will-o’-the-wisp.’

‘And we all knew,’ the rabbi said coldly, ‘that if he found you, then you could not hide.’

‘But couldn’t he be bribed?’

‘Yes and no,’ Irving Silver said. ‘Perhaps you would hear a voice in some dark alleyway, and you would promise r money and you might deliver it all to him. But then the Gestapo would come anyway, and the person Der Schattenmann had touched would be taken to the basement and the rest of his family put on the next train for the camps. He covered his tracks. If he found you, then it was like the world had never seen you.’

Frieda Kroner gasped at a sudden memory. She shuddered hard, but held up her hand and did not speak

when the others turned toward her,

‘But Sophie. The three of you. Mr Stein. You’re suggesting…’

‘Mistakes. Mistakes,’ the rabbi said. ‘No one was ever supposed to live, but sometimes we did. This was a mistake. And now, fifty years later, are those mistakes not being erased from the board?’ Irving Silver shivered and Frieda Kroner dabbed her eyes.

Simon Winter nodded. He was having trouble understanding the fear he saw before him, but knew that it filled the room. He looked around for a moment at all the simple, ordinary things that filled the rabbi’s apartment. A large brass menorah. Photographs of friends and family. A finely embroidered tablecloth. But it was as if all these items were obscured by smoky memory, and that the air was filled with a noxious smell.

Rabbi Rubinstein leaned back heavily. ‘It is hard now, to be old and to be remembering these things,’ he said. ‘It is like discovering a new pain.’ He sighed. ‘I had forgotten what it was like to be hunted.’

The others nodded in agreement.

Simon Winter wanted to reach out and touch the man, but could not. Instead, he said: ‘I do not understand something. Why would this man be here? On Miami Beach, where there is a great concentration of survivors. Wouldn’t this be the place where he would most likely be recognized? Why wouldn’t he be in Argentina or Romania or someplace safer?’

Irving Silver shook his head. ‘This is where he’d be safest.’

‘But how?’

‘You do not understand, Detective Winter,’ Rabbi Rubinstein said, starting slowly but rapidly accelerating his words as he spoke. ‘Der Schattenmann was not a Nazi! He