file, so that I might make proper use of it when I spoke to him.
“Thanks, Otto.”
“This crime at the Adlon,” he said. “Anything there for me? Like a nice young girl who’s been passing dud checks?”
“It’s small fry for a bull like you. An antique box belonging to one of the guests got stolen. Besides, I already figured out who probably did it.”
“Even better. I can get the credit. Who did do it?”
“Some Ami blowhard’s stenographer. Jewish girl who’s already left Berlin.”
“Good-looking?”
“Forget it, Otto. She went home to Danzig.”
“Danzig is good. I could use a trip somewhere nice.” He finished his drink. “Come on. We’ll go back across the road. As soon as you’ve reported it I can be on my way. I wonder why she went to Danzig. I thought Jews were leaving Danzig. Especially now that it’s gone Nazi. They don’t even like Berliners in Danzig.”
“Like everywhere else in Germany. We buy the rest of the country a beer, and still they hate us.” I finished my brandy. “Your neighbor’s field of corn is always better, I guess.”
“I thought everyone knew that Berlin is the most tolerant city in Germany. For one thing, it’s always been the only place that would tolerate the German government living here. Danzig. I ask you.”
“Then we’d better hurry before she realizes her mistake and comes back.”
7
T HE FRONT DESK AT THE ALEX was the usual crowd scene from Hieronymus Bosch. A woman with a face like Erasmus and a pink pig’s bladder of a hat was reporting a burglary to a duty sergeant whose outsized ears looked as if they had belonged to someone else before being sliced off and stuck on the sides of his dog-shaped skull with a pencil and an unsmoked roll-up. Two spectacularly ugly thugs—their bloodied mugs stamped with the atavistic stigmata of criminality, their hands manacled behind their twisting backs—were being pushed and pulled into a dimly lit corridor that led down to the cells and a probable job offer from the SS. A cleaning woman, with a cigarette clamped firmly in her mouth against the smell, who was badly in need of a shave, was mopping a pool of vomit on the shit-brown linoleum floor. A lost-looking boy, his dirty face streaked with tears, was sitting fearfully in a corner underneath an enormous spiderweb and rocking on his stringy buttocks, and probably wondering if he’d make bail. A pale, rabbit-eyed attorney, carrying a briefcase as big as the well-fed sow whose hide had been used to fashion it, was demanding to see his client, except that no one was listening. Somewhere, someone was adducing his previous good character and his innocence of everything. Meanwhile a cop had removed his black leather shako and was showing a fellow SCHUPO the large purple bruise on his closely shaven head: it was probably just a thought making a futile bid to escape from his rusticated skull.
It felt awkward being back at the Alex. Awkward and exciting. I figured Martin Luther must have felt the same way when he turned up at the Diet of Worms to defend himself against a charge of spoiling the church door in Wittenberg. So many faces that were familiar. A few looked at me as if I were the prodigal son, but rather more seemed to regard me as the fatted calf.
Berlin Alexanderplatz. I could have told Alfred Döblin a thing or two.
Otto Trettin led me behind the desk and told a young uniformed cop to record my statement.
The cop was in his mid-twenties and, unusually by SCHUPO standards, was as bright as the badge on his ammunition pouch. He hadn’t been typing my statement very long when he stopped, bit his already well-bitten fingernails, lit a cigarette, and silently went over to a filing cabinet as big as a Mercedes that stood in the center of the huge room. He was taller than I’d expected. And thinner. He hadn’t been there long enough to get a taste for beer and get himself a pregnant belly, like a true SCHUPO man. He came back reading,
“Thanks, Otto.”
“This crime at the Adlon,” he said. “Anything there for me? Like a nice young girl who’s been passing dud checks?”
“It’s small fry for a bull like you. An antique box belonging to one of the guests got stolen. Besides, I already figured out who probably did it.”
“Even better. I can get the credit. Who did do it?”
“Some Ami blowhard’s stenographer. Jewish girl who’s already left Berlin.”
“Good-looking?”
“Forget it, Otto. She went home to Danzig.”
“Danzig is good. I could use a trip somewhere nice.” He finished his drink. “Come on. We’ll go back across the road. As soon as you’ve reported it I can be on my way. I wonder why she went to Danzig. I thought Jews were leaving Danzig. Especially now that it’s gone Nazi. They don’t even like Berliners in Danzig.”
“Like everywhere else in Germany. We buy the rest of the country a beer, and still they hate us.” I finished my brandy. “Your neighbor’s field of corn is always better, I guess.”
“I thought everyone knew that Berlin is the most tolerant city in Germany. For one thing, it’s always been the only place that would tolerate the German government living here. Danzig. I ask you.”
“Then we’d better hurry before she realizes her mistake and comes back.”
7
T HE FRONT DESK AT THE ALEX was the usual crowd scene from Hieronymus Bosch. A woman with a face like Erasmus and a pink pig’s bladder of a hat was reporting a burglary to a duty sergeant whose outsized ears looked as if they had belonged to someone else before being sliced off and stuck on the sides of his dog-shaped skull with a pencil and an unsmoked roll-up. Two spectacularly ugly thugs—their bloodied mugs stamped with the atavistic stigmata of criminality, their hands manacled behind their twisting backs—were being pushed and pulled into a dimly lit corridor that led down to the cells and a probable job offer from the SS. A cleaning woman, with a cigarette clamped firmly in her mouth against the smell, who was badly in need of a shave, was mopping a pool of vomit on the shit-brown linoleum floor. A lost-looking boy, his dirty face streaked with tears, was sitting fearfully in a corner underneath an enormous spiderweb and rocking on his stringy buttocks, and probably wondering if he’d make bail. A pale, rabbit-eyed attorney, carrying a briefcase as big as the well-fed sow whose hide had been used to fashion it, was demanding to see his client, except that no one was listening. Somewhere, someone was adducing his previous good character and his innocence of everything. Meanwhile a cop had removed his black leather shako and was showing a fellow SCHUPO the large purple bruise on his closely shaven head: it was probably just a thought making a futile bid to escape from his rusticated skull.
It felt awkward being back at the Alex. Awkward and exciting. I figured Martin Luther must have felt the same way when he turned up at the Diet of Worms to defend himself against a charge of spoiling the church door in Wittenberg. So many faces that were familiar. A few looked at me as if I were the prodigal son, but rather more seemed to regard me as the fatted calf.
Berlin Alexanderplatz. I could have told Alfred Döblin a thing or two.
Otto Trettin led me behind the desk and told a young uniformed cop to record my statement.
The cop was in his mid-twenties and, unusually by SCHUPO standards, was as bright as the badge on his ammunition pouch. He hadn’t been typing my statement very long when he stopped, bit his already well-bitten fingernails, lit a cigarette, and silently went over to a filing cabinet as big as a Mercedes that stood in the center of the huge room. He was taller than I’d expected. And thinner. He hadn’t been there long enough to get a taste for beer and get himself a pregnant belly, like a true SCHUPO man. He came back reading,
Similar Books
