Walter Schoen was squinting again, confused. “You believe that’s true?”

Something strange was happening during the past six months: people coming to Walter for his assistance.

First Rudi and Madi, both seventy-five, good Germans but destitute, left with nothing when their home burned to the ground. It was in the Black Bottom, the Negro section of Detroit. Rudi said it was Negroes who set the house afire to make them leave. Madi said it was Rudi smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey until he passed out. Walter had no choice, they were family, Madi his aunt, one of his father’s sisters. He drove them out Grand River to the property he had bought at auction and told them they could live here and provide for themselves, raise chickens, plant a vegetable garden, see if the apples in the orchard were worth selling. Walter said he would see them once he got his home-kill business going and would be here to supervise the butchering.

He was working on the barn, fashioning the interior with chutes and hooks to become an abattoir, paving the floor and putting in drains, when the next one appeared, Honey’s brother, my God, coming in Walter’s market, extending his hand over the counter and saying he was Darcy Deal.

“I always wanted to meet you, Walter, but that goofy sister of mine cut out on you before I got the chance.” Darcy saying, “I know your trade, Walter. As soon as I got my release from prison, where they stuck me for making moonshine and where I learned to cut meat, I got this idea and come directly to you with a moneymaking proposition. You ready? I bring you all the meat you think you can sell and give it to you, no money up front. What are you paying now for beef, around seventeen dollars a hunnert weight? What I deliver won’t cost you nothing. I bring you steers stripped of their hides and bled out, packed in ice. All you do is cut steaks and sell ’em and we split the take down the middle.”

Walter said, “Where do you come by this meat you deliver free of charge?”

“Out of pastures. I rustle ’em up.”

Walter asked Honey’s brother if he was aware of the rules and regulations imposed by the government on the sale of meat. How it has to be inspected and approved or they don’t put a stamp on it.

Darcy said, “Jesus Christ, don’t you see what I’m offering you? Fuck the government, I’ll get you all the meat you want to sell at whatever you ask, not what the government says to charge. You sell it without your customers having to use any ration stamps. Don’t you have German friends dying to serve a big pot roast every Sunday? Aren’t you tired of the government telling you how to run your business? Having days there isn’t any meat to sell?”

“You’re breaking the law,” Walter said.

“No shit.”

“You can go to prison.”

“I’ve been there. You want the meat or not?”

“How do you kill the animal?”

“Shoot her between the eyes with a .45. She throws her head, looks at you cockeyed, and falls down.”

“Are you serious?”

“Don’t the cow have to be dead before you skin her?”

“I could show you a way,” Walter said, “that doesn’t destroy the brains.”

“That mean we have a deal?”

It was tempting. Not only make money, take care of Vera Mezwa and Dr. Taylor. Send a few double sirloins to Joe Aubrey.

Walter said, “But I don’t know you.”

Darcy said, “The hell you talking about? We was brother-in-laws for Christ sake. I trusted you with my sister, didn’t I? You ever hit her I’d of come here and broke your jaw. No, me and you don’t have nothing to worry about, we’s partners. The only difference, you’re a Kraut and I’m American.”

Walter said, “Well . . .” and asked Darcy if he’d seen his sister or spoken to her lately, curious, wondering about Honey, what she was doing.

“I ain’t seen her yet or called,” Darcy said. “I’ll drop by sometime and surprise her.”

Walter said, “Oh, you know where she lives?”

Now the ones were here who needed his help the most, coming at the worst time. Or, was it the best time, if they were to play a part in his destiny?

The Afrika Korps officers walked in the shop and he knew Jurgen immediately from 1935, still youthful, smiling, the same beautiful boy he had known ten years ago. Walter wanted to put his arms around him-well, take him by the shoulders in a manly way, slip an arm around to pat his back. Ask why he had stopped writing after Poland. Ah, and Otto Penzler, Waffen-SS, of that elite group who chose combat over herding Jews into boxcars. He said to Otto, “Major, your bearing gives you away. The moment you walked in the door I knew you were Schutzstaffeln, ready to dispose of your suit, one I see was crudely made from a uniform.”

Walter stopped. He didn’t mean to sound critical of the suit, made under duress in a prison camp, and said, “Although I must say the suit did serve you. It brought you here undetected?”

They couldn’t stay in the rooms upstairs. No, on that day in October they entered the butcher shop he knew he would drive them to the farm and have to let them stay, of course, until they decided what they would do next.

Unless, fate had sent them here-not for Walter to help them. The other way around, for them to help him. Why not?

He could explain who he was and what he intended to do without giving the whole thing away. Tell them his mysterious connection to Heinrich Himmler and their roles in the history of the German Reich, their destinies. They knew Himmler’s destiny. By now he must have rid Europe of most of its Jews and was the Führer’s logical successor. Walter, meanwhile squinting at his destiny, knew he would not be dealing with the Jewish problem. The press here portrayed Himmler as the most hated man in the world. Even people Walter knew who were vocally anti-Semitic said it would give them an incredible sense of relief if the Jews would go someplace else. There was talk about sending them all to live on the island of Madagascar. You don’t exterminate an entire race of people. We’re Christians, the Jews are a cross we must bear. They’re pushy, insolent, think they’re smart, they double-park in front of their delicatessens on Twelfth Street-also on Linwood-and what do we do? Nothing. We make fun of them. Someone says, But they do make the movies we go to see. Well, not Walter. The last movie he saw was Gone With the Wind. He thought Clark Gable the blockade runner was good, but the rest of the movie a waste of time. Walter had better things to do, work toward becoming as well known as Himmler, perhaps even a Nazi saint. He had finally decided yes, of course tell Otto and Jurgen what you intend to do. They were Afrika Korps officers, heroes themselves. Tell them they are the only ones in the world who will know about the event before it happens.

The only ones if he didn’t count Joe Aubrey in Georgia, his friend in the restaurant business who owned a string of Mr. Joe’s Rib Joints, all very popular down there. Though lately Negro soldiers from the North were “acting uppity,” Joe said, coming in and demanding service, and he was thinking of selling his chain. Joe had an airplane, a single-engine Cessna he’d fly to Detroit and take Walter for rides and show him how to work the controls. Walter had come to consider Joe Aubrey his best friend, an American who never stopped being sympathetic to the Nazi cause. He would fly up to Detroit and take Walter for a spin, fly around Detroit, swoop under the Ambassador Bridge and pull out over Canada and Walter would say to his friend Joe Aubrey, “What a shame you aren’t in the Luftwaffe, you’d be an ace by now.” Joe Aubrey thought he knew what Walter had in mind, but no idea how he’d pull it off. The prospect got him excited.

“Goddamn it, Walter, I can’t wait.”