“Did the big man have a leather suitcase or satchel?”

“Yes. It was brown.”

“His companions spoke German too?”

“Yes.”

“Did you overhear their conversation?”

“No, Inspector.”

“And the man’s face? The man in the hat?” Janssen asked.

A hesitation. “I didn’t see the face. Or his companions’.”

“You waited on them but you did not see their faces?” Kohl asked.

“I didn’t pay any attention. It’s dark in here, as you can see. And in this business… so many people. You look but you rarely see, if you understand.”

That was true, Kohl supposed. But he also knew that since Hitler had come to power three years ago, blindness had become the national malady. People either denounced fellow citizens for “crimes” they hadn’t witnessed, or else were unable to recall the details of offenses they actually had seen. Knowing too much might mean a trip to the Alex – the Kripo headquarters – or the Gestapo’s on Prince Albrecht Street to examine endless pictures of known felons. No one would willingly go to either of those places; today’s witness could be tomorrow’s detainee.

The waiter’s eyes swept the floor, troubled. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Kohl pitied him. “Perhaps in lieu of a description of his face, you could give us some other observations and we could dispense with a visit to police headquarters. If you happen to think of something helpful.”

The man looked up, relieved.

“I’ll try to assist you,” the inspector said. “Let’s start with some specifics. What did he eat and drink?”

“Ah, that’s something. He at first ordered a wheat beer. He must not have ever drunk it before. He only sipped it and pushed it aside. But he drank all of the Pschorr ale that his companion ordered for him.”

“Good.” Kohl never knew at first what these details about a suspect might ultimately reveal. Perhaps the man’s state or country of origin, perhaps something more specific. But it was worth noting, which Willi Kohl now did in his well-thumbed notebook, after a lick of the pencil tip. “And his food?”

“Our sausage and cabbage plate. With much bread and margarine. They had the same. The big man ate everything. He seemed ravenous. His companion ate half.”

“And the third man?”

“Coffee only.”

“How did the big man – as we’ll call him – how did he hold his fork?”

“His fork?”

“After he cut a piece of sausage, did he change his fork from one hand to another and then eat the bite? Or did he lift the food to his mouth without changing hands?”

“I… I don’t know, sir. I would think possibly he did change hands. I say that because it seemed he was always placing his fork down to drink the beer.”

“Good, Johann.”

“I am happy to aid my Leader in any way I can.”

“Yes, yes,” Kohl said wearily.

Switching forks. Common in other countries, less so in Germany, like whistling for taxis. So the accent may have indeed been foreign.

“Did he smoke?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Pipe, cigar, cigarette?”

“Cigarette, I believe. But I-”

“Didn’t see the brand of the manufacturer.”

“No, sir. I didn’t.”

Kohl walked across the room and examined the suspect’s table and the chairs around it. Nothing helpful. He frowned to see that the ashtray contained ash but no cigarette stubs.

More evidence of their man’s cleverness?

Kohl then crouched and struck a match over the floor beneath the table.

“Ah, yes, look, Janssen! Some flakes of the same brown leather we found earlier. Indeed it is our man. And there are marks in the dust here that suggest he set a satchel down.”

“I wonder what it contains,” Janssen said.

“That does not interest us,” Kohl said, scooping up these flakes and depositing them in an envelope. “Not at this point. The importance is the bag itself, the connection it establishes between this man and Dresden Alley.”

Kohl thanked the waiter and, with a longing glance at a plate of wiener schnitzel, he walked outside, Janssen behind him.

“Let’s inquire around the neighborhood to see if anyone saw our gentlemen. You take the far side of the street, Janssen. I’ll take the flower vendors.” Kohl laughed grimly. Berlin flower sellers were notoriously rude.

Janssen removed his handkerchief and wiped his brow. He seemed to give a faint sigh.

“Are you tired, Janssen?”

“No, sir. Not at all.” The young man hesitated then added, “It’s just that it seems our work sometimes is hopeless. All this effort for a fat dead man.”

Kohl dug his yellow pipe out of his pocket, frowning to see that he’d put his pistol into the same pocket and had nicked the bowl. He filled it with tobacco. He said, “Yes, Janssen, you’re right. The victim was a fat middle-aged man. But we’re clever detectives, aren’t we? We know something else about him, as well.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“That he was somebody’s son.”

“Well… of course he was.”

“And perhaps he was somebody’s brother. And maybe somebody’s husband or lover. And, if he was lucky, he was a father of sons and daughters. I would hope too that there are past lovers who think of him occasionally. And in his future other lovers might have awaited. And three or four more children he could have brought into the world.” He rasped a match on the side of the box and got a smolder going in the meerschaum. “So, Janssen, when you look at the incident in this way we don’t have merely a curious mystery about a stocky dead man. We have a tragedy like a spiderweb reaching many different lives and many different places, extending for years and years. How sad that is… Do you see why our job is so important?”

“Yes, sir.”

And Kohl believed that the young man did indeed understand.

“Janssen, you must get a hat. But for now, I’ve changed my mind. You take the shady side of the street. It will mean, of course, that you must interview the flower vendors. They’ll treat you to some words you won’t hear outside of a Stormtrooper barracks but at least you won’t return to your wife tonight with skin the shade of fresh beetroot.”

Chapter Eight

Walking toward the busy square to find a taxi, Paul glanced behind him from time to time. Smoking his Chesterfield, looking at the sights, stores, passersby, once again searching for anything out of kilter.

He slipped into a public rest room, which was immaculate, and stepped into a stall. He stubbed out his cigarette and dropped it, along with the cigarette butts and wad of pulp that had held the address of Käthe Richter’s boardinghouse, into the toilet. Then he tore the pictures of Ernst up into dozens of tiny pieces and flushed everything away.

Outside on the street again, he put aside the difficult images of Max’s sad and unnecessary death and concentrated on the job ahead of him. It had been years since he’d killed anyone with a rifle. He was a good shot with a long weapon. People call guns “equalizers.” But that’s not completely true. A pistol weighs perhaps three pounds, a rifle twelve or more. To hold a weapon absolutely still requires strength, and Paul’s solid arms had helped make him the best shot in his squadron.

Yet now, as he’d explained to Morgan, when he had to touch off someone, he preferred to do it with a pistol.

And he always came in close, close as breath.

He never said a word to his victim, never confronted him, never even let him know what was about to happen. He would appear, as silently as a big man could, behind the victim, if possible, and fire the shot into his head, killing him instantly. He would never think of behaving like the sadistic Bugsy Siegel or the recently departed Dutch Schultz; they’d slowly beat people to death, torment them, taunt them. What Paul did as a button man had nothing to do with anger or pleasure or the gritty satisfaction of revenge; it was simply about committing an evil act to eliminate a greater evil.