A Quiet Flame

Müller was a tall man with lots of hair, only it was all on the sides of his head with none of it on top, as if he had grown through it like a rubber plant.

“They had you measured pretty well,” he said. “They did everything but chalk a letter M on the dead man’s coat for you. Like in that movie with Peter Lorre. It’s the kid in the movie who tips off the cop about Lorre.”

“Haven’t seen it.”

“You should get out more.”

“Sure. Maybe I’ll buy a horse.”

“See the sights.”

“I’ve seen them already. Besides, maybe I see too much as it is. Soon it’s going to be unhealthy to be a cop with good eyesight in this country. That’s what people keep telling me, anyway.”

“You talk like the Nazis were going to win the election, Bernie.”

“I keep hoping they won’t. And I keep worrying that they might. But I’ve got seven loaves and five fishes telling me the republic needs more than just a lucky break this time. If I wasn’t a cop, I might believe in miracles. But I am and I don’t. In this job you meet the lazy, the stupid, the cruel, and the indifferent. Unfortunately, that’s what’s called an electorate.”

Müller nodded. He was an SDP man, like me. “Hey, did you hear the good news? About Joey Clovenhoof? His new wife Magda’s apartment got screened. Her jewels were lifted.” Müller was grinning. “Can you credit it?”

“Credit it? They should give whoever did it the Blue Max.”

I NEEDED A DRINK, I needed some female company, and I probably needed a new job. As things turned out, I went to the best place for all three. I went to the Adlon Hotel. Inside the sumptuous lobby I looked around for Frieda. Instead I found Louis Adlon. He was wearing a white tie and tails. In his lapel was a white carnation that matched his mustache. He wasn’t a tall man but he was every inch a gentleman.

“Commissar Gunther,” he said. “How nice to see you. And you must think me rude for not writing to thank you for the way you dealt with that thug. But I was hoping to run into you and thank you in person.” He pointed to the bar. “Do you have a minute?”

“Several.”

In the bar, Adlon waved for service, but it was already on its way, like a small express train. “Schnapps for Commissar Gunther,” he said. “The best.”

We sat down. The bar was quiet. The old man poured two glasses to the brim and then toasted me silently.

“According to my wife, Hedda, there’s an old Confucian curse that says, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ I’d say these are very interesting times, wouldn’t you?”

I grinned. “Yes, sir, I would.”

“Given that, I just wanted you to know that there is always a job for you here.”

“Thank you, sir. It might just be that I take you up on that offer.”

“No, sir. Thank you. It may interest you to know that your superior, Dr. Weiss, speaks very highly of you.”

“I didn’t know you two knew each other, Herr Adlon.”

“We’re old friends. It was he who leads me to suppose that the police service may soon change in ways we do not yet care to imagine. For that reason I felt able to make you an offer like this. Most of the house detectives here are, as you know, retired policemen. The incident in the bar proved to me that one or two of them are no longer equal to the task.”

We sipped the excellent schnapps for a while, and after that he went to have dinner with his wife and some rich Americans, while I went to find Frieda. I found her on the second floor, in a corridor leading to the hotel’s Wilhelmstrasse extension. She was wearing an elegant black evening gown. But not for long. The smaller, less expensive rooms were on that floor. These had views of the Brandenburg Gate and, beyond it, the Victory Column on Königsplatz. But I had the best view of all. And I wasn’t even looking out of the window.

I WAS TRYING to avoid Arthur Nebe. This had been easy while I was checking through the list of suspects I had compiled using the Devil’s Directory, but it was always more difficult when I was in the Alex. Still, Nebe wasn’t the kind of cop who liked leaving his desk very much. He did most of his detective work on the telephone and, for a while, by not answering mine, I managed not to speak to him at all. But I knew it couldn’t last, and a couple of days after the shooting, I finally ran into him on the stairwell outside the washrooms.

“What’s this?” said Nebe. “Has someone else been shooting at you?” He put his fingers in some old bullet holes in the walls of the stairwell. We both knew they’d been there since 1919, when the Freikorps had taken the Alex back by force from the left-wing Spartakists. It was a very German occasion. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to spend the rest of your life dead.” He smiled. “So, what’s the story?”

“No story. Not in this town, anyway. A Nazi thug took a potshot at me, that’s all.”

“Any idea why?”

“I figured it was because I’m not a Nazi,” I said. “But maybe you can tell me.”

“Erich Hoppner. Yes. I checked him out. It doesn’t look particularly political, since you mention it.”

“How can you tell?”

“You’re not KPD. He wasn’t SA.”

“But he was a Nazi Party member.”