He stood for a minute, his mind full of engraving plates and watch prices, all of which led him nowhere. Which was probably where Muller wanted him to go. He smiled to himself, thinking of Jeanie- two brush-offs in one morning, one more direct than the other. It was Muller who’d taken the circular way around, leaving him back on the steps not even sure he’d been through a revolving door. Except something nagged, a missing crossword piece that would leap to the eye if you looked at it long enough. He told the driver he wanted to walk.
“Walk?” the soldier said, amazed. “You mean back?”
“No meet me at Zoo Station in about an hour. You know where that is?“
The soldier nodded. “Sure. It’s a hike from here.”
“I know. I like to walk. Helps me think.” Explaining himself. He made a mental note to ask Ron for his own jeep.
But the soldier, like Jeanie, had been around. “I get it. You sure you don’t want me to drop you? I mean, I don’t care, it’s your business.”
Everybody does it, Jake thought as he headed across the battered park; a lot of small money that adds up. So whom had Tully done business with? A gun-happy Russian? A DP with nothing to lose? Anybody. Five thousand dollars, more. People got killed every day in Chicago for less, just for skimming a numbers collection. Life would be even cheaper than that here. But why come in the first place? Because the Russians were here, flush with cash. Not porcelain knickknacks and old silver to trade. Cash. Honey for bears. Everybody does it.
The park gates opened onto lower Potsdamerstrasse and a small stream of military trucks and civilians on rickety bicycles, all that was left of the traffic that used to roar by to the center. On foot Berlin was a different city, not the spectacle he’d seen from a touring jeep but something grittier, a wreck in closeup. He had loved walking in the city, exploring the miles of flat, irregular streets as if just the physical touch of shoe leather made it personal, brought him into its life. Sundays in the Grunewald. Afternoons wandering through districts where the other journalists never went, Prenzlauer or the tenement streets in Wedding, just to see what they were like, his eyes gliding from building to building, oblivious to curbs. Now he had to step carefully, skirting clumps of broken cement and picking his way through plaster and glass that crunched underfoot. The city had become a trail hike, full of obstacles and sharp things hidden under stones. Steel rods twisted into spiky shapes, still black from fire. The familiar rotting smell. At the corner of Pallasstrasse, the remains of the Sportpalast, where bicycles used to whiz by in the rac-ing oval and Hitler promised the faithful a thousand years. Only the giant flak tower was standing, like the ones at the zoo, too sturdy even for boombs. A soldier was propped against the wall with one hand, talking to a girl and fondling her hair, the oldest black market in the world. Across tile street, a few other girls in thin dresses leaned against a standing wall, gesturing to convoy trucks. At ten o’clock in the morning.
The side streets were clogged with debris, so he kept to the main roads, turning left on Bulowstrasse for the long walk up to the zoo. This was a part of town he’d known well, the elevated station hulking over Nollendorfplatz, with its ring of bars. A movie marquee had slid down to the pavement nearly intact, as if the building had been whipped out from under it, like the magic trick with a tablecloth. A few people were out, one of them pushing a baby carriage filled with household goods, and Jake realized that the dazed, plodding movement he’d seen from the jeep two days ago was the new pace of the city, as careful as his own. Nobody walked quickly over rubble. Why would anyone come to Berlin? Had Tully been before? There must be traveling orders, something to check. The army ran in duplicate.
