Bernie sat down, ruffling his hair again. “A face meeting with Frankfurt? Out of the blue? It could have been anything. Grief, usually. The last time it was Legal complaining about my methods,” he said, giving the word an edge. “They like to do that personally, bring you in line. Frankfurt thinks I’m a loose cannon. Not that I give a shit.”
“Why a loose cannon?”
Bernie smiled slightly. “I’ve been known to break a regulation. Once or twice.”
“So break another one,” Jake said, looking at him.
“Because you have a gut feeling? I don’t know you from Adam either.”
“No. But somebody comes to see you, makes a stop along the way, and gets shot. Now two of us are interested.”
Bernie met his eyes, then looked away. “You know, I didn’t come to Germany to catch crooked soldiers.”
Jake nodded, not saying anything, waiting for Bernie to pop up again. Instead, he stopped squirming and leaned forward, like a negotiator at the Cecilienhof, finally down to business.
“What do you want?”
“The other sheet. There’s nothing here.” Jake pointed at the report. “Not even ballistics. There must be someone you could ask. Quietly, just nosing around.”
Bernie nodded.
“Then a call to Frankfurt. Naturally you’d be curious, someone doesn’t show. So who was he, what did he want? Scuttlebutt. There should be talk all over the place now, somebody comes back in a box. Oh, did you know him? What the hell happened?”
“You trying to tell me how to do this?”
“Any rumors,” Jake went on. “Maybe something valuable’s gone missing. Some liberated souvenirs. It’s a long shot, but you never know. And a picture would be nice.”
“For publication?” Bernie said, wary.
“No, for me. There must be one in his file there, if you can get hold of it without upsetting the horses. I’m not sure how, but maybe something will come to you.” “Maybe something will.”
“Traveling orders. Who authorized the trip? What for? You’d want to know. He was coming to see you.”
“Yes,” Bernie said, thoughtful again, then sprang up and began moving around the room, jiggling change in his pocket. “And what’s all this supposed to get you?”
“Not much. It’s not much to ask, either. Just what you’d want to know if you’d never talked to me. If an appointment turned up dead.”
“So what else?”
“I need a partner. I can’t work this alone.”
Bernie held up his hand. “Forget it.”
“Not you. A name. Who covers the black market for Public Safety? Who’d know the snitches, the people out on the street? If Tully had something big to sell, who would he have gone to see? He sure as hell didn’t come to Berlin to stand on a corner. I need someone who knows the players.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
“Can’t?”
“There isn’t anybody like that. Not that I’ve ever heard of. ‘Covers’ it. Like a beat? You’re still back in Chicago.”
“You could ask,” Jake said, getting up now too, Bernie’s restlessness contagious.
“No, I couldn’t. I’m in Public Safety. Technically. You don’t shit where you sleep. Not for long, anyway. Nobody else will either, once they know what you’re after. Tully was PSD too. You think he had friends. Where do you think he had them? I have things to do here, not play cops and robbers with my own department. You do that one alone.” He looked up with a hint of a smile. “We’ll see how good you are.”
“But you’ll make the call. You’ll do that.”
“Yeah, I’ll make the call,” he said, busying himself again with the folder pile. “I hate it when people don’t show up.” He stopped and looked directly at Jake, his eyes friendly. “I’ll call. Now how about clearing out of here and letting me get back to work.”
Jake walked over to the card catalogues and fingered the brass pulls on the drawers. “Catching real criminals,” he said. “In here.”
“That’s right, real criminals. Careful of the merchandise. That’s the most valuable thing in Berlin.”
“I heard about the paper mill. Some break.”
“Maybe God figured he owed us one. Finally,” he said, a gravelly voice.
“Mind if I have a look? See what they’re like?” Jake said, pulling open a drawer before Bernie could answer. The Bs were near the back, a row of Brandts. Helga, Helmut, no Helene. He pulled his hand away, feeling relieved and ashamed at the same time. How could he have thought there would be? But how could you be sure who anyone was anymore? He remembered that first night, looking down on the old woman in the garden, wondering. What did you do? Were you one of them? The girls on Potsdamerstrasse, the bicycles going past KaDeWe, the woman in his old flat-everyone in Berlin had become a suspect. Who were you before? But Bernie knew. It was all here in black-and-white, typed on cards. His fingers flipped again. Perhaps he was a special case, the professor had said. Berthold. Dieter. There- Emil. Not a special case. But maybe a different Emil Brandt. He took out the card. No, his address. Her address. 1938. All the time Jake had known him. His eyes went down the card. A party decoration. For what? An SS appointment, in 1944. SS. Emil. A nice man who saw numbers in his head.
