Jake watched him open the door to the kitchen. More packing cases, a pile of canned goods, cartons of cigarettes. Gifts. He was still sipping the brandy, but moved around the small space with steady efficiency, one of those drinkers who never seem affected until they pass out at night. Jake went over to the shelves. Rows of westerns. Karl May, the German Zane Grey. Gunfights in Yuma. Sheriffs and posses tracking through sagebrush. An unexpected vice at the edge of Kreuzberg.
“Where did you get the map?” Jake said. The whole city, dotted with pins.
“My office. It wasn’t safe in the Alex, with the bombs. Now I like to look at it sometimes. It makes me think Berlin is still out there. All the streets.” He came into the room with two cups. “It’s important to know where you are in police work. The where, very important.” He handed Jake a cup. “Where was your murder?”
“Potsdam,” Jake said, glancing involuntarily at the map, as if the body would appear in the ribbons of blue lakes in the lower left corner.
“Potsdam? An American?” He followed Jake’s eyes to the edge of the map. “With the conference?”
“No. He had ten thousand dollars,” Jake said, baiting a hook.
Gunther looked at him, then motioned him to a table chair. “Sit.” He sank into the armchair, moving the book aside. “So tell me.”
It took ten minutes. There wasn’t much to tell, and Gunther’s expression discouraged speculation. He had taken off his glasses, his eyelids lowered to slits, and he listened without nodding, the only sign of life a steady movement of his hand from coffee cup to brandy glass.
“I’ll know more when I hear back from Bernie,” Jake finished.
Gunther pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed it in thought, then put back his glasses.
“What will you know?” he said finally.
“Who he was, what he was like.”
“You think that would be useful,” Gunther said. “Who.”
“Don’t you?”
“Usually,” he said, taking a drink. “If this were before. Now? Let me explain something to you. I saved the map.” He cocked his head toward the wall. “But everything else was lost. Fingerprint files. Criminal picture files. General files. We don’t know who anyone is in Berlin. No residency records. Lost. Something is stolen, you can’t look in the hock shops, the usual places. They’re gone. If it’s sold to a soldier, he sends it home. No trace. No policeman in Berlin can solve a crime now. Not even a retired one.”
“It’s not a German crime.”
“Then why come to me?”
“Because you know the black market.”
“You think so?”
“You get a lot of gifts.”
“Yes, I’m so rich,” he said, lifting his hand to the room. “Tins of corned beef. A treasure.”
“You know how it works, or you wouldn’t be eating. You know how Berlin works.”
“How Berlin works,” Gunther said, grunting again.
“Even now. Germans run the market. Probably the same ones who ran things before. You’d know them. So which one did Tully know? He wasn’t making a casual deal. He wasn’t in Berlin, he came to Berlin.”
Gunther slowly took out a cigarette and watched Jake as he lit it. “Good. That’s the first point. You saw that. What else?”
A detective testing a recruit. Jake leaned forward.
“The point is the money. There’s too much.”
Gunther shook his head. “No, you missed the point. The point is that he still had it.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Herr Geismar. A man sells something. The buyer shoots him. Would he not take the money back? Why would he leave it?”
Jake sat back, disconcerted. The obvious question, overlooked by everybody except a bent cop, still on the job behind the brandy haze. “Meaning?”
“Meaning the buyer and the killer are not necessarily the same. In fact, not the same. How could it be? You’re looking for the wrong man.”
Jake got up and walked over to the map. “The one leads to the other. Has to. There’s still the money.”
“Yes, the money,” Gunther said, following him with his eyes. “That interests you. It’s the other point that interests me. Where.”
“Potsdam,” Jake said dully, looking at the map.
“Potsdam,” Gunther repeated. “Which the Russians have closed off. No one has been there for days. Not even the people you think I know.” He took another drink. “For them, a real inconvenience. No market day-a serious loss. But they can’t get in. And your soldier can. How is that?”
“Maybe he was invited.”
Gunther nodded. “The final point. But for you, also the end. A Russian? Children with guns. They don’t need a reason to shoot. You will never find him.”
“The black market doesn’t work by sector. It’s all over the city. This much money-even a Russian-someone will know something. People talk.” Jake went back to his chair and leaned forward again. “They’d talk to you. They know you.”
Gunther lifted his head.
“I can pay,” Jake said.
“I’m not an informer.”
“No. A cop.”
“Retired,” Gunther said sourly. “With a pension.” He raised his glass to the packing cases.
“And how long do you think that will last? Once the MPs get started. An American killed-they have to do something about that. Clean things up. At least for a while. You could use a little insurance.”
