Children of Wrath (21 page)

Past the main gates they descended the terrace staircase, and he recalled coming down these same steps when he was a kid. Luna Park was a Berlin tradition. In the plaza below, the fountain still shot five stories high, beyond which cable cars sailed above the shimmering Halensee and its peddling swan boats. Ferris wheels. Waterslides. Roller coasters and sideshows. There couldn’t have been a starker contrast to the world they’d just stepped out of.

It had been a terrible summer. And only half over. The economy wouldn’t quit coming apart. Everywhere, revenues were plummeting. Businesses folding. Tent cities popping up. The Reichstag had rejected all the chancellor’s harsh austerity measures, so the chancellor had dissolved the Reichstag and called for new elections in September. The campaign had turned violent. Radical parties of left and right supplemented sloganeering with brass knuckles and truncheons. Brown-shirted Nazis and Red Front Communists clobbered it out in the streets and parks and on the U-Bahn. Schupo, the security police, were unable to put a lid on their turf war, which only added to the public perception that Berlin was spinning out of control.

That
Der Kinderfresser
couldn’t be caught only escalated the vertigo.

Around the central plaza the scent of roasting peanuts hovered in the air. Flags waved. Clowns juggled. People surged in a dozen directions. “Roller coaster! Roller coaster!” The kids, if no one else, presented a united front.

Willi loathed roller coasters. He didn’t mind speed as long as it was horizontal. But he sure as hell wasn’t letting them go alone. As they waited to buy tickets, he saw how happy Erich and Stefan were to have Heinzie Winkelmann along; they always got on better when their plump, good-natured chum joined in, although Willi wondered about Heinz’s father. Otto had no time to chat anymore, passing in the hall with a curt nod, never once asking about the
Kinderfresser
case—which was very unlike him. Willi assumed he still was depressed about losing his store and having to accept such menial labor in a mailroom, and embarrassed, perhaps, because Willi’d caught him crying that morning. After all, he’d made such a fuss at Heinz in front of them about how Germans didn’t do such things. Yet Vicki said she’d noticed a slight detachment on the part of Irmgard too.

Between the boys, at least, all was laughter. On the roller-coaster dock Willi got in with Stefan while Erich and Heinz jumped in ahead. As the cars yanked off on the long climb to the first precipice, Willi’s stomach began to knot. He’d rather slither through no-man’s-land than endure the twists and turns of this thing. But as they reached the peak and swept over, the kids cried with such delight that Willi just clenched his eyes and prayed they didn’t notice him. How would that look: one of Berlin’s top cops more frightened than his children.

*   *   *

With Freksa’s death the spotlight had suddenly fallen on him.

His reputation had been redeemed.

Because he’d already pointed a finger at the
Viehof
and because it had been his to begin with, the Kommissar had finally awarded him command of the
Kinderfresser
case. “You wanted it, Kraus? It’s yours. Don’t fuck up!” The whole of Berlin was familiar with his name now, and he was treated with a modicum of respect—even by his unit. But the ups and downs of the bloody ordeal remained every bit as nauseating as this ride. As were the complications set in motion with Vicki.

Whoever’d killed Freksa had gotten away with it. For now. The cleaver used to hack him in half held no fingerprints, nor were any discernible tire tracks found on the road outside. The more Willi recalled the noise of the motor, however, the more he was convinced he’d heard a small truck drive by that night. Maybe the Ox’s. The man had vanished entirely. Multiple raids on the peddlers’ market with their mass interrogations had yielded little and only metastasized the problem. The big market had dwindled but smaller ones sprang up in half a dozen other locations, making it impossible to monitor them all.

As the roller coaster swung down a steep bend and back up for another precipitous drop, Willi couldn’t help but clutch the seat. Ahead, Erich and Heinz were waving their arms crazily. Up, up, then over— Willi’s stomach bounced into his heart. He really did hate this thing.

Minutes later he was happier on the Auto Scooter track, which traversed a weird expressionistic landscape of tilted buildings, trees, and mountains designed to induce double vision. Willi, who very much liked fast driving as long as he was the one doing it, tried his best to help Stefan catch Heinz and Erich, but they couldn’t quite make it. Like the Shepherdess, he thought—always just out of reach. Everywhere. Nowhere. For weeks he’d gotten reported sightings of this red-haired abductress, but not a single hard fact. Even High Priestess Helga claimed she’d seen her. And where? In a dream.

“My sheets were drenched with sweat when I awoke,” she’d told him over the phone. “Positively horrifying. But I can’t remember a thing about it, Sergeant.”

Great. Even the dreams were vague.

Sometimes he’d wondered if this Ilse really existed or was just some phantom of the collective unconscious.

When they got to the fun house, the boys went wild in the hall of mirrors, trying to find each other in the maze of reflections. Even Willi began to get confused about what was real and what only seemed it.

Like everyone else in Berlin, he’d adopted the term
Kinderfresser
to describe the perpetrator of a whole set of kidnappings and murders. Whether this Ilse, the Shepherdess, was doing more than grabbing boys off the street, he didn’t know. But this was no one-woman operation, Willi was certain. In the last two months another six boys had gone missing. Even with the whole city on guard.

And Ilse had certainly not cleaved Freksa in two.

At lunch the boys ate schnitzel and kraut while Willi stuck to coffee, his mind drifting back to the lengthy conversation he’d had with his cousin at Passover. After seder, he and Kurt retreated to Willi’s little study while the boys went to Erich’s room to work on the Red Baron’s plane. Amazingly, they came running out an hour later to show it off, completely finished. It had only taken a little diligence, and a thing of singular beauty took flight, some odd three-winged bird. Kurt’s theorizing, meanwhile, suggested a criminal even more bizzare, and without the accompanying beauty.

“Just as the compulsion for order may defend against inner chaos”—he’d taken off his glasses grimly—“this selling the flesh, making designs of the bones, utilizing them, could very well serve to bolster an illusion of usefulness.” He stared at Willi without blinking. “More than likely to compensate for some equally deep-seated belief in his or her own useless
ness
.”

Poverty might play a role.

Certainly there had to be some experience in leather making.

*   *   *

Luna Park’s famous lane of sideshows contained small cabanas, each offering lurid peeks at circus-style oddities. Sword swallowers. Fire-eaters. The boys begged to see the bearded lady, but Willi put his foot down. He had no intention of letting them gawk at some unfortunate woman.

Since the peddlers’ markets had dispersed, he’d switched tactics and focused surveillance on the
Viehof
directly, the by-products zone specifically—where leather makers and bone boilers abounded.

He’d had a rather strange encounter there.

After a week of poring over maps and registration papers, he’d gained all sorts of insight into a world he barely knew existed. Dressed in the long white jacket of a
Viehof
inspector, he was able to poke around for days, speaking to people and getting to know how their operations worked. A web of interlocking streets contained dozens of varying businesses, the largest of which, the tanneries, occupied whole blocks. He’d gotten to inspect the workings of some of these massive facilities, which employed scores of laborers. Truck after truck of freshly skinned cowhides arrived each day from the slaughterhouses. Soaked in huge vats, scraped by hand, tumbled inside drums, and strung out to dry, they were eventually slid between giant rollers, pressed, folded, and shipped to make everything from watchbands to upholstery.

Not as large but far smellier were the plants for rendering fat into tallow. Barrels full of the stinking stuff arrived after each big slaughter, processed for use in candles and soap, shaving cream, lipstick. The gelatin works were of a similar vein, skin, tendons, ligaments, and hooves boiled down to make liquids used as ingredients in everything from marshmallows to shampoo. Horns. Feathers. Quills. Bristles. Nothing was neglected. Plants even rendered oils from the placentas of cow uteruses for use in cosmetics. Several gut-works spun intestines into thin, tough string for such things as musical instruments, tennis rackets, surgical thread. These interested Willi in particular. As did an entire street full of bone boilers and bone crushers, processing marrow and grinding powder for fertilizers and vitamins.

The other day, on an especially stench-filled lane shared by a number of small gelatin and bone works, surrounded in a haze of dust and oily smoke, he did a double take at the vision of a man in a white, blood-splattered smock. The fellow, shaded by a black worker’s cap, was spread-kneed on a stool, smoking. For a second Willi was sure it was the Ox. He was almost as big, and practically as fearsome, but the closer Willi looked, the more he felt certain it wasn’t the Ox. In fact, the more he felt certain it wasn’t even a he. Inadvertently their eyes met, and Willi saw a swift black shadow race across the meaty face before it turned away.

“Blistering hot, eh?” he said to strike up a conversation.

Barely a grunt came in reply, but the voice was coarse and masculine. The facial features too. Even the hands, permanently stained, it seemed, with several sanguine coats, were thick and strong as a man’s. Only there wasn’t a strand of hair on the forearms. And on the neck, no Adam’s apple.

“Must be tough to work here,” he said. “For a woman. You’re the first I’ve seen at the
Viehof
.”

A look of terror flashed across her face. After darting her gaze back and forth to see if anyone was near, she cast a quick glance at him. “I don’t mean no harm.”

She definitely wasn’t from Berlin, her accent so thick it was hard to even understand her, somewhere from the sticks. But Willi could hardly miss the fear still burning in her eyes. Clearly she wasn’t the Shepherdess. Helga the High Priestess had described her former devotee as slender and attractive. This woman was hideous. A thick, red, bulbous nose. Blubbery cheeks webbed with veins. God only knew what she ate to get that size. Truly a freak of nature, Willi thought. Both repellent and deserving of pity.

“I’ve been here since the war.” Round, glassy eyes fastened on him in a furious gambit for sympathy. “When the men were at the front.”

Willi knew in those days women practically ran Berlin. Factories. Streetcars. The
Viehof
too. Must have done a good job because nobody starved in the city, which certainly wasn’t the case in the countryside.

“Didn’t want to lose my job when the war ended so I pretended to be a man. Please, Herr Inspektor, I’m alone in the world … a little sister to support. Don’t report me.” The beefy hands clasped between fat knees in what looked like prayer.

Willi felt bad for her. Why shouldn’t a woman be allowed to do the same job as a man, if capable? He took down her name, where she worked, and her employee number just to make himself look official, but told her not to worry. As long as she was properly registered, he assured, her secret would be safe. The next day, though, when he glanced over the employment files for Reiniger Gelatins where she claimed to work, he couldn’t find the name she’d given him, and the employee number was false.

*   *   *

On the giant Swaying Staircase, which you had to descend while being tossed as if in an earthquake, the kids were laughing so hard they could barely stand. It felt like Willi’s own life these past few months. Every step at a new angle.

All of Berlin had been horrified at Freksa’s death and turned to his replacement to fill the top sleuth’s shoes. Overnight Willi’d become a minor celebrity. The press hounded him. The mayor of Berlin had paid a visit. He’d never before faced such a level of attention and expectation. But access also to certain basics. Such as support, finally.

A few days after his appointment to the
Kinderfresser
case, Kommissar Horthstaler had pranced in with his new assistant, Gunther—a giraffe of a kid, six feet four inches, who soon enough was following Willi about like a duckling. A country boy who’d never been to Berlin until Police Academy, he was almost impossible to dislike, but sometimes rather absurd. Such as when they walked outside and his ridiculously long neck turned ten directions simultaneously, the buildings, traffic, everything transfixing him. Especially the girls. He tripped over his huge feet looking at them all.

On the job he was smart and eager. His enthusiasm knew no bounds. Willi practically had to ask him to stop smiling. Which was why, halfway through his first week, it was impossible not to notice the sullen grimace etched acrosss his rectangular face one day after lunch. When Willi asked about it, the kid at least was honest enough, his bony Adam’s apple plunging like a bucket down a well.

“Is it true, sir, you’re a … Jew?”

Even in 1930, Germany’s rural population was for the most part barely literate peasants. Gunther, not surprisingly, had never been in the same room, much less acquainted, with a Jew. He certainly knew enough about them, though. Jews had not only killed the Son of God but were too arrogant to accept faith in Him after all these centuries. They were shiftless, unscrupulous, swindlers, thieves, perverts. They’d caused the Russian revolution
and
the depression. And, during the war, turned against the fatherland, conspiring with their international brethren to defeat and humiliate Germany.

Willi didn’t have the energy to combat two millennia of hate. But he didn’t want to lose the kid, either. He’d waited too long for a good assistant. So he invited Gunther over for dinner, to Beckmann Strasse. The kid wasn’t sure what to make of it, but was tempted enough by the prospect of a home-cooked meal to consent. By the end of the evening he was so infatuated with Vicki and the kids he didn’t seem to want to leave. He was especially amazed when the boys showed off Willi’s Iron Cross for bravery in combat. Then Vicki came out with a blue silk scarf she’d bought in Paris but Willi never wore.