Children of Wrath (5 page)

Willi looked away. He’d heard it all before … every time Klemper was here. How a child needed to be filled with shame. Terrified of authority. All independence crushed. For their own good. Martin Luther had famously declared he’d rather have a dead son than a disobedient one. In this respect, Willi thought, perhaps Jewish Germans did differ from many of their Protestant neighbors.

Once, when he was nine or ten, he recalled, he’d run away to see the Eiffel Tower. Saved his allowance. Bought a train ticket. Almost made it to the French border too, when a railroad officer nabbed him and dragged him back to Berlin. “Are you going to catch it when you get home,” he’d warned all the way. “I ran off when I was a kid and I can still feel it.” At the zoo station, though, Willi’s parents had smothered him with so many kisses the officer just stood there, mortified.

A more current recollection stiffened Willi’s spine.

That library memo about the circled Bible passage.

How ironic. Before he’d left work today he’d received a response to the inquiry he’d submitted.
Children of wrath,
it explained, was a term associated with a marginal theological doctrine known as Total Depravity. In his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul described the unsaved as being “by nature children of wrath.” Hard-liners in several Protestant denominations cited this phrase as proof of original sin: that all men are born inherently evil, unable to attain salvation except through God’s grace. These same hard-liners, according to the library, believed the passage underscored the bitter truth that, because babies were born “totally depraved,” infants who died unsaved were lost for all eternity. The Bible, however, the report concluded, never addressed any such idea, Total Depravity being a strictly human dogma. Which was a good thing, Willi supposed.

Not that it mattered anymore. He slumped in the chair.

The case was no longer his.

“
Mutter
—” An earsplitting shriek reached the terrace. “The babies!”

Everyone rushed inside.

As they huddled around the fish tank, the guppy babies, it was plain to see, seemed to have disappeared. They were not at the top of the tank. Not at the bottom. Not swimming around the ceramic castle on the Rhine with its mounted knights on a drawbridge.

“What are you looking for?” Elsie the acrobat emerged from the shadows suddenly with a strange glint in her eyes. “Those babies are gone.” She seemed to derive pleasure from the news. “You didn’t take proper care of them. Newborn guppies need a place to hide or to be removed to another tank. Otherwise”—she shrugged—“the mother just”—a small smile drew across her lips—“eats them.”

Her father slapped the side of her head. “Liar!”

Her mother seized her arm. “Is this how we raised you, to say such things?”

“It’s not a lie,” the girl cried. “After she gives birth, the mother’s starving and eats her babies. Every last one.”

“Preposterous.” Herr Klemper’s eyes bulged. “Against all laws of nature.”

“Then how come it’s in my biology book,” Elsie sneered.

Willi’s instinct was to shield his boys. But the older one at least, Erich, had a protective grip around the shoulder of his younger brother, Stefan. And neither, Willi noticed, was much concerned with the Klemper girl. Their eyes were fixed on Heinz Winkelmann, whose skin had turned as white as the sand in his new aquarium.

“Is it true?” he demanded to know. “Did the mother eat her babies?”

No one seemed willing to deny it. After a protracted moment, the pudgy-faced boy, nine years old today, held his stomach as if he’d been bitten and let out a bloodcurdling shriek.

Too shocked even to move, his parents simply stared at him.

The brother-in-law, Klemper, after some moments, felt compelled to divert onus off his own child and offer a word to the wise. “If you permit the boy to carry on so, Otto, you’ll ruin him for life: both for yourself and the fatherland.”

Heinz shrieked even louder.

“Otto doesn’t have your disciplinary skills, dear,” Frau Klemper explained about her brother-in-law.

“But he’ll turn the boy into a fairy.”

Willi watched Winkelmann hold his own a moment, then surrender to the superiority of his brother-in-law’s logic, his whole face turning to a block of stone.

“This stops right now.” He demanded of his son, “What makes you think you can carry on so? We Germans don’t cry. We face truth as it is.” His usually gentle blue eyes were cold as steel as Heinzie sought refuge behind his mother’s legs.

“Perhaps you’re being too harsh on the boy,” Willi said, trying to apply some brakes on his neighbor’s rage.

Otto flashed him a hate-filled glare. “No. A boy’s got to learn that life is a struggle—that only the fittest survive. If those babies didn’t live, it was because they weren’t strong enough.”

“But look … look.” Vicki was pointing. “One’s still there, Otto. See, way up top, in the castle tower.”

“Rescue it, Papa,” Heinz wailed. “Before she finds him.”

One glance at his brother-in-law and Winkelmann’s glare hardened. “Absolutely not. If that baby lives, it will because of its own strength, not because we intervened and—”

Like an arrow, the mother shot up and rendered the whole point moot.

Four

“You know what they say: everything has an end,” Herr Strohmeyer proclaimed as they entered the long, cold mixing rooms. “Except”—he cocked his head to make certain Willi understood a punch line was coming—“sausages. They have two!”

Willi did his best to smile. But this guided tour, he was thinking between dull pangs in his brain, seemed to prove some things had no end at all.

Tall, bald Strohmeyer, scion of Berlin’s premier
Wurst
dynasty since 1892, had been walking Willi through the family plant for what seemed hours now, prattling away in little more than advertising slogans. “A good manufacturer is as discriminating about what goes into his sausage as a winemaker.” Not that Willi’s headache was entirely due to the Sausage King’s self-promotion. Or his rancid jokes. It had been an exasperating week altogether.

A dozen deaths had now been attributed to
Listeria monocytogenes
. Nearly a thousand people across Berlin sickened from infected sausages, some quite severely. Still, the Ministry of Public Health was nowhere near containing the menace. Across the city dozens of companies and thousands of butchers were involved in the wholesale production, distribution, and sale of this staple German food. Tracing the origin of the contamination through retailer, wholesaler, parts suppliers, stockyards … it was a nightmare.

“And of course, the variety. Endless…”

Plus, Willi’d practically had to apprentice in sausage making to assess the possibility of criminal intention.

“You have your fresh sausage.” Strohmeyer was counting on his fingers. “Your smoked sausage, your dry sausage, your semidry.”

It was about as much as a Kripo officer could swallow.

“Not to mention your various casings: your hog, your sheep, your beef.”

The side-winding necessary only added to his frustration at having been assigned to this investigation in the first place. Criminal negligence, maybe. But intention? Willi could hardly help feeling he’d been yanked off a major multiple homicide, which by all rights should have been his, and handed a real tub of lard.

“But you mustn’t underestimate what goes into it.” Strohmeyer was smiling at Willi gravely. “Sausage making is an ancient art, Herr Sergeant-Detektiv. After you cut and grind and mix, you’ve first got to add the…”

Willi’s thoughts escaped back to that burlap sack. What track was Freksa taking on the investigation? Was he following up on the sewer line? What about that library memo he’d passed on to him about Total Depravity? Freksa hadn’t replied. His feelings toward Willi were no secret. But he wouldn’t go so far as to let prejudice get in the way of an investigation, would he?

“Of course any filler must be of the highest quality and possess the proper lean-to-fat ratio. And absolutely fresh. If not”—Strohmeyer lowered his voice as if afraid to curse things further—“the kiss of death.”

An ironic phrase, Willi thought, considering how many had received exactly that from his family’s sausages. Not that the man’s lament was difficult to understand. The Strohmeyer plant, across Landsberger Allee from the vast Central Stockyards, employed nearly a hundred workers, many of whom now stood about, observing their boss showing another official around. The giant grinders, the commercial mixers, the slicers, the mincers, the huge stuffing machines … all silent. Wages frozen. The meat industry and its associated trade unions on the same side for once, struggling even now to have the citywide sausage ban annulled in court. It was easy to sympathize with their plight. But Willi couldn’t stop picturing the mother of the six-year-old he’d interviewed earlier this week …

“We thought she just had a stomach flu.” The mother kept folding and unfolding a little sweater in her lap, rubbing it across her palm. “We even sent her to school.” Her voice was so hoarse it was barely audible, like when Vicki had laryngitis. “But that night the diarrhea was so terrible.” Willi’d shuddered to imagine something like that happening to one of his boys. “Filled with blood. And then the fever … and those convulsions. We ran her to the hospital, but—” She clutched the sweater to her neck.

Over the years he’d conducted more than one interview with a grieving parent. But he’d never, as he did this time, had to wipe tears from his eyes on the ride home.

Since the first victims came from lower-class neighborhoods, investigators initially guessed the sausages might be made of
Freibank,
meat cut from the carcasses of diseased animals, sterilized by boiling, then sold via city markets to the very poor. It soon became apparent, however, that the victims came from not only the poorest but also the richest neighborhoods in Berlin, and a number of middle-class ones too.
Listeria
had turned up in half a dozen kinds of sausages, traced to at least a dozen butcher shops, all of which purchased their products from the giant wholesale market near Alexanderplatz. Willi’d grown up in Berlin, lived here all his life, seen the huge Central Market halls on Neue Friedrich Strasse countless times, just a block from the Police Presidium. But he’d never stepped inside.

Until three days ago.

A vast arcade of brick and iron several stories tall greeted him with daylight pouring through giant windows on either end. A cacophony of noise from the sea of wholesalers’ stalls, many hundreds supplying a city of 4 million with meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, all under one roof. Retail greengrocers, butchers, fishmongers, thronging every square meter in search of a deal.

Willi was met by one of the top administrators, who’d dutifully shown off the refrigeration chambers beneath the great halls, connected directly to the city railroad, and the hydraulic systems that unloaded products from train cars with unparalleled rapidity. He was informed of the elaborate regulations regarding the handling of foodstuffs: meat allowed inside only at certain hours and only through specified entryways, produce through other entries at other times. He was assured that all dealerships were required to unpack their stock at least once every seven days and destroy all unsound articles. A team of inspectors was attached to each sales hall, as well as a medical station with a skilled nurse. No, the problem of
Listeria
had certainly not originated at the Central Market.

Not that anyone said it had.

The immense hall housing the sausage wholesalers was easily recognizable by its lack of customers. Day three of the sausage ban and the stalls had been empty except for the scores of salesmen wringing their hands and the piles of Bierwurst, Blutwurst, Bockwurst, Bratwurst, Landjager, Leberkase, Knackwurst, Gelbwurst. Nearly two hundred kinds of sausages awaiting reprieve. The Ministry of Public Health had focused on two dealerships: Klingel Brothers, supplier for nine of thirteen butcher shops known to be connected with the contamination, and Zuckerhof, across the aisle, supplier of seven. Both had procured their merchandise directly from local producers, largely, though not exclusively, Strohmeyer Wurst A.G. Neither, however, believed
Listeria
could have originated there.

In separate interviews both Klingel and Zuckerhof were almost vehement with Willi on this point. Strohmeyer’d been in business too long, they insisted, and was far too reputable a manufacturer. The contamination had to have begun with one of his suppliers. And not one of the big ones at the
Viehof,
either. No, the Central Stockyards were too strictly regulated. It had to have been a peddler. Those unscrupulous bastards sold on the cheap in alleys adjacent to the markets, free from rentals and regulatory demands. They were a real menace; Willi just had to look for himself. Legitimate dealers had been complaining about them for years, and what had it gotten them? A catastrophe. Who was going to compensate them for all these goods? If the sausage ban went on much longer, the honest brokers would be dragged under and all that’d be left’d be the cockroach peddlers.

The pounding in Willi’s head had started around this time, growing worse by the day.

*   *   *

This endless tour of the sausage factory only added to it.

“Of course we follow only the strictest safety guidelines published by the Ministry of Public Health itself.” Strohmeyer had turned strident by the time they reached the casing rooms. “No one understands better than we how bacteria can spread through a workplace. We keep our facility spick-and-span, as you can see. Any surface that comes in contact with meat receives generous applications of chlorine bleach. Our employees wash their hands before entering the workplace, or after they do anything that could contaminate them—such as sneezing.”

Willi stared at the rows of big hoppers with their long funnels and adjustable nozzle heads. He could almost see the fatty red mixture pressing through, filling the intestinal casings, casing after casing stuffed, twisted, links spewing forth, carefully wound around each other. A quick glance at Strohmeyer convinced him the Wurst King genuinely believed his own words. But Willi’d spent enough time poring over the records by now to know the rhetoric did not precisely conform to the facts.