Hitler's Angel
Authors: Kris Rusch
This one is in memory of Kent Patterson.
ONE
F
ritz pats his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. The pack is nearly empty, the cellophane crinkling beneath his fingers. The girl watches him, her wide, round American eyes taking in each movement. She perches on the edge of his metal kitchen chair. He has not risen from his seat. He doesn’t want her to see that the orange plastic has ripped, revealing a mottled brown stuffing and the coil of a spring
.
The apartment is bad enough: two rooms with a makeshift kitchen and a bath down the hall. He can afford better but he still sees luxury as a sign of
schiebers
and politicians – men who get rich off the pain of others. His money has come from the careful investment of his twenty-year-old windfall into television and business machines. He never speaks of those investments, made outside of Germany into American companies. He sees it all as vaguely illegal, although young Germans of today would probably applaud his foresight
.
He pulls the cigarette slowly from the top of the pack and resists the urge to sniff the tobacco as if he held a Cuban cigar. His cigarettes are thin, wrapped in brown paper, and unfiltered. He read in the American propaganda he receives that such cigarettes can kill
a man – they have gone so far as to ban television advertising of all cigarettes in the United States – but they seem to have no effect on him. His fingertips are stained with nicotine, but his hands are unrecognisable to him anyway – thick, covered with tufts of white hair, with deep wrinkles. They look like his grandfather’s hands, the hands of a man who died before this century, now in its seventy-second year, was born
.
‘You Americans all act as if the Demmelmayer case is the only thing that happened in Bavaria in 1929.’ He grabs the matches off his scarred end table. He flips open the match lid, pauses, and adds with only a touch of sarcasm, ‘There was a worldwide financial collapse in 1929.’
‘The Demmelmayer case was important to police work,’ the girl says. Her German is slightly accented. If he struggles, he can separate out the American inflections and discover how many of her teachers were Bavarian, Prussian, Pomeranian – or just plain ignorant
.
With a single movement, he rips out a match. ‘I have already talked about Demmelmayer. To schoolboys in the Fifties, BBC commentators in the Sixties, and now to you. Someone wrote an entire book on the case. You can find all you need in there. You do not need to speak to me. I have no more to say.’
‘People have written about the case’s sensationalism,’ she says. ‘I am studying how it fits into the science of crime-solving. For my dissertation.’
He studies her a moment. Americans have flooded Munich all spring to prepare for the Olympics, and to see West Germany. She is no different. She has taken advantage of the cheap airplane tickets to do primary research on her doctoral dissertation, and she hounded him until he finally agreed to this interview. He still isn’t
sure he should have let her into the apartment. When she came to the door, he stared at her in dumbfounded awe, unable to speak for nearly a moment
.
The round doe eyes. The high cheekbones. The rich brownish blonde hair. She is a ghost from his past returned
.
Until she speaks
.
‘No one has examined the importance of your role,’ she says
.
He blinks, still astounded at her uncanny resemblance to a woman fifty years dead. ‘What is your name again?’ he asks, more to clear his mind than to refresh his memory
.
‘Annie. Annie Pohlmann.’
‘Well, Miss Annie Pohlmann, they have all looked at the importance of the investigator. I have been a celebrity twice for this case. Once when I solved it, and then again when your Mr Hitchcock considered Demmelmayer as a base for one of his films.’
‘I know about that.’ Her voice is soft. ‘He was never able to get a script he liked.’
‘The case was not dramatic enough for him.’ Fritz turns the match over in his hand. He remembers the man. Rotund, very British. A bit too interested in the graphic details. Fritz could not confide in Hitchcock, even though he had another story that might have interested the filmmaker. But despite their failure to work together, word of Hitchcock’s interest was enough for articles on Demmelmayer, then a book, and later a bad television film, all of which gave Fritz enough money to last the rest of his life
.
The girl shakes her head. ‘Perhaps I am not communicating this clearly. I am writing about the way the inspector’s mind works, the way it puts the details together. I believe that only certain people can solve certain crimes.’
She doesn’t know how right she is. He puts the cigarette in his mouth. ‘And then what?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘After the crime is solved. It is like a movie, no? To your American senses. The crime is solved and all is well.’
She glances at the room, at its shabbiness, and her cheeks flush. She thinks he is talking about wealth
.
He is not
.
‘I expect it took a toll on you,’ she says politely
.
‘What did?’
‘Demmelmayer.’
He snorts, the idea absurd, and with a flick of his thumb, lights the match. ‘And what led you to that conclusion?’
‘You retired soon after.’
‘No.’ The match burns down to his fingertips. He shakes it out. The unlit cigarette bobs against his lips as he speaks. ‘I worked another three years. No one remembers that. No one speaks of it.’
‘Under Hitler?’
‘I thought you were an historian,’ he snaps
.
‘Of police procedures. I have no interest in Nazi Germany.’
He stares at her a moment, astounded that she believes she can study one part of a culture without studying another. The procedures he used, the procedures he changed, evolved because he was German, because he had been a soldier, because he had starved
.
Because of Gisela
.
He takes a deep breath, says, ‘Hitler did not come to power until 1933. What do they teach you in your American schools?’
‘Apparently not enough.’ She speaks with a touch of wry humour, as if she knows her education is lacking
.
‘Then you should know that the Nazis introduced many new police techniques.’
‘None I want to study,’ she says
.
‘Because you shock easily?’
She shakes her head. ‘I do not believe in studying the deeds of evil men.’
He strikes another match and, with a shaking hand, lights his cigarette. ‘You know a man’s heart, then?’
She frowns, swallows, and in an unconscious gesture, draws her bag closer to her body. ‘None of the histories say you were a Nazi.’
‘Many men go to great lengths to hide their past.’ He takes a drag. The nicotine is cool against his throat
.
‘So you were.’
He shakes his head. ‘I was in England by then.’
‘But you believed –?’
‘It is not as simple as that.’ He stubs out the cigarette, disappointment filling him. Despite her looks, despite her curiosity, she is the wrong one. ‘You do not need to talk to me.’
She lets her bag fall. It thuds against the floor. His sudden refusal seems to have intrigued her. She glances at the tape recorder she has set on the table beside her. A strand of brown hair falls across her face. He is wrong calling her a girl. She is a woman of perhaps thirty years. Old enough to have children of her own. Old enough to write books about things she does not understand
.
She brings her head back up, looks directly at him. ‘You worked for three more years,’ she says, her doe eyes full of compassion. ‘Yet no one speaks of it.’
He does not move. Her words catch him, her expression holds him. In it, there is something he has waited a long time to see
.
‘Why does no one speak of it?’ she asks
.
The air is full of a sudden tension. The question he has waited almost four decades to hear
.
‘Because they do not think it important,’ he says. The words are a test. The final test. If she passes it, he will talk to her
.
‘And you do.’
He takes another cigarette, presses its end against the half-smoked butt, using the old cigarette to light the new. Then he takes a puff, letting the acrid, unfiltered taste burn the back of his throat. He releases the smoke through his nostrils. The white wisps curl around his face, obscuring her and the tiny, shabby room. ‘I think,’ he says, pulling the cigarette from his mouth, ‘the things people fail to talk about are always the most important, don’t you?’
The smoke clears. He puts the cigarette on his ash tray. She tucks the loose strand of hair behind her ear. Americans all have a fresh-faced look, an innocence bred of good food and adequate medical care. She seems to have no response
.
He sighs. For a moment, he thought she would be the one. But she has shown she is not. For a moment, though, he believed…
He stubs out the cigarette. The interview is over, and he wants a glass of beer. He tried to speak to her, but like the last, she is not willing to listen. Well, then. Perhaps the next. Or the next
.
Please God, he hopes someone will listen before he dies
.
‘Will you tell me why you quit?’ she asks, her voice soft
.
His breath catches in his throat. He wishes he has not put out his cigarette. He tries not to sound too eager when he says, ‘If you listen to the whole story.’
T
he Föhn was still blowing when he arrived at Prinzregentenplaz. The wind carried dust from the gardens lining the buildings, off the cobbled streets, and into his eyes. He hated the Föhn – the wind some said brought hallucinations, and others claimed brought truth. Crime increased during the Föhn, a fact he always found odd, since the light Münich was so famous for was clearer when the strange wind blew down from the Alps. The Föhn had started the day before and had continued all night. And he had known, with a certainty that bordered on foresight, that change flew on this wind.
So he was not surprised to be called on a Saturday morning to one of the richest sections of the city, within walking distance of the
Englischer Garten
, the only peaceful place in the city. The few cars parked alongside the street were black and expensive, most of them Mercedes. The houses were Victorian, although some of the newer sported art nouveau facades. This block was full of apartment buildings, built for luxury, many two and three centuries old.
He stood in front of 16 Prinzregentenplaz, hands in the
pockets of his overcoat. So far, only the men from his unit and the street police had arrived. Good. With a murder in a location like this, the political inspectors could not be far behind.