The Informer (9 page)

Armina watched the man’s apartment near the dates when
Potamanthus distinctus
was going to appear on a stream in the Spreeland. The man left his apartment with some leather cases, one of them a leather tube for a fishing rod, and a large gladstone that was just the thing to hold a fishing vest, waders, and a net. But he only went by taxi to the center of the city, where he checked into a hotel. Then he went to the bar, where he had a drink before he went out to a small park, opposite an apartment building, where he waited like a fisherman on a bank who is trying to see a fish.

Everything about his posture, his lack of movement, was mesmerizing—he hardly seemed to breathe, and he didn’t flinch at the sounds of a backfire in the street or react to children who chased a ball or a woman who wheeled a baby in a perambulator. Instead, his silent immobility suggested something that coiled, that put itself in a position to gather strength for a strike. He moved his head once to follow the path of a couple, a young woman in a filmy purple dress and a man in a dark suit—the fisherman’s eyes followed them with a hungry glow, a brightness that suggested a coal that had been blown into an orange intensity. Then he went back to waiting.

A woman came out of the building he watched. She was well dressed, elegant, her dark hair heavy and trimmed so it fell around her face and was touched with filaments of light. The fisherman stood up from the bench. He followed at a distance, but as the woman walked toward the park, he
steadily reduced the distance, as though he were reeling her in. He had an almost perfect instinct for this: as the people on the street became more sparse, he closed in, and at the moment, a brief, almost vanishing instant, when no one else was around and when the park was close by, he took the woman’s arm, whispered in her ear, and steered her, with a subdued jerk, into the park.

Armina came into the miasma of terror on the part of the woman who was almost running on the tips of her toes to keep up as the man pushed her: she seemed to think that if she just went along, if she just tried to be nice, or compliant, if she just gave in, everything would be all right. Armina arrested him and found he was carrying a package of cigarettes of the brand she usually found around a woman who had been left in the park, an ice pick (with a tapped handle to give a better grip), and a silk cord.

She was promoted, and the men in the Inspectorate took her to a bar, where they all got drunk, Armina, too. Every now and then one of the men who worked in Inspectorate A asked her for help.

The Fisherman was tried and convicted, but every detail, however horrible, came out at the trial, and given the fascination with this kind of thing, all of these details, every one, were reported in the newspapers. Everyone knew what he had done with an ice pick, the cord, how he had smoked cigarettes and left them where he had done his work. The man had used the cigarettes to make those small marks, but before that he had used the silk cord until the women were almost unconscious, and then finally he got to the ice pick. He had used the cord on himself, too, when he had had trouble keeping an erection. “To keep the hydraulics going” is the way he described it. He had told his wife, a mousy woman with a limp, who sat through the trial and bit her fingernails, that he had gone fishing. “The hatch of
Potamanthus distinctus
is close now,” he’d say. “The fishing is going to be good.”

Now, Armina realized that the crimes she looked at could easily be done by a man, or men, who were using the details of what they had read about the Fisherman to mask who they were. She knew that sooner or later, they would add a detail of their own, and that was what she was looking for. A new detail. Well, she had a list to begin. She’d keep an eye out for something unexpected: some correlation, like the mayflies, that suggested
some actions that took place with motives disguised by the most ordinary event.

R
ITTER’S OFFICE WAS
one flight up. She stopped in the stairwell, in the scent of soap that was used to wash the steps every night, and began to think of an excuse. Ritter had a knack, something like the Moth’s: Ritter perceived her in a way that made even her best motives look like ploys, false stances, a ruse of some kind. And the only way to get away from his condescension was to appease him, to do what he wanted, so that he would give her a small, warm, almost friendly smile. Almost. She took some solace in the file that she had in her hand, where she had made a list of the names of men who interested her. And the one woman.

She went through the stairwell door to the hallway and up to Ritter’s door. The sound of typing was loud here, too, slow, steady, unstoppable as it went through the details of the events that needed to be recorded in the Berlin Police Department each day. A blunt instrument. Evidence of a desperate struggle. She knocked and pushed the door open, leaning into the oak and glass door with the brass fixtures, the knob seeming bigger than ever.

“Armina,” he said. “How nice to see you. Come in.”

He came around and closed the door behind her.

“Well, that’s better,” he said. “Won’t you sit down?”

She took the chair that was in front of his desk, sat back, tried to smile.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

Ritter put a cigarette into his mouth, turned the wheel on a lighter, which made a spark like one from a burning fuse, and the flame looked like a yellow sequin. Armina wished he would come with her to smell the dead leaves, the lingering perfume, to look at the bunched-up skirt….

“They’re getting younger,” she said.

“That’s to be expected,” he said.

“There’s less time between them,” she said.

Ritter flicked his cigarette against an onyx ashtray.

“Can we talk frankly?” he said.

“What other kind of talk is there?” she said.

He smiled.

“Yes, of course. What else is there? What are you doing about the women in the park?”

“I’m looking around,” she said.

“That’s good to hear.”

“I don’t think there’s a political aspect to this. So, I don’t think it’s something for you,” she said. “The best thing is to look into what is going on with an open mind.”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

The typing from the hall was insistent, as though one letter or number were being typed over and over: 9,9,9,9. She thought of the shape of a young woman at the bottom of a gully, the torn stockings, the pile of yellowing cigarette butts.

“So, who are you looking at? Have you got some names for me?”

She opened the file and took out the piece of paper with her neat handwriting on it.

“Andreas Weber, Alda and Michael Bauer,” she said.

“Weber?” said Ritter. “A banker? The sniffer?”

“That’s him,” said Armina.

“Give him a try,” he said.

“I intend to,” said Armina. “Edel Arnwolf, Erich Kortig, Josef Hahn.”

“Who are they?” said Ritter.

“They go to dump girls,” said Armina.

“Hmmmm,” said Ritter. “Scum.”

“Bruno Hauptmann,” said Armina.

“Where did you get that name?” said Ritter.

“I went to the train station,” she said.

“The Moth,” said Ritter. “He’s still there? That’s who you talked to?”

“Hauptmann. Bruno Hauptmann,” she said, if only to get out of his office and to go about her work. “He lives in Wilmersdorf.”

“I know Bruno Hauptmann,” said Ritter. “I went to school with him. The
Gymnasium
. The university.”

“Maybe you can help me,” said Armina.

“Look. Bruno has an organization to help young women get out of the
park. That’s why he’s being accused. Well, don’t you see? The dumpy man with the red hair, the Moth, wants to get rid of anyone who would stop girls from working for him. I would have thought you were more adroit than that.”

“I think we should look into it,” said Armina.

“No,” said Ritter. “I can vouch for Bruno. Forget it.”

The typing stopped outside. They waited. A secretary ripped a piece of paper out of the carriage of a typewriter. The sound was like someone skinning a deer and pulling the hide away from the meat.

“I’m not so sure about that,” she said.

“I am,” he said. “Drop it.”

“Look,” she said.

“There’s no looking,” he said. “I’ll vouch for Hauptmann. That’s enough. Who else have you got?”

The paper trembled in her fingers, and as she looked at Ritter she was appalled he could see her anger in such a small gesture. She looked down at the sheet and then at Ritter as she made it stop.

“So?” said Ritter.

“Harvey Becker, Konrad Richter, Otto Mayer,” she said.

“Who are they?” he said.

She held the paper while she kept her eyes on him. Was she going to let him push her around, just like that?

“They’ve hurt their wives,” she said. “Put them in the hospital. They’re getting worse.”

“Good,” said Ritter. “Stick with them. That’s where you’re going to find what you’re looking for.”

She stood up and waited, certain that if she moved toward the door she would be acquiescing. He didn’t look up. She squared her shoulders, waited.

“Well, thanks for coming in. Let me know if you turn up anything else. But, be smart. Forget Hauptmann.”

She stood there for a while, but finally she went to the door, certain that just by turning, by moving, some communication had taken place. Well, she would have to find a way to resist, as though it were possible to retrieve that moment in which they had both been so perfectly poised and
when anything was possible. The typing started again and the scent of cigars rose from the floor below.

In her office she opened the map of the park again, smoothing out the paper, which made a sound like remote thunder, and when she did she thought of a Russian toast, “To us, fuck them,” but then she thought, Who is “us”? Me and my imaginary correspondent? Stop, she thought, just stop. You have enough to worry about.

F
elix’s gray skin added to the effect of his oversize coat. He looked around, from under his brows, as though he wanted to hide the fact that he was taking things in, and then he groomed Gaelle with his nicotine-stained fingers, smelled her underarms, smoothed the dress over her small hips, checked to see that the seams in her stockings were straight. “You’ve got to watch yourself,” said Felix to Gaelle. “Why, you’re an expensive item, and you want to look like it.” The nicotine stains on his index and second fingers had the shape of a hemisphere.

Armina walked up the avenue and stopped behind him as his fingers touched a button on Gaelle’s blouse and then undid it to expose her underwear. Then he said, with his back to Armina, somehow knowing she was there without seeing her, “Why, you must be a cop? What do you want?”

“I’d like some help,” said Armina.

“You hear that, my sweet?” he said to Gaelle. “Help.” He faced Armina. “You don’t think much of me, do you? My skin’s gray and wrinkled. So, I must be a punk, right? Isn’t that what a cop thinks?”

“I don’t think much of anything at all,” said Armina.

“Oh,” said Felix. “I know what my place is. I’ve been taught what it is. You won’t catch me reaching for anything above my station. Why, look at my leg.” He walked back and forth and hit his leg with the flat of his hand. “See? I’ve been taught.”

“A lot of girls are frightened,” said Gaelle. “What are you doing about it?”

“That’s why I’m here,” said Armina.

“Well, well,” said Felix. “And you come down here for people like us? For a limping boy and a girl with a scar?”

Felix shook a cigarette out of a blue package with a furtive air, and lit
it with a match he struck on his thumbnail. He worked on the cigarette with a quick sucking, the smoke coming out of his nostrils in two long plumes, like a horse breathing in the cold.

“You’re going to stunt your growth if you keep smoking like that,” said Gaelle.

“Don’t make me laugh,” said Felix. “That’s an old wives’ tale.” He turned to Armina. “I take what I get. I don’t ask for more. People like us, what can we expect? Mercy? Why, Gaelle, wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yes,” said Gaelle. “I’d like that.”

“We’ve got a poor man’s mercy,” said Felix.

“What’s that?” said Armina.

“Why, you won’t catch me giving an opinion on anything. Oh, no,” he said. “I know what’s what. And where I’m supposed to stay. I’ve been taught. You know what these streets are like if you haven’t got any money?”

A car came along, slowed down, the driver’s eyes on Gaelle. Then it speeded up again and disappeared into the clutter of automobiles.

“Do you ever go with older men?” said Armina.

“So, you want help with Marie Rote?” said Felix.

“That’s right,” said Armina.

“It’s above me to make a comment. But there were times when I had my doubts about Marie Rote. She went with men who were nutters. Why, she’d even go with Crazy Peter.”

“She was dumb,” said Gaelle.

“Well, that’s the way of it,” said Felix. “Why, I don’t think you can imagine the kinds of people who are around here after dark.”

Armina looked at him.

“I think I can,” she said.

Felix shrugged. The skin around his eyes was wrinkled.

“Look,” said Gaelle. “Let’s say a girl helps you. She starts playing around with one of these guys, you know, like the one you’re looking for. What if the guy finds out she’s just a tool of the cops? What is the guy going to do? How is he going to protect himself?”

“That’s what I’m trying to say,” said Felix. “It’s just me, so you don’t have to listen. But playing around with some of these guys in the park is not a smart thing.”

“I’m asking for help,” said Armina.

Gaelle walked back and forth, her hips sleek in her dress, her shape luminescent in the lights from the cars.

“Let me think about it,” she said.

Gaelle turned her face as a challenge: was Armina a snob, a woman who was smug and condescending, who wouldn’t even go shopping with someone like Gaelle? And in the gesture, in the odd vulnerability of the moment, Gaelle realized that’s just what she wanted to do. They might go to the department stores, look through the lingerie, have lunch in that place where each room had a different theme, a jungle complete with rain, an American Wild West scene, a street in Paris. The fantastical quality of the decorations made Gaelle think that all things were possible, even friendship.

“Let me think about it,” said Gaelle. “Do you have a card or something?”

Armina took a card from her handbag. Gaelle passed it over to Felix, who held it by the tips of his fingers, as though it were crawling with germs. He shook another cigarette from the blue package and lighted it, the smoke rising around him in a curling mass.

“So, tell me,” said Armina. “What’s a poor man’s mercy?”

“Cunning,” said Felix as he put the card in his pocket.