The Second Son: A Novel (4 page)

Steckler continued to scan the pages. “Yes.” He looked up. “So you’re a Jew?”

It was impressive how Steckler had waited this long to ask, the small spectacled face doing its best at indifference, though mocking it all the same. These days it was where things always began or ended: Jew, the calling card of bureaucracy. This one, however, was shaking things up, slipping the question in at the middle.

“Technically,” said Hoffner. “Yes.”

Steckler returned to the pages. “It’s a world of technicalities now, isn’t it?”

Hoffner said nothing.

“And to have it go unnoticed for over three years,” Steckler added. “Remarkable.”

The Nazis had passed the
Berufsbeamtengesetz
in April of 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service—a clever little piece of legislation to weed out the Jews and the Communists.

Steckler continued to read. “Your mother. She was a Jewess. Ukrainian.”

“She converted,” said Hoffner. “To Lutheranism.” It might have been Methodism—Hoffner had never known which—but why burden Steckler with the details.

“But not before you were born,” said Steckler.

“No.” Hoffner was no less offhand.

“And then she converted back. In 1924. She became a Jew again.”

“She was very persistent.”

Steckler looked up. Moments of uncertainty always brought a tight smile with men like this. He went back to the file. “Probably why there was the confusion.”

“Probably.”

“She died in 1929?”

“She did.”

Steckler turned the page. “You could retire now, you know.” He seemed to be warming a bit. “Take your pension.”

“Not my full pension,” said Hoffner. It was going to be a morning of corrections.

Steckler glanced down to the bottom of the page and then closed the file. He looked up. “I’m sure we could work something out.” A chumminess seemed to be struggling to find its way through. “Only a few years left, Herr Chief Inspector. What are you—fifty-five, fifty-six?”

“Sixty-two,” said Hoffner.

“Really? Even better.” Steckler had no reason to push too hard on this one; time was on his side. “It’s a new generation, Herr Chief Inspector. New direction. New methods. Alexanderplatz isn’t the place you once knew.”

“No,” said Hoffner. “It isn’t.”

“And you’ve had such a very nice career. Impressive, even. Why muddy it now?”

It was uncanny how the Nazis always tossed everything onto everyone else’s lap: Hoffner was the one now muddying things.

“It’s been a good career, yes,” he said.

He wondered if Pimm had sat in a chair like this, commended for his estimable career marks—the takeover of the five territories, the boy and heroin trade north of the Hallesches Gate, his work in rooting out “undesirables” during the Red scare. Probably not. And probably no mention of his help in the Luxemburg and Ufa episodes, not that those were something to crow about these days. In the end, it had come down to Pimm the Jew. Pimm the crime-boss Jew. A bullet to the skull had been more than sufficient.

Hoffner reached into his jacket pocket. “But if you think we can work something out,” he said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and matches, “I’d be happy to leave the murder and mayhem to you and your new generation, Herr Steckler.”

Steckler’s smile returned. “Undersecretary Steckler,” he corrected.

Hoffner nodded, lit up, and said, “Now—about my son.”

*   *   *

Berlin had never looked so red.

Hoffner gazed through the tram window and doubted whether the Nazis recognized the irony. Little Rosa Luxemburg had been dead almost twenty years and yet the streets bled—red with black, of course (who could miss the black at the center), but it was the red that flapped in the air: flags, pennants, flowers. The scarves that hung around the children’s necks were particularly fetching, as if even their little throats were soaked in it. It might have been the rain—this had been a particularly wet, cold July—but why reduce it to weather?

Irony, though, was for those on the outside, those with something still to gain, although surely this bunch had been on the fringes long enough to appreciate it just a bit. Wasn’t there an irony in their having been elected at all, in their claims to victimization by the Bolsheviks, Versailles, the Jews? Fascinating to see earnestness wash away even the most stubborn traces of the truth.

The tram stopped, and Hoffner stepped off to a nice dowsing of his trousers from a passing truck. The lettering on its side had it heading west to Döberitz. Everything was heading west these days—food, horses, prostitutes—all of it to keep the Olympic athletes happy. Most were already settled in; the last few stragglers would be setting up digs in the next day or so, with their sauna and chefs and shooting ranges and private showers. Hoffner tried to picture the genius who had seen fit to call such lush accommodations a village.

But for those who had invaded to cheer the athletes on, Berlin was determined to quell any lingering doubts. Thoughts of Olympic boycotts might be long forgotten: everyone who had threatened not to come was already here. Even so, the Jew-baiting signs that had so troubled the French and the English and, of course, the Americans (would they be bringing their Negroes?) had been pulled from shop windows, stripped from the
Litfassäulen
, and replaced with odes to sport and camaraderie and international friendship. Not that the Greeks had been much on mutual friendships or protecting their weak—mountainsides and babies came to mind—but they had come up with the ideal, and wasn’t that what the new Germany was all about?

It was a cloud of gentle denial—ataraxia for the modern world—that had brought this cleansing rain, and Hoffner wondered if he was the only one to feel the damp in his legs.

He turned onto Alexanderplatz and saw the giant swastika draped across the front of police headquarters. It billowed momentarily. He imagined it was waving to him, a gesture of farewell, good luck, “It was swell, Isabel, swell.” The telephone call from the ministry had no doubt preceded him. The paperwork would follow, but he was out. There was no need for the flag to be anything but gracious in victory.

The look on the sergeant’s face at the security desk confirmed it. The usual nod of deference was now an officious bob of courtesy.

“Ah, Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar,” he said. At least the man continued to refer to him by his title. Hoffner had been one of the very few to insist on his old rank after the SS had absorbed the Kripo and the Gestapo into what was now known as the Sipo. He had never considered himself a major or a captain, or whatever rank they had tried to foist on him. Inside the Alex, “detective” would have suited him just fine, but even the Kripo had its standards. So “chief inspector” it remained, if only for a few more days.

“Herr Scharführer,” Hoffner answered.

“Will you be needing help with any more boxes, Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar?”

Hoffner had anticipated the ministry’s response. He knew the letter he had sent them a few weeks back would bring his file into play. He knew it would mark the beginning of the end—of everything. The rest was academic. Most of his office was already packed up and gone, thirty-five years neatly stacked in boxes across town in his rooms on Droysenstrasse.

“I think I can manage it, Herr Scharführer,” Hoffner said. He nodded, then pushed through the oak doors and stepped out into the Alex’s vast glassed-over courtyard. The smell of ammonia, with a nice lingering of mildew, pricked at his nose as he headed for the far corner.

The rote quality of the walk to his office had taken on an unwelcome nostalgia in the last weeks: Why should he care that the once-familiar cobblestones now lay buried beneath a smooth flooring of cement? Had he really spent that much time in the subbasement morgue to mourn its dismantling? Was there anything truly lost by riding an elevator up to the third floor rather than taking the stairs? There was a sentimentality here that troubled him, and Hoffner wondered if it would be this way from now on, even beyond the Alex? Was it possible to be disgusted by a self not yet inhabited?

At least he could still take one last stroll past the offices on the floor, stop into the kitchen for a cup of bad coffee, or hear the general incompetence spilling from the desks and telephone conversations. There had been a distinct drop in the quality of police work since the politics of crime had superseded the crimes themselves. The newest officers were hacks and morons, and their brand of policing was growing ever more contagious. Why make the effort when dismissals and convictions rested on political affiliations, even for the most despicable of rapists, murderers, and thieves? At least Hoffner was on his way out. For those with five or ten years left, the Alex had become a cesspool filled with nouveau petty posturing or, worse, old-guard yearning for invisibility until their pensions came due. Either way it was an abyss.

“Nikolai.”

The voice came from the largest office on the floor. Hoffner had long given up trying to figure out how Kriminaldirektor Edmund Präger knew when someone was walking past. There was nothing for it but to pop his head through the doorway.

“Herr Gruppenführer,” Hoffner said. Präger had been given no choice but to take on the new rank.

“Have a seat, Nikolai.”

Präger was pulling two glasses and a bottle from his desk drawer. Over the last few months it appeared as if the desk had been moving ever closer to the window, as if Präger might be planning a jump, albeit a gradual one.

Präger said, “I just got the call.” He poured two glasses while Hoffner sat. “So it’s finally done. I can’t say I’ll miss you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Präger allowed himself a half smile. “The Kripo might be filled with thugs and idiots now, but at least they do what they’re told. It’s a different sort of babysitting with them, and for another four months I can manage that.” He raised his glass and they both drank.

“And then?” said Hoffner.

“We’ve a place outside Braunschweig. My wife’s family. We’ll go there and wait for this nonsense to pass while they pay me my pension.”

Präger poured out two more and Hoffner said, “Sounds very nice.” He took his glass. “So—how many Gypsies do you have locked up out in Marzahn now? Four hundred? Five?”

Präger had the whiskey to his lips. He held it there another moment before bringing the glass down. “Just once, Nikolai, I’d like to have a drink, a chat, and then see you go. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“You still think it’s nonsense?”

Präger drank and Hoffner asked again, “How many?”

Präger thought a moment, shook his head, and said, “What difference does it make?” He set the glass on the desk. “There’s something wrong with having just one of them out at that camp, isn’t there?”

Hoffner appreciated Präger’s decency, even if it always surfaced despite itself. Hoffner took a sip. “Good for you,” he said, and tossed back the rest.

“Yah,” said Präger. “Good for me.” He thought about pouring out two more but instead put the bottle away. “The camp can house up to a thousand,” he said. “It’s around eight hundred now. Until the games are over. Then we’ll set the Gypsies free. Happy?”

“Not that you’re keeping count.”

“You know what it’s like with these people. The SS likes its papers in triplicate. I’ve no choice.” Präger lapped at the last bit of booze in his glass and then placed it back in the drawer. “You’ll stay in Berlin, of course. Can’t imagine you anywhere else.”

“I hear there’s some nice farmland outside Braunschweig.”

“My relatives know how to use an ax, Nikolai. I’ll tell them you’re coming.”

“It’s been guns and rifles for a while, now.”

“Has it?”

Präger sat back. In twenty years peering across a desk at the man, Hoffner had never seen him strike so casual a pose.

“You and I are too old to be concerned with any of this,” Präger said. “Take your pension, join a bird or card club, learn how to make a few friends, and wait to die. I think even you can manage that.”

Hoffner pushed his glass across the desk for a refill. “But not outside Braunschweig.”

Reluctantly, Präger opened the drawer and pulled out the bottle. “It’s the walking dead in Braunschweig, Nikolai,” he said, as he poured Hoffner a half-glass and returned the bottle to the drawer. “How would you learn to make a friend?”

Hoffner smiled and then drank. “I’ve managed this long.” He set the glass down and stood.

“You should take in some of the games,” said Präger, retrieving the glass and filing it. “You like sport.”

“I prefer my chest-thumping in private.”

“Then you won’t be disappointed.” Präger closed the drawer. “It’s no uniforms at the stadium. The memo just came down. Supposedly they had a rough go of it last winter for the skiing. All those foreigners outside Munich thinking they were in a police state. Imagine that? Even the SS will be in mufti.”

Hoffner took a momentary pleasure in picturing the discomfort that would cause. “So how much of it are they having you attend?”

“It’s not all that bad,” said Präger. “The opening thing tomorrow and then some of the running events. I’m in a box next to Nebe, who’s in a box next to Heydrich. And next week I’ve been invited to give an address to a contingent of Dutch, French, and American policemen. ‘The City and the Law.’ Very exciting.”