I only learn about the cancer deaths from my own comrades on the West German side, who ask how it’s going with bemusement. Not from Grimmenkauf. He never mentions it.
We are building a case step by laborious step—as if with a limp. We have turned up some eyewitnesses who will place Chad and Anna together, alone, on the night of the murder, who can put Chad in Anna’s apartment, but can they prove themselves coherent enough amid the partying, if they’re put on the witness stand? They are all kids; all jobless. And Grimmenkauf grumbles, reiterates the politics, that the panel of judges won’t convict on merely a logical chain of connection, they’ll need proof, irrefutable. Proof as blunt and unforgiving as whatever killed Anna Hoppler.
Anna’s dark, drafty apartment has been picked over thoroughly. The West German police have swept it carefully, professionally. The East German police swept it brutally. And Grimmenkauf and I inspect it ourselves afterward—look at every chipped corner of furniture, every pot handle, every hairbrush, every book, every closet top, every toilet tank, every fireplace implement—for blood, for anything, and find nothing.
Chad’s apartment is clean—mockingly so. Nothing stashed. It is a spoof of the bachelor pad—sleek and clean, burnished and expensive, polished gleaming surfaces, utterly unused kitchen utensils, shiny sinks, way out of line for a soldier (he spends scant time in the barracks, only the two nights a week he is required to). As if the apartment says, Look all you like. There is nothing here.
And as we search it, Grimmenkauf won’t let the beer garden politics go. “An apartment like this—this is what the typical East German thinks freedom will mean. An existence of sleek modern surfaces with no history and no past. They long for freedom, because they think it comes with accommodations like this. Because that is the sales job that the Western media has done on us. Freedom as Western goods, as American lifestyle. No wonder the Americans are such champions of freedom. Because they know deep down that it is really a matter of untapped markets, of economic potential…”
Grimmenkauf’s hatred of American values only finds more expression as the days go on.
He is still dutifully limping after Corporal Miller when Miller wanders into a West German post office branch.
A fact which, when Grimmenkauf mentions it, catches my interest—and my instincts—much more than it does his. Because I know, as Grimmenkauf doesn’t, that Corporal Miller can ship and receive at no cost, overnight, any cargo, any freight, through the PX at the military base. The faster, cheaper, far superior way for him to ship. So why the German post office?
“Obviously,” says Grimmenkauf, “to avoid the risk of his packages being inspected by the American military.”
He’s right. It is obvious. Safety. Anonymity. And there I would have left it. But something is beating at me; something feels odd. No cost. Overnight. Ship and receive for free. Lower middle-class Army kid from the wrong side of Chicago, out hustling the world. The transactional personality. The trader. Wouldn’t he gravitate to the most profitable method? Figure out an arrangement, as he apparently had with Anna? Wouldn’t he find a way to make a deal?
On a hunch, I checked with authorities on the base, with whom we West Germans have a good working relationship and who saw no reason not to cooperate, and it turned out that Colonel Miller was shipping plenty of goods through the American PX. He clearly felt a high degree of safety and confidentiality in using the American PX. Clearly he had his own contacts there, partners he could trust, cut in on some profits, and thereby blackmail and control.
A little digging and prodding, and we get the full picture: Pharmaceuticals. Untracked duty-free timepieces. African pelts. Monkey brains. Rhinoceros testicles. Freeze-dried poppy seeds. Corporal Miller is a one-man transfer station. A one-man import-export center. We could bust him on any of these, of course. But it will be another slap on the wrist; a tortuous legal process. We want him, we need him, for Anna.
So—a robust use and enjoyment of the American PX advantages.
Except, maybe, if you’re sending something you really can’t risk. Only then do you turn to the official, anonymous, utterly reliable German postal system.
Anonymous, that is, until we persuade the postal service for an inspection exemption. Circumventing privacy rules with the reluctant assistance of none other than my brother Siggy, a long-standing, dutiful postal employee, who nervously, grudgingly, locates the appropriate confidential shipping waybills for us. A little family connection. A little back-scratching. A little arm-twisting. A little East German tactics on my part, I guess. My nod to my partner of the moment, Herr Grimmenkauf.
We find only a couple of receipts. The bare minimum disclosed on them. Including the shipping date.
A package sent the morning of November 10th, 9 a.m. Contents undisclosed, as is permitted. But the date stamp is clear.
The morning after the Wall fell. The morning after the partying. The morning after Anna Hoppler was murdered. Just as the post office opened.
Giving me a thin hope, the sliver of a sense, that Chad didn’t hide the murder weapon, didn’t bury it, or throw it in the river.
That he shipped it.
Remember I said it was a joke, this East West partnership of Grimmenkauf and me? Well, the joke now accelerates. Gets straight to the punch line. Because the German police—as if to have the full belly laugh out of this—happily pay to put us both on a flight from Berlin to London to Los Angeles, California. To Grimmenkauf’s fabled, beloved America. To Los Angeles, no less, the belly of the beast. To an address in West Hollywood, where some particularly large cartons sent by Corporal Miller have made their way before us.
Grimmenkauf in Los Angeles. The trenchcoat, the squat form, hunched against the unfamiliar sunshine, the gleam off buildings. Squinting out the rental car’s passenger side window as we wind our way up into the Hollywood Hills. Looking at the gleaming, buffed, immaculate ostentation. Disgusted, dreamily, fascinated, silent, as if he has arrived in heaven and hell simultaneously.
I am fully expecting one of Grimmenkauf’s anticapitalist diatribes. Look how precarious, Herr Bunder. Look where they build, on outcroppings of rock, on shifting land. It is irresponsible. Arrogant. A statement of impermanence. Beautiful homes built on the backs of Mexican laborers. Who tend their green lawns and picture-book shrubbery for them. These hills themselves like a Hollywood set.
Of course, these are my own observations. Grimmenkauf never utters a word. Are his anti-American views infecting me? Or perhaps, convincing me?
We cruise now along Mulholland Drive—a street name I recognize from the noir movies with Susie—but on this Los Angeles morning, sunshine bright and bouncing against the rental car sheet metal, against the bright clean road bed. It is the polar opposite of East Berlin, I’m thinking. In weather, appearance, attitude, in past and history (or lack thereof), in atmosphere both literal and metaphoric, in every possible way, its opposite. Grimmenkauf stares out. Blue eyes soaking it in.
The woman’s name is Elaine Markham. The home is beautiful, of course. A big glistening swimming pool, overlooking the Los Angeles valley. Bright colorful abstract paintings on the wall. Ms. Markham greets us in her red tracksuit. Early forties. Bronzed. Gleaming smile. Plastic surgery on her upturned nose, her high cheeks, and her ample and equally upturned breasts. A Hollywood liberal. I once thought that Grimmenkauf and I were opposites, but I have been significantly trumped—as I see polished, sunny Elaine Markham and wrinkled, trenchcoated Grimmenkauf regard each other—from across the globe, from across the universe, divergent species passing unexpectedly close.