The two girls, Irene and Nadja, shared a small room at the rear of the flat, behind the kitchen. “This is maybe why they fighting sometimes,” Sonja said. “Our boy Paul gets a room for himself, but the girls must share.”
He stood in the room between two narrow beds, both with white chenille spreads, his hands in his pockets. On the wall above the beds was a cross to which Christ was nailed, his back arched in pain.
“Our other children were born here in Montreal,” Sonja said. “But my husband and Irene and me, we lived in Budapest during the war. Irene is maybe too young to remember how hard this was, but I remember. I remember how small she was, how little food we had, how much she cried. Before the war we lived with my parents, but my father was against collaborating with the Nazis, against withdrawing from the League of Nations. His contrary positions, they cost us everything. And when the Soviets invaded, were we rewarded? Of course not. We lost even more.”
She put a hand on her chest and shuddered. “Why I am telling you this, Mr. Handler, is because my little girl had a hard beginning to her life. I just didn’t want the end to be hard too.”
“Tell me about the man you saw,” Max said. “Where exactly was he?”
“Across the street, in front of 4120,” said Mrs. Peletz, the neighbor two buildings to the north, who spoke in a thick Yiddish accent. She was about fifty, with thick legs and gray hair pulled into a bun.
“Was he coming or going?”
“Just standing with his back against the telephone pole, smoking.”
“How long was he there?”
“I don’t know. I went to get the mail and he was there. That was maybe eleven. I went out again ten, fifteen minutes later to shake out a rug, and he was still there, still against the pole, smoking.”
“Looking at your side of the street or the houses behind him?”
“My side.”
“What made you notice him?” Max asked.
“Who just stands there? He doesn’t live on the street, he’s not talking to no one, there’s no bus that comes. Not even looking at a watch. Just smoking. Who does such a thing?”
“And that’s why you noticed him?”
“That, and because he was so pale. Most people, it’s summer, they have a little color. But not him. Like a ghost he was. I said to my husband, maybe he’s been someplace where there’s no sun. Maybe he just came from jail.”
Max made a mental note to check with Bordeaux Prison and Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Penitentiary, see if they had released anyone in the last month or two with a record of offenses against children.
“How old a man was he, Mrs. Peletz?”
“Younger than you,” she said, “but not a boy. Maybe thirty?”
“You get a good look at his face? The color of his hair?”
“A hat he wore, with the brim pulled down,” she said. “I just know his face and arms were white.”
“He didn’t wear a jacket?”
“If he wore a jacket, would I have seen his arms?”
Max smiled. “I guess not.”
“Like china they were,” Mrs. Peletz said. “The kind they make from bone.”
Max squatted at the base of the light pole in front of 4120 Hôtel de Ville, which was the ground-floor flat in a brick building with silver-coated staircases winding up to the second and third floors. There were half a dozen cigarette butts on the ground, Player’s Plain and du Mauriers with filter tips.
He had just started up the walk to ring the bell when he saw a man in a second-floor window. Tall enough to fill the entire frame, gaunt looking, his neck and head bent at an odd angle. An unmistakable figure.
Max rang the bell to the flat. The lock disengaged and he went up a dark staircase that curved to the right. Waiting there was Jan Albrecht, better known to a generation of Montreal wrestling fans as Baron von Bismarck, the Killer Kraut. In a city that adored its hockey players, boxers, strippers, and singers, wrestlers were among the biggest stars. Even though the Baron was the most hated villain in town — a character who would cut, choke, stomp, and gouge his opponents, brushing aside referees to inflict maximum damage — Jan Albrecht was known as a gentleman outside the ring.
“Hello, sergeant,” Albrecht said, extending a massive hand. He was half a foot taller than Max, who stood six feet. His head was huge, with a jutting chin that ended in a bulb split by a cleft. “How are you?”
“I’m good, Jan. How about you?”
“I suppose I could complain,” the big man said, pointing at his bent neck with his left hand, “but I will spare you.”
“How long you been living here?”
“Since the accident. Rents downtown are high and my earnings are not what they used to be. It’s all right. I’m content here. What about you, sergeant? Do you still moonlight at the Forum? You were good security.”
“Too busy these days.”
To Max’s eyes, Albrecht didn’t look like he got much sun. But his skin was more gray than white, the color of a dead mouse. And his height and crooked figure would make him familiar to a neighbor.
“You’re here about the little girl?” Albrecht said.
“Yes.”
“She is dead then?”
“Yes.”
“A terrible thing.” Albrecht moved stiffly to one side and waved Max into a dim parlor. There was a faded chesterfield with gold and brown stripes and white antimacassars over the rear. A couple of wooden chairs on either side of a chipped wooden table. “You will take a coffee?”
“No thanks. I saw you in the window and wanted to ask if you noticed anyone hanging around the street the day the girl disappeared.”
“A constable already came by to ask. Regrettably, I saw no one.” Albrecht rubbed the side of his neck, pushing it even farther off center before releasing it with a snapping sound. He had broken it two years back in a bout against the great wrestler Yvon Robert. Albrecht had knocked Robert down, stunned him with a forearm to the throat, and then climbed onto the top rope for his signature finish, a thunderous elbow smash known as the Hammer of Hell. But as he jumped, the toe of his boot had gotten caught under the top rope and he landed on his head, shivered in a violent spasm, and didn’t move again for weeks.
“One of the neighbors saw a guy hanging out front that morning, smoking. Very pale,” Max said.
“I’m sorry, sergeant, I don’t think I saw any such fellow.”
“Well, if you remember anything, give me a call.”
“Of course. You sure you will not take a coffee?”
“No, thanks anyway.”
He heard a door slam at the rear of the flat. Then footsteps, and another door opening and closing.
“Someone else here I can ask?”
“Oh,” Albrecht said, “that’s just Billy.”
“Wild Billy?”
“Yes.”
“He lives with you?”
“We have both recently endured somewhat hard times,” Albrecht said.
“Call him out here,” Max said. “Maybe he saw something.”
Albrecht smiled. “Billy hardly looks out the window, as you might imagine.”
“Call him out anyway.”
“Of course.” He walked through the parlor to the corridor that led to the back of the flat and called, “Billy?”
He got no answer. He called again, louder.
A door opened and a voice that was both high-pitched and raspy shouted: “What! I’m drying myself off, for Christ’s sake.”
“We have company, Billy. Come out here a moment.”
“I’m bare-assed.”
“Put a robe on and come out. It’s Max Handler.”
“Who?”
“Sergeant Handler. He used to work security at the Forum.”