He said, “So I have an ally inside the Alex?”
From his expression, Jogiches had never thought of it that way. Truth to tell-until this moment-neither had Hoffner. “I suppose you do,” said Jogiches.
Hoffner waited as a lifetime of mistrust stared back at him. Luckily, the dead are quick to realize that they have nothing to lose.
“Groener,” Jogiches finally said. “Detective Sergeant Ludwig Groener.”
Jogiches enjoyed the moment immensely. “Oh, don’t look so surprised, Inspector. Why do you think he never won promotion? Bit of an embarrassment to his uncle the General, I suspect, but then maybe that’s the reason he became one of us in the first place. I never asked. Groener’s far more than you ever imagined.”
In fact, Hoffner had never even conceived of it, not that he had heard much beyond the name. It had come at him like a wave of gibberish, a word in a child’s game with syllables and cadence but no meaning. Groener? The name was, at this moment, completely incomprehensible.
It was the perfect lead-in to the garbled singing that suddenly erupted from one of the tables by the front door. A drunk had taken to his feet and was already at full throttle:
“When lovely eyes begin to wink, when full glasses gleam and clink, there comes once more the call to drink, to drink, to drink, to drink!”
Everyone at the table laughed. It was loud enough to draw half the caf’s attention, Hoffner with them. When he turned back, Jogiches was on his feet. “We’ll do this again, Inspector,” he said as he reached for his hat. “There’s another door through the kitchen. They won’t have anyone there.”
“You still haven’t told me how you know about Munich.”
Jogiches placed his hat on his head. “And you, Herr Inspector, have to leave me some secrets.” Jogiches grabbed his umbrella and, without another word, headed for the back of the cafe.
It was only then that Hoffner remembered where he had seen Jogiches before. Rcker’s bar, the day they had found Mary Koop, the professor with the umbrella. It was a startling image. Hoffner wondered: Had Jogiches been watching him even then?
The front doors opened and a Polpo detective appeared; the man was too obvious to be anything else. Hoffner watched as the singing drunk suddenly maneuvered himself out into the aisle and clumsily blocked the detective’s path. Jogiches had picked his lookout welclass="underline" the man showed a tremendous dedication to his task.
Taking advantage of the commotion, Hoffner stood and quietly made his way back toward the kitchen.
Martha was asleep by the time he stumbled in. As always, she had left a light on for him.
Hoffner was still mulling over his first encounter with Jogiches as he tossed his clothes in a pile and turned out the light: had Munich been a consideration back in January? Had Jogiches stayed in the shadows and allowed three more women to be killed rather than expose what he knew? Had Groener done worse? Hoffner quietly slipped into bed. His head was still thick from the brandy as he lay back, closed his eyes, and tried to piece it all together.
“Late night.” Martha’s voice filled the darkness.
It had been a long time since she had waited up for him. “You’re awake, then,” he said. He listened for movement; when none came, he added, “Not that late. Go back to sleep.”
There was the hope that she would give in, but they both knew better. She spoke quietly and without any hint of judgment. “Nothing you want to tell me, is there, Nicki?” She kept her back to him.
It always came here, he thought, with no distractions, nothing to run to for a moment of relief: a newspaper lying about, a package recently delivered, a boy passing by the door. Only darkness and conversation and the unbearable weight of the two.
“Tell you what?”
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”
She had always had the good sense to wait until things had sputtered out before posing the question. It was safe by then, each of them aware of what he had done and how he had chosen not to let it drag on. There was a kind of victory in that for them both. Now, however, it was four years on since his last slip, and her timing had gone off.
“The Wouters case,” he said. “Loose ends.” He did his best to wrap it in the truth, which, of course, only made it more crueclass="underline" anything other than his confession signaled her miscalculation.
“Oh,” she said vaguely. She was trying not to sound betrayed.
“Yes. I might have to take a few days in Munich.”
“Munich?” she repeated with false blandness.
The stupidity of what he had just said struck him at once. A few days in Munich? Could anything have been more obvious? The truth had snuck in and was now lashing away. He said, “Two days, at the most. I’m not even sure how the trains are running.” He would have given anything for an outburst of anger or despair or loathing, but Martha always let her strength work its magic.
She said, “Sascha’s friend is coming up at the weekend.” Hoffner had no idea what she was talking about. “Kroll’s niece. The girl from Frankfurt. It’s all planned. So I’m sure the trains are running fine.”
Hoffner wondered if, perhaps, they had moved past the worst of it. Unpleasantness loomed somewhere, but he chose to ignore it. “Geli,” he said: the name came to him like an unexpected gift. Sascha had met the girl on his last summer holiday: she was bright and pretty and thirteen and equally taken with the boy. Hoffner recalled something being said around the table last week. It was all very hazy.
“He’s in such a nice mood about it,” said Martha. She rolled toward him. “And you’ve been very good, Nicki. A boy needs that sort of thing.”
The air was clearing. They were well beyond it now. “He’s a good boy,” said Hoffner. Not that he knew his son well enough to say it, but he knew Martha needed to hear it.
“I saw the Mrike,” she said. It took Hoffner a moment to follow. “I found it in your jacket. You haven’t read him in years.”
Again, he needed a moment. “No. I-just came across it.”
“You were always so fond of him.”
“Yes.”
She continued to stare up at him. “You don’t love her, do you?”
And there it was, the banality of the question so much more painful than its answer. It might have been comical had Martha known the book’s source, but then again, he had chosen to keep it. Perhaps the question wasn’t as absurd as he thought. “No,” he said with quiet certainty. “I don’t.” Hoffner waited, wondering if she might drag them back into it; instead, she rolled away and onto her side.
She said, “I saw the gloves. They’re lovely. Thank you, Nicki.”
He had left them for her this morning with a little note on her pillow. “With warm affection,” or some such thing. It would have been too much on poor Herr Taubmann to return them now.
“Does everyone have a partner!”
Tamako-he might have been Japanese, but it was anybody’s guess-called out from high above on his catwalk to the throng of dancers below. As always, he was immaculately togged in silk tuxedo and vest, and stood shouting into his now-infamous white megaphone, which he had named “Trubo.” Tonight, Tamako was keeping his dyed ginger-blond hair greased back to show his inordinately high forehead, which, for some reason, was powdered in white.
“You!” he said, leaning over the railing and pointing an accusatory finger at no one in particular. “Higher knees! Herr Trrrrrubo wants higher knees!”
A woman at the edge of the floor began to lift her legs with greater abandon. Her dress flew up and she laughed as the men around her helped to hike it up farther each time she kicked.