“Find Macri and get him to my office fast, say it takes priority over anything else he’s working on. And tell accounting I’m requisitioning a thousand marks cash, I want it right away. They can send along a 202, I’ll fill it out when I get the time.”
His jaw dropped.
“Shit, Lieutenant, on whose authorization? I mean, I can’t…”
I took out von Leeb’s letter and shoved it across the desk at him.
“On my authorization. Read it, and move your peachlike ass.”
His eyes were wide as he handed the letter back.
“Yes sir, Lieutenant, right away.”
This business had some redeeming features, anyway.
Kohler was still on the phone when I returned, and he waved me over, cupping the receiver in the palm of his hand.
“The Commissioner wants to talk to you. He’s pretty pissed off.”
I mumbled something into the phone and Gunther started to roar.
“What is this investigation about, Haider? That prick won’t tell me a damned thing. Now you’d better…”
“I’m not allowed to, Commissioner, I can’t say a word about it to anybody, not even you. They’d bust both of us if I did.”
“Haider, I’m warning you…”
“Ask Professor von Leeb. I can’t say anything. I’m sorry.”
I hung up on him, something every cop dreams of doing, but I didn’t get much satisfaction out of it. I was caught in a three-way pincers movement between von Leeb, the Gestapo and Centre Street, and I’d be lucky if I came out of this thing pounding a beat on Staten Island.
“Trouble?”
Kohler was regarding me sympathetically, but I just shrugged.
“My day for it. But so long as I’m von Leeb’s fair-haired boy, Gunther’ll handle me like rare crystal. It’ll be another story once this thing is over.”
“If it’s over,” he corrected me gently. “Where are you going to start?”
“With Pickett. What else have we got?” I sprawled into the swivel chair and thrummed a pencil lightly on the desk calendar. “Did you come up with anything you haven’t told me yet?”
Kohler shook his head.
“We haven’t really launched an independent investigation. I didn’t even know that fucking report had been forwarded to the Wilhelmstrasse until von Leeb wired me he was on his way, and he threw the whole thing into your lap before we could get going on our own.” He smiled with more than a little bitterness. “Naturally, the Geheime Staats Polizei stands at your disposal.”
I let that one pass.
“Who was the investigating officer at the 16th?”
Kohler extracted a slim leather notebook from his inside jacket pocket and flipped through the pages.
Hagburg, Fred Hagburg. Sergeant, a landsman, third generation Auslanddeutsch. Non-political.”
“He was the one who spotted this mezzuzah thing?”
Kohler studied the. notebook again.
“No, that was a file clerk, a patrolman, Ernest Fiske, five-gen Asax. It was just an accident, he was closing out the docket and spotted the photograph. He’s an active member of the Herrenvolk Bund and it rang a bell.”
“Just our luck. Without him that goddamn file would be gathering dust today.”
“I didn’t hear that.” Kohler slapped the notebook shut with a ring of finality. “Remember, be careful how you approach Fiske. He’s the one guy who might be able to fit the pieces together, and von Leeb wants this kept under the rug.”
“No more than I do, Ed. I’ll play it as a normal follow-up check.”
There was a rap on the door and Macri entered, carrying a small suitcase, his identikit folio tucked under one arm. I got up, and held out my hand to Kohler.
“Wish me luck.”
“You want me to come along?”
“No, I’ll fill you in later. Can I reach you at headquarters?”
“All night. I’ll be sleeping there till this thing is settled.” He took a small chamois pouch from his side pocket and handed it to me. “Von Leeb wants you to take this along. Our only hard evidence.”
I undid the string and a tiny silver cylinder fell into the palm of my hand. It felt oddly cold, and I shivered in spite of myself.
We had to wait at the desk for the cash, and I had Callender dispatch an unmarked car. When we got outside a patrolman had pulled it around, a ’68 Opel, and I signed a chit and dismissed him. Macri looked at me curiously as I nosed out into the midday traffic.
“What’s up? Callender tells me you’ve been roped into something big.”
I grunted, and cut’ across Seventy-second to the Horst Wessell Drive.
“Callender should keep his mouth shut. As far as you’re concerned it’s just routine. Understand?”
Macri held up his hands in mock surrender.
“I capish, Bill, I capish. Mine is not to wonder why…”
“Yeah.”
I switched on the radio as he hit the Drive, listening with half my mind as Kirsten Flagstad dissolved into the news, the announcer prattling on about the Duce’s funeral as if it were the social event of the year. Which in fact, it was. The Fuhrer was attending personally, as well as most of the Gauleiters and Reichsleiters, and Mosley had just flown in from London to join Lindbergh, Laval and Quisling, who’d been in Rome a week drinking toasts to Allied unity. Even the Contraxists were putting on a show of mourning, though I’d lay odds they were already carving Italy up in private. Macri toned the volume lower, and spoke in worried tones.
“Ed, you don’t think this is gonna make any difference for us wops, do you?”
I wished he’d keep quiet and let me concentrate on important things.
“Why should it? Graziani’s a good man, he’ll carry on just the same.”
“No, I mean all this crap you hear about how maybe some of us will be reclassified now, you know? I mean, with the Duce gone some people think maybe things will change. That’s-just bull, isn’t it?”
I glanced at his swarthy features and coarse oily hair.
“You’re not Sicilian, are you, Tony?”
“No, no, of course not,” he said too quickly. “I’m a northerner, Florence, we got nothing to do with those Arabs.”
Macri’s racial purity. was the least of my concerns right now.
“Then forget it, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
I pulled off at the Fourteenth Street exit and followed Second Avenue over to Houston, double-parking outside the precinct house. Macri waited for me in the car as I walked up the steps past a gaggle of grimy kids booting a soccer ball across the sidewalk. I didn’t know the duty officer but I flashed my badge and asked for Hagburg.
“Second floor, to your right,” he said disinterestedly, and went back to his crossword.
Hagburg was a fat, florid guy in his late forties with about four remaining strands of black hair carefully plastered down in an intricate spiderweb across his shiny skull. He was pecking away with one finger at an ancient typewriter, his eyes squinted in concentration, and he didn’t look up when I identified myself.
“Take a seat, Lieutenant, I’ve gotta finish this complaint. Be widdya in a minute.”
I settled myself uncomfortably on the rickety wooden folding chair in front of his desk and lit a cigarette while Hagburg laboriously clacked out his report. When he was through he left the form in the machine and looked up at me without much enthusiasm.
“What can I do for you?”
I’d mentally rehearsed my story on the way over.