Страница 16 из 89
“That’s why I’m organizing a press conference this afternoon,” said Izzy. “So you can tell the newspapers just how seriously we’re taking this case. That we’re pursuing all possible leads. That we won’t rest until the murderer is caught. Well, you know the kind of thing. You’ve handled a press conference many times before. On occasion, you’ve even handled them quite well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“However, you have a natural wit that sometimes you would do well to restrain. Especially in a political case like this one.”
“Is that what this is, sir?”
“Oh, I’d say so, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ernst Ge
“Thank you for your confidence, sir.”
Izzy’s lips puckered, as if savoring the taste of his own intelligence like a freshly made matzoh ball. “Well, what have you come up with so far?”
“Not much. She wasn’t killed in the park, that’s for sure. We’ll know more about the cause of death later on today. Hard to say if it was a lust murder or not. Maybe that was the point of removing all her sexual organs and everything that was attached to them. On the face of it, you might say that’s the most remarkable feature of the case. But you might just as easily point to the reaction of Herr and Frau Schwarz themselves. Last night, neither of them seemed particularly upset when I told them that their daughter was dead.”
“God, I hope you’re not suggesting you think they did it?”
I thought for a moment. “Maybe I’m misjudging them, sir. But the girl was disabled. Somehow I got the feeling that they were glad to be rid of her, that’s all. Maybe.”
“I trust you won’t be mentioning any of this at the press conference.”
“You know me better than that.”
“It’s true, some Nazis do have a few ruthless ideas concerning the treatment of society’s unfortunates. People who are physically and mentally handicapped. However, even the Nazis aren’t stupid enough to think that’s a vote wi
“No, I suppose not, sir.” I lit a cigarette. “There’s one other thing. The murdered girl had five hundred marks on her. That’s a lot more pocket money than I used to get when I was her age.”
“Yes, you’re right. Did you ask the parents about it?”
“They suggested there must have been some mistake.”
“I’ve heard of money disappearing from a dead man’s pockets. But I’ve never heard of money being planted on one.”
“No, sir.”
“Ask the neighbors, Bernie. Speak to her school friends. Find out what kind of girl Anita Schwarz was.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Bernie. Get yourself a new tie. That one looks like it’s been in your soup.”
“Yes, sir.”
BEFORE THE PRESS CONFERENCE I went and had my hair cut at the KaDeWe. Henry Ford himself couldn’t have arranged the business of cutting German hair more efficiently. There were ten chairs, and I was in and out in less than twenty minutes. The KaDe We wasn’t exactly around the corner from the Alex. But it was a good place to have a haircut and buy a new tie.
As always, the conference itself took place in the Police Museum at the Alex. This was Ge
There were about twenty reporters and photographers gathered among our previous triumphs. Behind a table that had been cleared of a selection of curious murder weapons, I sat between Weiss and Ge
Later on, I agreed with Weiss that my next comments could have been a little more diplomatic:
“The last time I looked, Herr Allgeier, Germany still has a system of criminal justice in which people are brought before the courts, tried, and, if found guilty, serve a prison sentence. After they’ve paid their debt to society, we let them go.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t let them go at all,” he said. “It might be best for the German people if these so-called known offenders were put back in prison as quickly as possible. Then this kind of lust murder might never happen.”
“Maybe. That’s not for me to say. But where do you get off thinking that someone like you can speak for the German people, Allgeier? You used to be a jack, in Moabit. A backstreet turk working the three-card trick. The German people might equally demand to know how you turned into a journalist.”
Several of the non-Nazi newspaper reporters thought this was very fu
Germany had always had the death penalty for murder, but for several years, the newspapers-the non-Nazi newspapers-had waged a vigorous campaign against the guillotine. Lately, however, these same papers had bowed to Nazi influence and refrained from writing editorials urging the commutation of a murderer’s sentence. With the result that the state executioner, Joha
“The plain fact of the matter is that we’ve always relied on known offenders to give us information,” I said. “There were even murderers serving sentences in prison who were once prepared to help us. Of course that was before we started executing them again. It’s hard to persuade a man to talk to you when you’ve chopped his head off.”
Weiss stood up and, smiling patiently, a
“Just the fascist newspapers, surely.”
“All newspapers are fundamentally fascist, Bernie. In every country. All editors are dictators. All journalism is authoritarian. That’s why people line birdcages with it.”
Ge