Garden of Beasts

American favorites. I have a press pass and can get close to the athletes. I was supposed to bribe them to lose on purpose. That’s why he was so nervous for the past couple days, I guess. He owed some of your gang rings, he called them, a lot of money.”
    “Morgan was killed because this Taggert wished to impersonate him?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Quite an elaborate plot,” Kohl observed.
    “Quite a lot of money was involved. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
    Another glance at the limp body on the floor. “I noted that you said you decided to end your relationship with Mr. Taggert as of yesterday. And yet here he is. How did this tragic ‘fight,’ as you call it, transpire?”
    “He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was desperate for the money—he’d borrowed a lot to place the bets. He came here today to threaten me. He said they were going to make it look like I killed Morgan.”
    “To extort you into helping them.”
    “That’s right. But I said I didn’t care. I was going to turn him in anyway. He pulled that gun on me. We struggled and he fell. It seems he broke his neck.”
    Kohl’s mind instinctively applied the information Schumann had provided against the facts and the inspector’s awareness of human nature. Some details fit; some were jarring. Willi Kohl always reminded himself to keep an open mind at crime scenes, refrain from reaching conclusions too quickly. Now, this process happened automatically; his thoughts were deadlocked. It was as if a punch card had jammed in one of the DeHoMag sorting machines.
    “You fought to save yourself and he died in a fall.”
    A woman’s voice said, “Yes, that is exactly what happened.”
    Kohl turned to the figure in the doorway. She was about forty, slim and attractive, though her face was tired, troubled.
    “Please, your name?”
    “Käthe Richter.” She automatically handed her card to him. “I manage this building in the owner’s absence.”
    Her papers confirmed her identity and he returned the ID. “And you were a witness to this event?”
    “I was here. In the hallway. I heard some disturbance from inside and opened the door partway. I saw the whole thing.”
    “And yet you were gone when we arrived.”
    “I was afraid. I saw your car pull up. I didn’t want to get involved.”
    So she was on a Gestapo or SD list. “And yet here you are.”
    “I debated for some moments. I took the chance thatthere are still some policemen in this city who are interested in the truth.” She said this defiantly.
    Janssen stepped inside. He eyed the woman but Kohl said nothing about her. “Yes?” the inspector asked.
    “Sir, the American embassy said they have no knowledge of a Robert Taggert.”
    Kohl nodded as he continued to ponder the information. He stepped closer to Taggert’s body and said, “Quite a fortuitous fall. Fortuitous from your perspective, of course. And you, Miss Richter, I’ll ask you again—you saw the struggle firsthand? You must be honest with me.”
    “Yes, yes. That man had a gun. He was going to kill Mr. Schumann.”
    “Do you know the victim?”
    “No, I don’t. I’ve never seen him.”
    Kohl glanced again at the body then tucked his thumb into his vest watch pocket. “It’s a curious business, being a detective, Mr. Schumann. We try to read the clues and follow where they lead. And in this case the clues put me on your trail—indeed they led me here, directly to you—and now it seems those very same clues suggest that it was actually this other man I have been seeking all along.”
    “Life’s funny sometimes.”
    The phrase made no sense in German. Kohl assumed it was a translation of an American idiom but he deduced the meaning.
    Which he certainly could not dispute.
    He took his pipe from his pocket and, without lighting it, slipped it into his mouth and chewed on the stem for a moment. “Well, Mr. Schumann, I have decided not to detain you, not at this moment. I will let you leave, though I will retain your passport while I look into these matters in more depth. Do not leave Berlin. As you have probablyseen, our various authorities are quite adept at locating people in our country. Now, I’m afraid, you will have to quit the boardinghouse. It’s a crime scene. Do you have another place to stay where I can contact you?”
    Schumann thought for a moment. “I’ll get a room at the Hotel Metropol.”
    Kohl wrote this down in his notebook and pocketed the man’s passport. “Very well,