Garden of Beasts

pistol. It was an automatic of some sort with a toggle on the top, a Luger, he believed. Aiming at the man’s chest, Paul squinted. He recognized the fellow from the Beer House. He’d been sitting on the patio, lost in his newspaper—Paul had assumed. He held a pistol, a large automatic of some kind, but it wasn’t pointed at Paul; he was still aiming at the man on the ground.
    “Don’t move,” Paul said in German. “Drop the gun.”
    The man didn’t drop it but, convinced the man he’d shot wasn’t a threat, slipped his own weapon into his pocket. He looked up and down Dresden Alley. “Shhhh,” he whispered then cocked his head to listen. He slowly approached. “Schumann?” he asked.
    Paul said nothing. He kept the Luger aimed at thestranger, who crouched in front of the shot man. “My watch.” The words were in German, a faint accent.
    “What?”
    “My watch. That’s all I’m reaching for.” He pulled out his pocket watch, opened it and held the crystal in front of the man’s nose and mouth. There was no condensation of breath. He put the timepiece away.
    “You’re Schumann?” the man repeated, nodding at the briefcase on the ground. “I’m Reggie Morgan.” He too fit the description Avery had given him: dark hair and mustache, though he was much thinner than the dead man.
    Paul looked up and down the alley. No one.
    The exchange would seem absurd, with a dead body in front of them, but Paul asked, “What’s the best tram to take to get to Alexander Plaza?”
    Morgan replied quickly, “The number one thirty-eight tram . . . No, actually, the two fifty-four is better.”
    Paul glanced at the body. “So then who’s he?”
    “Let’s find out.” He bent over the corpse and began to rifle through the dead man’s pockets.
    “I’ll keep watch,” Paul said.
    “Good.”
    Paul stepped away. Then he turned back and touched the Luger to the back of Morgan’s head.
    “Don’t move.”
    The man froze. “What’s this?”
    In English Paul said, “Give me your passport.”
    Paul took the booklet, which confirmed that he was Reginald Morgan. Still, as he handed it back, he kept the pistol where it was. “Describe the Senator to me. In English.”
    “Just easy on the trigger, you don’t mind,” the man said in a voice that placed his roots somewhere in NewEngland. “Okay, the Senator? He’s sixty-two years old, got white hair, a nose with more veins than he ought to have, thanks to the scotch. And he’s thin as a rail even though he eats a whole T-bone at Delmonico’s when he’s in New York and at Ernie’s in Detroit.”
    “What’s he smoke?”
    “Nothing the last time I saw him, last year. Because of the wife. But he told me he was going to start again. And what he used to smoke were Dominican cigars that smelled like burning Firestones. Give me a break, pal. I don’t want to die ’cause some old man took up a bad habit again.”
    Paul put the gun away. “Sorry.”
    Morgan resumed his examination of the corpse, unfazed by Paul’s test. “I’d rather work with a cautious man who insults me than a careless one who doesn’t. We’ll both live longer.” He dug through the pockets of the dead man. “Any visitors yet?”
    Paul glanced up and down Dresden Alley. “Nothing.”
    He was aware that Morgan was staring in chagrin at something he’d found in the dead man’s pockets. He sighed. “Okay. Brother, here’s a problem.”
    “What?”
    The man held up an official-looking card. On the top was a stamp of an eagle and below it, in a circle, a swastika. The letters “SA” appeared on the top.
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means, my friend, that you’ve been in town for less than a day and already we’ve managed to kill a Stormtrooper.”

Chapter Six
    “A what?” Paul Schumann asked.
    Morgan sighed. “ Sturmabteilung. Stormtrooper. Or Brownshirt. Sort of the Party’s own army. Think of them as Hitler’s thugs.” He shook his head. “And it’s worse for us. He’s not in uniform. That means he’s a Brown Elite. One of their senior people.”
    “How did he find out about me?”
    “I’m not sure he did, not you specifically. He was in a phone booth, checking up on everybody on the street.”
    “I didn’t see him,” Paul said, angry with himself for missing the surveillance. Everything was too damn out of kilter here; he didn’t know what to look for and what to ignore.
    Morgan continued. “As soon as you started into the alley, he came after