Garden of Beasts

returning to the dorm. Owens asked, “What’re you doing?”
    “Heading into town. Get some work done.”
    “Naw, Paul. We were hoping you’d stay around. You missed an all-right ceremony last night. You’ve gotta see the food they got here. It’s swell.”
    “I know it’s grand, but I gotta skip. I’m doing some interviews in town.”
    Owens stepped closer then nodded at the cut and bruise on Paul’s face. Then the runner’s sharp eyes dropped down to the man’s knuckles, which were raw and red from the fight.
    “Hope the rest of your interviews go better than the one this morning. Dangerous to be a sportswriter in Berlin, looks like.”
    “I took a spill. Nothing serious.”
    “Not for you maybe,” Owens said, amused. “But what about the fellow you landed on?”
    Paul couldn’t help but smile. The runner was just a kid. But there was something worldly about him. Maybe growing up a Negro in the South and Midwest made you mature faster. Same with putting yourself through school on the heels of the Depression.
    Like stumbling into his own line of work had changed Paul. Changed him real fast.
    “What exactly are you doin’ here, Paul?” the runner whispered.
    “Just my job,” he answered slowly. “Just doing my job. Say, what’s the wire on Stoller and Glickman? Hope they haven’t been sidelined.”
    “Nope, they’re still scheduled,” Owens said, frowning, “but the rumors aren’t sounding good.”
    “Good luck to them. And to you too, Jesse. Bring home some gold.”
    “We’ll do our best. See you later?”
    “Maybe.”
    Paul shook his hand and walked off toward the entrance to the village, where a line of taxis waited.
    “Hey, Paul.”
    He turned to see the fastest man in the world saluting him, a grin on his face.
    •   •   •
    The poll of the vendors and bench-sitters along Rosenthaler Street had been futile (though Janssen confirmed that he’d learned some new curses when a flower seller found out he was troubling her only to ask questions, not to buy anything). There had been a shooting not far away, Kohl had learned, but that was an SS matter—perhaps about their jealously guarded “minor security matter”—and none of the elite guard would deign to speak to the Kripo about it.
    Upon their return to headquarters, however, they found that a miracle had occurred. The photographs of the victim and of the fingerprints from Dresden Alley were on Willi Kohl’s desk.
    “Look at this, Janssen,” Kohl said, gesturing at the glossy pictures, neatly assembled in a file.
    He sat down at his battered desk in his office in the Alex, the Kripo’s massive, ancient building, nicknamed for the bustling square and surrounding neighborhood where it was located: Alexander Plaza. All the state buildings were being renovated except theirs, it seemed. The criminal police were housed in the same grimy building they’d been in for years. Kohl did not mind this, however, since it was some distance from Wilhelm Street, which at least gave some practical autonomy to the police, even if none now existed administratively.
    Kohl was also fortunate to have an office of his own, a room that measured four meters by six and contained a desk, a table and three chairs. On the oak plain of the desk were a thousand pieces of paper, an ashtray, a pipe rack and a dozen framed photographs of his wife, children and parents.
    He rocked forward in his creaking wooden chair andlooked over the crime scene photographs and the ones of the fingerprints. “You’re talented, Janssen. These are quite good.”
    “Thank you, sir.” The young man was looking down at them, nodding.
    Kohl regarded him closely. The inspector himself had taken a traditional route up through the police ranks. The son of a Prussian farmer, young Willi had become fascinated with both Berlin and police work from the storybooks he’d read growing up. At eighteen he’d come to the city and gotten a job as a uniformed Schupo officer, went through the basic training at the famed Berlin Police Institute and worked his way up to corporal and sergeant, receiving a college degree along the way. Then, with a wife and two children, he’d gone on to the institute’s Officers School and joined Kripo, rising over the years from detective-inspector assistant to senior detective-inspector.
    His young protégé, on the other hand, had gone a different route, one that was far more common nowadays. Janssen had graduated from a good university