Garden of Beasts

at a table in the front bar, arguing with a man in a dirty light blue suit and a flat-topped straw boater hat. Webber glanced up and beamed a great smile toward Paul then quickly dismissed his companion.
    “Come here, come here, Mr. John Dillinger! How are you, my friend?” Webber rose to embrace him.
    They sat. Before Paul could even unbutton his jacket, Liesl, the attractive young waitress who’d served them earlier, made a beeline for him. “Ach, you’re back,” she announced, resting a hand on his shoulder, squeezing hard. “You could not resist me! I knew it! What will it be now?”
    “Pschorr for me,” Paul said. “For him a Berlin beer.”
    Her fingers brushed the back of his neck as she stepped away.
    Webber’s eyes followed Liesl. “It seems that you have yourself a special friend. And what does bring you back? The allure of Liesl? Or have you been beating up more dung-shirts and need my help?”
    “I thought we might be able to do some business, after all.”
    “Ach, your words are like Mozart’s music to me. I knew you were a sharp one.”
    Liesl brought the beers immediately. Paul noted that at least two customers who’d ordered earlier had not been served. She wrinkled her face, looking around the bar. “I must work now. Otherwise I would sit and join you and let you buy me schnapps.” Resentfully she strode off.
    Webber slammed his glass into Paul’s. “Thank you for this.” He nodded after the man in the baby-blue suit, who was now at the bar. “Such problems I have. You wouldn’t believe them. Hitler announced a new car at the Berlin Auto Show last year. Better than the Audi, cheaper than the DKW. The Folks-Wagon, it is to be called. A car for everybody. You can pay by installments then pick it up when you’ve paid in full. Not a bad idea. The company can make use of the money and they still keep the car in case you don’t complete the payments. Is that not brilliant?”
    Paul nodded.
    “Ach, I was lucky enough to find thousands of tires.”
    “Find?”
    Webber shrugged. “And now I learn that the damn engineers have changed the wheel size of the piss-ant little car. My inventory is useless.”
    “How much did you lose?”
    Webber regarded the foam in his beer. “I haven’t actually lost money. But I will not make money. That is just as bad. Automobiles are one thing this country’s done well. The Little Man’s rebuilt all the roads. But we have a joke: You can travel anywhere in the country in great speed and comfort. But why would you want to? All you find at the other end of the road are more National Socialists.” He roared with laughter.
    Liesl was looking at Paul expectantly from across the room. What did she want? Another order for beer, a roll in the hay, a marriage proposal? Paul turned back to Webber. “I will admit you were right, Otto. I am something more than a sportswriter.”
    “If you are a sportswriter at all.”
    “I have a proposal.”
    “Fine, fine. But let us talk among four eyes. You understand the meaning? Just the two of us. There’s a better place to speak and I need to deliver something.”
    They drained their beers and Paul left some marks on the table. Webber picked up a cloth shopping bag with the words KaDeWe—the World’s Finest Store printed on the side. They escaped without saying good-bye to Liesl.
    “Come this way.” Outside they turned north, away from downtown, from the shops, from the fancy Metropol Hotel, and plunged into the increasingly tawdry neighborhood.
    There were a number of nightclubs and cabarets herebut they’d all been boarded up. “Ach, look at this. My old neighborhood. It’s all gone now. Listen, Mr. John Dillinger, I will tell you that I was very famous in Berlin. Just like your mobs that I read about in the crime shockers, we had our Ringvereine here.”
    Paul was not familiar with the word, whose literal translation was “ring association,” but, with Webber’s explanation, decided it meant “gang rings.”
    Webber continued. “Ach, we had many of them. Very powerful. Mine was called after your Wild West. We were the Cowboys.” He used the English word. “I was president of it for a time. Yes, president. You look surprised. But we held elections to choose our leaders.”
    “Democracy.”
    Webber grew serious. “You must remember, we were a republic then, our German government was. It was President Hindenburg. Our gang rings were very well run. They were grand. We owned buildings and