A Quiet Flame

His office at the Alex resembled that of a university professor’s. He sat in front of a large bookcase full of legal and forensic tomes, one of which he himself had written. On the wall was a map of Berlin with red and brown pins indicating outbreaks of political violence. The map looked like it had the measles, there were so many pins. On his desk were two telephones, several piles of papers, and an ashtray where he tipped the ash from the Black Wisdom Havanas that were his one apparent luxury.

He was, I knew, under enormous pressure, because the republic itself was under enormous pressure. In the March elections, the Nazis had doubled their strength in the Reichstag and were now the second-largest party, with eleven and a half million votes. The chancellor, Heinrich Bruning, was trying to turn the economy around, but with unemployment at nearly six million and rising, this was proving almost impossible. Bruning looked unlikely to survive now that the Reichstag had reconvened. Hindenburg remained president of the Weimar Republic and leader of the largest party. But the aristocratic old man had little liking for Bruning. And if Bruning went, what then? Schleicher? Papen? Gröner? Hitler? Germany was running out of strong men who were fit to lead the country.

Izzy waved me to a chair without looking up from what he was writing with his black Pelikan. From time to time he put down the pen and lifted the cigar to his mouth, and I amused myself with the vague hope that he might put the pen in his mouth and try to write with the cigar.

“We must continue to do our duty as policemen even though others may make it difficult for us,” he said in a voice that was deep and full-bodied, like a lager darkened by colored malts—a Dunkel or a Bock. He put down the pen and, sitting back on the creaking swivel chair, fixed me with an eye as pointed as the spike on a cuirassier’s Pickelhaube. “Don’t you agree, Bernie?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Berliners still haven’t forgotten or forgiven their police force for what happened in 1918, when the Alex surrendered to anarchy and revolution without a shot.”

“No, sir. But what else could they do?”

“They could have upheld the law, Bernie. Instead they saved their own skins. Always we uphold the law.”

“And if the Nazis take over, what then? They’ll use the law and the police for their own ends.”

“Which is exactly what the Independent Socialists did in 1918,” he said. “Under Emil Eichhorn. We survived that. We shall survive the Nazis, too.”

“Maybe.”

“We must have a little faith, Bernie,” he said. “If the Nazis do get in, we shall have to have faith that, eventually, the parliamentary process will restore Germany to its senses.”

“I hope you’re right, sir.” Then, just as I was beginning to think Izzy had summoned me for a lesson in political science, he came to the point.

“An English philosopher named Jeremy Bentham once wrote that publicity is the very soul of justice. That’s especially true in the case of Anita Schwarz. To bowdlerize a phrase from another English jurist, the investigation into her murder must not merely proceed, it must be seen to proceed vigorously. Now let me tell you why. Helga Schwarz, the murdered girl’s mother, is Kurt Daluege’s cousin. That makes this a high-profile case, Bernie. And I just wanted to let you know that the last thing we want right now is Dr. Goebbels arguing in the pages of his tawdry but nonetheless influential newspaper that the investigation is being handled incompetently, or that we’re dragging our feet because we have some anti-Nazi ax to grind. All personal prejudices must be put aside. Do I make myself clear, Bernie?”

“Very clear, sir.” I might not have had a doctorate in jurisprudence like Bernard Weiss, but I didn’t need to have it spelled out with umlauts and ablauts. Kurt Daluege was a decorated war hero. Currently in the SS, he was an ex-SA leader in Berlin, not to mention Goebbels’s deputy. More important for us, he was an NSDAP member of the Prussian State Parliament, to which the Berlin police owed its first loyalty. Daluege could make political trouble for us. With friends like his, he could make trouble in a hospice for retired Benedictine monks. The smart money in Berlin said that if they ever got into power, the Nazis were planning to put Daluege in charge of the Berlin police force. It wasn’t that he had any experience of policing. He wasn’t even a lawyer. What he did have experience of was doing exactly what Hitler and Goebbels told him to do. And I presumed the same was true of his relation by marriage Otto Schwarz.

“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.”