"Much," I said, glad that I'd caught my breath outside the door. "I needed rest."

"And chicken soup," he said. "Bettina makes a wonderful chicken soup with dumplings. Puts you right back on your feet."

"I am a terrible cook," I lied. Bettina used my chicken soup recipe, but I would keep her secrets. "I have to stay on my feet without the soup."

"Pity." He took out his cigar and shook it at me. "Stop by and have some of Bettina's. She'd like to fatten you up and pair you off."

"Like a lamb to slaughter." I smiled my first real smile since I'd entered the building.

"So far, you've gotten away every time, lambkin." He chuckled, his gray eyes twinkling.

"I am a fast runner."

"But do you always have to run?" He put his cigar between his lips and puffed. The smoke smelled stronger than cigarettes, and I could see why Bettina hated it. "Kommissar Lang asked me about you. He's a good man. Perhaps even a little lovestruck."

"He's a member of the SS," I said, louder than I intended.

"Many men are." He chewed on the cigar end. "And more join every day. Soon you'll have no one to date if you don't date Nazis."

"I'd rather be alone."

He shook his head. "What's the real reason you're here, besides my irresistible nature? Or perhaps a chance to see Kommissar Lang?"

"I am doing a piece on drug overdoses and prostitutes," I said. "Any recents?"

"Other girls come in here asking about family and friends," he said. "With you, always the story."

"A girl has to eat."

"Chicken soup if she can get it." He ambled back to the file cabinets. He retrieved a few gray folders. Fritz had an amazing knack for finding the right cases for me. When he went on vacation I never got anything useful out of the office.

"Some of these are old." He slapped folders down on the counter in front of me. "But I never know which one will have the best details for you."

"You are a born newspaperman, Fritz." I opened the first folder, aware of his eyes on me. It was about a fourteen-year-old girl named Gretel who overdosed on heroin. I sighed and skimmed through the details. I had to look interested in all of them, but I also wanted to get out of there before Kommissar Lang came in. Lovestruck or no, he was no fool. He might have matched up Ernst's folder with the picture I'd been standing near.

Four folders in, I found her. Alias: Sweetie Pie. Name: Unknown. She looked like the woman I saw with Francis last night, but I could not be certain. It had been dark.

I sat the folder on the counter and took out my notebook. I skimmed the rest of the report. Age: early twenties. That made her anywhere from fourteen to eighteen when she gave birth to Anton. Cause of death: cocaine overdose. Her body had been found in the public toilets at Wittenbergplatz. My knees weakened, and I clutched the counter. I had been one of the last people to see her alive.

There were no coincidences, Paul used to say. Only reporters who were not smart enough to see the whole picture. Francis had seen her last night. He had given her money to buy the drugs that had killed her. But why?

Occupation: prostitute. The police had no name, they had no origin, no next of kin, and no address. How had she managed to practice her trade for all these years without anyone knowing her real name? If Rudolf had known more about her, he had kept it from the police. Nowhere did the report mention that she'd been identified by Rudolf von Reiche, so I assumed that must have cost him a bit for a bribe. She was listed as single with no children.

And, like that, Anton became an orphan. An invisible one.

I turned the folder upside down so Fritz could read it. "Tell me about this one."

Fritz glanced at the report. "Nasty piece of work, that one," he said. "I was here when they brought her in this morning. Chockfull of diseases, I imagine. Sores everywhere. Bone thin too."

I nodded and massaged my temples. Anton had no mother and no father. Anton's only relatives were me and Ursula, assuming that the dead Sweetie Pie was his real mother and Ernst his real father. I looked down at the photograph. What kind of childhood had Anton experienced so far?

Fritz lifted the picture. "I never look at these," he said. "Luckily, it's not my job."

I took it out of his hands and studied it. The woman lay on the white tile floor of a bathroom stall, trapped between the toilet and wall. Her black hair pillowed her head. She wore knee-high lace-up leather boots and thigh-high dark stockings with a rip above the knee. The rip was so sad that I stared at it instead of her pale face, turned artificially toward the camera. I was grateful to see no resemblance between her and Anton.

"There's not much information on her."

Fritz nodded. "Maybe not from around here. And not all of the local girls have a history with us."

"She looks so old to be in her early twenties."

"That kind of life burns them out young." Fritz looked down at the picture. "I don't think she got much chicken soup either."

"Or gave out any," I said, without thinking.

"You think she had children?" Fritz asked. "Her kind gets them cut out before they are ever born."

True. Pregnancy was bad for business and a child such a burden. Why did she carry him full term? Perhaps it was before her life on the street? Perhaps her parents cast her out because she was pregnant? Poor Anton, losing both parents within a few days of each other. A coincidence, or something more sinister? Was he in danger? Was I?

I slid the report back into the file with shaking fingers.

"You're taking this one a bit seriously," said Fritz. "I've seen you look at worse than this before. Did you know her?"

"No," I said, glad that I did not have to try and lie to Fritz when he asked a direct question. "Getting soft in my old age."

"You have a long way to go to get soft," Fritz said. "But you're softening. I read your story on the little girls in that rape case. It was refreshing to see someone writing about the victims instead of analyzing the poor, sad perpetrator."

"Thank you." I skimmed the rest of the files to disguise my interest in Sweetie Pie. I'd never concentrated on prostitutes before, unless they were murdered. They died many other ways as well: malnutrition, tuberculosis, syphilis. Most had names, real names, next of kin, and real addresses. But Sweetie Pie was not the only one cut off from everyone and everything.

I tried to take notes for Anton, but there was nothing I wanted to tell him about how his mother had lived and died.

"Useful bits?" Fritz asked.

I handed Fritz back the folders with a smile. "Not many. But perhaps I can turn them into a story."

"Need anything else?"

I took a deep breath and willed my voice to sound calm. "How about those floaters you told me about the other day? How many of those do you have, say over the last two weeks?" Ernst was sure to be included in that group. I concentrated on keeping calm, but my heart raced, and my breath was short and quick. It hurt to call Ernst a floater.

Fritz turned and headed to the file cabinets. "I'll take a look."

I pretended to take notes in my notebook about the prostitute files I'd seen, trying to distract myself while Fritz opened cabinets and shuffled through folders.

"Here you go." Fritz set a few more folders in front of me. "More light reading."

"Thank you." I forced my hands to slow down and open each stiff folder in turn, eyes darting to the photograph. The first one was not Ernst.

"I'll leave you to your work," Fritz said. "I have reports to type. Let me know when you're done. And, Hannah, take a day off. You don't look well."

He walked across the room to the shiny black typewriter. He was so relaxed and solid, I felt suddenly bereft.

The next folder was Ernst's. I placed my green notebook on top of it, as if taking notes, and slid the picture between the pages. I hoped Fritz would not notice that the picture was missing. It was not his job. I copied details from the report to my notebook mechanically, trying not to read them.

But I did read them. I became Peter Weill, the detached reporter. Ernst had been killed by a single stab to the chest. It's rare for a person to die of a single stab wound. A murderer with military training, perhaps? Or a doctor? A policeman? Or a very lucky stroke? It seemed most likely that the person had military training, but that was no help. Almost every man over thirty-five had received military training for the war.

Hard to believe he'd let an armed man get so close to him. Ernst was no fool. But there were no bruises on his body to indicate that he'd fought back. No bruises, no cuts to his hands. Except for the stab wound, there were no marks on his body. Did he know his murderer?

He'd been found naked, so the murderer must have stripped him before dumping him into the river. Why? Ernst wore distinctive, hand-tailored dresses for his shows. They would have led the police right to the tailor, and then to the man who paid the bills, Rudolf von Reiche. I shivered. Even if the killer had been a stranger to Ernst, he must have known that one did not buy evening dresses for a man two meters tall at Wertheim Department Store.

He'd been in the water for a few hours at most when a Berolina tour boat fished him out. The tourists got to see a side of Berlin they had not paid for.

The taste of blood in my mouth startled me. I was biting the inside of my cheek. I willed my jaw muscles to relax. After closing Ernst's folder, I paged through the others without reading them.

I stuck Ernst's folder back in the pile and tapped it on the counter.

"Thank you, Fritz," I called.

"Always glad to be of service." The hall teemed with people hurrying to lost-and-found or the passport office. I pushed my way upstream against the human tide. My eyes filled with tears. Tears for Ernst. Tears for Anton. Tears for myself. Tears for a prostitute I'd never met. Two dead. Two cast adrift. Anton's only safe harbor was me, and I was drowning too. I would sort out what to do with him. I cleared my throat and swallowed. The time for tears had gone. It was time to act. I would find out who killed Ernst, and I would bring him to justice.

13.

An unusually small man dressed in riding clothes stood near the pictures in the Hall of the Unnamed Dead, scanning each one. He looked familiar, with curly hair and exotic skin. As he neared Ernst's picture, I realized who he was.

"Francis!" I called.

Without turning, he ran. He darted up the hall and slipped through a crowd of people. I had never seen anyone move so swiftly.

I walked as quickly as I could without attracting attention, but when I reached the back door he was gone. What was he doing here?

Still thinking about Francis, I strolled the few blocks down to the newspaper, wondering if my eyes had deceived me.

Inside the newsroom, the clack of keys greeted me, the sounds of writers typing furiously, proud each time a bell dinged at the end of a line. I hurried to pour a cup of the vile coffee. Even that would be better than the taste of blood in my mouth.

Cup in hand, I walked through swirling smoke to open the windows. I inhaled the outside air, which smelled only of manure and automobile exhaust; a bouquet compared to cigarette smoke. I sat at an empty desk and looked for Paul or Maria. They were nowhere to be found. Unusual for both to be gone so early in the day. Had they resumed their romance? In their heyday, they'd barely come to work. Back then I was happy that Paul had found someone, but now I wished it had been anyone but Maria.

I sat down at a battered typewriter and rolled in my paper, savoring the familiar clicking sound as I turned the drum. I had no new sensational trial. The rape story had finished early. For the first time in years, Peter Weill had nothing to say. I'd spent my research time fencing with Rudolf and verifying his story. Good for my curiosity, bad for my journalism.

Still, I had a typewriter and paper. No sense in letting that go to waste.

Dear Fritz, I know that this seems fantastic, but you would only be receiving this letter if my suspicions had some truth.

I then typed details of my conversation with Rudolf, my suspicions that he had killed my brother, that he had killed Anton's mother, and that he would kill me. Even to me, it sounded foolish. Although I understood Rudolf's anger at Ernst's infidelity and believed him capable of a quick crime of passion, I had trouble believing he could have killed Ernst with one blow. He had no military training, and I doubted he picked up anything heavier than a fountain pen most days. Even if he had killed Ernst, why kill Sweetie Pie? That was no crime of passion.

I typed up everything I knew, adding a note asking that Anton be delivered to my sister Ursula. Bad news for him. She was no one's idea of a nurturing mother, but she was his only living relative. As difficult as she was, living with her was preferable to an orphanage. Then I signed my name. I sealed the documents in an office envelope and wrote "In the event of my death, deliver to Fritz Waldheim at the Berlin Alexanderplatz Police Station." I felt paranoid, but Ernst was dead, Sweetie Pie was dead. And I was the only one who had made a link between their deaths. So far.

The smell of cigarette smoke and burnt coffee was all but forgotten as I moved into the world of my story. I wrote of a woman visible only in the brief moment when a man picked her off the street. Then she became desirable and earned money and notice, until she returned to the street again. In death, Sweetie Pie lay alone, nameless, clutching the card of an aristocratic lover, a man who identified her body at the police station but stayed out of official reports, a man with an important name, a rich man.

I hoped Herr Neumann would have no time to read through the story. He'd pull that line as slander, although I knew better than to use Rudolf's name. I did "accidentally" capitalize the word Reich, matching as it does von Reiche. Only a lazy typesetter would miss it, but I could always hope.

Perhaps it would trigger an investigation, if Fritz read it in conjunction with my letter. If I were killed. I snorted. Now all I had to do was die, then Rudolf would be sorry. I felt like a twelve-year-old, mentally viewing the attendees of my imaginary funeral, thinking they were sorry that they had treated me badly.

"You're looking rather odd," Paul said. I looked around for Maria, but she was gone. He handed me a cup of warm coffee. Mine had long since gone cold.

"I try." I sipped the coffee and made a face. "Will you hold this for me?" I handed the envelope to Paul.

He leaned against my desk, his long elegant legs angled toward the window. He shifted to the right, putting his weight on the leg that had never been wounded.

"What is this?" Paul asked, reading the outside. " 'In the event of my death'?"

"Probably nothing," I said. "Paranoia."

"You're not the paranoid type." Paul scrutinized my face. He stood and came around to the back of my desk.

"Everyone can be, under the right circumstances." I stood as well.

"Not Peter Weill," he said.

"I have to go."

Paul put his hand on my arm, over the bruises concealed by my long sleeves. "Hannah?"

"Stay out of it, Paul," I said. "It's the only way you can be of use to me."

He took his hand off my arm and bowed slightly. "I'd rather be of use to you while you're still alive."

"We do not always get what we want, do we?"

Hurt flickered across his face, but was replaced by a studied politeness. "Indeed."

"You are a great friend," I said. "But-"

"Paul!" shouted a reporter from across the room. "I need you over here."

Paul held up one long finger. "Just a second."

"I cannot explain," I said.

"Does this have to do with the rape case?" he asked. "And that new man you are seeing?"

I shook my head. "First, I am not seeing him anymore. Second, it has nothing to do with him." I thought about his Friday invitation. I would not go out on a boat with him. Not at all. I had no time for frivolous pursuits.