In spite of my worry about Rudolf, I smiled. "My name is Hannah Vogel." I held out my hand.

"Wilhelm," he said, shaking it firmly. "Wilhelm Lehmann."

"The little boy from school?" I asked, surprised. More than five years ago, Ernst had brought an awkward twelve-year-old boy to our apartment. Now that I knew what to look for, I saw the ghost of the boy in the young man's face. Obviously thrilled by the attention, Ernst claimed that Wilhelm followed him around like a puppy. I bet Ernst had been even more flattered now that Wilhelm was all grown-up and filled out.

Wilhelm nodded. "Back then he always tried to talk me out of loving him."

"He did?" I'd not seen this side of Ernst. I'd never known him to turn down love or adoration. He never got enough of it.

"He said to find a nice girl. Said I was too young. But not last Friday when I showed up at the club. That night he knew I was a man. They all knew." Wilhelm knocked back his whiskey like Tom Mix, the western star. He clunked his shot glass back on the table. "I could have had any of them. I picked Ernst, because I thought he cared."

"Oh," I said, my usual comment when at a loss for words. Wilhelm was now a man, and a Nazi. He'd been a gentle boy, good with Mitzi. Now his mission was to beat up Communists and Jews.

"But then Ernst vanished. Without a single word to me. He didn't come to work." Wilhelm slumped in his chair, and his lower lip stuck out ever so slightly. He did not look manly anymore. "I don't know, but I think he ran off with that rich soldier he was talking about."

"A soldier?" I leaned forward. "What was his name?"

"Somebody famous. Somebody more important than me."

I suppressed an impatient sigh. "Do you know anything else about him?"

Wilhelm furrowed his brow. "Ernst said that he was scared of him, but he liked it."

I'd never known Ernst to be afraid of anyone, even when he should have been. "Why was he scared?"

"He said it like it was a big joke, but I think he meant it." He glared at me. "But who knows what he means when he says things."

"And you have heard nothing from him since?" I stole a quick glance toward the bar. Rudolf leaned toward Oliver, who shrugged and pointed to the stage door. Was Rudolf asking about Ernst? If so, Oliver was not telling him Ernst wasn't there.

"No, but I am not the only one looking for him either. A pair of SA officers came to the bar yesterday. I told them I had not seen him in days, but they just kept asking and asking."

Why were members of the Sturm Abteilung, Hitler's burgeoning private army of storm troopers, interested in Ernst? Rudolf stalked to the backstage door, and I turned my chair so that Wilhelm sat between me and the stage. It was the best I could do without running away. "Did they say why they wanted to find him?"

Wilhelm shook his head. "Maybe he is hiding from them. Or maybe he's hiding from me," Wilhelm said, suddenly sad. He pulled a red silk handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed his eyes. The kind of dabbing expressly forbidden under the Code of Manliness, a series of rules I'd invented for Ernst, to protect him.

Wilhelm ran his hand absently along his cheek. He tucked the red silk neatly into the pocket of his brown shirt so that not the tiniest glimpse was visible. "Do you think Ernst couldn't bring himself to tell me that he hates me after all? That he's hiding so he doesn't have to face me?"

Ernst was not hiding from Wilhelm, but I was hiding from Rudolf. What if he found me here? If he'd killed Ernst, whom he'd loved, he'd have no trouble dispatching me, whom he loathed. The hair raised on the back of my neck.

"I do not think he would hide from you," I told Wilhelm, trying to be reassuring.

"Only cowards hide," Wilhelm said angrily. "Papi says . . ." His voice trailed off.

"What does your father think of your new friends?" Ernst had long ago told me that Wilhelm and his father did not get along.

"Papi?" Wilhelm took a long drag of his cigarette. "He fixes me up with girls. He hates what I am."

"What are you?"

"Queer. He doesn't like queer men. Says we're a blight on the race. He says Hitler thinks it too. That one day Hitler will round us all up and kill us. But he's wrong about that. Isn't Hitler's best friend Rohm? Rohm is as queer as me, and nobody's rounding him up."

"What if something happened to Rohm?" I took the last sip of beer, sweeter than the others, mostly syrup. I placed my glass softly on the wooden table.

"Hitler can't afford to lose him. They'll protect him all right. He's the only one who can handle the storm troopers. That's why Hitler begged him to come back from Bolivia."

I raised my eyebrows. Hitler was not the begging type.

"Rohm is much tougher than Hitler. Men followed him into battle in the war, paid with their lives in Verdun, and still more followed him." Wilhelm's eyes shone, and he ran his index finger across his lips.

"Does that say more about him, or the men who followed him?"

Wilhelm shook his blond head. "Rohm's a hero. Once he marched sixty-five French prisoners back from the front lines. He had been shot in the chest. It grazed his lung. But he took them back to the base, stumbling along with three other wounded German soldiers. His authority was so strong that none of the prisoners ran, even though Rohm and his men had only Rohm's service revolver, with only six shots."

"And how do you know about this feat of valor?" Behind Wilhelm the musicians took a break, putting down their shiny instruments and waddling up to the bar like penguins.

"My father told me and he should know because he's Rohm's top lieutenant in Berlin."

"Does it bother him that Rohm's queer?"

Wilhelm laughed incredulously. "He worships Rohm. It's fine for Rohm to do whatever he wants. It's just not fine for me. Plus I don't act manly enough."

"What does that mean?"

"Ernst used to coach me on ways to act manly around my father."

I winced. Ernst certainly had experience in that.

"He called it the Code of Manliness. You should know all about it. He said you made it up."

"I did, to keep him safe from our father."

"The tyrant."

"Is that what Ernst called him?"

"That was the nicest thing Ernst called him." Wilhelm laughed. "I'd have to apologize to say what he said in front of a lady."

"That sounds like Ernst," I said, smiling.

A tall, overweight man dressed in a badly tailored flapper dress with black fringe wobbled over to our table. He looked like a circus tent about to unravel. "Hi, darling," he said, to Wilhelm. I remembered him from my previous visit to El Dorado. Lola.

Wilhelm pulled out a chair and watched the man with calculating eyes.

"Nice falsies," the man said to me, through his garish coral lipstick. "You're a convincing woman."

"And you are a convincing man," I said, "which I'm guessing was not your intention."

He blushed and gave me a genuine smile. I smelled the floral odor of Vasenol body powder. "I'm sorry, esteemed lady," he said. "My vision isn't so good and I thought you were, well, you know."

I laughed. "Hannah." I stuck out my hand.

He took my hand in his moist hairy one. "I'm Lovely Lola."

"Please, sit down." I gestured to the empty chair.

The man shook his head, and the black hair in his wig swung from side to side. "I came to invite your friend . . ." He pointed one coral fingernail at three small doors along the back wall. The wall, and the doors, were painted with a mural of a Chinese harbor. The doors were invisible, unless you knew what to look for.

Wilhelm started to shake his head, but then looked over at me defiantly. "I'd love to go into the dark room with you. And you, Hannah, be sure to tell Ernst that when you see him."

Wilhelm stood and shook my hand. His grip was firm and dry; the grip of a young man afraid of nothing. "It was wonderful seeing you, Hannah. If you see Ernst, please tell him I'm looking for him. I miss him so and I want to make it right, whatever he's upset about. I can do anything that soldier will do, and better."

Lovely Lola smiled.

I turned over one of the El Dorado beer coasters and wrote my name and the telephone number at the newspaper on the back using my jade-green fountain pen. "Call me if you see him."

He wrote an address on his own beer coaster and handed it me. "We don't have a telephone, but here's our address. It's by the bottle factory."

"Thank you." I glanced at his messy handwriting before tucking the coaster into my purse.

"Tell him to stop by and say hello. Or anything. Anytime. And that I'm not waiting for him. Not really."

Wilhelm took Lovely Lola's hand and led him back to the door on the far left. From Ernst, I knew that those doors contained little rooms with only a wooden bench in them, for bracing oneself against while . . . while one was intimate with a companion. If one could call it that. I shuddered and left the table. I knew I was a dreadful prude, but I could not bear to think of fresh-faced Wilhelm and that old transvestite in that little room. I did not want to see them again when they came out, flushed and sweaty like the men I'd seen emerge from those rooms in the past.

It did not help to know that Ernst had also had Lola, or that Wilhelm was only doing this to make a point to Ernst. Without me there as a witness, none of this would be happening. I swallowed a ball of nausea and headed back to the bar.

8.

On the way back to the bar an excited female voice trilled in Dutch. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two couples. The women looked like women as they giggled and tried not to point at "women" at the other tables. The men looked dazed.

"Thank you, Oliver." I set my empty glass on the bar and climbed onto a bar stool. "Do you know about a rich soldier Ernst might have mentioned? Wilhelm thinks they're away on a trip."

Oliver shook his bushy head and looked away. "Your brother mentions many men, including soldiers. But I never heard him mention a par tic u lar one." He polished a glass and set it in the row behind him.

"Oh." Was this part of Oliver's selective forgetfulness? Like last names, and dalliances? The perfect bartender.

"Don't worry. He'll show up soon. He's missed a show or two before you know."

"He has?" I asked, surprised. Ernst was responsible about his act.

"When Rudolf left to see a sick relative to make sure he was still in the will, your brother disappeared for a week." Oliver pulled six shot glasses down and expertly filled them. "And he wasn't with Rudolf."

"Do you know where he went?" I leaned my elbows on the smooth teak bar.

"Could have been anywhere." He placed glasses on a round red tray. "Your brother never lacks for offers."

"Thank you for the information," I said. In my experience, a source only gave this much information if they wanted something in return. What did Oliver want? "Was that Rudolf?"

Oliver's lips smiled, but his eyes were blank. "He was asking after your brother too."

"Did you tell him he's not here?"

"I told him to check backstage. Right now he's probably listening to a long tirade from Winnie." Oliver glanced back toward the stage door. A customer raised one hand with his fingers outstretched, and the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. Seven.

"He seemed in a hurry."

"Winnie will slow him down." Oliver took down another shot glass, filled it, and added it to the tray.

I stood to go. It would be well to get out of the El Dorado before Rudolf noticed me.

"Not sticking around for the show?" Oliver asked. "They've been using Francis instead of your brother. Quite an opportunity for an ambitious man. He's a gifted dancer, and at the end of the act he's wearing nothing but a fez and a loincloth."

"Who's Francis?"

"I need to deliver these." He cut across the dance floor to a group of mustached men sharing a table in the corner. They looked so much like men that I suspected they were women.

Oliver returned and dropped a few coins into an empty beer stein behind the bar. "You never heard of your brother's archrival?" he continued. "Francis has been trying to get into Ernst's act, and his pants, for over a year. Ernst's vacation is the best thing to happen to him since he got here."

"Where is Francis?"

Oliver pointed to a petite, curly-haired man sipping absinthe at the other end of the bar. His black hair and dark eyes and skin made him look exotic. He wore filmy harem pants, a black harem vest that seemed to cover pert breasts, a fez, and golden slippers with long curling toes. He looked too small to take down Ernst, but I walked over anyway. If he got close enough, he could have killed him.

"Can I buy you a drink?" I asked.

"Please," he sneered, glaring up at me with bloodshot eyes. The smell of alcohol from his breath was overpowering. "I know you spent hours getting those hips right, but you're still not my type."

"Hannah," I said, sticking out my hand.

"A real woman." He ignored my hand. "As I suspected. A transvestite would never wear those shoes with that dress. They're a train wreck. Your dress, by the way, is four years out of style."

"Give or take." I gestured to Oliver to refill Francis's glass, but Oliver shook his head.

"I don't take drinks from women." Francis wagged his long, lacquered fingernail at me drunkenly. "It gives them the wrong idea."

"What idea is that?" I asked.

"Do I know you?"

"I'm looking for my brother," I said. "Ernst Vogel."

"When you find him," he said, trying to push himself off the bar to a standing position. "Tell him to get back here."