A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 8
June 23, 2008
NEWS: The trailer is done, except for the scoring. I’ll release it in April 2009.
EXCERPT: “Anything worth my time?” I said to Fritz, because that is what I would have said on any other day.
“A group of Nazis beat a Communist almost to death, but that’s not news.”
“Not news,” I said. “But newsworthy, even though the Tageblatt will not run it. Someone should care what the Nazis are doing.”
“We care,” Fritz said. “But the courts let them go faster than we can arrest them.”
Trace of Smoke Excerpt 7
June 16, 2008
NEW: I will have a trailer done this week! But I won’t release it until April to generate interest in the book. And I have a new and wonderful blurb on my home page from the esteemed historical fiction writer Paul Doherty. Hooray!
EXCERPT: Like every Monday, I had come to the police station to sift through the weekend’s crime reports in search of a story for the Berliner Tageblatt, looking for a tale of horror to titillate our readers. Mondays were the best times for fresh reports. People got up to more trouble on weekends, and at the full moon. Ernst’s photograph flashed through my head. He too had got up to more trouble on the weekend. I swallowed my grief and handed Fritz back his handkerchief.
Fritz shook his head. “We found a few floaters last weekend.” He walked behind the wooden counter that separated his work area from the public area. “Mostly vagrants, I think. Probably a few from a new power struggle between criminal rings, but we’ll not prove it.”
I held my face stiff, using the polite smile I’d mastered as a child. I was grateful for the beatings, slappings, and pinchings I’d received from my parents. They had taught me to hold this face no matter what my real thoughts and feelings. Ernst had mocked me for it. Everything he thought or felt showed on his face the instant it entered his head. And now he was dead. I gulped, once more fighting for control. Fritz furrowed his brow. He suspected something was wrong, in spite of my best efforts.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 6
June 9, 2008
“Still raining, I see.” Fritz pointed to my dripping umbrella. I’d forgotten I still held it. He closed the office door.
“Washes the dog shit off the sidewalks.” I forced a laugh that tore my lungs. The weather remained our favorite joke, Fritz and mine. We jested about that and his Alsatian dog, Caramel. “How are Bettina and the children?” I tried to always keep it light with him. To make him enjoy handing me the police reports so much it did not cross his mind that he did not need to do it.
“Are you crying?” he asked, concern in his gray eyes. No getting past Fritz, the experienced detective.
“A cold.” I wiped my wet face with my wet hand. I hated to lie to him, but Fritz ran everything by the book. He would neither understand, nor forgive, my passing off my papers, even to save Sarah. “A cold and the rain.”
He took a clean white handkerchief out of his uniform pocket and handed it to me. It smelled of starch from Bettina’s wifely care. “Thank you,” I said, wiping my cheeks.“Anything interesting?”
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 5
June 2, 2008
Fritz held the door open, and I nodded my thanks. He was the kindly husband of my oldest friend, and I feared that he would recognize the photograph too, if he studied it closely. He must not suspect that Ernst was dead. My identity papers, and Ernst’s, were on a ship to America with my friend Sarah and her son Tobias.
Sarah, a prominent Zionist troublemaker, was forbidden to travel by order of the German government. We’d loaned them our identity papers so they could masquerade as Hannah and Ernst Vogel, a German brother and sister on vacation. Their ship would dock soon, and our papers would be returned, but until that happened no one could notice anything that Hannah and Ernst Vogel did in Berlin without placing their lives in danger. Even though Ernst had acted distant with me for the past six months, he had agreed to the plan.