A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 19
November 17, 2008
Still, Ernst thought those brown shirts and chocolate-colored shorts quite fetching. He’d only dated much older men. I had hoped that he would end up with a nice girl, in the end. Loving men was dangerous, and I would have shielded him from that danger if I could, or had him not choose to go down that path. But I knew that he had no choice. He had been exactly who he was from his earliest days. Still, he could have chosen a man less predatory than Rudolf. Perhaps this boy had been an improvement for him. I stifled a sob. Too little, too late. At least he’d been alive while dating Rudolf. I rubbed my hands over my face, trying not to think of Ernst as dead.
Would Ernst have left a good provider like Rudolf for a youth? He cared so much about his own comfort. When he betrayed Rudolf in the past (as he had often done), he’d been careful to conceal his affairs. Rudolf was a jealous and powerful man.
The bell for the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church rang ten. I was late for the trial. If I did not go, I might lose my job, lose everything. I thought about trying to convince Ernst’s landlady to let me into his apartment, but did not think I could face his rooms after all, with his dresses and his scent.
I plodded back toward the subway station. A sign with a white U against a dark blue background marked the entrance. Ernst called those signs empty smiles. He had preferred the confines of a taxi with a rich partner to the crush and noise of a subway car. And now he was to be buried alone, without the pomp he loved. I clutched Rudolf’s box and walked to the platform.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 18
November 10, 2008
A tiny scrap of red silk stuck out from under the flap of the box, and I stroked it with my fingers. One of Ernst’s handkerchiefs. I’d taught him to sew. We’d hemmed many handkerchiefs together, always red and always, when he could afford it, silk.
A cold wind brushed my face, and I turned up the collar of my coat. I tucked the corner of red silk out of sight. “Do you know the Nazi boy’s name or address?” I asked Rudolf.
“Certainly not.” Rudolf sniffed again.
I wondered if he’d been sniffing cocaine in Ernst’s apartment.
“I do not associate with that lot,” he said.
“Your nose is bleeding.” I dug for a handkerchief in my satchel.
Rudolf pulled a lace-edged handkerchief out of his pocket and held it to his nose. A red stain bloomed through the white linen. “Damn allergies,” he said. “I must be on my way. Inform Ernst that we have much to resolve.”
Rudolf raised his hand to hail a taxi. “Make sure he knows the consequences.”
“Which are?”
“Very unpleasant.” Immediately a taxi stopped in front of him, as taxis must have done all his life. He climbed in without a backward glance, and the taxi trundled off like a giant black beetle.
My mind filled with thoughts of Ernst and the Nazi boy. I had always wanted him to date a boy nearer his own age. But not a Nazi. I was a socialist, and despised Nazis for many things, including wanting to force women back into the home—children, kitchen, and church were to be our only realms. A particularly bad set of choices for those of us who neither had nor wanted a husband or children. And I did not want to think what would happen to the Jews and Communists if the Nazis gained power. I suspected that children, kitchen, and church were far better alternatives than what the Nazis would give them.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 17
October 14, 2008
“When did you last see Ernst?” I tried to remember the date under the photograph. The body was found Saturday.
“Friday night.” Rudolf sniffed. “Not that it concerns you. Or me since he abandoned me for that youth.”
“You let him leave the bar with a stranger?” I felt like a hopeless old maid as soon as the words left my mouth.
Rudolf laughed, a sound like a horse’s whinny. He walked down the street. “Your brother does what he wants.”
“What is in the box?” I followed him. I cast a glance over my shoulder at Ernst’s front steps, imagining him sweeping down them, admonishing Rudolf and me for arguing over him like two dogs over a bone. A delectable bone, he would add, arching his eyebrows. I bit my lip. He would never come down those stairs again.
“The box has only trinkets I gave your brother to show my feelings. Back when he shared them.” Rudolf tossed his head like a horse without upsetting his thick gray hair. I suppressed a smile at the feminine gesture. He certainly did not do that around his rich law clients.
“May I see these trinkets?” I hurried to keep pace with Rudolf’s long-legged stride.
“Why?” Rudolf asked. “They do not belong to you.”
“Nor are they yours,” I said. “If you gave them to Ernst.”
Rudolf narrowed his eyes and stopped walking. A crowd of workmen in caps and open necked shirts pushed by us on their way from the subway station.
“Are you stealing them, Rudolf?”
Rudolf sighed, and his pockmarked face sagged, caving in under the weight of his fifty years. As angry as he was, he was hurt, too. “He might cast them out on the street,” he said. “If they mean nothing to him now, I should have them.”
“Perhaps they have financial meaning?”
“I have no need to stoop to petty thievery,” he said. “Take them. Pass them along when you see him.” He thrust the cardboard box into my hands.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 16
September 29, 2008
NEWS: I’m off to LA this week for Shriekfest! Hopefully THE HUMANITARIAN will knock ‘em dead and suck their blood. Or something.
EXCERPT:I leaned backward to look at Rudolf. Thirty centimeters taller than me, and he always stood too close. He never forgave me for despising him, and I never forgave him for seducing my sixteen-year-old brother out of my home and into his decadent life. Inside of a week of meeting Rudolf, Ernst left school, moved out of the apartment, and started singing at the new El Dorado, a queer club on Motz Strasse. I barely saw him after that. Rudolf had turned him from a serious student into a chanteuse.
“He’s not a child any more,” Rudolf said. The front door swung shut behind his back. “In fact, he’s turned to defiling them himself.”
“What are you doing here, visiting Ernst?” I knew Ruldolf was not just visiting, but a lie from him might be illuminating.
“He’s not here.” Rudolf pursed his thin lips. “You look pasty in that horrible coat, Hannah. It is the color of a paper bag. And the cut is all wrong. Are you dressing out of the dustbin?”
“Where is he?” A cold weight lodged in my stomach.
“Cavorting with that Nazi boy he’s seeing no doubt.” Rudolf scanned the street.
“Nazi boy?” I stuttered.
“Someone more his own age. A luscious youth.” Rudolf hefted the box against his narrow hip. “Someone of whom you would approve.”
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 15
September 9, 2008
NEWS: I just found out that my vampire screenplay THE HUMANITARIAN is a finalist in Shriekfest 2008: The Los Angeles Horror/Sci-Fi Film Festival!
EXCERPT:
CHAPTER 2:
A burst of humid air hit my face as two teenage boys pried open the doors of the moving train. The train had entered a tunnel, and the boys were daring each other to stick their arms into the darkness, never knowing when they would draw back a bloody stump. Their parents thought they were safe in school. I closed my eyes and did not open them until I sensed the subway car had re-entered the light.
The train stopped at Kaiserhof station. I had missed my connection at Friedrichstadt. I should have climbed out and taken a bus to Moabit for the trial, but instead I rode west toward the more expensive borough of Wilmersdorf. Eventually this subway would take me to the Zoological Gardens, only a few blocks from Ernst’s apartment building. I stayed on, unable to do anything else.
When I got out at Bahnhof Zoo, I climbed the stairs like an old woman, hesitating on every step. Fewer passengers jostled me now. I wound my way through fashionable buildings, barely sparing a glance at the neo-Gothic spires of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church.
As I wavered in front of Ernst’s apartment building, Rudolf von Reiche burst out, tall, lean, and aristocratic in a gray three-piece suit and a shirt so white it cut my eyes. He carried a cardboard box the size of a child’s school bag and almost knocked me off the stoop. “Ah, Hannah, Queen of the Bourgeoisie,” he said in a frosty tone, tipping his gray bowler at me.
“Hello, Rudolf, Defiler of Children.”
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 14
September 1, 2008
NEWS: Back to “A Trace of Smoke,” for those of you who are following the novel. I hope you liked the “Coffee” excerpt too. You should be able to get it at a bookstore near you by mid-October.
EXCERPT:
Outside, a gust of wind tried to rip the umbrella out of my hands, but I held on, cursing and half crying as I stumbled across cobblestones to the subway. I pushed my way down concrete stairs, against the crush of people going to work. They chattered and laughed together, gleeful in the mundane details of their lives. I wanted only to go home and be alone.
Pictures of Ernst flashed by in my head. The most painful images were from his childhood. He’d been a wonderful child and, later, a great friend. I leaned against the wall of the subway station, face turned toward the tile and sobbed, safely alone in the crowd. When I could stand and walk again, I did.
Once aboard the train I collapsed on the wooden seat and drew a deep breath. I ran my fingers over the oak slats of the bench. The wood was blonde, like Ernst’s hair. Across from me, their faces hidden behind twin newspapers, sat two men in black fedoras. One man read the Berliner Tageblatt, the other the Völkische Beobachter, that Nazi rag.
Coffee short story excerpt
August 25, 2008
NEWS: I just received the cover art for MISSING, the anthology where my short story COFFEE will appear in October 2008. Today instead of more SMOKE, I decided to paste in a bit of COFFEE. Hope you like it! Comments, as always, are welcome.
COFFEE EXCERPT:
It was the summer of 1946, barely a year since the Allies had won the war. When Alexander climbed into the Berlin streetcar, the conductor flashed him a frightened smile. Alexander nodded in return. Free rides if he wore his American army uniform. Free food at the mess while children starved. Free to go home at the end of his tour and escape the devastation. Privileges of the occupying army.
Jagged stumps lined the wide street. The trees themselves had been destroyed by bombs or cut down for firewood. Probably a posh neighborhood once, with leafy branches shading women in floppy hats pushing prams. Boys crouching in the dirt playing marbles. Girls pouring tea for well dressed dolls.
Houses and apartments once stood proudly on this street. Now few remained. Most were reduced to piles of rubble. Others mere vacant lots, as if an angry God had reached down and carried buildings away whole.
Wind blew through the broken streetcar window, bringing with it the fetid smell of death. He thought he’d grown used to it, but his throat tightened. He poked his nose into the bag looped over his shoulder, the scent of coffee warring with the smell of corpses buried under rubble.
He remembered his mother bringing a bowl of milk with a dollop of coffee and a dash of cinnamon to their round table in Brooklyn. To act like an adult, he’d swallowed the bitter brew.
Had he brought enough coffee? A few pounds. Bars of chocolate. A carton of cigarettes. Cigarettes were currency in Berlin since the end of the war.
Wind ruffled the blue airmail paper in his other hand. Elegant letters danced across the page. He rubbed his dry eyes with his knuckle. He hadn’t slept more than a few hours a night in months, perhaps years.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 13
August 18, 2008
“I apologize in advance if there’s anything inaccurate. My editor has a leaden touch.”
Kommissar Lang handed me a pen. “Come to my office and sign it.” He gestured back down the hallway, past the photograph of Ernst. If I followed him, I knew that he would regale me with tales of his arrests and later be offended that I did not write each one for the Tageblatt. I had been through that with countless police officers, and afterward they were never much use as sources.
I placed his newspaper against the wall and signed it. “I must be at the courthouse early. It is best to watch the accused come in and sit down. One learns so much.”
He nodded. “One can determine a great deal from watching someone walk.”
I handed him back the newspaper and walked out the front door, trying not to let the wobble in my knees betray me.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 12
August 11, 2008
I turned and marched back down the hall, willing myself not to glance at the photograph. If I did not look, perhaps it would not be true.
“Fraulein Vogel,” called Kommissar Lang. I heard him sprinting after me.
Something was amiss. Would he demand to see my papers again, papers I still did not have? I envisioned myself bolting through the front door of the police station, but instead I turned to him, ready to concoct a story of lost papers.
“You forgot my autograph,” he panted.
“I do apologize.” Relief flooded over me. “It slipped my mind. I am so late for the Becker trial.”
Kommissar Lang nodded. “The rapist who targeted schoolgirls in the park?”
“That one.” Any other day I would have asked him about his involvement in the case, but today I needed to get away before I broke down.
He thrust the paper at me.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 11
August 4, 2008
“You have such insight into the male mind,” Kommissar Lang said. “You and your husband must be very close.”
“She’s never been married,” Fritz said. The corners of his mouth twitched with a suppressed smile.
“Might you autograph an article for me?” Kommissar Lang clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward. “Do you have an article in today’s paper?”
I had not yet read today’s paper. “I am not certain.”
“Yesterday’s,” Fritz said. “Front page.”
“I will procure a copy.” Kommissar Lang hastened out of the room. Fritz returned to his desk without saying a word. His shoulders twitched with laughter, but he kept a serious face. It cost me, but I gave him the expected warning smile.
When I glanced down at the reports, I saw gibberish. Lines of black type ran along the paper, but my mind could not turn them into words. My hand shook as I pretended to take notes, but I hoped Fritz could not see that from his desk. I willed myself to think of nothing but numbers and stared at the second hand of my watch, silently counting each tick. When three minutes elapsed, I put the unread reports down on the counter. “You are correct, Fritz,” I said. “Not much there.”
I would find no report of a sensational murder or string of robberies for Peter Weill’s byline today. And the murder I most wanted to research I could not ask a single question about. No attention dared fall on Ernst or me. If Sarah and her son were still underway, they might be arrested. Because of her political activism, she had been denied emigration to the United States three times. But it was becoming harder for even apolitical Jews to leave Germany. If the National Socialists, the Nazis, were to gain the majority in the Reichstag, I shuddered to think what would happen. Anti-Semitic scapegoating ran deep everywhere in Europe. As disgusting as I found it, I had to admit that Hitler was far too clever at using it for his political ends. Things would get worse before they got better.