Murder Without Pity (18 page)

He watched her scribble four names on the notepad. Then she caressed away something on his brow before she gripped his hands, and he could feel her heat.

“These men are very important in what I’m about to tell you, Stanislas. I don’t exaggerate. Remember this annihilation gang in memory of our beautiful man. There will always be others like them. First, SS Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann. You said you vaguely recalled his name. Many knew this Gestapoist precisely—no, I must say ‘painfully.’ Many knew him painfully. He worked under Reinhard Heydrich, deputy to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, grand implementor of the Final Solution. Eichmann headed Berlin’s Gestapo Jewish Section to transport Jews to their deaths, IV-B-4. More textbook knowledge, so let’s move on.

“Next, SS Captain Théodor Dannecker. Who was he? He’s more evil than other Nazis. The howling madman I mentioned earlier. Concerning the deportation of Jews from France to their deaths, very important. So important that this strutting little creature with an office at 31A Avenue Foch needed no intermediary for permission to talk to Berlin. No German-ambassador-to-France Otto Abetz to first phone. No Gestapo Knochen to go through unless he wanted to. In the special matter of deportation, he headed the Paris Jewish Affairs Section and reported to just one other madman, Adolf Eichmann in Berlin.”

“He could bypass his superiors?”

“Stanislas, you’re naïve in this! We’re not talking about a textbook bureaucracy with proper lines of authority to follow. Listen to me. Please! No intermediary. None. Simple, efficient, and deadly, this structure from Dannecker to Eichmann. Do not question me! I know this period so well I hear screams at night sometimes, it’s that real. Trust me.”

She must have again realized she had raised her voice for she lowered it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have acted like that. It’s just that we’re maybe close to a central truth, and I’m having a problem controlling myself. We’re almost through. Then I’ll tell you what I suspect our beautiful man may have discovered.

“Commissioner François, director of the Jewish Section at Paris’s police headquarters. From 1940 on, his office collected census data on Jews, their names, where they lived, and so on, and passed it to the Gestapo.

“Under him, André Tulard with his vast card index containing thousands of Jewish names from earlier censuses. This file was indispensable for what they were plotting.”

She slashed a vertical arrow down the middle of the paper. Across that, she whipped seven horizontal lines, then scribbled names. “At the top, Hitler making policy. Directly under him, Himmler the implementor. Next, Heydrich. Next, Eichmann, all in Berlin. Over to Paris: Dannecker, Eichmann’s representative; Commissioner François; and finally, André Tulard. A vital part of the Franco-German chain of command for the huge roundup to follow.”

Using Tulard’s file they came in the early hours of the morning, she explained, teams of Paris police in an operation dubbed “Spring Wind.” The calendar showed the date, the sixteenth of July 1942. The few survivors would call it Black Thursday. These teams swept through targeted districts and hauled away the very young and old, the sick and pregnant, every foreign Jew they could snatch, along with many stateless ones.

“Such a threat to Pétain’s French state, Stanislas, these tailors, butchers, and printers. My papa. My mamma. My little sisters, Rachael and Lea. My family included among the thirteen thousand innocents. Their biggest sweep, and everyone detained at that Drancy suburb before being shipped to Auschwitz. One of the trains, I’m guessing, may have carried away the Pincuses. Everyone, that is, except our Léon, whom someone may have hid.”

“That could explain why we’ve located no family. Just an old man, who lived near a village, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, and he died before—”

“Le Chambon-sur-Lignon?”

“That’s right. Why?”

“That village sheltered hundreds of fleeing Jews during the war. Maybe the Pincuses didn’t get trapped in that Paris raid. Maybe they had heard about Le Chambon and escaped to that village. The rescuers kept no detailed records I’m aware of, so I must speculate. Perhaps the Germans swept into Le Chambron later and snatched the entire family except for Léon, whom this old man hid. The family ended up at Auschwitz, was gassed immediately, and left no bureaucratic trace. But this isn’t that important. What is, is that Léon survived with a memory of how that Paris raid had caused his family’s extinction. Many years later, he may have found a document with Boucher’s name, and that started his search. Here I make another leap.”

She stood and returned to pacing off her energy. “When that Dannecker creature arrived in Paris, he assigned a liaison officer to police headquarters. This was standard practice. To make things run smoothly between the German killing machine and the French one. Now what if this howling madman assigned two, not one, and the second one was Kleist, and he liaisoned with Boucher, who worked with Tulard in the police prefecture’s Jewish Section?”

“He admitted at the interrogation meeting Kleist at some cultural society during the Occupation.”

“There you have it. They might have used it as cover.”

“Meeting there didn’t mean Boucher helped plot the murder of Pincus’s fam—”

“Helped plot the murder of thousands, among them that family and mine. I must be clear about that. That’s what I suspect.”

“And the son went for him more than fifty years later and not the other conspirators?”

“My thinking too at first. After half a century? Was that possible? But I remembered the other plotters were dead. And I also noticed this handiwork.” She paused before a tall cabinet behind him. It harbored ponderous files with the years marked in bold strokes from a black felt pen. “One shelf for each decade, yes? The 1940s at the bottom, working up through the 1990s. The folders run sequentially without a break until the mid-1980s. After 1986, there’s this intriguing four-year gap. I’m guessing he did his research. He charmed, lied, stole, did whatever it took to document Boucher’s complicity, yet found little and came to a stop. He didn’t quit. Not when the memory of his family’s murder was eating him. It was a dead end, nothing more. What happened during that period? The Berlin Wall fell. The Cold War ended. And as part of this new era Moscow unlocked some archives, some of which their military had seized from the Gestapo when they captured Berlin in 1945. I think our Léon woke from his sleep to return to his ways.”

Was that why he quit teaching? Stanislas wondered. To devote full time to his vendetta? And had he shouted years later Boucher’s name that fateful morning when he confronted him? He must have except…. “You’re forgetting he helped administer black market regulations. He didn’t hide in some bureaucratic maze, planning mass murder.”

“We only know what he appeared to do. With his large staff—another fact, I assure you—he could delegate, while he busied himself elsewhere. Stanislas, look, I’m not a lawyer. But I know the statute of limitations has long since passed for war crimes.”

“Suing for a crime against humanity then?”

“For something bigger, yes, that. That might explain why he was apart from our community because I’ve never heard of him until now. Of the few Vichy collabos charged with crimes, the courts sent even fewer to prison. Our man must have wanted an airtight case. This was his family, after all. No blunders with research. No sharing of information and possible leaks. No time wasted arguing over tactics. No justice by committee. His case from start to finish to guarantee a trial and imprisonment. What he found is here. I’m sure of it. Could I take some documents home to translate? I may discover enough to tell us what happened.”

“I can’t allow that, Anna. This is evidence in an ongoing investigation. I have to have it inventoried and put under seal. But I want you to let me know what we have here, and I’ll work you into my schedule during the next few weeks. You can translate the documents when they’re transferred to my office.”

“Transferred?” Her moment of surprise passed with a smile. “Yes, of course. I just thought…well…it was a silly idea. I should have known better. Very well. Just give me a minute while I put my things back in my bag,” and she turned toward the desk.

Sweat dripped down his back and from under his arms as if he were in the tropics. Surrounded by these documents made him feel dirty, and he rose and hobbled toward the doorway, happy to get away.

Work a meeting into his schedule during the next few weeks? she thought. With his workload, more likely in a month. And endure the nerve-wracking days and the sleepless nights, waiting to go there? She could feel the urge pull at her, the pages were that close. Why not? she wondered. What was the harm? A few documents, missing for a few hours, that’s all.

She listened to the thump of his cane and the drag of his shoe. She listened seconds longer until she thought he had stepped outside. She glanced behind, saw he had, and shifted back to her bag and the ringed notebook beside it. She flipped quietly through it till she came to several pages earlier paper clipped. Some military or civilian clerk, she couldn’t tell which, had apparently made detailed transcripts in German of telephone communiqués between the Paris police prefecture and Eichmann’s Berlin office. Despite the poor preservation, she could make out the transcriber had typed at the top of each page the date of the sixteenth of July 1942; the subject matter, the raid of Jews begun that day; and the parties to the conversation: Eichmann and Dannecker along with an obscure reference to Boucher. She clutched her fists in rage. And that swine swore in an interview he was in Lyon. Maybe he wasn’t.

She gave a sharp glance back again. Stanislas leaned on his walking stick, while he chatted with Officer Leclair. She refocused on the notebook as she pried the rings apart. Don’t think anymore, she told herself. Do it. She lifted the pages into her bag. Her hands shook as she strained to noiselessly close the binder.

“You’re through?”

Panic gripped her. She pinched shut her eyes with fright. She could think of only one word to utter. “Almost.” She remained seated, too nervous to look at him. She pushed in her compact, colored tubes of red and pink, a thick address book, and a cell phone into her purse.

Finally she rose. He stood in the doorway, waiting, and he didn’t seem to have caught anything unusual. “These lipsticks,” she said and brushed back some strands of hair. “They’re a weakness I can’t cure. I can never resist those Galeries Lafayette sales.” She’d translate the documents that evening. She’d stay up the entire night if necessary.

“Your secret’s safe with me. I’ll even take an oath.”

“Oh really, Stanislas, you and your legalisms.” She watched him shake his head, amused at her, and she managed a laugh. “You don’t understand how vain women can be.” She’d return them tomorrow. She’d confess immediately she had violated his confidence and beg forgiveness. He might not understand. He might even find it difficult to trust her again. She didn’t care. She’d take the chance. This was her family. Boucher, an accomplice in their murders or an innocent? Any consequences from her theft were worth the price, she decided.

She snapped her purse closed with a smile.

LAST METRO HOME

Fog roiled in waves through the night, obliterating Rue de Rivoli. Only traffic lights above landmarked the street, and they blinked spectral red like storm lanterns to no one except Anna. A wind pressed loneliness into her, made her hurry to flee the damp chill.

Off to her left a solitary police car drifted past, bobbing frail beacons through the mist. The driver turned at the corner and vanished, abandoning her to the gloom. Further up the street, swirls of fog flicked up the pale sides of Saint-Jacques Tower, lit by lamps. Its familiarity comforted her. She must be near Boulevard de Sebastopol and that much closer to home.

She tripped and caught her balance. She must have stepped from the sidewalk into that avenue that had vaporized like everything else into gaseous gray. She had pushed herself, she realized, staying too long at the Center after that self-storage visit, translating those German documents. She had already missed the next to last metro. She must not miss the last one.

Suddenly she stopped and gazed around, bewildered. Where was the metro’s entrance? She must have walked too far or taken the wrong turn. The mist thinned off to her side. The entrance became visible. She kicked a path through a patch of low fog as she hurried toward it and out of the cold.

Down the steps, through the turnstile, down more stairs, deeper into the depths she rushed, through a long corridor, around a corner, through another long passageway, up some steps, and out onto the wing of the platform where she abruptly hesitated. Graffiti, splashed across the plastic seats, glistened in freshness. Paste dripped from the top corners of grinning Drays, Fuchs, and Streibles postered along the walls. In the middle of the platform, the sign of the alarm call box, smashed at an angle, sputtered off and on in yellow. She glanced to the stairs behind, then changed her mind. What vandals had swept through must have moved on, and the metro would arrive shortly. Comforted, she stepped further onto the quay.

The elevated platforms on both sides of the tracks were deserted except for a man, curled against the wall near her. Cigarette butts and used metro tickets, the refuse of commuters, littered the floor around him. A wine bottle under his head served as a pillow, and his chest rose and fell in fits. Against a trouser leg rested a cage with a bird feathered in white. A bottle clattered down the stairs far ahead.

She glanced in that direction. Anarchic voices echoed from some level above. Boots clunked with menacing heaviness at the top of the stairway. A youth, head shaved and wearing a brown shirt, swaggered down the steps and onto the platform.

He picked up the bottle at the bottom of the stairs and flung it onto the tracks below. It smashed onto the rails with a terrifying loudness.

The bird fluttered its wings in agitation against its cage.

A second youth, head also shaved, also wearing a brown shirt, clopped down onto the platform and joined him. He stood taller than his companion. Anna stared at him, while he bent over to pick up a can with a nozzle that lay hidden behind a trash sack. She felt herself breathing hard. She had seen him somewhere.