The Storyteller

  "They don't have to be mutually exclusive," Leo said amiably. And just like that, he steered the conversation away from a critique of me and to an analysis of the last election.

  It's an odd luxury, knowing someone's got my back. Unlike Adam, whom I was always defending to others, Leo effortlessly defends me. He knows what will upset me before it even happens and like a superhero, bends the track of the runaway train before it strikes.

  This morning, when Pepper and Saffron leave, I have a box of freshly baked chocolate croissants for them as a care package. My sisters hug Leo good-bye; then I walk them out to the driveway, to the rental car. Pepper embraces me tightly. "Don't let this one get away, Sage. I want to hear how everything turns out. You'll call me?"

  It is the first time I can remember my sister soliciting contact, instead of just criticizing me. "Absolutely," I promise.

  In the kitchen, Leo is just hanging up the phone when I return. "We can pick up the van on the way to the hospital. Then while you're getting Josef--Sage, what's wrong?"

  "For starters," I say, "I'm not used to getting along with my sisters."

  "You made them out to be Scylla and Charybdis," Leo says, laughing. "They're just ordinary moms."

  "That's easy for you to say. They're mesmerized by you."

  "I hear I have that effect on Singer women."

  "Good," I reply. "Then maybe you can use that magic to hypnotize me, so that I don't screw this up today."

  He comes around the counter and rubs my shoulders. "You're not going to screw this up. You want to go over it again?"

  I nod.

  We have done dry runs of this interview a half dozen times, some with the recording equipment to make sure it works properly. Leo has played the role of Josef. Sometimes he's forthcoming, sometimes he is belligerent. Sometimes he just shuts down and refuses to talk. I say that I'm losing courage; that if I'm going to bite the bullet and actually kill him, I need to be able to think about what he did as a concrete example, not a global genocide; that I need to see a face or hear a name of one of his victims. In every scenario so far, I've gotten him to confess.

  Then again, Leo is not Josef.

  I take a deep breath. "I ask him how he feels . . ."

  "Right, or anything else that seems natural. What you don't want is for him to think you're nervous."

  "Great."

  Leo sits down on the stool beside mine. "You want him to open up without leading him on."

  "What do I say about my grandmother?"

  He hesitates. "Normally I'd tell you not to bring Minka up at all. But you did mention a death in the family. So play it by ear. If you do mention her, though, don't let on that she's the grandmother who was the survivor. I just can't be certain how he'll read that."

  I bury my face in my hands. "Can't you just interrogate him?"

  "Sure," Leo says. "But I'm pretty sure he'll know something's up when I show up at the hospital instead of you."

  The plan is for Leo to be parked in a van across the street from Josef's house. That way the receiver--a box the size of a small briefcase--will be in range for the transmitter of the body wire. While Leo is hidden in the van, doing surveillance, I will be in Josef's house.

  We have a safe word, too. "And if I say I'm supposed to meet Mary today . . ."

  "Then I run in and draw my gun, but I can't get a clear shot without hitting you. So instead I break out the jujitsu moves that got me a blue ribbon in seventh grade. I toss Josef off you like a cheap coat and pin him against the wall by the neck. I say, Don't make me do something we'll both regret, which sounds like a movie line, and is, but I've used those before in tense law enforcement situations and they actually work. I release Josef, who collapses to my feet, and confesses not just to all war crimes at Auschwitz but also for being responsible for the colossal mistakes New Coke and Sex and the City 2. He signs on the dotted line, we call in local law enforcement for an arrest, and you and I ride off into the sunset."

  I shake my head, smiling. Leo actually does carry a gun, but he has assured me that ever since Camp Wakatani in fifth grade any weapon is really for show; that he could not hit a target the size of Australia. It's hard to tell with him, but I imagine he's lying. I cannot imagine that the DOJ lets him carry a weapon without having learned how to use it efficiently.

  Leo looks at his watch. "We should get going. You ready to get suited up?"

  It's hard to wear a wire when it's summertime. My usual outfit, a tank top and jean shorts, is too tight to hide the microphone that will be taped underneath my shirt. Instead, I have opted for a loose sundress.

  Leo hands me the transmitter--it's the size of an iPod mini, with a small hook that can be affixed to a waistband or belt, neither of which I have. "Where am I supposed to put it?"

  He pulls aside the neck of the dress and tucks the transmitter into the side of my bra. "How's that?"

  "So comfortable," I say. "Not."

  "You sound like you're thirteen." He threads the wire with the tiny microphone under my arm and around my waist. I pull down the top of the sundress so that he has better access. "What are you doing?" Leo says, backing away.

  "Making it easier for you."

  He swallows. "Maybe you should do it."

  "Why are you so shy all of a sudden? Isn't that like locking the barn door after the horses are gone?"

  "I'm not shy," Leo grits out. "I'm trying very hard to get us to the hospital on time, and this doesn't help. Can you just, you know, tape it down? And pull up your damn dress?"

  When the microphone and transmitter are in place, we make sure the channels are synced to the receiver that Leo will have in the van. I am driving the rental car; Leo sits in the passenger seat with the receiver on his lap. We go first to Josef's house, where we drop off Eva and test the transmitter for distance. "It works," Leo says when I get back in the car, having filled Eva's water bowl and spread her toys around the living room, promising her that Josef is on his way.

  I follow the GPS directions to the parking lot where Leo is meeting someone from the DOJ. He is quiet, running through checklists in his mind. The only other car there is a van, making me wonder how the other officer will get back home. It's blue, and says DON'S CARPETS on the side. A man gets out of the driver's side and flashes his badge. "Leo Stein?"

  "Yup," Leo says, through the open window. "Just a sec."

  He hits the power button so that the window rolls up again, so that our conversation is private. "Don't forget to make sure that there's no background interference," Leo says.

  "I know."

  "So if he likes to listen to CNN or NPR make sure you turn it off. Power down your cell. Don't grind coffee beans. Don't use anything that could affect the transmission."

  I nod.

  "Remember that why isn't a leading question."

  "Leo," I say, "I can't remember all this stuff. I'm not a professional . . ."

  He mulls for a moment. "You just need a little inspiration. You know what J. Edgar Hoover would do, if he were alive today?"

  I shake my head.

  "Scream and claw at the top of his coffin."

  The response is so unexpected, so irreverent, that a bark of laughter escapes before I can cover my mouth. "I can't believe you're making jokes while I'm freaking out."

  "Isn't that exactly when you need them?" Leo asks. He leans forward, and stamps me with a kiss. "Your gut instinct was to laugh. Go with your gut, Sage."

  *

  As the doctor relays the post-discharge instructions to us, I wonder if Josef is thinking the same thing I am: that a dead man, which he hopes to be, does not have to worry about salt intake or rest or anything else on the printout we are given. The candy striper who wheels Josef down to the lobby so I can bring my car around recognizes him. "Herr Weber, right?" she asks. "My older brother had you for German."

  "Wie heisst er?"

  She smiles shyly. "I took French."

  "I asked for his name."

  "Jackson," the girl says.
"Jackson O'Rourke?"

  "Oh yes," Josef says. "He was an excellent student."

  When we reach the lobby, I take over and wheel Josef to a spot in the shade outside. "Did you really remember her brother?"

  "Not one bit," he admits. "But she didn't need to know that."

  I am still thinking about this exchange when I reach Leo's car in the parking lot and drive it under the portico so that Josef doesn't have to walk as far. What made Josef such a memorable teacher, and such a devoted citizen, was his ability to make these connections with individuals. To hide in plain sight.

  In retrospect, it's been a brilliant plan.

  When you look someone in the eye and shake his hand and tell him your name, he has no reason to think you are lying.

  "This is a new car," Josef says, as I help him into the passenger seat.

  "It's a rental. Mine's in the shop. I totaled it."

  "An accident? You are all right?" he asks.

  "I'm fine. I hit a deer."

  "Your car, and your relative passing . . . so much has happened in the past week that I do not know about." He folds his hands in his lap. "I am sorry to hear of your loss."

  "Thank you," I say stiffly.

  What I want to say is:

  The woman who died was my grandmother.

  You knew her.

  You don't even remember, probably.

  You son of a bitch.

  Instead, I keep my eyes on the road as my hands flex on the steering wheel.

  "I think we need to talk," Josef says.

  I slide a glance toward him. "All right."

  "About how, and when, you are going to do it."

  Sweat begins to run down my back, even though the air conditioner is on full blast. I can't talk about this, now. Leo isn't close enough, with the receiver, to record the conversation.

  So instead I do exactly what he told me not to do.

  I turn to Josef. "You said you knew my mother."

  "Yes. I should not have kept this a secret."

  "I'd say that little white lie is the least of your problems, Josef." I slow at a yellow light. "You knew my grandmother was a survivor."

  "Yes," he says.

  "Were you looking for her?"

  He looks out the window. "I did not know any of them by name."

  I sit at the red light long after it turns green, until a car behind me honks, thinking that he has not really answered my question.

  *

  When we pull up to Josef's house, the carpet van is exactly where it's supposed to be, across the street. I cannot see Leo; he's somewhere in the cavernous back with his receiver ready and waiting.

  I help Josef up the porch stairs, giving him an arm to lean on when he cannot bear his own weight. Leo, I'm sure, is watching. In spite of his earlier superhero story, I know he's ready to rescue me if necessary, and he doesn't find it unreasonable to think an elderly man who can barely walk is capable of doing harm. An eighty-five-year-old subject once came out of his house and started shooting, he told me, but luckily he had cataracts and lousy aim. We have a saying in our office, Leo had said. Once you've killed six million, what's six million and one?

  As soon as the key turns in the lock, Eva comes running to greet her master. I lift her squirrelly little body and place her in Josef's arms so that she can lick his face. His smile is as wide as the sea. "Oh, mein Schatz, I missed you," Josef says. I realize, watching the reunion, that this is the perfect relationship for him. Someone who loves him unconditionally, who has no conception of the monster he used to be, and who can listen to any tearful confessions without ever betraying his confidence.

  "Come," Josef announces. "I will make us tea."

  I follow him into the kitchen, where he sees the fresh fruit on the counter and then opens the refrigerator to find milk, juice, eggs, and bread. "You did not have to do this," Josef says.

  "I know. But I wanted to."

  "No," he corrects. "I mean, you did not have to."

  If, that is, I was willing to kill him anytime soon.

  Here goes nothing, I think.

  "Josef." I pull out a chair and gesture for him to sit down. "We have to talk."

  "You are not having second thoughts, I hope?"

  I sink down across from him. "How could I not?"

  I hear the drone of a lawn mower outside. The kitchen windows are open.

  Shit.

  I fake an enormous sneeze. Standing up, I walk around and start ratcheting the windows shut. "I hope you don't mind. The pollen's killing me."

  Josef frowns, but he is too polite to complain. "I'm afraid of what will happen after," I admit.

  "No one suspects foul play when a ninety-five-year-old man dies." Josef chuckles. "And there is no one left behind in my family to ask questions."

  "I'm not talking about the legal aspect. Just the moral one." I find myself fidgeting and force myself to stop, thinking of the rustling of fabric that Leo must be hearing. "I feel a little silly having to ask you this, but you're the only person I would know who might even understand, because you've been there." I look up at him. "When you kill someone . . . how do you ever get over it?"

  "I asked you to help me die," Josef clarifies. "There's a difference."

  "Is there?"

  He exhales heavily. "Maybe not," he admits. "You will think of it, every day. But I would hope you could see it as mercy."

  "Is that how you thought of it?" I ask, the most natural flow, and then I hold my breath for his answer.

  "Sometimes," Josef says. "They were so weak, some of them. They wanted to be released, like I do now."

  "Maybe that's just what you told yourself so you could sleep at night." I lean forward, my elbows on the kitchen table. "If you really want me to forgive you for what you've done, you have to tell me all of it."

  He shakes his head, his eyes growing damp. "I have already. You know what I was. What I am."

  "What was the worst thing you did, Josef?"

  It strikes me, as I ask the question, that we are gambling. Just because Darija's murder was the one written up does not mean it was the most heinous crime Reiner Hartmann committed against a prisoner. It only means that it was the one where he got caught.

  "There were two girls," he says. "One of them worked for . . . for my brother, in his office, where he kept a safe with the currency that was taken from the prisoners' belongings."

  He rubs his temples. "We all did it, you know. Took things. Jewelry or money, even loose diamonds. Some officers, they got rich working in the camps for this reason. I listened to the news; I knew that the Reich was not going to last much longer now that the Americans had gotten involved. So I planned ahead. I would take what money I could, and I would convert it to gold, before it was worthless."

  Shrugging, Josef looks at me. "It was not hard to get the combination to the safe. I was the SS-Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer, after all. There was only the Kommandant above me, and when I asked for something, the question was not whether I would get it but how quickly. So one day, when I knew my brother was not at his desk, I went to the safe to take what I could.

  "The girl--the secretary--saw me. She had fetched her friend from her job outside, and brought her to the office while my brother was gone, to warm up, I suppose," he says. "I could not let the girl tell my brother what she had seen. So I shot her."

  I realize I am holding my breath. "You shot the girl who was the secretary?"

  "I meant to. But I had been injured, yes, on the front line--my right arm. I was not as steady with the pistol as I should have been. The girls were moving, frantic, they were clutching at each other. So the bullet went into the other girl, instead."

  "You killed her."

  "Yes." He nods. "And I would have killed the other one, too, but my brother arrived first. When he saw me there, with the gun in one hand and the money in the other, what choice did I have? I told him that I had caught the girls stealing from him, from the Reich."

  Josef covers his eyes with one hand. His throat
works, the words jamming. "My own brother did not believe me. My own brother turned me in."

  "Turned you in?"

  "To the disciplinary committee at the camp. Not for stealing, but for shooting a prisoner against protocol," he says. "It was nothing, a simple meeting where I was reminded of my orders. But you see, don't you? Because of what I did, my own brother betrayed me."

  I am not sure what element of this story makes it, in Josef's warped mind, the worst thing he ever did--that he murdered Darija, or that he destroyed the relationship he had with his brother. I am afraid to ask. I'm more afraid to hear the answer.

  "What happened to your brother?"

  "I never talked to him again, after that. I heard he died a long time ago." Josef is crying silently, his hands trembling where they rest on the table. "Please," he begs. "Will you forgive me?"

  "What will that change? It won't bring back the girl you killed. It won't fix what happened with your brother."

  "No. But it means that at least one person will know I wish it had never happened."

  "I'll think about it," I reply.

  *

  I get into the rental car and blast the air-conditioning. At the end of Josef's block I turn right, into a cul-de-sac, and pull over at the curb. Leo is driving toward me in the van. He swerves so fast that the van goes over the curb, then hops out and pulls me out of the car and twirls me in a circle. "You did it," he crows, punctuating each word with a kiss. "Goddamn, Sage. I couldn't have done a smoother job."

  "Are you hiring?" I ask, relaxing for the first time in two hours.

  "Depends on what position you're looking for." Leo frowns. "Wow. That came out wrong . . . C'mere." He opens the back of the van and rewinds the digital recorder so that I can hear my own voice, and Josef's.

  You killed her.

  Yes, and I would have killed the other one, too.

  "So it's done," I say. My voice sounds hollow, with none of the bright ring to it that Leo's has. "He'll be deported?"

  "There's just one more step. I already called Genevra, my historian, and she's headed here tonight. Now that we've got Josef on tape confessing, we'll see if he's willing to cooperate and talk to us voluntarily. We drop in unannounced--usually to see if the subject has an alibi, but clearly that's not the case here. It's just a way for us to get even more information, if that's possible, to secure the case. Then Genevra and I head back to D.C. . . ."

  "Back?" I echo.

  "I need to write a pros memo, so that the deputy assistant attorney general can approve it, start legal proceedings, and issue a press release. And then, I promise you, Josef Weber will die," he says. "Miserably, in prison."