The Informer Read Online Free Page B

Gaelle thought, I’ve got to pull myself together. Her stockings were a little soiled at the top where an earlier customer had dripped on them, and she wished she could find a way to change them. Had she really gotten away? She looked around, trying to think it over. Felix held the lighter, which hung in the dark like reassurance itself.
    “It could be plate,” said Felix. “But it looked like he had good stuff.”
    “Thanks for coming with me,” said Gaelle.
    “Sure, sure,” said Felix. “We’re a team.”
    Felix looked at the lighter.
    “Just a few more and we’re done for the night,” said Felix. “Say, you’re looking better, you know that?”
    “Am I?” said Gaelle. “Well, I guess.”
    “Sure,” said Felix. “Did that guy give you a scare?”
    “Everyone has an army,” said Gaelle. “The Reichsbanner, the Brown-shirts, the Red Front Fighters. They shoot spies.”
    “Make some money,” said Felix. “Keep it simple.”
    “That’s it?” said Gaelle. “That’s what you’ve got to say?”
    “Those guys are horny for information. Easier than sex, and pays better, too. If you don’t know anything, make it up. It’s like money that grows on moonlight. Why, I couldn’t have dreamed up something better than what we got. Armies, schemes, and enough murder to make everything seem important. A lark, see?”
    Gaelle put a hand to her hair and walked around to get her knees to stop trembling, but it lingered, and she struggled with that watery sensation, that weakness in her legs.
    “You see what I’m saying?” said Felix.
    “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

A rmina Treffen worked for Inspectorate A, the serious crimes section of the Berlin Police Department. At this hour, just after dawn, the park was a combination of green and gold, the tops of the trees covered with a film of gilt as the sun rose, and along with the colors, the place had a serenity, a moist silence matched only by the ominous trilling of birds. Armina was twenty-six years old with red hair and very white and freckled skin. Her eyes were green, almost the color of trees in the first light of dawn.
    She was concerned about Gustave Ritter, head of Inspectorate IA, the Political Section, who was taking more interest in her cases than before. Now, as she walked up the path of the Tiergarten with the crowns of the trees like green lace, she considered Ritter. He reminded her of a puff adder in the Berlin Zoo, and while the association was one of malice, she recognized something else that was common to both: the naturalness with which they were ready to strike. Ritter wouldn’t regret causing her trouble any more than the snake. How could the moon regret pulling on the oceans, or how could lightning regret setting a tree on fire?
    In the park she passed a bronze statue of a poet that was the color of blackened leather, and the poet seemed forever knowledgeable and wise, although he appeared to squint with discomfort, as though what he knew had come at an eternal price. The path had benches every fifty feet or so, and at this hour they were shiny with dew, although in the stillness of dawn the atmosphere of what happened here at night seemed to linger, the women in silky dresses, their white thighs marked by a taut garter as they lifted their skirts, the men in their dark suits, the bills offered, the snap of a clasp of a handbag. Armina passed the benches and thought that this one was just a child, maybe sixteen, dressed like a schoolgirl.
    The men in uniform, the Schutzpolice, stood at the top of a gully,their blue coats crosshatched by brush and new leaves, their buttons so much like those of a train conductor, as though this were a way station on the route to the underworld. The Schutzpolice murmured and looked around: they appeared lost and searching for a familiar landmark. Down below, in the bottom of the gully, the odor was of decayed leaves, and something else, too, a scent of flowers and the promise of spring.
    Hans Linz