house, his dark eyes fired up. “Malcolm said Czechoslovakia is a…a…a…”
“A what, darling?”
“A Bohunk rubble heap! A shit pile! Scheiss! Scheiss! In German for mutti!”
Celeste raised a hand, stopped and hit her own pinched-together knees. “In English for you—little ingrate, disgrace to your real father, a cultured man, a doctor, not a consort of whores and hoodlums—”
Stefan knocked over the end table and ran out of the room, straight into Mal, blocking the doorway. The small fat boy careened off his six-foot-three stepfather, then grabbed him around the waist and buried his head in his vest. Mal held him there, one hand steadying his shoulders, the other ruffling his hair. When Celeste stood up and saw them, he said, “You’ll never give it up, will you?”
Celeste mouthed words; Mal knew they were native tongue obscenities she didn’t want Stefan to hear. The boy held on tighter, then let go and ran upstairs to his room. Mal heard ting-ting-ting—Stefan’s toy soldiers being hurled at the door. He said, “You know what it makes him think of, and you still won’t give it up.”
Celeste adjusted her arms inside her overslung cardigan—the single European affectation Mal hated the most. “Nein, herr Leutnant”—pure German, pure Celeste—Buchenwald, the gas man, Major Considine, cold-blooded killer.
Mal braced himself into the doorway. “Captain soon, Fräulein . Chief DA’s Investigator, and climbing. Juice, Fräulein . Just in case I think you’re ruining my son and I have to take him away from you.”
Celeste sat down, knees together, a finishing school move, Prague 1934. “To the mother the child belongs. Even a failed lawyer like you should know that maxim.”
A line that couldn’t be topped. Mal kicked up the carpeting on his way outside; he sat on the steps and watched rain clouds hover. Celeste’s sewing machine started to whir; upstairs, Stefan’s soldiers were still dinging his already cracked and dented bedroom door. Mal thought that soon they’d be stripped of paint, dragoons without uniforms, and that simple fact would tear down everything he’d built up since the war.
In ’45 he was an army major, stationed at a temporary MP barracks near the recently liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. His assignment was to interrogate surviving inmates, specifically the ones the medical evacuation teams deemed terminally ill—the husks of human beings who would most likely never live to identify their captors in court. The question and answer sessions were horrific; Mal knew that only the stony cold presence of his interpreter was keeping him frosty, contained, a pro. News from the home front was just as bad: friends wrote him that Laura was screwing Jerry Dunleavy, a buddy from the Homicide Bureau, and Buzz Meeks, a crooked Narcotics Squad dick and bagman for Mickey Cohen. And in San Francisco, his father, the Reverend Liam Considine, was dying of congestive heart disease and sending daily telegrams begging him to embrace Jesus before he died. Mal hated the man too much to give him the satisfaction and was too busy praying for the speedy and painless deaths of every single Buchenwald survivor, for the complete cessation of their memories and his nightmares. The old man died in October; Mal’s brother Desmond, the used-car king of Sacramento, sent him a telegram rich in religious invective. It ended with words of disownment. Two days later Mal met Celeste Heisteke.
She came out of Buchenwald physically healthy and defiant, and she spoke enough English to render the interpreter unnecessary. Mal conducted his interrogations of Celeste solo; they spoke on only one topic: her whoredom with an SS lieutenant colonel named Franz Kempflerr—his price for her survival.
Celeste’s stories—graphically told—killed his nightmares better than the contraband phenobarbital he’d been blasting for weeks. They excited him, disgusted him, made him hate the Nazi colonel and hate
“A what, darling?”
“A Bohunk rubble heap! A shit pile! Scheiss! Scheiss! In German for mutti!”
Celeste raised a hand, stopped and hit her own pinched-together knees. “In English for you—little ingrate, disgrace to your real father, a cultured man, a doctor, not a consort of whores and hoodlums—”
Stefan knocked over the end table and ran out of the room, straight into Mal, blocking the doorway. The small fat boy careened off his six-foot-three stepfather, then grabbed him around the waist and buried his head in his vest. Mal held him there, one hand steadying his shoulders, the other ruffling his hair. When Celeste stood up and saw them, he said, “You’ll never give it up, will you?”
Celeste mouthed words; Mal knew they were native tongue obscenities she didn’t want Stefan to hear. The boy held on tighter, then let go and ran upstairs to his room. Mal heard ting-ting-ting—Stefan’s toy soldiers being hurled at the door. He said, “You know what it makes him think of, and you still won’t give it up.”
Celeste adjusted her arms inside her overslung cardigan—the single European affectation Mal hated the most. “Nein, herr Leutnant”—pure German, pure Celeste—Buchenwald, the gas man, Major Considine, cold-blooded killer.
Mal braced himself into the doorway. “Captain soon, Fräulein . Chief DA’s Investigator, and climbing. Juice, Fräulein . Just in case I think you’re ruining my son and I have to take him away from you.”
Celeste sat down, knees together, a finishing school move, Prague 1934. “To the mother the child belongs. Even a failed lawyer like you should know that maxim.”
A line that couldn’t be topped. Mal kicked up the carpeting on his way outside; he sat on the steps and watched rain clouds hover. Celeste’s sewing machine started to whir; upstairs, Stefan’s soldiers were still dinging his already cracked and dented bedroom door. Mal thought that soon they’d be stripped of paint, dragoons without uniforms, and that simple fact would tear down everything he’d built up since the war.
In ’45 he was an army major, stationed at a temporary MP barracks near the recently liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. His assignment was to interrogate surviving inmates, specifically the ones the medical evacuation teams deemed terminally ill—the husks of human beings who would most likely never live to identify their captors in court. The question and answer sessions were horrific; Mal knew that only the stony cold presence of his interpreter was keeping him frosty, contained, a pro. News from the home front was just as bad: friends wrote him that Laura was screwing Jerry Dunleavy, a buddy from the Homicide Bureau, and Buzz Meeks, a crooked Narcotics Squad dick and bagman for Mickey Cohen. And in San Francisco, his father, the Reverend Liam Considine, was dying of congestive heart disease and sending daily telegrams begging him to embrace Jesus before he died. Mal hated the man too much to give him the satisfaction and was too busy praying for the speedy and painless deaths of every single Buchenwald survivor, for the complete cessation of their memories and his nightmares. The old man died in October; Mal’s brother Desmond, the used-car king of Sacramento, sent him a telegram rich in religious invective. It ended with words of disownment. Two days later Mal met Celeste Heisteke.
She came out of Buchenwald physically healthy and defiant, and she spoke enough English to render the interpreter unnecessary. Mal conducted his interrogations of Celeste solo; they spoke on only one topic: her whoredom with an SS lieutenant colonel named Franz Kempflerr—his price for her survival.
Celeste’s stories—graphically told—killed his nightmares better than the contraband phenobarbital he’d been blasting for weeks. They excited him, disgusted him, made him hate the Nazi colonel and hate
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