Mr. Monk Goes to Germany (16 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Mr. Monk Goes to Berlin

We managed to arrive at Berlin-Tegel Airport with our virtue intact and my sanity only slightly frayed at the edges.

A stewardess stood at the door of the plane, smiling and offering the departing passengers a silver platter covered with heart-shaped chocolates wrapped in red foil.

Playboy
s and chocolate. When it came to the Friendly Skies, the Germans couldn’t be beat. I wondered if the lucky folks in first class got lobster and hot-oil massages.

I took two chocolates since I knew Monk wasn’t going to take his and started unwrapping one as I deplaned.

Monk staggered off the jet as if he’d been gored by a bull, tossed off a cliff, and then hit by a bus.

“Am I bleeding from every orifice?” he rasped.

“I can’t see every orifice, thank God.” But the thought was enough to kill my appetite for the chocolate. I tossed it in the trash can at the end of the jetway.

On our descent into Berlin-Tegel, we flew right over the city center and I got a great view of all the landmarks that the tourist guides say you’re supposed to see.

But from the sky, the Brandenburg Gate, the Television Tower, the Gendamenmarkt, the Reichstag and gleaming glass tent over the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz weren’t nearly as fascinating as the sprawling, monolithic apartment blocks that looked like concrete labyrinths. They were monuments to the former East Germany’s boom in the mass production of enormous prefabricated slab concrete housing during the 1960s. I didn’t have to know exactly where the Berlin Wall once stood to pick out some parts of the city that were once in the German Democratic Republic.

I’d expected that; it fit with my preconceived image of Berlin. What I wasn’t expecting was the lush green of the Tiergarten, the former royal hunting grounds, and the vivid blue of the river Spree, which wove through the city like a bright ribbon.

In my mind, Berlin was gray, bleak, and oppressive. But from above, it looked vibrant, colorful, and exciting.

Monk missed it all, spending the descent bent over in crash position and pleading with God to spare his life. He would have liked that the airport was a big hexagon and that the design theme was carried on inside, from the shape of the pillars to the designs on the floor.

“Did you feel those G’s?” Monk said as we crossed the terminal. “They nearly flayed the flesh right off our bones.”

“I didn’t feel the G’s,” I said.

“Maybe you’re paralyzed,” Monk said.

“I’m walking, Mr. Monk,” I said. “I think we can rule out paralysis.”

“It’s post-traumatic stress paralysis,” Monk said. “You’re in so much pain that your mind is blocking it to protect you.”

“That condition doesn’t exist,” I said.

“I’ve just discovered it,” Monk said.

His mood improved considerably once we were outside and he saw the hexagonal concrete benches on the hexagonal-patterned sidewalk and the row of identical beige Mercedes taxis lined up at the curb.

“Order,” he said, taking a deep breath.

“You can smell it?”

“Can’t you?” he asked.

We got into the backseat of the taxi and I gave the driver the copy of
Im Fadenkreuz,
which I’d opened to the page that listed the editorial staff. I pointed to the address at the bottom.

“We’d like to go there, please,” I said.

The driver nodded and off we went. I don’t know whether he took us on the scenic route to shake every last euro out of us, but we didn’t mind. Monk got a chance to see a lot of the sights that he’d missed from the sky.

We drove down a grand, tree-lined boulevard that ran through the middle of the Tiergarten and ended triumphantly at the Brandenburg Gate. It helped that we had our own sound track. There was a marching band performing in front of the gate, and whatever they were playing was big, brassy, and dramatic. I wondered if the tourist office kept them there 24/7 just for the effect.

For twenty-eight years, the gate had stood decaying in the barren no-man’s-land between the walls of East and West Germany as a sad and powerful symbol of all the things that divided the country and its people. Now it once again stood for the city, its rebirth, and, in its own way, for restoration of order.

I don’t usually think in such a historical perspective, but the music was working on me big time.

The gate had been restored to its former glory, its symmetry matched by the pair of new, identical, four-story neoclassical-style buildings that flanked it. The buildings managed to look old and new at the same time. Beyond it, I could see Parizer Platz and the tree-lined Unter den Linden.

Monk leaned out of the taxi window like a golden retriever to get a better look at the gate as we passed.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” he said when he’d settled back in his seat. “Every city should have one.”

“Maybe every city should have a Golden Gate Bridge, an Eiffel Tower, and a Big Ben, too. We wouldn’t have to go anywhere to see the world.”

“Sounds good to me,” Monk said.

We made a few turns and found ourselves on Friedrichstrasse, the center of what was now a high-end shopping district. It had once been the administrative center of Hitler’s government and, later, of the GDR. But no amount of neon, glass, and travertine could soften the intimidating institutional coldness of the buildings or the rigid order they were designed to convey.

And that was intentional.

The city planners were strictly enforcing the architectural principle of “critical reconstruction,” which mandated that buildings had to maintain the same historical shapes, style, and alignment of the past.

The result was that the monumental style of National Socialist architecture, which Hitler referred to as “Words of Stone,” and the cold, intimidating power of the GDR had survived, buffed up with shopping mall gloss and the sterilized Disney gleam.

All the buildings were exactly the same height and blockish shape, with smooth, unadorned, symmetrical facades of polished stone and glass that were practically flush with one another.

Each building had a two-story ground floor for restaurants or businesses, followed by four uniform stories of office space or apartments, topped by three terraced stories, creating an unbroken roofline down the entire street.

The flat conformity of the building facades was rarely broken by bay windows or other architectural features. The only things that set the buildings apart from each other were their stone cladding and the shape of their windows, which were evenly aligned in long, symmetrical rows.

Because there were no gaps between the buildings, except where the blocks were broken by other streets, the effect was like driving between two immense walls of stone and glass.

Monk gaped in amazement and pleasure at the buildings as we passed them.

“We have found paradise,” he said.

“There’s no charm or character to these buildings,” I said. “They are so functional.”

“You say that like those are bad things,” Monk said. “All the buildings fit together perfectly.”

“That’s the problem,” I said. “You can hardly tell one apart from the other.”

“All cities should look like this,” Monk said.

“What about individuality?”

“I’m all for individuality, as long as it doesn’t stand out,” he said.

“You like conformity.”

“There are valid artistic and practical reasons for maintaining a uniform height for buildings.”

“What’s artistic about sameness?”

“It assures that the domes and spires of churches, as well as the towers of official government buildings, stand out over everything else. It draws attention to them, underscoring their beauty, their omnipresence, and the religious or state power that they represent. That’s the cunning reason why Friedrich the Great created the eaves-height law in the eighteenth century. It’s one of the things that made him great.”

I regarded Monk in a new light. “You’ve done some reading.”

“I’m not illiterate,” Monk said.

“I meant that you’ve been reading about Germany.”

“I’ve had trouble sleeping,” Monk said, “so I read some of the guidebooks the Schmidts have downstairs.”

While he was talking, I’d realized something else. I hadn’t seen a single tree or even a leaf since my passing glance at Unter den Linden.

“There aren’t any plants on these streets,” I said. “Not even so much as a bush or a flower.”

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Monk said.

“I think it’s weird,” I said.

“Nature belongs in the woods, not in the city.”

“Nature is a part of life,” I said. “It would be nice to see some here.”

“Nature muddies things up,” Monk said, “and attracts wild animals.”

“Is that another example of the thinking that made Friedrich great? Did he outlaw trees, too?”

Two blocks ahead, in the middle of the street, I could see a simple white guard shack with sandbags in front of it, marking the spot where Checkpoint Charlie, the border crossing between East and West, once stood. The shack was a replica and looked like it was more of a photo op for tourists than a meaningful historical marker or a memorial to those who’d died trying to escape to the West.

The taxi driver turned onto a side street and parked in front of a blockish building with a facade of mottled green granite. I paid him and asked for a receipt. I intended to get reimbursed by Monk for every euro I was spending. I should have insisted on a per diem, too.

We got out and I immediately noticed a single narrow strip of red cobblestones running through the asphalt and around the next corner. I took a few steps and saw a plaque embedded in the stone. I felt a shiver when I read it.

“Mr. Monk, do you know where I am standing?”

“In the middle of the street,” he said. “If you don’t move, you’re going to get hit by a bus.”

“This was where the Berlin Wall once stood,” I said. “I’m standing on history.”

“Be sure to wipe your feet,” he said. “I’m sure they won’t appreciate it if you track history into the lobby.”

And with that comment Monk went inside the building.

The logo of
Im Fadenkreuz
was the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle scope. “Crosshairs,” I learned from Ernestine Kahn, the managing editor, was the English translation of the name of the magazine.

“What we like to put in our crosshairs is corruption,” she said. “We reveal the bribery, the dishonesty, and the greed of public officials and business leaders.”

“You’ll never run out of stories to tell,” I said.

“Not in Germany,” she said. “It’s the sad truth, but it’s great for our magazine and our circulation. People love it when we bring down the rich, the mighty, and the sanctimonious.”

It wasn’t hard for us to get an audience with Ernestine. I told the front desk that Monk was a homicide consultant with the San Francisco Police Department and that we were investigating the death of Bruno Leupolz. We were immediately invited up to her fourth-floor office, which looked out on a golden office building that stood alone on its own plot of land and rose above everything else on the street. Friedrich the Great wouldn’t have been pleased.

“What is that?” I gestured to the golden monolith.

“A symbol of journalistic freedom and the reason our magazine is in this building,” she said.

Ernestine’s black hair, pale skin, black pants, and loose white blouse blended seamlessly into the white walls and black furniture of her office, which was as crisp, immaculate, and monochrome as she was. Or vice versa. She must have been practically invisible whenever she sat behind her desk. Perhaps it was a survival technique against predators in the corporate jungle.

I suddenly felt very vulnerable and garishly colorful in my red scoop-neck shirt and blue jeans.

“The Berlin Wall used to be right in front of this building and when it was, all these windows were sealed with bricks and concrete so that no one could see life on the other side or try to escape to it,” she said. “Axel Springer was a newspaper publisher. He built that skyscraper so that everyone in the East, where I grew up, could see the wealth, freedom, and opportunity that the West offered. The GDR responded by building six apartment towers just to block people from seeing his building. It made me want to become a journalist.”

“Every day you look out that window, you must be reminded of your childhood.”

“It reinvigorates me and reinforces why I do what I do, a job that wasn’t possible before the wall fell,” she said. “So what’s your interest in Bruno Leupolz?”

“We think he was murdered,” Monk said.

“ ‘We’ meaning the two of you,” she said.

“For now,” Monk said.

“The police say he died of natural causes,” she said. “What makes you think that it’s something more sinister?”

“Why do I get the feeling that we’re being interviewed?” I said.

“You’re talking to a reporter,” Ernestine said. “I don’t talk to anybody unless I think there might be a story in it. Is there one here?”

“There’s the story Leupolz was working on for you,” Monk said.

“He wasn’t on assignment for us. He just liked to use our name,” she said. “It opened doors that would otherwise be slammed in his face.”

“You didn’t mind?” I asked.

She shrugged. “If he lucked into something hot, which was rare, he’d come to us with it first.”

“But you knew what he was working on,” Monk prodded.

Ernestine grimaced as if the knowledge was causing her physical pain. “He was investigating some psychiatrist who helps people with physical deformities.”

“Dr. Martin Rahner,” Monk said.

She nodded. “Bruno was convinced the guy was a fraud and a swindler.”

“You weren’t?” I asked.

“I didn’t care one way or the other,” she said. “He was just a psychiatrist, though if you believed Bruno, he wasn’t even that.”

“What do you mean?” Monk said.

“Bruno told me that the doctor’s credentials were false, that he’d lied about some degree or plagiarized some paper or something like that,” she said. “I didn’t pay much attention, to be honest.”

“Why not?” Monk said. “Doesn’t your magazine expose criminals?”