It felt awkward being back at the Alex. Awkward and exciting. I figured Martin Luther must have felt the same way when he turned up at the Diet of Worms to defend himself against a charge of spoiling the church door in Wittenberg. So many faces that were familiar. A few looked at me as if I were the prodigal son, but rather more seemed to regard me as the fatted calf.

Berlin Alexanderplatz. I could have told Alfred Döblin a thing or two.

Otto Trettin led me behind the desk and told a young uniformed cop to record my statement.

The cop was in his mid-twenties and, unusually by SCHUPO standards, was as bright as the badge on his ammunition pouch. He hadn’t been typing my statement very long when he stopped, bit his already well-bitten fingernails, lit a cigarette, and silently went over to a filing cabinet as big as a Mercedes that stood in the center of the huge room. He was taller than I’d expected. And thinner. He hadn’t been there long enough to get a taste for beer and get himself a pregnant belly, like a true SCHUPO man. He came back reading, which, in the Alex, was something of a miracle in itself.

“I thought so,” he said, handing Otto the file, but looking at me. “This object you’re reporting stolen was reported stolen yesterday. I took the particulars myself.”

“Chinese lacquer-and-basketry box,” said Otto, glancing over the report. “Fifty centimeters by thirty centimeters by ten centimeters.”

I tried to work that out in imperial measurement and gave up.

“Seventeenth century, Mong dynasty.” Otto looked at me. “That sound like the same box, Bernie?”

“Ming dynasty,” I said. “It’s Ming.”

“Ming, Mong, what’s the difference?”

“Either it’s the same box or they’re as common as pretzels. Who made the report?”

“A Dr. Martin Stock,” said the young cop. “From the Asiatic Museum. He was pretty exercised about it.”

“What kind of fellow was he?” I asked.

“Oh, you know. Kind of how you’d imagine someone from a museum would look. Sixtyish, gray mustache, white goatee, bald, myopic, overweight—he reminded me of the walrus at the zoo. He wore a bow tie—”

“I’ve seen that before,” said Otto. “A walrus wearing a bow tie.”

The cop smiled and then continued. “Spats, nothing in his lapel—I mean no Party badge or anything. And it was a Bruno Kuczorski suit he was wearing.”

“Now he’s just showing off,” said Otto.

“I saw the label on the inside of his coat when he took out his handkerchief to mop his brow. An anxious sort of fellow. But you would have gathered that from the handkerchief.”

“On the level?”

“Like he swallowed a geometry set.”

“What’s your name, son?” Otto asked him.

“Heinz Seldte.”

“Well, Heinz Seldte, it’s my opinion that you should leave this fat man’s desk job you’ve got here and become a cop.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“So what’s the deal, Gunther?” said Otto. “You trying to make a monkey out of me?”