The little Barlows had a pied-à-terre in New York, and one in Vienna—small but comfortable apartments, in both places. When Elmira mailed the invitation to Zim’s memorial to Elliot in Exeter, I happened to be working with John and Susan in their Vienna apartment. The snowshoer called me right away, telling me there was a printed invitation to the memorial service for Lieutenant Matthew Zimmermann at St. James’ Episcopal Church on Madison Avenue, between East Seventy-first and East Seventy-second Streets—only a few blocks south, I knew, of the Zimmermanns’ Park Avenue apartment. On the back of the formal invitation was a handwritten message from Elmira; a “select few” were also invited to a “reception” at the Zimmermanns’ apartment, after the church service. Zim had given his main mother, as he called Elmira, a short list. In the event of his death in Vietnam, Zim wanted me at his memorial service, together with one of his wrestling coaches at Exeter—“the small one,” Elmira specified. Coach Dearborn had made Mr. Barlow the lightweights’ coach at Exeter; the snowshoer had been Zim’s principal workout partner there.

I really needed a break from the little Barlows and their Nazi storm troopers—those two SA men who are seen kissing each other during Hitler’s two-and-a-half-hour speech in Düsseldorf in 1932. Those Sturmabteilung guys, the two kissers, were John and Susan Barlow’s main characters; one of them murders the other. Soon the kissing killer is murdering more storm troopers. I had some empathy for these fictional characters—even for the murderer, but especially for his first victim. Their historical counterparts were less sympathetic. Rudolf Hess and Ernst Röhm—they were actual SA guys. As Uncle Johan had first informed me, Röhm was co-founder and a leader of the Sturmabteilung. (It was Uncle Martin who’d told me Röhm was wounded on the Western Front, where he’d lost a piece of his nasal bone.) My principal “research job” for The Kiss in Düsseldorf was to view hours and hours of archival footage, everything from newsreels to propaganda films. The director wanted me to find early footage of Hess, Röhm, and Martin Bormann from before they were Nazis. They were Freikorps guys originally, as Uncle Martin had said. Right-wing nationalists, Uncle Johan called the Freikorps. Uncle Martin said Hitler had Röhm killed because Röhm was a homosexual, but Hitler had targeted other Freikorps guys for execution—including Röhm. (In a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler had implied that the Freikorps were enemies of the state.)