“I never married. Perhaps you knew that. And if you didn’t then perhaps you can understand why I didn’t, Gunther. When a man chooses not to marry he tells his mother that for all kinds of reasons he’s never met the right girl, but mostly there’s just one reason. The oldest reason of all. That there never could be such a thing as the right girl. If you know what I mean.” He smiled thinly. “I imagine that it can’t be the first time you’ve encountered this sort of thing.”

“I understand perfectly, sir. During the Weimar Republic, when I was a cop at the Alex, I think I saw every facet of human behavior known to man. And quite a few that were unknown, too. Believe me, I’m immune to this kind of thing. Moral outrage is something only Nazis seem to suffer from these days.”

This wasn’t true, of course, but you have to say that to your clients or they’ll never open up. I have just as much moral outrage as the next man, provided that man isn’t called Adolf Hitler. According to the English Daily Mail—currently the best-selling newspaper in Berlin because it’s the only paper in which the story appears—the Führer and most of the German High Command were currently exhibiting a great deal of outrage concerning the marriage of the minister of War, Field Marshal von Blomberg, to a woman of low birth and even lower morals named Erna Gruhn. Just how low was a matter of common knowledge in and around the Alex because Erna Gruhn was a prostitute and a former nude model. It was said the morals boys had a file on her that was almost as thick as von Blomberg’s skull.

“In November nineteen thirty-three,” began von Frisch, “I met a boy in the lavatories at Potsdamer Platz station. His name was Bavarian Joe and he was—well, he was—”

I nodded. “A warm boy for a cold night. I get the picture, Captain. No need to say any more about exactly what happened. Best get to the squeeze. I mean, the blackmailer.”

“Following this liaison, while I was boarding a westbound train, another man got on and told me he was a police officer. I think he said his name was Commissioner Kröger. It wasn’t. He isn’t even a police officer, let alone a commissioner. Anyway, he said he’d seen exactly what had happened and threatened to place me under arrest for being a 175er, which is to say a homosexual. Then he offered to drop the charges if I would pay him five hundred marks in cash. I had about two hundred on me at the time so I handed this over and promised to take him to my bank the next day, where I would pay him the balance. And I did.”

“Which bank was this?”