Private Berlin (Private 5)

AS THE SHRIEKING intensified, Mattie pounded on Ilona Frei’s door and shouted, “Frau Frei? Ilona Frei?”

“That one,” said a woman’s voice. “She crazy.”

She stood in the doorway of apartment twenty-five, a disgusted old Vietnamese woman wearing a maroon scarf on her head. “She always screaming and crying ’bout ghosts and something. Crazy.”

The screaming inside had turned into hysterical sobs.

“Stand back, Mattie,” Burkhart ordered.

Mattie got out of his way. Pistol drawn, Burkhart hurled his weight against the door. The jamb splintered and the door blew open.

They followed the sound of the woman sobbing, “No! No! God, no! Please, Falk! Please!”

At the mention of Falk, Mattie ran past Burkhart into a bedroom that featured a mattress, a few blankets, and a lamp burning a naked bulb.

The same disheveled woman Mattie had seen on video embracing Chris in Private Berlin’s lobby the week before he died was now rammed into the deepest corner of the room. Ilona Frei’s hands were wrapped tightly around her head as if to protect it from a beating.

“No,” she moaned. “No, Falk. No.”

“We’re not here to hurt you, Ilona,” Mattie said softly, walking to her slowly. “We’re here to help you.”

Ilona Frei blinked through her tears and began to whimper, “No. Please. I want to stay here. I’m taking my meds. I promise you. There was someone at the hallway window. He wore a mask. I promise you. Don’t take me away again.”

“We won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go,” Mattie soothed.

Ilona Frei panted and sweated like a wild woman, but Mattie’s tone of assurance caused her to lower her arms. She spotted Burkhart and pressed backward in fear.

In her mind, Mattie heard Frau Ledwig telling her that all of the children who arrived at Waisenhaus 44 on the night of February 12, 1980, feared men.

She looked at Burkhart. “Do me a favor? Check the hallway window and that fire escape. And then hang outside.”

Burkhart squinted, but then he nodded.

When he’d gone, Mattie turned back and said: “We’re friends of Chris Schneider’s, Ilona. We worked with him at Private Berlin.”

Something unknotted in Ilona Frei at that point and she peered at Mattie as if she were a distant light in a fog. “Christoph?”

Mattie sat on the bare floor next to her. “The man you went to see at Private Berlin a couple weeks ago. The boy you lived with at Waisenhaus 44.”

Ilona Frei wiped her tear-streaked face and choked: “Where is he? He was supposed to come see me and tell me he’d found my sister.”

Mattie sighed and said, “Chris is dead, Ilona.”

At that Ilona Frei began to hyperventilate. She began scratching at her wrists, whining, “No. No. Please tell me that’s not true.”

“I’m sorry. But it is true. He died last week.”

Ilona Frei lowered her head and began to weep. “How?”

“Chris was murdered, Ilona. I found his body in a slaughterhouse in—”

“No!” Ilona gasped before her entire body went seizure-stiff and trembling. Her lips rippled with terror as she said: “Not there. Not the slaughterhouse. Oh, God, not there.”

She tried to get up but then doubled over on her knees, and retched.

Mattie was completely upended by Ilona Frei’s reaction. But while the poor woman dry heaved and choked, Mattie got to her feet, and in the bathroom she found a threadbare towel that she wetted in the sink.

She returned to the bedroom to find Ilona Frei slumped against the wall looking like she’d been punched and kicked into dumbness.