The Hour of the Cat Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  June 1938

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  July 1938

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  August 1938

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  September 1938

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  September 20-21, 1938

  Chapter 10

  November 1938

  Chapter 11

  March 1939

  Chapter 12

  April 1945

  OBITS

  HOUR OF

  First published in paperback in the United States in 2006 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc,

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  Copyright © 2005 by Peter Quinn

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and

  retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in

  writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote

  brief passages in connection with a review written for

  inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Quinn, Peter.

  Hour of the cat / Peter Quinn.

  p. cm.

  1. Private investigators—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Germans—New York (State)—Fiction. 3. Nurses—Crimes against—Fiction. 4. Intelligence officers—Fiction. 5. Death row inmates—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 7. Conspiracies—Fiction. I. Titles. PS3617.U584H’.54—dc22 2005040602

  Book design and type formatting by Bernard Schleifer

  eISBN : 978-1-590-20574-7

  To Genevieve and Daniel

  A chuisle mo chroí

  L’chaim

  August 1936

  PROLOGUE

  Eugenics was a science that ruled that some forms of life were undeserving of life. The regime at hand merely had to draw the practical conclusions and carry out the death sentences. National Socialism, which harped incessantly on notions of purity of race, would have been the laughingstock of Germany had its scientists shown the imbecility of this idea. Instead, it was the scientists who gave an academic garb to racism or, rather, invented scientific racism as a modern version of pure and simple prejudice and fear of the other.

  Finally, the Holocaust, the systematic “extermination” of human beings, would have been unthinkable without the medical profession’s “detached” evaluation of these human beings as not only inferior and therefore unworthy of life, but as positively dangerous to the national Aryan body and therefore doomed to quick and efficient, yet of course wholly unemotional elimination. This is what makes the Holocaust central to our era, for it was founded on a scientifically sanctioned, indeed ordered, brutality.

  —OMER BARTOV, Murder in Our Midst

  THE EXCELSIOR HOTEL, BERLIN

  IAN ANDERSON TOOK a copy of the Völkischer Beobachter from the racks of newspapers lining the hotel café’s walls. As soon as he returned to his corner booth, a waiter served the coffee and pastry he had ordered. At the sight of the German newspaper, the waiter checked the single letter that the maître d’ had written in the corner of the seating card, a reminder of the Excelsior Hotel’s commitment, for the duration of the Olympic Games, to address guests in their own language. Yes, E for Englisch, as he had thought. “Will there be anything else?” the waiter asked.

  “Not for the moment,” Anderson said. “Danke.”

  The waiter tapped his heels together, lightly, making an almost imperceptible sound, then moved into the room’s cavernous center, beneath the immense electric chandeliers, through the closely placed tables, in search of more orders. Advertised as the largest hotel in Europe, the Excelsior had recently added “the most cosmopolitan,” a claim given credence by the crowd eagerly availing itself of the international selection of over 200 newspapers and magazines provided gratis. Most of the patrons were engrossed in their newspapers, the front page headlines in seemingly every language on the continent—German, French, Spanish, Hungarian—announcing the success of the previous day’s opening ceremonies at the Berlin Olympiad.

  Anderson looked up from the Völkischer Beobachter, its gushing account of yesterday’s event nothing less than what he expected from the Nazi Party’s official newspaper. A paper flag bearing the rising sun held over his head, a Japanese guide led a straggly line of his countrymen to a table on the far side of the room. The maître d’ approached. “Herr Anderson, your guest has arrived,” he said in barely accented English. “Should I show him to your table?”

  “Please, if you don’t mind.” Anderson folded the paper and laid it beside him. He stood and brushed the pastry crumbs from his pants. The maître d’ was almost at the table when the person behind popped in front. “Ian Anderson, right?” He held out his hand without waiting for an answer. “I’m Chuck Weber, and I appreciate your taking time to meet with me.”

  “It’s quite all right, Mr. Weber,” Anderson said. “Won’t you have a seat?”

  “Call me Chuck, please.” Weber sat in the booth, across from Anderson, who artfully slipped several marks into the hand of the slighted and scowling maître d’. The maître d’ bowed in gratitude, whispering, this time in German, “Herr Anderson, I can only hope the manners of an English gentleman will rub off on your American guest.”

  Weber watched the maître d’ as he returned to his station at the café’s entrance. “What’d he say?”

  “That it seems as though the whole world has come to see the Berlin Games.”

  “He’s got that right.” A waiter came to take his order. “Cognac, make it a double,” Weber said. He had a pudgy, round face, topped by thick, slicked-back hair the color of dirty straw. He was significantly younger than he’d sounded on the phone, in his early thirties, not late forties, as Anderson had guessed.

  Fumbling for a moment in the inside breast pocket of his tan hounds-tooth-check jacket, Weber finally found what he was looking for. He took out an alligator case not much larger than a cigarette lighter, extracted a business card and handed it to Anderson. “As I said on the phone, I’m with Holcomb & Belknap. We’re headquartered in New York but, as you see from the card, we have offices in Chicago, London, and now Berlin.”

  “Yes, I see, ‘Charles R. Weber, vice president.’ An impressive title.”

  “Doesn’t say so on the card, but I’m the youngest v.p. in the history of the firm.”

  “And your firm’s specialty, it says here, is public relations. It’s not a profession I know a lot about.”

  “P.R. is a bigger deal in the States than over here, but it’s catching on. It’s not complicated, really. In a nutshell, when an individual or business needs to deal with the press, we make sure it’s done to their advantage. If you’ve got a good story to tell, we get it covered. If it’s not so good, we help frame it in a favorable way or keep it out of the spotlight altogether.”

  The waiter delivered Weber’s cognac. He lifted his glass. “Cheers,” he said. “I’m interested in the book you’re writing.”

  “Yes, you said so on the phone. What do you know about my book?”

  “Well, Ian—you don’t mind me calling you Ian, do you?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “It’s this way, Ian. Mr. Holcomb, founder and managing director of our firm, was
at a dinner party in New York also attended by your American publisher. His ears pricked up when he heard the title, My Journey in Nazi Germany.”

  “Travels in the New Germany is the correct title.”

  “Sure, that’s it. As Mr. Holcomb told your publisher, we’ve got clients with a standing interest in what gets written about Germany, especially given all the propaganda and emotions that get mixed in and passed off for facts.”

  “Do you have the German government for a client?”

  Weber chuckled. “Not that I’d feel obliged to tell you if we did, but no, we’re not on Hitler’s payroll.” He finished his drink. “Quite the opposite, we work with a number of American firms whose interests in Germany are purely commercial or philanthropic. They are very concerned about steering clear of politics.”

  “American interests in Germany aren’t a subject of my book.”

  “A lot of times it hardly matters what’s written. What counts is the interpretation put on it. Today, in the U.S., there are those whose only interest is in painting everything that happens in Germany as intended either to harm certain ethnic groups or to start another war. Here, in Berlin, you can see for yourself how wrong they are. Does it look to you as though a new version of the Spanish Inquisition is under way? Or that another war is on tap?” Weber gestured with his empty glass at the room filled with happy tourists and relaxed patrons.

  “Germany encompasses more than this room,” Anderson said.

  “Exactly right. It’s impossible to sum up all that’s happening in Germany by looking exclusively at a small piece, good or bad. Think about it! A country flattened by defeat and depression is on its feet. Business is booming. Millions are back to work. Yet some only want to see the negative. I’ve been working with firms such as International Business Machines, Ford, and Texaco. You’d think they’d win praise for building bridges of peace through international commerce. Instead, they’re attacked and pilloried for not joining a boycott of trade with Germany.”

  “It’s absurd when you think about it,” Weber continued. I mean, look at Avery Brundage and the American Olympic Committee, and the heat they took over the decision not to boycott these Games. In the face of every kind or pressure and threat, he stood his ground, so that today the United States is here, alongside the rest of the world, ready to compete, and with a team that includes Jews and colored as well as regular Americans.”

  “The issue was the treatment of Jews here in Germany and their exclusion from amateur sports.”

  “Sure, and then what do we in the States say when people turn around and point fingers at us for not letting the colored play in our professional baseball leagues? And you English aren’t exactly pure as driven snow when it comes to the treatment of other races. I mean, ‘Let the one without sin cast the first stone,’ right?”

  “What happens in America or Britain doesn’t excuse what happens in Germany, and vice versa.”

  “Of course, I’m sorry for getting us sidetracked. I’ll get right to the point. I’ve been told that you’ve been looking into the eugenic program underway in Germany, and without intending in any way to tell you what to write, I’d like to see to it that my client is left out of the discussion. Not praised, not criticized, left out.”

  “I told you, my interest isn’t in any specific American involvement in Germany. My focus is on the people of this country and the direction in which they’re being led.”

  “There are those in the p.r. business who think you have to be subtle and coy, insinuating your message rather than stating it. Not me. ‘Give it to ’em straight,’ that’s the Chuck Weber philosophy. Just so you know that I’ve got nothing to hide, I’ll tell you up front who my client is. It’s the Rockefeller Foundation. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mind if I ask how?”

  “I presume you already know or you wouldn’t have sought me out,” Anderson said.

  Without mentioning names, Anderson told Weber that he’d spoken with a number of doctors and researchers at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. Anderson turned the last word over in his mind. Eugenics: A happy sound and a benevolent, if condescending, intent on the part of Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin and the upper-class gentleman who coined the word—from the Greek for “wellborn”—and the concept. Encourage only the fit (the rich, the successful, the already blessed) to breed; discourage the unfit (the infirm, the poor, those devoid of pedigree.) A not-so-harmless concept in the hands of social engineers, racial theorists, and medical scientists, for whom eugenics was the key to ridding the world of the weak and securing the future for a master race.

  “It’s no secret,” Anderson concluded, “that racial hygiene is a basic goal of the National Socialist regime or that the foundation has been a long-standing supporter of the institute’s work, particularly its eugenic research.”

  “The foundation’s interest is purely scientific, not political.”

  “The two aren’t as easy to separate as some wish to believe. Scientists aren’t without political views. Research doesn’t occur in a social vacuum. Someone must decide what is worth researching, which projects should be funded, and to what end.”

  Weber turned and thrust his glass at a passing waiter. “Another,” he said. He faced Anderson again “That’s my point, Ian. In the U.S., for instance, most people came to accept the fact that idiots and morons shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce. A decade ago, when our highest court affirmed the practice of compulsory sterilization, it proceeded on the principle that ‘three generations of imbeciles is enough.’ But under the present circumstances, with the bleeding hearts in the political driver’s seat, the momentum is in the other direction. Hysteria replaces reason. Politics interferes with science. Radicals denounce anything to do with racial improvement as ‘fascist.’”

  “Do you think the science that’s practiced here in Germany is pure and unbiased?”

  The waiter delivered Weber’s drink. Two tall, well-built officers in black SS uniforms passed the table. They were accompanied by identical twin sisters, blonde, svelte, clear-complexioned, each in a tight sheath dress fitted to her athletic form. The whole room seemed to watch as they crossed to their table.

  “Nice scenery, eh?” Weber said. “That’s the future Germany is trying to build for itself, a race of healthy specimens. They believe it can’t be left to chance. Science must show the way by encouraging the strong to breed.”

  “And eliminating the weak and the sick?” Anderson said.

  Weber wagged his finger, as if to scold Anderson for telling a fib. He recounted several visits he’d paid to Germany’s eugenic courts, which had been instituted by the racial hygiene laws passed several years before. Each case, he said, was heard before a judge, a doctor and a social worker. No distinction was made among classes or religious creeds. The laws were equally applied to one purpose: using compulsory sterilization to reduce Germany’s burden of hereditary diseases, mental as well as physical, and allow the fit to thrive. He stressed once more that any assistance by the foundation to the eugenics movement was based solely on the pursuit of “scientific truth.”

  Anderson let Weber’s brief sermon on scientific truth pass without comment. “My book is about individuals, not institutions,” he said.

  Weber finished his drink and stood. “Thanks for being straight with me.” He placed two tickets on the table. “Here’s a couple of press passes to the track and field competition. It should be quite a show, given the quality of the American and German athletes.”

  The waiter came with a bill, which Weber plucked from the tray. “It’s on me,” he said, “and I’ll keep you in mind, Ian. I started as a reporter. It’s a good way to stay poor. There’s a lot more money in p.r., believe me. My firm is always looking for good writers, and we pay the highest rates in the business.”

  “I won’t give you any guarantee the foundation won’t be the subject of further scrutiny. Though I never
intended to look at the funding behind the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, I won’t discourage others from doing so.”

  “You know that, and now I know it. But my client doesn’t. Far as they know, I’ve helped them dodge a bullet. That’s p.r., Ian. It’s not just what you do for your clients, but what they think you do.”

  June 1938

  1

  It’s often been said that New York isn’t a city in which to grow old. The truth of this bit of folk wisdom instantly impresses itself on the casual visitor. New York is a nervous place, a raw city, unpolished, unfinished, uncivil, more like Berlin in the days of the Weimar Republic than present-day Boston or Baltimore. The grandeur that was Rome and the hauteur that is Paris are utterly missing. If the visitor will linger here a while, however, he will discover that in its wanton disregard for rank or station, in its mongrel disdain for all that is ancient and outdated, in its restless lust for fun, fashion, and the future, New York is the man-made equivalent of the fountain of youth. New York might try your patience and test your wits. It might lift you to the heights of stardom or expel you to the provinces. But it will not let you grow old.

  —IAN ANDERSON,

  “New York, Home to the Next World’s Fair,”

  World Traveler Magazine

  PARK AVENUE, NEW YORK

  THE GREEN, LEAFY SEA of Central Park’s treetops framed in the window behind her, Mrs. Prudence Addison Babcock stood with one hand on a baby grand piano. Her other hand raised a cigarette to her mouth. She had a pretty face, except when she sucked on the cigarette. Her cheeks became sunken pits, the sharp, bony points seemingly ready to poke through her skin. Her eyes narrowed into slits. The embittered eyes of a woman with a hubby who’d been fingered before. Fingered and forgiven. Not this time. “I want the son of a bitch caught in the act. In the act. I want pictures.”