“Go home, you Prussian pig,” someone shouted.

“Yes, clear off back to Berlin, you stupid Pifke.”

They were right, of course. It was time to go home. After a short while among Munich’s Neanderthals, the men of Berlin were already looking like a real advance in human evolution. By all accounts, Munich was Hitler’s favorite town. It was easy to see why.

I went out of the Police Praesidium by a different set of stairs, which led into the central courtyard, where several police cars and vans were parked. As I was making my way under the arches to the street, I encountered the burly desk sergeant, who was now coming off duty. I knew this because he wasn’t wearing his leather belt or his duty epaulettes. Also, he was carrying a Thermos. Moving to block my way out, he said, “Sure it’s always a shame when a cop goes down in the line of duty.” He chuckled. “Except when it’s a Jew, of course. The fellows who shot that yid bastard, Herzefelde. They deserve a medal, so they do.” He spat onto the ground ahead of me for good measure. “Have a nice trip back to Berlin, you Jew-loving prick.”

“One more word from you, you worthless Nazi gorilla, and I’m going to pull the tongue out of your thick Bavarian head and scrape the shit off it with the heel of my shoe.”

The sergeant put his Thermos on a windowsill and bent his ugly mug toward me. “Who the hell do you think you are, coming to my city and threatening me? You’re lucky I don’t run you in just for the fun of it. One more word out of you, sonny, and I’ll have your eggs hanging from our flagpole in the morning.”

“If I threaten you, you’ll stay threatened and write me a thank-you letter on nice notepaper in your best writing.”

“This is a man with a broken jaw who’s talking to me,” said the sergeant, before throwing a punch at my head.

He was tall and strong, with shoulders like the yoke on a Frisian milkmaid and a fist as big as a fire bucket. But his first mistake was to miss. His tunic was still buttoned and this slowed him down, so I was already ducking the blow by the time it arrived. His second mistake was to miss again. And to lead with his chin. By now, I was ready to take a swing myself, as if I’d been taking a swing at the very man who had shot Paul Herzefelde. And I let him have it hard, very hard, right under the chin. This, as von Clausewitz would probably have agreed, is the best part of the chin with which to make decisive contact. I saw his legs go the minute I struck him. But I punched him again, this time in the belly, and when he doubled up, I hammered him in each kidney with a heavyweight contender’s high ambition and strength of will. He fell back against the wall of the archway. And I was still hitting him when three SCHUPO men pulled me off and pinned me against the wrought-iron gate.

Slowly, the sergeant picked himself off the cobbles. It took him a while to straighten up, but eventually he managed it. I’ll say one thing for him: he could take a punch. He wiped his mouth and, panting hard, came toward me with a look in his eyes that told me he wasn’t about to invite me to stay for the Oktoberfest.

“Hold him up,” he told the other cops, taking his time about it. And then he hit me. A short right hook that went up to his elbow in my stomach. Then another, and another until his knuckles were tickling my backbone. Except it wasn’t funny. And I wasn’t laughing. They let me go when I started throwing up. But they hadn’t finished. In fact, they’d only just started.

They dragged me back into the building and down into the cells, where they went at me again-good, expert blows from cops who knew what they were doing and who clearly enjoyed their work. After an hour or so, I heard a voice from a long way off, reminding them that I was a cop, and that was when they left me alone. I had an idea it was Schramma who got them to lay off, but I never found out for sure. I stayed on the floor of that cell for a long time. No one was kicking me, and it felt like the most comfortable place in the world. All I wanted to do was stay there and sleep for twenty years. Then the floor slid to one side and I fell into a deep, dark place where a group of dwarfs were playing a game of ninepins. For a while, I joined the game, but then one of the dwarfs gave me a magic drink, and I slept the sleep of Jacob on Mount Moriah. Something Jewish, anyway.

THE CELLS in the prison below the Munich Police Praesidium were once occupied by Augustine monks. They must have been tough men, those Augustine monks. My cell had a hard bunk and a straw pallet on top, which was about as thick as a blanket. The blanket was made of thin air. Job or Saint Jerome would have been very comfortable down there. There was an open toilet without a seat, and no window in the smooth, porcelain tile wall. The cell was hot and smelly, and so was I. “Love the sinner and hate the sin,” said Saint Augustine. That was easy for him to say. He never had to spend the night in a cell beneath the Munich Police Praesidium.

They left the lights on all the time, and it wasn’t in case you were scared of the dark. I had no idea what time of the day or night it was. A few days of that, and you’re ready to do more or less whatever they tell you, just to see the sky again. That’s the theory, anyway. And after what seemed like a week but was probably only two or three days, a doctor came to look at me-a real Schweitzer type, with a mustache as big as an octopus and more white hair than Liszt’s grandmother. He examined the bruises on my ribs and asked me how I’d come by them. I told him I’d fallen off my bunk when I’d been asleep.

“Do they hurt?”

“Only when I laugh, which is not so much since I’ve been here, oddly enough.”

“You may have a couple of broken ribs,” he said. “Really, you need an X-ray.”

“Thanks, but what I really need is a cigarette.”

He examined the bruises on my ribs, gave me a cigarette, and asked me for my clothes.

“I don’t think they’ll fit you,” I said, but I took them off all the same. I just wanted to go home.

“We’ll get these things cleaned,” he said, handing my clothes to the custody officer. “You, too, if you’re up to it. There’s a shower at the end of the corridor. Soap and a razor.”

“Kind of late to be handing out hospitality, isn’t it?” But I had the shower and the shave all the same.

When I was clean, the short man handed me a blanket and took me into an interview room to await the return of my clothes. We sat down at opposite ends of a table. He opened a leather cigarette case and put it in front of me. Then someone brought me a cup of hot, sweet coffee. It tasted like ambrosia.

“I am Commissar Wowereit,” he said. “I’ve been instructed to inform you that no charges are to be made and that you are free to go.”

“Well, that’s very generous of you,” I said, and took one of his cigarettes. He lit it for me with a match and then sat back on his chair. He had slim, delicate hands. They didn’t look like they’d ever thrown a tomato, let alone a punch. I couldn’t imagine how he fitted in with the rest of the Munich polenta with hands like his. “Very generous,” I repeated. “Considering I was the one who got roughhoused.”

“A report of the incident that occurred has already been sent to your new police president and his deputy.”

“What do you mean, my new police president and his deputy? What the hell are you talking about, Wowereit?”

“Of course. I’m sorry. How could you know?”

“Know what?”

“Ever heard of Altona?”

“Yeah. It’s a dump outside Hamburg that’s notionally part of Prussia.”

“Much more important than that, it’s a Communist town. The day you arrived in Munich, a group of uniformed Nazis staged a parade there. There was a brawl. Actually, it was more of a riot. And seventeen people were killed, and several hundred people wounded.”

“Hamburg’s a long way from Berlin,” I said. “I don’t see how-”