The Devil's Opera(6)

Construction workers of every stripe were moving briskly about; carpenters, masons, and general laborers were in demand for the new hospital expansion, as well as several other projects in the city, not to mention the navy yard. Several women were out selling broadsheets and newspapers, including the shrill-voiced hawk-faced young woman who handed out Committee of Correspondence broadsheets in that part of town.

But still no cabs. He shook his head. Never a cab when you wanted one.

A hand landed on Gotthilf’s shoulder, startling him. He looked up to see his partner, Byron Chieske, settling into place alongside him.

Gotthilf had to look up at Byron. In truth, he had to look up at most adults. He wasn’t very tall; not that he was a dwarf, or anything like that. Nor was he thin or spindly. He was a solid chunk of young man; he just wasn’t very tall.

Byron, on the other hand, was tall, even for an up-timer. He stood a bit over six feet, was well-muscled, and had large square hands. His clean-shaven face was a bit craggy in feature, but not of a nature that would be called ugly.

“Yo, Gotthilf,” Byron said. “Ready for the meeting with the captain this morning?” The captain would be Bill Reilly, another up-timer. Byron was a lieutenant. The two of them had been seconded in early 1635 to the Magdeburg city watch to lead in transforming that organization from what amounted to a group of gossips, busybodies, and bullies to an actual police force on the model of an up-time city police group. They had both been involved in police and security work up-time; they both had at least some education and training in the work; and they had both been in an MP detachment from the State of Thuringia-Franconia army that was stationed in Magdeburg at the time, so they had been available.

“As ready as I’m going to be,” Gotthilf muttered, “considering we have nothing of worth to report.”

“Yeah, Bill may chew on us a bit,” Byron conceded as they walked down the street toward the station building. “But he knows we can’t make bricks without straw. No information, no leads, no results.”

Gotthilf snorted. Byron looked at him with his trademark raised eyebrow, and the down-timer snorted again, before saying, “You know, for someone who professes to not darken the door of a church, you certainly know your way around Biblical allusions.”

Byron chuckled. “Oh, I spent a lot of my childhood in Sunday School, Gotthilf. I may have drifted away from it some as an adult, but a lot of it stuck.” He shoved his hands in his coat pockets, and grinned down at his partner.

Gotthilf grinned back at Byron, who seemed to be in a garrulous mood this morning—by the up-timer’s standards, anyway. Byron was ordinarily one who wouldn’t say two words where one would do, and wouldn’t say one where a gesture or facial expression would serve instead. So to get five sentences out of him in as many minutes bordered on being voluble.

As they stepped on down the street, Gotthilf’s mind recalled their first meeting, ten months ago. He had trouble now even remembering why he had joined the watch; something to do with wanting to do something to prove to his father he was more than just a routine clerk, if he recalled rightly. He had been smarting from another comparison to his brother Nikolaus, studying law at Jena. Not that his father was impressed with the city watch, either, as it turned out.

On the day that he met Byron, Gotthilf was the youngest member of the city watch, the newest, and possibly the angriest. He hadn’t really wanted to be paired with the lieutenant, and he wasn’t of a mind that the over-tall up-timer had anything to teach him or anything to bring to the city watch. But their first case—one involving the murder of a young girl and a young blind lad involved in petty thievery—had opened his eyes to what the Polizei could do.

So now, even at his young age of twenty-three, Gotthilf was an ardent supporter of the captain and the lieutenant, having quit his clerking position and thrown himself into the job. He was now one of three detective sergeants on the force, partnered with Byron, and still one of the youngest men in the Polizei.

And that and a pfennig will get me a cup of coffee at Walcha’s Coffee House, he gibed at himself.

The two men walked into the station house, hung their coats on pegs in the hallway, and headed for their desks. They flipped through the papers and folders lying there, then looked at each other.

“See the captain?” Gotthilf asked.

“Yep,” Byron responded.

They headed for Reilly’s office on the second floor. Byron took the lead.

“Chieske, Hoch.” The captain set down his pencil, folded his hands on top of the document he was reading, and nodded toward a couple of chairs a bit to the side of his desk. “Have a seat. Any progress on that floater case?”