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would be to use your acquaintance with me to further your career. But others might not be so certain. Think of what could happen to your reputation if—”
    “My reputation?” Willi hated interrupting, but there was no point even discussing that word. “My reputation couldn’t get much worse, Dr. Weiss. No matter who I am or what I do, the men in my unit only see me as one thing: a big-nosed Jew. You’ve never intervened on my behalf, and still you couldn’t convince anyone down there, including Kommissar Horthstaler, that my whole career wasn’t managed by you.”
    The deputy president tightened his lips, letting out a long, low sigh. “Even if I thought it appropriate, I couldn’t interfere right now, Willi. I’m in a bit of a tight spot myself.”
    Willi stared at him, his whole throat clenching. As if whacked across the face suddenly, he understood. Under attack by virulent anti-Semites, Weiss, one of the most prominent Jews in the whole civil service, could ill afford even the smallest scandal involving Jewish patronage. Willi felt a white-hot shame rush through his face for having been so selfish. To hell with the gentile world, he raged inwardly. For putting Weiss and him in such positions.
    “I know it’s frustrating, Willi. More than that.” The doctor’s dark eyes rested on him gently, almost lovingly. “It’s downright degrading. Depressing. You become a policeman because you believe in justice and at every turn meet injustice. But a passion for what’s right isn’t the only virtue a good police officer must possess. Patience. Wisdom. A vision of the larger picture. A sense of responsibility.”
    Willi could feel that bag of bones slipping farther and farther from his hands.
    Why was it so important to him?

 
    Three
    “Responsibility”—Otto Winkelmann proudly puffed his pipe—“is nature’s most basic survival precept. Heinz’s gift will help him learn what the word really means.”
    Willi’d already gotten an earful about it when he’d arrived home from work earlier, Stefan and Erich all over him about how the Winkelmanns had bought their son a ten-liter aquarium for his birthday, filled with guppies. If only we could get one like that, they’d cried. Now, over dinner, Willi heard how, after the tank had been set up, Heinz had gotten quite a lesson in the birds and bees too—so to speak. In minutes, one of the guppies had gone from big-bellied to bone thin, and a dozen shiny-silver slivers were darting around the water.
    “Could that really be true?” Otto’s sister-in-law seemed incredulous, checking with her husband. “Don’t fish lay eggs?”
    “Here we go-o-o-o!” Frau Winkelmann interrupted, bursting through the terrace door, practically invisible behind her steaming platter.
    Everyone at the table sat up and oohed.
    In honor of Heinzie’s birthday she had bestowed the rarefied pleasure on a select few—Vicki, Willi, and her relatives the Klempers—of her deviled ribs.
    Despite himself Willi felt drawn into the group trance as she placed the tray down. Not that he had much appetite after lunch at headquarters this afternoon. But some rites were too seductive to resist.
    “You’re the Meister, Irmgard.” Vicki applauded as if it were opening night at the opera. “Nobody devils a rib like you.”
    Their host, Otto Winkelmann, struck a more commemorative note. “Remember how many times we could only dream of such meals? During the war and then the revolution and then the—”
    “Oh, really, Otto,” his sister-in-law erupted. “Why must you litanize such things? I can’t stand even to think of them.” Frau Klemper rested her plump fingers on her bosom, sniffing at the beef. “I refuse to ever think of those awful times again.”
    “That’s idiotic, Magda.” Her husband rolled his eyes as if she were really too much. “Remembering is all that keeps us from forgetting. Isn’t that so, Otto?” Felix Klemper stuffed a napkin between his bulging neck and