Just one week before, the Lange family had ushered in 1943 with champagne and the pleasant tinkling of laughter. In the company of the esteemed congressman from Wisconsin’s fourth district with the long Polish name—who said he could only stay for an hour and one drink, but stayed for five and a few bottles—the family had moved excitedly through the house, greeting their guests, buzzing with anticipation for the new year.
But it wasn’t just the congressman who gave their soiree its clout. River Hills’ most glamorous young wives, and the men who made Milwaukee run, had also walked through the Langes’ front door, greeted by the family with the warmth reserved for old friends. They were somebodies who would always remain somebodies, Franz and Helene Lange thought to themselves, just like they did every year when they opened the door for the first guest. Hadn’t the war proven that? Even the owner of the city’s baseball club and his glamorous horsewoman of a wife, who still wore her mink sable, had stopped by for nearly thirty minutes. And when they left, light as champagne corks, they’d said they were reluctant to go, as the Langes’ would surely be the best party of the night. Helene had blushed and said, “Of course it won’t be. With your circle of friends?” But she knew they were right. She and her husband did throw a wonderful party. Helene was sure of that.
She wasn’t skilled at everything, but Helene Lange was an accomplished hostess. She knew to always have double the amount of food per guest, as even those who declined would end up coming, and to have the waiters refill the drinks before they were half-consumed. “A party feels wrong in these uncertain times,” a few guests had said when they arrived, but that sentiment was forgotten when they saw the sizzling suckling pig with rosemary and garlic potatoes and caviar garnish being served in enormous quantities. Helene knew that during war, delicacies were appreciated even more.
It was true that all over the country, celebrations had been muted out of respect for the conflict raging abroad, but Helene and Franz were sure they were exempt from such behavior. Their annual New Year’s Eve party was buoyed by a decadence and happiness that floated above life’s annoyances and it shouldn’t be canceled because of what was happening thousands of miles away. More important, everyone associated the evening with Lange Steel, and that helped the family’s bank accounts swell.
Franz Lange, an engineer by trade, had founded Lange Steel only seven years after immigrating to the United States in 1921 and molded it into one of the Midwest’s largest producers of steel wire. For a company like Lange, war had been a boon, turning its profits ever upward. With peace nowhere in sight, forty-seven-year-old, perpetually power-hungry Franz was even thinking of expansion. On that New Year’s Eve, he and his graceful wife, Helene, had of course shared sympathetic thoughts for those fighting and prayers for families dealing with loss, but imagined the best was yet to come for them and their only child, Christian.
As the sound of a tree branch grazing a window echoed through the room, there was another knock on the door.
“Is your father in here?” the anxious voice of Helene Lange whispered from just outside Christian’s open bedroom door.
“He’s not with you?” Christian asked, his pitch newly baritone. He was already sitting up in bed, his goose feather pillows strewn across the floor next to him.
“He must have fallen asleep listening to the radio,” said Helene, looking around her son’s room as if she didn’t quite believe that her husband was not there.
“The news of the Russian troop movements in Stalingrad,” Christian reminded his mother. “He was listening to the report after supper.”
When the fist hit the door a third time, Christian pushed his blankets back, let them slide onto the carpeted floor, and stood up next to his mother. “Dad must be awake now—” he said. He stopped midsentence as they heard the distinct creak of their front door. Then a voice unmarked by a midwestern twang rang through the still house.
“You are Franz Lange?”
In River Hills, it was always a good thing to be Franz Lange. Franz Lange had a glamorous wife, a big house, and a son who grew more handsome with every sunrise. But from the sound of his voice, this night crawler did not care for Franz Lange.
For Christian, it was the note of callousness that snapped him wide awake. Suddenly, he knew who these men were. He had thought of them often in the past year, but they had seemed more like fictional characters, laughable villains in a police novel, not brusque men who could push into his home. His mother retied the belt of her thin pink robe, higher than usual since her stomach had grown noticeably larger over the holidays, and motioned to her son to follow her down the stairs.
There were many kinds of people in Milwaukee, but there was only one kind of person in River Hills—rich. And the two strangers standing in the Langes’ foyer did not look rich. One was tall and fair like the Lange men, the other dark-haired and stout, with a hairline that stopped just an inch above his shaggy eyebrows. Once inside, they had pulled out identification cards, showing they were who Christian had guessed: FBI agents. The shorter one was Smith, the taller Jakobsson. A Swedish name to match his yellow Viking hair, thought Christian, though his cheap suit undercut his good looks.
Christian felt himself grab on to his mother’s robe, a childish instinct that surprised them both. She reached for his hand.
“You all deaf? Family of mutes?” asked the shorter one. “We’ve been standing there knocking for damn near ten minutes. I was about to bust down the door. It’s snowing, you know?”
“I’m sorry,” Franz said, offering to take their coats, an offer that was rudely waved off. “It’s rather late. I’m afraid we were all sound asleep.”
“Sure you were.” Smith removed his hat and looked up at Franz. “We have permission to search your home, Mr. Lange. I’m sure you know why.”
“Because I am German and we are at war,” said Franz. “I am not ignorant of what is happening in the world.” He turned around and looked at his wife. “Helene, please, fetch our papers,” he said, a touch too haughtily given the circumstances. “He, Christian, is American,” he said of his son, who had remained a step behind his mother. Helene reluctantly let go of her son’s hand and rushed back up the carpeted hallway without a word, nodding for Christian to follow her. The two men walked farther inside.
While the family was prepared to watch the agents start turning the house upside down, searching every corner, every drawer—as they’d been told was their practice—all the men did at first was stroll through the rooms as if they were guests, examining the expensive furniture and peering out the window at the faint outline of the nearby Milwaukee River, only visible because of the night’s blue-tinted full moon.