One Man, One Murder

by Jakob Arjouni

  A pause. Schlumpi looked at the secretary, the secretary looked at me, I looked at Slibulsky, and Slibulsky looked at the ceiling. Then the secretary gave Schlumpi a nod, and Schlumpi left the office.

  “I admit that you’ve got the edge, for now. But don’t forget the consequences. How will Mr. Wang react to this? He can change his residence quickly. I can foresee a few problems for you.”

  Slibulsky almost managed to nod and shake his head at the same time. I did the latter.

  “We won’t have any problems. This is mainly a matter of principle. No one should think they can get away with just about anything merely because Wang isn’t here. And that is why Slibulsky will recoup his losses in plain view of everybody. The alternative? Well, I’m a private investigator, and for twenty thousand marks I’ll be glad to find Wang for you.”

  He rolled the pen between his fingers, looking pensive. Then he shrugged and started closing the ledgers. “As you wish. I’ll inform Mr. Wang about all of this. The rest will take care of itself.”

  After he had stuffed the ledgers into a brown briefcase, he got up and walked around the desk. He moved jerkily, as if he had trouble retaining his posture without a backrest. “As for you, Mr. Slibulsky … Please accept my apologies for the business with your arm. It was done according to orders, and, as you must have noticed, I found it hard to observe.” Looking mildly embarrassed, he held out his hand to Slibulsky. “No offense …”

  Amazed, Slibulsky raised his eyebrows. Then he made an awkward gesture, and I had a hard time keeping a straight face. The secretary turned red in the face.

  Armed with beer and shots of schnapps and a stack of blue chips we took our places at the roulette table. I leaned closer to Slibulsky: “How much do we have to win here?”

  “A hundred and twenty thousand.” And, while he was stacking the chips: “How did you know about my inheritance?”

  “Gina told me.”

  “Mhm … And what would you have done if the guy hadn’t happened to be Schmitz’s secretary?”

  “No idea.”

  He divided the stack in two and shoved one half over to me. “But I told you to keep out of it.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  I took the chips, leaned back, and bet a thousand on Odd.

  The croupier, a lean guy with a mustache and cold eyes, glanced at both of us. Then he set the ball in motion and did not pay any attention to us for the next hour. It almost seemed as if he didn’t even notice where we placed out bets. But he did notice, and when we left the joint around two o’clock, Slibulsky no longer owed the house a dime.

  It was still warm outside. The moon had risen above the railway station. The woman in white patent leather was gone. We started walking to Raoul’s Haiti-Corner, a small restaurant that served good rum and good beans. For a while we trundled along in silence. Slibulsky had stuck his left hand inside his coat and hunched his shoulders. As we left the railway quarter and turned into a side street, he finally spoke up: “All right, you win. But the next time you think you have to pull me out of some shit, please let me know beforehand.”

  I stopped.

  “Just like you did, ‘let me know,’ eh?”

  “How could I tell you anything? After you called me a guy who steals people’s last pair of socks and then sends them off to be killed?”

  “Touché. But just tell me next time—before you lose a fortune at roulette, and before you try to work for guys like Charlie in order to make some money for guys like Schlumpi, while Schmitz and Wang sit in their castle and wipe their asses with paper currency.”

  He frowned. After a moment’s silence, he said: “Yes, you’ve got a point there.”

  We walked on, faster. Our steps regained some of the old bounce. My stomach was growling as if I hadn’t eaten anything for days.

  As we passed Ellermann’s Gaming and Sports Center with its third-floor pool hall, Slibulsky said: “Maybe I should practice shooting with my left? I’m out of a job now anyway. We play as a team, and people like to bet against guys with casts on their arms. We let them win the first few games, then we up the ante, and all of a sudden—”

  “Sure, sure. But you keep forgetting that you aren’t so hot even with your right hand—”

  “Not there, for crissakes! No, we’ll do it in those joints where the yuppies like to spend an evening poking holes in the baize, with their girlfriends watching, and so on. Those guys tend to be pretty timid and tight-fisted, but when they see a hundred per cent chance to make a killing, they’re worse than Hausfraus at a white sale! Gina once dragged me to a class reunion or whatever it was. Those guys don’t just drink their beers: they count ’em. When the waiter comes to collect, each one of them knows down to the pfennig how much he and everyone else has had to drink. I’m sure they’re terrific at skat. But if one of the party hasn’t been keeping track, they pounce on him like hyenas. When I said I couldn’t remember how many I’d had, so I’d be willing to make up the difference, three of them put in quick orders for food.”

  We climbed over a railing beside the streetcar tracks and ran across.

  “So how big would those bets be? Ten marks, and a fake term paper?”

  “No. Those guys do have folding money in their secret little wallets. They pay for their drinks with small change, but just check out their threads—you could buy a house with what they cost. It’s those little wallets we’re after.”

  “All right, we can give it a try. Practice at Ellermann’s tomorrow night?”

  Slibulsky scratched his neck. “Don’t know about tomorrow night … Maybe I’d better make myself scarce for a while—at least until we find out if Charlie will keep his mouth shut. And that Manne is a violent son of a bitch. When he finds out that his jig is up, he’s liable to do anything. That wasn’t a bad trick, by the way.”

  “No, not bad.”

  “Except that Manne doesn’t wear a watch, but I only realized that later.”

  “But why a gay joint?”

  “Because I couldn’t think of any other that far away. Charlie had told me about it. He said they filmed the patrons there, and then.…” He rubbed his index finger with his thumb. “I thought it would be a good false track, farfetched enough for you to stick with it for a while. And, besides—,” he punched my shoulder playfully, “one should try everything once.”

  “Thanks but no thanks.”

  “I read something about that in a paper. It said everybody’s a little queer, so if you just do a little soul-searching, you’ll discover that little bit in yourself. Jeez, people must have a lot of time—to search their souls to find out what it is they really need for a good time …”

  “Just imagine what their good times consist of.”

  We turned a corner and passed a tavern in which people were roaring the German national anthem. Two fat pimply-faced kids with shaved heads stood guard on either side of the door, holding wooden clubs at beer-belly level. The bomber jacket one of them was wearing bore a legend in black, red, and gold lettering; it said Keep Germany Beautiful—No Miscegenation!

  Slibulsky said, in a loud voice: “Know the one about the three Nazis getting a haircut?”

  The kids’ heads turned irritably. For a moment, they seemed to be contemplating action, but then they resumed their pose, staring dully straight ahead and pretending that they hadn’t heard anything. Compulsion to obey orders.

  “How does it go?”

  “Yeah, right. The barber asks the first one how he’d like to have his hair cut, and the guy says ‘Parted on the right, like Hitler’s.’ He asks the second one; he says ‘Shave it.’ Then he asks the third guy. He looks a little perplexed but says, quickly: ‘Like the others.’ ”

  We were the only patrons of the Haiti-Corner. Raoul joined us and treated us to a bottle of rum. After we had eaten and finished that bottle, we opened and worked on another one until Raoul locked the door and closed the blinds. Then we started rolling the dice. The loser had to propose a toast and down a shot of rum.
Each game lasted five minutes.

  16

  I sat at the kitchen table in my bathrobe, breakfasting on black coffee and pickled herring. The window was open. Radiant sunshine, blue sky. A warm wind caressed my face. In the street, a car radio blared “Bella, bella, bella Marie”. That noise was interspersed by shouted orders: “Gertrud! Turn the water on!” and “Gertrud! Turn it off!” The first spring day of the year. My cabeza felt like it was made of lead.

  I managed to swallow two rollmopses and a cup of coffee. I got up, lit a cigarette, and leaned on the windowsill. People on their lunch break and housewives carrying bags streamed down the sidewalks, a gang of kids was sitting on a pile of building materials, spitting in front of their feet, and a miniskirt stood leaning against the bus stop sign. I watched the greengrocer pop out of his store to berate a woman about touching his wares. Then the phone rang. I pulled myself together, padded back into the room and flopped into my chair.

  “Kayankaya.”

  “Good morning. This is Elsa Sandmann. I woke up in your car, yesterday morning.”

  “Oh …” I sat up straight. The party angel. Even though I hadn’t forgotten her, I had hardly expected a call. Her voice was pleasantly hoarse, and I could tell she was puffing on a cigarette between phrases.

  “I thought you might know how I ended up there.”

  “Well, let’s see … You had left that party; you were rather drunk, and you wanted me to take you to Frankfurt. But I had to go someplace else—so you just got in and crashed in the back seat. When I came back, I tried to wake you up, but without success.”

  “You weren’t at that party?”

  “No. I just happened to be there, on the street.”

  “And then you just left me and drove off into the woods?”

  “That’s it, more or less. I did put a blanket over you.”

  “Pretty strange, I must say.”

  “Yes, it was. I had to leave you again. And then I was locked up. And then I got arrested.”

  “Your card says you’re a private investigator.”

  “I know. After all, it was me who had those printed up.” After a brief pause that gave me the impression there was a smile at the other end of the line, she asked: “But I always thought cops and private detectives were in cahoots?”

  “You don’t watch enough television.”

  “That’s possible. I also thought that detectives really needed their cars. But in your case, I suppose the suspects would have to help push.”

  “Well, it’s my kind of car.”

  “Have you been looking for it?”

  “No.”

  “But I’ve been looking for you. After I had checked out the woods and every tavern in Gellersheim, I decided it would make more sense to drive to your place. I had no idea what that would involve. I stalled out three times, the fourth gear wasn’t working, and the brakes—well, all right. When I got to my place, I was exhausted. That car isn’t just your kind of car, it doesn’t even like strangers.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sure it just got too excited by having you drive it. How about giving me your address, and I’ll come and get it.”

  Instead of giving me her address, she blew smoke into the mouthpiece. In the background I could hear street noises and the bell of a streetcar. I imagined that she was sitting there by a window, in her bathrobe, a plate of croissants in front of her.

  I saw the sunlight glinting in her hair.

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  She thought it over. A cup clinked against a saucer. “Between seven and eight?”

  “That’s fine,” I said. She gave me an address in Sachsenhausen. Then we said ciao and hung up. It occurred to me that the telephone was as poor a setting for Elsa Sandmann as the rotting back seat of my car had been. Then again, none of us are too good on the phone, especially not when speaking to strangers: as often as not, the result is a chain of misunderstandings, inappropriate laughter, and pauses in which neither one knows whose turn it is to speak next.

  I went back to the kitchen to study the street some more until the mailman arrived and handed me a large brown envelope. I ripped off the tape and pulled out a pink file folder, labeled in black magic marker: Rakdee, Sri Dao. Besides unimportant bits of paper including an Interpol printout that reported “no data,” the file contained the following entries:

  “Mrs. Sri Dao Rakdee entered the Federal Republic of Germany on June twenty-second, nineteen hundred eighty-eight, on a tourist visa.… applied on September twenty-second for an extension of visa in order to marry Mr. Manfred Greiner.

  “A further extension was granted on December twenty-second, nineteen hundred eighty-eight, after a delay encountered in efforts to obtain documents necessary for the marriage from Mrs. Rakdee’s birthplace, Chiang Mai.”

  It was one of those old buildings freshly painted in candy colors that make one praise one’s lucky stars for having plain old gray facades across the street. Day-Glo turquoise stripes on a yellow background with pink window frames. As if that weren’t enough, every balcony was overflowing with potted palms and other plant life, helium balloons, children’s toys turning in the wind, and all kinds of other tchotchkes. A blend of “Dear Neighbor, Anarchy is Doable” and “Our Village, Ever More Beautiful.”

  I walked to the front door, which was off to one side under a glass awning, and into the entrance hall. A gigantic chandelier hung from the ceiling. The staircase was carpeted in red. An advertising agency occupied the second floor, and on the third was a branch office of the Party That Has a Heart for Trees. That door was covered with stickers: North Sea, Nuclear power plants, Bicycles, Peace, Mandela, Palestinians, Nicaragua, Children, The Disabled, Gays, Gay Foreigners, Women, Pregnant Women, Single Women, Women in Houses of Prostitution … The door looked like a cross between a votive picture of the Virgin and a collection box for good causes, albeit one in which one needn’t put anything. A prolonged glance was enough to receive absolution for all of last week’s asocial actions and a moral advance against any that one might commit in weeks to come. To have these stickers on your door or car had to be the equivalent of a hundred Hail Marys.

  I went on up to the fourth floor and rang the bell. There was no response. I rang again. When I heard someone approach on silent cat’s feet, I moved out of spy hole range. After a while I rang a third time and heard a quiet, whiny voice say: “Who is it?”

  “Kayankaya. Let me in.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “We don’t have anything to discuss.”

  “I beg to differ. And if you don’t let me in, I’ll tell you everything from right here.” I raised my voice. “It’s just that I’d be sharing it with the whole building, and I don’t know—”

  The door opened and Weidenbusch stood there in pale blue pajamas made out of some kind of toweling fabric. He was blushing. “I must say, this is—”

  I touched my forehead. “Good morning.”

  Then I pushed past him into the apartment, crossed a shiny parquet floor, and stopped in a large, sunny room. Weidenbusch followed, yapping at my heels: “You’re trespassing! As a detective, you ought to know that!”

  Then he stopped in the doorway and fussed with his hair. The room was decorated with the kind of art that looks as if someone had decided, one morning, to paint his breakfast tray white and hang it on the wall. In the middle stood a table with weird angles, surrounded by chairs shaped like stylized lightning bolts. And there were dozens of lamps. Each one of them resembled something that didn’t look the least bit like a light fixture, Otherwise the room seemed empty, until I took a quick tour of it and discovered a television set, discreetly hidden behind the door. The windows were open, and strains of Asiatic folk tunes could be heard from outside.

  I turned: “Is it possible to sit on one of those?”

  He didn’t get that right away. Then he responded, sounding a little annoyed: “But of course. They’re as stable as any co
mmon chair. My cousin designed those.” He added, looking blasé: “Unfortunately, you can now see them in every other apartment.” But I could tell that he was putting a brave face aboard a ship the rats were abandoning in a hurry.

  “Gosh, I must only visit the ones that don’t have them yet.”

  I sat down on one of the lightning bolts, took out my cigarettes and matches and put them on the table.

  “I haven’t asked you to stay.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t need an invitation. Boy, you must be a real tight family. The furniture’s designed by a cousin, your mother makes decisions about your girlfriend …” I looked at him. “But that, of course, was a lie.”

  He hurried over to the table. “I told you at the airport—you’re no longer working for me! And if you’re trying to get more money out of me …” He picked up my smoking paraphernalia and tossed them in my lap. “The check’s in the mail. And that’s all you’ll get from me.”

  “Listen, brillo pad, how come you’re acting so superior all of a sudden? Have you been taking lessons? But you’re missing something here.”

  I put cigarettes and matches back on the table.

  “You still haven’t told me if you found Mrs. Rakdee yesterday.”

  He opened his mouth, but I raised my hand and shook my head. His face was turning paler.

  “Pretty clever, I must say. The artsy little fellow who gets cold feet on a foray into real life and then lets Mom whip him back into his customary existence in one of these nice old buildings. I really bought it. With the greatest of ease.”

  He was still standing in front of me in the get-out-of-here mode, but now he was staring at the floor, and his terry-cloth-covered belly was heaving rapidly.

  “How about offering me a cup of coffee?”

  He looked up. “Coffee?” He looked absent-minded, then shook his head. “My espresso machine is broken.”