If it was noticeable in this purple haze, my piece of ordnance had to be more conspicuous than I had thought.
“I have a license to carry a gun, and I’m a licensed private investigator. No need to get all wound up about it. Tell me, is one of your girls on the needle? To sweeten her purple working days?”
At first I was afraid that she would sink her long scarlet finger nails into my cheek, but she simply pushed a small white button next to the beer tap. I hastened to pocket my change and turned to face the door with the PRIVATE sign. Two or three seconds passed before it opened, slowly, and out of it emerged three tank-sized types in pinstripe suits with bulges under their armpits similar to mine. Their eyes surveyed the room. Sedately they advanced to the bar and gathered around me like old friends. The shortest of the three wore a mustard-coloured tie with a pattern of small light-green elephants. He looked down at me, placed his paw on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. I clenched my teeth.
“Well, sports fan, I hear you find it hard to say adieu?”
He gave me a dirty grin. Three of his teeth glittered with gold.
“There’s a lot of nice joints in this town. You don’t have to spend all your money in one place, do you?”
The three of them together must have outweighed me five to one. I realized that, but couldn’t resist the urge to smash their clean-shaven jaws.
“How much does your insurance pay for one of those gold teeth?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m wondering if I should challenge you to a round.”
All three of them laughed.
“OK, strong man, the show is over. The door is over there. It’s the door to a healthy life.”
Gold Tooth jerked his thumb at the exit. While I was still pondering my next move, the other two grabbed my arms and carried me out into the street. I felt like a child being lifted into a bathtub. One of them growled, “Get a move on, man, or I’ll break your fucking Turkish nose.” Wide-eyed, I exclaimed, “Oh,” and pointed at something. Both of them slewed around and stared at the blank wall.
“What the—?”
I tapped the speaker’s shoulder, he turned his head and I drove my fist into his face, breaking his nose with a dry crack. He grunted and hit the sidewalk.
His partner glared at me in disbelief, then collected himself and got ready to beat my brains out. I saw his muscles bunch under the tight jacket as he advanced, cracking his knuckles and moistening his lips. The neon cast shadows on his face, but I could see the whites of his eyes. Once he got his hands on me I wouldn’t stand much of a chance.
He stopped and gave me a you’re-dead-meat look. I rushed him, then stopped abruptly, ducked, and let his right fist pass over me like a flying chunk of concrete. I jumped, grabbed his arm, threw my weight against it, and twisted it heavenward. The bones in it broke with a loud crack, and he roared with pain. His undamaged left kept swinging blindly, and I managed to duck twice, until he scored a direct hit on my chin.
I staggered backwards on the sidewalk and crashed into a lamp post. My legs gave, and I slid slowly to the ground. My adversary lurched towards me, his right arm flapping like a rag. I sat and waited until he stopped in front of me.
“You little Turkish rat, you’ll never do that again!”
I rolled to one side and drove the toe of my shoe into the back of his knee. He hit the ground with a dull thud and lay there like a felled tree. I grabbed his good arm and stretched it across my thigh.
“Take it easy, big boy, or you’ll need another cast. I’m telling you!”
He shook, and I had trouble hanging on to his arm. Then he gave up, and I was able to draw a breath. He had to be in a great deal of pain from the broken arm. Then Goliath beneath me began to whimper.
“Stop that noise. If you behave yourself, I’ll let you go. But first, a question: Do you know a man called Ahmed Hamul?”
He gritted his teeth, and groaned, “Noo … Never heard of him.”
I added a little pressure.
“You sure you never heard of him?”
He gave a loud groan and roared, “No, goddamn it, I can’t help it, I never heard of him!”
At that moment, the door opened, and a herd of small light-green elephants eyed me with surprise.
I felt no desire to break any more bones. I let go of the mammoth’s tortured arm and got to my feet. Gold Tooth surveyed the carnage. Then his hand dipped under his coat, but I beat him to the draw.
“Hold it right there! Now raise your hands, both of them, nice and slow. Or I’ll let you have it.”
He made a face and obeyed.
Only now I noticed the sizable audience that had gathered to observe the events from a safe distance. It didn’t seem the right place to wave shooting irons, so I stuck mine back into its holster. My remaining adversary also noticed the crowd and grinned, flashing his gold teeth.
“You should have charged admission. I don’t know how you managed to beat up those two, but it must have been a spectacular performance.”
A distant police siren was coming nearer.
“You better pick up your friends. The cops will be here any minute, and they might ask unpleasant questions.”
He looked at me with amusement.
“Thanks for the advice. Gosh, I hadn’t thought about that. You’ve got a smart little head on your shoulders. But you better take care, someone just might use it for target practice.”
I’d had my fill of tough guys with big mouths. Before I left, I checked the one whose face I had remodelled. His nose was bloody pulp slowly dripping down his cheeks and onto the sidewalk. He was groaning. I grabbed his shoulders and shook them. When he opened his eyes, I growled, “Now remember—visitors from abroad should be treated in a friendly fashion. Next time I’ll rip your ears off.”
He tried to say something, but only hawked up crimson snot.
I left the battlefield and ambled down the street.
A green police car roared past me, lights flashing, the siren going full blast. I was certain that they would find only Milly there, looking surprised and exclaiming, “But my dear officer, we’ve had no trouble here at all, believe me!”
I made a beeline for the nearest fast food joint and ordered three paper cups of beer. My chin had suffered considerable damage, and the little mouse behind the counter made a disgusted face.
“Never mind that, sister. It’s just greasepaint. I’m with the theatre back there, just taking a break.”
She laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry, it looks pretty real. What’s the play?”
“Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in a modern Oriental—Existentialist production that provides a corrective to traditional European models of interpretation.”
She looked serious, nodded. “I see.”
After a pause, “And what happens in your production?”
“Romeo meets Ali Baba and trades Juliet for the Forty Thieves.”
“Uh-huh, and then?”
“Juliet falls in love with the Forty Thieves, but they want to have children with Romeo, and Ali Baba is left out in the rain. At the end, they all make up, swim down the Nile towards a bright future, and sing ‘Soccer Is Our Life’.”
She looked at me with round eyes. Then she turned and brought me my beer. After I paid her, she asked, “And what’s the bloody chin for?”
“To make the audience think, dear.”
With that I left her, carried my cups of beer to a table, sat down, and lit a cigarette.
The place was really hopping. Americans in shorts crowded around the small green plastic tables, working hard on their perennial smiles. Out of the jukebox in the corner came Mick Jagger’s voice bleating, “You can’t always get what you want”. I’m not too partial to the bawled maxims of superannuated rock ‘n’ roll stars.
The beer was beginning to have its gentle effect on my brain. I considered going home and to bed. My search for the prostitute seemed less promising by the minute, and I no longer felt like trading blow
s with troglodytes.
I decided to try my luck with the streetwalkers. Surely they at least would content themselves with spitting at me.
But first I paid a visit to the men’s room. Someone had not been feeling too good. A pool of vomit lay steaming in the corner. My stomach contracted and I had to draw a deep breath so as not to add immediately to that pool. I took a fast leak, checked my face in the mirror, wiped some dried blood off my chin, and left the premises.
Ten to twelve. The sky was now pitch-dark. I walked down a quiet side street past a few timid johnnies who preferred to ask their questions about price and quality in the dark, away from the bright lights. Next to a pizzeria, a white patent leather shoe seemed to grow out of the wall. I headed towards that spot. Next to it, the smell of warm dough rose into the street from a ventilation shaft. It was a good spot. If I had been obliged to stand in the street and wait for clients, I would have picked it too.
Long white legs stretched upward from those high-heeled patent leather shoes. A bright turquoise net body stocking covered her belly and bosom, and her lank blond hair was tied in a braid with a matching turquoise bow.
She let loose before I had said a word to her, “Keep walking, buddy. No fucky-fucky for you. I’ve got my principles.” She waved her arm like a traffic cop.
“Never mind fucky-fucky. I just want to ask you something.”
But that didn’t interest her at all.
“Fuck off, man, stick it up your ass. Scram.”
It seemed highly unlikely that she had ever entertained Ahmed Hamul. Her smooth white arms indicated that she didn’t belong to the needle sorority either. I walked on, decided to try two more of the ladies, and hoped that I wouldn’t find out anything that might prevent me from going home to bed after that. Regrettably, things didn’t turn out that way.
As I approached the next doorway, I was greeted by a short net stocking. “Hi, sweetie, you look lonesome.” Her bosom threatened to burst through the black satin and slap me in the face.
“Yeah, guess I am. I’m looking for a girl who used to know a man by the name of Ahmed Hamul. Have you heard that name before?”
She crossed her arms and looked at me with astonishment and disgust. “When did the cops start a Foreign Legion?”
“I’m not a cop. I’m a private investigator.”
“I see. Well. Why don’t you fuck off, then? I’m working.”
I wondered if the remaining thirty-two marks in my pocket might impress her.
“I’ve got thirty marks. It isn’t much, but if you can tell me anything at all about Ahmed Hamul, they’re yours.”
She chewed her green fingernails and looked at me appraisingly.
“But I don’t know your Ahmed. At all.”
“He was killed last Friday. Somewhere around here.”
“Oh. That guy.”
“Yes. That guy.”
“Let me see your money. I can’t tell you anything before you show it to me.”
“And afterwards?”
“We’ll see, OK?”
When I didn’t respond to that, she burst into a tirade. “God almighty, what a skinflint! What’s to lose, for a paltry thirty marks? I make that much with one squeeze of my ass.”
She was right. Besides, it wasn’t my money. I handed her the three ten-mark notes and she stashed them under her garter with a practised gesture.
“Far as I know, the guy used to hang out at Heini’s Fried Chicken. It’s a couple of blocks from here. I go there sometimes.”
I hadn’t expected anything nearly that concrete.
“Why do you think that was the guy whose friend I’m looking for?”
“I ate there Sunday night, and a girlfriend told me someone stuck a knife in the back of the Turk who used to play the pinball machine there.”
“Who’s the friend?”
“Oh, just someone I know.”
“How did she know that?”
A small man wearing a hat approached us with mincing steps, staying close to the wall.
“She must’ve read it in the paper. And that’s all I can tell you. Here comes a customer.”
“All right. Have a nice evening.”
As I walked away, she called out to say that if I ever came up with a little more dough, she wouldn’t mind showing me a good time. I pretended not to have heard that.
I knew Heini’s Fried Chicken, if only from the outside. Now I stood in front of it and studied the menu. It was a restaurant with a snack bar, and as I walked in the stink of stale grease hit my nostrils. I sat down at a table by the wall with a good view of the whole establishment. Old paper garlands, leftovers from the carnival, hung below the ceiling. Otherwise the room was a uniform light brown, furnished with a careless array of rustic wooden chairs and tables. A stag’s head belled above the bar. There were only a few customers. Tanned pimps in white sports coats were entertaining their present or future employees with tales of high adventure. Here and there, single whores sat nursing a corn schnapps. A burping bum slouched in a corner. Twirling his moustache, a tall thin waiter approached me to enquire what der Herr’s wishes were. I told him der Herr would like a cup of coffee and a Scotch, and he dashed off again.
I studied the women. One of the prettier ones sat staring at a shiny chicken leg. The waiter returned, balancing cup and glass on the tray, slid both onto the table with a flourish, and purred, “Would der Herr like something to eat as well?”
He really belonged in the restaurant of the Plaza Hotel, serving lobster legs to conventioneers, not in this greasy schnapps joint.
“No thanks, I’ve had my dinner.”
He smiled and slid away.
I spotted the pinball machine Ahmed Hamul had frequented—if I was right in assuming that my thirty marks had been too measly a sum to exercise the net-stocking lady’s powers of invention.
I lit a cigarette and walked over to the machine. Pursued by a hundred superwomen, Flash Gordon zoomed across the glass. I decided to use my remaining two marks to play the machine. I had no idea how I would pay for my coffee and Scotch.
I stuck the coins into the slot, pushed the red button, and turned around. The machine rumbled “Oh, yes.” The girl with the plateful of chicken looked up briefly and cast an incredulous glance across the room. I shot the ball into the blinking sea of lights, and watched it carom off rubber and plastic. I let it roll and walked over to the girl with the poor appetite.
“Excuse me—may I join you?”
She looked at me as if I had bad breath. “What for?”
“I have a message for you from Ahmed … he’s still alive,” I whispered.
A shot in the dark—but a bull’s-eye. Her mouth opened wide enough to accommodate your average watermelon. I felt like the winner of a lottery jackpot.
“Oh … yes … please sit down …” she stammered, and pulled up a chair for me.
“Who are you? And—and what are you saying?”
I took my time sitting down, feverishly pondering my next move.
“I’m a friend of Ahmed’s. He’s asked me to give you something.”
I looked around. Fortunately, there was no one within earshot.
“I’ll explain everything later—not here. Do you know of a more private place to talk?”
“Yes, of course … We could go to my place, it isn’t far, but … Why don’t we do that, excuse me, but I’m a little confused … you know, it’s—”
“No problem,” I said. “Let’s pay up and go.”
I waved to the waiter, asked for the check, and remembered that I had deposited my last two marks in the pinball machine.
“This is embarrassing, but I seem to have left my wallet at home. Can you take care of my coffee and Scotch? I’ll pay you back.”
“But of course.”
While the waiter prepared the check, she began to rummage nervously in her crocodile purse. I was sure the waiter would have liked to ask her if she had enjoyed her food, but he had to restrict himself to staring gloo
mily at her untouched plate and pretending to be personally chagrined. I was sure he really didn’t give a damn. From the look of his emaciated body, he was not too partial to drumsticks dripping with grease. She found her money purse and took out a twenty-mark bill. Her hands were shaking.
“You can add my coffee and Scotch to that.”
His expression briefly reflected surprise. He had no doubt classified me as a john, and was amazed to see a prostitute treat one of her clients to coffee and a drink.
While he was making change, I went back to my table, picked up my cigarettes, and knocked back my shot. When I returned to her table, she was just putting the change into her purse. I had found Ahmed Hamul’s girlfriend, in record time and without assistance. I was pleased with myself. And that was why I didn’t bat an eyelid when I watched her collect fourteen marks in change.
The door of Heini’s Fried Chicken closed behind us, and we stood in the street. “I live right here,” she said, took two or three steps and pushed a battered door. A flickering fluorescent tube cast a dim light on the entrance hall and staircase. Without a word she started up the stairs, and I followed. There must have been many questions on her mind, and she did not know where and how to begin. That was all right by me. I didn’t have any answers.
When we got to the second floor I found out her name. It was hand printed in block letters above the doorbell: HANNA HECHT. Hanna Hecht unlocked the door and switched on the light. We stood on a fluffy white rug in a tiny vestibule. The only other things in the room were a blue telephone and a dim pink Chinese lantern suspended from the ceiling. The place was like an aquarium filled with lukewarm cocoa.
There were two doors. One of them no doubt led to Hanna Hecht’s bedroom-come-office. She opened the other one.
These four walls enclosed a small stove, refrigerator, sink, and some cheap furniture, and were decorated with pictures of horses, a pink and beige poster with hearts and dancing children, another with the winsome heads of some pop group. A shelf in a corner was filled with trinkets, horse books, a radio alarm clock. The possessions of a Coke-swilling teenager, rather than those of a junkie prostitute.
Happy Birthday, Turk! Page 5
