Mehmet Somer - The Gigolo Murder

Ponpon couldn’t remember exactly where Haluk was from, but she knew it was somewhere in the Aegean region. He’d arrived in Istanbul to study at the university, after which he went on to earn a master’s degree abroad. Although handsome Haluk could have had his pick of any nubile girl from a good family, it was no surprise when he settled on Canan. In fact, the marriage was approvingly considered a match made in heaven.

As far as his law practice, it was unlikely he’d been entirely on the straight and narrow: No scrupulously honest lawyer could have grown so rich so fast.

Ponpon naturally spent the night, sending me off to bed once I’d downed a glass of warm milk mixed with a spoonful of pekmez molasses and a handful of vitamins, under her watchful eye.

I awoke the following morning to the smell of toast, extremely hungry, perhaps as a result of all those vitamins. Sniffing greedily, I detected various other heavenly breakfast aromas mixed in with the toast. I couldn’t stand it anymore and jumped out of bed.

Sunlight flooded into my bedroom as I opened the curtains. The first sunlight in days! It had to be a sign: resurrection!

Hearing I was awake, Ponpon sang out a cheery good morning.

“Well, goodness me! Look who’s up. If it isn’t our own sleeping beauty.”

“Good morning,” I shouted, keeping it short.

Bursting in on me, Ponpon was dressed in one of her signature embroidered kimonos, an impish smile on her face, to which she’d already applied what only she would deem “staying-home maquillage.”

“Go and your wash your face,” she ordered. “Breakfast is ready!”

“I know. The smell woke me up. Goodness knows what you’ve prepared.”

Ponpon is an absolute whiz at all things domestic. In a spare hour or so, she’ll have whipped up stuffed cabbage rolls dressed with olive oil, mouth-watering Circassian chicken salad with a dusting of ground walnuts, and spinach börek with hand-rolled, nearly translucent layers of mille-feuille. Her refrigerator is always full, and her hands usually nimbly at work on a bit of embroidery or delicate lace. “We simply must keep alive the traditions of the sultanas,” she’ll mumble through a mouthful of pins while hand sewing a bewildering array of beads, sequins, and spangles onto the performance costumes she designs. In a home overflowing with tacky gimcracks, gewgaws, and bibelots of all descriptions, Ponpon busies herself polishing silver candlesticks, ironing doilies, dusting the fake crystal dangling off velvet lampshades, and affixing “life-affirming” handmade chiffon butterflies to the drapes. Her store of knowledge in the domestic arts could fill a series of cookbooks and a complete encyclopedia of domestic instruction for the ambitious homemaker.

The breakfast she’d prepared was top-notch, a veritable open buffet worthy of any five-star hotel.

“How’d you manage all this?” I asked. “The cupboards are empty.”

“The last thing I expected from you was a silly question like that,” she admonished. “The numbers of the local market and corner shop are written down in your address book.”

She had a point, but much of the lavish spread she’d placed before me couldn’t have been found at the overpriced bakkal on the corner.

“But our shop doesn’t stock bacon…”

Yes, she’d even fried up a dozen rashers of bacon. Nice and crispy, just the way I like it.

“It was just a simple question of going online, and presto, two bags of groceries delivered right to your door in half an hour.”

“You used my computer?”

Oblivious to my tone, her answer implied she’d simply exercised her most fundamental right:

“Uh-huh.”

“But how did you open it? I’ve got a password.”

“As if that’d be a problem. How many times have you typed in your password right in front of me? I know it by heart: Audrey!”

That I’d chosen the first name of my idol as my password was no surprise. But Ponpon’s ability to determine my password from the movement of my fingers on the keyboard-since it was impossible for her to have read it on the screen-was a bonus point for her, a demerit for me.

“Oh, before I forget. I charged it all to your credit card… Your handbag was here in the kitchen.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “No problem.”

“I just thought I’d let you know.”

Breakfast was every bit as magnificent as it’d smelled and looked. I savored each mouthful.

Although I’d finished a healthy serving, I ate another plateful at Ponpon’s insistence. Strangely, I even relished it.

“I phoned Fatoş. She’ll be round this evening,” I was informed.

Fatoş Abla is a girl getting on in years who makes house calls to our little circle of drag queens, trannies, and she-males. “Geriatric wolves are the laughingstock of newborn lambs,” she’d announced one day, rather incongruously and signally with a well-worn Anatolian maxim, her retirement from the business. That is to say, once she’d hit forty and discovered that her list of clients, her “circle of gentleman admirers,” was fast diminishing, she’d exchanged prostitution for a career of waxing, depilatories, eyebrow plucking, arm-hair bleaching, hair coloring, and the like. Her personal life was stormy, punctuated by noisy public scenes during which she cast out a seemingly endless stream of shiftless young lovers. She was said to spend all her earnings on them, for which reason she remained virtually penniless. Nevertheless, her pride was intact, her bearing as regal as Queen Elizabeth’s as she deftly tore a tuft of pubic hair from between some girl’s legs. Except for Ponpon, we all addressed her as “ abla ,” and gave her the respect any elder sister would traditionally expect in Turkey.

“What time is it now?” I asked.

“It’s coming on three.”

“I must have slept in.”

“You need it, sweetie. It’s just what your body requires.”

I decided to read the newspaper until Fatoş Abla showed up to subject me to the tortuous beautification rituals required of any self-respecting she-male. The news was on page three.

HIGH SOCIETY SENSATION! screamed the headline.

Prominent financial consultant Faruk Hanoğlu had been arrested on suspicion of murder, accused of killing twenty-four-year-old minibus driver Volkan Sarıdoğan.

Displayed side by side were an identity card snapshot of Volkan Sarıdoğan and a posed photograph, obviously taken by a professional, of Faruk Hanoğlu in his office. I called out to Ponpon: “Isn’t Faruk Hanoğlu Canan’s brother?”

“Uh-huh,” Ponpon confirmed. Then, a few seconds later: “Why do you ask?”

“Have you seen the paper? He’s been arrested…”

“I know. What are you getting at?

There was one question we couldn’t get our minds around that morning, one no doubt shared by members of Istanbul high society: Why on earth would this wealthy family man and “personal financial consultant” (read “loan shark”) murder a minibus driver?

I reread the article, which was decidedly short on detail. The dated photograph of a young Volkan Sarıdoğan looked out at me with dreamy eyes, handsome even in a cheap instant snapshot. Next to him, in the other picture, Faruk Hanoğlu ostentatiously rested a hand on his desk. He must have taken after his mother; he looked nothing like his half sister, Canan. But then again, the proud, cool smile was the same.

“I met Faruk Bey once,” said Ponpon, “at a party Canan was giving at her home. He seemed like a gentleman, not at all the type I’d have pegged for a murderer. He was quite flirty, and very talkative. But there was something strange, something unpleasant, about him. Like he was looking down his nose at everyone.”