Jakob Arjouni - One Man, One Murder

“You know I didn’t mean any harm. On the contrary. It was just because I love you, and because I’m a proud man.”

“Yes, Charlie.”

“I don’t think you’d have found a guy like me in Klein-Morlenbach. Right, sweetheart?”

“Absolutely right.”

After two snifters of Asbach had been set down next to the matchbox cars, and the girl had retired to the bed with a notepad and a pencil, we clinked glasses to eternal friendship. Then I asked him: “Do you know a guy who looks like a steam roller and answers to the name Axel?”

“Sure do. Big Beef Axel. Was a pretty good heavyweight once. Now he deals in used cars and motorbikes.”

“Including Toyotas?”

“He drives one. Why?”

“Is it a silver-colored jeep?”

He raised his eyebrows suspiciously. “Are you trying to give me the third degree again?”

“I just want to know if this Axel drives a silver Toyota jeep.”

“What if he does? Is it against the law?”

“Does the name Hottges mean anything to you?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Commissioner Hottges of the immigration police.”

“Hey, man, am I a Negro? Why should I know any immigration cops?”

“But when I mentioned the name Koberle to him, he didn’t seem particularly surprised.”

“He didn’t, eh.… Listen,” he gave me the stare, “what’s all this bullshit?”

“Yesterday, I came to see you about Mrs. Rakdee. Remember?”

He groaned. “Oh, not that again.” He reached for the Asbach and leaned back. His toes toyed idly with the fluffy rug. “So? Did you find her?”

“No. But I know who kidnapped her.”

“Yeah?” He swirled the brandy in the snifter.

“Yeah. A guy named Manne. But he’s just one of a gang. The others are Hottges, Axel, Slibulsky, and …”

I watched him out of the corner of my eye. His surprise seemed genuine. His voice grew deep and ominous.

“What are you telling me, snooper?”

“They tell refugees, illegal aliens, that they can provide them with forged papers. The refugees pay three thousand marks a head, and then they get locked up in a predetermined location where Hottges and his guys come and pick them up. Today they got thirty of them; that’s a total of ninety thousand marks. It’s really a smart and simple scam … And I think your brother is the one who came up with it.”

“Heinz did?”

He grabbed my lapels and came so close that I felt his breath. “Say that again.”

“Get your hands off me first.”

“I’ll keep them on you as long as I please. So?”

“A man by the name of Koberle is involved in this business. And if it isn’t you-”

“Is there any evidence for that?”

“No, but it fits, and it’s enough for the news hounds.”

“The papers …?”

He gave me a searching look, and his grip on me relaxed.

Then he shook himself and hissed: “Man, if you’re shitting me, I’ll turn you into hamburger. But if it is true,” he let go of me, “my brother’s sold his last candy bar.”

After another searching glance, he rushed to his closet and tossed shoes, socks, and a shiny gray suit into the room. The girl had almost stopped breathing. Hiding behind her notepad under the covers, she watched Charlie’s actions and seemed to consider if it would be wiser to pick up his things or to play dead. Suddenly he stopped and leaned against the closet door, his jaw jutting out at an angle.

“Why are you telling me all that stuff?”

“First of all because I want to know where the gang is hanging out now.”

“I have no idea.”

“And secondly, as I told you, I don’t have any proof, and since the cops are involved in it, an official investigation would be over before it even began. Charlie, I want you to kick some ass.”

His shoulders stretched the fabric of his white jacket. “Don’t worry, I will. But, you know,” he shuffled his feet on the rug, “it would be best not to go to the papers right away. I want to take care of this before my boss finds out about it. Otherwise it might look as if I had no control over my boys here.”

I nodded. “Eberhard Schmitz wouldn’t like that.”

Charlie looked at me. “No, he wouldn’t like it at all.” There was a curiously ecstatic expression in his eyes.

“All right then. I’ll wait until tomorrow night.”

His eyes cleared. A grateful smile.

“You’re O.K., snooper.”

While he changed, picked a shirt and checked his tie in front of a mirror, he kept up a steady stream of curses. I twirled a cigarette between my fingers and waited. “My brother’s in cahoots with the cops-God, I’m glad our Mom’s no longer alive. She was the greatest whore in all of Sachsenhausen-what a body … She was the toast of the whole fucking Occupation Zone. ‘Boys,’ she used to say, ‘boys, remember one thing: never tell the cops anything. Only a cowardly swine would call the cops. It was cops who dragged your grandpa to the ovens.’ ”

He shook his head. “And now the fucking crip goes and helps them rip off bimbos …”

He slewed around to glance at the bed. All that could be seen was a hank of hair.

“Hey, you silly little cunt, pay attention when I’m talking about my family!”

Slowly, her face emerged. “But Charlie, I’m listening.”

He growled contemptuously, over his shoulder. “That’s what she always says. But all she really wants to do is write letters to her girlfriends, ‘Frankfurt is so exciting’ and ‘oh, I’m so happy here …’ ” He jabbed the air in front of her face with his index finger. “What would your friends say if they saw you looking like that? Eh?”

And, while he took a.32 automatic out of a drawer in the bedside table: “And anyhow, what’s the use writing letters when you can pick up the phone.”

The girl had pulled the covers over her head. The bedspread trembled like a sick dog. Charlie slapped the clip into the gun. “Don’t think I give a shit about your bawling.”

I checked my watch. It was nine-fifteen.

“Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“Where you headed with that cannon?”

“Where …” He stuck the automatic in his waistband.

“… Oh, have a beer, get a little fresh air …”

“That suits me just fine. I could use a beer.”

“Oh yeah?”

I got up and went to the window. It was raining again. The wind was blowing the rain almost horizontally down the street, and the wet windowpane made the neon signs look like runny watercolors. People huddled in entrance ways.

“A little fresh air never hurt anyone.”

Charlie scratched his ass pensively.

“Just take care you don’t catch a cold.”

The cloud cover tore open and moonlight flooded the premises of Wolf’s Car Repair Shop. To the right, a pile of hubcaps, to the left, a heap of rusty fenders, and behind that, car doors of every shape and size. A narrow puddled road led past the mounds of scrap to a flat building at least fifty meters long. Half of the building was occupied by the shop. The other half was taken up by an office and a storeroom for parts. Cars were parked in front of it, among them the silver Toyota jeep. A wide-mesh wire fence ran around the perimeter, with a locked entry gate and two rough-hewn wooden doors, both of them unlocked. We slipped in through one of them and cautiously walked up to a wide concrete slab in front of the office door. It stood ajar. A narrow beam of light fell on our mud-encrusted shoes.

Charlie pulled his automatic. “You go first.”

I shook my head. “Guy with the artillery goes first.”

He prodded my chest with the gun. “You first.”

I said, “As you wish,” and put my hand on the doorknob. It didn’t look like an easy trick to slip on the concrete step, but I was going to try my best. I jerked the door open to the left, shifted my weight to the right, and spun around like a top. The edge of my hand struck Charlie straight in the stomach. While he bent over, gasping for air, I punched him twice in the face. His nose cracked and blood ran over his mouth. With an incredulous expression on his face, he crashed down on the gravel. I picked up his automatic, rubbed my knuckles, and listened. Except for Charlie’s subdued groans, the place was as quiet as a graveyard.