Jutta Profijt - Morgue Drawer Four

Martin came back out of the bedroom dressed, his hair nicely parted, and he looked like Mommy’s Favorite again. Just still wearing that little wool coat…I contemplated whether Olli would take him seriously if he saw him like this. On the other hand, Olli and anyone else who ran into this guy would immediately know he’s not dangerous. That’s good when you’re placing yourself directly into the lion’s den. So I didn’t say anything. Not about his clothes, anyways.

“Martin,” I started with my deal. “I’m prepared to help you recover Birgit’s car.”

Martin didn’t hesitate once. “Great,” he said.

“I’ll do it if you promise me you’ll keep investigating my murder case.”

Now he started playing the pillar of salt.

“So, what do you say?” I whined, getting sick of the stupid way he was acting. He reminded me of those guys who paint their faces white, throw on a bed sheet, and stand out on some street corner—and then want people to give them money for not moving. I’d always thought that was crazy.

“I might have thought that after everything I’ve already done for you it would go without saying that you would help me now,” he said.

“And tomorrow you’ll piss off and leave me sitting in this shit all alone,” I said, and I could sense that the idea had already occurred to him.

“No,” he said, reluctantly. “I will keep helping you. But right now Birgit’s car is at the top of our list.”

Martin is a man of honor, which is why I was satisfied with this promise. We left the apartment, scraped the ice off the windows of his trash can, picked up the car keys from Birgit, whom we did not bring along—for her own safety—and drove to Olli’s.

Olli’s got a used-car lot out on the arterial. It looks just the way you’d imagine, including little pennants and giant signs with the prices on them, trying to give the impression the cars are a good value. Naturally they aren’t. Prices like that never are, which actually goes without saying.

Olli was there of course, sitting with his legs apart on his desk chair staring at Martin as he entered the office. Olli’s always there, even though he doesn’t live there. No one knows where Olli lives; maybe he doesn’t know himself anymore, which is why he’s always at his car lot. It happens only very rarely that he’s not there, and then it’s only for a couple of hours. People say.

I started with a quick spin around to get oriented, and this was really the first time that I felt like my immateriality was pretty frigging cool. I floated over the lot, staring into every corner, and then—and this would have been totally impossible for a flesh-and-blood person—I snuck into the big shop that was toward the back of the property.

In the front part was the workshop and the paint booth, the finest equipment anywhere and with an excellent reputation beyond the city limits. Regular customers could come in this far, too. But the shop extended even farther behind the paint booth, which you couldn’t really tell either from the outside or the inside. You had to know it, and I knew it. And there, between the fat BMWs, Daimlers, Jags, and even a couple of Audis, was Birgit’s baby. Some dark-haired, dark-skinned men were standing among the cars, talking in a language unknown to me. I didn’t pay much attention to them, but I thought I’d seen one or another of them before at some point. Especially the tall guy. But that didn’t matter now. I tore back to Martin, reported my discovery, and made my way toward the office with him.

Martin and I had discussed our action plan, which is why right now I had nothing to do other than observe.

“Are you Olli?” Martin said in greeting. He kept his hands in his pockets.

Martin and I had haggled for ten minutes on this point of the plan alone. I’d explained to him that he had to be cool. He had to immediately make clear that he knows not only the name on the office door but also the nicknames, especially Olli’s, and he certainly shouldn’t try to be genteel. So, no hand-shaking. By acting this way Olli would immediately know that Martin wasn’t just another normal prospective used-car buyer.

Martin by contrast didn’t want to be either impolite or provocative. He rubbed his colorful cheek and declared that he really didn’t feel at all like provoking anyone. Understandable, but bullshit. For our plan to work he had to exude cool self-confidence. Yes, Martin! You can see we’re treading on pretty fucking thin ice. But what all wouldn’t a man do to get his sweetheart to stop bawling?

“What can I do for you?” Olli asked back.

I’d noticed the vigilance-switch flip on in Olli’s eyes, which almost disappeared between his fat cheeks and fat eyelids.

“I’m looking for a car,” Martin said.

“Settled on something?” Olli asked. Complete sentences weren’t really his thing.

“Settled,” Martin said. “A BMW 3-Series convertible from the early 1980s, tiptop condition, grey exterior, red leather interior.”

Olli sort of jiggled a couple of times, which could mean he was laughing or that he might be exploding in the near future.

“Hard to get,” Olli said.

“No,” Martin said. “Hard to keep.”

We’d practiced this script over and over, because if Olli can spare brainpower and words, he’ll save both—which is why his standard phrases are predictable. However, one should not assume he has no brainpower. Olli is clever, which is why he’s the fattest fish in the pond of hot-car dealers. He knew that Martin knew that that convertible had been stolen. We even knew that it was in back in his shop. But Olli didn’t yet know that we knew, and we couldn’t hurl disses at him, either, since that’d be a provocation. But with Olli you didn’t need to lay everything out straight, either; with him you just had to strike the right chord, and I knew that chord. I hadn’t worked for Olli for years for nothing. I knew Olli as well as a small-time car thief with golden hands can know his client.

We’d find out right away if that was good enough.

Olli didn’t say anything and stared at Martin; Martin didn’t say anything and stared at Olli.

“How much do you want to spend?” Olli asked. Also standard.

“I propose a wager,” Martin said, without real conviction.

Olli jiggled again; I hoped he was laughing. “A wager? Well, let’s hear it,” he said.

Martin swallowed. “My girlfriend Birgit used to have a car like that,” he started in a trembling voice. “She saved up a couple of years until she could afford it. She’s totally crazy about cars, and at some point it just had to be that one.”

Olli’s eyes disappeared almost completely behind his rolls of fat, which were squeezing out from top to bottom.

“After a couple of days the car disappeared,” Martin continued. We had agreed that the verb “to steal” in all its principal parts would be avoided entirely.

“She was howling her eyes out, for two specific reasons: first, she loved that car, and second, it wasn’t insured yet.”

Olli bent forward, to the extent that this was at all possible with his galactic corpulence. “Not insured?” he asked. A small twinkle appeared in his left eye. We were on the right track!

Martin shook his head.

“And what’s your deal?” Olli asked.

Martin shrugged. “I don’t care about cars, but I love my girlfriend.”

Now! It had to be about to happen, I thought, and, bingo! We’d done it. Olli was crying. Thick tears were running down his cheeks; he was sincerely touched that this wool-wearing gnome had the courage to enter this lion’s den and get his sweetheart’s car back. The fattest guy since Jabba the Jigglemonster from Star Wars just so happens, when he has time, to spend the entire day watching the sappiest romance movies conceivable. His personal DVD collection ranges from silent black-and-white films to animated movies and everything in between that the lachrymal-gland-squeezers in Hollywood, Bollywood, and wherever else in the world had ever captured on celluloid. And he watches all of them again and again. And he weeps during every movie, even when watching it for the twentieth time. And he loves women with a weakness for cars.