Jutta Profijt - Morgue Drawer Four

“You’re in luck,” she said, laying her hand on Martin’s. “Today I’m making even obscure wishes come true.”

She smiled warmly. Not all frumpy, like lots of others, not with euro signs in her eyes, not tired—no, she smiled warmly. Cheerfully. Radiantly.

Martin was taking his time. Maybe he was unable to do it any other way. Maybe he was just in another dimension, caught in an unearthly plane not subject to time reckoning. Anyways, he didn’t say anything for a long time, sipping on the champagne he had left and staring at this delightful creature.

“What does your obscure wish look like, then?” she asked at some point. “Or would you prefer to tell me tête-à-tête ?”

I could see an unambiguous YES starting to materialize in Martin’s brain, so I yelled, “Stop!”

“What?” he asked me gruffly.

“If you say yes now, it’ll be very, very expensive,” I said.

“Hmm,” Martin mumbled.

“And think of Birgit,” I hastened to add.

“Birgit…”

I realized that Martin wasn’t actually thinking of having sex with this vision of a woman at all; he just wanted to keep staring into her eyes and talking with her.

“Dude, that little charmer sitting on the stool in front of you is a whore,” I said. “She wants to blow you off or…whatever else.”

Martin swallowed and suddenly found his feet back on the ground, briefly wondered how expensive the champagne he’d ordered was, and then he said his line: “I’m looking for a friend.”

He nonchalantly held the drawing out to the angel so she could see it.

“Semira!” She almost yelled it, but she quickly put her hand over her mouth, opened her blue eyes wide, and stared at Martin, taken aback. “What’s happened to her? She and I had plans to go out, but she stood me up, and that’s not like her at all.”

Martin’s heart, which had only just started easing its pace, started pounding harder again.

“Did she work here?” he asked.

The blonde shook her head. “You’re—not a customer of hers?”

Now Martin shook his head, but of course not half as gracefully.

“Is it OK if we keep talking here?” he asked carefully, looking around. Several sinister-looking guys were watching the two of them.

“Oh,” the angel said, sliding down from her stool. “For us it’s OK, but it’s bad for business. Come with me.”

So Martin slid down off his stool, too, and the bartender subtly reminded him it was fine for him to leave—but his sixty euros for the beer and two glasses of champagne should stay behind. Martin paid and followed the blonde outside.

“So, where do you know Semira from?” she asked. “And what do you want from her?”

“I don’t want anything from her,” Martin said. “She’s dead.”

“No!” she gasped, tears filling her enormous eyes. “How?”

“Anaphylactic shock,” Martin said. “That means…”

“I know what it is,” the blonde hissed. Uh-oh, the kitty cat was extending her claws. “And who are you?” she asked.

“Martin Gänsewein. Coroner.”

He offered his hand, and she reflexively shook it and whispered, “Yvonne Kleinewefers.”

Honestly, I couldn’t make head or tail of what was happening here. I was slowly starting to wonder how the blonde fit into this story. She wasn’t your typical lady of the night at a Russian tochka. If she were, she wouldn’t have been allowed to leave the establishment with a customer during working hours. Martin was having similar thoughts, plus he was starting to get cold, so he suggested the nearest place.

“There’s a café over there. Why don’t we get something warm to drink?”

She nodded and followed him.

Martin ordered a chamomile tea, which they didn’t have, a peppermint tea, which they also didn’t have, and before he could further display his in-depth knowledge of other monastery-grown teas and tisanes, Ms. Kleinewefers ordered two coffees. Basta .

She also took over the conversation, like a celestial being that had metamorphosed from a tinsel angel to an avenging angel.

“What has happened that would send a coroner through the brothels at night asking questions about Semira?” she asked.

“Didn’t you see Semira’s picture in the newspaper?” Martin asked as a counter-maneuver.

“No, after my nighttime fieldwork and daytime course-work I don’t have terribly much time left over to practice bourgeois self-edification by reading newspapers,” she hissed.

“Fieldwork?” Martin asked, irritated.

“I’m doing my master’s thesis on the expectations of men who go to brothels. What they’re really looking for there, their genuine needs, which don’t necessarily always have to do with sex but which they would like fulfilled,” she rattled out. “My adviser is not really all that sold on it, which is why I’ve been gathering material for some time so that he will approve the topic.”

“You’re doing a master’s in psychology?” Martin asked.

“No, economics.”

Martin took a sip of his coffee, which had just arrived at the table. “Are you trying to put one over on me?” he asked between two coughing fits.

“Ever since Germany legalized prostitution, it’s become a more and more important source of revenue the government can now legally line its pockets with. Even beautiful Cologne with its world-famous cathedral has been levying a ‘pleasure tax’ since 2004, which brings in just under a million euros a year.”

“A sex tax?” Martin stammered. “What, from the…” Evidently his well-cultivated vocabulary was failing him here.

“From the whores, pimps, and bordellos. The tax administration doesn’t care who pays, but a portion of each euro earned in this service industry ends up in the treasury.”

Martin shook his head, speechless.

“Since prostitution is legal now, the Federal Employment Agency can also theoretically find a job placement for an unemployed woman at a brothel now. No one has actually made a placement like that yet, however.”

“Not yet,” Martin mumbled.

“Well, within that context, the question arises how to optimize supply within this very lucrative service industry. As I’m sure you know, expanding services is the future.”

“And you got to know Semira through this, uh, fieldwork?” Martin asked.

She shook her head. “The other way around. I got to know Semira at the university.”

“She was a student?” Martin was getting more and more confused. “But she wasn’t even legally in this country…”

“But she was damned smart. She wasn’t registered, so she couldn’t attend small seminars. But she could attend the large lectures where there are hundreds of students. At a giant university with umpteen thousand students no one notices if the lecture hall is missing a student or has one extra.”

Yvonne had been stirring her coffee the whole time and only now realized she hadn’t even added any sugar to it yet. She remedied this quickly, then took a big gulp.

“Although she was very cautious and didn’t actually want to make friends with anyone at all, not even other students, we sat next to each other a couple of times and got to talking. She told me that she worked as a call girl. That’s how I picked the topic for my thesis.”

“Did she work for an agency, or freelance?” Martin asked.

“For an agency. Or rather, for an agent. I’d have liked to interview him, but she never told me who he is.”

“Then do you know how she originally met this agent?” Martin asked.

“Only that it was more or less a coincidence, because his main line of business is actually something else. ‘High-end luxury,’ I remember how she worded it exactly. Semira was proud that the guy described her as a luxury product, too. Personally I don’t think being classified as a ‘product’ is a compliment.”