More Beer

5

The windows were open onto the steady patter of rain. I was leaning my elbows on the desk in my office. The other agencies and physicians had all closed up shop, and I was alone in the building, except for the janitor watching television in his basement apartment. Scraps of music wafted from the Chicken Inn across the street. It was time to have my client chair reupholstered. My bottle of Chivas lay in the drawer. I tried to think about something else. Women. Once I knew a girl with whom I spent rainy days drinking tea and playing backgammon. Now and again, one of us would go out for cigarettes. In the evenings we lit candles and sipped champagne … and so forth.

There was a water stain on my ceiling. The credit agency above me had installed a bathtub not too long ago. It was useful for keeping the beer cold, the cashier had told me.

A bathtub. Cold beer. Women. I pulled the Chivas out of the drawer and treated myself to a drink. I had to find the fifth man, and I had an idea. Normally I have no megalomaniacal tendencies, but now I saw only one way to make progress in this case.

I walked up Kaiserstrasse in the direction of the main railroad station. Except for a couple of whores with umbrellas on the comer, the block was deserted. A small but raucous bunch of Americans went into a brothel. The neon lights looked dim in the rain, and there was no clientele to lure into the strip joints. A police car drove by on its rounds. In front of the Rio stood a lumpy figure in a napa leather coat. He looked like he’d been standing there for a long time. He grabbed my sleeve. “Hey, Mustafa-come see classy women. Great tits, great ass. Real classy! No lie. And real cheap.” I crossed the street. A blonde informed me she’d do it tonight for just twenty. “See, buddy, it’s like a going out of business sale.”

Finally I reached Ellermann’s Game and Sports Center. The poolroom was on the second floor. As a frequent visitor, I knew the assistant manager. The poolroom was as desolate as the street. Two Japanese were shooting. Two five-hundred-mark bills lay on the side table. I watched one of them sink the eight ball and pocket the bills. Without a word they renewed the bet and racked the balls for a new game. In the back, an elderly gentleman was practicing bank shots. The assistant manager stood by a window and watched the goings-on in the hot-sheet hotel across the street.

“Evening. What’s happening?”

He clicked his tongue.

“She’s been haggling over the price for half an hour.”

Now both of us were watching. “All right! She’s got the bills. Now she closes the curtains.”

He turned.

“Quite an odd show, that. But in this filthy weather business is bad, and prices go down. Red-dot specials in the red-light district.”

He slapped my shoulder.

“Well, Isnogood, how about a game?”

I nodded, and he went to get the balls. Karate-this had been his nickname ever since he’d kicked in the face a patron who had been unwilling to pay-was a born-and-bred native of this part of town. After doing some time for auto theft and bodily injury, he had stayed clean and was on friendly terms with both cops and pimps. Both cops and pimps came to shoot pool at his place.

He returned and racked the balls. I took the first shot, and we alternated all the way to the eight ball. Both of us missed it three times. Then he triple-banked it elegantly into a pocket, noting, “Your left arm is like jelly.”

“I had an accident.”

He grinned. “And the doctor prescribed schnapps? You stink like a still.”

I growled noncommittally, and we played another game. As he was lining up his shot, I asked him, “Do you know anybody who’d like to make a little money? Five hundred marks an hour.”

He made his shot, straightened his back slowly. “And what would he have to do during that hour?”

“Stand watch in front of the offices of the Criminal Investigation Unit. And maybe crack a safe.”

“The Crime Squad, eh? I see.”

We continued our game. After a while, he said:

“If you’re not feeling too good-my girlfriend is on vacation. You can come stay with me for a couple of days.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

“That’s even worse.”

“I’m looking for a murderer-or an accomplice who has connections to the police. His name should be on a list of informers. At least, that’s what I think. In any case, he must have turned in four alleged suspects in exchange for being let go, and he’s probably under contract now. The detective superintendent in charge of the case is tremendously proud of these successful arrests, and I’m the last person to explain to him that he has released the only truly guilty party. On the contrary: He’s busy weaving his web of informers, and he’s worried that I might destroy it.”

Karate sank the three.

“And you would like to clean out his office. How are you going to move those files and mountains of paper? In boxes, or in sacks? These days, or so I’m told, they have archives. So maybe you won’t find anything at all in that office, and you’ll have to get the archives and the computers too. I suppose it would be a good idea to call a cab to the front door.”

He slammed the seven in, then scratched on the next shot, and it was my turn.

“I don’t know anyone who’d do such a job without wanting to get paid in advance. And I don’t even know anyone you paid in advance who would do the job.”

I lit a cigarette and walked around the table, looking for a shot.

“Let’s suppose the guy would have no trouble proving that I forced him to do it. As soon as we set foot in police headquarters, he should, in fact, persuade any questioner that I’ve arrested him without a warrant. If we get caught, that’ll give me a chance to get away. I’ll pretend I’m just a dumb private dick who’s been trying to curry favor with the superintendent by this senseless arrest.”

He pulled out a cigarette, rolled it morosely between his lips and growled, “A dumb dick? Not just dumb, totally out of his mind.” He shook his head. “Listen, when you lose your license, I’ll be glad to give you a job. Keep an eye on the place, shoot a little pool. Seven marks an hour. Nice quiet job.”