More Beer

6

The Dawn Restaurant. The Chinese lettering on the window was scratchy and flaking off. On the glass door, a pale green dragon blew smoke around the menu. Little bells rang as I entered. The booths were dimly lit by paper lanterns and decorated with dusty Chinese parasols. Disco pop was playing on the radio. The small Chinese man behind the counter was chewing on a toothpick and glancing at me with bored eyes.

“I’m looking for a Mr. Slibulsky.”

He pointed his thumb at one of the dark corners. I ordered coffee and walked to the back, the top of my head grazing the colored paper garlands. Slibulsky sat at a bamboo table, drinking beer. The description fit. Short, black curls, puffy cheeks, unshaven, a drinker’s nose. I sat down across from him.

“Ernst Slibulsky?”

He stared into his beer.

“Uh-huh.”

“Kemal Kayankaya. Private investigator.”

He drank his beer. Then he scrutinized me and said, “Aha.”

“I’m told you’re looking for work. I have a job for you.”

My coffee arrived, and he ordered another beer.

“It pays five hundred marks an hour.”

He leaned back, stretched his legs, and grinned. He commented that this would at long last allow him to hire a tax consultant.

“All you have to do is let me handcuff you and take you to the Criminal Investigation offices. Then you have to start carrying on and shouting that I had no right to do that.”

“Shouting?”

“Only as we go in. If we manage to get out again, you better keep your mouth shut.”

“And if we don’t make it out again?”

“Then you go on playing the part, claiming you don’t know anything about anything, saying I pulled a gun on you, told you I was a cop, and so on. They’ll take no interest in you.”

He told me I had a sense of humor and went back to contemplating his beer. I told him pretty much everything that had happened so far in the Bollig case. Not that I really trusted him, but it was my only chance to win him over. When I’d finished, he looked at me and asked, “Who gave you my name?”

I shook my head. I had given Karate my word. Slibulsky took a wooden match and stuck it between his teeth. Then he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.

“And who won?”

“Come again?”

“I’ve never known anyone to visit Karate without shooting a game with him.”

He pointed at my hands with his matchstick. “Blue poolroom chalk.”

“We won one each.”

He took out his wallet.

“Any friend of Karate’s is all right by me. Even if he’s a snooper, and is planning a really weird operation.” He put twenty marks on the table.

“Make it eight hundred, and it’s a deal.”

I talked him down to seven. We paid up and left the Dawn.

“We’ll go by my place first. Get a bit of disguise, handcuffs, and so on.”

“And four hundred marks. The balance tomorrow.”

Someone had stuck red fliers under the windshield wipers of all the cars parked in the street. “Jimmy’s Jean Shop-Great Inaugural Hullabaloo!” I tossed mine into the gutter, and we drove off.

After pulling the brim of my hat down low over my eyes, I shoved Slibulsky into the entrance hall of police headquarters. The woman at the switchboard and the cop on duty looked up. I pushed Slibulsky straight to the reception window. As soon as we were in front of it and the woman slid the window open, he started ranting.

“Lemme go, you shithead, you god damn snooper! I have nothing to do with any of it. Miss, he’ll just tell you a bunch of garbage. He has no fucking right to drag me here. Or to beat me up either.”

I punched him and leaned into the window.

“I have an appointment with Detective Superintendent Kessler. He’ll be here any moment. If he should call from anywhere along the way, please tell him I’ve brought the man in.”

She stared at me, dumbfounded. The cop came to the window.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Listen, this is urgent. We may have to mount a major operation tonight …”

“You’re dreaming, snooper! I shit on your-”

“Shut up!”

Slibulsky played his part well. The two in the reception area were at a loss.

“All right, then? I’ll wait for Mr. Kessler in his office. He gave me his keys.”

I rattled my house keys.

“Oh well, all right.” Then the cop grabbed his uniform jacket and added, “I’ll come along to make sure he doesn’t give you any trouble.”

I raised my hand.

“That won’t be necessary. I can take care of him. Besides, no one’s going to give me any grief later, if I have to use a little force. I’m not a policeman, you see,” I looked at him with narrowed eyes, “but he has to sing.”

He grinned.

“I understand. I’ll notify Superintendent Kessler as soon as he gets here.”

I nodded and guided Slibulsky to the hallway in which I seemed to remember Kessler had his office.

Behind my back, I heard the woman say, “But Mr. Kessler just …”

“Let it be. It’s gotta be something secret.”

At last we stood in front of the door. I took out my skeleton key and worked on the lock. Five seconds later I had the door open.

“If someone shows up and there’s time to get out, you knock on the door. If there isn’t, you start playing your part.”

“I hear you.”

I closed the door quietly and switched on the light. The office was just as I remembered it. Only the silence was mildly unnerving. I sat down at the desk and went through the drawers. Typing paper, rubber stamps, the famous ruler, a city map of Frankfurt. At the very bottom, a pocket calendar. I took it. The skeleton key worked great on the metal cabinets. The first one was empty. The second contained coffee cups, aspirin, cookies, and shaving cream. The third, finally, held twenty-odd files. I went through them all. Was that a knock? No, I guessed not … Then I read, “Investigation of Bollig case.” Now there was a knock. Louder this time. Unmistakable. Slibulsky stuck his head inside and whispered, “You deaf? Hurry up, man!” I stuck the file under my arm, switched off the light, and shut the door behind me. The voices sounded quite close.

“What a mess! I was in the building. You saw me!”

Kessler! Slibulsky dragged me in the opposite direction. We had hardly reached the corner of the hallway before the light came on. We ran down the hall on our toes. Then the shouting began.

“They’ve broken into my cabinets! Don’t just stand there, sound the alarm! They must still be in the building! Block all exits!”

We ran down a flight of stairs. No exit. I tried every door until one opened. The toilet. In the tiled wall at the end of the urinal gutter there was a frosted glass pane.

“That’s our way out.”

“How about taking these off me first?”

I unlocked the handcuffs. At that moment the siren began to wail. “Now we’ll have some fun.”

I took off my coat, wrapped it around my right arm, and smashed the glass pane. The frame was narrow, but we managed. Head first, I let myself drop the two meters down to the wet lawn. Slibulsky popped out behind me. We crawled over to some bushes. The building was brightly lit. A cop ran past us. The entrance had been closed. We had to cross about twenty meters of open space to reach the wall. Another cop appeared, gun in hand. Through the broken window we could hear them crashing into the toilet,

“They got out through here! Everybody outside! Shoot on sight!”

We had no choice. I held on tight to my file. “Now!”

We were up and running.