One Man, One Murder

15

The blocks around the railway station were really jumping. It was the Americans’ night off, and the Eintracht team had taken a bath in Mannheim, zero to one. Frustrated G.I.s and even more frustrated soccer fans reeled down the sidewalks, and cars shaking with music were gridlocked around the block. Shell game artists gathered crowds on street corners. Flickering neon; honking horns, shouting and singing blended into one garish surge. We passed two derelicts fighting over a can of beer while a third one was busy spilling its contents over his shirt front and reached the entrance to The Smiling Die.

Slibulsky went inside. I sat down on the trunk of a parked car. Two women were patrolling the sidewalk. The air was warm and smelled relatively clean; for this night, at least, the rainy weather had washed exhaust fumes and male odors into the gutter.

Turkish music was playing behind a window. I took a cigarette from my pack and noticed that I was out of matches.

“Need a light, darling?” One of the women planted herself in front of me and smiled. Thirtyish, she had a pretty but slightly fleshy face. Her white patent leather outfit didn’t quite cover her ass, and her legs were encased in tall pointy boots.

I nodded, and she produced a lighter.

“Got an ashtray, too, upstairs.”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’m waiting for somebody.”

She checked me out, from top to toe. “You like the exotic types better? My roommate’s the sweetest seductive thing since chocolate …”

I shook my head again. “I told you, I’m just waiting for somebody.”

“For the guy you were with? Charlie’s pet? You may have to wait a long time.”

“How so?”

“Cause he’s a loser.”

I dragged on my cigarette, expelled the smoke through my nose, and shrugged. “None of my business.”

“So why are you sitting here?”

“When he comes out, we’ll go have a drink.”

“He’s a buddy of yours?” She made a face. Then she looked me up and down again and asked, contemptuously: “What kind of an asshole are you?”

Shaking her head, she strutted back to her beat. I watched her go, tossed my butt, got off the car trunk and went in. The joint was packed. Clouds of smoke hung under the ceiling, and the waiters’ faces glistened with sweat. I made my way to the bar. Ignoring the instant angry chatter of the woman working the beer tap I opened the door marked Office and saw Schlumpi, the man I didn’t know, and Slibulsky. Slibulsky’s right cheek was red; now the left cheek turned the same color.

“Kayankaya! Oh, shit! Fuck off”

I slammed the door shut behind me. The man I did not know pursed his lips, looked indignant. Schlumpi wiggled his fingers and very carefully moved a little to one side. I opened my jacket to show the handles of the guns I was still wearing tucked behind my belt. “Take a good look before you make a mistake.”

Schlumpi froze, and the man I didn’t know cleared his throat.

“Such manners.…” Suddenly I knew him, all right-I recognized his voice.

“Is it better manners to break someone’s arm when he can’t pay his debts?”

He was sitting behind a desk in a yellow and brown checked jacket, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles on his nose, and some open ledgers in front of him. His hands were folded around a gold-plated ballpoint pen. He looked for all the world like a postal employee, maybe even a postmaster. One of those faceless types that make one wonder if they invented the rubber stamp or if the rubber stamp invented them.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ll explain it to you. Slibulsky here lost a bunch of money he inherited, fifty thousand marks to be exact, at your roulette table. And since he is a goddamn idiot, he then went on to borrow the next fifty thou, or whatever, from you, and proceeded to lose those as well. So now you’re giving him the business, and he gets involved in a lot of bad shit in order to pay you back. You follow me?”

“Kayankaya.…” Slibulsky sighed.

Ignoring him, I walked up to the guy to whom I had spoken on the phone the day before. I aimed my index finger at his nose. “But here’s the kicker. To whom does he owe that money, and for whom are you collecting? For Wang. And who are you? You are Eberhard Schmitz’s secretary. We spoke yesterday. Now the fifty-thousand-mark question is: Where has Wang been hiding since his wife was strangled and her lover fell out of the window? Even the cops should be able to find an answer to that. And while you’re mulling that over, Schlumpi can tell the croupier …” I turned. “… to fix the wheel so that our numbers come up when we’re playing.”

A pause. Schlumpi looked at the secretary, the secretary looked at me, I looked at Slibulsky, and Slibulsky looked at the ceiling. Then the secretary gave Schlumpi a nod, and Schlumpi left the office.

“I admit that you’ve got the edge, for now. But don’t forget the consequences. How will Mr. Wang react to this? He can change his residence quickly. I can foresee a few problems for you.”

Slibulsky almost managed to nod and shake his head at the same time. I did the latter.

“We won’t have any problems. This is mainly a matter of principle. No one should think they can get away with just about anything merely because Wang isn’t here. And that is why Slibulsky will recoup his losses in plain view of everybody. The alternative? Well, I’m a private investigator, and for twenty thousand marks I’ll be glad to find Wang for you.”

He rolled the pen between his fingers, looking pensive. Then he shrugged and started closing the ledgers. “As you wish. I’ll inform Mr. Wang about all of this. The rest will take care of itself.”

After he had stuffed the ledgers into a brown briefcase, he got up and walked around the desk. He moved jerkily, as if he had trouble retaining his posture without a backrest. “As for you, Mr. Slibulsky … Please accept my apologies for the business with your arm. It was done according to orders, and, as you must have noticed, I found it hard to observe.” Looking mildly embarrassed, he held out his hand to Slibulsky. “No offense …”

Amazed, Slibulsky raised his eyebrows. Then he made an awkward gesture, and I had a hard time keeping a straight face. The secretary turned red in the face.

Armed with beer and shots of schnapps and a stack of blue chips we took our places at the roulette table. I leaned closer to Slibulsky: “How much do we have to win here?”

“A hundred and twenty thousand.” And, while he was stacking the chips: “How did you know about my inheritance?”

“Gina told me.”

“Mhm … And what would you have done if the guy hadn’t happened to be Schmitz’s secretary?”

“No idea.”

He divided the stack in two and shoved one half over to me. “But I told you to keep out of it.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

I took the chips, leaned back, and bet a thousand on Odd.

The croupier, a lean guy with a mustache and cold eyes, glanced at both of us. Then he set the ball in motion and did not pay any attention to us for the next hour. It almost seemed as if he didn’t even notice where we placed out bets. But he did notice, and when we left the joint around two o’clock, Slibulsky no longer owed the house a dime.

It was still warm outside. The moon had risen above the railway station. The woman in white patent leather was gone. We started walking to Raoul’s Haiti-Corner, a small restaurant that served good rum and good beans. For a while we trundled along in silence. Slibulsky had stuck his left hand inside his coat and hunched his shoulders. As we left the railway quarter and turned into a side street, he finally spoke up: “All right, you win. But the next time you think you have to pull me out of some shit, please let me know beforehand.”

I stopped.

“Just like you did, ‘let me know,’ eh?”

“How could I tell you anything? After you called me a guy who steals people’s last pair of socks and then sends them off to be killed?”

“Touche. But just tell me next time-before you lose a fortune at roulette, and before you try to work for guys like Charlie in order to make some money for guys like Schlumpi, while Schmitz and Wang sit in their castle and wipe their asses with paper currency.”

He frowned. After a moment’s silence, he said: “Yes, you’ve got a point there.”

We walked on, faster. Our steps regained some of the old bounce. My stomach was growling as if I hadn’t eaten anything for days.

As we passed Ellermann’s Gaming and Sports Center with its third-floor pool hall, Slibulsky said: “Maybe I should practice shooting with my left? I’m out of a job now anyway. We play as a team, and people like to bet against guys with casts on their arms. We let them win the first few games, then we up the ante, and all of a sudden-”

“Sure, sure. But you keep forgetting that you aren’t so hot even with your right hand-”

“Not there, for crissakes! No, we’ll do it in those joints where the yuppies like to spend an evening poking holes in the baize, with their girlfriends watching, and so on. Those guys tend to be pretty timid and tight-fisted, but when they see a hundred per cent chance to make a killing, they’re worse than Hausfraus at a white sale! Gina once dragged me to a class reunion or whatever it was. Those guys don’t just drink their beers: they count ’em. When the waiter comes to collect, each one of them knows down to the pfennig how much he and everyone else has had to drink. I’m sure they’re terrific at skat. But if one of the party hasn’t been keeping track, they pounce on him like hyenas. When I said I couldn’t remember how many I’d had, so I’d be willing to make up the difference, three of them put in quick orders for food.”

We climbed over a railing beside the streetcar tracks and ran across.

“So how big would those bets be? Ten marks, and a fake term paper?”

“No. Those guys do have folding money in their secret little wallets. They pay for their drinks with small change, but just check out their threads-you could buy a house with what they cost. It’s those little wallets we’re after.”

“All right, we can give it a try. Practice at Ellermann’s tomorrow night?”

Slibulsky scratched his neck. “Don’t know about tomorrow night … Maybe I’d better make myself scarce for a while-at least until we find out if Charlie will keep his mouth shut. And that Manne is a violent son of a bitch. When he finds out that his jig is up, he’s liable to do anything. That wasn’t a bad trick, by the way.”

“No, not bad.”

“Except that Manne doesn’t wear a watch, but I only realized that later.”

“But why a gay joint?”

“Because I couldn’t think of any other that far away. Charlie had told me about it. He said they filmed the patrons there, and then.…” He rubbed his index finger with his thumb. “I thought it would be a good false track, farfetched enough for you to stick with it for a while. And, besides-,” he punched my shoulder playfully, “one should try everything once.”

“Thanks but no thanks.”

“I read something about that in a paper. It said everybody’s a little queer, so if you just do a little soul-searching, you’ll discover that little bit in yourself. Jeez, people must have a lot of time-to search their souls to find out what it is they really need for a good time …”

“Just imagine what their good times consist of.”

We turned a corner and passed a tavern in which people were roaring the German national anthem. Two fat pimply-faced kids with shaved heads stood guard on either side of the door, holding wooden clubs at beer-belly level. The bomber jacket one of them was wearing bore a legend in black, red, and gold lettering; it said Keep Germany Beautiful-No Miscegenation!

Slibulsky said, in a loud voice: “Know the one about the three Nazis getting a haircut?”

The kids’ heads turned irritably. For a moment, they seemed to be contemplating action, but then they resumed their pose, staring dully straight ahead and pretending that they hadn’t heard anything. Compulsion to obey orders.

“How does it go?”

“Yeah, right. The barber asks the first one how he’d like to have his hair cut, and the guy says ‘Parted on the right, like Hitler’s.’ He asks the second one; he says ‘Shave it.’ Then he asks the third guy. He looks a little perplexed but says, quickly: ‘Like the others.’ ”

We were the only patrons of the Haiti-Corner. Raoul joined us and treated us to a bottle of rum. After we had eaten and finished that bottle, we opened and worked on another one until Raoul locked the door and closed the blinds. Then we started rolling the dice. The loser had to propose a toast and down a shot of rum. Each game lasted five minutes.