One Man, One Murder

8

Shortly after five-thirty I drove into Gellersheim. Ten minutes later I had located Rosenacker, a short street in the outskirts. It looked as if a couple of nouveau riches had decided to emulate the truly wealthy. The nameplates on the gates were too big, the driveways too small, and every villa looked different: some were perfectly round, others had Gothic arches or Bavarian-style carved wood curlicues. In front of an aerodynamic one-story building stood a gigantic flagpole: the flag bore the legend Theo Manz Cinema Production. A closer look revealed that the flag was plastic and that the garden gate had no handles. I was reminded of a movie type who had hired me to follow his future wife around for a week. He wanted to know if she was likely to waste his money in boutiques and bookshops. At the end of the assignment, he was unable to pay me because one of his projects had just collapsed. He told me that I should, nevertheless, be grateful for having made his acquaintance: he would gladly arrange a small part for me in his next movie. When I told him I didn’t want a part in a movie, only my fee, he said he was “somehow quite totally amazed,” as he put it. In style of speech and dress, this forty-year-old owner of a Volvo and a penthouse had an insatiable desire to give the impression of a high school student hitchhiking to the south. My fee arrived in dribs and drabs, a hundred marks a shot, at intervals corresponding to the times I saw him dining on red snapper and drinking bubbly in fashionable restaurants.

In its surroundings, Number Six looked pleasantly normal. The two-story brick box with a vine-covered terrace stood in a large well-kept garden with a pond and two driveways: one was hidden behind dog rose bushes, for staff and deliveries, the other was covered with light-colored gravel and bordered by roses and cast-iron carriage lights mounted on poles. Through the bars of the black iron gate I could see tire tracks. These were the only signs that anyone except for the gardener had been visiting here for a while. All the shutters were closed, the mailbox was full of advertising materials, and the moist glittering lawn looked undisturbed. I regretted that the thunderstorm was over. In the present radiant sunlight I had the unpleasant feeling of having my every move observed from a long way off. Nothing could remain hidden from Mrs. Olga whose neighboring villa with its little pink turrets looked like an American miniature copy of Heidelberg Castle.

The name on the mailbox was “Dr. Schelling.” I acted as if I had stopped at the wrong number and walked down the street past the staff entrance. After ten steps or so, I turned, ran back, jumped over the wooden fence and landed on a wire. Held up by plastic supports about three feet above ground it stretched all around the walls of the plot, ending in small gray boxes installed in the corners. I got up and took cover behind the nearest tree. Nothing happened. The alarm must have been turned off. Hunched over, I ran across flowerbeds, overturned a few pieces of garden furniture, reached the terrace, and pressed myself against the glass sliding door. Shielding my eyes with my hands I scanned the room inside and saw a couch, some chairs, a television set. As I slid to one side, the door slid open as well, to my surprise. After casting a quick glance all around, I went in.

Instead of the usual cold stale smell of furniture in vacant houses, I noticed an odor of stale cooking, with a lemony whiff of men’s perfume thrown in. I listened. A wall clock was ticking, a refrigerator humming somewhere in the distance. I touched the radiator. It had been turned off but was still warm. Then I noticed what I hadn’t been able to see from outside: the light was on in the entrance hall. I proceeded cautiously to the door, leaned against the doorframe, pulled my Beretta. Moving past a built-in kitchen and a toilet I reached the stairs. Halfway up the stairs I noticed, diagonally below me, a basement door. I tiptoed back, slipped the safety catch, and went down the steps to a large room furnished with a soccer game machine, a pinball machine, and a ten-meter-long dining table. On the table stood a huge tin bucket in the midst of some thirty plates with remnants of stew and bread on them. There was silverware on the floor, several chairs had been overturned; there were three more games on the pinball machine, and there was a ball in the chute. I walked across the room toward a curtain of gray blanket material. I pushed it aside and found myself in a narrow, yellow-lit hallway with doors to the right and the left. Each one of the rooms was some twenty-five square feet in size and furnished with three army cots, a sink, and the kind of light fixture you find in garages. Only the last room on the left contained something else.

He lay on his stomach, stripped down to his socks, and the gray skin on his arms was tattooed with images of women and weapons. He looked surprised. Under the mustache, his mouth was open, as if he wanted to say “But-?” or something like that. But he wasn’t saying anything, and he would never say anything again. His neck was broken.

I felt his pulse, then covered him with a blanket. I went through his clothes which lay scattered on the floor. There was no wallet or address book, only a box of matches, half a pack of cigarettes, and a nine-millimeter Browning pistol. I slipped the gun in my pocket, pulled the blanket off him again, and read the inscriptions on his arms: “Manne loves Ingrid”; “Manne loves Sabine”; “Manne loves Iris more than all the chicks before!”; and “Manne hates Tempo Hundred!” No last name. I sat down next to him and smoked two cigarettes. Then I went out into the garden behind the house, found a tool shed, took a shovel and dug a three-foot-deep pit next to a basement window. Then I took the cable of the electric lawnmower and went back to Manne. After I had wrapped him and his clothes into a huge sausage, I pulled him to the window and heaved and pushed him outside. A little later, I had covered the shallow grave so that it was invisible to the casual eye.

Then I checked out the house. I went through cupboards, chests, desks, nightstands, I even looked under the rugs, but didn’t come up with anything. Except for the basement, the house was like an empty furniture showroom. There were no letters, no books, there wasn’t even an old toothbrush. Only that stew and Manne, and a heap of vegetable scraps in the kitchen garbage can.

I found a telephone and called Gellersheim information for Dr. Schelling’s number. It wasn’t listed. No Dr. Schelling in Frankfurt, Offenbach, Mainz, Wiesbaden, or Kassel, either. After I hung up, I remembered the shovel. I took it back to the tool shed. As I stepped out of the shed, I saw a note pinned to the wall with a pair of garden shears. It said: “Water lilies? New gravel? Trim trees-new ladder!” And there was a phone number.

It rang three times. Then came a cool, businesslike male voice: “Olschewski for Schmitz.”

“Schmitz?”

“Eberhard Schmitz. I am his secretary. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I … You mean Eberhard Schmitz, Georg’s brother?”

“That’s correct.”

“… ”

“Hello?”

“Yes, yes, I’m still here … I wanted to know-see, I’m the gardener at the villa in Gellersheim, and for the trees I need a new ladder-to trim them, you see.”

“Buy one and add it to the invoice.”

“Many thanks.”

“Anything else?”

I cleared my throat. “Well, maybe you could ask the parties who come here from time to time not to walk all over the fresh flowerbeds …”

“You know you don’t have to worry about that. We’re paying you enough to make it worth your while to redo the flowerbeds.”

“I just meant-”

“Don’t mean, just do your work. Goodbye.”

On the drive back I contemplated the best plan of action and arrived at half a decision. Back in Frankfurt I parked in front of the first tavern with a Henninger sign and walked into a dark booze grotto full of stale tobacco smoke. Two guys in their mid-thirties sat at the bar in their cheap Sunday best. They had half-empty drinks in front of them, hand-rolled cigarettes between their fingers. Behind the counter a girl was drying dishes. The proprietor sat reading an illustrated magazine. There was no one else in the joint. Lit-up slot machines stood by the wall, old carnival garlands hung above the tables. The four people turned to look at me. Expressionless, pale, flat faces. The proprietor put his magazine away and crossed his arms.

“Private party.”

Faint smiles on the faces of the guys at the bar. I rammed both hands in my pants pockets and looked at the floor.

“Let’s keep this sweet and short. This is a public place, and I would like to have a beer and make a phone call. But if it so happens that this is a private party, or that the beer taps have been turned off, or that you’re closing this very second-then I’ll be back. Every day. And I’ll bring some friends. Big friends, sensitive friends, friends with baseball bats. We’ll make this joint our neighborhood pub. So you better see about getting some Turkish music, and I don’t think there’ll be much of a demand for your pork chops.”

“All right, all right.”

The proprietor made a resigned gesture. Then he nodded to the girl and returned to his magazine. Disappointed, the guys in their mid-thirties concentrated on their drinks.

“And where is your phone?”

The proprietor took his time. Then he looked up and said: “We don’t have one. We use smoke signals.”

Was that ever a riot. The guys at the bar almost fell off their stools, and the proprietor had to wipe tears from his eyes. While the three kept on erupting into renewed guffaws, the girl put a phone on the counter and pushed it toward me, flashing me an embarrassed smile under cover of the beer taps. After the wild merriment subsided, I dialed Slibulsky’s and Gina’s number. I let it ring for a long time. Then I hung up and received my beer. I sucked it down in one go, nodded to the girl, and walked to the door. A roar came just as I grabbed the doorknob: “Hey, you haven’t paid!” I opened the door.

“I’ll send you a buffalo hide by the end of the week. That should pay for the beer.”