‘… My Croatian isn’t perfect, but that’s roughly what he said. And suppose it was only your brother but you still have a wife and children there? I expect you’d be a hundred per cent in favour of working for them then.’
I thought of the brutality with which the racketeers went to work, and realised that if someone like Romario didn’t pay up, the gang would be more or less literally holding a gun to their families’ heads.
‘And what specially amuses the tall man and the others when they’re sitting over a schnapps later is that of course the palefaces are from all the so-called ethnic groups: Serbs, Muslims, Croatians, gypsies. One of their favourite sayings is, “We’re sending all Yugoslavia out on the streets for us.” ’
‘How can they know for certain which refugee has family where?’
‘They have lists, no idea where they get them. Anyway, you can bet the tall man is only quite small fry in the organisation. The bosses will be in Croatia, and then there’s a kind of German who talks big. He came twice, acting the way my Granny said German tourists used to.’
‘A man with uncomfortable blue eyes?’
‘That’s right. Always looks as if he didn’t know whether he wants to screw someone or kill them. The day before yesterday he came in and bawled out the tall man in front of everyone as if he was the last one hiring out the deckchairs. I don’t know exactly what it was about, I was in the kitchen. But I think there’s going to be some kind of important meeting in the next few days.’
‘Of the bosses?’
He shrugged. ‘My uncle ordered about a ton of fillet steak for the weekend. That won’t be for the few regulars who drink at his place.’
I thought of the Albanian. It was only in my fury with Ahrens’s Hessian who broke my nose that I’d dragged him into this too hastily. I couldn’t possibly hand him people who’d been blackmailed into being gangsters and would probably be very glad to stop at once. But I had to give him something. I couldn’t offer the Albanian a deal and then say a couple of days later: sorry, I made a mistake. At least, not if I wanted to go on earning money as a private detective in the same town in the future. A meeting of Croatian bosses would be just the thing. If it took place. And if I could find out when.
‘Do you know why they powder their faces and wear wigs and never say a word when they’re extorting money?’
‘Orders from the top. But I can’t see why either. I only once heard one of them who’d taken off his wig because of the heat being bawled out in the back room. That get-up must matter a lot to the bosses.’
Finally I asked him about the two palefaces who hadn’t turned up last Thursday, but he couldn’t tell me any more except that no one had mentioned them since. Then we’d both obviously had enough for one night. I offered him a cigarette, and we sat smoking, exhausted.
After a while he asked, ‘I don’t have to worry about you landing me in trouble, do I?’
‘Not in the least. But all the same, you’d do better to look for a different job. It could get pretty hot there soon.’
‘You must be joking. How many jobs do you think there are around here for me?’
I took a pen and a scrap of paper out of my pocket and wrote down Slibulsky’s name and business phone number for him. ‘Ice-cream vendor. As far as I know it pays very well. Call this number first thing tomorrow and say you were sent by me, Kayankaya.’
I gave him the note. He glanced at it, and hesitantly put it in his pocket. ‘Thanks.’
‘It’s for me to thank you. And if your uncle or his friends make trouble for you, call me. The faster you get out of there the better.’ I shook hands with him. ‘See you at Slibulsky’s.’
He nodded, and then he suddenly seemed to have to pull himself together so as not to laugh out loud. He was probably only now beginning to believe that this man with the bashed-up face and the pistol in his jacket pocket really wasn’t going to do anything more to him tonight.
Ten minutes later I was racing away from Marilyn Monroe’s sister at full speed, and if my shoulders hadn’t been in such a bad way I might have stuck two fingers out of the side window by way of goodbye.
I left the car in the no-parking zone and dragged myself into the Mister Happy. It was just after three, and generally only the video recorder was working at that time. While the inmates dozed on plushy pink sofas, or sat over coffee and crossword puzzles hoping for a last customer, the troops were slogging it out on a large screen, naked, against scenery like a furniture warehouse. Soft, continuous moaning mingled with equally soft piano music.
I crossed the room, greeting girls to left and right, and found Deborah in the kitchen, as I’d expected. She was eating ham sandwiches and leafing through mail-order catalogues with a colleague.
‘Hey, baby, what happened to you?’
Whatever had happened to me, at least it was no reason for her to spread a bit more mustard on her sandwich and take a hearty bite. She added, with her mouth full, ‘You don’t look too good.’
Deborah a.k.a. Helga was a small, plump twenty-year-old from a village in north Germany. She had an ‘Italian style’ perm, nail lacquer in Malibu, Cherry Red and Flamingo, tracksuits with as many zip fasteners as possible, and when she went out she wore a cap saying Foxy Kitten. From what she said she didn’t mind her job, and sometimes even enjoyed it. All the same, she was saving hard to open an espresso and sandwich bar in her home village a couple of years from now. What she definitely enjoyed, all the time, was eating. And I really liked her for that. She ate like a cow: slowly, with relish, never letting anything disturb her. Watching her eat had an effect on me like doing yoga.
‘I’m OK,’ I said, as she fished a gherkin out of a jar and waved it about to dry it. ‘Do you have anything else to do?’
‘Huh, there’s been nothing going on here for hours. I’m just having a bite to eat and then I’m turning in. You can go upstairs if you like.’
‘I could do with a dunking in your whirlpool bath.’
‘Ha!’ She stabbed the air with the gherkin. ‘That comes extra!’ And laughing, she nudged her colleague in the ribs. The colleague, a tough dimwit, grinned derisively.
I had once helped Deborah out of a rather sticky situation with her pimp, we had come closer to each other with Willy DeVille’s Heaven Stood Still, and since then we’d had a tacit agreement: I could have her spoil me once a week, and in return I’d be available for any further fix she might be in. The point was that there hadn’t been one, and there wasn’t going to be one for the foreseeable future. The Mister Happy was as civilised and homely as a village bakery in a French film. I should know; I’d been acquainted with the madam for years, and had found Deborah the job here. Signs that she herself was seeing less and less point in our arrangement had been increasing recently, and although she laughed now, I was sure that at the back of her mind a fierce little calculating devil was registering another two hundred marks unearned.
‘Come on, baby, just joking. Of course you can go in the pool. But you’ll have to rinse it out first. No one cleaned it after the last guy, and he was all hairy.’
‘Oh. Hm.’
‘See you.’ She threw me an airy kiss. ‘And I’ll see that you feel as good as new tomorrow.’
She did, too. When Deborah was well-fed and in a good mood there were few who could tell her anything about how to do that. For an evening’s good screw to make up for things, I reflected, I wasn’t as badly off as Slibulsky thought.
Chapter 12
Perhaps I didn’t feel exactly new, but after a night of extensive massage and breakfast in bed in the morning I was in surprisingly good form except for the variegated colours of my face. Deborah kissed me goodbye, and as I went out to my car and removed the parking ticket from under the windscreen wiper I thought almost lovingly of how, before I’d even had a chance to look at the breakfast tray, she’d asked if I didn’t want my egg.