But since the wall fell, all the action has moved to Mitte, the reinvigorated heart of old Berlin, and the Ku'damm has had to change. Its vibrancy today comes less from the big stores, fancy restaurants, historic relics, and tourist traps on the main thoroughfare than from the eclectic mix of cafйs, galleries, "sex kinos," boutiques, and bars to be found on the side streets.
One such place is Der Reizvolle Bar. The exterior embodies the contrasts of the Ku'damm. It has a tasteful, marble-tiled exterior and a garish, well-lit sign depicting a buxom woman hugging a grinning bear.
Der Reizvolle, by the way, is German for "Sexy Bear." And yeah, that sign looks just like the tattoo on Otto's arm.
Across the street from Der Reizvolle is a panel van, a vehicle favored as much by thieves robbing homes in the Hollywood Hills as by police officers involved in surveillance operations.
Two such police officers happen to be sitting in the back of this van, facing a monitor mounted on the wall that shows a wide-angle view of the exterior of the club.
The thin young cop with the prematurely receding hairline and the big goatee that he hopes will distract you from it, and who is presently second-guessing the wisdom of piercing his nipple two weeks ago to impress his girlfriend, is Kriminalkommissar Stefan Krementz.
The fat older one, with the rosy cheeks and an undiagnosed thyroid condition that makes his eyes bulge from his chubby face, and who is happily slurping up the Dreistern Hausmacher Gulasch, halb und halb, aus Schweine und Rindfleisch that he is digging out of a can with a spoon, is Kriminalkommissar Heinrich Bader.
Stefan looks at the slop his partner is eating. "What is that? Dog food?"
"It's a delicacy from the old GDR. I buy it over the Internet."
"The wall fell so you'd have the freedom not to eat that crap anymore," Stefan says.
"The wall fell so the West could sell us more expensive crap to eat."
Stefan spots something on the monitor. "Hello."
An old rusted Volkswagen taxi-van chugs up outside of Der Reizvolle. The taxi is rattling and spewing smoke. John McGrave emerges with his suitcase, looks around, and goes inside the club.
Stefan looks at Heinrich. "Who is that?"
"You're familiar with the phrase 'Ugly Americans'?"
"Yeah."
Heinrich tosses his empty can on the floor. "Now you know where it comes from."
The Sexy Bear Club is all chrome, neon, and skin. The music is loud, throbbing, and percussive. The clientele is upscale, fashionable, and almost exclusively male. The four dancing girls on the stage are topless, black haired, self-possessed, and arrogant, wearing G-strings and high heels, moving in unison to a well-choreographed routine. The only thing missing is Robert Palmer's reanimated corpse and it would be the 1980s all over again.
McGrave approaches the crowded bar and its neon-trimmed shelves of fine spirits. He takes a stool at the corner, sets down his suitcase, and waves over the bartender. She's a short-haired blonde wearing a low-cut red bandage dress that hugs her curves so tightly that she makes that blue babe Mystique in the X-Men look like she's got on a parka.
Maria is wearing a necklace with a pointed silver pendant that's like an arrow pointing at her deep cleavage, and McGrave follows the directions.
"Nice rack," McGrave says.
"Danke," she says.
"I meant the neon." He smiles and gestures to the lighted shelves behind her.
"Now I'm hurt." Her English is perfect and only slightly accented.
"What's your name?"
"Maria. What can I get you, big guy?"
"Diet Coke. In the bottle."
She gets him a bottle, sets it in front of him, and pops the top. She starts to go.
"One more thing. You see that big ugly bruiser over there?"
He tips his bottle towards the muscled guy in the tight black T-shirt at the other end of the bar, who is watching the customers near the stage instead of the dancers. Obviously, he's a bouncer.
"That is Dieter," she says. "What about him?"
"Give him this." McGrave hands her a photo of Otto's corpse on a morgue slab.
Maria looks at it, then back at him, shocked. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah," he says and takes a sip of Diet Coke.
"That's Otto Stoffmacher, one of the owners of this club," she says. "Dieter and Otto are friends."
"Show him," McGrave says.
She hesitates but delivers the photo to the bouncer. McGrave takes out a roll of Mentos from his pocket as he watches her go.
Dieter looks at the photo, blinks hard, and then glowers at McGrave, who smiles and waves.
The bouncer steps away from the bar and disappears into a back room.
Maria returns to McGrave, who unwraps the Mentos. "You should leave while you still have a pulse."
He spills a couple of Mentos on the counter and eats one. "Don't worry, Maria. I know what I'm doing. You can relax, and so can your friends outside."
She looks at him quizzically, but before she can say anything, Dieter returns with a burly guy in a suit that can barely hold all his muscles. Dieter steps up close to McGrave. Burly sends Maria away with a sharp glance, then slaps the photo down hard on the counter in front of McGrave.
"What happened to him?" Burly asks.
"He met me," McGrave says. "Would you like to meet me?"
"Ja. Very much."
Burly opens his jacket so McGrave can see the gun shoved under his waistband.
"That's real terrifying and all," McGrave says, "but what happens if you have to bend over and tie your shoe?"
"Come with us," Burly says. It's an order, not an invitation.
Dieter cracks his knuckles for emphasis.
"Sure," McGrave says.
He drops his Mentos into his bottle of Diet Coke and walks away from the bar. An instant later, the bottle explodes, spewing an enormous geyser of foam, startling everyone in the place but McGrave, who uses the distraction to take Burly's gun, elbow Dieter hard in the throat, and knock Burly to the floor.
The dancers stop dancing. Everyone turns and stares. But the music is still playing and it actually isn't a bad soundtrack for what is going down.
McGrave puts the gun in Burly's face with one hand and holds up his badge with the other for everyone in the place to see, especially Maria.
"LAPD. Everybody take it easy."
McGrave glances at Dieter, who is wide-eyed, gurgling, and desperately clutching his throat, and decides the bouncer presents no threat. He looks down at Burly.
"Who was the dead guy to you?"
"My partner in this club," Burly says.
"What was he doing in Los Angeles?"
"Vacation."
McGrave shoots the floor next to Burly's head. People drop down and take cover. Others scramble for the door.
Maria tenses up, but her gaze drifts to a well-dressed man in a perfectly tailored Brioni suit sitting alone and stock-still at a table, holding his glass. He looks like a male model advertising whiskey.
"Try again," McGrave says to Burly.
"On a job. With the man."
"What man?"
Maria is paying no attention to McGrave. She's watching the well-dressed customer, who is glancing furtively at the back door.
"I don't know his name," Burly says.
McGrave presses the gun to Burly's forehead and cocks the trigger. "How do I find him?"
Burly spits it out in a panic. "You don't. He finds you. He has an agent, Hans Beimler. You meet Beimler. If he likes the job, he sets up a meet with the man."
"Where's Beimler?"
"Tequila's. On the beach at Mьhlenstrasse."
The well-dressed man bolts for the back door. Maria leaps over the bar, no mean feat in her dress, and runs across the club after him, holding her pendant to her mouth and talking into it.