Very slowly, he took his feet off the desk, sat up straight, and held the gun with both hands aiming it at my forehead. His eyes, glittering a moment ago, were dry and cold. His voice had an edge to it.
“You’re not a cop, are you?”
“Do I look like one?”
“You look like a boozy little rat.”
The sky had darkened, and there was a distant sound of thunder. My quota of half-assed loudmouths was filled for the day.
I pointed at his nose. “Booger.”
He didn’t get it right away. Then, in a reflex motion, his hand rose to his face, and he glanced down. My first blow made him drop the gun, the second did some damage to his tanned jaw, and the third made him gasp for air.
I picked up the gun and sat down on the edge of the desk. “All right, let’s take it from the top. Is that woman here?”
Bent over in his chair, holding his jaw with one hand and his stomach with the other, he looked at me in disbelief. Then he shook his head, cautiously, and groaned: “You’re out of your mind.”
“Yes or no will do just fine. Are you a dealer in forged papers?”
“Forged papers?” He let go of his jaw and waved at the high tech scenery. “I make half a million a year just on the stock exchange. Why would I deal in shit like that?”
“But you seemed pretty concerned when it occurred to you that I might be a cop.”
“So? I just don’t like you guys. Can’t help it. Besides, you have no right whatsoever to barge in here. That business was three years ago. This is a completely clean shop. We don’t even show dubious videos.”
“What business?”
“Oh, stop pretending. The one about the kid who wasn’t sixteen yet, whatever-the fucking little liar …”
His face brightened in mid-sentence. While I was still wondering what had cheered him up so suddenly, I was struck by a lightning bolt, straight down the spine to the tips of my toes. With a glaring light in my head and the feeling of falling into the void I heard his voice from far away: “Come here, angel, let me give you a kiss for that.”
I was rushing down an endless steep slope at an infernal pace. No one and nothing could have stopped me, not even I myself. Everything was white. No sky, no sun, no trees. Just white. The skis carried me across the snow at such speed that I had no time to breathe. I had no poles. I went down, ever farther down, my heart slid into my head. But suddenly nothing was white anymore, everything turned black, and a huge abyss yawned at the end. I was unable to stop, my body was bereft of all sensation, and a deafening noise spread out over everything, the roar of a thousand firestorms.
I opened my eyes. About a foot away, a vacuum cleaner was moving back and forth. Behind it, working the vac with one hand and holding a gun in the other, was the runt. He looked at me with sad big eyes. I tried to move my head. It felt as if someone had stuck a knife into my neck. I sat up, gingerly. They had swept me into a corner of the barroom. The dirty glasses were gone, the chairs were back on the floor, and the place smelled of violets. The vacuum curved around my feet. I closed my eyes tight.
“Isn’t it neat enough now? Or are you expecting a visit from your Mom?”
He kept pushing the monster around the floor. Then he hissed at me: “Fuck off. I’m doing my job.”
He waved the gun in the direction of the door. I managed a painful nod.
“All right, all right.”
I was sure that I wasn’t the first to poke fun at him; nor would I be the last. I could imagine heavy-duty leather guys like Gerhard stomping on him every day. One day he would probably kill one of them, and he would certainly get caught. In the joint, people would start stomping on him again, and so on and so forth, all the way to the coffin. “You won’t have me to stomp on anymore” is what they should engrave on his headstone. If he’d get a headstone.
Five minutes later I was up on my feet. I touched the matted spot on the back of my head.
“You’ve got some real strength in those arms, kiddo.”
“Fuck off.”
I sighed, tapped my forehead, and staggered to the bar. My head, my stomach, all my franchised parts clamored for a drink. Without asking for permission I grabbed a bottle of scotch and raised it to my lips. Some time later, when I set it down, the knife in my neck had turned to a rubber arrow. The fat guy in lingerie was sitting at the other end of the counter. He stared dimly in my direction, then raised his hand and waved furtively: “Care to join me in a drink?”
I twinkled back. “Sorry, but I’ve got the curse.” I staggered out into the rain.
“Gina?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Kayankaya.”
She laughed, and we exchanged a few pleasantries about a mutual female friend with whom they had spent the previous evening. That person must have gossiped quite extensively about my alleged mating behavior. Gina and Slibulsky had been, living together for more than seven years, and apart from occasional tussles, they got along famously, although they were a rather incongruous couple: Gina, a young thirty, studied archeology, saved seals, read fat books, and worked as a teacher in a dance and deportment school for girls from good families. She claimed that this was just a job to pay the rent, but I wasn’t always so sure. One memorable evening she explained to me how napkins had to be folded, and why. On the other hand, she was as unconcerned about Slibulsky’s lifestyle as she was about whether other people were as interested in old potshards as she was.
“Listen, Gina; Slibulsky told me he broke his arm because he fell downstairs. Do you happen to know what stairs?”
“In the whorehouse, of course.”
“That’s all he told you?”
“That’s all.”
“Mhm. And that legacy from the aunt in Berlin-what do you know about that?”
“What’s to know? He used it to pay off his debts. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, no particular reason.”
The rain sounded like a shower of golf balls against the glass walls of the phone booth. Around the booth, a small lake was forming.
“No, you see, I’m recommending him to my tax accountant, and the guy needs to know a few things about him … What kinds of debts were they?”
She made a pert puffing noise. “Just debts.”
“How much did he inherit?”
“Fifty thou.”
Now it was my turn to puff. “When did he get the money?”
“In January. But they withheld the tax before it was paid.”
“I see-well, then, I don’t suppose my accountant will be interested in that. Thanks, Gina, and let’s keep this to ourselves, O.K.? I want to make Slibulsky a present of a free advice session with my guy.”
“Gee, you must be rolling in it.”
“Well, at the moment … Talk to you soon.”
The sky was turning even darker. I stared into space for a while. Then I tore the door open and bounded across the puddles to my car. Mrs. Olga may have been an alarmist, but she did not hallucinate things.
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.