“Rambo!” The footsteps grew fainter. Rambo stayed where he was. In slow motion I tried to raise the Beretta. My heart was racing. Rambo observed my movements without any sign of interest.
“Come on!” Thinking along the lines of “all right then, be a good Rambo,” I tried to smile at the beast and slipped the safety catch off my gun. Our eyes took each other’s measure. Just as I was about to pull the trigger, Rambo grabbed me. He did not bite, he grabbed. Like a wolf trap-just once. And held on, just like a wolf trap. My shot went wide of the mark. I lay on the ground, screaming, my arm between his jaws. The teeth had penetrated my sleeves and embedded themselves directly in my flesh. Granted, he did not bite my arm off. Calmly, without any particular effort, he stood above me. A dog who tore flesh the way other dogs dozed in the sun. Twigs were cracking behind me. Crazed with pain, I roared: “Get your fucking dog off of me!” I tried to see the asshole who was his master, but Rambo didn’t let me. Whoever that asshole was, I hated him, hated him even more than I hated his bull terrier. There was a draft of air, my skull exploded, and I zoomed into the void.
“Wake up, my friend. Wake up …”
A smooth warm hand stroked my forehead. I squinted.
At first I didn’t see anything, and when my eyes focused, all I saw was concrete. Concrete ceiling, concrete walls, even my head seemed filled with concrete. Fluorescent lights glared from the walls around me. I remembered the generator. The room was approximately twenty by sixty feet. No windows and no sign of any heating or anything else. To the left and right, along the walls, sat some thirty people on rough wooden benches, giving me questioning looks. On the floor between the benches three children were playing with marbles. Now and again the marbles clicked and there was a brief whispered exchange. Otherwise all was quiet.
The hand touched me again. I forced my head to turn a little and looked into the wrinkled face of a black man who held me on his lap and quietly repeated his “wake up”. His voice had the reassuring timbre of smokers who have managed to grow old. While I tried my best to comply with his wish, a woman in a glittering red outfit whispered something in Arabic, and a fat guy next to her nodded. It seemed to me they had decided I wouldn’t be much help.
After what seemed a long time. I managed to sit up. Keeping my eyes closed, I managed to find a cigarette and put it in my mouth. The back of my head felt funny, and when I squeezed it, it oozed red liquid. The black man gave me a light and smiled. He had to be at least seventy. His hair was short, gray, and wiry, and he wore a dark blue suit with a handkerchief in his breast pocket, shirt and tie, patent leather shoes, and a whiff of expensive perfume. Next to me in my muddy and bloody clothes-my right sleeve hung in shreds-he looked like one of the truly wealthy who find it amusing to mingle with the common folk sometimes and to enjoy a hot dog in their company. I smoked and examined the consequences of Rambo’s repulsion of the Turkish invasion. Gingerly I picked bits of fabric out of the wound and tried to keep my arm elevated. Then I scanned the silent circle of faces. The place felt like a cross between a dentist’s waiting room and an air-raid shelter.
I cleared my throat. “Is there, by any chance, a lady here by the name of Sri Dao Rakdee?”
No one answered. Nothing changed in the expressions of three Thai women huddling in a corner. Before I had recovered from my surprise and disappointment, a fellow with two black brushstrokes under his nose and a lot of gold in his face asked me: “Who are you?”
“Kemal Kayankaya, private investigator.”
Now all of them looked startled. The children stopped tossing marbles, and my Samaritan moved a little farther from me. From all sides came the choral exclamation: “Police!?”
I shook my head very gently. “No.”
Deep breaths. A pause, then the next question: “Are you here for papers?”
That was the glitter lady.
“I’m looking for a Mr. Larsson who claims he is able to provide people with forged identity papers.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Aren’t you here because you don’t have residence permits?”
Some people looked tense again, others avoided my eyes.
All of them acted as if the question did not apply to them. I pointed at the door: “Is it locked?”
A lean character out of a jeans ad, with lots of patches on his jacket and Walkman earphones round his neck, stood up and said: “What if it is? It’s for protection. So no one can find us-it’s quite all right.” He repeated that for emphasis: “Totally perfectly all right.”
“But what if no one at all comes to find you? And they just forget about you? I assume that Mr. Larsson, or whatever his name is, has already received his fee?”
“He even got our jewelry,” the glittering lady lamented.
“All our jewelry!”
“Oh, that jewelry. He just took it because most of us didn’t have enough money. He let me keep my Walkman.”
My adoptive father scratched his chin.
“That’s just a piece of plastic.”
The jeans guy gave him a contemptuous look.
“Just like your patent leather pumps, Grandpa. Haven’t seen a pair of those since we had to leave Iran ten years ago. You’re totally retro, Gramps, totally retro-what do you want a German passport for? Go back to Oogah-Boogah and pick bananas.”
The old man smiled.
“We’re all here for the same reason.”
“Sure.…” The guy looked around. “Only I’m not as scared as you are. This Larsson is on the level. I had a word with him yesterday, I told him that I am Ramin Ben Alam, so don’t even dream about fucking us over. He heard me. Then we talked about movies, Eddie Murphy and so on.”
“You’ve been locked in here since yesterday?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“And before that, you were downstairs in the villa?”
He nodded.
“Did Larsson explain why you had to move?”
“Because of that neighbor. The old bag called the cops.”
I forgot my demolished skull and leaned forward. “Really?”
“Right. I told you, we’re here for our own protection.”
Suddenly it dawned on me why the immigration office had no file on Rakdee when I visited them. And that wasn’t the only thing that dawned on me. But the question remained: what was going to happen now? I leaned back slowly and carefully.
“When will you receive your papers?”
“Tonight.” He beamed. “Then we’ll party. First a great dinner with my girlfriend, and then we’ll disco down at the Marilyn.” He took a couple of dance steps, wiggled his hips and croaked, in English, “I’m bad, I’m bad, I’m bad-yeah.…”
People observed him with pity. He tossed his head back. “Yeah, with my girlfriend Gabi, Gabi Schmittke!”
I extinguished my cigarette butt. “This Larsson, did he have tattoos on his arms?”
The old man sitting next to me nodded.
“And what does the guy look like who brought me in?”
Two girls in headscarves giggled. A little fellow with a goatee got up and raised his arms to indicate something as wide as a wardrobe. “Much meat, much beard, and much, much smell.”
I sighed. Then I looked around. “I don’t suppose he brought you anything to eat or drink?”
No response. The goateed fellow sat down again.
“And what if he won’t bring you anything tonight, either? What if he won’t be back, ever?”
People stared at the floor. I got up, swayed to the door and checked if it could be dealt with. One might as well have tried to kick the concrete wall in. When I turned back, the children were clinging to their voluminous mother. One of them was crying, her face smeared with bunker dust and tears. The other two watched me with wide-open eyes.