“Hey, what do you know, it’s the little brown guy with the big mouth! Well, this is a surprise.” He shouted over his shoulder: “Sweetheart? We’ve got company. Two glasses, and a bottle of Asbach!” Then, back to me: “Let’s have a drink!”
Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed my shoulder, kicked the door shut with his bare heel, and dragged me over to the couch. All over the glass table and the fluffy rug was an array of what looked like almost a thousand colorful little metal cars. On the table stood a bottle of rubbing alcohol next to a pile of white rags and a beaker filled with toothbrushes. While he kept kneading my shoulder with one hand, he picked up one of the cars with the other, held it up to the light, and exclaimed happily: “Nineteen seventy-one, yellow jeep, brown top, tow bar-isn’t it terrific?”
“Super-terrific.”
Carefully, he put the miniature back. “My collection. Eight hundred and ninety-two models. I clean ’em up every spring, it’s a job-but, snooper,” his hand waved across the colorful pile, “tell me, ever see anything like it?”
“I need to have a word with you, Charlie.”
That startled him.
“I’m showing you my car collection, and you ‘need to have a word’?”
“You got it.”
His arm slid off my shoulder like a dead man’s. Then he flashed a grin. “I know what you need, snooper, you need a drink.” He patted my knee and snapped his fingers in the direction of the bathroom. “Sweetheart-what’s with those drinks?”
“Coming right up, Charlie.”
A girl entered the room. In her jeans, knit top, and gym shoes she looked no older than sixteen. She had a blue bow in her hair. She smiled politely at me and disappeared behind the bar. With her round snub-nosed face, small firm breasts, and an ass like two honeydew melons, she looked like a teenager who spends her mornings in the schoolyard, her afternoons at an ice cream parlor, and her evenings with the captain of the soccer team. That impression was marred, however, by a big green bruise around her right eye and bright red scratch marks on her cheeks and neck. She had tried to cover all that up with make-up, but the result made her look like a monster.
Charlie leaned back and gave me a wink. “Sweet, eh?”
“A little worse for wear.”
He wagged his head. “That’ll pass.” And, louder: “Right, sweetheart? In two or three days, I’ll have my princess back.”
“Yes, Charlie.”
“You know I didn’t mean any harm. On the contrary. It was just because I love you, and because I’m a proud man.”
“Yes, Charlie.”
“I don’t think you’d have found a guy like me in Klein-Morlenbach. Right, sweetheart?”
“Absolutely right.”
After two snifters of Asbach had been set down next to the matchbox cars, and the girl had retired to the bed with a notepad and a pencil, we clinked glasses to eternal friendship. Then I asked him: “Do you know a guy who looks like a steam roller and answers to the name Axel?”
“Sure do. Big Beef Axel. Was a pretty good heavyweight once. Now he deals in used cars and motorbikes.”
“Including Toyotas?”
“He drives one. Why?”
“Is it a silver-colored jeep?”
He raised his eyebrows suspiciously. “Are you trying to give me the third degree again?”
“I just want to know if this Axel drives a silver Toyota jeep.”
“What if he does? Is it against the law?”
“Does the name Hottges mean anything to you?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Commissioner Hottges of the immigration police.”
“Hey, man, am I a Negro? Why should I know any immigration cops?”
“But when I mentioned the name Koberle to him, he didn’t seem particularly surprised.”
“He didn’t, eh.… Listen,” he gave me the stare, “what’s all this bullshit?”
“Yesterday, I came to see you about Mrs. Rakdee. Remember?”
He groaned. “Oh, not that again.” He reached for the Asbach and leaned back. His toes toyed idly with the fluffy rug. “So? Did you find her?”
“No. But I know who kidnapped her.”
“Yeah?” He swirled the brandy in the snifter.
“Yeah. A guy named Manne. But he’s just one of a gang. The others are Hottges, Axel, Slibulsky, and …”
I watched him out of the corner of my eye. His surprise seemed genuine. His voice grew deep and ominous.
“What are you telling me, snooper?”
“They tell refugees, illegal aliens, that they can provide them with forged papers. The refugees pay three thousand marks a head, and then they get locked up in a predetermined location where Hottges and his guys come and pick them up. Today they got thirty of them; that’s a total of ninety thousand marks. It’s really a smart and simple scam … And I think your brother is the one who came up with it.”
“Heinz did?”
He grabbed my lapels and came so close that I felt his breath. “Say that again.”
“Get your hands off me first.”
“I’ll keep them on you as long as I please. So?”
“A man by the name of Koberle is involved in this business. And if it isn’t you-”
“Is there any evidence for that?”
“No, but it fits, and it’s enough for the news hounds.”
“The papers …?”
He gave me a searching look, and his grip on me relaxed.
Then he shook himself and hissed: “Man, if you’re shitting me, I’ll turn you into hamburger. But if it is true,” he let go of me, “my brother’s sold his last candy bar.”
After another searching glance, he rushed to his closet and tossed shoes, socks, and a shiny gray suit into the room. The girl had almost stopped breathing. Hiding behind her notepad under the covers, she watched Charlie’s actions and seemed to consider if it would be wiser to pick up his things or to play dead. Suddenly he stopped and leaned against the closet door, his jaw jutting out at an angle.
“Why are you telling me all that stuff?”
“First of all because I want to know where the gang is hanging out now.”
“I have no idea.”
“And secondly, as I told you, I don’t have any proof, and since the cops are involved in it, an official investigation would be over before it even began. Charlie, I want you to kick some ass.”
His shoulders stretched the fabric of his white jacket. “Don’t worry, I will. But, you know,” he shuffled his feet on the rug, “it would be best not to go to the papers right away. I want to take care of this before my boss finds out about it. Otherwise it might look as if I had no control over my boys here.”
I nodded. “Eberhard Schmitz wouldn’t like that.”
Charlie looked at me. “No, he wouldn’t like it at all.” There was a curiously ecstatic expression in his eyes.
“All right then. I’ll wait until tomorrow night.”
His eyes cleared. A grateful smile.
“You’re O.K., snooper.”
While he changed, picked a shirt and checked his tie in front of a mirror, he kept up a steady stream of curses. I twirled a cigarette between my fingers and waited. “My brother’s in cahoots with the cops-God, I’m glad our Mom’s no longer alive. She was the greatest whore in all of Sachsenhausen-what a body … She was the toast of the whole fucking Occupation Zone. ‘Boys,’ she used to say, ‘boys, remember one thing: never tell the cops anything. Only a cowardly swine would call the cops. It was cops who dragged your grandpa to the ovens.’ ”
He shook his head. “And now the fucking crip goes and helps them rip off bimbos …”
He slewed around to glance at the bed. All that could be seen was a hank of hair.
“Hey, you silly little cunt, pay attention when I’m talking about my family!”
Slowly, her face emerged. “But Charlie, I’m listening.”
He growled contemptuously, over his shoulder. “That’s what she always says. But all she really wants to do is write letters to her girlfriends, ‘Frankfurt is so exciting’ and ‘oh, I’m so happy here …’ ” He jabbed the air in front of her face with his index finger. “What would your friends say if they saw you looking like that? Eh?”