And, while he took a.32 automatic out of a drawer in the bedside table: “And anyhow, what’s the use writing letters when you can pick up the phone.”
The girl had pulled the covers over her head. The bedspread trembled like a sick dog. Charlie slapped the clip into the gun. “Don’t think I give a shit about your bawling.”
I checked my watch. It was nine-fifteen.
“Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“Where you headed with that cannon?”
“Where …” He stuck the automatic in his waistband.
“… Oh, have a beer, get a little fresh air …”
“That suits me just fine. I could use a beer.”
“Oh yeah?”
I got up and went to the window. It was raining again. The wind was blowing the rain almost horizontally down the street, and the wet windowpane made the neon signs look like runny watercolors. People huddled in entrance ways.
“A little fresh air never hurt anyone.”
Charlie scratched his ass pensively.
“Just take care you don’t catch a cold.”
14
The cloud cover tore open and moonlight flooded the premises of Wolf’s Car Repair Shop. To the right, a pile of hubcaps, to the left, a heap of rusty fenders, and behind that, car doors of every shape and size. A narrow puddled road led past the mounds of scrap to a flat building at least fifty meters long. Half of the building was occupied by the shop. The other half was taken up by an office and a storeroom for parts. Cars were parked in front of it, among them the silver Toyota jeep. A wide-mesh wire fence ran around the perimeter, with a locked entry gate and two rough-hewn wooden doors, both of them unlocked. We slipped in through one of them and cautiously walked up to a wide concrete slab in front of the office door. It stood ajar. A narrow beam of light fell on our mud-encrusted shoes.
Charlie pulled his automatic. “You go first.”
I shook my head. “Guy with the artillery goes first.”
He prodded my chest with the gun. “You first.”
I said, “As you wish,” and put my hand on the doorknob. It didn’t look like an easy trick to slip on the concrete step, but I was going to try my best. I jerked the door open to the left, shifted my weight to the right, and spun around like a top. The edge of my hand struck Charlie straight in the stomach. While he bent over, gasping for air, I punched him twice in the face. His nose cracked and blood ran over his mouth. With an incredulous expression on his face, he crashed down on the gravel. I picked up his automatic, rubbed my knuckles, and listened. Except for Charlie’s subdued groans, the place was as quiet as a graveyard.
I prodded him with the tip of my shoe and hissed, “Get up.”
He was holding his remodeled face with one hand, clutching gravel with the other. He managed to raise his head and stare at me.
“What was that-”
“Shut up, and get up.” I pointed the automatic at his forehead. “One-”
By the time I said two, he was on his feet.
“Onward.”
Like a drunken sailor he staggered to the door, leaned against it and stumbled into the entrance hall, a rough corridor with a bare lightbulb and rusty coat hooks on the wall. Two gray blankets hung over the entrance to the storeroom. Behind them, a radio was playing. I grabbed Charlie’s collar and stuck the automatic in his ear. “Not a peep.”
He trembled. We approached the entrance slowly. Now we could hear voices over the radio music. When we got to the blankets, I gave Charlie a shove that made him fly inside, head first, jumped after him and crashed into a shelf full of headlights. Axel and Slibulsky were sitting at a table with two bottles of beer and a pile of jewelry in front of them. They looked thunderstruck. Then Axel pulled a.221 Remington Fire Ball, a weapon suitable for hunting elephants or shooting down small aircraft; one could also use it as a weight to hold down the roof in a hurricane-but for fast shooting, it’s about as useful as an eggbeater.
My first bullet struck his shoulder, the second his forearm. As he slid off his chair, roaring, I crawled over the stack of headlights, grabbed his black monster gun, and jumped to one side, both my guns at the ready.
“Next guy makes a move I don’t like, I’ll drill a hole in his skull!”
No one was even contemplating such a move. No one, that is, who knew what a gun is. I heard his paws hit the floor, then a throaty sound and panting. I whipped around and fired twice without looking. It was incredible. Even though the Remington had torn off half of his side, Rambo kept coming. Dragging his bloodstained ass across the floor, showing no sign of pain, he charged me on three legs. I pulled the trigger again, and I had to pull it four more times before the animal, deformed into a red blob, finally lay there motionless. I took a deep breath. Then I turned. Charlie lay whimpering between two oil cans, Axel had curled up in pain under the table, and Slibulsky looked paralytic. He surveyed the battlefield with an absentminded stare, seemingly trying to figure out what was going on. When that stare got around to me, it skipped.
“Slibulsky.”
“Mm-hmm …?”
I got up and went to the table.
“You have a gun?”
He raised his left arm slowly, raised his right arm, still in its plaster cast, and shook his head. Our eyes met for a moment. His were empty, expressionless as buttons. I indicated that he could put his hands down again.
“Turn off the radio and take care of Fatso.” I turned. “Charlie! Join the company.”
While Slibulsky heaved Axel onto the chair and Charlie came stumbling over, holding a handkerchief to his mouth, I looked around the room. Tall metal shelves filled with spark plugs, fan belts, and other parts stood in tight rows stretching to the end of the room. No windows, no ventilation. Dirty yellow light was provided by a row of caged light bulbs strung diagonally across the ceiling.
“Any more of those monsters here?”
No response. Chin on chest, holding his shoulder, Axel leaned over the table and breathed heavily. Now and again he opened his mouth, but all that came out was saliva. I stuck his Remington behind my belt.
“All right. You first, Charlie.”
He removed the handkerchief, let the hand holding it rest on his lap. Still pretending innocence, he said: “Me? But why me?”
I had had enough condescension from a pimp. Before Charlie could raise his arms, I slapped him, hard enough for the sound to echo across the room. He covered his face with his hands.
“Shut up and listen to what I have to say.” I lit a cigarette and started pacing. I was furious. “Since you like to think that everybody else is an idiot, you had to check me out yesterday morning, in person. Slibulsky could have taken care of that quite unobtrusively, and I wouldn’t have suspected from the very beginning that you either knew who kidnapped Mrs. Rakdee or were involved in it yourself. In the meantime, I had some other ideas, but when Slibulsky panicked and tried to send me on a wild goose chase-if not before-I decided to pay attention to you again. And, of course, to Slibulsky.”
I took a drag on my cigarette. Slibulsky didn’t move. He had been motionless for the last five minutes, resting his good arm on the cast and staring holes into the floor.
“The anonymous note was a gigantic mistake. Not only because of the shaky handwriting-it looked exactly like something written by a right-handed person who has to use his left-but also because I was bound to realize, at the After Hours if not before, that the note was meant to distract me-from Gellersheim, since I hadn’t planned on going anywhere else. And only you knew about that … So, while I was in the shower …” I had walked up to him. Now I reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out his Interconti notepad. Slibulsky reacted only by calmly smoothing the front of his jacket. I tossed the pad on the table.