One Man, One Murder

He looked startled. His eyelashes fluttered irritably. He didn’t say anything.

“You must have checked the Yellow Pages. But why Kayankaya, why not Muller?”

“Because she’s Thai, and I thought …”

“You thought Thailand and Turkey both start with a T?”

“How could I have known that you’re a Turk? On the contrary, I expected-but …”

Unfinished, the sentence hung between us as if someone had strung barbed wire across the room.

They visit exhibitions in New York and go on safaris in Africa; they smoke hashish in Cairo, eat Japanese food, and propose to teach democracy to the Muscovites; they are “international” down to their Parisian underwear-but they’re not able to recognize a Turk unless he’s carrying a garbage can under his arm and leading a string of ten unwashed brats. I thanked my lucky stars that Weidenbusch was not my prospective landlord. I tossed the match on the floor and examined my fingernails. “What’s the name of the club your friend worked for?”

“It’s the Lady Bump. On Elbestrasse.”

“And to whom did you pay the five thousand marks?”

“To a man called Korble or Koble …”

“Koberle? Charlie Koberle?”

“That’s it.”

“Who else knew the expiration date of her visa?”

“Oh-a couple of friends, and my sister.”

“What does your sister do?”

“She works at a day care center. She does therapy there, child therapy.”

“She’s a kindergarten teacher?”

“Something like that.”

I fished out a cigarette and rolled it between my fingertips.

“You don’t really look like a guy who’d fall for mysterious phone calls. You should have known that people like that aren’t harmless pranksters.”

“But I wouldn’t have agreed to it, if.” He gulped, closed his eyes for a moment. His hands locked together like a couple of fighting octopi. “You see, yesterday morning, what with her bags all packed, everything happened so quickly, and then …” His shoulders sagged with exhaustion.

“Do you know anyone else who received an offer like that? Maybe one of her former colleagues at Lady Bump, for instance?”

“No, I don’t.”

“All right. Two hundred marks a day, plus expenses. Your address, your phone number, where you can be reached during the day, and your girlfriend’s complete name. I’ll see what I can do.”

Five hundred-mark bills emerged from his alligator skin wallet and wandered across my desk.

“One more thing. I’m not into strong-arm stuff. If you need someone to rearrange faces-”

“No, no-I was just so excited when I said that. I’m sorry.”

I accepted his apology and took the money. “Your profession?”

“Artist.”

I was dumbfounded. “Huh?”

With an eager but nervous glitter in his eyes he explained: “Yes, I’m a sculptor and painter. I write, too-short stories for television. I may even get to make a movie sometime soon. And I write things for the radio, as well.”

I stared at him. “You do all those things at once?”

“I can’t help it. I have to do things, I have to work and be creative. If I don’t, I go nuts.”

“I see. You ever try television and beer?”

He gave me a sweet and sincere look and said in a confidential tone: “I can’t stand that. I really can’t. I envy you for being able to do that.”

I wasn’t sure he’d gotten my point, but I didn’t really care.

“Your address?”

He handed me his card. A little flower on the left, a little flower on the right, and in the middle: Manuel Weidenbusch.

“Sri Dao Rakdee. Rakdee with two ‘e’s.”

I flicked the card with my thumbnail and said: “See you later.”

2

Frankfurt was covered by a blanket of rumbling darkness. The first raindrops started falling. I managed to more or less squeeze my Opel between two convertibles from Offenbach and ran up the steps to the Eros-Center Elbestrasse. Two gray plastic flaps marked the entrance. They looked as if every visitor had stopped to puke on them before leaving the establishment. I pushed them aside and entered the ground floor. Tiled walls and floor, pink lighting. The walls decorated with bosomy plaster busts and joke paintings of the genre “Hunter Pursues Stag While Stag Mounts Hunter’s Wife.” Invisible speakers played “Amore, amore” sung by a swoony Italian voice. The air was dense and sweet and seemed to move in waves as one walked through it. It was a depraved, gigantic pissoir de luxe in which the female attendants wore garter belts and colorful panties. Not far from the entrance, rows of doors stretched down half-dark hallways. Every few feet another door, and behind each door a room that smelled of sweat: a towel on the bed, porno pictures on the walls, a sink, a pack of Kleenex. Most of the doors were closed. In front of those that were open women sat on stools, bored and heavily made up, their legs stretched out into the hallway, their smiles as fake as glass pearls. This time of day, no one worked unless they had to. There were no clients except for a couple of weirdos who toured the hallways three or four times pretending that they had just wandered in by accident.

Tucked away in a corner was the establishment’s own refreshment stand. Soft drinks and small sandwiches for the personnel. On the counter three flies were fraternizing with the sandwiches under a glass bell. A small man wrapped in a blanket huddled next to the cash register contemplating a jigsaw puzzle, the unlit butt of a hand-rolled cigarette in a corner of his mouth. The puzzle seemed to represent the German Chancellor in fifty pieces. Next to the man stood a full glass of vermouth; at his feet lay a sleeping dachshund sporting a knitted vest. The shelf behind them held a row of dusty cans of lemonade.

“Slibulsky here?”

He shook his head without looking up. I watched him compose Herr Kohl’s chin.

“Having fun?”

He shook his head again. Droplets of sweat were trickling down my neck. My palms were damp, the collar of my coat felt scratchy in the stifling heat. I was being boiled alive, slowly, and I found it astonishing that he had wrapped himself in that blanket.

“It’s an easy one, just fifty pieces.”

He set the piece he was holding aside and turned to me. “It’s a freebie. From the party. I don’t care for politics, but it’s a freebie. Capish?” He sneered. “Normally I do the ones with three thousand pieces. At least” The cigarette butt stayed stuck to his lip and wagged up and down as he spoke.

He looked at me a while longer as if to say “and if you’d like to be punched in the mouth, I’ll be glad to oblige.” Then he turned his attention back to the puzzle. I smoked, he did his jigsaw puzzle. I checked the time. Quarter past eleven. I had agreed to meet Slibulsky at eleven sharp.

I had known Ernst Slibulsky for two years. We were almost friends. He fixed my car, I advised him on the choice of presents for his girlfriend, and whenever he’d had a fight with her, he came and crashed on my couch. Once a week we played billiards, had a couple of beers, talked about soccer. Sometimes we had too many beers, tried to discuss other subjects, and didn’t agree about anything. Three months ago, Slibulsky had started working for “Ibiza” Charlie. He bounced the johns when they got out of hand, he collected the money from the ladies. It was the first time he’d done this kind of work.

The small man sighed. The puzzle was done. He reached for the glass of vermouth but did not remove the cigarette butt while he drank. When he put the glass down, it was empty. He frowned, wiped his mouth with the