from a towel. He's studying his reflection and holding a portable home phone in his good hand. He's clean-shaven and his hair is washed, but his skin is a sickly pale and his brow is already dappled with perspiration.
But considering that he just dug a bullet out of his shoulder with pliers, doused the wound with rubbing alcohol, and stitched it shut with dental floss, he looks fucking great.
'She died with her eyes open,' he says. 'Did you look into them, McGrave?'
McGrave looks at the caller ID on his phone.
It reads 'John McGrave.' The son of a bitch is in his house.
'Yeah, I did,' McGrave says.
'Then you know what I am going to see when I look into your eyes at the end of our next encounter.'
Richter opens the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, sorts through the prescription medication until he finds what he wants. Vicodin. He pockets it.
'It's a date,' McGrave says. 'Make yourself comfy. I'll be home in ten minutes.'
Richter steps into the bedroom. The bed is unmade. The furniture looks like it was bought used from a Motel 6. He glances at a framed photo on the dresser of McGrave, his ex-wife, and his teenage daughter, all of them soaking wet and laughing as they try to wash an uncooperative bulldog in a plastic kiddie pool.
'You have a nice family. I'll be back for them, too.'
He tosses the phone on the bed and steps over the carcass of the bulldog, a kitchen knife buried to the hilt in its throat, as he walks out.
Whoever designed Berlin-Tegel Airport had a fetish for hexagons. The terminal is shaped like a hexagon. The pillars are hexagons. The floor tiles are hexagons. The ceiling lights are part of a gridwork of interlocking hexagons. Outside, there are hexagonal concrete benches on a hexagonal-patterned sidewalk bordering a hexagonal parking lot.
The architect probably slept in a hexagonal bed in a hexagonal apartment and made his girlfriend wear hexagonal underwear.
But the hexagons go unnoticed by John McGrave as he emerges from the terminal into the chilly Berlin night carrying only an overstuffed gym bag.
He's a man on a mission.
McGrave stands out in the crowd of stylishly dressed and stylishly disinterested Europeans. He is wearing a beat-up leather jacket, a loud Hawaiian shirt, faded jeans, and dirty tennis shoes. And yes, they're the same clothes he was wearing on Saturday. Be glad you weren't the passenger sitting next to him in coach on the fourteen-hour flight, because he hasn't shaved, or bathed, in almost two days.
He approaches a line of tan E-Class Mercedes sedans idling at the curb. The driver of the first car, a short Turkish man with a thin mustache, steps forward and reaches for McGrave's bag. But McGrave holds it out of reach.
'No, thanks,' McGrave says. 'I want a taxi.'
The driver gestures to his car. 'This is a taxi.'
'That's a limo. I want a taxi.'
The driver points to the other Mercedes behind his. 'All taxis.'
'Do I look like I can afford a ride like that? Forget the der limo. I want the der taxi. Where are the der taxis?'
Again, the driver points to the other Mercedes. 'Here. There. All taxis.'
'Okay, I see them,' McGrave says. 'Now show me where I can find the cheap ones.'
Ladies and gentlemen, Tidal Wave is in Berlin.
During the Cold War, the shopping district of Kurfьrstendamm, known by locals as the Ku'damm, was a garish, glittering, glaring beacon of conspicuous consumption, shining bright from the walled island of Capitalism that was surrounded by the red sea of Communist East Germany.
But since the wall fell, all the action has moved to Mitte, the reinvigorated heart of old Berlin, and the Ku'damm has had to change. Its vibrancy today comes less from the big stores, fancy restaurants, historic relics, and tourist traps on the main thoroughfare than from the eclectic mix of cafйs, galleries, 'sex kinos,' boutiques, and bars to be found on the side streets.
One such place is Der Reizvolle Bar. The exterior embodies the contrasts of the Ku'damm. It has a tasteful, marble-tiled exterior and a garish, well-lit sign depicting a buxom woman hugging a grinning bear.
Der Reizvolle, by the way, is German for 'Sexy Bear.' And yeah, that sign looks just like the tattoo on Otto's arm.
Across the street from Der Reizvolle is a panel van, a vehicle favored as much by thieves robbing homes in the Hollywood Hills as by police officers involved in surveillance operations.
Two such police officers happen to be sitting in the back of this van, facing a monitor mounted on the wall that shows a wide-angle view of the exterior of the club.
The thin young cop with the prematurely receding hairline and the big goatee that he hopes will distract you from it, and who is presently second-guessing the wisdom of piercing his nipple two weeks ago to impress his girlfriend, is Kriminalkommissar Stefan Krementz.
The fat older one, with the rosy cheeks and an undiagnosed thyroid condition that makes his eyes bulge from his chubby face, and who is happily slurping up the Dreistern Hausmacher Gulasch, halb und halb, aus Schweine und Rindfleisch that he is digging out of a can with a spoon, is Kriminalkommissar Heinrich Bader.
Stefan looks at the slop his partner is eating. 'What is that? Dog food?'
'It's a delicacy from the old GDR. I buy it over the Internet.'
'The wall fell so you'd have the freedom not to eat that crap anymore,' Stefan says.
'The wall fell so the West could sell us more expensive crap to eat.'
Stefan spots something on the monitor. 'Hello.'
An old rusted Volkswagen taxi-van chugs up outside of Der Reizvolle. The taxi is rattling and spewing smoke. John McGrave emerges with his suitcase, looks around, and goes inside the club.
Stefan looks at Heinrich. 'Who is that?'
'You're familiar with the phrase 'Ugly Americans'?'
'Yeah.'
Heinrich tosses his empty can on the floor. 'Now you know where it comes from.'
The Sexy Bear Club is all chrome, neon, and skin. The music is loud, throbbing, and percussive. The clientele is upscale, fashionable, and almost exclusively male. The four dancing girls on the stage are topless, black haired, self-possessed, and arrogant, wearing G-strings and high heels, moving in unison to a well-choreographed routine. The only thing missing is Robert Palmer's reanimated corpse and it would be the 1980s all over again.
McGrave approaches the crowded bar and its neon-trimmed shelves of fine spirits. He takes a stool at the corner, sets down his suitcase, and waves over the bartender. She's a short-haired blonde wearing a low-cut red bandage dress that hugs her curves so tightly that she makes that blue babe Mystique in the X-Men look like she's got on a parka.
Maria is wearing a necklace with a pointed silver pendant that's like an arrow pointing at her deep cleavage, and McGrave follows the directions.
'Nice rack,' McGrave says.
'Danke,' she says.
'I meant the neon.' He smiles and gestures to the lighted shelves behind her.
'Now I'm hurt.' Her English is perfect and only slightly accented.
'What's your name?'
'Maria. What can I get you, big guy?'
'Diet Coke. In the bottle.'
She gets him a bottle, sets it in front of him, and pops the top. She starts to go.
'One more thing. You see that big ugly bruiser over there?'
