The Imam’s Salafists, all clad in white, give me the stink eye when I enter the building with Natasha and her entourage. I’d love to hide from their hostile stares. They cover their guns with their hands, while the SWAT team walks past.
Natasha gives me a detailed description of what’s awaiting me inside the whorehouse. But I’m not really listening. Like always, I’m distracted by her beauty. Maybe you know what I’m talking about. She’s a sight that makes the heart of an aging Pusher beat faster. A sylphlike woman, but tough as nails. Even though I don’t want to come across as being sentimental, pushers, too, can fall in love. You’d understand if you could only see her. Stroking her ponytail with her left hand, she strides along the narrow hall past the chambers that house the dominatrixes. Reddish light illuminates haphazardly stuccoed walls, where the paint is flaking off. All my attention is on Natasha. On the streets of the Ghetto unveiled women have stopped to exist, you know. The times when female Lemons showed at least their faces are long gone. It all started with simple headscarfs. In all variations. Slung around their heads a couple of times and secured with pins. Or loosely placed on top of their hair in granny-style. They also wore makeup, skimpy clothes, or spray-painted jeans. However, even back then there were those who hid under niqabs with only their eyes being visible. A few fans of the burka were also around. Since then poverty in the ’hood and the steady influx of people from the Lemon territories have drastically altered women’s lives. The frivolous game, originally meant as a protest against Western values, quickly turned brutally serious. First, it was the jeans and miniskirts that vanished under dark shapeless tents. Next, makeup was gone from the faces. Until finally the faces themselves were obscured by curtains of fabric. Walking ghosts. The double-walled burka is the latest fad. I’m not joking. Should the top layer tear, there still is another one below to protect the women from prying eyes. The principle also used for double-walled oil tankers. The level of escalation can always be raised yet another notch. Times aren’t getting any better, I’m telling you. Meanwhile, women affiliated with gangs and the human wrecks who have fried their brains with meth have become the only unveiled women around. The young men don’t seem to mind. They just don’t know any better, I guess. I, on the other hand, find it frustrating to be denied a glimpse of half-exposed tits and pert asses, when making my way through the ’hood. Freedom, my friends, is something you only learn to cherish once you’ve lost it. Thank God, I have a permit that allows me to get out of the Ghetto at least four times a week. Otherwise, I’d lose my mind. No idea how the Lemons put up with it. The only nude flesh they get to ogle is that of the girls on the billboards behind East Side Gallery. Digitalized lust on huge flat screens, about sixty feet high in the air. A free morsel, that the detested Capitalist-Christian society beyond Ghetto limits deigns to throw them. Maybe all those devout Lemons spend their time standing at their apartment windows and working their mangled dicks, while gawking at those hot virtual broads. Don’t ask me. When the screens aren’t occupied by scantily clad women bearing witness to the superiority of Western lifestyle, the watchtower staff belabors Christian catch-phrases, aimed at converting the Lemons to the Church of our Savior. A job cut out for Sisyphus.
“Hey, are you listening to me?” Natasha’s voice eventually reaches my consciousness.
“What?” I ask, admiring her feminine curves. “Digital asses,” I blurt.
Natasha laughs. “What’s wrong with you? Seems like you haven’t seen the inside of a whorehouse for a while.”
Embarrassed, I scratch my head. “I’m a little distracted... by... I...,” I stammer like an idiot.
Natasha turns and lasciviously puts her right hand on her gun in its belt holster, while tilting her body a bit to the side. I have problems meeting her eyes. She is in her thirties, but looks a lot younger. Like a ripe fruit. I should have let off some steam before this meeting. After having spent time in a Catholic boarding school the feeling that you missed out on something never seems to leave you. “What do you have for me?” I eventually ask.
“See for yourself,” she replies and motions to the SWAT guy out in the hall to wait for us. Then, she leads me into a kitchen.
A dead man is slumped forward on a chair, his head resting on the table. He’s white as a sheet, his limp arms dangling on left and right. His skull has been shattered. Hairs are stuck in the dark red blood that’s drying on the oilcloth. The Salafist has slippers on his feet. One of it has come off. Eyes wide open, he’s staring at the sink, where dishes have been left to soak. It’s Yussuf Bansuri, the manager of this brothel.
“Somebody wanted to make sure,” I state, when I notice the brain-matter in his hair.
“Sent to the great beyond with love. Looks like it was a matter close to someone’s heart,” Natasha agrees.
I just love her cynicism. A rare trait with women.
“Look at this,” she points out to me.
“What?”
“Look what he’s holding in his hand.”
I kneel and study the dead man’s hand. There’s a poker card stuck between two of his fingers. Someone must have placed it there after his death, I suppose. “Ace of clubs,” I announce the value of the card.
“It was the killer who wedged it between his victim’s fingers,” she echoes my own assumption.
I nod, yes. “A sign?”
Natasha lifts a brow, thinking. “Ever come across this symbol?”
“No.”
“A gang?”
“None that I know of.”
“What does it mean, you think?”
“Gambling? Gambling debts?” I joke.
She shakes her head as if I’d just said something stupid. “Stop fooling around, Hauke.”
“Why are you guys here,
