“The Imam has notified us,” she explains.
“The Imam?” I’m surprised. “He wants the LKA involved? Why?”
“He figured that there might be trouble that couldn’t be contained inside the Ghetto.”
“Because of the dead manager of a whorehouse?”
“It’s one of his cousins.”
“So what? He’ll live. Half of the Ghetto is somehow related to him.”
“There seems to be more behind it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have called us in,” Natasha speculates.
“The Chechens?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Who else? The Turks?”
Natasha shakes her head, no.
“The bikers wouldn’t dare pull such a stunt,” I think aloud. “Thor doesn’t have a death wish. It’s also the Chechens he has an ax to grind with, not the Arabs. What good would it do him to raise up stink with the Imam?”
Natasha bends over the dead Salafist, examining the deep gash on his head. “What, do you think, did this? Baseball bat?”
“Maybe,” I reply, nodding. I study her sparkling eyes. “I know what you’re thinking. This simply reeks of bikers. But it doesn’t mean a thing.”
Natasha gives me a serious look. “The Imam has issued a threat against us.”
“So?”
“If we don’t hand the killer over to him, he’ll declare holy war.”
“So what?” I wave her off. “Why should it bother you when these jokers finish each other off?”
“Don’t you understand? He wants to start a jihad against the infidels. The idea is to export the fight outside the ghetto.”
“Out of the ghetto? What makes you think so? The ace of clubs?”
“He reads it as a Christian symbol, because the clubs are shaped like little crucifixes.”
I snort. “Bullshit—it’s nothing but a playing card.”
“You know the Lemons. They wallow in the past and have successfully convinced themselves that we’re the oppressors.” Natasha waves her hands. “Booooh, conspiracy, watch out,” she scoffs with a tense smile. “Man, they still blame us for the crusades.”
“What does Ali Bansuri think? That the LKA is behind the whole thing?”
Natasha strokes her chin. “No idea what he might be thinking.” She again studies the battered man.
Same as me. “Looks pretty happy, right?” I say. “Maybe he’s with his 72 virgins now.”
Natasha turns around to face me. “Is everything okay with you?” she asks.
“Fine and dandy,” I reply, fascinated by her luminous blue eyes and the pride reflected in them.
“You need fresh junk?” she wants to know.
I nod. “My case’s almost empty.”
“I brought something with me. It’s outside in the car.”
“Great.”
“Hauke?”
“Yeah?”
“Keep your eyes open for things that might be getting out of control.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“Lay low a little. Calm down the Arabs. Don’t antagonize them.”
“That’ll only encourage them even more.”
“The violence needs to be contained under all circumstances.”
“Cheer up,” I tell her. “When the going got tough last time, everything stayed inside the Ghetto.”
Natasha nods pensively. “If it just wasn’t for the crucifix,” she says. “It’s making me feel really uncomfortable.”
3
I live in the subway, station Samariterstrasse. Train number 5 hasn’t stopped in the Ghetto for a long time and the stations here have been closed off. But I’ve discovered an access to the tunnel system in a derelict building. Subways or sewers, I know my way around the city’s underbelly. It’s a good way to get from A to B unnoticed. As the intervals between the trains to Hauptbahnhof, the central train station, are rather short, I always have to be on the alert while walking the hundred feet or so to the abandoned platform of Samariterstrasse. From time to time police or security launch raids in the tunnels, but they leave me alone. One of the benefits of my job for the LKA is that it allows me to bribe the sheriffs with coke. I’ve made my home in the little ticket booth on the deserted platform, where I even have electricity and running water. Free of charge. My place is fixed up like a trailer: sleeping area, tiny kitchen, a crapper that even flushes, and a sofa. A kiosk about twenty yards away on the same platform serves me as my library, even though reading is not my only pastime down here. Every day I sit in the lounge chair I have pushed to the edge of the platform and watch the trains go by. When they slow down on approach to the station, I can make out the faces of the commuters, traveling from the boroughs of Marzahn or Hellersdorf to their jobs in Mitte, the heart of Berlin. Most of them are just dully staring ahead. But those who have window seats look at me, while I relax in my bathing shorts, my hand holding a cocktail from which I lift the little paper umbrella now and then to take a sip. Surrounded by rats and dirt. Temperatures inside the tunnel are cozy almost all year around. In the summers it can be downright humid. The working stiffs just gawk at me like at an alien. I guess to them it’s like catching a glimpse of a foreign world: the thrill of the Ghetto. The situation makes it okay to take a quick look into the abyss before having to face a day at the office. I even have a couple of fans—almost exclusively female. A brunette always presses a sheet of paper to the window. “You want to marry me?” it says. Funny, how daily rituals make people eventually become parts of your life. Maybe I’ll bump into her at Alexanderplatz one of these days and buy her a coffee. The thing with the rats was a bit of an exaggeration on my part, by the way. We’ve learned to coexist. When the occasional rodents come passing through, I usually toss them something. A piece of cheese or a bit of bread. Smart critters, they are. They learn extremely fast.
A little under three weeks ago I started sharing my little ticket booth with two roommates who otherwise would have been lynched by the Lemons: Lucas and Quasim. Even though it makes my place a bit crowded, the two
