by Martin Suter
“English guys? Americans?”
“Both.”
It was nearly 2:00 a.m. before Allmen left Lonely Nights. He gave Rosy-but-I-don’t-have-thorns a kiss on the hand in farewell. And a generous tip since, for reasons he would explain next time, right now he couldn’t accept her suggestion to take a room in the Intotel.
7
When Carlos brought Allmen his early morning tea he normally said no more than “Muy buenos días, Don John.” He brought it at five to seven each day, not a good time for a conversation with Allmen.
On this of all mornings, when Allmen’s head was heavier than ever, his tongue more parched, Carlos decided to make an exception. To his “Muy buenos días, Don John,” he added a “Cómo amenció usted?” A rather formal way of asking after someone’s health in the morning.
At this time, and in this state, it was a question to which Allmen had no specific answer beyond “Muy bien, gracias.”
Carlos placed the cup on the bedside table and waited.
“I’ll report back later, when you have more time.”
Carlos started work at seven. Allmen could go back to sleep for a while.
But Carlos said, “I’ve got time. It’s only a quarter to.” He was so curious to know the results of Allmen’s nocturnal researches, he had taken the liberty of waking his patrón ten minutes early.
He was all the more disappointed once Allmen had finished his short report.
“Lo siento, that’s all,” Allmen apologized.
“No tengo pena,” Carlos assured him. “If you could get the receipts ready, so I can calculate the expenses.”
Then he wished him a good day and asked to be excused. “Con permiso.”
Expenses were an ongoing issue. It was against Allmen’s nature to collect receipts. That was for cheapskates. A man of the world was not concerned with where his money had gone.
He sat up, stuffed a pillow behind his back and sipped the tea, lukewarm now.
No one vanished without a trace. But sometimes the trace vanished. Like the end of a length of wool, lost in the ball. They just had to find it before someone else did.
8
It was Carlos who picked up the thread again.
“Gelbburgstrasse,” he said, with that persistence bordering at times on irritating obstinacy. “Gelbburgstrasse is our best bet.”
Allmen made a start on identifying who Sokolov’s clients might have been—for which he was entirely reliant on Carlos’s Internet-research skills—while Carlos gave some thought to the apartment block. In the brochure he finally found his inspiration: “Cleaning service, once a week, including trash disposal.”
That was it. They had to continue their investigation one social stratum lower. Allmen was the wrong man for that job. But Carlos was certainly dependent on him during the preparatory stages. He went to the library, where Allmen liked to read for an hour after his siesta, and outlined his plan.
Allmen reached for the telephone and called Immolandia. The woman who had helped him the day before answered. She sounded pleased to hear from him again so soon.
Herr von Allmen had a purely technical question. “I see in your brochure that the apartments are cleaned once a week. Which day is that normally? Our teams work mainly from home and frequently participate in international video conferences. It would be unfortunate if they were disturbed by the cleaning staff.”
Carlos had come up with this story. The woman from Immolandia didn’t question its plausibility for a second and asked Allmen to wait a second.
After some time she returned with the information that it depended on the floor in question. “First and second floors Tuesdays, third and fourth Wednesdays.”
“Mornings or afternoons?”
She asked Allmen to wait again. He heard her talking on the other line. “Mornings,” was the result of her inquiries.
Allmen thanked her, and promised to pass the information to the relevant department, who would be in touch directly.
Tomorrow was Wednesday.
9
Overnight the temperature dropped, and it rained so hard Carlos had to get up several times to empty the pots and bowls under the leaks in the library’s glass roof.
Now, first thing in the morning, it had started raining again, and Carlos, who did his part-time hours either in the morning or afternoon, depending on the weather and the tasks in question, had taken this morning off.
On the way from Schwarzegg station to Gelbburgstrasse he had to open his umbrella. In the other hand he held the suit bag with the suit in it. When it got too heavy, he swapped it with the umbrella. He had to switch increasingly often.
Outside the house was a station wagon with a taxi sign. The driver was helping his passenger stash a large amount of luggage into the trunk. Carlos took the lift to the third floor.
The door to apartment 12 was open. In the hallway were a few bags of trash and a suitcase. “Hello?” Carlos called. No answer.
“Who are you looking for?” a voice asked behind him. It was the man he had just seen loading the taxi.
“Are you Mr. Sokolov?”
“He hasn’t lived here for a long time.” The man went in and took the luggage. “And neither do I anymore.”
“Do you know his new address?” Carlos thought he might as well give it a shot.
“No, but I’m starting to be interested.” He shut the door and left, without a parting word.
Carlos walked from one door to the next. Nowhere was a cleaning crew to be seen. He climbed a floor higher. There, outside apartment 15, was a cleaning trolley. The door was half open. A vacuum wailed from inside.
“Hello?” Carlos shouted. “Con permiso?”
The vacuum was silenced. A dumpy, gray-haired woman came to the door. “Sí?”
Carlos was in luck. The woman was from Ecuador. That would make the conversation easier.
“I’m looking for Mr. Sokolov, apartment 12.”
“He doesn’t live here anymore.”
“I know. I just met the next guy. He doesn’t live here anymore either.”
“No one stays here long.”
“How can I find out his new address?”
The woman shrugged her shoulders. “You aren’t the only one who wants to know that.”
Carlos sighed theatrically and lifted the suit bag up indignantly. “And what am I to do with this now?”
“Are you from the dry cleaners?”
“Dry cleaners? Tailor! This is a tailored suit!” Carlos undid the zipper. One of Allmen’s many suits was revealed. Made of a very pale cashmere, in a shade his patrón had later regretted, the suit had never been worn.
“Have a feel. Worth over six thousand!”
The woman slipped one of her rubber gloves off and felt the fabric, full of awe. “Una maravilla!” she exclaimed.
“Who’s going to pay me now?” Carlos seemed on the brink of tears.
The woman softened. “Have you got a pen?”
Carlos closed the zipper on the suit bag, placed it cautiously on the ground and took a notepad and ballpoint out of his breast pocket.
“Maria Moreno,” the woman said. “From Colombia. She used to work here too. She said Sokolov had offered her a job as housekeeper.”
“And? Did she take it?”
“Don’t know. At any rate she left at the same time he left. Maria Moreno.”
“Got it. And?”
“From Colombia.”
“Yes. Got it. And?”
“And nothing. Maria Moreno. I don’t know any more. Maria Moreno from Colombia.”
Carlos sighed. “Do you work for Immolandia or for a cleaning company?”
The woman looked suspicious. “Why?”
“They must have her address in their databank.”
She looked at him as someone might look at a dimwitted child. Now Carlos got it. Maria Moreno’s immigration status was like his: illegal.
He thanked the woman and said goodbye.
The train was almos
t empty and three teenagers were sitting on the steps to the top deck passing a joint between them. Rain flowed down the windowpanes.
Carlos put the suit bag carefully on the luggage rack, swept the commuter newspapers aside, and sat down.
He hadn’t got much further than his patrón.
10
The Putamayo Club consisted of a sign saying “Putamayo Club” in colorful letters, framed by orchids. During the week it hung over the regulars’ table at the Alte Kanonier Tavern, among the pictures of soccer players, club emblems, photos of the bar regulars, playing cards, and dish-of-the-day offers.
But every Thursday it graced the entrance to the small ballroom between the bar and the bowling alley. There, the Colombians met.
The Alte Kanonier was in an outer district of the city. Their taxi stopped at a corner building, its upper floors looking over the crisscrossing tracks of the freight depot. An illuminated sign with a logo for a long defunct brand of beer read “Alte Kanonier.” There were two steps up to the entrance. Light shone through a latticed yellow pane.
The bar was quiet. A few men were playing cards at the regulars’ table. At another sat an old couple, indulging in a meal out. An exhausted woman was eating with her three adolescent children. A young couple were having an awkward discussion and four young men in sweat suits were drinking beer.
Carlos went ahead, past the bar and down a corridor. Loud salsa music blasted through a door as a barmaid came toward them with a tray full of empty glasses. They entered the Putamayo Club.
The room was not as full as it sounded from outside. The Colombians were sitting at long tables watching the handful of people dancing. Conversation was only possible by shouting. If any of the guests had been doing so, now they were silenced by the arrival of this odd couple.
Allmen and Carlos sat at one of the long tables, nodded to the people already sitting, and waited till the music allowed conversation. It was a long wait.
The silence when it finished was as overwhelming as the music had been deafening. The guests sat suddenly mute in front of their drinks and smiled at each other, waiting, it seemed, for some background noise against which they could talk to each other.
The man sitting closest to them, accompanied by two middle-aged women, was also the first to pluck up the courage. “I’ve not seen you here before,” he said to Carlos.
“It’s our first time here,” Carlos replied.
“No me diga!” their neighbor cried. “You don’t say!”
“I’m sure it’s not your first time,” Allmen observed.
“Me?” The man revealed a gold incisor. “I co-founded the Putamayo Club. Eight years ago. My name is Alfredo, by the way.”
“Then you probably know every Colombian in the city,” Carlos suggested.
“There aren’t many I don’t know.” The man basked for a while in this fact. “Four hundred thirty-two members—we started with sixteen—in eight years!”
Now Carlos cried out “No me diga!” in disbelief.
Although he had lived in Carlos’s company for many years, Allmen had never gotten used to the elaborate ceremony of such conversations.
He watched as the dance partners from earlier prepared to start up again, while a few of the younger club members crowded around the music system and rummaged through the CDs.
“This is just a normal club night. But you should come when we celebrate the Battle of Boyocá. Or Independence Day. Then we have to rent the barroom too. And there are still people waiting in line outside.
Allmen was starting to lose his patience. “Then perhaps you could help us,” he said.
“Con mucho gusto,” Alfredo said.
The music now made any further conversation impossible.
Not till the next pause could Carlos and Allmen pop their question.
“Maria Moreno?” Alfredo repeated, looking inquiringly at his two companions. They repeated the name too. “Maria Moreno?”
All three shook their heads.
At this point Allmen International Inquiries might have given up, if one of the women hadn’t then ventured, “And what do you want from her?”
“Somebody I know spoke highly of her. If you see her, ask her to call me.” Allmen passed her his card. The man took it out of her hand, examined it, and put it in his pocket.
They were still engaged in the elaborate farewell ceremony when the music excused them from it.
11
At Viennois the usual post-10:00 a.m. guests were in attendance. Allmen was sitting at his regular table, between the retired literary critic, who shared croissants dipped in a latte with his heavy-breathing Pekingese, and the model, no longer in her prime either and juggling two cell phones. One for incessant chatter, another in case of calls from her agent.
He drank his coffee as always, ate a croissant, and read a story. Today it was Anton Chekhov, “Anna on the Neck.”
The two ancient ladies who arrived and departed in separate taxis were absorbed in their lethargic conversation, revolving, it appeared, around the appearance of the passersby they were watching from their window seats. And as usual, the man who occupied all the chairs at his table with his coat, hat, briefcase, and shopping bags, was furtively clipping articles from the café’s newspapers with his pocketknife scissors. At the table where the three shop owners met, the fourth chair was still kept free—in memory of the antiques dealer Tanner, who had lost his life thanks to the dragonfly bowls.
There were few places where Allmen felt so at home as this old-fashioned café. He had come here even as a student, when he couldn’t stand it any longer on his father’s farm. For him, the clinking cups, the snorting Lavazza espresso machine, and the muffled, relaxed voices were more homey sounds than the snorting and stamping of the cows in the barn at his parents’ house.
Allmen put his book on the table, took a sip of coffee, and looked around. The doctor’s receptionist returned with a tray of dirty cups and drank an espresso at the counter while she waited for a new round of orders to be filled. Even the two city bureaucrats were there, bickering as always for the privilege of paying the coffee-and-croissants bill.
A cellphone played a silly tune. Only when he felt it vibrating in his jacket did Allmen realize it was his. He was constantly asking Carlos to change the ringtone. But all of them were embarrassing.
He answered. A woman asked, in Spanish, “Are you Señor Allmen?”
“Allmen. Just Allmen.”
“I’m Maria Moreno. Someone told me you were asking for me.”
“Thank you for calling.”
“Someone recommended me?”
“True.”
“Who?”
“A former colleague from Gelbburgstrasse. But she said you might already have a full-time job.”
After a short pause she said, “Not anymore. I’m free. But I don’t do offices. Only private homes.”
“This is private.”
“But your card looks like it’s from a firm.”
“This would be for me at home.”
“Full time or by the hour?”
“By the hour.”
“I’m looking for full time. With a room.”
Allmen hesitated.
“Or by the hour. Would be okay. Thirty.”
When Allmen didn’t answer straight off, she added, “Or twenty-five. But no lower.”
“You can discuss the details with my assistant. I’ll give him your information. Just a moment.” Allmen turned to the last page of his Chekhov book and took his pen from his jacket. “I’m ready.”
“For what?”
“Your details. Name, address, and so on.”
“What do you need that for?”
“To pass on to my assistant.”
The woman was silent. Then, in a different voice, she said, “I can’t work officially though.”
“Don’t worry. This isn’t going any further than my assistant.”
Maria Moreno gave Allmen her details. It was only when he asked ab
out her previous employer that she halted. “What do you need to know that for?”
“As a reference, should we need it. Just routine.”
She reluctantly gave him the information. “Artyom Sokolov, Spätbergstrasse 19. But you won’t get hold of him there.”
“Why?”
“He’s gone.”
“For a long time?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know.”
Allmen said goodbye and promised that Señor de Leon would be in touch.
He knew Spätbergstrasse. It was barely five minutes from Villa Schwarzacker by foot.
He put his cellphone back in his inside pocket and waved to Gianfranco for the bill.
While he was waiting he noticed another guest. He was sitting a few tables away, with his back to the wall, like Allmen, reading the International Herald Tribune. Allmen was able to observe him in the broad wall-length mirror. At one point the man glanced over the top of his newspaper and their eyes met. Now Allmen noticed his uncanny resemblance to a certain actor. The name was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t quite remember.
He turned back to his book, but the actor’s name was bothering him. He kept looking back at the man with the newspaper. Next time their eyes met, the man’s turned to look past him. Allmen followed his gaze and saw two men sitting at a window table, turned slightly aside.
As he made for the exit after paying, he heard them talking. They were English.
12
The house at Spätbergstrasse 19 was an unfortunate piece of architecture, a 1960s villa built in a mixture of the English and Ticino country house styles. A look without precedent or influence in this district, luckily.
It was built only ten yards from the dense cypress hedge that screened the property from the street. However, this left room for a large garden on the west side, the front of the building. There must have been a fine view of the lake and the mountains from that spot.
The house did not look lived in. The shutters on the ground floor were closed, the windows on the upper floor uncurtained. The lawn on either side of the flagstones to the front door needed a trim, and the mailbox set into the gatepost was overflowing with free magazines and leaflets, despite the sign saying, “Stop! No Adverts!” On the mailbox nameplate someone had written by hand, “A. S.”