Good As Gone (Simon Fisk Novels)

by Douglas Corleone

  “And the girl?”

  He sighed, shrugged his shoulders. “When the world economy collapsed, Simon, most groups decided to diversify. Many drug traffickers began trafficking in humans.”

  “But an American girl of six, snatched from a hotel room in Paris? Surely that doesn’t fit any MO you’ve ever heard of.”

  “No,” Ostermann conceded, “it doesn’t. But then, you must consider that Turkey lies next to Syria, Iraq, and Iran. If these two thugs, Dietrich and Karl, brought the girl here to Berlin, chances are this is just a stopping-off point.” He paused but continued walking. “That the girl’s father designs innovative weaponry not sanctioned by the U.S. government does not seem incidental to me. It is possible the girl was taken to lure the father. Perhaps this is Iran’s sordid way of extending Vince Sorkin an offer of employment.”

  It was nearing 11:00 P.M. when we entered the underground station. We stopped at an electronic ticket machine and purchased two one-day travel cards, then waited ten minutes on a platform with a smattering of other people until a mustard-yellow train arrived right on time. The train itself smelled of skunked beer, and looking around it was easy to see why. Of the dozen passengers nine were teenage boys, each with a large brown paper bag sitting between his thighs.

  We got off the U-Bahn at Gneisenaustrasse after a brief ride, the Glock that Davignon had provided me weighing heavily in the holster against the side of my chest as we ascended the cement steps back to the street.

  From there, Ostermann led us straight to Tunnelbar, a relatively well-lit establishment with a young, energetic crowd. Not at all what I had expected.

  “You taking us to pick up women or look for criminal sorts?” I asked him.

  “Patience, Simon,” Ostermann said. “This is where I usually find my favorite informant.”

  We moved slowly through several loud, crowded rooms before stepping into a lounge-type area with a relaxed vibe. In the far corner two dark men reclined on a couch, while a third sat comfortably in an oversize chair, sipping from a dark red drink.

  “Alim,” Ostermann said, “how nice to see you.”

  Alim didn’t appear quite as pleased. He motioned for the two other men to leave the room and grudgingly offered us the couch. As his friends left, Alim called out, “Another Wodka Gorbatschow and cranberry.” He turned to us. “Would you gentlemen like anything to drink?”

  “We’re fine,” Ostermann said. “You’ve been watching the news lately, Alim?”

  The young Turk shrugged. “What do I care about news, unless it involves me.”

  Ostermann nodded. “Well, allow me to update you, then. A few days ago, a six-year-old American girl was taken from her parents’ hotel room in Paris. My friend here, who is not a policeman but works privately like me, has obtained evidence that the girl was brought here to Berlin by two German men named Dietrich and Karl.”

  Alim smiled smugly. “I know at least two dozen Dietrichs and twice as many Karls, Herr Ostermann. Tell your friend he should return to Paris and collect more evidence.”

  Ostermann looked around the room at the young, mellow faces. The speakers in the lounge were turned low and everyone was seated, a drink in one hand, one leg folded over the other. Ostermann leaned toward Alim and said, “For the time being, this is all we have to go on. So tell me where I can find these two dozen Dietrichs and four dozen Karls, and my friend and I will be on our way.”

  The Turk smirked and turned away from us. When he spoke, he raised his voice so that anyone in the room could hear.

  “You know better than to come to me with this shit, Ostermann. I know nothing of what you are talking about. Now get the fuck out of my face.”

  In one smooth move, Ostermann leaped from his seat, snatched the rocks glass from Alim’s hand, and smashed it against the Turk’s forehead. Alim cried out and dropped to the floor as blood spilled into his eyes.

  I stood and tried to play it cool, gave a cursory glance around the room. Everyone had turned his head but no one else was rising from his seat. One look at Ostermann standing over the bloody Alim and no one wanted to get involved.

  “Talk to me again like that, Alim,” Ostermann said, “and I will see that you die an old man in prison.”

  “Easy,” I said in Ostermann’s ear. “Remember, if the police show, I’m not leaving Germany.”

  As I said it, one of Alim’s friends returned with the vodka and cranberry. He took one look at Alim, bloodied on the floor, and turned to leave. I grabbed him, brought him roughly over to the couch, and seated him, while stealing another glimpse around the lounge, eyeing down the one guy who’d taken out his smartphone. I took a single step toward him and he stashed the phone back in his jacket.

  Ostermann said, “So, Alim, think hard. Do you know any thugs named Dietrich and Karl who are friends or confederates? Anyone who recently took a business trip to Paris?”

  Alim remained on the floor, sobbing. Ostermann lifted his foot and stamped on the Turk’s right hand. Alim screamed out as his friend popped off the couch and cried, “I do, Herr Ostermann. Please do not hurt him anymore.”

  Relieved, I turned to the friend.

  “What is your name?” Ostermann asked him.

  “Sidika.”

  “And you know of a Dietrich and Karl who recently returned from Paris?”

  “I have not seen them since they returned,” Sidika said. “But there were two men who called each other Karl and Dietrich, bragging about going on a holiday to Barcelona last week.”

  “How do you know this? You were listening in?”

  “No, I do business with their friend, Hans. Hans was supposed to go on the trip as well, but he backed out at the last moment for a reason he wouldn’t say.”

  “Where can we find this Dietrich and Karl?” Ostermann said.

  “That I do not know. But I can give you Hans’s address here in X-berg.”

  Chapter 15

  From the opposite side of the street we saw lights on in the flat. Ostermann wanted to go in right away, but I suggested we hold back.

  “It’s not even midnight,” I said. “What are the odds this guy’s staying home tonight?”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “We wait an hour. If he exits the building, we tail him. Maybe he leads us directly to Dietrich and Karl.”

  Ostermann frowned. “And if he doesn’t leave the building in the next hour?”

  “Then we go in and put a gun to his head.”

  We waited for approximately forty minutes, I with my hands in my pockets, Ostermann puffing on Haus Bergmann cigarettes. We didn’t speak. The wind made it feel like twenty below. And to think, I used to love the cold. Probably because my father hated it. Constantly threatened to move us to South Florida. I’d told him I’d rather die.

  “There,” I said as lights began to blink out in Hans’s flat. “Stamp out that lung dart and get ready to move.”

  Ostermann flicked the butt into the street as Hans came bounding down the steps. The streets were fairly dead, which made tailing Hans a bit of a trick. Fortunately, he didn’t go very far, only to Obentrautstrasse, to the famous nightclub SO36.

  “You know, Iggy Pop used to come here,” Ostermann said as we waited in line to get in.

  “Is that right?”

  “Back in the seventies, Berlin was home to the punk-rock movement.”

  I looked at him. “You’re not going to tell me that you were a punk back then, are you?”

  Ostermann smiled. “To the bone, Simon. To the fucking bone.”

  Tonight was metal night. A live band with painted faces played on stage in front of an ape-shit-crazy mosh pit. I’d never thought I’d find myself missing the techno music at Le Cab back in Paris.

  Hans edged around the crowd and we followed at a safe distance. First he went to the bar, ordered a shot of Jägermeister and chased it with a Monster Energy Drink. Then he roamed by himself for a good half hour, stopping off at the bar for a shot of Jäger every ten minutes or so.<
br />
  “Great, he’s a loner,” I said to Ostermann. “We’re wasting valuable time.”

  “Give it another fifteen minutes,” he said over the metal. “It’s early yet for Kreuzberg.”

  We waited. Watched Hans circle the club another two, three times, not bothering to speak to anyone. He did another shot, chased it with another energy drink. After twenty minutes I was ready to approach him, but Ostermann held me back. And sure enough, ten minutes later, Hans met up with a number of friends who had just entered the club.

  “Recognize any of them?” Ostermann said.

  I couldn’t be sure. But of the five, only two had light hair. So, if Dietrich and Karl were among them, those were our men.

  “Only one way to find out,” I said. “We’ll wait for one of them to go to the pisser. You’ll watch the door while I go in and have a chat with him.”

  “I can do you one better than that,” Ostermann said. “See those girls over there in the corner? They’re working girls. This is their off night. But for the right price, they’ll take our friends into the back alley and give ’em a wank.”

  I wasn’t exactly comfortable with Ostermann’s suggestion. Still, a little girl’s life hung in the balance. I pulled some euros from my pocket and handed them to him. “Will this cover it?”

  He glanced down at the notes. “Are you kidding? This should cover every bloke in the club. Be right back.”

  I watched Ostermann go up to the skinny, young girls and slip them some money. He turned slightly and motioned to Hans’s group with his sharp chin. Then he strolled back to me.

  I said, “You sure these posers are going to believe these girls just picked them out of the crowd and want to take them out back for sex?”

  Ostermann smiled at me. “Welcome to Europe, my friend.”

  *

  Ten minutes later, Ostermann and I stepped into the narrow back alley. Ostermann raised his SIG P226 as I removed the Glock from inside my jacket.

  “Now which of you ladies is Dietrich and which is Karl?” Ostermann said.

  The girls quickly came off their haunches. One of the two screamed. The other threw her hands over her mouth.

  “Quiet, girls,” Ostermann said. “Go on your way. Tell anyone what you saw and we’ll find you before you can say, ‘Ich bin eine Hure.’”

  The emaciated girls took off down the alley. The men zipped up their flies, buttoned their denims, buckled their belts. If they were afraid, they didn’t show it.

  “Now answer his goddamn question,” I said.

  “I am Dietrich,” said the taller of the two in a heavy German accent. He was wearing a pair of lightly tinted glasses with large black frames, a Rammstein T-shirt stretched across a broad chest.

  The air was cold enough that I could see his breath.

  I stepped up to Dietrich. Removed his glasses and studied his face. Close enough to the passport photo to make me think we had the right men. I took a step back, elbows bent, ready to raise the gun if I needed to.

  “What were you two doing in Paris earlier this week?” I said.

  “We weren’t in Paris,” Dietrich replied evenly. “We were in Barcelona. On holiday.”

  “Wrong,” I said. “You were checked in to room 506 at the Hotel Lyon.”

  Calmly, he said, “I am afraid you have us mistaken for someone else. We were in Barcelona. On holiday.”

  “Lie to me again,” I said, “and this is going to turn out bad for both of you. Now, what were you doing in Paris?”

  “We weren’t in Paris,” Dietrich repeated in that same damn robotic voice. “We were in Barcelona. On holiday.”

  Before I could utter another word, Ostermann smashed Dietrich in the face with the butt of his gun. The blow broke the German’s nose, blood spilling down his mouth and chin like a macabre waterfall.

  The man who must have been Karl sprang forward, tried to grab Ostermann’s gun, but he was too slow. Ostermann caught him with a right elbow to the jaw, threw him hard against the brick wall. Stuck his SIG P226 into Karl’s mouth.

  I straightened Dietrich up, eyed Ostermann with contempt, hoping he wouldn’t make another move with the gun. Particularly not one that could earn us a few decades in prison.

  “The next lie earns you a dislocated kneecap,” Ostermann said to Dietrich. “And your friend here loses the left side of his face.”

  “We don’t know what the fuck you’re going on about!” Dietrich tried.

  Ostermann cocked the hammer of his gun. Karl began emitting nervous sounds from deep in his throat, his lips still wrapped tightly around the barrel of Ostermann’s pistol.

  “I think your friend Karl here is trying to tell us otherwise,” Ostermann said.

  “We weren’t in Paris!” Dietrich shouted. “We were in Barcelona! On holiday!”

  Ostermann maneuvered the gun so that the barrel could be seen inside Karl’s left cheek. He moved his finger to the trigger.

  Christ, I thought. Now who’s the psycho?

  “Take the gun out of his mouth,” I ordered Ostermann, sweat dripping from my hairline despite the bitter temps. He didn’t even look my way.

  “All right, Dietrich,” Ostermann said without moving a muscle. “Start talking or it’s Karl’s funeral. If you remain quiet after that, you’re not even going to be around to be a pallbearer.”

  I glanced down at Karl’s legs. His blue jeans were turning black as he pissed himself.

  “All right, all right,” Dietrich said, finally in a genuine panic. “We were in Paris, Karl and I. We were given a job to do.”

  “What was that job?” I said, trying to remain focused, hoping Ostermann’s finger didn’t become too itchy.

  “T-to take a child,” Dietrich stammered. “An American girl named Lindsay Sorkin.”

  “Where did you take her?”

  “Only as far as Hauptbahnof.”

  Hauptbahnof was Berlin’s central railway station, a modern monstrosity with two sky-scraping glass-and-steel office towers and a massive main hall that doubled as a shopping mall with a couple of dozen restaurants.

  “Be more specific. Where in Hauptbahnof?”

  “The lower basement, near the Karlstadt grocery. Our instructions were to leave her in the third stall of a men’s room that was closed for repair. Someone else would take her from there. We do not know who.”

  “Who hired you?” I said.

  “His name is…” Dietrich swallowed hard, tried to catch his breath. “His name is Talik. I do not know his surname. He arrived here from Istanbul only a few days ago. I was introduced to him by his nephew.”

  “His nephew?”

  “Alim. Alim Sari. He’s a heroin dealer. Lives somewhere on Mehringdamm here in X-berg.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Ostermann shouted.

  “Your Alim?” I said.

  Ostermann nodded.

  I turned back to Dietrich. Drool dripped down his chin, and blood continued to flow from his nose.

  “Where can we find this Talik?” I said.

  “I do not know. We met him at Viktoriapark, near where Alim lives.”

  “All right,” I said. “Give us Alim’s address.”

  “It is in my wallet,” Dietrich said.

  “Remove your wallet,” I told him. “Slowly.”

  He did. With trembling fingers, Dietrich opened his wallet, flipped through some cards, and gave us the address.

  I was about to demand that Dietrich turn over his phone when Ostermann suddenly took the butt of his gun and knocked Karl out cold. Soon as he did, Dietrich broke into a run. Ostermann dashed after him, caught him just before he could escape the alley.

  I hurried to them, but before I could intercede, Ostermann had Dietrich on the ground and was kicking him mercilessly. I grabbed Ostermann and, with all my strength, dragged him away from the fallen kidnapper. As I did, I looked back to make sure Dietrich was still breathing.

  Chapter 16

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” I said once we near
ed the end of Mehringdamm.

  I was angry. Livid, really. I wasn’t in the torture business. Never had been. These two hadn’t needed guns in their mouths to make them talk. And they sure as hell hadn’t needed concussions after they’d already spilled their guts.

  “What choice did I have?” Ostermann said. “They would have warned Alim we were coming. Besides, it was fun. Did you see the one named Karl piss himself?”

  “I nearly pissed myself.”

  “Well, you’d still have five suits left,” he said with a chuckle.

  I didn’t even smile, just looked away.

  After Ostermann knocked them out cold, we checked the men for identification. The unconscious kidnappers were named Dietrich Braun and Karl Finster. Nothing else on their persons was of any use.

  “Eight years ago, you called me a psycho just for carrying a gun,” I said. “Now you’re running around like you’re Clint Eastwood.”

  “I am a different man now, Simon. I have a son. Rest assured, my beating two child kidnappers in a back alley of a Berlin nightclub will not cost me a single hour of sleep.”

  I grabbed hold of his arm, freezing him under the yellow glow of a streetlamp.

  “Well, maybe it should,” I growled.

  “You’re serious?” he said with that piercing blue stare of his. “This Dietrich and Karl, they kidnapped a six-year-old girl, Simon. We have no idea what has been done to her. But you, you know what has already been done to her family. You really think these two men deserved something better? We should have killed them, if you ask me.”

  I released his arm. “I’m here in Berlin to find this little girl, not to execute the men responsible.”

  “We executed no one,” he said flatly. “I merely knocked them out. And I would do it again and again and again and again.” Ostermann clutched me by the shoulders. “Tell me, Simon. What if instead of Lindsay Sorkin, these men had taken Hailey Fisk? What then? Would you have let them live?”