Requiem for a Gypsy

by Michael Genelin

  “I like the blond hair. It goes well with your skin,” Jana ventured.

  “Thank you,” he said, unenthusiastically, his voice so soft that Jana had to strain to hear it.

  “Our mutual friend, Herr Konrad, has told me that you know a bit about the Turkish community, which I understand is quite large in Berlin.”

  “Kreuzberg section,” he whispered. “Our town.”

  “Zeki was forced to move,” Konrad alerted Jana, frowning slightly. “He got in a little trouble over a debt. I ‘assisted’ him in moving to another part of town. Not too far from Kreuzberg,” he assured Jana. “Zeki still does his daylight hours in the area. He’s just more careful. Right, Zeki?”

  Zeki got out a self-conscious “Yes.”

  “You’re in a hard business, Mr. Erkin,” Jana sympathized.

  “Sometimes,” Erkin admitted.

  “I assume Herr Konrad told you why I wanted to meet with you?”

  “Yes.”

  Jana glanced at her notes, making sure she had the murdered Turk’s name right.

  “We had a Turkish man killed in Slovakia. We think he may have either come from Berlin or had ‘business’ contacts here. I understand you might have known about him. He was called ‘The Turk’ in our country, but his birth name was Murat Tabib. Did you know him, or know about him?”

  Erkin gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  “Good. Tell us about him.”

  There was silence from across the table.

  “Tell her,” Konrad growled, not appreciating the hesitation.

  Erkin shifted in his seat, trying to make himself comfortable, unable to avoid the stares of both officers, his discomfort not abating no matter how he changed his position. It took a few more seconds for the words to come out. When they did, he spoke with a pronounced stutter, sudden intakes of breath leaving gaps between words. Again, an addict’s symptoms indicating neurological damage. Between this and the ravages of metabolic distress reflected on his face, the man’s body was signaling physical breakdown.

  “He was into the drug business … then into home burglaries … then cars. He ran with a guy named Balder. Balder also did cars. Burglaries too… . He’s supposed to be good with safes.” Zeki managed a quick laugh, which seemed to have its own stutter. “Balder’s German … but he speaks … better Turkish than me.”

  “Did you know a man named Akso? He ran with Balder.”

  “I think so. High voice. He … had a problem … with … with little boys. Liked … them too much… . Too much. The family of a boy … caught him. They cut off his balls.” He began to laugh, laughing so long and loudly that he began to cough, the coughing lasting for a long minute. He only managed to stop himself by running over to the breakfast tables and grabbing one of the containers of fruit juice and drinking almost all of it down without breathing between gulps. Jana used the minute away from Erkin to question Konrad about him.

  “This man is physically wasted. His speech patterns suggest brain damage. So how reliable is his information?”

  “He’s better than most. I know the Toothpick. Once in a while he’s off, but he knows better than to fuck me over.” He looked over at Erkin, who was still standing by the breakfast tables, panting from the exertion of his coughing, then turned back to Jana, satisfied that the man was going to recover. “I also think I know Akso, the eunuch. He’s a halfer: his mother is a Turk, father German. The man was a child molester until the family of one of the boys chopped off the family jewels. Everybody working criminal in Berlin knows the story. After his testicles came off, he dropped his father’s name, which was German, and now uses his mother’s maiden name: Akso. I think he did the name change hoping the community wouldn’t recognize him as the man who was no longer a man. I don’t blame him. Who the hell wants to be known as a eunuch?”

  He looked back at Erkin, who now seemed to be standing up, his breathing becoming easier. Yes, he would live. The German cop refocused on Jana. “A warning on Akso. Not having balls doesn’t mean you can’t be mean, and Akso is a mean man. People stay away from him.”

  Zeki Erkin came back to their table, still carrying the almost-empty juice container. He sat down, pallid from his coughing fit.

  “The man from yesterday, at the bar. I think maybe you want to ask Zeki about him,” Konrad suggested.

  Jana nodded. “Just waiting for the right time.” She gave Erkin a reassuring smile. “How are you feeling? Better, I hope.”

  “Yeah, better,” he got out, pleased that she would ask after his welfare.

  “Good. So, let’s continue. Do you know a man with a large birthmark on his face? Red-brown.” She held a clenched fist to the left side of her face. “A little bigger than this.”

  Erkin looked thoughtful, stoking the left side of his face as if testing to see if he had the birthmark. “I think so. Maybe.”

  “Why just ‘maybe’?”

  “I … saw it … him, I mean.…” He looked disoriented. “I can’t remember so well sometimes.”

  Jana felt the sense of frustration that only a near miss can bring. “Give it time. It will come back to you.”

  “Yeah.”

  She decided to leave it for a moment, hoping he would remember later in the conversation. “Where can we find Balder?” she asked.

  Erkin looked blank, a man without an answer.

  “Assume Balder comes back to Berlin, right? He has to bed down somewhere. Do you know where he lives?” Erkin gave her the same blank look. She tried another tack.

  “Balder’s in the car business. He comes to Berlin to see his contacts, people he either works for or works with. Let’s say he’s done a safe or some other type of burglary. If he steals, he has to take the goods he’s stolen to a receiver. So does Akso. Who does either one go to see?”

  She could see the dawn of a notion on Erkin’s face. “You have to … see Ayden Yunis for … that. He has a piece of the … car business. Stolen jewelry.… He … has a piece of everything,” Erkin finished in a rush.

  Jana checked with Konrad, who nodded. “Yunis owns a little chunk of this and a slice of that. On the surface, he owns a few restaurants in Kreuzberg. A bakery. Even owns a piece of a bank. But he’s more than that. He’s been around for a long time.”

  “A man who works the shady side?”

  “He is the shady side in Kreuzberg.”

  “Just the kind of man I need. Will he see me?”

  “I would think so. It makes for good will.” Konrad laughed. “He always talks to the opposition. Tells stories. Likes a good joke.”

  “It sounds as if you’re fond of him.”

  “He has a sense of humor.”

  “Ah, now I understand. He laughs before he takes people’s money.”

  Konrad grimaced.

  Jana turned back to Erkin. “Thank you, Mr. Erkin.”

  “You know … maybe I know … the man with … the mark on … his face from Yunis. I think maybe … I saw him there.”

  Jana felt hope rise, then told herself not to become excited over the information. The man was simply trying to please her.

  “You suggested you saw the man with the mark on his face at Mr. Yunis’s place. Can you remember when that was?”

  His face got blank again. “I … I don’t know.”

  “Thank you anyway, Mr. Erkin. In the future, if you remember, please tell Herr Konrad.”

  Zeki Erkin looked at Konrad, as if he had just realized he was sitting next to him. “Sure, I’ll remember.”

  Jana had her doubts.

  A few minutes later, they were on their way to Kreuzberg, dropping Erkin off before they actually entered the area. It wouldn’t be too good for him if he was seen coming into the area accompanied by police officers. In fact, it would be very bad.

  Chapter 30

  After they let Erkin off, Konrad drove with more deliberation, keeping an eye on the sidewalks as well as the streets. Jana could see that he had become more wary.

  “Trouble?”
<
br />   “No. Just making sure that things are as they should be and not how they could be. This area used to have periodic disturbances that bordered on full-scale insurrections. Christ, there was war on Oranienstrasse every weekend. On May Day every year, the whole fucking place went into convulsions.” He pointed to a small scar just above his right eyebrow. “No helmet, no faceplate. I was taking a cigarette break and some son of a bitch tossed a stone from a balcony. Boom, I was lying in an ambulance bleeding as bad as Akso must have been when they cut off his balls.”

  “Is the area still that bad?”

  “Occasionally. Most of the action has become a little more discreet. Now the protests are more form than substance.” He slowed down even more, pointing to a man standing on the corner.

  “We are now officially entering Kreuzberg. The guy on the corner likes to greet people who wander into the section by taking them to places they can get laid, get dope, or get killed, depending on who they are and how much money they have.” He shook his head in disgust. “In point of fact, it’s not always the same guy. He’s just the newest. When we take one down, as you’d expect, there’s always another to take his place on the corner.”

  The difference between the area they’d just come from and the area they were now in was marked. Older areas are often more beautiful than other, newer locales. With Kreuzberg, that wasn’t the case. It was rundown, dilapidated, decaying. The air had the cloying odor of garbage even when there was no actual garbage on the streets.

  The one thing that made it seem like it wasn’t the death spiral that so many older areas go through was the bustle on the sidewalks. They were alive with people. And the storefronts, rather than catering to the German public, seemed to belong to a separate population of Greeks, Eastern Europeans, counterculture proponents, and every other group that still hadn’t assimilated into the native population of Berlin. However, judging from the storefronts, the clear preponderance of the population was Turkish.

  “Look at the windows.” Konrad pointed to something that resembled a Western supermarket, the sidewalk in front of the market crammed with burlap bags full of everything from dried fruit to a thousand and one spices. “They speak Turkindeutsche.”

  Konrad was right. The windows advertised the goods inside with a patois of German and Turkish that only a native Kreuzberger would be able to decipher.

  “How much longer?” Jana asked.

  “Sooner rather than later. You said you wanted to see Ayden Yunis, so I’m taking you to see him.”

  They crossed the Spree Kanal, the water below not looking very inviting, and within a few blocks were on Oranienstrasse. Two short blocks later, past the carts and the street vendors and even more foot traffic, they parked in front of a large bakery.

  “This is where we find Yunis.”

  They got out of the car, Konrad checking out the building.

  “Mr. Yunis and his palace. When he isn’t doing something miserable to someone else, he’s a cheerful guy who loves to be around baked goods. Nuts, eh? He works his non-baked-goods stuff out of the bakery just to the rear of the ovens.”

  They went in. The customers, like the people on the streets, were a mixture of cultures. The bakery products displayed in the cases were equally mixed, the bouquet of honey and nuts blending with rye seed and yeast, a fusion of baklava and Berliner gebackene brot enveloping everything.

  Jana followed Konrad, who shouldered his way through the customers and around the counter, then walked down a small aisle, past the ovens and the racks of pastries and assorted breads in varied stages of baking. At the rear of the bakery was a curtained area in the corner. A number of people stood in front of the curtain, all of them men, several of them—younger and more belligerent-looking than the others—quickly forming a wall. They moved forward to intercept the two police officers.

  “Kriminalpolizei,” Konrad mouthed, showing them his police identification. As if following an order, the men dropped away, unblocking the way to the curtained area.

  “You made it look easy,” Jana complimented Konrad.

  “The police aren’t a threat to Yunis. It’s his associates he’s afraid of.”

  They reached the curtained entrance and Konrad, without hesitation, went inside, Jana following close behind. Ayden Yunis, an average-sized man with deep, sunken shadows under very dark eyes, sat at a small table working on papers spread in front of him. Jana had half expected him to be wearing a white baker’s outfit. Instead, he was well dressed, in an expensive tailored suit, with a tiny, delicate flower in his lapel.

  Yunis stood, giving them a half-bow.

  “Please sit down, Investigator Konrad. And you as well, Commander Matinova.”

  They sat at the small table across from Yunis.

  Yunis gave Jana a brief nod to go along with his prior bow. “Tea will be here in a minute.”

  “Thank you for seeing us, Herr Yunis.” Konrad spoke with extraordinary deference to the man. “I know how full your day is.”

  “All this politeness from a police officer to a man he thinks is immoral.” A sardonic smile flickered over Yunis’s face. “I return your respect with my own.” He looked at Jana, a glint of humor in his eye. “You’re probably wondering how I know your name.”

  “No, Herr Yunis.”

  He examined her face to see if she was pretending to have knowledge she didn’t have. He could see she wasn’t feigning. It aroused his curiosity.

  Jana saved him the embarrassment of asking about her reasoning. “We dropped Zeki Erkin off on the street. He depends on your good will to stay alive in Kreuzberg. Erkin took advantage of his opportunity by phoning to alert you that we were on our way. That gave him a stock of good will with you, or perhaps a favor of narcotics to feed his habit. He also told you I was not a German and gave you the name of the hotel where he met me. In turn, you had one of your subordinates call the hotel to verify Erkin’s information. I registered under my name and title. Your man then informed you what he’d learned.”

  Yunis was pleased with her deductions, playfully applauding her reasoning. “Very good.”

  “Not hard if you know how informants operate.”

  “I’ll have to remember not to trust that miserable little scheisse,” Konrad grumbled, angry at himself for not anticipating what Erkin would do.

  “You already knew that,” Jana reminded him.

  Konrad was irritated at himself. “I’m one of those people constantly required to relearn what I should know the first time around. And you, Herr Yunis. How do you deal with the Erkins of the world?”

  “I have to be my own policeman. I get no other assistance,” Yunis reminded him. “I’m required to know what’s going on. Otherwise someone will soon be ‘helping’ me to forget. And that would be the end of your bringing me such charming and insightful guests as Commander Matinova.” He regarded Jana for another few seconds. “I was wondering how I should pursue our relationship, Commander.”

  “Best to be direct with me. In turn I’ll be direct with you,” Jana suggested.

  “Except one has to trust those whom one is direct with.”

  “Think of it as saving time. We both profit by not playing games. It’s worth the risk.”

  One of Yunis’s men came in with a tray of tulip-shaped glasses and a large carafe of tea. The man ceremoniously poured the tea into the glasses, handed one to each of them, placed the tea carafe on the table, and then immediately left.

  They all sipped at their tea.

  “Tea is wonderful. It eases one through troublesome times.” Yunis took a deep sniff of the aroma wafting out of the glass. “There is a saying about why Turks drink tea at meetings. ‘Conversations without tea are like the night sky without stars. The tea eases us over the bad spots, past the arguments.’” He took another sip, letting out an audible sigh.

  “I truly hope we have no disagreements,” Jana told him, taking another sip of her drink, following the ritual Yunis had laid out for them. She raised her glass in a smal
l salute to the man. “Very good tea.”

  “Thank you.”

  Yunis studied her for another brief second.

  “You know how to be silent at the right time.”

  “I appreciate your kind words, Herr Yunis.”

  He continued studying her, eventually smiling. “I don’t think I’d want to gamble against you if you were on the other side.” He nodded, as if agreeing with himself. “I have a marvelous idea. I’m playing cards this evening with several associates of mine. I had a fleeting thought that you might be able to assist me by joining in the process.”

  Jana shook her head. “I would think that the participants will all be men. They wouldn’t be comfortable with me in the room.”

  “All of them appreciate an intelligent woman.”

  “Cards aren’t my game. People are.”

  “They each have their unpredictability, and are both dangerous.”

  “There’s a maxim in police work. You have to be able to at least see the danger to be able to avoid it. In this world, regrettably, I can’t see or avoid it all the time. And I can’t shun people if I’m going to do my job. However, I do know enough to stay away from games of chance.”

  Jana decided to end the preliminary bantering and get to the point of her being there.

  “There were two murders in my country. They appear to be linked. Two men, both tied to the events, are originally from Berlin. We think they may have returned here. One has Turkish blood. The other speaks Turkish. I’ve come here to ask if you can assist us in locating them.”

  “You’re asking me to help you arrest these men?” His voice had taken on an inflection of surprise. “I would never do anything remotely like that. I protect my people. That’s why I’m allowed to sit here drinking tea with police officers.”