“What do you mean, it turned out—?”
“Well, you see, the police came, and all of us had to go to the station, and Vasif had a long talk with the police. I wasn’t there, I had to wait in the reception room. Then Vasif came back and told me that everything was all right.”
“He didn’t have to pay a fine?”
“No, thank God, we had very little money back then, and Vasif was quite desperate when they took us in. But then he was happy again, and he didn’t have to pay anything.”
“The other driver—can you remember his name?”
“No, I can’t.”
“What kind of a person was he?”
“He was a young man. With blond hair.”
There were millions of those. However, the police had to have a record of the accident.
“Do you remember the precinct they took you to?”
“Yes, it’s not far from here, three blocks over. The accident happened just around the corner. I can show you the spot from this window.”
We got up and stood next to each other by the kitchen window. She described the accident again, in detail. Even from here, it was easy to see that it had indeed been Vasif’s fault. We stood there for a moment watching the noisy traffic until I asked her, “Where was your husband going on the day of his fatal accident?”
“It was a Saturday, and we were having breakfast when the phone rang and Vasif had a few words with whoever it was. Then he told us he had to go for a short drive, and that he would he back soon.”
She fell silent and compressed her lips.
“Do you remember that date?”
“The twenty-fifth of April, nineteen-eighty.” “You don’t know who called him?”
“No. It was one of Vasif’s friends.”
“Where did the accident happen?”
“On the road to Kronberg.”
There had to be a record of that too. I decided to leave Mrs. Ergün alone and go to the police. My first question would be directed to the Narcotics Squad. I wanted to know if Vasif and Ahmed had a record with them.
“Mrs. Ergün, you have been a great help. I’ll come by again tomorrow, and I hope I’ll know more about it then. Could you tell your daughter Ilter to call me today, either at the office or at home? She has the number.”
We said goodbye, and I thanked her for breakfast. As I was about to leave, the old woman gave a start, as if someone had kicked her. Reluctantly, her gaze strayed past my shoulder.
The kitchen door opened with a quiet squeak. Cheap scent wafted through the room. I turned slowly and looked in the direction of that perfume. Ayse Ergün stood in the doorway, on shaky pins. Mother and daughter stared at each other in silence. At last I understood.
Ayse’s eyes looked like the eyes of someone struggling through a fog. Unfocused, their gaze slid across the kitchen. A light but steady tremor ran through her small, thin body, and her fingers curled into her palms as if she were trying to hide them. Ayse Ergün was not a victim of syphilis. She was on the needle.
2
“Come again—what is it you want?”
He sounded like an ambitious officer dressing down some hapless private for his insufficiently creased pants. His teeth bit off every word so cleanly I was afraid he might do damage to his tongue. His steel-blue eyes flashed at me with irritable condescension. At least he did not pick his nose constantly, like Mr. Nöli.
But for the second time I had to engage in verbal combat with a hero of the reception desk at police headquarters.
“You got shit in your ears? I’m looking for the Narcotics Squad! Do I have to spell it out for you?”
He snapped his jaws and squinted as if I had poured boiling water on his socks.
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that! I can have you thrown out in the street!” He raised a ruler in a threatening gesture and slammed it on the desktop. The cords in his clean-shaven neck grew taut.
“Don’t tell me how to speak. Your kind doesn’t understand anything short of a kick in the pants before you condescend to give a halfway decent answer to a simple question. All right, I can find it by myself.”
While I was still telling him that, he got up, his face cheesy white. I turned on my heel and left the room. I didn’t hear him say anything else. He was probably on the phone, giving orders for my summary execution.
A pair of flesh-coloured nylons frisked towards me in the grey hallway.
“Excuse me, could you tell me where the Narcotics Squad’s offices are?”
She scrutinized me with a certain degree of awe. Maybe she thought I was a heroin lord who was finally turning himself in. Maybe she was just fascinated by my chin, which was still adorned with a dark scab.
“They’re on the fourth floor.”
“Thank you.”
This time I took the elevator. Number four lit up, and the scratched doors opened.
First I smelled him, or rather, his cigar. A moment later I saw him. Futt the Butcher stood waiting by the elevator door. Next to him stood a youth of slender build who stopped whatever he had been saying in mid-sentence when his eyes lit on me. I couldn’t help laughing.
A fat red vein swelled up on Futt’s bald pate, and his fat chest heaved. But the roar did not come. Instead, he broke into a smile like a torturer’s assistant who is delighted to see his next victim.
“Ah, it’s the envoy.”
He sounded beery and cheery, ready to offer me a cigar. Only his eyes narrowed. He could have had a career as a character actor in children’s movies—the sweet uncle next door who is fond of making peepee with the little girls.
“Ah, it’s the detective superintendent. How is the Hamul case? Are international complications in the offing, or was he just your average darkie? My interest is of a private nature, as you must have discovered in the meantime.”
Slowly Uncle Futt returned his cigar to its place between his polished teeth. He inhaled deeply, then puffed out a series of cute little smoke rings. The kid next to him must have heard about me. He was pawing the floor with his hind legs, and I had the impression that he was just waiting for a hint from his boss to hurl himself at me. With his physical proportions, he would probably have to resort to pulling my hair.
Futt blew the last puff of smoke out of his lungs and into my face and said, in the compassionate tone of a defense attorney who informs his client of the execution date, “My dear Mr. Kayankaya—as far as I know, I don’t have any urgent appointments this afternoon. Therefore I’ll spend some time finding out how to divest you of your private investigator’s license as quickly as possible. I’m sure it will be child’s play for a man of your talents to find some other form of employment.”
“Like, sanitation engineer?” the kid burbled, and twisted his lips into an uncertain smile.
Futt, however, didn’t seem to think that was very funny. He gave the kid a look of cutting reprimand.
The pair provided an excellent demonstration of the simply structured existence of master and dog.
Futt raised his eyebrows and continued, “Now, Mr. Kayankaya, I’m not a heartless person, but there are certain things that get my goat. First and foremost, it annoys me when someone thinks he can have fun at my expense. I consider honesty to be one of the noblest virtues, and if you had been candid with me, who knows, we might be working together at this point. Now, however …”
He waved his hand in an eloquent gesture. Dog-boy slobbered on his pants leg and gazed expectantly at his master. But Master did not return that gaze.
Instead of barking, Dog-boy spoke up. “Ahem, Superintendent, maybe we should, uh … shouldn’t we … now that—”
Futt’s short and decisive “No” struck him like a whip.
I was tired of watching this training session. I asked Futt, “I can tell that he can sit up and beg—but can he retrieve the little stick?”
Futt laughed. Not wholeheartedly, but loudly enough to make me feel sorry for the kid. The kid was looking at me as if I had been spreading rumou
rs about his tiny penis.
“When you’re done laughing, you might wipe the snot off your chin, or someone else might have fun at your expense.”
He grabbed his chin. I laughed and left him there. Before I found the door to the Narcotics office and knocked on it, I could hear the elevator doors open and the duo getting into it. During that strange game played by master and dog, I had somehow felt as if I were the bone.
A deep voice bellowed a drawn-out “Yes” and I turned the doorknob. The office faced east, and I squinted as I walked in.
It was a large room with three worn wooden desks, one of them hopelessly cluttered with files. It was the one at which the owner of the deep voice sat. He had the face of an intellectual afflicted by migraines. Two large red bumps, no doubt caused by his spectacles, adorned the bridge of his nose. He had taken them off and was chewing on one of the earpieces with a suffering expression. A steaming cup of black coffee sat on the desk. In a corner, a radio whispered weather reports. There was a whiff of fat cigar in the air. So Futt too must have made some progress. The man arranged his face in the grave wrinkles of one carrying a heavy burden and looked at me as if I were his dentist.
Since he did not give any indication that he wanted to speak first, I opened the conversation.
“Good morning. My name is Kemal Kayankaya. Last Christmas I received a private investigator’s license. Now, after ‘outing’ Santa Claus, I intend to prove that that longhair who called himself the son of God was in fact the most notorious hash-smoking hippie in all Jerusalem.”
He did not bat an eyelid, but went on staring at me with those migraine eyes. A kind person would have handed him a bottle of aspirin. I was not a kind person.
“May I suggest a method whereby you may avoid the pain of speech? If you wiggle your left ear, that means yes, if you wiggle your right ear, that means no, and I’m only allowed three direct questions. Is that a deal?”
Instead of wiggling his right ear, he said, “No.” A brief pause followed, and I wondered if that would be all I’d hear him say.
“I don’t know who you are. Besides, I’m not particularly interested in knowing who you are. If you just wanted to drop in to present this comedy routine, I must now ask you to leave. I am a busy man.”
He pulled a crumpled handkerchief out of his pocket and started wiping his glasses.
“I came here to find out if the Narcotics Squad has a file on a certain Ahmed Hamul. Last week he ran into a knife, in the district around the railroad station.”
He put his glasses back on. Now he looked like a graduate student of German language and literature after a hard night of studying. He was simply out of place in this environment.
“Even if there were a file, you would be one of the multitudes who would never get to see it. Don’t waste your time, and mine. Go make your wisecracks somewhere else. If you keep on trying, I’m sure you’ll run into somebody who thinks they are amusing.”
At the end of his little speech, he folded his hands. He looked exactly like a professor after a lengthy lecture who is hoping that the students won’t have any further questions and will now leave quietly.
“Who or what do you have to be in order to see those files?”
“Everything you are not.”
“All right, that’s that, then. But we’ll meet again,” I added, without the slightest idea why. While I was leaving the room, the radio oozed something about seven bridges I would have to cross.
I left the stuffy halls of the police headquarters and walked out into the sunny street. A really packed pair of jeans squeezed past me, and I kept my eye on them until a pair of sloppy overalls intervened. I headed for the nearest pay phone to make a call to a retired detective superintendent I know. Theobald Löff had been enjoying his pension for two years. I had first met him when he was looking for a former female client of mine in a murder case. He was the first and only cop I’d met with whom I had found it possible to communicate.
As a man who had retired from the police force with honours, Löff would be able to gain access to the files I needed. I put my two ten-pfennig coins in the slot and dialed Löff’s number. The phone rang three or four times. Then a harassed voice shouted to please wait a minute, the milk was boiling over. It was Mrs. Löff. They had been married for some forty years and their union was of the kind described as happy and boring. I stood in the stuffy telephone booth and felt drops of sweat trickle from my armpits, one by one. The booth smelled like digested garlic.
Finally Mrs. Löff returned to the phone and wanted to know who it was. I told her who it was and what he wanted. She said her husband had gone out but would return soon, and why didn’t I drop in for lunch? I thanked her for the invitation, slammed the receiver back on its hook, and fled outside.
3
The Löffs live in Nieder-Eschbach, a suburb of terraced houses on the fringe of our metropolis. The numbers on the glass or plastic lights hanging in front of the houses are the only thing that distinguishes one beige shoebox from another. In front of each one lies a manicured little lawn, four by four metres, bordered by carefully planted flowering shrubs, and these in turn are surrounded by a low picket fence, stained brown, whose sharp points serve no other purpose than to puncture the eyes of small children who may fall on them. The air of long summer evenings reeks of charcoal grill smoke, and one can see excited heads of households running about in their dark blue sweatsuits, swinging sausages and pork chops. I steered the Opel down the quiet street at a sedate pace, looking for number thirty-four. Then I spotted it on a wrought-iron coach lamp next to a door of blue corrugated glass. I parked and got out of the car. The only traffic noise was the distant buzz of a moped. Smells of half-cooked food wafted from open windows. Behind a barred basement window, a woman’s voice warbled, “Die Gedanken sind frei …”
I opened the gate, stumbled over a stupidly grinning garden gnome, and pushed the doorbell button. It responded with a high-pitched two-note chime. Mrs. Löff came to the door wearing a bright floral apron.
“Mr. Kayankaya! Come in, this way. Lunch will be ready in a minute. My husband’s in the living room.”
For a sixty-year-old, she was in fine shape. Her husband, however, was somewhat at a loss what to do with his free time once he was done tending his vegetable garden. Theobald Löff’s favourite pastime consists of regaling willing audiences with stories of heroic deeds from his law enforcement career.
I walked through the low-ceilinged light brown vestibule into the living room. When the Löffs had moved in, years ago, they had first placed a gigantic television set in the corner and then arranged the rest of the furniture around it. A living room suite upholstered in coffee-coloured corduroy faced the monstrous TV, and so did the other easy chairs in the room. Even the lamps were positioned to provide a pleasantly muted background light. On the walls were engravings of various castles and afghans with rustic motifs. Mrs. Löff must spend her long winter evenings crocheting these—at least, that was what they looked like. On two coffee tables lay seed catalogues and television magazines.
Löff sat in his easy chair, hands folded on his lap. He was looking out onto a patch of his garden. When I entered, he got up and shuffled over in his terrycloth slippers.
“Hello, Mr. Kayankaya! How nice to see you again.”
I shook his small, thin hand. Löff has an abundant head of grey hair: at first sight, it looks like a fur hat on the slightly built and now somewhat rickety fellow. His face is narrow and covered with little wrinkles like a dried-up apple. His imposing aquiline nose is its most noticeable feature.
“Hello, Mr. Löff, how are you? How is your lettuce doing?”
He made a face, enhancing the dried-apple effect. “Lettuce! That stuff’s only fit for children and octogenarians. I tore it all out and tossed it on the compost heap. Couldn’t stand the sight of it any longer. What’s the point? You spend half the year planting and nursing it, then you have to eat it the rest of the year. My wife wanted to freeze it! That’s
impossible, I told her. No, it’s not, she said. The very thought—to have to chew on defrosted lettuce, every goddamn day! I just tore it all out.”
He contemplated his slippers defiantly.
“But enough about that. Have a seat. Tell me why you’ve come to see me. I’m sure it’s not just to enjoy my old lady’s lunch sausage.”
We seated ourselves on the brown couch. He crossed his arms across his chest and looked at me expectantly.
“No, I didn’t come just for the sausages. I’d like to ask you if you think it might add a little variety to your days if you put on your policeman’s hat again, and helped me out.”
He cast an impatient glance at the ceiling.
“You know very well how I feel about that. Cut to the chase.”
I told him my story from the very beginning. I told him about Ilter Hamul’s visit, the threatening note, Ahmed Hamul’s dealing, the fast little Fiat, Hanna Hecht, Mrs. Ergün’s story, Papa Ergün and his accidents—all the way up to my visit to the Narcotics Squad that morning.
Löff listened attentively. I noticed that he seemed to be feeling better already.
“And I think that’s the whole story so far,” I concluded, and sat back to wait for his questions.
He slipped back into his detective superintendent mode. He scratched his head, got up slowly, found his pipe and tobacco, packed the pipe, and arranged his little wrinkles into a solid frown. I don’t think I could have done him a greater favour.
Sherlock Löff lit his pipe and let the smoke trickle through his nostrils with an air of deliberation. “Who is working on the case?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. It’s that guy who looks like a butcher, Futt, and some tiny character who flutters around his ankles.”
“That’s Harry Eiler. Futt’s shadow, even back when he was still working for the Narcotics Squad. He’s really just a cop on the beat, that’s all he’s good for. Nevertheless, Futt keeps using him as a partner or assistant—I can’t see why. He must have his reasons. Futt may be a nasty piece of work, but he’s a good policeman.”
Happy Birthday, Turk! Page 7