Copenhagen Noir

by Bo Tao Michaelis

  Maria tries to get into the red dress. One of her hands is useless.

  “I’m working,” the guy says from out in the kitchen, and laughs loudly. “No,” he says. “It’s going to be one of the rough ones. Nobody buys the soft stuff anymore.”

  Maria goes off screen. She’s gone a few moments. The sound of the man from the kitchen, he’s still laughing. Then we see the red dress close up, her arm rising, reaching toward the camera. The picture goes black. She’s taken the tape.

  How she got past him and down the stairs, I don’t know. But after she reached the street he probably didn’t try to catch up with her. She looked too beat up. It would look like a rape, still in progress. And he wouldn’t have known she had the tape. So he’d let her go. All they’d been doing was making one of the rough ones.

  Nabil covers his mouth. “I’ve seen him before,” he says. He makes a face, to concentrate. An escape from the images on the screen. Then he snaps his fingers.

  “I’ve seen him with Ali’s little brother. Down at Nørrebro City Center.” Nabil pulls out his cell phone, makes a few calls. Speaks half Arabic, half Danish. His voice switches between sounding chummy, they laugh together, and a little bit menacing. Our time is over. That time when we were the boys on Swallow Street. The boys. The big shots. But even now, nobody fucks with Nabil.

  He puts the phone back in his pocket.

  “I know where he lives.”

  Christian is back in the room again. His eyes scare me.

  “Let’s do it,” he says.

  “Let’s go over to one of my friends’ first,” Nabil says. “He’s got some things lying around.”

  I know what he means.

  I had actually thought I would just follow along. Do what had to be done. But no more than that. I’m the one, though, who bends over and pulls the toolbox out of the closet. Opens it on the workbench, finds a sports bag. The one thing I learned in prison was to make sure I’d never return. Three young men, stopped in the middle of the night, the trunk filled with baseball bats, they spend the night in jail. And with my record I would be back in prison.

  But a hammer, a wrench, a large screwdriver, and a pair of hobby knives, they’re all tools. Even if you’ve just finished doing time for a violent crime, the police can’t do shit. They have to let you drive away. I lifted weights with a man who always kept a set of golf clubs in his car. No balls, just the clubs.

  We’re out riding again. The boys from the Bird. Even though we have the streets to ourselves, rainy November streets, I stay under the speed limit.

  It was on a night like this that the police caught me. Almost four years ago. I tried to run, but when a big policeman from Jutland cuffed me, it was a relief. I knew it would happen. It had begun a year earlier and it had to end, one way or another.

  While everyone else went into job training or the military or found girlfriends who wanted to go to Ikea and buy coffee tables you assemble yourself, and many of them began talking about home entertainment systems with large, flat screens and surround sound, so they could hold each others’ hands and watch I, Robot, I became a dedicated amphetamine abuser. A few months that came back to me in flashes as the indictment was being read. Like emptying the minibar in a hotel room and waking up hung over, then looking at the price list on top of the television.

  Nabil enrolled in several areas of training at vo-tech schools, but always stopped after a short while. He talked about becoming a driving instructor. Next time I saw him he wanted to start up a cleaning service.

  As quickly as Christian became part of the neighborhood, became one of the natives, he pulled out just as fast. He moved away, went to school. The last I heard he was about to become an auditor or bookkeeper or economist. Something with numbers and lots of money. When I met him he was wearing a polo shirt with a Gucci bag over his shoulder.

  Now we’re in the car together. Our reunion.

  Nabil guides us. Down this street, make a right ahead. Otherwise no one speaks.

  We’re still in Northwest, close to Emdrup. “Here it is,” Nabil says, and points to a redbrick building. I drive by, park the car on the first side street. We get out. Everything happens so slowly, infinitely slowly. Like underwater. Three men, one with a sports bag in his hand. They walk down the street, come to a door. Slowly, slowly. There’s no intercom, one of them opens the door, and they continue up the stairs. So slowly, three men. Though I’m one of them, I’m watching from the outside. Feet climbing the stairway.

  Nabil presses the buzzer.

  If I hadn’t answered my phone I would be lying on the sofa right now. I would be asleep in front of the film I’d rented, a few empty beer bottles on the coffee table. Tomorrow I’d have woken up, watched the rest of the film while eating breakfast, fed my two birds, and went to work.

  The door opens. I recognize him from the video, a sunkenchested young man in a T-shirt and jogging pants. When he sees us he tries to slam the door. He doesn’t stand a chance, the door rams his head. He stumbles back a few steps.

  Then I see the knife in his hand. It must have been there in the hall, on the little table under the mirror, ready in case. He smiles for a moment, raises the knife. Then it happens. I wake up. No longer underwater, I feel the blood in my veins again. The world is suddenly hard and sharp. I can feel my hands, feel my legs, feel the air flowing in my nostrils and filling my lungs. I toss the sports bag full of tools in his face. Before he hits the floor Nabil has started hitting him. I was never hooked on amphetamines. At least not only. This was what I needed. What I was trying to snort up, to no avail. Now, in this moment, I know it. When I hear Christian close the door behind us, and we drag the guy through the hall and into the living room.

  We’re the boys from the block again. The boys from the high-rise on Swallow Street. We’re together again.

  I don’t know how long we keep at it. Not just an hour, a lot longer. With the stereo turned way up. We sweat, we laugh. I lose my sense of time. Remember only short flashes. Postcards of violence. One where I’ve raised the hammer above my head. One where I hold him and Christian sticks the handle of the screwdriver down his throat. One where Nabil jerks the guy’s pants down and reaches for the monkey wrench.

  We might have been easier on him, stopped earlier, if the room hadn’t reminded us of the images from the video.

  At some point he starts screaming. Screaming so loudly that he drowns out the stereo. This is after we’ve got his pants off. Which wasn’t easy, because he kept twisting, kicking. Nabil goes into the bedroom. He’s laughing when he comes back out. He’s holding a gag, a pink rubber ball hanging by two leather strings. In it goes, into the guy’s mouth. “One of the rough ones!” Christian yells, while he holds him by the throat. “This here is going to be one of the rough ones!”

  There’s not much left of him when we leave. He’s barely alive. It’s hard to determine which sex he is. We destroyed him. How do you destroy a man? Keep at it. Just keep at it.

  Early morning. It’s quiet in the car again. I drop the two of them off. Stop a few times on the way home and throw the tools in various trash containers. Then the sports bag.

  I take a shower before going to bed. Stuff the clothes in a garbage bag that I’ll throw out on the way to work.

  I lie in bed and listen to the quiet. My eyes are already heavy. I know that as soon as I wake up the hangover will check in. Far stronger and different from any I’ve had before. The first few minutes I’ll think it’s something I dreamed. A nasty dream I can blink away, that will be out of my body when I’m done pissing. A dream I’ll have forgotten when I smell the coffee flowing through the machine. But then I’ll remember that it wasn’t a dream. I’ll grab the duvet or sheet and try to hold on. I’ll sit there like it’s a bad movie and make a face and keep holding on until the alarm clock rings again. Telling me that the day has begun.

  First I’ll drive out and buy some new tools. Then to work. Be on time. Old Nielsen will be waiting with a new record player or transi
stor radio that should have been thrown out but some old lady has insisted it be repaired. The next few weeks I’ll jump up whenever the doorbell rings. Every time I’ll think it’s the police. Whenever I’m about to forget what happened, my sore muscles will remind me. But that’s not the hard part. Not at all. Time will pass. A new day will begin. New days always begin. The hard part will be forgetting how good it felt. To be alive again. To be the boys from Swallow Street, the boys from the block. Us.

  AUSTRALIA

  BY CHRISTIAN DORPH & SIMON PASTERNAK

  Vesterbro

  M Thursday, 6:05 p.m. E65 to Swinouscie, Reza’s Bistro arek opened the camper door. Reza stood on a stool with her back to him and both hands in a tub. She had rolled up her puffed sleeves, and her elbows were pumping. The camper smelled like fish. She turned, stood with a large cooked roach in her gloved hand.

  “I’m too old for this, Marek. I had to send Zbigniew out for gelatin for the aspic. And now I need shallots and coriander.”

  The rubber glove slid off with a snap. She stepped down from the stool, left the fish on the kitchen counter, and walked over to the laminated table at the back of camper, took out a cigarette from a silver case, lit up, and inhaled the smoke deep into her lungs. Then she came back, stood with her face inches from his. She had been drinking slivovitz again and had eaten something spicy. She lifted her forearm and showed him the z and the small green numbers of the tattoo.

  “They’ve tried to kill us off, Marek. They injected phenol in the hearts of my younger brothers. They shot color in Sonja’s green, green eyes and they got infected, but they didn’t let her die, not before she got gangrene. But we will never die, Marek.”

  Marek lowered his head, he always felt uneasy here. Glanced around at the screaming-red sashed curtains, the brown laminate, the green, red, yellow lamps, the picture of the brothers and sisters, the cousins, and the mother and father in a frame beside the television, the press photo for Zigeuner-Zirkus 1939, the entire tiny band with a Great Dane to establish proportions—the violinist to the right holding the toy violin reached the dog’s shoulders: Reza at nine years of age.

  “Irina says that you pull out. And you’re doing it less and less.” She pinched his arm with her small, hard claws. “Look at me, Marek.”

  He turned to her, stared down at her wrinkled cleavage, the ample makeup.

  “You fucking Polacks. Big men, but what are you shooting? Blanks? I want grandchildren, Marek.”

  She looked him hatefully in the eyes, but then broke off and walked over to the dresser, put on her large glasses. She brought out a folder. Marek glimpsed a passport and a pile of other papers.

  “We have a job for you in Copenhagen. One of our Polish girls has run away. Adina something or other. Olek will tell you everything. Zbigniew has arranged another car.”

  “Can’t I take my own car?”

  “No. You are escorting another girl. Here are her papers, straight from Moldavia.”

  Marek walked past the well-lit bistro. Another hooker job. Do they think I’m worthless? He looked in through the glass. His wife, Irina, stood inside, flushed, red blisters on her body. Five years and nowhere. She was giving orders to a girl who stood trying to keep a tub from spilling. He could feel Reza’s fingernails all the way into his soul.

  He walked over to his own car, grabbed the spare tire, 100,000 euros stowed under the rim.

  He’d reached 100,000 yesterday. Enough for a new life.

  The girl, pale and silent, was already in the car when he plopped down in the driver’s seat.

  “Marek,” he said. “I’m Marek.”

  The girl began crying.

  Thursday, 7:10 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V

  Henry og Connie Jensen was the name on the oval copper nameplate on the fifth floor. Adina had run and run and run like a deer in a cone of light, she was all in, and it wasn’t until now that she felt how cold she’d been, how scared. She had stood on the bridge above Dybbølsbro Station, wanting to throw herself in front of the train. Better to die than go back to Olek, better to do it herself. But then suddenly she didn’t dare do it, and she remembered Henry. You can come anytime, and I mean it, he had said. He always repeated it: Anytime. It was stupid to hide at a client’s place, impossible, but now he opened the door, welcomed her, stood there with his big furrowed face, the worried eyes, and she fell into his apartment, was sucked into the warm hallway. Henry helped her over the thick wool rug, over to the sofa.

  “You need to take your clothes off, Adina,” he said. “I don’t mean that way,” he added, without irony. “I think I still have some of Connie’s clothes. Wait here.”

  A brown bureau filled the wall to the right; tiled table, wing-back chair, floor lamps, TV. Christmas plates lined the walls, all the way around. With stiff fingers she lit up a cigarette and searched her bag; a half Rohypnol in foil, two codies, and a Valium. She stuck the pills in her mouth, swallowed them, and slid back on the sofa. She felt nauseous. Henry returned with a pair of much-too-large beige pants and a wool cardigan. He helped her off with her clothes, rolled them off her, the pantyhose, the clammy panties. She sat smoking through it all, it was nice to let someone else take over. He sat at the other end of the sofa and hugged her ankles.

  “What happened?”

  She didn’t want him sitting there touching her.

  “Adina, you have to tell me, or I can’t help.”

  “Lenja is dead.” It popped out of her mouth, and she doubled up; she wasn’t going to cry while he was touching her.

  “We have to call the police, then.”

  “No, no, no, Olek will kill me!”

  “Do you want some soup?” he asked suddenly. “I have some broth I can warm.”

  A few minutes went by as he rummaged around in the kitchen. Then a bowl of steaming soup was sitting in front of her, and he handed her a spoon. She was insanely hungry.

  “Lenja’s the one with the blond hair, right?”

  Adina ate with her face in the bowl, three dumplings and four meatballs, she counted them.

  “I’ll get out, Henry. I’ll leave in a minute. I just need to lie down a while.”

  Friday, 1:30 a.m. Hawaii Bio, Oehlenschlægersgade 1, 1620 Copenhagen V

  Just call me Yvonne, said the middle-aged fake blonde at the till in the rear of Hawaii Bio, a twenty-four-hour dive filled with porno films and sex toys at a corner on Vesterbrogade. I’m looking for Olek, Marek replied in English, the language she had spoken. Yvonne turned her head and yelled, Olek! Then she offered him a cup of coffee. She sat knitting a stocking cap with a purple border. The coffee tasted bitter.

  The girl was asleep in the car. She lay there hugging his coat. Ludmilla, fourteen years old, from Moldavia. She’d just sat there on the ferry, blue-eyed, cold, and frightened. Marek couldn’t get a single bite down her, so he’d gone into the dutyfree shop and bought a box of assorted candy, which she ate in the front seat. When they drove off the ferry she said, I have money for school, in English, and showed him a brown envelope. He looked out over the turnip fields and stuck a Marlboro in his mouth.

  She’d fallen asleep while he was filling up in Tappernøje.

  “Where is she?” Olek said, barging in through the back door. His eyes were bloodshot, he was every bit as blistered as his sister.

  “Who?”

  “You know, the new one.”

  “We’ll get to her. She’s asleep in the car. Your mother says there’s something that needs taken care of quick.”

  They sized each other up. Olek gave him the eye and turned on his heel. Marek followed him out to the stairway, where Olek took three steps at a time. Second floor: cubicles, they heard someone moaning in one of the closest. Third floor: rooms to let, they entered one and Olek passed him a photo—Adina Sobczak. Thirtyfive years old. Disappeared yesterday morning, emptied her closet and tricked a moronic Albanian at the till into handing over her passport. Last job: four Polish workmen on Mysundegade 3, t
he loft, lunch break, two hundred kroner per. Her roommate Lenja croaked yesterday morning, that might have made Adina crack. Olek pointed out Lenja’s things in the small room. Clothes, mashed down in a large sports bag. The breath freshener was hers too. Why don’t these fucking Lats brush their teeth?

  Only the metal case belonged to Adina. Quickly they dumped it out, a barrette lay at the bottom. Marek picked it up. Hello Kitty. There was also a receipt. She’d bought a brush and something in product group 16 for 67.75 in Føtex on Vesterbrogade, the day before yesterday.

  Not much to go on. Four Polish workmen who had gotten it on the cheap. He turned the barrette in his hand.

  “Find her,” Olek said. “Find her and do her.”

  Thursday 9:23 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V

  Adina brushed her long hair. The rain had made it ratty. Her back hurt, her lower back. Olek’s sperm burned inside her. All the humiliations, the beatings, the cold. Lenja had lain on the bathroom floor behind the shower curtain, naked, bloody behind her ear. Olek’s signature. He fucked them in the ass, then before he came he smacked them behind the ear so they would tense up and contract; they laid there waiting for that clout. She went over and opened the curtain a crack. One of Olek’s boys, Kofi, was selling dope on the corner. She’d have to wait until he left. She sat down and Henry came in with coffee and a plate of cookies.