Copenhagen Noir

by Bo Tao Michaelis

  “You’ll bring them to me now,” Bruiser says. His tone is menacing.

  “If I’m not delayed or find something better to do,” Sleipner says, and leaves.

  Outside, Sleipner makes sure he is not being followed, then walks to a supermarket and goes to customer service to request the return of a full grocery sack that earlier in the day he dropped off for safekeeping. He is given the sack, which contains groceries and mortgages.

  Sitting on a park bench, he pulls out the mortgages. Later he walks into a post office and mails a thin envelope with fifty thousand kroner to an address in Jutland.

  He walks back to his table, where Bruiser sits with four empty and one half-full whiskey glasses and waits for him.

  “There,” Sleipner says, and lays thirty-one mortgages on the table.

  Bruiser counts them. “There’s one mortgage missing,” he says. He speaks slowly, almost lifelessly, yet with a threatening undertone, as if he is the quiet before the storm.

  “Of course. Naturally, I’ve kept one,” Sleipner says. “Otherwise I’d be walking around scared that you’ll take revenge on me. That won’t happen, now that you understand—I’m telling you now, anyway—that should anything bad happen to me, one of my friends you don’t know and never will know will send the final mortgage to the police, with the message that you forged it. I can send it to the police myself, if I think you’re beginning to act naughty.”

  Bruiser can’t believe his ears. Then he thinks it’s too crazy to really be true. Not until later does he realize the battle is lost.

  Sleipner and Bruiser never again sit at the same table. It seems as if they both prefer the company of others, should they desire company.

  But when Sleipner and Bruiser run into each other—something that cannot always be avoided, being part of the same crowd—Bruiser is always quite friendly, in fact very polite.

  And that is worth taking note of. Politeness, you don’t see much of that in their crowd.

  DEBT OF HONOR

  BY KLAUS RIFBJERG

  Amager

  The wind drove the rain in over the market’s flat roof in gusts, and the sidewalk from Elbagade to Parmagade floated. The streetlights still retained some of their half-blind poverty from during the war, though by now it had been several years since the last Prussian had dragged his boots and himself southward. But maybe it was just his imagination, maybe it was just his inner light, turned down so low that it resembled a pilot light. Maybe that was it, that he, Aage Baldersen, was on pilot light.

  He pulled up his coat collar and felt its clammy chill against his neck hair. Despite the blackouts and everything else, there had been more action during what some called the evil years, but what he thought of as the good years. There had been lots to do, and while most felt something was left missing when the police were nabbed on September 19, 1944, and sent to Germany, others—he included—felt a certain relief. Not because he was a German sympathizer, but no one would deny that it had taken a certain amount of pressure off the underworld when the law had been removed in one fell swoop and later replaced by the so-called Vagtværn, the private guard whose effectiveness in relation to the police was on the scale of a teaspoon to an excavation crane.

  Someone had thrown a few snipped-up Christmas trees on the bare ground by the depot. Their limbs shook hysterically in the wind gusts and were mirrored in the large puddles formed by the rain. Disgruntled, Aage Baldersen blew out through his nose. Right now there was only mud and slush, but occasionally during the summer a circus slapped its tents up on the lot, and once, having nothing to do that day, he’d been stupid enough to buy a ticket for a show that should have had to pay its audience, that’s how bad it was. One of the clowns was an obese former half of a comedy duo who’d had some success in film. Now he looked like a worn-out punching bag and was just as funny as one.

  Parmagade stretched out before him into the horizon. The blocks towered up on both sides of the street, and the vanishing point was anybody’s guess in the drizzly mist. But Baldersen knew very well what was hidden out east; back when the five-room apartment had a porcelain washbasin (women painted on it) and real booze and wasn’t a dump like now, he had bicycled the route many times, past the hospital and along Italiensvej and down to the beach and public baths that had proven to be a convenient meeting place when the bosses decided how the work should be divided. Nobody was going to frisk someone in their birthday suit!

  Those days had been great in a lot of ways, and he didn’t even have to close his eyes to picture them. There had been a shortage of everything, but if you could get hold of a product in short supply it could be sold at a high price. Actually, he was very proud that he’d been part of what had to be called a major economy. True, it had developed underground, even though the retailing was done out in the open. But in front of the Lido by the Liberty Memorial and on Suhmsgade, it had naturally been only small stuff: single cigarettes, butter and sugar ration coupons, some 60 percent soap, and bike tubes with no holes. Baldersen’s level was more wholesale, but it made him happy anyway to see all the activity when he occasionally—and mostly for pleasure—inspected the troops.

  He blew rainwater out between his lips and stepped into the hallway, where a weak, sour odor met him. The place needed painting, and there wasn’t much varnish left on the steps. While hauling himself slowly upstairs he felt the moisture that had seeped through the soles of his shoes.

  Naturally, Aage Baldersen had understood that things wouldn’t be the same after the Liberation, but the first few years went very well. People still lacked everything that made life a bit more fun; the promised boatloads of bananas arrived a lot later than most had expected. But now he’d hit bottom, and while others saw light ahead, he stared into a growing darkness. And that’s really what surprised him the most: he’d lost his zing. It was as if all the fun had gone out of life. Once he’d been cheerful and energetic, now he was mostly surly, if not depressed.

  Deep inside he knew what it was about: a lack of excitement. If he wanted he could get work—honest work—but he didn’t seem to have it in him, his slide had been too severe, and when it was all said and done, he had been the one left holding the bag. They bought him out with cash, and he’d been dumb enough to take it (who says no to a truckload of C-notes?), but when the paper money exchange came after the war, he was sunk—there was no way he could explain where all that money came from. He was so depressed that he couldn’t even enjoy the flames when all the bundles ended up in the furnace.

  And this is where he’d ended up. Aage Baldersen opened the door to his apartment—room—that you walked directly into because it had no entryway, with the bathroom out in the hall. His shoes had dried enough from the climb up to the fifth floor that they left only small tracks on the floorboards when he walked in, yet he didn’t know what to do with his coat. He stood undecided for a moment, then he unbuttoned it and let it fall to the floor in a wet heap. He was soaked from the knees down.

  He sat on one of the two dining room chairs that were the sum total of the apartment’s furniture and turned his eyes to the window facing the courtyard. One good thing the peace had brought: it wasn’t necessary to lower the blinds, the blackouts were over, the view was open. No longer busy with anything else, Baldersen now permitted himself to enjoy the free entertainment from a distance. Being broke prevented him from enjoying the pleasures to which he’d had such ample access in the good old days, but he took a certain dogged pleasure in seeing how people made fools of themselves in the illuminated rooms above and below, arguing, fighting, or hunching listlessly over dining room tables, and the bitches, yes, there were bitches too, and when he discovered that he had a view of two dykes who weren’t ashamed of performing most of the stunts their kind dreamed up, and in full public view, it both aroused and enraged him. A pair of cows like them should have been shipped south with the other perverts, but anyway he wouldn’t want to have missed them.

  He grabbed the half-bottle of schnapps he kept
on the shelf beside the kitchen sink. Although he had only cold running water, it didn’t really matter, since he still went to the public baths at Helgoland in the summer, and the water did a fine job of cooling off the liquor if it got too warm. He poured schnapps into a coffee cup and sat down at the table. Maybe it wasn’t just the building that smelled sour, maybe it was him. He took a shot of schnapps and directed his sight to the entertainment on the other side of the street. But not much was going on, and should Aage Baldersen be completely honest he would have to admit that it was a poor show; like the circus, it wasn’t worth shelling out money for.

  The schnapps warmed him up, and a bit later he fell asleep. Naturally he was unaware of it, but in that crooked position, his elbow on the table and head in his hands and arm hanging, Aage Baldersen looked like a sculpture that could easily be entitled: “Tired Man.” That was what he was, and when a while later someone knocked on the door and he opened his eyes and felt a shudder race through him, he thought: Uhh, I never want to wake up again! But of course he woke up—after all, he was still alive.

  The man he let in was about his own age, wet only on the outside of his black, shiny oilskin coat. A military belt bound it in front. Without being invited, he sat down opposite Baldersen on the other dining room chair.

  “Hey, Baldy,” he said after a short pause, “how you doin’?”

  Aage Baldersen said nothing, but he straightened up in his chair. The weariness that he had felt before was gone, replaced by a disgust as thick as pudding.

  “I’ve got nothing,” he said.

  “Excuse me,” the man replied, “I didn’t quite hear what you said. What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  The man laughed tersely. “So, that was what I heard.”

  The silence lengthened between them, and only the faint reflection from the windows across the street created any sort of movement in the room.

  “You know what you owe.” The man leaned forward. “You don’t walk off with that much money without there being certain … debts. Debts of honor, if you want to put it that way.”

  “You want a schnapps?”

  “No thanks, I don’t drink on the job.”

  Aage Baldersen drained the coffee cup. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Debts? Debts of honor? What the hell is that supposed to mean? You know goddamn well just like everybody else what happened to that money.”

  “Half a million? You’re not going to goddamn sit there and tell me it’s gone?”

  Baldersen shrugged. He turned his head and stared out the window. “Fuck you,” he said.

  The man in the oilskin coat stood up, light reflected from the gloss. “Everybody trusted you, Baldy, it was a confidential deal. Everybody knew you had it under control.”

  “You bought me out.”

  “You’ve damn well never been worth half a million. You know that. Sure as hell you do, Baldy.”

  Aage Baldersen didn’t even make an attempt at hunkering down. He just sat there.

  “What you’ve done, how you’ve fixed it all up, I don’t care. I’ve just been sent to collect.”

  “It was my money.”

  “Your money? It was our money. Fair and square. You hear?”

  The man had stepped behind Baldersen’s chair. A moment later he lifted his arm and hit Baldersen behind the ear with a small sandbag.

  “Just a sample,” he said, “there’s more coming real soon. If you don’t start talking.”

  Aage Baldersen rocked back and forth on the chair. That damn rain, the damn darkness. In fact, he was soaked.

  “Leave me alone. I’m tired,” he said, “tired, tired, tired …”

  Soon the man started pounding him. It was almost like a machine. It was as if he didn’t just want to beat Baldersen to the floor, he wanted to beat him into it. Slowly the figure melted and slid down off the chair.

  “Night, Baldy, goodnight. And sleep tight,” the man whispered.

  After a while the man stuck the sandbag in his pocket, opened the door to the hallway, closed it behind him, and began the long walk down to Parmagade. Outside, the rain had stopped, but the wind still blew, and the figure’s shadow moved uneasily over the walls of the buildings in the streetlights’ glow. There was no traffic, but the steady ding-ding from a small bell announced that a late trolley car was backing into the depot.

  WHEN IT’S TOUGH OUT THERE

  BY GRETELISE HOLM

  Istedgade

  Despite a double gin-and-tonic and two of the small pink pills that she preferred to call “muscle relaxants,” her hands shook when she punched the number. And she held her breath while listening to the amorous voice: “You’ve reached City Sex and Luxury Massage. For telephone sex, press 1. For information about net-sex, press 2. For appointments, press 3. For personal service, press 4—”

  She hung up as if she’d been burned, mixed a dry martini, and curled up in the well-preserved, original Arne Jacobsen Egg chair.

  She looked out over the sound through the coast road villa’s picture window, waiting for the alcohol to relax and embolden her. Her Philippine au pair gave a friendly smile through the glass, which she was cleaning.

  A half hour later Claire Winther felt she was ready. It was the only solution, the only way out of this situation, she told herself.

  She punched the number again and pressed 4 for personal service.

  “This is Bonnie. What can we do for you?”

  “My name is Michelle Jensen, and I’m interested in hearing if there’s a possibility of working for you.”

  “There’s a decent possibility if you look really good and know what you’re doing. How old are you, and how long have you been in the business? You specialize in anything?”

  “I’m thirty-four but I can easily pass for twenty-six, definitely. I have to admit I don’t have a lot of experience, in fact I’m a beginner. But you know how it is, it’s tough out there right now, you need a little extra cash, so why not … if you have a natural talent?”

  “We’ll take a look at you and talk about it. Come in around six if you can, and if you have some porny pictures of yourself, bring them along on CD.”

  “I don’t.”

  “No problem. We’ll figure it out. In fact, we could use a Danish girl right now, so if you’re okay …”

  Claire felt calmer. Bonnie had sounded like a normal, everyday person. How hard could it be?

  She chose a dark wig and large sunglasses. The oldest pair of jeans she owned, and a red lace top under the black leather jacket that hadn’t been outside the closet for five years. Given her exclusive wardrobe, this was the cheapest she could look, she decided, and she topped it off with crimson-red gloss lipstick and a shot of a much-too-heavy and sweet perfume, a shopping mistake.

  Obviously she couldn’t arrive at the brothel in her Jaguar, so she called a cab and asked the driver to drop her off at the main station. It came to eight hundred kroner.

  The November murk lay wet and heavy over the city, so she pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead as she walked down Istedgade, first past the row of hotels next to the station, then past all the porn and sex shops decorated for the Christmas season.

  It was fascinating, she had to stop and stare through the shop windows. A Christmas manger scene with the tiny baby Jesus—surrounded by dildos. A blow-up sex doll with a silicone pussy wrapped in a chain of red heart-shaped Christmas lights. Handcuffs, leather whips, half-masks, and chastity belts hung on a plastic Christmas tree with a star on top and icicles covering it.

  At the shelter, the Men’s Home, the guests for the night had already begun to gather. Hoarse voices, the clinking of bottles, and tubercular coughs rose from the group of ragged, dirty, homeless figures. Claire decided to cross the street to the other sidewalk.

  There was more dignity to the slick black kings of the street, who in two-and three-man groups marked off their territories, while the black females busied themselves braiding hair in salons, the walls covered wi
th wigs and hairpieces of all colors.

  The African hair salons were something new, thought Claire, who hadn’t sat foot in Vesterbro since she left as an eight-year-old.

  A drunk wearing only an open leather vest on his upper body tumbled out from one of the half-basement tattoo shops and knocked into her. His skin was totally and colorfully illustrated from his bald head to his waist.

  More sex shops, more Asian grills, more stores with weird combinations of souvenirs, Christmas decorations, porn underwear and sex toys, more bars, more brothels.

  At Skelbækgade, the street prostitutes—the lowest in the pecking order, the most desperate—were already busy. Addicts and Africans, as far as she could tell. Several men walked back and forth, openly sizing them up, while others crept past in their cars.

  The nine-to-five shift, they called these early sex customers, when she was a kid.

  At the spot on Istedgade where the place begins to look respectable again, she turned right, down a side street.

  She stopped when a text message beeped in. It was John, from Rio: All’s well, dear. Brazil is the land of opportunity. Great deals. Looking forward to getting home December 9. Hug and kiss.

  She answered at once: Thanks, hon. On the way to new fitness center. Trying to get in shape for Christmas. Take good care of yourself.

  The fitness center was to be her alibi. She had a membership card in her pocket.

  “Wow! You’ve got class!” Bonnie said, looking almost lovingly at her as she pulled her in through the hallway to the reception area.

  Ikea, Claire Winther noted. Cheap, but light and clean and less sleazy than she had expected. A beige corner sofa and a coffee table with porn magazines. A counter with a coffee maker and plastic cups. A flatscreen on the wall, fastened to a swinging arm.