Morgue Drawer Four (16 page)

I had to stand by and watch the whole miserable scene with a seething rage in my gut. But I couldn’t take it out on anyone. God, how I’d have loved to plant my heel into Pablo. No matter where. But, no, poor fucking impotent poltergeist that I am, I couldn’t let off my steam in any way. Everyone else definitely had it better!

Only they didn’t know how much they should appreciate it. At least, not Martin. He was softly groaning, holding his hand over his cheek and trying to hold his other hand over his shin, although of course that didn’t work since he was running. Miriam still had hold of his duffle coat, yanking him quickly toward the exit.

“What was that?” Martin asked, not very eloquently.

“That was Pablo,” Miriam said. There were tears in her eyes. “He’s a first-class asshole.”

“You don’t say,” Martin muttered as he ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth to identify any internal injuries.

“We’re going to the police,” Martin said after his search turned up nothing.

“No way,” Miriam said. “For the moment we’re even. If we go to the police, he will take out some nasty revenge on us.”

“Even?” Martin asked incredulously.

“Yes, even,” Miriam said. “And that’s that.”

Martin took Miriam home and then drove to the Institute for Forensic Medicine. There was a moderate uproar among his colleagues as he arrived with dirt on his jacket, ripped pants, and unmistakable swelling from being punched in the face. The boss who came running over wanted to know what had happened, and Martin somehow cooked up a wild story of mistaken identity, backed up by exclamations of dismay and occasional brow-furrowing, then he had Katrin patch him up and gave in to his boss, who sent him home. The stares of his colleagues and superiors as they followed his departure spoke volumes. In any case I had the impression that they hadn’t bought his story from the get-go, particularly recalling the one or two strange, not to mention unsettling, new behavioral patterns he’d been displaying over the past few days. For example, freaking out during my autopsy, talking to “himself” in the break room, his absentmindedness often accompanied by fervent head-shaking, his frequent visits to the morgue for no discernible reason, or just his overall nervousness and irritability, which were actually uncharacteristic of Martin. Martin, however, didn’t notice the stares, and that was definitely a good thing for the moment.

A bandaged Martin drove in his bandaged trash can to the car shop, had his window replaced as he sat on one of the two chairs in the waiting room, clinging to a paper cup full of foul-smelling coffee that the nice mousy girl at the service desk had brought him. He sat that way for almost two hours, motionless like an Egyptian statue, apart from occasionally moving his left arm to put the cup to his mouth and back down again. The bruise on his cheek had started to look like a red-currant thumbprint cookie, and the thin skin under his eye was turning a similar color. He looked scary.

After the trash can was finally repaired, Martin drove home, carefully took a shower to avoid grazing his shin, and went to bed. Great!

Now here I was alone with the city maps again. But instead of learning medieval street names by heart, I considered whether I should believe Pablo or not. I couldn’t really decide. I did think he was capable of murder in any case, and it presumably wouldn’t have been his first. People used to gossip that he put a guy on ice for calling him a “flaming fairy.” Maybe that guy had hit a nerve. But no one with a brain bigger than a piece of rabbit poop would be stupid enough to try and find out the truth.

I wasn’t getting anywhere this way; all this brooding wasn’t helping, plus it’s not my kind of thing. If I still had a body, on a day like this I’d have crashed in front of the boob tube downing one beer after the other, and at some point I’d have blissfully passed out into a coma. However, if at the time—that is, during my life—I had known how little time I had left on earth, I would’ve enjoyed this near-daily pastime perhaps a bit less often. Now, by contrast, I had until the end of time, but no access to either boob tube or beer.

I was just wondering if I should wake Martin up to turn the idiot box on when the phone rang. Surprised, I realized that it had gotten dark out, and the clock showed seven thirty already. Martin was still napping. The phone kept ringing. After the twelfth ring it stopped, but then immediately started again. Martin appeared at the bedroom door, groped for the phone, and whispered, “Yes?”

“Martin?” a voice asked, which after a moment’s thought we both recognized as Birgit’s.

“Yes?” Martin whispered again. “What time is it?”

Birgit burst out crying. “My car’s gone,” she said, hard to understand through her sobs.

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Martin asked.

“Stolen,” Birgit said, sniffling then crying louder.

“Did you already report it to the police?” Martin asked.

“Yeahahaha,” she sobbed. “But they said there wasn’t much hope…”

“Now, don’t be so upset,” Martin said in a voice so velvety soft you could still hear the cozy comforter he’d just emerged from. “You can buy yourself…”

“Ooh hoo hoo,” pierced out of the receiver. “…any money…not insured yet…never have something like that again,” was all we could make out.

“The car wasn’t insured?” Martin asked. “Nooo!”

Martin literally melted in compassion for that chick who’d bought herself a hot ride and then was too stupid to insure the thing. The man had a big heart, I thought. The first thing I’d have done is chew her out. Not Martin.

He said, “Oh, Birgit. Please don’t be so upset. Maybe they’ll find it, your car. It’s pretty conspicuous.”

“But,” sniffle, sniffle, “the police said that it was definitely an organized ring that steals classic cars like that on order, and then the car is out of the country the same night.”

The moment she said “organized ring,” a jolt went through Martin. His neurons were all a-tingle. He straightened up in his fleecy terrycloth pajamas, stretched, and said, “Actually, maybe there’s a way for someone to do something.”

A banner was unfurling in his brain, as big as one of those sheets that soccer fans hold up in the stadium for their favorite players. But Martin’s banner read: “Now you can do something for me!”

And by “you” he meant me.

And a certain other name popped into Martin’s thoughts, decorated with a hundred exclamation points: Olli!

You remember: Olli’s the guy I stole the SLR for that I found the body in…well, you know the story.

Of course there wasn’t any guarantee that Olli had anything to do with Birgit’s stolen Beemer, but the chances were a hundred to one.

I wasn’t listening to Martin’s quiet muttering into the phone anymore at all, and instead I was wondering how best to proceed.

“Tell her we need the license number, the VIN, and the car key,” I quickly told Martin before he could hang up. Birgit promised to get everything together.

“Then let’s get going.”

Martin looked horrible. He had bags even under his nondiscolored eye, making it look as though his tears of late were made of squid ink; the coloration of the bruise had reached its maximum luminosity; and his eyes—well, they were something. His look had changed. In place of the friendly, sincere, and innocent way he used to look at the people around him, in the past few days a kind of irritated fatigue had taken over instead. Or a tired testiness, seasoned with a pinch of fuck-off. Especially now as he was mumbling with Birgit in that cuddly voice, you could make out mainly only the fatigue, but when he turned to speak to me the whole load of negativity burst through his pupils. Great, now I was the Bad Guy again, and I hadn’t even beaten him up. Plus, I was even prepared to help him with his girlfriend’s car. A little gratitude would have been very much in order. Or some kind of deal. That’d be even better. He’d have to promise me…

Martin came back out of the bedroom dressed, his hair nicely parted, and he looked like Mommy’s Favorite again. Just still wearing that little wool coat…I contemplated whether Olli would take him seriously if he saw him like this. On the other hand, Olli and anyone else who ran into this guy would immediately know he’s not dangerous. That’s good when you’re placing yourself directly into the lion’s den. So I didn’t say anything. Not about his clothes, anyways.

“Martin,” I started with my deal. “I’m prepared to help you recover Birgit’s car.”

Martin didn’t hesitate once. “Great,” he said.

“I’ll do it if you promise me you’ll keep investigating my murder case.”

Now he started playing the pillar of salt.

“So, what do you say?” I whined, getting sick of the stupid way he was acting. He reminded me of those guys who paint their faces white, throw on a bed sheet, and stand out on some street corner—and then want people to give them money for not moving. I’d always thought that was crazy.

“I might have thought that after everything I’ve already done for you it would go without saying that you would help me now,” he said.

“And tomorrow you’ll piss off and leave me sitting in this shit all alone,” I said, and I could sense that the idea had already occurred to him.

“No,” he said, reluctantly. “I will keep helping you. But right now Birgit’s car is at the top of our list.”

Martin is a man of honor, which is why I was satisfied with this promise. We left the apartment, scraped the ice off the windows of his trash can, picked up the car keys from Birgit, whom we did not bring along—for her own safety—and drove to Olli’s.

Olli’s got a used-car lot out on the arterial. It looks just the way you’d imagine, including little pennants and giant signs with the prices on them, trying to give the impression the cars are a good value. Naturally they aren’t. Prices like that never are, which actually goes without saying.

Olli was there of course, sitting with his legs apart on his desk chair staring at Martin as he entered the office. Olli’s always there, even though he doesn’t live there. No one knows where Olli lives; maybe he doesn’t know himself anymore, which is why he’s always at his car lot. It happens only very rarely that he’s not there, and then it’s only for a couple of hours. People say.

I started with a quick spin around to get oriented, and this was really the first time that I felt like my immateriality was pretty frigging cool. I floated over the lot, staring into every corner, and then—and this would have been totally impossible for a flesh-and-blood person—I snuck into the big shop that was toward the back of the property.

In the front part was the workshop and the paint booth, the finest equipment anywhere and with an excellent reputation beyond the city limits. Regular customers could come in this far, too. But the shop extended even farther behind the paint booth, which you couldn’t really tell either from the outside or the inside. You had to know it, and I knew it. And there, between the fat BMWs, Daimlers, Jags, and even a couple of Audis, was Birgit’s baby. Some dark-haired, dark-skinned men were standing among the cars, talking in a language unknown to me. I didn’t pay much attention to them, but I thought I’d seen one or another of them before at some point. Especially the tall guy. But that didn’t matter now. I tore back to Martin, reported my discovery, and made my way toward the office with him.

Martin and I had discussed our action plan, which is why right now I had nothing to do other than observe.

“Are you Olli?” Martin said in greeting. He kept his hands in his pockets.

Martin and I had haggled for ten minutes on this point of the plan alone. I’d explained to him that he had to be cool. He had to immediately make clear that he knows not only the name on the office door but also the nicknames, especially Olli’s, and he certainly shouldn’t try to be genteel. So, no hand-shaking. By acting this way Olli would immediately know that Martin wasn’t just another normal prospective used-car buyer.

Martin by contrast didn’t want to be either impolite or provocative. He rubbed his colorful cheek and declared that he really didn’t feel at all like provoking anyone. Understandable, but bullshit. For our plan to work he had to exude cool self-confidence. Yes, Martin! You can see we’re treading on pretty fucking thin ice. But what all wouldn’t a man do to get his sweetheart to stop bawling?

“What can I do for you?” Olli asked back.

I’d noticed the vigilance-switch flip on in Olli’s eyes, which almost disappeared between his fat cheeks and fat eyelids.

“I’m looking for a car,” Martin said.

“Settled on something?” Olli asked. Complete sentences weren’t really his thing.

“Settled,” Martin said. “A BMW 3-Series convertible from the early 1980s, tiptop condition, grey exterior, red leather interior.”

Olli sort of jiggled a couple of times, which could mean he was laughing or that he might be exploding in the near future.

“Hard to get,” Olli said.

“No,” Martin said. “Hard to keep.”

We’d practiced this script over and over, because if Olli can spare brainpower and words, he’ll save both—which is why his standard phrases are predictable. However, one should not assume he has no brainpower. Olli is clever, which is why he’s the fattest fish in the pond of hot-car dealers. He knew that Martin knew that that convertible had been stolen. We even knew that it was in back in his shop. But Olli didn’t yet know that we knew, and we couldn’t hurl disses at him, either, since that’d be a provocation. But with Olli you didn’t need to lay everything out straight, either; with him you just had to strike the right chord, and I knew that chord. I hadn’t worked for Olli for years for nothing. I knew Olli as well as a small-time car thief with golden hands can know his client.