Morgue Drawer Four (22 page)

“Evidence of handcuff use?” Yvonne asked.

“None,” Martin said. “No use of force, no fetish-related practices, no drugs.”

She summed the main points up again: “So we’re looking for someone who has an unusual car, hires a call girl, has unprotected sex with her, isn’t into any kinky games, and who gave her hazelnut cookies that she died from.”

“Correct.”

We let her have some time to mull that over; Martin drank his coffee and ordered two more.

“I can remember comments about two clients that might be worth considering,” Yvonne said with the fresh cup of coffee in front of her.

Martin leaned forward eagerly.

“The one guy she used to call ‘Dr. Strangelove’…”

“She gave her clients nicknames?” Martin asked, amazed.

I snickered. What nickname would Martin have gotten?

“Well, sure,” Yvonne said. “I wanted to know as much as possible about what her clients wanted, but she didn’t want to name names. So we had to find a way to easily but discreetly talk about the men.”

Martin nodded.

“So, to continue, Dr. Strangelove is an entrepreneur, something to do with steel, I think. He has at least four fancy cars, including a Porsche and a Jaguar. He’s a widower, and harbors an abysmally deep mistrust of women—he thinks they are all only interested in his money.”

“That’s probably true, too,” I interjected, but Martin didn’t acknowledge me.

“He has two grown daughters who keep trying to set him up with women, but for them he plays the monk. He satisfies his urges with call girls, and over the last two years exclusively with Semira.” She thought for a moment. “At least he said he was exclusive with her.”

“Yes,” Martin said thoughtfully. “That might well be something to take with a grain of salt. Does he live in Cologne?”

“I think so, yes.”

Meanwhile Martin had taken out a pen and a piece of paper from the pocket of his jacket, jotting down the most important information.

“The other guy she used to call ‘Il Papa.’”

Martin wrote down “Il Papa.”

“He’s married, but he told Semira his wife is frigid and unapproachable. He doesn’t actually live in Cologne, but he comes to town a lot on business, so he rents a small apartment here.”

“What does he do?” Martin asked.

Yvonne shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“What did he want from Semira?” Martin asked.

Stupid question, I thought. Sex, of course.

“Warmth?” Yvonne said.

Female mumbo jumbo, I thought.

“Sex of course, too,” she said.

All right!

“But he only wanted a little sex, and otherwise just lots of cuddling. Warmth that he wasn’t getting from his wife anymore.”

Why would the man tell Semira such bullshit, I wondered. Normal men have to tell women baloney like that so they’ll jump into bed with them. But a call girl will jump anyway, so why all the claptrap?

“How did she come up with the nicknames?” Martin asked. “Why was one called Dr. Strangelove and the other Il Papa?”

Yvonne shrugged. “No idea. I asked her that too, but she said only that the nicknames suited them. She didn’t want to give any explanation for them so no one could guess the men’s identities.”

“Too bad,” I said. “After all, that’s exactly what we want.”

Meanwhile the supply of coffee had gone dry again, and Yvonne gave such a big yawn that she almost fell out of her chair. They exchanged phone numbers, Martin paid, Yvonne decided to take a taxi home, and we cruised homeward in the sardine can. Martin crashed into bed and slept nine and half hours straight. I watched TV until I couldn’t stand what was on anymore, and then I moved to the kitchen—after all, I didn’t have any eyelids that I might mercifully have closed, and I couldn’t turn off the tube, either. A few days ago I was desperate because I couldn’t switch the thing on, and now it was the opposite. Life sure is strange, especially when you’re dead.

After a proper tea, a little bowl of sugar-free muesli, and a shower, the next morning Martin was feeling fit enough to continue the investigation. I felt beat and was grumpy because I had no idea how to proceed. Dr. Strangelove and Il Papa were phantoms (actually I had wanted to say they were as hard to detect as cum stains on a shower curtain, but I’ve been making serious strides toward improving my language here) who turned up in stories, or who killed people but left no evidence you could trace back to them, but Martin was of an entirely different view.

“We have one clue as to where we have to go to search for the two of them,” Martin said.

“Where?” I replied in a huff.

“Where you stole the car,” he said with satisfaction.

“Great,” I said. “Then let’s stroll down to the Cologne Congress Centre that thousands of people go in and out of every day and ask whether Dr. Strangelove or Il Papa may have heard one of the numerous presentations or attended any seminars on that illustrious day.”

Martin could not be dissuaded by my bad mood.

“We’re going to find out what events were being held that day, and then we’ll decide what direction to go next.”

“And what direction would that be?” I asked.

“If there was a presentation for entrepreneurs, say, that might give us a clue about Dr. Strangelove,” Martin said. “We might even be able to find an employee who remembers an attendee with that unusual car.”

The idea wasn’t totally stupid, I had to admit. And the likelihood was not exactly remote that a pimply trainee banquet server would have found out about a rocket ship like our SLR being parked out in the lot. People always go and take a look at nice rides, and some pompous guy who works there will always know who it belongs to…Hmm, maybe we really were going to be able to find out the owner’s identity this way. The owner who presumably murdered me! I got hot and cold at the idea.

We ran back through all the details of the information we had about the two men in question: Dr. Strangelove had to be strange in some way, although we didn’t know if his name referred to how he looked or something else. He was an entrepreneur involved somehow in steel. He had several cars. He lived in Cologne, was a widower, and had two grown daughters, so he had to be at least forty, maybe even fifty or older.

Il Papa was married, stayed in Cologne only in a second apartment because he had business here. Maybe his nickname had to do with getting on in years. Maybe Semira christened him that just because he called her “my child” or something; we just didn’t know. Maybe he was Italian
and
an old fart
and
he called her “my child.” No idea. We’d have to keep our eyes and ears open.
Vámonos.

On the way we were still thinking about what reason to give for asking about the events that had been held on the illustrious day, but after batting around a few ideas and not being able to agree on anything remotely believable, Martin ended the conversation with a wave of his hand.

“We’ll just act like it’s the most normal thing in the world to ask about past events, and we won’t give any reason.”

No sooner said than done—but it didn’t work.

“May I ask why you need this information?” the pretty receptionist asked in her pretty short-skirt suit with her pretty smile on her pretty face. Martin blinked stupidly at her.

“It has to do with an inquiry into a death,” he said after a brief moment. He whipped out his business card, held it out for the pretty little mouse to read, but pulled it away again when she reached for it.

“Shouldn’t the police be handling the investigation?” she asked cautiously.

“No problem,” Martin said with a friendly smile, looking only the tiniest bit pinched. “If you’d like to have the police come out, I can arrange that with a single phone call. We—that is, the investigative team I’m part of and I—were thinking it would be somewhat more discreet for you if I just popped in here quickly for the information. It was easy for me to stop by because you’re on my way to my next appointment, you see.”

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.

“Um—wait a second,” she said.

She vanished into the office behind the counter and reappeared two minutes later with a few still-warm sheets of printer paper.

“Here you are.”

Martin briefly looked through the papers, tucked them into his pocket, nodded at her, and walked back to the trash can, which was parked around the corner. With a car like that you simply cannot park right in front of a convention center and
not
attract attention.

We got into the trash can and read through the printout. It’s positively dreadful what all topics people hold conventions on. “Feminizing the World Experience of Preschool and Elementary School Children” was a symposium with a panel discussion by some association of preschool teachers.

We didn’t expect either Dr. Strangelove or Il Papa to be among the preschool teachers. So we kept reading.

“
Traduttore, Traditore:
Language Professionals’ Self-Conception between Taking Sides and Risking Lives.” Hmm. Translators, right? Maybe interpreters? We lacked both certitude and mutual agreement, but nonetheless the two of us shared a rather gloomy expectation of finding the friend we sought amid the illustrious world of polyglots. Although Il Papa did sound quite Italian…But we decided to keep looking for now.

“Germany as a Place for Business: Is Globalization Passing Us By?” Woo hoo, that sounded promising. Could our steel entrepreneur Dr. Strangelove be interested in globalization? Martin added a checkmark. Truly a systematic person. We continued through the list.

The “Annual Meeting of Speechwriters” didn’t inspire us, and with a snort Martin dismissed the “Christian Lifestyle League: Uncompromising Action in a Society in Moral Decline.”

“I actually do consider myself a Christian,” he said, “and I even dutifully pay my church tax. But if ‘uncompromising action’ means forgoing organ transplants or medically necessary procedures because they desecrate the inviolability of the person, to say nothing of wanting to ban forensic medicine to avoid disturbing the dead…”

He interrupted himself mid-sentence, which is not at all like him, and he gaped at the paper, which he was holding perfectly still as though he were playing jackstraws and feared losing if he so much as twitched.

“Have you turned into a pillar of salt there, speaking of being a good Christian?” I asked, proud that I was able to leverage one of the two stories from the Bible I know. The other is the one with the ark. I always liked that one a lot. Two of every sort, then everybody gets the boat rocking by screwing until the sun comes out. What a great image.

“Christian,” Martin whispered. Was he lost in some kind of religious trance? Or was he just engaged in some intense reflection? I couldn’t make out any supernatural waves, so I cleared my throat loud and clear.

No reaction.

“What now?” I asked after a while, hoping my words would get me further than coughing.

“Dr. Eilig,” Martin mumbled.

“No, Dr. Strangelove,” I said, correcting him. Was he getting all mixed up now, already?

“No,” he said. “There is a Bundestag representative whose name is Dr. Christian Eilig.”

“Ah ha,” I said. Active listening. We covered that before, remember?

“He’s against organ transplants, and lately he’s come out against autopsies, too,” Martin said.

“Rings a bell,” I said, because I vaguely recalled some discussion along those lines in the break room at the Institute.

“The guy is more Catholic than the Pope,” Martin said.

Stupid saying, never liked it. Plus, I didn’t understand why Martin was making such a pregnant pause right now, of all times. Sometimes it’s pretty annoying that I never went to college.

“Um, what are you trying to tell me?” I asked, slightly irritated.

“Il Papa,” Martin said. “That’s Italian. It means ‘the Pope.’”

“You’re not trying to tell me that the Pope was there?” I asked.

“No. But Dr. Eilig was.”

“And?” I said. I could certainly understand Martin getting into a tizzy about this guy drawing his whole profession into question, but we were right in the middle of a murder investigation, and we had much better things to do than ponder the latest lunacies that some wingnut had brought up two weeks ago at the convention center.

“Dr. Christian Eilig, or ‘Dr. Christian’ for short, is more Catholic than the Pope, as they say; he lives in a nice area out past Bergisch Gladbach in the hills east of Cologne, but as anyone who reads the local papers here knows, he has an apartment in town from which he has a view of Cologne Cathedral. And, he collects cars.”

“Matchbox?” I asked Martin.

“No, real ones,” Martin replied. “When asked about this vice, he says, ‘Everyone has to have a vice, otherwise we’d all be saints, not people.’”

Hmm.

“In addition, he’s married.”

I’d have liked to nod pensively, but that wasn’t possible, obviously, so I said hmm again.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Martin asked.

“I think so,” I said. “How do we find out if the Pope had an SLR?” I asked.