The symphonic music blaring through the house interrupted Sean's dream about surfing the 100-foot waves created by an atomic blast in New York harbor. He opened his eyes, slightly disconcerted to find himself in a small bedroom as opposed to the promised luxury of the Atlantic Hotel, then vaguely recalled mumbling 'Ein Kaiserringstrasse' to a taxi driver.
Sitting up set the world in a whirl and Sean wished he had heeded Bertram's repeated warnings about drinking too much sekt. He lurched over to the open window and breathed in the briny air with all the greed of someone disinterred after being buried alive.
Goose bumps rose on his skin.
Silky cirrocirrus clouds striated the blue sky. Each gust of wind bent the twisted trees within the neglected garden. Summer had temporarily vanished from Hamburg, a warning of seasons to come. Thankfully he had fallen asleep in his clothing and there was no evidence of Petra’s sharing his bed. She could only complicate things and he decided to leave the house as secretively as possible.
Grabbing his bag, he crept down the dusty hallway. The music increased in volume as did the sound of someone humming along with the string section of the orchestra. His curiosity forced him to peek inside the studio. Lukas Von Hausen stood in the center of the room, wearing an ancient tuxedo. On the table scores of open paint tubes oozed into a dripping delirium of colors. His right hand posed a fine brush over the painting depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, except the model was not a man, but a naked Petra.
Her hands were secured by a rope to a pole and her expression portrayed the utter submission to fate. A video camera replayed the scene with a delay of several seconds on the black-and-white television in the corner, almost as if the past were coming back to life. The stereo speakers vibrated with the movement's coda, then the needle lifted off the record with a scratch. Petra looked at Sean and Lukas grinned wolfishly without turning around. "Did we wake you?"
"No, Mendelsohn did."
"Ah, you recognize him."
"Him, but not the piece." It had been a lucky guess.
"You're an anomaly. Most tourists to Germany are drawn to Berlin’s mystique of a city split in two and Munich for the beer festivals and the Black Forests, but very few Americans other than sailors or are drawn to Hamburg." Lukas dabbed the brush on the painting. "And we all know now you didn't come for Reeperbahn, did you?"
"No, I came here to make money. I can this city is a geldstadt."
"I forget how blunt you Americans can be. What do you think of this painting?"
"It's nice." Sean had little desire to compliment a man he despised on sight, even though the painting captured every nuance of medieval sacrifice.
"Ah, nice is not a critique. You are being noncommittal, maybe because you watch too much TV to be an art lover."
"I stopped going to museums, because I don't like paying to safeguard the possessions of the rich."
Before Lukas could respond, Petra changed her position, and he barked, "Nein, nein, nein. Standst still, du kennst das."
"Ich weiss', aber ich bin mude." Petra lifted her bound hands off a nail, then wrapped a sheet around herself.
"If you are tired, take a break." Lukas threw down the paintbrush. "Petra told me about your gambling for one night of pleasure."
The baron went to the pair of VCRs under the TV and slipped a cassette. Lukas pressed the 'stop' button, and then went over to another video camera, which he aimed at Sean's face.
"You must have been very disappointed at losing all your money, but most men think they get sex for free.”
"I've had sex with women for reasons other than money." Sean re-surveyed the wire-thin cicatrix on Petra's arms and Sean wondered who could have caused such damage. At this moment Lukas was his number one suspect, but he was simply looking for any reason to hit the aristocrat.
"What? For love?" Lukas pulled away the sheet, so the arterial system of scars mapped across Petra's body was more visible. "You think these comes from love?"
"My parents have been married for twenty years." Sean answered without hesitation, for his pyramid of disappointments had not forced him to despair of falling in love.
"And they must have hated every minute."
Sean took a step forward.
Petra crossed the room to hold him back.
"Don't." Something in her voice suggested fear for Sean more than herself or Lukas.
"I would have thought that a man of your age would be much more cynical about sharing an emotion for the sake of pleasure. No, there is always someone dominant in a relationship. Anything else is a big lie.” Lukas seemed to be seeking an altercation. "Petra is my mistress and I am her slave. Could I stop her from doing what she wants? No one can, plus restraining her would go against the my generation's creed of Freiheit. The older generation thinks we are too free, but no one of my age would give up our freedom as our parents did for Hitler. We do as we want, when we want."
Sean dropped his bag to free both hands.
"The entire world has been waiting to learn ethics from the Germans."
"Ach, you suppose I am one of these people, who do think the Jews marched into the ovens on their own. The word is Trauerarbeit. Yes, I mourn them and also all the Germans who died in that war. It was wrong, but by abandoning morals entirely, even for a short time, allowed us reach point zero and achieve the present success. 1968 was much more important to modern Germans than 1945."
"Revolution against the rich?"
"Revolution against everything, but it failed." Lukas focused the camera on Petra's face. "You know she had been a very beautiful woman before her 'accident'. Hardly my type then, though once she had been destroyed, she possessed a quality other women don't and needed a man to protect her. Not a pimp, but a friend. Petra understands her powerlessness now. You should see the before-photos."
"You can spare me the photos."
"Then what about this?" Lukas pressed the Play button on the VCR.
The TV instantly displayed Lukas naked at Petra's feet, then Sean stepping into the doorway.
"The magic of the video camera is that it acts as our mirror of our conscience and your face reveals the classic stupidity of the middle-class."
Sean had a short fuse and Lukas was standing on most of it.
"Lukas, either paint or get out." Petra shut off the VCR.
"Consider it a souvenir of Hamburg to show your children." Lukas took the cassette from the VCR and handed it to Sean, who swatted the tape to the ground.
"Temper, temper, Herr Coll."
"You talk too much.” Petra pushed Lukas and the German fell into a chair, pretending to cower from Sean.
"Please don't hit me."
Kurt entered the room and asked, "Am I disturbing something?"
"No, we were just discussing the possibility of romantic love." Lukas decorously rose from the chair and clapped his hands. "Petra, your rest period is over. Back to your place."
Without the slightest protest Petra resumed the martyr pose.
Kurt grabbed the American's arm and said, "Let's leave the 'artiste' to his work."
Outside the house the nightclub owner looked over his shoulder and advised Sean, "You will be seeing plenty of Petra in the future. Lukas isn't worth the trouble."
"I feel he is." The bones of his fists were close to popping through the skin and Kurt threw him against the wall.
"Believe me, you would be doing me a favor, if you killed him, but Lukas excels at several martial arts and I would hate you to learn the mistake of fighting him the hard way, besides Petra can take care of herself."
Sean believed in the art of fighting dirty, but also only when everything else had failed, so he took fifteen deep breaths and obeyed his mother’s advice about walking away from trouble.
At least for now.
"Let's get out of here."
Kurt slipped behind the wheel of a pristine 1963 Thunderbird. Bertram was passed out in the back. Sean sat in the front. Strangely this confrontation had cured his hangover and he commented on the T-bird's concourse condition, after which Kurt informed him, "I bought it after seeing THE AMERICAN FRIEND, speaking of which you’ll be needing a car too."
"A car?"
"You know how to drive?"
"Yes." Sean had been driving since he was 12.
"Then you need a car."
Kurt drove to a dealer south of the Harbor. Sean picked out an orange 1966 BMW Sweepback 1600. Its top speed was barely 160KPH and the windows went down till a little edge remained, so hanging your arm out the window was uncomfortable, but upon his return to the lot Sean agreed to purchase the BMW, thereby owning a car for the first time, since leaving university. Sean thanked Kurt in his native language.
"You speak German better than you do French."
"I thought I spoke French pretty good."
“Yes, I remember your living on Rue Dez Ecoof. You speak French like you think you can speak it, but, sorry, my boy, the only way to learn a language is through a girlfriend. Get a German one, she'll help you with the language, but now it’s time to get you somewhere to live. Follow me to Milchstrasse. I have an apartment all picked out”
Kurt had gone to a different driving school than Petra and on the ride over the modern apartment building on Mittelweg he obeyed all the traffic laws. They stopped before a cafe and entered a modern building. Kurt pushed the penthouse button. On the top floor he opened a door.
"What do you think?" Kurt had found him a small furnished studio with a wrap-around terrace.
"I'll take it." It was a vast improvement on his tenement apartment in New York as was everything about his new life in Hamburg.
"Let us go celebrate your new life," Kurt suggested once they were outside.
"I think Bertram has had too much celebration." Sean pointed to the Frenchman, who had remained motionless.
"Yes, he has." Kurt lifted Bertram's glasses to check, if there was still life in the DJ. "But I want you to meet Cali Nordsturm. He works down at the Eroscenter."
"Isn't it a little early for the Reeperbahn?" Sean caught the apartment keys thrown by Kurt.
"Not if you know the right place to go?"
The German's T-Bird glided through downtown Hamburg. As the two cars passed the shell of St. Nicolai, Sean spotted a very plain Opel sedan hazardously overtaking a bus.
He didn't think much about it, until spotting the same car in the rearview mirror, as they entered St. Pauli. Sean was unable to see the driver's face, but immediately made him for a cop.
When they pulled into a garage off Taubenstrasse, Sean parked next to the T-Bird. Kurt slid out of the car. Bertram remained out for the long count.
"Looks like you have a new security system."
"More like a dog that will not bark." The two of them left the Frenchman to his slumber. Kurt looked both ways on the street and said, "So you have a new place to live and a new car. Tomorrow we will get you new clothes. No one will recognize you back in New York or Paris."
"Listen, I think you have a problem." Sean eyed the Opel up the street.
"Yes, the Opel is the Police and it is usually against the law to surveil normal citizen.” Kurt crossed the wide avenue of the Reeperbahn. "The police track me, thinking it will help them catch Cali. The idiots think he is the city's biggest criminal, even though they hypocritically tax him for these crimes.”
"And what are those?"
"He is a Zuhalter or what you call a pimp."
"Selling women isn't against the law?"
"It is nearly impossible to prove, which is the next best thing to being legal." Kurt said, as they walked under a red neon sign with naked women dancing atop each letter of 'EROS'. "Come with me and I will show you paradise on Earth."
Inside the lurid red neon of the factory-sized brothel, lingerie-clad women lurked lewdly around the poles supporting the tent shielding them from the sun. Most of the day shift were old veterans at the end of their careers. They greeted Kurt like he was a long-lost boyfriend paying the money he owed them.
He pinched their cheeks, kissed their breasts, and caressed their behinds before calling over a sleek Valkyrie in leather lingerie. The dyed blonde could easily handle one more decade of sex tourists before being put out on the streets and Kurt proudly announced, "Sulka teaches all the young girls the tricks of the trade."
"Maybe I teach you some ‘French’ later." Sulka tongued her heavily lacquered red lips, then growled, "All the way down. The best you will ever have."
Most of the times he had been with a woman, how she might please you remained a mystery, until the sheets of the bed were thrown back, and even then most women were afraid of letting go to prevent the man from discovering how much they enjoyed it. Sean would not have to ask Sulka afterwards, "How was it for you?" Mostly since her response would be determined by how much money she received for her services. Kurt directed her attention to Dutch tourists meandering onto the concrete floor, but a trio of whores already had their hooks into the newcomers.
"I think your American friend will be more fun than those cheeseheads." Sulka opened her bra to display her firm breasts and Kurt grabbed him. "I'll bring him back after meeting meets."
Sean trailed him to a badly constructed motel and they climbed the metal stairs into a cheaply furnished office. Two white men in jogging outfits and one black man in an Italian suit sat in the cramped quarters. The desk was piled with money on all denominations and currencies. The two white men rose to welcome Kurt with hugs and slaps on the shoulders, while the black man lasered Sean from behind aviator sunglasses. Sean met the yellowed eyes. He had seen hundreds of men, who imagined themselves tough, but the black man was no pretender.
"This is my best friend in the world." Kurt put his arm around the black man. "Cali the Ear-ripper. Whatever he wants in the club, he gets. In return, if you ever have any problem with anyone in the club, mention Cali's name and that problem will go away. And I mean any problem."
"Yes, just call me and I will be there." The two men shook hands and Cali's grip buckled Sean's knuckles, so he let his hand go limp. Cali grinned in triumph and released Sean's hand. The black pimp signaled for the two bodybuilders to leave the room and Sean was impressed any white German would take orders from a black man.
"Please to meet you."
Cali intently inspected Sean, but the nightclub owner said, "Stop being so frightening. You are both my friends. Sean, I have another job for you. Cali wants to learn English. Maybe you can help him."
"Yes, I am very interested in improving my English." Cali pulled off his sunglasses.
"I really only speak American." Sean was not deluded by Cali's hospitality or three-piece suit. This man was a merciless killer like Kevin Driscoll.
"All the better, because I want to go to America to drive in the Cannonball Run.”
Sean didn’t have the heart to tell him that legendary race was an urban myth and said, “I’ll have you speaking like Burt Reynolds within a month.”
“You two talk. I have some business to take care of.”
Kurt left the office and Cali offered Sean a drink from a fully-stocked bar to see.
"A Coke would be fine." Sean accepted the soda and watched the black man finger a scar running down his cheek like it was a guitar string. Cali noticed his interest and demanded, "Was ist los? You have not seen a nigger before?"
"Not in Germany, I haven't." Sean suspected Cali wasn't interested in any lies. “I come from Maine. It’s a state up near Canada. Only whites, so we didn’t have any ‘niggers’. In Boston everything seemed okay, but only because all the blacks were living in the ghetto. I had black friends, but none of my white friends liked that. I didn’t care. I’ve slept with black women and played basketball against them all, so I tend not to think any black man as a 'nigger'. Maybe if he puts a gun to my head, but I've only fought white men, so let's keep the 'nigger' out of this."
"Leaving the 'nigger' out is easier said than done.Everyone in Hamburg calls me ‘Nigger’ Cali. Always have and always will.”
Sean sensed he was being assessed for some future reason and suspected Cali’s involvement with Kurt’s transfer of funds. The two were friends and probably partners in crime. The profits from prostitution had to be enormous and not paying taxes would make them even bigger. Sean took a sip of his drink, then asked, "You ever think about living someplace, where no one could call you 'nigger'?"
"Where? America or Africa?" Cali laughed at the idea. "In America they would lynch me or throw me in jail. Africa? How long do you think I would last in Africa? One week? Two? I am a black man in Germany. I have two hundred women working for me each night in this fuck factory. I get over five hundred marks from each one. It's simple arithmetic. I make money and money proves my worth to most Germans. This is my kingdom. Could I have one in America?"
"Nothing happened between us." Sean frowned at his business being public knowledge, but Cali dismissed his disapproval with a wave in the air. "Sometimes a kiss is as good as a fuck. Do not be so shocked. Sex is my business. It pays me to well-informed about who is with who in this city and who wants to fuck who."
"So you're doing the city a public service."
"Yes, a pimp is a dirty job, but I am the best at it and I pay more taxes than most industrialists in Germany. I obey the law as best as I can, but there are always detours available for my group of business associates. His group had averted the criminality of pimping by renting out the hotel rooms to the girls working the Eros Center since 1967.
"You don't have to legitimize yourself to me," Sean replied, thinking that the American taxpayers were spending billions in defense to protect this whoremaster from Communism.
"Legitimize? I am what I am. Someone who makes excuses."
"Somehow I think that will be unnecessary." Sean was convinced that the pimp had more alibis than excuses.
"You can never be sure what will be necessary. Let me put it this way." Cali glanced out the window of the office, then leaned forward on the desk. "Maybe there is a woman or man, who resist my 'friend'. The problem could be a father, a lover, a husband, a boyfriend, or girlfriend or that the woman thinks the man is as ugly as sin. My job in this case is to assist my 'friend' in making his wish come true. No one has ever refused me. Maybe you will want my help and may be sooner than you think. You and Petra. Only one man in Hamburg is willing to pay her price. Before her beating, it was different. She would go with any man."
Sean was about to ask, "What beating?", when Kurt entered the office red-faced and out of breath. He gulped Sean's drink and made a face upon discovering it was coke.
"My boy, Sulka is refusing business to be with you. Go, take care of her."
Sean had forgotten Sulka during his conversation with Cali, but said, "Sorry, I don't pay for it." "We all pay for it one way or the other." Cali pulled out a wad of DMs and peeled off three 100 Mark bills. "Every man pay with either with dinner or time. This way there are no flowers or candies, just sex. All nice and clean. The girls have to get check every two weeks for disease, plus you’re not paying for the sex, just for the girl to go away in the end, so try Sulka.”
"No thanks."
<>"You give me lessons in American English and I will give you credit with any of my girls." Cali yelled to Sulka out the window. The leather-clad bleached blonde trotted to her master's call. Cali smiled wickedly and said, "I told her, she better be good or else I would put her on the Fischmarket."
"What's that?" Sean had to ask, as Sulka took his hand.
"When they are finished here, they go to the harbor for the free trade. It is the end of the road." Cali pinched Sulka's cheek, telling her, "Machts gut mit ihm, ja."
Cali's threat had put the love of Satan in her and Sean submitted to Sulka's tugging on his arm.
Once Sean was out of the office, the two men's jovial demeanor vanished.
Kurt locked the door and Cali shut the window. The black man took off his sunglasses, so Kurt could see that some of his doubts had been laid to rest. “He might work, but what’s to insure he sees this through to the end?”
"Because we have a secret weapon,” Kurt raised his glass in a toast to Cali. "Most men are willing to sacrifice their life for a woman faster than money or themselves. If I am right, then my friend upstairs is no different from anyone.
"Petra." Cali laughed at the simplicity of Kurt's trap. "He will never see what hits him."
"Not until it is too late," Kurt replied, wondering if he was also being set-up by Cali. It was a risk that he willing to take and leaned back in the chair.
Kali poured two glasses of scotch whiskey.
"Zum Sonderboch."
"To a sucker."
They clinked glasses and drained the whiskey.
The odds were with them.
They always were when you played by the rules of the Reeperbahn.
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