Sean picked up nearly eight hundred thousand Swiss Francs at the bank and Herr Egard regarded the American, as if he never wanted to see him again. His wish would come true today, if Sean could get up the nerve to steal the packet. The banker accompanied him to the Volvo followed by a guard.
"Is anything wrong?"
"No, just making sure the money get to the car safely. Have a good trip."
"Thanks. See you next week."
"Looks like they're worried about someone robbing us," Murah commented, as he wheeled the car into the street.
"They might have a point."
"How so?"
"We haven't changed our routine from day one." Sean checked for anyone following him or her, except the street was empty.
"Yes, with this much money at stake, the risk becomes less of an issue." Murah's tone warned that last week's hesitancy on the bank's steps last week had not gone unnoticed. Thankfully he left it at that and they proceeded to the airport in silence.
The day passed as slowly as any other they had spent in the airport.
Sean buried himself in Isaac B. Singer's THE SLAVE until his flight was ready for boarding. Murah surprisingly showed a ticket at the gate.
"You're going to Hamburg?"
"I have to speak to Kurt in person."
Sean didn't ask what, but it seemed like Kurt wasn't taking any chances on this trip.
Inside the plane Murah signaled for Sean to take the window seat, while he sat guard on the aisle, signifying any chances Sean had for taking this money had been those few seconds a week ago.
After the plane took out, Sean browsed through STERN and stopped on a page advertising diamonds.
A handsome man offered an engagement ring to a lovely woman. He thought about how happy Petra would be to get such a ring. Even with the liquidation of everything he owned, the old BMW, 4000 marks, and his motorcycle in New York, that ring was beyond his means. Sean pondered the possibility of convincing the Yugoslav to split the money between them, but suspected at the mere mention of a theft he would be thrown from the airplane without a parachute.
The plane landed in Hamburg on time and Murah escorted him through the terminal. No one stopped him for questioning and Kurt had met him outside in the T-Bird. One glance told Sean the German was still doing drugs and he looked ready for a return visit to the hospital. His death wish was his own business and Sean handed the aluminum case to Kurt, thinking how all this money wasn't making anything better for him and Sean's stealing it probably wouldn't have benefited him either.
"No problems this time?" Kurt asked, his hands shaking on the steering wheel.
At first Sean thought the question was directed to him, but Murah answered from the back seat, "No problems. Not in Geneva. No here."
Kurt expressed his gratitude to his courier by paying him an extra thousand Marks, then informed him, "Only one more transfer left, probably Friday, then you're free again."
"I can hardly wait." Sean exited from the car and went to his own.
Each week the money from the bank had doubled in amount. Now 800,000 was about what most normal people earn in a lifetime. Next week was probably going to be 1,6000,000 Swiss Francs. How much didn't matter, because there was no way he could pull off this heist by himself. He would have to be satisfied with his courier fee and that fact that Petra and he were now lovers and that was something money couldn't buy.
When he arrived at the apartment, Petra demonstrated how happy she was to see him without resorting to any of the tricks of her previous career and relied strictly on the tenderness of someone who was in love. Sean could only reciprocate in kind. He suggested they go out to eat.
Petra would have preferred to remain where they were, yet didn't argue, since he seemed so happy. Sean dressed in his black suit, while she changed into a light shirt and tan shirt. The gold chains remained in the dresser and the leathers stayed in the closet. "No leather. No gold," asked Sean.
"No, the only way I can be someone new is not be who I was before."
"I wish I could do the same."
"Once we leave here, maybe we can."
"We'll see soon enough." Sean was willing to try with Petra.
They walked outside hand in hand. The spire of the church across the street was a slender needle into the night sky and a few leaves rolled down the sidewalk.
"Autumn," said Sean.
"Not yet." Petra let the warm breeze off the lake blow through her day. "Summer still has some life in it."
Three young girls in mini-skirts passed them and Sean followed them with his eyes, until Petra's fingernails dug into his flesh. He turned sharply to her and said, "Sorry, I didn't know it was against the law to look."
"It isn't, but just remember that when you're with me."
"How could I forget?" Sean held up his palm. "You drew blood."
"Only a little.” Petra took his hand and kissed where the red half-circles.
When they reached the Porsche, she stopped and said, "Funny I should want you so much now after not wanting you at all."
"Me, I wanted you from the first time I saw you." Sean replied, as he sat in the passenger side of the convertible.
"Lusten oder Lieben?" Speaking English all the time was exhausting, since she used at most three hundred words, but Sean's German was worse than a three-year old.
"A little of lust and a lot more of the love."
"Is that what you mean by love at first sight?" Petra slipped behind the wheel of the Porsche.
"Maybe I do." Sean's obsession for Tammi had been cleansed by his love for Petra, because nothing cured a broken heart faster than to falling in love. She caressed her cheek and he asked, "And you?"
"Moglich Ich auch." Sometimes it was too soon to say more than 'maybe', but for both of them the time to say more was not far away.
They drove to St. Pauli under a velvet sky dotted with distant stars and Sean lifted his head.
"Wishing on a star."
"Looking for a meteorite. August is the time of the Pleiades. Where I come from in Maine, the sky is dark enough to see scores of them."
"Too much light in Hamburg."
"Same as New York." The only movement above was a jet plane heading north. "Maybe we could go to the Alps first. I'm sure we can see them there."
"Sounds beautiful."
"Same as you."
"Genug romantik, bitte."
"As you wish."
Petra parked the car on the Reeperbahn and they strolled arm in arm to the Italian restaurant near Herbertstrasse.
Every table in the front was crowded with noisy customers. The maitre de greeted Petra with four kisses on the cheek and gave her a table in back. Several groups of diners spoke in hushed tones and Sean had to ask, "Are you famous or something? Every place we have ever gone, people recognize you. Why?"
"It is an old story and why my face is the way it is. I am amazed you never ask me what happened."
"I thought you would tell me one day."
"And no one else did?" Petra unfolded her napkin and put it on her lap, showing she had been brought up with the same middle-class manners as Sean.
"They said something about a beating, but never why or who."
"Yes, that is the short story of what happened." Petra fingered her left eye.
Glass.
"And the long?"
Before she could answer, the waiter came over with a bottle of wine from the chef. Petra thanked him and allowed Sean to taste the wine, which was exceptionally chilled, if nothing else. When the waiter left, Sean said, "And you were saying?"
"I was organizing the prostitutes to get rid of the pimps. I had some success at first, but then the pimps stopped my campaign by beating me up." Petra kept it short. Telling Sean the gory details about the savage attack would have been too close to reliving the actual event. Her good eye twitched, as she said, "The newspapers made a big deal about my 'crusade', though they were only interested in selling newspapers."
"And what about the girls?"
"The girls? They got the message and so did I. No union, so I went back to being a whore."
"Hollywood would buy the rights to your story." Sean reached over to hold her hand, though she coldly replied, "This is not Hollywood. It is an old story and one I wish to forget."
She lifted her other hand and touched the most damaged side of her face. The pain generated from her empty eye socket served as a reminder of her vow of vengeance. Her face hardened for a second, till she released the thought. "What about you? Why are you here? A bad love story or wanted by the police?"
"A little bit of both. Actually more than a little." Sean told her about Tammi, the cops, and the nightclub, then said, "I've always been unlucky in love."
"Maybe that was only in New York."
"Maybe," Sean answered without telling her of other disasters in Paris, LA, and Miami.
"Maybe your luck will change." "It has so far." Sean kissed Petra on the neck.
A frisson cascaded down her spine.
"Mine too."
"At the roulette wheel."
"Not yet."
The waiter delivered their linguine and the conversation broke off, until Petra asked, "What kind of name is Coll."
"It was Coll, but my great-great-great grandfather wound up on the losing side of the American Revolution. His family disowned him and he fled to Canada, shortening his name to 'Coll'." Sean recounted the story his grandfather had told him. It was a lie, but the tale of murder in the North Woods, which was the truth, was too complicated for one dinner.
"So you are Canadian?"
"No, I am American. My grandfather served as a doctor for the British in World War I and met my grandmother as a field nurse a hospital in France. She was from Maine and after the war they returned to the States." Sean looked across the table.
Petra was staring over his shoulder. A heavy-set man stood up from a table of men and approached them. Sean grabbed a fork. Petra said, "Don't."
The man spoke swiftly in German. Sean didn't understand the words, but read Petra's eyes.
"Listen, we're having dinner, so please return to your table."
"Hah, an American. Why aren't you at a fast food restaurant."
The dark-haired man explained what he had said to his friends in German and they laughed, slapping the table.
Unwilling to start a fight, Sean responded jovially, "Some of us do and some of us don't."
"Amerika, Kulturlos Leute." One of his friends sneered loudly.
Several diners swiveled their heads at the sound of the disturbance. The waiter tried to interfere, but was pushed away by the fat man. While most Germans were good people, but Sean kept running into the worst. Considering where and for whom he worked, he could expect nothing less.
"Petra and I are old friends, are we, Liebsten?"
"We were never Liebsten." Petra remembered this man, his nakedness, what he had wanted, how much he had paid her, how many minutes he had taken. She looked at Sean to warn to make any trouble, but he said, "We have plenty of culture. cowboys, the blues, and pizza."
"That is not Kultur." The man's face was warped by superiority, as he spat out, "Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller. Das ist Kultur."
"Ancient history," Sean replied, resisting the urge to add bombing German cities into rubble to the list, though any reason to be polite had disappeared several seconds ago and Sean didn't give a rat's ass who this man was, where he came from or anything else, for a sliver of a tear shined in Petra's eye.
"Ancient history?" The man pushed away the hands of another waiter. "Better ancient history than 'nigger' history."
"You said what?" Sean put his clenched fists under the table, then said, "Maybe you prefer to talk about the new German culture. Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschewitz."
Those four words wipe off the drunk's smug smile and he would have thrown a punch had his friends not wrestled him away, muttering something about there never having been a Final Solution, but that he had one designed for an 'Auslander'.
The waiters and maitre de hurried over to apologize for the men's behavior.
"Es war nichts. Rechtung, bitte?" Petra asked for the bill and the maitre de said the dinner was on him before retreating from the table.
"Sorry." Sean shrugged. "I guess I shouldn't have mentioned the Nazi thing."
"It wasn’t about Nazis. I fucked that man and hundreds of men just like him in Hamburg. This is not the first time or the last time that will happen."
He handed her a napkin.
"You think a napkin will make me feel better." Petra threw it on the floor and left the restaurant
Sean quickly followed her and found her leaning against the barrier of Herbertstrasse. He touched her hair, then caressed her face. She slapped away his hand. Seeing a meteorite streak across the sky, he wished Petra would forget what had happened in her restaurant and he said, "Petra."
"What?" She demanded with a heart-crushing hostility that cut into his heart.
He swallowed a lump of hurt, then said, "Just that neither of us have been saints, but that's not saying that we can't start over with a clean slate."
"I thought it was possible to change, but those men and the people in the restaurant see me as what I am. A whore and that is all I am."
She was right, but Sean wasn't giving up so easily and told her, "You don't have to be who they want you to be."
"What? You want things to be right, so I can come back to your house and fuck you. For free too. You think you do not have to pay for a woman. You pay, every man does. It could be dinner or flowers or jewelry, but no woman will give it away for free. Or maybe you want to be the whore. I will give you one-thousand DM for a night. That was my fee before they destroyed my face." Her hands struck out to drive him away for his own good.
"I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about you and me. Us." Sean seized his wrist, twisting it hard and finding himself angered by his inability to help her.
"Us? There is no us." A cynical snarl leapt from her throat, then she attacked him. Sean defended himself as best he could without hurting her, but that meant letting down his guard. Petra clipped him with a hard fist and he stepped back to bump into someone.
"Arseloch." It was the fat man. Two other men emerged from the darkness. They were taller than Sean, but he had one advantage. They would want to talk first. Sean was all action.
"So, was jetzt?" The German demanded to the chuckles of his friends. This must have been their idea of a good ending to the night and the man shoved Sean backwards, saying, "Was denkst du?"
Some people might call a 'sucker punch' unfair, but nothing is fair in love and war, so Sean grabbed hold of the drunk's wispy forelock and his right fist impacted on the man's face with the sweetness of driving a baseball over the outfield fence. The man fell back into his friends' arms, while Sean stared at the clump of hair in his left hand. Pinpoints of blood speckled the man's forehead.
Caught off-guard by the scalping, Sean momentarily forgot the other two assailants, but one of them smacked Sean in the head and he dropped on his knees and not to pray. He tried to get to his feet, but his legs were too weak to support him, so he instinctively contracted into a ball. The punches became kicks to his ribs, legs, and back. One boot snapped his head back with an explosive flash strobing into his sockets. He was about to lose consciousness, when a hollow shot rang out.
Sean flinched, but no bullet burned into his body.
Running footsteps replaced the blood roaring in his ears, then the click of high heels. Sean opened his eyes. Petra stood over him, a small-caliber pistol in her hand. She stuck the gun in her purse, then pulled him to his feet and said, "We have to go before the police come."
"Just point me in the right direction." Sean stumbled to his feet and Petra helped him walk down the street. This was the second bad beating he had received in Hamburg and the three men had hurt him, though he had escaped without his nose being broken or a tooth knocked out. At least he had something to be thankful for.
In the car Petra cleaned the blood off his face and said, "Tut mir lied."
"You don't have to apologize, unless you're telling me you want to end this now." Sean gazed into both her eyes. That one of them was glass was unimportant. To Sean they were still the gateways to her soul.
"I've been around the world. I’ve been with many women. I told you. I'm no saint, but with you I'm willing to try. I love you, Petra. I have for a while. I love you. There I said it again."
Petra still couldn't tell him the same thing too, but kissed him tenderly on the lips before asking, "You said you would leave here with me?"
"Yes," was all Sean could say, because it was the truth.
Petra turned on the engine and shifted into first, saying, "Then let's go home."
From a nearby BMW SS Tommy and Lukas watched the couple drive away. The blond pimp turned to his passenger and asked, "Are you satisfied?"
"For now, yes?" Lukas put down the Leica R5 with a 200mm zoom. He had hoped for the beating to go on forever, but had forgotten how tough Petra could be and desired her more than ever.
"You'll be even more satisfied next time," SS Tommy promised, because then he would be the one doing the heavy work and then there would be two targets instead of one. He did some calculating in his head, then added another person to this number. There was no reason to leave Lukas out of that little party.
None at all.
In his mind they were all almost dead men.
No comments:
Post a Comment