Sean drove to a non-descript garage in Versoix. A swarthy mechanic in greasy overalls helped lift Kurt out of the Mercedes. Leaving the dead man's body with a complete stranger was too much like leaving off his laundry, but Sean had little other choice with Petra's life on the line. He conveyed the German's wish to be cremated in Pere-Lachaise to the Yugoslav in faltering French, then hopped into the Mercedes 500i and headed north.
The Swiss Border police outside Base waved him through customs as did the counterparts in Wiel am Rhein. Once on the Autobahn, Sean opened up the big car and raced the Porsches, BMWs, and the occasional Ferrari. None of the drivers were counting laps, only speed.
North of Heidelberg the gray strand of highway dissolved into the thick fog off the Rhine River. Red taillights heaved into sight at the last moment and pulled over with the flick of the high beams. If anyone had braked, the ensuing chain reaction would have left hundreds of car and trucks slamming into each other for hours. This potential danger deterred few of the speedsters, least of all Sean.
Outside Frankfurt an entire lane was blocked by an endless column of tanks exiting to the Fulda Gap. For all he cared, they could have been fighting World War Four.
His foot stamped on the gas and the Benz passed the armor at suicidal speed in the breakdown lane. Sean attempted to call his apartment with the mobile phone, but no one answered on the other end. His mind replayed hundreds of scenarios from Petra being dead to her having set him up and he roller-coastered from fear to anger without resting on one long enough to rationally settle on the truth. The answer was waiting in Hamburg, then again he was not after answers, only Petra.
An hour after sunset he reached the outskirts of Hamburg, Sean decelerated for the first time in hours. At 100KPH the car seemed to be at a standstill. He traversed a city filled with laughing teens, couples holding hands, and kissing lovers. He cursed their normal lives, but prayed that he could start doing the same tomorrow.
The Reeperbahn was packed with cars and Sean double-parked the Mercedes on a crosswalk. He pushed the men and women out of the way with the Halliburton case and ignored their comments on his rudeness.
An unruly mob of men fought to get into the Eroscenter. He head-butted one soldier and kicked the shins and ankles of anyone too stubborn to give way and popped through the narrow hallway into the tented hall.
His eyes slowly adjusted the lurid crimson luminescence. The near-naked women trawled lewdly for better-paying customers from the over-capacity horde. Blondie's HEART OF GLASS blared on the crackling loudspeakers. Order had collapsed within the giant brothel
Something was up. The men acted like it was the end of the world and the women, as if they were celebrating a long-forgotten pagan holiday. Their Babelesque cackle crammed into his ears. Their hands reached out and their whispers offered depraved delights. He ran a gauntlet of breasts and thighs, slick with fluids from sweat, semen, and lubrication.
Women and men scuffled to get upstairs to the hotel rooms.
Several prostitutes serviced men against the wall of the main room. Two Brazilian transvestites were on their knees, each fellating a pair of young sailors. A blonde woman with enormous breasts reached for Sean, but he fought off her grasp.
An explosion of naked bodies burst from the narrow hotel entrance and collapsed on the slick floor to coalesce into a contorted orgy of flesh under the crimson neon's eternal dusk. For a second Sean remembered the column of tanks and thought maybe the atomic war had begun, for these people were fucking like there was no tomorrow.
His name was shouted out above the din of groans and Sulka flounced up to him, her lustful eyes beacons to any takers. She kissed him on the cheek and re-arranged the leather harness. Her breasts, belly, and hips shined with the slippery mélange of sweat and semen. She rubbed up against his body and whispered in his ears the same line she had said months ago.
Sean asked, "Wo ist Petra?"
"Ich weiss' nicht." She pinched her nipples between her thumb and index finger and winked at a passing customer.
"Und Cali?"
"Nicht hier. There are no Zuhalterei here tonight."
"None."
"Thanks to Petra. She butchered die Alte at an apartment on Mittelweg and came here and slashed Maserati Klaus' ass with a razor. He confessed everything and we wanted to kill him. She said he wasn't the one she wanted dead."
"Who was?"
"SS Tommy and Kali."
"Shit."
"Rechtig, but there are no pimps here. The Eroscenter belongs to us. The women and we are not giving it back. The Zuhalterei called die Bulle, but we fought off the Schupo. After a five minute-long barrage of bottle the police wisely decided to retreat up the street."
"A good decision."
The bass amp had blown and the music vibrated over the sound system like a 100 dB kazoo. Wherever Cali was, so was Petra and Sean shouted over X-Ray Specs' UP BONDAGE. "I have to find Petra."
"Go to her house." Sulka dragged away her next client, yelling, "Gehen zum Hausen."
Sean was in a madhouse and he reverted to his old angry self. The brawling scrum of men buffeted about the sex club's entrance and they stepped aside for the wild man swinging the aluminum case. Several tried to fight him, but their lust fever was no match for his blood rage or the metal case. Smarter men took advantage of his wake and rushed into the temporary gap, only to be hopelessly repacked shoulder to shoulder.
Sean spurted onto the sidewalk, his tie gone and every button on his jacket ripped off. Somehow he had lost a shoelace in the mob. Outside the scene was turning nasty, as the ousted pimps struggled vainly to block the herds of men funneling into the Eroscenter.
Sean proceeded past the police barriers through a helmeted squad of riot police. More police were arriving every moment and forming into ranks to clear the streets of the rebellious carnival.
A dull savage roar stopped them in their hobnailed tracks and Sean thought proudly of Petra's revenge, until realizing that the pimps were honor-bound to retaliate and this time her sentence was a death.
He got in the Benz and stepped on the gas. The Mercedes plowed through the crowd, knocking the rioters aside. The police charged into the fray, as he yanked the car west toward Kaiserringstrasse.
Several police cars raced in the opposite direction to the Reeperbahn. He doubted whether any police were left to patrol to the rest of the city and blew through three red lights, the last onto Petra's street. The streetlights had been knocked out, meaning that the pimps had beaten him here. He parked the Mercedes on the sidewalk before the gate, which was hanging off its hinges.
His heart pounded with fear and he prayed he found Petra alive, but knew whom he would kill, if she was dead. He did not need a judge or jury, just a gun.
The front door had been demolished as well. Black shadows gripped the studio to the left and the stairs were an inky upside-down chasm climbing to the second-floor. He heard a creak and entered the studio. Someone was sitting in a chair. His pleas became a mantra. "Please, let her be alive."
The beam of a flashlight blinded him and Sean stumbled backwards over the debris on the floor. He lifted his hand to block the light and did not recognize the man in the chair, until the policeman who had stopped him at the airport said, "Herr Tempo, I have been waiting you. Your friend started a riot in the Eroscenter by slashing one of Cali's henchmen so severely that he needed surgery."
"All the pimps could killed themselves for all I care. Where's Petra?"
"I was hoping you could tell me." The expression on the policeman's face told Sean that Petra was still at large.
"I was out of town." The studio had been demolished, but there was no blood on the walls or floor, which was a good sign. "Who wrecked the place?"
"Some pimps came here, but she was someplace else. The neighbors complained about the noise and we arrested them. They will stay the night in jail, but tomorrow they will run her down her to the ground."
"You seem on top of things."
"We at the Stittpolizei have had a special interest in Petra Wessel. Her revenge tonight originated with a beating last year. We would love to speak to her."
"I bet you would."
"I've been by your place and she isn't there either."
"It's a big city."
Her escaping from Cali meant that the money in the car was theirs. He had to find her first and they could leave town for good. Sean moved toward the door.
"Not so fast, Herr Coll" The policeman stood up with his hand in his pocket. "You came here a little over a month ago on an Irish passport. You get a job without going through the right procedure and do not pay Lohn-steufer or income tax."
"So I am under arrest?"
"Not yet."
"I don't have the time for this."
"Just a few more minutes of your time, Herr Tempo." The detective withdrew a notebook from his jacket and read with the help of his flashlight. "You also poisoned a group of skinheads and then get into a fight with Tommy Leiter, also called as SS Tommy. You lose this fight, but start an affair with Petra Wessel, a prostitute. You then transport large sums of money from Geneva to Hamburg for Herr Oster, who is a good friend of Cali Nordsturm, the King of The Reeperbahn. You have been a very busy man, Herr Tempo."
"Sounds like you have been too," Sean retorted sarcastically, though the policeman had him dead to rights.
"Herr Coll, I also called up the NYPD and asked them about you. A Sergeant Ferguson told me you were involved in two murders, which occurred outside a nightclub, The Inter-Continental."
"No charges were pressed."
"That is exactly what Sergeant Ferguson said you would say."
"Maybe he should get a job as a mind reader, cause he never got me to tell him a thing."
"Yes, he said that too." The policeman shut his notebook. "We police are all the same. We like to draw lines between the dots, but sometimes we need help. Unfortunately you have not been too helpful either here or New York."
"I guess I'm just not a good citizen." Sean said, but something was not adding up right and he fingered what it was finally. "So if you are Vice, what were you doing at the airport? I mean it's not like the pimps have a pump room in the terminal. If you were interested in me, it was, because someone told you to be interested in me."
The change in the policeman's face verified Sean had struck a nerve.
He started to leave the room and the policeman blocked the American's way with his arm.
"Where are you going?"
"To find Petra and, you can't stop me." Sean pushed the cop and walked out of the room, expecting to hear that famous 'HALT.', which had struck fear into the hearts of Europe forty years ago. Instead the policeman said, "Herr Coll, I will be watching you."
“I'm sure you will." With 1984 only two years around the corner Sean would have expected nothing less from the police.
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