ALMOST A DEAD MAN by Peter Nolan Smith - CHAPTER 1

Greta showed for an evening rendezvous in Hamburg’s harbor district. She was dressed in slick leather and arrived on time in anticipation of a sordid evening of sex with her lover. The tall blonde got out of her car. Willi was not on the desolate street. She heard footsteps and a black man and a white associate dragged her into a shadowy warehouse and sat the blonde on a battered chair.

Twisted claws scurried across the floor and the well-dressed woman lifted her black stiletto heels in horror, but rats were the least of Greta’s problems and she begged, “Please let me go, I haven’t done anything wrong?”

"Nothing wrong?” The black man in the spotless jogging suit circled the chair. Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes and he asked, “Are you a saint?”

“No, I'm not a saint.” The expensive wig flopped off her head. Hans Roth was less a woman without it.

"Are you an artist?" The man swatted the 40-watt bulb dangling from the rafter. "These shots are very kunstlich. I can’t see that you are a man and your friend’s skin is as white as ivory.”

“They are only souvenirs.” The thirty-two year old banker shivered in the slick leather dress.

“Expensive souvenirs, nicht war?”

“Yes, they are.” The weekend in a St. Pauli hotel had cost over 2000 Deutschmarks or half his monthly salary.

“And now you are in trouble.” The black man was as tired of his role as any actor performing Hamlet for the ten-thousandth time. Still his audience flinched on cue, when he flopped the lurid snapshots on the man's lap. “You know who I am, yes?”

"You are Cali Nordstrum. I have read about you in the newspapers." Hans lowered his head. The man was the city's most notorious pimp

"And how someone tried to kill me last week?" Cali fingered the 5-Deutschmark coin hanging from his necklace.

"Yes."

"And I bet that you are thinking you were lucky that they were unsuccessful, but you are wrong. If I was dead, I could not help you."

"With what?"

"You have been money stealing from the bank to pay for your romance. Yes, Willi told me everything and this is not a crime you can get away with forever."

"Es tut mir lied." The part-time transvestite buried his veiny hands into the fallen wig.

The black man handed the transvestite a handkerchief.

"Stop your sniffling. You did not steal from me and we are not here to hurt you or blackmail you, but to help you."

Cali backed away and his scarred face melted into the gloom.

For ten years Hans had protected his name, job, and family from disgrace. Liaisons with street boys lasted one night, but the last months with Willi had incarnated his true persona and he asked hopefully, "How?"

Cali whispered in the man's ear and mapped out his scheme with the persuasiveness of a CIA officer selling the last helicopter seat out of Saigon, since the desperate always bet on long shots. “This is your chance to earn enough money for you and Willi to disappear from Germany. No one would think of searching for you in Thailand. Not as a woman. Were you lying about your commitment to Willi?"

"No." His Adam’s apple gulped in hope of redemption.

"Your first name is Hans, yes?"

"I prefer Greta."

"Greta, I am a better friend than enemy. You can contact me at this number. Tell Willi nothing. This is 'our' secret." He gave the banker a business card and a wad of DM notes. "This will come out of your cut later."

“I’ll follow your every command.”

When his hand reached for the money, Cali snatched the man’s ear so hard that the cartilage partially snapped from the skull. A butcher at the city slaughterhouse had taught him the trick. His stepson was Cali's partner.

"Greta, you understand there's no backing out?"

"Yes," Hans said through watery eyes and Cali released him. The banker arranged his wig and smoothed out his dress. "Thank you."

"Thank me, when this is all over." Cali nodded and his friend opened the basement door for a black leather angel with platinum hair. Heroin had got the better of Willi’s beauty and the black pimp shook his head. He hated drugs. They cut into his employees’ productivity. His associates became sloppy. These weaknesses cost time, money, and lives in his business.

The banker was blind to Willi’s deterioration and they embraced as man and woman.

“Let’s leave the lovers alone.” Neither his friend nor he needed to witness the hustler’s performance.

At the entrance Kurt Oster pulled out a cigarette. The flame from a gold lighter illuminated a rugged face.

"Are we really going to cut in the banker?"

"Just because we are criminals doesn't mean we have to be dishonest. Everyone will get what their fair share, since it’s always luckier to believe you aren’t going to hurt anyone in the beginning.”

Cali stepped into the street to avoid the smoke. Cigarettes killed thousands of people every year.

The police never arrested the manufacturers. Pimps were better headlines. On the warehouse loading dock he surveyed the street. Only three cars were in sight.

“Anything wrong?” Kurt flicked the cigarette on the cobblestones.

“Someone is out there.”

“No one comes to the harbor at night.” The two walked to a brand-new silver Benz.

“We did.” Premonitions served as Cali’s early radar warning.

“And we haven’t done anything wrong.” Kurt’s hair had been recently cut in Milan. The jean jacket had been purchased on the King’s Road and the gold-buckled loafers had been hand-stitched in Italy. Only one shop in Paris carried the 501 jeans. Kurt drove a 1961 Thunderbird. He had expensive tastes in women too.

“Yet we will and things always have a funny way of going wrong.” Cali spoke German, ate sausages, liked Schlager rock, but the stares and pointed fingers at his black skin verified he was an Auslander to nearly every German, except one and that person wasn’t his mother.

“Which is why I will enlist the American for the Sonderboch. German police love arresting international criminals and a sucker holding the bag might buy us a few hours or even days to flee from this life.

“Someone from Hamburg might suspect something, but he won’t.”

"So, this American, is he stupid?”

"No, even better. Broken-hearted." Kurt added the missing link, "Plus Petra will act as the lure."

"Are you mad? She is a danger to us all."

"The greater the risk, the greater the gain.”

"Just once I would like someone to lie to me."

“I’ve never lied to you.”

“Not once?”

“Not about anything important.”

“Like your debts to the loan sharks.”

Cali was putting his life in his friend’s hands again.

“I never lied about them. I just never told you how much. If you don’t want to do this, I understand.”

“I didn’t say that. I want to get out of this life.”

“Not many live to tell the tale.”

“I know that all too well. Last week I walked out the the restaurant. I bent over to pick up this coin." Cali tapped the coin on the chain. "A second later shots go over my head. I return fire. Only hit the wind. Five marks saved my life. I’m 27. No one retires from this work alive, besides stealing millions isn’t any different from stealing an apple. The trick is not getting caught.”

"At least not by the wrong people."

Neither man was worried about the police, but Cali’s Reeperbahn compatriots. SS Tommy, his right-hand man, controlled half Hamburg's prostitutes with sociopathic violence. Mack 'Die Alte' beat the smaller pimps into submission. Cali’s fellow pimps controlled Hamburg's streetwalkers, girls, gay rent-boys, and underage 'Strichmadchens' with ruthlessness and fear was his greatest defense against their turning him. In their eyes he was always a 'Schwartzer'.

The black pimp opened the trunk of the Benz. Cali loved the new car smell. He reached into the trunk's secret compartment and handed over a manila envelope.

“That enough money?”

“More than enough to open an account in Switzerland.”

Kurt tucked the envelope inside his jacket.

“We can tell no one about this.”

Cali checked the street again.

“It’s me and you against the world.”

“Like always.” They shook hands to reseal their childhood pact. Cali drove away and Kurt followed in his electric-blue T-bird, lost in a better world money can buy.

Two seconds later only the exhaust fumes from the Thunderbird remained on the street and a bearded man emerged from the shadows.

The thirty year-old had seen enough. He would catch up with Kurt at his nightclub. Like most criminals

Kurt Oster was a creature of habits. Some good, some bad, and the bearded man knew which ones were which.

After all he was a policeman.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN by Peter Nolan Smith - CHAPTER 2

Howling sirens accompanied East Villagers fleeing into the Astor Place Subway. A lucky few reached the shelter of the tunnel and the rest raised their eyes to the speck falling to Earth. A white flash vaporized the troposphere, as a subhuman scream ping-ponged across the tenement canyon of East 10th Street.

“Dooooonnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaa."

Inside a railroad flat's bedroom a thirty year-old man threw off the pillow over his head and Sean Coll staggered to an open window. Sweat dripped off his face, as he looked down to the sidewalk.

“Dooooonnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaa."

A middle-aged Polish woman fled from a dope-sick junkie mauling a parked car with an iron pipe. Glass shards flew in the sunlight. The beserker arched his face to the broiling sun and emptied the ashes of his soul from his lungs.

"DOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNAAAAAAA."

No woman answered his warbling aria.

A cop car rounded the corner and the heroin addict hid the pipe, but nothing short of an 'officer-down' call was extricating the policemen from their air-con cruiser.

Once the cruiser drifted out of sight, the junkie demolished another windshield.

“Shit."

Sean's Triumph was on deck for batting practice.

He hurried to the kitchen and filled a trash bag with water from the brimming tub.

Fifteen seconds later Sean heaved out the plastic sack out the window. Liquid beads sprayed from its rupturing seams. The bag of water struck the junkie’s shoulder and the impact crushed him to the sidewalk. The plastic shroud fluttered over his fallen body. He lay still. Water dropped from that height might be fatal blow, but junkies don’t die easy. The addict rose to his feet and looked up at the buildings before limping down the block.

Sean flopped on the couch. The floor fan failed to circulate the sullen air and sweat oozed from his body like he was a miraculous weeping statue. Sheet lightning crackled across the sky and the rumbling thunder echoed the tale of Sleepy Hollow, yet no rain fell from from above.

The telephone broke his trance and he grabbed the phone on the third ring.

"Tammi?"

"No, this is Kurt." A man's voice crackled over trans-Atlantic interference.

"Kurt?"

"Do you remember me?"

"From Paris."

The German telex entrepreneur lived in a house near the Eiffel Tower. Kurt showed up at bars and restaurants with beautiful women. Sean had done drugs with him twice.

"How's New York in the summer. Hell, no?"

"Pretty close to it. Only me, the poor, the depraved, and the dying."

"You speak a little German, yes."

"Ich hatte Deutsche im Hoche Schule gelernt.”

His classmates had ridiculed Sean’s reading of Kafka's DAS URTEIL, until the warty Bavarian teacher had snubbed out his Pall Mall and coughed, "Even with his stutter Herr Coll speaks German better than the rest of you hairdressers."

Most of his speech impediments had been cured by therapy and few people noticed the stammer.

"You are Irish, yes?" asked Kurt.

"American and Irish." Ireland granted second-generation descendants citizenship, which was also in the EEC. “Why?”

"Because you need papers to work in Hamburg at my new club BSirs.”

"Isn't that what Alex called his droogies in CLOCKWORK ORANGE."

"The bouncers dress just like them. Your friend, Bertram Bellepas, is the DJ. The city is beautiful. The women more so. You manage the club for two-hundred Deutschmarks a night, plus a one and a half percentage of the gross, which will come to about three-thousand marks a month. A ticket will be waiting at Lufthansa office in New York. I will meet you at the airport. What do know about Hamburg?”

“Only that the Beatles played at the Star Club and sex trade thrives on the Reeperbahn.” Sean swiftly calculated that six months of work would earn him roughly fifty thousand marks or $30,000. Still he had to say, "Ich musste zu denken." “Do you have a better offer?”

"No."

There was only one reason to stay here, but the odds of Tammi coming back the New York were nil and he said, "I'll tell you tomorrow."

"Not coming would be a big mistake.”

“It wouldn’t be my first one.”

“No, and it won’t be your last, but you should come. It’ll be fun. Call me later, but think yes.”

Kurt gave his number and the overseas line clicked dead.

Sean hung up the phone and imagined Bruder Karl hearing that his worst student might be working in Germany. His classmates could go to hell.

After a buttered bagel and coffee at Velseka’s Diner Sean shot hoops in Tompkins Square Park, losing more games than he won.

During the early evening he drank beer on his stoop. Workers walked home from a Nine-To-Fives. He should have been one of them. He had a college degree. His family lived normal lives in Boston. He had no answers to any questions about his deviation from conformity and climbed upstairs to change into jeans and a light t-shirt.

The sun was setting upon his return to street. Sean sat on his Triumph and drove up 1st Avenue to East 77th Street. He parked the bike on the corner and walked halfway down the block. Tammi's name remained on the mailbox. He pressed the buzzer. A glass bottle shattered against the brick wall.

"Bastard. Man. Bastard." A wizened woman in a shroud of garbage bags scrounged through the nearest trashcan for another missile. "I'm the only crazy on this block and you're not crazy. You're only in love with someone who doesn't love you. I've seen you and your whore. She was fucking that Russian and everyone else. All you bastards want is for us to be whores, then you throw us out on the street."

The old woman tore apart her plastic sheath. Her body was encrusted with layers of dirt.. Sean retreated to his motorcycle. The kickstart ignited the 650cc engine and a backfire of flames spurted from the exhaust pipes. Dogs barked inside the buildings and car alarms howled on the street. He revved the motor and raced to 2nd Avenue.

The old woman was right and only one thing could erase her words.

He burned the red light. A newspaper truck missed him by inches.

At 23rd Street he shifted into fifth.

Crossing 14th he spotted a blonde getting into a taxi.

She was the same height as Tammi.

Sean braked to a skidding halt.

A young businessman ran up and lifted her skirt. She laughed, while he forced her into a taxi.

The yellow Checker pulled away from the curb. Sean blasted through the red light.

A siren whooped behind him. The blonde turned and Tammi's mirage dissolved into another woman’s face.

Sean veered over to the curb and pulled off his helmet. Two car doors slammed and footsteps flapped against the pavement. A flashlight beam blinded his eyes and a voice ordered, "Get off the bike."

"What’s the problem?" Sean balanced his bike on the kickstand and lifted his hands.

"You see what I see, Kev?"

"I can't friggin' believe my eyes. Sean Coll in the flesh."

"I told you that was his bike, but you said, "Naw, Seano's in France. Guess you were wrong," the tobacco-harsh voice commented with the pleasure of being right.

The flashlight was shut off and Sean blinked away the shadows. The two NYPD officers grinned like drunken hunters discovering an animal snared in their trap. Kevin Driscoll was thinner than his partner, but still had forty pounds and a few inches on Sean. Neither cop was shy about tossing around their weight.

"Welcome back, Seano." deRocco took off his perforated summer-weight peaked cap and scratched his balding head.

"I'm leaving as soon as I can." Sean had been avoiding deRocco and Driscoll like a disease.

"You believe that, Kev?" deRocco was the brains of the pair.

"Nah, it's bullshit." Kevin Driscoll waved on the gawking drivers and deRocco stepped closer. The smell of whiskey on his breath was not a good sign in hot weather. "Drop yer fuckin' hands. This ain't no arrest. We just wanna talk with you."

"I haven't talked to no one about where you were the night Johnny Fats was killed."

“Frankie, you know this Johnny Fats?” Driscoll slapped the flashlight into his palm.

“Never heard of him.”

"Really? If I had ratted you out, would you be here now? Not a chance and a cop in prison isn't a pretty sight."

"You threatenin’ us?" Driscoll’s hand dropped to his .38.

"Not at all, just that I dis covered the precinct's bagman behind the club. A single bullet hole had perforated his forehead. Somehow a Grand Jury had ruled it 'death by misadventure'. In the ensuing IAU investigation fifteen cops from the Ninth Precinct had been fired without pensions and two imprisoned at Sing-Sing."

"So what?"

“Just I saw you leave with him and I saw him died.”

”We weren’t involved with Johnny Fat’s death." Driscoll protested, not knowing the bagman hadn’t said a single word before his death rattle and deRocco snapped, "Shut up, Kev."

“I buy you’re not killing Johnny, but someone set up the execution.”

“It wasn’t us.” deRocco's eyes blanked out with a cold-blooded gaze.

"Sgt. Ferguson thinks we three know more than we should.”

The IAU sergeant had plenty of theories, mostly of them were on the money.

"That cocksucker." deRocco venomously spat out the words.

Sean smirked, for the precinct cops spread about deRocco's sexual leaning.

"What you smilin' about?"

"Nothing." Cops had a hard job in New York City, however these two were past redemption. “Just I got a phone call today from Germany. They want me to work at a nightclub there. Maybe I should go?”

“And stay away for a while too.” deRocco lit a cigarette. "You're a lucky fuckin' Mick, Seano."

"You want to contribute to my bon-voyage fund?"

“Don’t push it, Seano. Just get the fuck out of town."

"Sure, I'll send you a postcard." The two officers returned to the cruiser and then crossed 14th Street into the Ninth Precinct. Sean had to face the truth that Tammi was gone for good.

"Hamburg," he muttered, tugging on his helmet.

He started his bike and obeyed all the lights to his apartment. By the time he reached East 10th Street, he was thanking deRocco and Driscoll for forcing him to accept Kurt's offer. Maybe the distance of a few thousand miles would help free his soul of Tammi.

Something had to someday.

He only wished it was today.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN by Peter Nolan Smith- CHAPTER 3

A rutted dirt road cut through a wooded park north of Hamburg. The moonless night deepened the darkness within the tunnel of tall pines. A wild swath of brush, brambles, and thorns sprawled along a crumbling stonewall to rusting wrought-iron gates opened wide for the evening's guests.

During the reign of the Baader-Meinhof Gang the Von Hausen estate had been guarded by electronic sensors, video cameras, and attack dogs, and armed guards. Most of the revolutionaries were prisoners, fugitives or deadand neglect served as the best security measure for Germany's uncrowned aristocracy.

Flickering torches flared before a 19th-Century mansion. Laughter echoed through the savage rose gardens. The men appeared powerful and the wives looked ten years younger than their real age. The uniformity of their faces and bodies shared the success of ageless interbreeding.

Dexy's COME ON, EILEEN blared from the speakers. Exquisite teenage girls moved sinuously, while the blasé young boys shrugged listlessly from side to side.

Behind the twin turntables Bertram Bellepas was dying to dance with several of the female guests, but Kurt had warned the DJ against fraternization.

This gathering preferred the help in their place and the older set viewed Kurt with all the suspicion the rich hold for the lower classes. Few could understand their host’s association with such Gesindel. Lukas Von Hausen simply called the nightclub owner 'entertainment'.

His young wife skated through the crowd on high heels. A shimmering silk sheath clung to her tanned body and her silver-blonde hair cast an unearthly halo around her face. Vanessa Von Hausen greeted Lucas with a kiss. Her marriage to a man over twenty years her senior and the antithesis to her ingenuous purity mystified everyone.

Lukas' golden hair had thinned to patches and his flesh was mottled from drug abuse. His bright smile had been replaced by decaying teeth. Considering how hard the baron had abused himself throughout the Sixties and Seventies, his achieving forty-two years amazed no one more than himself, but he had not always been as ruined as he was today and kissed her cheek, consummately acting the role of a loving husband.

“Having a good time, darling?”

"Lots of fun," his wife whispered in her ear and touched a red spot on his shirt. His grimace confirmed another meeting with mistress and she withdrew her hand, as if his masochism might be contagious, saying,

“Come dance with me.”

"Dancing is best left for the young in body and heart. You’ll have more fun with Kurt.”

“I’d rather dance with you.” Vanessa prayed for his salvation, but turned her turquoise blue eyes on Kurt Oster. She motioned to him. They met on the dance floor. Many of guests scrutinized their every move and Kurt asked, “You us want to dance in front of these people?”

“Lukas gave me permission, so I’ll ask again. Dance?"

"With you. Anywhere at anytime."

Vanessa swayed back and forth to synthetic-pop of Tabu’s ALLEIN. Silky strands rippled across her spine like a theater curtain closing on the stage and a lengthy gold necklace swung between her compact breasts. The melting scent of her perfume wafted in the night air. Feeling hard nipples shift across his chest,

Kurt stepped back from Vanessa.

“What is wrong?”

“These people are the upper echelon of Northern Germany. Their lineage stretches back in time to the Middle Ages and their families control riches beyond imagination, but these people only have money, because they were born rich, married someone rich, or stole it. My father vanished after Stalingrad and my stepfather was a brutal Hafenstrasse butcher. I was born with a bone in my mouth. Not a silver spoon. I will never be one of them."

Germany's complicated laws of inheritance protected any true redistribution through marriage, so Kurt could only achieve his dream by robbing from the rich to give to the poor and he held Vanessa tighter.

"Like Lucas?"

"I will never be him, but that is good, because you do not love Lukas and he does not love you"

“How can you say that? He is my husband."

"Yes, he is." He understood that it was better for him to say nothing about Lukas' arrangement with Petra. His hand slipped down her back and then he spun her in a dizzying circle. “I am not here to schmatzen with these people. They have no use for me. I am here to see you."

"Me?"

"You know how I feel about you and I think you feel the same way too. I am working on something that could change both our lives and then I will ask you to leave this all behind. Somewhere in your heart you will find a way to say, "Yes."

Her life belonged to Lukas and Vanessa demanded without any conviction, “Stop.”

"Why?" Kurt sidestepped around her, then pulled Vanessa tight like an Apache dancer. “You want us as much as me."

Bertram segued into LE FREAK. Chic's hit launched the dancers into a frenzy.

On the terrace Lukas clapped his hands in feigned delight and waved for his wife to come over. Once she was next to him, he put his arm lovingly around her and asked, "What did Kurt say to you?"

She paused for a second, attempting to tell a lie, only her upbringing wouldn’t allow anything, but the truth.

"Kurt wants to take me away."

"Oh, don't they all, my dear? What else did he say?" Kurt and Lukas had met countless times at parties, concerts, and clubs.

"That he had something big planned that could change everything for him."

"What? Like rob a bank?"

"He did not say." Vanessa lowered her head.

"Of course he would not." Lukas cautioned her like a concerned husband, "You should stay away from Kurt. There was nothing more pathetic than a lower-class fool in love with their better."

"Thank you for the warning." Vanessa was trapped playing the princess in a diabolical fairy tale. "If there is anything I have learned from you, it is that no man is harmless."

“And few women too.” Lukas walked away, as tears formed in her eyes. Only one woman could satisfy his libido and he should have married Petra, except his titled prejudices forbade such a luxury.

Entering the library, Lukas stood before the monumental 32-volume dictionary of the German language started by the Grimms Brothers and completed in 1961. Only a thousand copies were sold, since few people could afford a full set.

Books crowded the library's shelves. His father hadn’t read any of them. Lukas had upheld the tradition and lifted Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig, as if the sentences, paragraphs, and chapters could be absorbed through the power of osmosis, though not a single word passed through the covers to his hand. Lukas hated books as dusty reminders of the past, since he had come to view that his entire life as various remakes of his favorite movies; DARLING, SUNSET BOULEVARD, INFANTS DE PARADIS, SALO, and most lately Jean Renoir's black-and-white version of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

Lukas slammed his fist against the wall. He had been tricked by an addendum to his father's will that he would be left out of the inheritance, unless he married an honorable woman.

The old man had been mad to think his sacramental union with a girl as pure as Vanessa could rescue his soul from damnation and he would have disinterred his father's corpse for the forest animals to scavenge, except his designs were on the living.

Someone knocked on the door.

"Come in."

The door to the library opened for his guest.

Lukas motioned for SS Tommy to sit.

Cali's right-hand man bore a close resemblance to a boar wearing a blonde wig.

"Good evening, Herr Von Hausen."

"Yes, it is." Lukas pulled the shades shut and SS Tommy sat in a rich leather chair.

“Embarrassed by me?”

“You wouldn’t fit into this crowd.”

“And Kurt Oster does?”

“He has his uses as do you.”

“Just not socially other than right-wing meetings.”

"One day the Reich will rise again."

"Like the sun." SS Tommy leaned back to look at the party. “The rich having fun.”

"Sadly I am not rich. My beloved father had spent everything trying to save our steel mills. I inherited this 'mansion' and nothing else."

"I know your situation and that you can't pay me back. That is a problem, but the Party has asked me to give you time." SS Tommy hated the aristocrat, but the Party was in no position to exclude upper-class members. He picked up DER TOD IN VENIDIG without reading its title. "But you didn't invite me here for a social chat, so what do you want?" SS Tommy

"Besides a united Germany, what is your fondest dream?"

"To be King of the Reeperbahn."

"Those are dangerous words.”

“For you more than me.”

“Do not worry I will say nothing, but what if I could make your dream come true?" Lukas had continued associating with the Neo Nazis in case the connection might come in handy one day and today was that day.

"You? How could you help me?"

"Who stands in your way? Ein Schwartzer. Kali Nordstrum."

"Everyone knows this?"

"I hired someone to follow my wife. She had several innocent meetings with Kurt. I told him to follow Kurt. Two nights ago he reported that Kurt and Nigger Cali met with a transvestite, who turned out to be a banker. It seemed like nothing."

"Cali does nothing for nothing."

"Exactly." Lukas faced SS Tommy. "Cali and Kurt Oster might have something big in the works. Something that could help both you and me, if we were to interfere."

"Such as what?"

"A robbery worth several million Deustchmarks. The whos are connected, it is strictly a matter of finding out when and where."

“And you’re asking me to help you?”

“Asking you to be a partner is as dangerous as grabbing an egg from a snakehole.”

“I feel the same way about you, but while a snake might bite any hand stuck in the hole, no one said you had to be the one snatching the egg, but I'm no sucker." SS Tommy slammed down the book and seized the baron by his lapels.

"No one said you were. Lukas and Cali will be our Sonderboch." Lukas answered and the pimp loosens his grip. “Now I understand why the rich are rich. Because they cheat everyone.” SS Tommy let off Lukas.

“So what is next?”

"When my man tells me any new information, I will tell you."

"Is he police?"

"Yes, but he can be trusted."

"A Nazi?"

"Yes. Are you in or not?"

"If I find out you have been lying to me in any way, I will kill you."

"I hope you find that will be unnecessary." Lukas flipped his arm against the pimp's wrists, knocking himself free. His right hand struck the pimp's throat and his fingers choked off his air. "You may think me a weak man. An ex-junkie. A masochist, but I am not what you think. Not at all."

Lukas released SS Tommy and the baron slapped him on the back.

"Breathe slowly and the pain will go away faster."

The taller man could have easily killed him a few seconds ago and the blonde pimp would not underestimated the Count twice.

"When would this happen?"

"Maybe a month. Maybe two."

"Will this cost me any money?"

"Only time and your special talents." Lukas adjusted his jacket, strangely aroused by the confrontation. SS Tommy pointed a thick finger at the count, trying to regain some of his confidence.

"Remember. If you fuck with me...."

"You will kill me." Lukas displayed no fear of SS Tommy’s threats. “So are we in agreement?” The blonde pimp nodded and the two men shook hands. Lukas opened the door.

"You'll understand, if I ask you to leave by the back."

"No offense taken," SS Tommy fantasized about paying back this insult and walked through the woods to his car parked on the nature park’s road. He rubbed his throat and drove his Ferrari from the state forest.

The title of King of the Reeperbahn appealed to him, not because of money. He had more than he needed as well as every type of woman in this world. He craved the power to strike back at everyone who had ever stood in his way and that list was topped by Cali, because as much as he enjoyed the sound of 'King of the Reeperbahn', it would even sound better once SS Tommy was ruled the street and Cali was floating in the Elbe.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN by Peter Nolan Smith - CHAPTER 4

Hamburg's Hotel-Intercontinental casino was quiet on weekday afternoons. A single woman in gold leather stood at the roulette table bracketed by two rival factions of Japanese businessmen. Her short hair spiked out like a crown of thorns. Her right eye moved independently of the left and her facial bones seemed to have torn apart by forces beyond her control, so the woman in her mid-twenties resembled Ava Gardner, if the movie actress had crashed a Porsche into a wall.

The two Tokyo bosses in Saville Row suits glanced at the brunette, as they emotionlessly placed bets.

The Japanese company men considered all Occidental women ugly, but their opinion was inconsequential, since their respective bosses' had ordered them to proposition this extraordinary onno-tojin. Money was no object, as their companies footed the expense, yet none could muster the courage to approach this formidable foreign woman.

"Faites votre jeu." The croupier expertly flicked the steel ball against the wheel's outer rim. Its orbit decayed to be caught by a slot. The brunette in a filmy silk shirt and short leather skirt swore under her breath, "Schiesse" and suspected that the house might have rigged the wheel, but refrained from complaining, since most casinos in Germany had banned her for 'counting' at the blackjack tables, which was why she played roulette in her hometown.

Petra had excelled at Math at high school and could recall every winning number of the past hour.

Seventeen had been blanked over fifty times. At 36 to 1, a win would put her back in the game. She laid her last hundred on that number.

"Machen Ihren Spielen," the croupier said, setting the ball on its course.

The Japanese followed suit and she muttered under her breath, "Slitauge."

It wasn't a nice word to use, but she wasn't in a 'nett' mood.

Twenty-one.

Another loser.

The brunette sarcastically thanked the croupier and departed before the businessmen propositioned her to be a naked sushi platter. As the brunette passed the front desk, the concierge coughed and she asked, "Was ist es?"

The concierge passed a piece of paper.

She read the note and headed out to the swimming area, where she slipped on newly bought sunglasses to shield her one good eye from the bright sunlight. Her right hand idly played with her heavy 22K gold necklace, then her once-worn high heels snapped on the concrete patio.

Several men followed her every step.

She saw none of them.

Sitting next to Kurt Oster the brunette took off her sunglasses and unveiled hatred of men filled her right eye. The two neighboring men changed their lounge chairs. She had grown accustomed to their expressions ever since waking in a hospital bed with an IV drip in his arm and a bandage over her left eye. Before falling back into a narcotic daze, the doctor had gazed down and said, "It won’t be so bad." It had been a lie she wanted to believe, until seeing her face in the mirror several days later.

Bad only covered the surface damage.

"Have any luck at the tables?"

"There are good days and bad days and thankfully tomorrows."

"That sounds like you lost everything." Kurt Oster cinched the belt of the cotton-bathing robe, so he resembled a dissolute tycoon at Swiss spa.

"It makes no difference, winning or losing." The brunette leaned back in the chair and regarded three blondes in bikinis at the end of the pool. They were obviously disappointed by her arrival and she asked in a very businesslike manner, "Why did you want to see me?"

“Petra, I can remember when you used to be fun." Schlange was an understatement of her perpetual foul mood.

"So can I and that person is someone I want to forget."

"If you want to forget for good, there's a packet in my cigarette case." Kurt rarely went anywhere without a stash of coke and heroin.

"No, thank you." Revenge was the only stimulant running in her veins.

"Could you use some money?" Kurt winked at the stewardesses in the pool.

"Do you need it back?"

"No.”

"Then I'll take it,” she said, knowing that borrowed money was a loser at the tables.

"There are a thousand marks in my pocket. Maybe your luck will change."

When Petra had been a whore, Kurt Oster had treated her as a lady, plus he had visited the hospital every day and paid for all the bills not covered by the German health service without ever asking anything in return. Still no one in Hamburg gave away money for free and her eyes narrowed with practiced suspicion. “No one in Hamburg gives away money for free. Was ist der Fang?”

"I have this American coming to town and I want you to take care of him."

"I don’t fuck men anymore." Petra Wessel’s repugnance to the other sex had not resulted from her life on the Reeperbahn.

Disinterestedly watching a stewardess dive into the hotel pool, Kurt pulled her closer and Petra stiffened, for the Zuhalterei’s lesson against organizing a union for the girls of the Reeperbahn had scarred her to the mere touch of a man. Kurt apologized and whispered in her ear, "All I am asking you is to entertain him."

"Why me?"

"Because who else can I trust in this city?” Petra on the team completed the equation and Kurt Oster lifted his gaze to the sky. The clouds were so clean and the sky so blue, he wished the afternoon could last forever.

"Will he end up dead?" It was a question she had to ask, though another man dead or alive was no skin off her back. Kurt's face conveyed mock horror at her suggestion.

"This man will be my safety valve should anything go wrong."

“A Sonderboch?"

"Yes, as sucker, but to what purpose I can not tell you other than it will worth your while."

"I want something other than money." Petra leaned back and said, "I want names."

"Why can't you forget the past?"

" I see out of one eye." Petra's lacquered fingernail tapping her glass eye created a disconcerting artificial click. The gesture was a disturbing reminder of her vendetta and Kurt said, "I can't promise anything. I've told you that before."

"And I didn't believe you then anymore than now. Either give me names or I won't take care of your American." Petra began to stand, but Kurt's hand gently touched her arm.

"You play tough, Petra."

"I've had good teachers."

"I suppose you did." Kurt had not been in town during her beating, but had a short list of suspects. “I will give you those names, when this job is through."

"So you’re planning to leave town after all this?" Petra smiled with a wicked premonition of her dreams coming true.

"If I tell you those names, my life wouldn't be worth a pfennig. Not here and maybe a few other places too." He arched an eyebrow to show he understood the danger of her payment. Petra regarded Kurt closely.

He was her only friend in Hamburg and she nodded, saying, "I'll do your little dirty job and I'll take that thousand marks. Maybe my luck will change."

Petra Wessel reached inside his robe for the money, then left for the parking lot. At her peak she had been the number one call girl in all Hamburg and even as damaged goods the tall brunette possessed a devastated wantonness few men could resist.

The blonde undercover police officer by the cabanas recognized the brunette from the newspaper story of her beating and imagined their conversation had been about drugs or money, although this week's surveillance of Kurt Oster had turned up nothing suspicious other than his consorting with various criminals around Hamburg and his connection to top artists, Schlager singers, movie stars, the rich and the powerful, passing from one world to the other without a stutter step.

While there might be guilt by association, Alex Brucken was being paid to watch the nightclub owner breaking a Commandment and the policeman had yet to see him commit adultery with Lukas' wife.

Not once.

He was beginning to think that the baron's suspicions were only paranoia, but the money was the baron's to waste and Alex's time was expendable. At least for the next month of his vacation, then it was back to work and his Schupo bosses never liked wasted time or money. Not on the State's clock.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN by Peter Nolan Smith - CHAPTER 9

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?" "So you and Petra? What is with that?"

"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.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 12

The Eros Center was packed with an early evening crowd. Men queued before the hotels with their choices. Kali stood at his office window. SS Tommy sat at his desk. They needed to talk and Kali turned to his enforcer.

"Last night."

"Yes, last night."

"I do not want you to seek revenge."

"I have a reputation." Killers do not thrive on mercy.

"I know." Kali added nothing.

SS Tommy understood the silence and said, "

"So I will not kill your American."

"Or maim him." Cali poured his associate a Scotch and coke.

Johnny Walker Black.

"Normally if someone crossed someone our gang, they pay a pound or two of flesh."

"Not even a gram? He doesn't understand life in Hamburg. Leave him alone."

"You would have never forgiven him. Ignorant or not ignorant."

"You are right. but your one punch nearly killed him. Nobody is better with a right than you."

Other men had not been as lucky as Sean.

"It's nice to know I have not lost it. Some people do as they get older." SS Tommy cracked his knuckles, while staring at Cali. Until now he had thought the baron was making up a story about Cali and Kurt being involved in a big score, but their inordinate concern for this American's safety proved that they were planning something. They thought they were so smart, these two old friends. SS Tommy had someone smart on his side too.

"So you will do nothing?"

It was a hypothetical question. No one could control the blonde bodybuilder, not even SS Tommy himself.

"If that is what you want, then that is what I will do, but if you change your mind, then let me know." SS Tommy sipped the glass, thinking about his killing the American and then broadened his grin in anticipation of putting a gun to Nigger Cali's head.

"That won't be necessary."

"If you say so." SS Tommy had special plans for Kurt too. "But you owe me."

"I know I do and so will the American. You will have no trouble with him from now on."

"Good, then we are all friends again." SS Tommy slapped the desk, then shouted for the redhead from Hannover. She hurried into the room.

"So this is the treasure you won last night." Cali drew her closer and she sat on his lap without a struggle, as he asked, "So what do they call you, darling?"

"Vella," the redhead answered, raising her eyebrow as if she had studied the films of Fassbinder.

"So are you ready for work, my dear?"

"Yes." Vella threw her arm around Cali, as he squeezed her thigh.

"I am not here for fun and games. I am here to make money. For you and for me."

"Are her papers in order?" Cali kneaded the fleshy part of the palm. It was soft, denoting between her thighs would be as well.

"Yes, she is of age and passed the blood test." SS Tommy had faked the papers. 16 year-olds were a goldmine for at least the first six months.

"So then, put her to work."

"Do you want the first stab?"

"She's beautiful, but better she should be broken in by a stranger. I will pick out your fist customer."

SS Tommy said nothing, because Vella was a working girl now and it didn't matter who her first customer was as long as he paid.

Cali smiled at the young girl and went to the office window, scanning the men wandering through the ErosCenter's perpetual night, He called over a young sailor and explained the situation. The sailor peered over the window sash at the redhead.

"Ich hab' kein Pulver."

"No money. Go to the toilet and Onanieren," yelled SS Tommy.

"You were young once. Young like this boy." Cali motioned for SS Tommy to sit down and asked, "How much you want for her?"

"I thought you were not interested."

"How much?" Cali asked without audible interest.

"One thousand marks."

Cali handed the girl ten one-hundred DMs from a roll of bills and she held the money in her hand like a wilted fan. He led the redhead from the office and pointed the sailor to a hotel on the other side of the Eroscenter. When the couple left, SS Tommy said, "I hope you let him pay for the room."

"I may be sentimental, but I am far from stupid." Cali sat down wearily, for the night had lasted several hours longer than necessary to achieve this temporary truce. The schedule for their scheme would have to be sped up, for SS Tommy's revenge could only be forestalled so long and then he would kill Sean.

Of this Cali was certain, but that didn't prevent him from smiling at the blonde pimp to portray a mask of everything being as they always had been in the Eroscenter.

None of it fooled SS Tommy, for he had been waiting ages for a shot at Cali and he thought about how good it would be to have them both begging for their lives. As good as that dream feel, nothing would be better than being the King of the Reeperbahn. Once he achieved that goal, he would be on top of the world and no one was kicking him off the mountain.

Certainly men soon to be dead.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN by Peter Nolan Smith - CHAPTER 17

When the European summer vacation began in earnest, the Reeperbahn swelled with tourists. Beatles fans on the pilgrimage thronged to the Star Club twenty years too late and couples visited the acrobatic sex shows at the 'Colibri' or 'Salambo'. More importantly buses from all over Western Europe stopped on the wide boulevard and disgorged scores of male passengers to be sucked into the ErosCenter’s maelstrom of commercial sex.

The prostitutes barely lasted five minutes on the concrete floor before a customer dragged them upstairs. The small cubicles within the St. Pauli hotels were turning over rooms every thirty minutes. Money and fluids were being exchanged at a record pace and no one could be happier than the pimps and few women were working harder than SS Tommy's new girl. The crimson light accented the long red hair and painted her pale skin a lurid tone to allure men like moths to a fire. Only several days into the game she was every inch the whore, but having been transformed into a star she was picking her customers with disdain for them all and this haughty behavior was infuriating SS Tommy.

When the redhead refused to accompany an obese fisherman upstairs, SS Tommy rushed over and asked, "What was wrong with him? Too fat?"

"I've been with more fat men in the last week than I can count and as long as they are on the bottom I have no problem with them"

"Then what is it this time?" SS Tommy demanded.

"He smells like he bathed in herring before he came here." Vella regarded the man with disgust, while the other whores of SS Tommy's string snickered at what she had said. The blonde pimp seized her arm. His fingers sank through her flesh and she cringed in pain, as he warned, "I don't want to hear you ever say, "No." again. Do you understand me?"

Having heard what happened to bad girls, she nodded her surrender and SS Tommy told the fisherman, if he wanted Vella that he would have to pay three times the going rate.

"Three times?"

The blonde pimp lifted the redhead's silver nightie and said, "Where will find a girl like this. Just feel her skin. Soft as a peach and tight as a baby. She has only been here two nights."

"But she said I stink."

"My friend, you do stink." SS Tommy ridiculed him, saying, "I thought two things smell like fish and one of them is fish, but you make three. Next time you come to the Eroscenter, take a bath and use soap. An industrial one."

"I don't know."

"You don't know? You upset my girl and now you are upsetting me."

"Sorry." He agreed to SS Tommy's price.

The pimp patted the redhead on the rear end, as the fisherman dragged her upstairs. "You keep this up and you will be the number one earner tonight."

Two hours later Vella was dead on her feet. The garters holding up the sheer stockings bit into her thighs like bear traps and the sky-high stiletto heels crushed her toes like a vise. Her lips were bruised from seven blowjobs and after the eight fucks her vagina felt like it had been pummeled by sandpaper cocks.

Most of her clients had been quick, though the last one had taken forever to get off. Thankfully the old veteran, Sulka, had taught the novice the old trick of stroking the man's skin between the base of his cock and anus, so when Vella had reached down and scrapped her nails on this region with a milk maiden's gentleness, the trick had cried out and came instantly inside his condom.

Afterwards he had said she was the best and given her a big tip.

She had told him anytime and asked his name, which she had forgotten before it was out of his mouth. The money was all she could remember about these men, although their dank musty smell seemed to be indelibly permeate her flesh.

Vella leaned against the wall and prayed for the night to end.

A whistle shrilled from the corner, which was SS Tommy's way of telling the women another busload of men was entering the sex den.

"So how do you like it here." Sulka asked, massaging the redhead's knotted shoulders.

Vella leaned back against the older woman's breasts.

Sulka exhaled the smoke of a cigarette, then nuzzled the young girl's neck.

"The fucking I can handle, but the blowjobs." Vella grimaced, then trembled, as the old whore expertly struck a vein of sensitivity. Sulka smiled, thinking soon she would have her way with the newcomer, but for tonight it was all work and no play.

"I would love to say you get a taste for them, but those uncircumcised penises are like hundred year-old pieces of cheese. And men joke about the way our pussies smell. Sorry, Schartzie, I see an old friend."

Sulka blew her a kiss and strutted over to a well-dressed businessman.

"I will see you later." It was good to have a friend here, then Vella spotted several men floating closer and sagged against the wall. It had only been five minutes since her last trip upstairs.

Before anyone could proposition her, Vella went over to SS Tommy, who was counseling several new fish about their choices. Upon seeing the redhead, SS Tommy put his arm around her and announced, "Vella is the best. No one is softer.

She blushed, hearing about her most intimate parts described in such a fashion before these men. The rest of SS Tommy's stable were glad the new girl was in the dubious position of his favorite girl and bet how many men the new girl could take during an evening. She had already beaten most of their expectations.

"Who will take her now?" SS Tommy demanded, recognizing several faces in the crowd as long-time customers with a preference for new girls. There was nothing he liked better than an auction to the highest bidder.

"Tommy," Vella whispered in the pimp's ear.

"What?" He was annoyed she had interrupted his spiel.

"I'm not saying no. If you want me to go, I will, but I could use a couple of minutes' rest," Vella said, licking at her chapped lips.

"You need a break?" SS Tommy told the men to hold on and he would be right back, then hauled Vella over to the corner. The pimp harshly explained that her rest came, when no one wanted her, then saw the exhaustion on her face. "Maybe I have been running you too hard. I have to teat you with care. You are new. Not like Sulka. She can handle anything. Normally I never let anyone rest during a shift, but you have been very good tonight. Already you have eleven men and the night is still young. Did you know the record is thirty-three?"

SS Tommy caressed her cheek like he would a girlfriend.

"No, I didn't." Vella groaned inwardly.

SS Tommy glanced at the thinning circle of men. He spotted two regulars, who liked to split a girl between them. He indicated they were next, but would have to wait. A good businessman had to be aware of his clientele's tastes as well as the limits of his workers. The blonde Zuhalter gave a key to Vella and said," I tell you what. You go up to my special room and rest for fifteen minutes."

Vella's heart lightened to think she had a little time off.

SS Tommy kissed her on the lips, then went over the brothers to finalize the deal fort the ménage-a-trois, so Vella could make up for whatever time she had been off the floor.

SS Tommy watched the redhead wearily walk up the stairs. The short-time double date would be a surprise, but one to which Vella would have to become accustomed. He would later take her out to the Schlacterei, the all-night steak house next to the city's slaughterhouse, then bring her to the Hotel Atlantic. It would pass for a romantic evening, except the bill would come from her evening's earnings.

Several minutes later SS Tommy remarked to himself that he hadn't seen Cali all evening. He scanned the floor of the Eroscenter for the black man. 'Nigger' Cali was nowhere in sight and his stable of girls were taking advantage of this uncustomary lapse in vigilance by gathering in clumps to gossip about the evening. He could not have left the Eroscenter on such a busy night, so he had to be in his office. SS Tommy could have taken matters into his own hands, but their laziness was a good excuse to find Cali.

SS Tommy crossed the floor of the Eroscenter. The blinds of Cali's office were drawn and the door was shut. Someone was inside with Cali and SS Tommy decided to find out the identity of the visitor.

Five minutes later he smiled upon seeing Stivan Klein exit from the office. The Jew only made business calls. SS Tommy sneered a greeting to Hamburg's biggest moneylender, then pondered why Cali required the Jew's services.

Something was up and Cali had not spoken about expansion against Hamburg's other pimps in Hamburg. This meeting with the Jew had to be connected with Kurt Oster's and Nigger Cali's secret deal. There was only one way to discover, if his hunch was right, and he entered the office without knocking.

The black hole of an automatic pistol muzzle greeted him and Cali's left arm protectively encircled several hundred thousand Deutschmarks on the table. SS Tommy lifted his hands and said, "And I thought I was having a good night."

"It's been all right," Cali answered defensively. The blonde pimp had been snooping around too much lately and his barging into the office was no accident and Cali demanded brusquely, "What do you want?"

"Your girls are taking a break." SS Tommy estimated the money to be three hundred thousand DMs. To pay that off, Cali's two-hundred girls would have to work full shifts three nights in a row without ever being idle or any of the other partners getting their share. "I thought you might want to know."

"Thank you very much." Cali put the money into the safe. "I will be out in a few minutes. Tell those lazy sluts that for me."

"No problem." SS Tommy backed out of the room.

Cali locked the door, then sat on the edge of his desk. If it had been anyone else, then he would have been concerned that they might say he was skimming their profits, but with SS Tommy it was worse

Cali was blocking the blonde Zuhalter's further progress within the organization. His five-year reign over the Reeperbahn had been longer than most heavyweights retained their belt. He admired few men more than Rocky Marciano. The heavyweight champ had quit before anyone could dethrone him. Cali wished he could be so lucky, for none of his predecessors had retired alive, but Cali intended on being the first.

He shut the safe and swung the dial. The gun was returned to the desk drawer. The way his right-hand man had stared at the money reminded Cali of someone planning a robbery. He would have to keep a closer eye on SS Tommy. Eventually someone would stumble on the trail of their activities and either want in or take it all for themselves, which was right up SS Tommy's alley.

Opening the curtains he surveyed the floor of the Eroscenter and calculated the night's intake with an interest bordering on obsession. While the pimp understood having to deposit larger and larger sums in the Swiss bank account, the launching of Kurt's scheme had siphoned off every pfennig he could afford and more. As good a friend as Kurt was, this could all be a scam and one that would cost him dearly. In his business it was always better to trust no one, if you wanted to stay alive.

Poking his head out the window, Cali saw that SS Tommy was right. His women were loafing. While he had much more important matters on his mind, Cali motioned for two loitering whores to come over to him.

They both stubbed out their cigarettes on the hard pavement and sauntered lewdly to the window, hoping a customer would drag them away from this impromptu conference with the 'King of the Reeperbahn'.

Unfortunately the Eroscenter was experiencing a temporary lull in the evening. Everyone within earshot cringed, as Cali harangued the two slackers. Cali was angry and all the women knew what that meant. He warned them that this had better be the last time they shirked their duties. To make a point, he slapped one girl on her ass, then ordered them to get back to work.

It was time to redouble their 'looking busy' and they approached every loose men under the tent. Soon business was back to normal. The eager customers and curiosity-seekers were being steered to the whores by the pimps. The men and women went upstairs and money came back down. Several women shrieked with glee, as a screaming prostitute chased a naked man from the hotel. Cali had spent thousands of nights like this in the Eroscenter and had seen it all too many times before .

Most of them passed without a problem.

Other times he had to break an arm, protect a girl from a drunken soldier, or beat her for stealing money. When he first started this business, he loved the sex, the money, and the power, since they were the epitome of most men's fantasies. Now all he wanted was to be as far away as possible.

Maybe if Petra had not been beaten, he would feel the same as before. Cali had told Kurt to warn Petra, but she had been too headstrong to give up her crusade to organize the whores. When the rest of his organization voted to teach her a lesson, Cali had to go along with his associates. Any sign of weakness towards women on his part would have meant his doom as well.

One night Petra had gone to speak with the women down at the Fischmarkt and she had wandered the fish market until three men in ski masks had stepped out of the shadows.

Cali had watched, as SS Tommy and Maserati Klaus stomped Petra. For Maserati Klaus it had been a job, but SS Tommy prided himself for beating Petra Wessel to a bloody pulp. Only his intercession prevented her death. After Mack Die Alte and SS Tommy left the scene, Cali called the police on his mobile phone and reported a Strafanzeige, telling the police of a woman being beaten. When they asked his name, he hung up.

Tears had blinded him, as he had driven away. It had been years, since he had cried and afterwards that his career as a pimp was nearly over, though on the Reeperbahn, they only retire you with a bullet or a knife. Somehow he had to get out of this, in order to become an old man. The older the better and the only way he could achieve that his burying 'Nigger Cali', since his enemies would want his next reincarnation just as dead as his present one and everyone here like the dead better than the living.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 19

TWENTY-TWO

That Sunday a fierce rainstorm pummeled Lac Leman and Sean imagined that the Russians and USA were waging meteorological war over Europe. Rather than leave the hotel room's comfort, Sean ordered club sandwich from room service and read Heinrich Boll's BILLIARDS AT HALF PAST NINE, figuring the day to be a dead loss. He fell asleep halfway through the book.

In the morning the bells of Emanuel Church tolled eight times. Sean rose from the bed and went to the window. The rain was still falling through a misty fog onto Geneva's lakeside park,

At 8:15am the bellboy entered the room with the pre-ordered continental breakfast. Sean ate, then dressed in the black suit, which he wore on these trips to Geneva. By 9:05am he checked out of the hotel.

Rain splashed off the sidewalk and he sat in the Volvo.

"No walking today." asked Murah.

"A little too wet for my taste."

The big man was unusually tanned and Sean complimented the Yugoslavian saying, "Nice color."

Murah bobbed his head like a tendon had been cut in his neck.

"Yes, I was in Thailand one week and girls big fun. Little brown fucking machine. A man's Disneyworld."

The Yugoslav put the car in drive and the Volvo pulled away from the hotel.

During the short drive Sean studied the driver's profile. Murah's brow had been battered by fists and his ears flattened by a thousand punches. The flutter of his right eyelid indicated nerve damage. Sean had been hundreds of fights throughout his life, but Murah had been in countless life-and-death battles. The flattened knuckles on the steering wheel were a proof that the driver gave worse than he received.

They arrived at the bank on Rue du Fosse Vert. Sean checked his watch. 9:30am. He got out of the car, saying, "I'll be a minute."

"Take this." Murah handed him a chrome suitcase, similar to those photographers used to transport cameras. Sean opened the case. It was empty, but its addition jarred him into understanding what he was for Kurt.

A bagman.

Someone who picked up cash for someone else.

The same as Johnny Fats, who ended up dead in New York.

The marrow in his spine gelled into ice, as he entered the bank. The guards were in place. The tellers were at the tills. Herr Egard sat at his desk and nodded a greeting. Everything about the routine had the feeling of sameness. Sean approached the desk and the banker handed him a packet, saying, "Four hundred thousand Swiss Marks."

"Four hundred thousand francs?"

"Swiss."

Sean signed a document authorizing the transfer of funds. The amount was twice as much as the previous pick-up.

"Is there something wrong?"

"No, I just want to count the money in private."

"As you wish, please come this way." Herr Egard brought him to a thick-walled room and said, "Buzz me, when you are through."

The door shut behind him and Sean suspected these walls would protect him from an atomic blast. Nothing bad could happen to him in here, only outside, so he took his time counting each packet of ten thousand-franc bills, while going over every moment of his trip back to Hamburg.

When he was finished counting, Sean repacked the case, then buzzed the door.

"Alles in Ordnung?" asked Herr Egard.

"Alles ist klar." Sean was envious of the banker's well-ordered world. Except for a few wrong turns early in his life Sean could be leading the same life, but he had no idea how to get back onto that path. He was who he was and nothing was going to change that.

He walked toward the exit and a guard opening the door for him proved that, but once he stood on the steps, a crazy urge to run away came over him.

Sean looked at Murah behind the wheel of the Volvo. The Yugoslav was certainly packing a piece, but his hands were not on the steering wheel. It would take him a couple of seconds to get out of the car. Sean could outrun the big man and melt into the city. He could be in Paris by nightfall and anywhere in the world the next day, but something kept him from robbing Kurt.

Actually someone.

Sean got in the car and the Yugoslav asked, "Is there anything wrong?"

"No, I was just taking a breath of air before I get stuck in the airport all day," Sean lied, not caring whether Murah believed him or not.

"All part of the job," Murah commented, as the Volvo pulled away from the curb. The driver said nothing else on the way to the airport and by the time Sean arrived at the airport, he had settled down to being strictly a courier, instead of a thief.

He walked into the terminal with his travel bag over his shoulder and the aluminum case in his left hand. Murah seemed to be on edge, as he escorted Sean through the terminal.

"Was ist los?" Remembering Kurt's mention of armed robbery, Sean clasped the case, though he could imagine anyone so stupid as to attempt a hold-up it in an airport.

"Nichts ist los?" Murah answered, though his eyes swiveled like a lizard hunting for a fly.

"Who are you looking for? The police?"

"Die Polizei sind da." Murah motioned secretively at the two uniformed officers against the wall. His porcine eyes shifted from left to right, then he smiled dully. "I'm more worried about the taxman."

"The taxman?"

"What do they do the taxman look like?"

"Like saints. Very evil saints." Obviously Murah did hold any love for the government revenue collectors and as they sat down, Murah announced, "As you Americans say, "The coat is clear."

Sean didn't bother to correct the Yugoslav's mutilation of the phrase and remained quiet, as they sat through the long hours till his departure. When he finally passed through the gate, Sean said, "See you next week."

Murah waved back, glad for this trip to be over, for he could have sworn that the American was planning a runner at the bank and had anticipated him to attempt the same in the airport. He would have hated to shoot him, but a job is a job. He waited for the plane to take off, then Murah returned to his Volvo, ready for another week of work at his car repair shop.

During the Lufthansa flight #3671 to Hamburg the 727 rose through innumerable pockets of turbulence, as a capricious cross-streams buffeted the plane. The aircraft yeed and yawed like a ship at sea. Every passenger on the flight was scared and Sean was no exception. He picked up a Stern Magazine and buried his face in the pages praying for the plane to land. His prayer went unanswered and for the first time in his life he reached for the airsick bag, though he successfully fought back the nausea. They did not clear the overcast, until they were a few hundred feet from the ground. The wind tugged on the plane from all directions and, when the pilot expertly landed on all three points, everyone on board responded with applause.

The quick taxi to the terminal undernoted how little air traffic Fuhlsbuttel handled.

When the airplane's outer door opened, Sean was first out of the plane and swiftly proceeded across the windy tarmac to the terminal. Inside he spotted Kurt behind the separating glass, but when he waved, the German strangely retreated into the crowd.

"Herr Tempo?" a man asked behind him. A stranger using your last name is always a bad sign, whether in person or on the phone. Sean turned around to face a young man sporting a trim goatee and longish blond hair. There was no denying what he was.

"Are you Herr Tempo?" asked the plainclothes policeman.

"Depends on who's doing the asking." Sean noticed that the other travelers gave the two men a wide berth and their whispering glances confirmed that they had already convicted him without an accusation.

"Inspector Brucken." A badge further identified the blonde man as a police officer. "I am with the Hamburg Kriminalpolizei. Would you please come with me?"

It was more a command than a request. A pair of uniformed policemen stood by the arrival gate in a back-up position. Sean had no choice, but obeyed the command and entered the office before the inspector. The walls were painted institutional green. A table and two chairs were bolted to the floor. A two-way mirror was screwed into the wall and Sean recognized he was in an interrogation room.

"What's this all about?"

"You are familiar with Cali Nordstrom or Tommy Letier, also called SS Tommy?" The police inspector's crumpled suit bore the stress of having spent too many hours in a car.

"Maybe I do." The next best thing to saying nothing was to repeat the negative of what you had just said, so he added, "Maybe I don't."

"I know you do, so could you open that case?"

As far as he knew, transporting money was not illegal, though ignorance was no guarantor of innocence, still Sean took a risk and opened the case. It wasn't his money. The policeman's eyes widened at seeing so much cash. Sean had probably responded in the same manner at the bank.

Alex Brucken read from a notebook for a few seconds, then said in clipped English, "You have been taking trips to Geneva every Monday for the last three weeks."

"Am I a hobby of yours?" Sean asked, refusing to be rattled.

"More or less." The plainclothed officer folded the notebook inside his jacket, so it might have been mistaken for a gun in a shoulder holster. "You take this money to Kurt Oster, a business associate of Cali Nordstrum."

"I haven't robbed any banks. All I did was pick up some money from Switzerland and bring it here. As far as I know that is not against the law."

"No, but maybe what happens to the money afterwards is."

"Is this an official investigation?" Sean started for the door.

"What is the difference?" Inspector Brucken grabbed Sean's wrist.

"It's the difference between telling you the truth or telling you to go fuck yourself." He had used the line before in New York and practice makes perfect.

"Consider it unofficial interest." The policeman released his hold.

"Then consider me 'gone', I'll save the 'fuck yourself' for later." Sean saluted the inspector.

"That is very funny, but excuse me, if I do not laugh," the inspector said, as he opened the office's door. "We will stay in touch."

"I'm sure I can bet on that," Sean replied like some tough guy in a movie, but he was relieved to be freed. As he walked through the terminal, Sean thought about what he was going to say to Kurt. Nothing nice, for he didn't have to wonder why he was being rousted. Kurt and Cali were criminals just like the officer said they were. All that talk about this being legal was bullshit, but then Sean had always known that.

Stepping outside he pulled up his collar against the cold the drizzling wind. Summer was almost gone and he was not even close to getting out of town.

A brand-new BMW pulled up to the curb. Kurt was behind the wheel. Sean slid in and they sped from the airport. Kurt's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.

"What was that all about?"

"Some policeman sticking his nose where he should not." Kurt answered, which Sean could tell wasn’t the truth.

"He knew about my transporting your money." To Sean's way of thinking Inspector Brucken could have only discovered what he was doing by someone snitching him out. The list of those people aware of his trip was small; Petra, Kurt, Herr Egard, and Murah. None of them would have talked, meaning someone else was taking an interest in what he was doing for Kurt.

"There is nothing illegal about that. If there was, then you would have been arrested, yes?" Kurt's telling him the same thing again had a more false ring to it after his encounter with the police. "That policeman, he is guessing. That is all."

"Then why did he mention Cali's and your names?" Sean was too angry to buy the excuse. He had come three thousand miles to avoid a problem with the police only to find himself getting in deep here. Inspector Brucken might be shooting in the dark, but eventually the policeman would find something, because there was more than likely something to find.

"He is simply fishing for information."

"Then why did you hide?" Sean turned around in his seat. The road was empty, but that didn't make him feel any better.

"It was better that way." Kurt stepped on the gas. The thrust of the car forced them against the leather seats. He nervously drummed on the steering wheel, indicating the gravity of the confrontation. "All that money came from my liquidation of my telex holdings throughout Germany. They send people to jail for tax evasion, so I have been protecting myself. To be truthful, I will be leaving Germany soon. I am tired of this shitty weather. Once I settle my affairs, we can both leave."

"I want to go now." Sean was spooked. Anytime you speak to a cop means things are heading in the direction of jail. While a German prison might be better than Riker's Island, Sean had no desire to be a penal guest of any nation.

As the BMW rushed down Mittelweg, the streetlights came on one by one. The few people on the street were wearing more clothes than the weather required, as if they were anticipating an early winter. Sean fingered the door handle, when they neared Milchstrasse.

"If you want to go, I cannot stop you." Kurt braked sharply, and the big car swerved to a halt. He was angry, because something had fucked up. Even worse was Sean's wanting to bail out. He had to stop the American from going and said, "But I can't pay your percentage from the club right this instance."

"Just pay me from what you have in the case?" Kurt owed him approximately five thousand Marks, which converted to around $3000.

"I have to give it all to Cali."

"Why not me?"

"You will not kill me and Cali would. All I'm asking is for one month more."

"From where I'm sitting one month seems like forever."

"I can use you here. At the club."

Sean looked up at his apartment. The lights were on. Petra was upstairs. She had kept him from running in Geneva. Her and her alone. It was Petra who also made him cave into Kurt by saying, "Okay, I'll stay, but I'm through with the trips to Geneva."

"Thank you, Sean. Thank you very much." Kurt was profoundly grateful, and tears formed in his eyes. Sean was fairly certain it was all an act, but asked, "What is wrong?"

"Well," Kurt hesitated, as he weighed opening up his mind to the American, then he said, "It is Vanessa. She's gone."

"How many days has she been gone?"

"Two."

"Stop worrying. I can tell by the way she looks at you, that this is no fly-by-night affair," Sean assured the driver, though he had never given Kurt anything, but long odds with the platinum beauty. Their worlds were too far apart.

"I'm glad someone sees it that way," Kurt said, as his passenger left the car.

He watched the American cross the street to the apartment building. Sean had a right to be rattled. Someone had talked. Not Cali, not himself, and the banker had too much to lose to blurt out his guts. Kurt thumped the dashboard with his fist. This policeman was a warning from someone other than the police saying they knew exactly what Cali and Kurt were doing.

If Cali found out about this policeman, he would back out of the project. Without the money from the swindle, Kurt would remain a front for Cali and, as much as his friend would take care of him, Kurt had to be his own man.

Cali and Kurt had pledged at the beginning of this project, that no one could stop them. Neither of them had ever said anything about that person being one of them and nothing was going to change that either. Nothing and he drove away into the rain

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 21

Everyday thousands of business transactions occurred with millions and millions of Deutschmarks being transferred to various banks around Europe. Most were small, but together, they coalesced into huge sums, and he had been searching for the right amount that could be sent on a Friday and remain undetected till Monday morning, when he would be long gone from Hamburg.

Entering the post office, Hans descended to a row of telephone cabins, and dialed Cali's number from memory. Hans Roth tightened his tie, while the phone rang. A man answered the phone. Hans had altered his voice to a smoky rasp, suitable for a woman in trouble.

"It is Greta. Willi's friend."

"This better be business, Greta," demanded Cali.

"It is, it is."

"I hope you are not calling from your office."

"No, no, I am outside."

So what is the problem?"

"I am getting very nervous. The bank managers have been talking about an audit and, if they do, I will go to prison. What about doing the wire transfer now? Several large sums have passed by my desk." Hans had to admit that the planning of this crime was a thousand times more scintillating than his small misdirections of cash and he had been dying to tell Willi about his 'project'. Only the memory of Cali's tug on his ear prevented him from spilling everything to his lover.

"How big?"

"One for three million Deutschmarks and another for five."

"We want the biggest, Greta. Think of Thailand under a starry sky. As a woman. I have seen the results and you are the ideal material for the operation. You will be a woman. This is why you are doing this, right?"

"Of course, it is." Hans was momentarily transported to the paradise Cali had painted and breathed easy, knowing his reward was not far off.

"And don't worry about an audit. Your superiors will not want to spoil anyone's summer holiday and remember you are with a team of professionals."

"Is there anything else I should be doing," Hans exclaimed, daydreaming about the aftermath of his operation.

"For a start stop being a woman, until you are one," Cali barked, then hung up the mobile phone in his Turbo 500, as he drove down the Autoroute from Kiel. He hated leaving town now, but his presence had been required to insure a small-time pimp paid his debt. He had only broken the young Zuhalter’s thumb to demonstrate his grip on the business was as firm as ever, but the pressure was getting to him, for the knuckle of the thumb coming out of the socket had sounded a lobster shell being cracked and nearly turned his stomach.

He flicked the high beams at a camper, nearly ramming into the rear end before the slower vehicles gave way. The driver was shocked to see a black man driving such a car. Cali gave him the finger, as Sean had taught him, then stamped his foot on the accelerator, wanting to go somewhere he would be another black man among many.

There had to be thousands of places like that far away from here. He recited their names; Brixton, Harlem, Watts, Africa. Together they became a siren song. One he could no longer resist. It was time to go back home and home no longer meant Hamburg.