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 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 35

Sean drove to a non-descript garage in Versoix. A swarthy mechanic in greasy overalls helped lift Kurt out of the Mercedes. Leaving the dead man's body with a complete stranger was too much like leaving off his laundry, but Sean had little other choice with Petra's life on the line. He conveyed the German's wish to be cremated in Pere-Lachaise to the Yugoslav in faltering French, then hopped into the Mercedes 500i and headed north.

The Swiss Border police outside Base waved him through customs as did the counterparts in Wiel am Rhein. Once on the Autobahn, Sean opened up the big car and raced the Porsches, BMWs, and the occasional Ferrari. None of the drivers were counting laps, only speed.

North of Heidelberg the gray strand of highway dissolved into the thick fog off the Rhine River. Red taillights heaved into sight at the last moment and pulled over with the flick of the high beams. If anyone had braked, the ensuing chain reaction would have left hundreds of car and trucks slamming into each other for hours. This potential danger deterred few of the speedsters, least of all Sean.

Outside Frankfurt an entire lane was blocked by an endless column of tanks exiting to the Fulda Gap. For all he cared, they could have been fighting World War Four.

His foot stamped on the gas and the Benz passed the armor at suicidal speed in the breakdown lane. Sean attempted to call his apartment with the mobile phone, but no one answered on the other end. His mind replayed hundreds of scenarios from Petra being dead to her having set him up and he roller-coastered from fear to anger without resting on one long enough to rationally settle on the truth. The answer was waiting in Hamburg, then again he was not after answers, only Petra.

An hour after sunset he reached the outskirts of Hamburg, Sean decelerated for the first time in hours. At 100KPH the car seemed to be at a standstill. He traversed a city filled with laughing teens, couples holding hands, and kissing lovers. He cursed their normal lives, but prayed that he could start doing the same tomorrow.

The Reeperbahn was packed with cars and Sean double-parked the Mercedes on a crosswalk. He pushed the men and women out of the way with the Halliburton case and ignored their comments on his rudeness.

An unruly mob of men fought to get into the Eroscenter. He head-butted one soldier and kicked the shins and ankles of anyone too stubborn to give way and popped through the narrow hallway into the tented hall.

His eyes slowly adjusted the lurid crimson luminescence. The near-naked women trawled lewdly for better-paying customers from the over-capacity horde. Blondie's HEART OF GLASS blared on the crackling loudspeakers. Order had collapsed within the giant brothel

Something was up. The men acted like it was the end of the world and the women, as if they were celebrating a long-forgotten pagan holiday. Their Babelesque cackle crammed into his ears. Their hands reached out and their whispers offered depraved delights. He ran a gauntlet of breasts and thighs, slick with fluids from sweat, semen, and lubrication.

Women and men scuffled to get upstairs to the hotel rooms.

Several prostitutes serviced men against the wall of the main room. Two Brazilian transvestites were on their knees, each fellating a pair of young sailors. A blonde woman with enormous breasts reached for Sean, but he fought off her grasp.

An explosion of naked bodies burst from the narrow hotel entrance and collapsed on the slick floor to coalesce into a contorted orgy of flesh under the crimson neon's eternal dusk. For a second Sean remembered the column of tanks and thought maybe the atomic war had begun, for these people were fucking like there was no tomorrow.

His name was shouted out above the din of groans and Sulka flounced up to him, her lustful eyes beacons to any takers. She kissed him on the cheek and re-arranged the leather harness. Her breasts, belly, and hips shined with the slippery mélange of sweat and semen. She rubbed up against his body and whispered in his ears the same line she had said months ago.

Sean asked, "Wo ist Petra?"

"Ich weiss' nicht." She pinched her nipples between her thumb and index finger and winked at a passing customer.

"Und Cali?"

"Nicht hier. There are no Zuhalterei here tonight."

"None."

"Thanks to Petra. She butchered die Alte at an apartment on Mittelweg and came here and slashed Maserati Klaus' ass with a razor. He confessed everything and we wanted to kill him. She said he wasn't the one she wanted dead."

"Who was?"

"SS Tommy and Kali."

"Shit."

"Rechtig, but there are no pimps here. The Eroscenter belongs to us. The women and we are not giving it back. The Zuhalterei called die Bulle, but we fought off the Schupo. After a five minute-long barrage of bottle the police wisely decided to retreat up the street."

"A good decision."

The bass amp had blown and the music vibrated over the sound system like a 100 dB kazoo. Wherever Cali was, so was Petra and Sean shouted over X-Ray Specs' UP BONDAGE. "I have to find Petra."

"Go to her house." Sulka dragged away her next client, yelling, "Gehen zum Hausen."

Sean was in a madhouse and he reverted to his old angry self. The brawling scrum of men buffeted about the sex club's entrance and they stepped aside for the wild man swinging the aluminum case. Several tried to fight him, but their lust fever was no match for his blood rage or the metal case. Smarter men took advantage of his wake and rushed into the temporary gap, only to be hopelessly repacked shoulder to shoulder.

Sean spurted onto the sidewalk, his tie gone and every button on his jacket ripped off. Somehow he had lost a shoelace in the mob. Outside the scene was turning nasty, as the ousted pimps struggled vainly to block the herds of men funneling into the Eroscenter.

Sean proceeded past the police barriers through a helmeted squad of riot police. More police were arriving every moment and forming into ranks to clear the streets of the rebellious carnival.

A dull savage roar stopped them in their hobnailed tracks and Sean thought proudly of Petra's revenge, until realizing that the pimps were honor-bound to retaliate and this time her sentence was a death.

He got in the Benz and stepped on the gas. The Mercedes plowed through the crowd, knocking the rioters aside. The police charged into the fray, as he yanked the car west toward Kaiserringstrasse.

Several police cars raced in the opposite direction to the Reeperbahn. He doubted whether any police were left to patrol to the rest of the city and blew through three red lights, the last onto Petra's street. The streetlights had been knocked out, meaning that the pimps had beaten him here. He parked the Mercedes on the sidewalk before the gate, which was hanging off its hinges.

His heart pounded with fear and he prayed he found Petra alive, but knew whom he would kill, if she was dead. He did not need a judge or jury, just a gun.

The front door had been demolished as well. Black shadows gripped the studio to the left and the stairs were an inky upside-down chasm climbing to the second-floor. He heard a creak and entered the studio. Someone was sitting in a chair. His pleas became a mantra. "Please, let her be alive."

The beam of a flashlight blinded him and Sean stumbled backwards over the debris on the floor. He lifted his hand to block the light and did not recognize the man in the chair, until the policeman who had stopped him at the airport said, "Herr Tempo, I have been waiting you. Your friend started a riot in the Eroscenter by slashing one of Cali's henchmen so severely that he needed surgery."

"All the pimps could killed themselves for all I care. Where's Petra?"

"I was hoping you could tell me." The expression on the policeman's face told Sean that Petra was still at large.

"I was out of town." The studio had been demolished, but there was no blood on the walls or floor, which was a good sign. "Who wrecked the place?"

"Some pimps came here, but she was someplace else. The neighbors complained about the noise and we arrested them. They will stay the night in jail, but tomorrow they will run her down her to the ground."

"You seem on top of things."

"We at the Stittpolizei have had a special interest in Petra Wessel. Her revenge tonight originated with a beating last year. We would love to speak to her."

"I bet you would."

"I've been by your place and she isn't there either."

"It's a big city."

Her escaping from Cali meant that the money in the car was theirs. He had to find her first and they could leave town for good. Sean moved toward the door.

"Not so fast, Herr Coll" The policeman stood up with his hand in his pocket. "You came here a little over a month ago on an Irish passport. You get a job without going through the right procedure and do not pay Lohn-steufer or income tax."

"So I am under arrest?"

"Not yet."

"I don't have the time for this."

"Just a few more minutes of your time, Herr Tempo." The detective withdrew a notebook from his jacket and read with the help of his flashlight. "You also poisoned a group of skinheads and then get into a fight with Tommy Leiter, also called as SS Tommy. You lose this fight, but start an affair with Petra Wessel, a prostitute. You then transport large sums of money from Geneva to Hamburg for Herr Oster, who is a good friend of Cali Nordsturm, the King of The Reeperbahn. You have been a very busy man, Herr Tempo."

"Sounds like you have been too," Sean retorted sarcastically, though the policeman had him dead to rights.

"Herr Coll, I also called up the NYPD and asked them about you. A Sergeant Ferguson told me you were involved in two murders, which occurred outside a nightclub, The Inter-Continental."

"No charges were pressed."

"That is exactly what Sergeant Ferguson said you would say."

"Maybe he should get a job as a mind reader, cause he never got me to tell him a thing."

"Yes, he said that too." The policeman shut his notebook. "We police are all the same. We like to draw lines between the dots, but sometimes we need help. Unfortunately you have not been too helpful either here or New York."

"I guess I'm just not a good citizen." Sean said, but something was not adding up right and he fingered what it was finally. "So if you are Vice, what were you doing at the airport? I mean it's not like the pimps have a pump room in the terminal. If you were interested in me, it was, because someone told you to be interested in me."

The change in the policeman's face verified Sean had struck a nerve.

He started to leave the room and the policeman blocked the American's way with his arm.

"Where are you going?"

"To find Petra and, you can't stop me." Sean pushed the cop and walked out of the room, expecting to hear that famous 'HALT.', which had struck fear into the hearts of Europe forty years ago. Instead the policeman said, "Herr Coll, I will be watching you."

“I'm sure you will." With 1984 only two years around the corner Sean would have expected nothing less from the police.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 36

"You are a lucky man. The ax chopped through skin, muscle, and gristle, but it did not damage any vital organs." The doctor swabbed the clean edges of the wound with an antiseptic, then began stitching shut the wound. Cali flinched as the needle pierced the skin and the doctor said, "You really should go to a hospital."

"Will I die, if I do not?" Cali examined the fissure with a mirror. He had seen worst.

"No, but it will leave an ugly scar."

"I have a few others." Cali touched the white line on his cheek.

"Those are a beauty marks in comparison." The doctor tugged the needle through a tough section of skin and knotted the thread. "This will hurt a little. Are you sure you don't want any painkillers?"

"No, it only hurts, when I breathe." Hurt was an understatement, as the doctor stitched up the final centimeters of the wound. Some morphine would be nice, except any lapse of awareness could cost him his life, for while SS Tommy was safely deposited at the bottom of the Elbe, the dead man still had friends dedicated to revenge and Cali needed to stay awake, if he wanted to see tomorrow.

The doctor gave Cali a shot of tetracycline and asked, "Have you ever thought about changing your profession."

"Yes, I'm thinking about becoming a doctor. After all I've been through, I think some of your skill is sticking to me." Cali reached for his shirt.

"Joke all you want, Cali. It's your life." The doctor packed his bag. "If you start running a temperature, call me. While whoever did that might want you dead, I do not like patients dying on me. Stay off your feet and for God's sake, stay away from the Reeperbahn for a few days."

"For once in my life, I will obey your command."

Cali let the doctor triage over to Vanessa. After a quick examination the doctor announced that she was in the first stages of anorexia, but would not suffer any permanent damage. He advised she begin eating rice and broth before trying solids. Cali had not explained any of the particulars of her starvation regime and the doctor asked none, having attended to the pimp's various wounds over the past five years and understanding sometimes it's better to know nothing.

After the doctor left, Cali stood up stiffly. The agony would lessen to an ache, while the wound would scab over and itch. He had experienced this before, but hopefully for the last time. He opened the terrace windows and stepped outside. The rain had stopped and a few stars speckled the sky between the clouds scuttling from the south. Summer had come back to town.

Happy talk climbed from the cafes of Milchstrasse. The people at the tables were having a good night and some might go to the Malchek later for drinks, drugs, dancing, talk, then go home pleased with the evening. Few would care about the owner's death, because there was always someone ready to take his place in the night.

Cali counted the dead.

Four and he was severely wounded. Petra had gone berserk. Vanessa was shell-shocked. Lukas could not have anticipated the stress from the failed money transfer would implode Kurt's heart, but ignorance would not save him from Cali's vengeance. He would strangle the warped aristocrat with his bare hands and his telling where the embezzled money was would not delay his death.

The only other problems facing Cali were the American's bringing him the money and Petra's being on the prowl. Sean would never leave town without her and she would not go, unless she paid Cali back what she owed him. It was only a matter of time, till one or both of them showed up.

In the meanwhile he could only wait and that was easier than it looked for a man in his condition.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 38

The Malchek's bartenders and busboys chuckled amongst themselves upon seeing Sean's distressed appearance. He was in no mood to be the fool for anyone and lifted his torn jacket. The gun in his waistband erased their mocking grins and the staff returned to setting up for the night, as if they were being paid overtime.

After putting on Herbie Mann's MEMPHIS UNDERGROUND, Bertram came out of the DJ booth and said, "Looks like you had a wild night."

Sean ignored the comment and asked, "Is Jonny in?"

Bertram knew enough not to ask any more questions and said, "Yes, in the office."

"Thanks." Sean went to the office and the German looked up from counting the money for the evening's bar banks and frowned, saying, "Let me guess. You're taking off tonight."

"You guessed right. Have you seen Petra?" Sean gazed down at his laceless shoe and hoped Jonny had the answer to his question, but the bar manager shook his head and simply said, "No"

"Do you have any idea where she is?"

"No."

"You heard about the Eros Center?"

"Everyone connected to the Reeperbahn has heard about her. There's a price on her head, If she was smart, she got in her car and drove far away. Maybe you should do the same."

"I can't leave without her."

"Ah, Love. I remember it well. Go home, Sean. That is the best thing you can do. I'll tell Kurt you were sick." Jonny rubbed his face, thinking about how tired he would be at the end of this night, though the American would be worse off.

"You don't have to bother," replied Sean.

"Meaning Kurt had a heart attack in Geneva."

"Fatal?"

"Yes."

"Oh," Jonny answered, but before he could ask for details, the American had already left the office.

Outside on the sidewalk several pedestrians hurried by Sean, as if he were a madman. Getting to the Mercedes he saw he had once more forgotten to lock the doors. It was a testament to German honesty that no one had bothered to steal the metal case in the back, then again any object was worthless, unless you know its value.

Most men or woman would have gladly started all over again, especially with a million dollars in their pocket, but without Petra he was starting at ground zero and he had been there too many times to be there alone again.

Sulka, the police officer, and Jonny had all told him to go home. Sean wondered, if they meant the penthouse studio on Mittelweg or America. There were no flights leaving for the States tonight, so that only left him with one choice for tonight.

He drove like a drunken Indy driver to Milchstrasse and parked the car on the sidewalk before his building. Sean glared at the Schickerai in the cafe, daring them to make a comment. They all knew better and saved their comments until he entered the building.

Upstairs Sean searched the penthouse's three rooms.

He found f wet strands of rope on the bathroom floor and a closet empty of Petra's clothing.

Feeling like Adam exiled from Paradise without Eve, Sean went to the terrace. He surveyed the star-pitted sky, then howled out Petra's name. The warm wind in his face was the only reply. He remembered the madman in New York. No woman had answered his call and Sean regretted throwing the bag of water more than ever.

Returning inside, he smashed his fist into the wall. His knuckles cracked and he was about to throw another punch, when Cali appeared on the terrace.

Cali's skin was pale as a black man can get without being a ghost. He peered over the edge of the terrace, as if he was searching for the police, then turned to Sean and said, "Good parking job."

"I did my best." Sean tossed the keys to Cali. The black man fumbled the catch, but grabbed the keys before they hit the floor. His face contorted with pain, as he straightened up. "Where's Petra?"

"Not here," Cali spoke with the least amount of words possible, for each breath stretched the stitches to the breaking point. He shouldn't really be moving, but a million dollars in the hands of a stranger was a good reason to get out of bed.

"You wouldn't be here, if she was." Sean entered the penthouse and threw his jacket in the corner, feeling the dirt of a long day crusting like molting snakeskin. "I know. I've been to the Eroscenter."

"Bad?"

Cali stood at the doorway, his voice an imitation like Richard Roundtree in SHAFT.

"Bad isn't the word for it. All hell's breaking loose. You and your friends are on the out." Sean entered the bathroom and splashed water in his face.

"Only temporarily."

"Sure. Until you and your boys go down and beat the shit out of them like you did Petra?"

"I did not want that to happen."

"Tell that to someone who might believe you."

"I never touched her." Cali was hardly in the mood for a confession, but didn't have the energy to lie.

"I see the way people treat you here. Maybe you didn't touch her, but you okayed it. You had to teach her a lesson, so the whores would stay in place. That's just how the police in America or South Africa keep the niggers in line. Beat them over the head. And don't tell me your being black in Germany made you what you are today. You could have taken those beating and kids calling you nigger and turned out good. Hell, other people did." Sean seethed with the frustration of being unable to find Petra and the anger of being a pawn in Cali's game.

"You have no idea what being a ‘nigger’ here is like." Cali was taking these accusations like Ali on the ropes against Foreman.

"No, I don't, but you don't have to be that way now. I mean, what pleasure do you get from beating up women?"

"Yes, I never took from beating a woman like SS Tommy did Petra. Am I sorry for that? Of course I am." Cali was tired of the American being a preacher, as would any unreformed sinner being told of his wrongs, but it was difficult taking the moral high ground standing six feet deep in the mud, but when the shit gets a foot deep, you have to step a foot higher. "I can't pretend I've been a good man. Most of what I've done, I've done without looking back. With Petra I wish I could rewind time like a video, but I am not a God."

"No, you're King of the Reeperbahn and around here that is as close to being a God as you can get in Hamburg. You had other choices. Everyone does." Sean wiped his face dry with a towel and looked at himself in the mirror. He was shot, but at least in better shape than Cali. "You could have fucking warned her. Told her to leave town. Anything, but watch. You watched, while SS Tommy and the other fucked her up."

"Yes."

"You fucking nigger motherfucker." Sean used the n-word like a KKK member, but then again anyone white would.

"I thought being a 'nigger' didn’t matter to you, but you're the same as all white people." Cali pointed to the pistol in Sean's waist. "Would killing me make it all better?"

"The deal was you get your money and I get Petra safe and sound."

"Deals change. Everything went to shit today."

"Hey, don't I know it. I went to Geneva to pick up money, bring it back here, pack my bags and leave. Simple, right? Instead I find a dead man in a car. The woman I love gets kidnapped, then escapes and goes berserk." Sean sidestepped by Cali and returned to the bedroom. Cali's eyes narrowed to cold glinty slits, "Where is the money?"

Sean motioned to the case on the table. "It's all there."

Cali opened the case and picked out two packets of ten-thousand Swiss Marks

<"You think money will make everything good?"

"We Germans have few friends and I lost my best friend today. Nothing will bring him back. Am I sorry? Yes, but he was the one who killed himself. Drugs, a history of heart problems, and another man’s wife all combined to kill him today. I had you drive to that garage, so we could bring Kurt to Paris to be buried. That's was his wish and I thank you for that." "

"How sentimental." Sean dressed quickly in jeans. "I'm glad everything worked out for you."

"Nothing worked out. Nothing." Cali threw the money to Sean. "Consider that your severance pay from the club or for taking care of Kurt."

"Go fuck yourself."

Sean had pushed the wrong button.

Cali grabbed the American, the adrenalin of his rage temporarily masking the agonizing spasm in his side. Sean brought up his arms and knocked away the pimp's hands away, then pushed him against the wall. The black man's excruciating pain precluded any defense, so he begged, "Let me go, please."

Hearing the pathetic plea, Sean released him.

"No one is willing me what to do."

"I can see that, but it's in your best interests to get out of town and stay out of town. Tonight."

"That's what everyone keeps telling me, but I'm not leaving, until I find Petra before SS Tommy does."

"It is already too late for SS Tommy. He's dead," Cali gasped, hugging himself and praying the agony would subside.

"How?" To Sean this was the best news he had heard all day.

"The less you know the better. Just be happy he didn't get to Petra."

"Happy, do I sound happy? You think someone else is to blame for everything that went wrong today, but it's your fault. All of it. I tell you this, Cali. You try and mess with Petra and I'll kill you. Believe me, I can do it. In cold-blood." Sean stuffed his clothing in a bag and grabbed a few books, his money, and car keys. He was leaving this apartment for good. When he reached the door, he heard a whisper. Sean wheeled around and asked, "You have something to say?"

"Try the Hotel Inter-Conti. That's Petra's second home."

"I'll do that."

"And tell her I'm sorry. For everything."

"Yeah, right."

The door shut and Cali was grateful the American had foregone punishing him for his sins, since SS Tommy had already performed a pro job this afternoon. He gathered his strength and tottered into the next door apartment. In the bathroom he lifted his shirt. The stitches in his chest had held, but only just. He sponged off the crimson drops weeping from his wound.

The American was right.

Earlier he blamed Lukas for his interference or SS Tommy for this carnival of chaos, but he was responsible for all the mistakes of today and the day of Petra's beating. He would miss his friend him more than words could express and he might have even cried, but Cali had not cried since he was four years old. He would have liked to have come up with another way of paying back Lukas, but killing him was the only one that came to mind.

Lukas, being born to the rich, deemed himself above any violence Cali could summon, however nothing today had gone as planned, either for Cali or Lukas. Still both of them were the remaining chief architects of this day, and as long as this day had been, it was not over yet.

Vanessa Von Hausen mumbled in the bed, then opened her eyes, unable to recognize the man standing by the window for several seconds, then she asked, "Where is Kurt?"

The expression on Cali's face told her he was not here.

"Where is Kurt?" Vanessa asked again.

"You should rest," Cali said, hobbling over to the blonde wraith. Her previous childish beauty would not reblossom for some time, but she did look like a princess rescued from a dungeon. He placed a tray of food next to the bed.

"Where is Kurt?" Vanessa pushed away the food. Her desire for Kurt was stronger than her hunger. "Do not tell me a lie, Cali."

Cali had been lying all his life. If not that, then keeping his mouth shut, when asked for the facts, because the best secret is the one you never tell anyone. The same goes for the truth.

"Please tell me," Vanessa pleaded.

He could not refuse and told her everything she wanted to hear.

None of it was the truth.

When he was through, Vanessa looked at him with disappointment and said, "Cali, Kurt told me you are his best friend. I am a big girl. I do not need any lies. I have been through too much for that. Where is Kurt?"

The tears in Cali's eyes told the truth better than any words he could say, but he told her everything, this time holding nothing back, either from her or himself.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 39

Twice footsteps approached room 341 In the Intercontinental Hotel. Petra sat in the corner with a 9mm in her hand. Footsteps neared the unlocked door. She raised the weapon . The people proceeded down the corridor. She had been wearing the dominatrix corset, vest, and girdle for hours. The leather cut into her flesh. She quickly stripped and put on a thick cotton robe, then asked herself, "Where is he?"

SS Tommy was not the kind of man to let her off for running amok up his world. At any second the cold-blooded kill might smash through the door. She ran through the drill one more time.

Point and shoot.

A hail of bullets.

SS Tommy dead on the floor.

More minutes in the quiet hotel room. She grew drowsy and shut her eyes for a second, telling herself, that she would not go to sleep.

"Schiesse."

Sleep was SS Tommy's ally.

She composed a list of men who deserved death.

Her father for raping her.

The neighborhood priest for his fiery sermons on Hell and boring platitudes of Heaven.

She spared the boys in Hochschule who glimpsed up her dress, her first clients as a Strichmadchen on Lange Reite and the old men smitten by the top girl of Hamburg, because she had known what she was doing and taken advantage of the situation as best she could, although no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise, the one being paid was never the one on top.

Her blood burned at the thought of SS Tommy whipping her and Cali for allowing the beating.

Kurt was guilty by association.

Lukas also deserved a bullet and lastly Sean Coll, who had weakened her resolve.

They all had excuses, but 'Sorry' would not give back her eye or remove away the scars. If to forgive was divine, then she was purely human. Every man was guilty of something and her capacity for mercy was on empty. The next man to walk through the door was a dead man, even if he were room service. One was as good as the other. They were all the same.

Her teeth clenched tightly and her jaw muscles locked place. She had no power to speech and stiffness spread through her body to sculpt a taut statue. Footsteps neared and stopped before her door. She sighted the gun head high and held her breath to steady her hands. This would take less than a second. A man opened the door. His silhouette outlined by the hallway light was the perfect target, until he asked, "Petra?"

Sean peered inside the unlit room and his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness.

A woman was in the corner.

He suffered a mal de déjà vu, dating back to discovering her in the old house on Kaiserringstrasse, then light glinted off the metal in her hands.

A gun.

He hated life repeating itself for higher stakes, but he had been on a losing streak too long and tonight that bad luck was going to end one way or the other.

"Petra. Don't."

"Go away." Her voice trembled with anger.

It never paid to argue with someone holding a gun, but Sean could not leave and stepped inside the room.

"No closer or I will shoot. Go away."

"So you can kill yourself. No, I'm staying," Sean spoke and recollected an old news story from Miami about some man getting shot in the head five time and complaining later to the doctors in the emergency that he had a bad headache. He had been shot with a 22. A 9mm was less forgiving.

He took one another step.

"Petra, I know you want to kill someone. Me?"

She said nothing and his hand snaked out to slap at the pistol. The gun went off before he touched it. A shot thundered in his eardrums. Her involuntary flinch had deflected the bullet's course. He snatched the pistol from Petra before she could pull off another round.

"You crazy fucking bitch. You could have killed me." Sean threw the weapon into the corner, then struggled to restrain Petra's fists, knees, and feet. Her screaming cut through the ringing in his ears, then she freed her right hand to strike him in the jaw.

A left landed and his head snapped back. Petra was not holding back. Sean grabbed her arms and twisted her body. They fell onto the floor. Her nails lacerated his face. If she had been on the top, he would not have stood a chance.

Sean seized her wrists and sat on her stomach. He almost hit her and Petra winced in expectation. He shook his head. The last thing he had on his mind was hurting her or letting anyone else touch her.

"Ist da ein problem hier?" someone asked, startling Sean.

A very respectable man in his pajamas stood at the door and Sean rolled off Petra. "There's no problem, mister. Just go to sleep. We will try and be quiet. Sorry to disturb you."

Sean shut the door and picked up the pistol from the corner. The barrel was warm to his touch and the smell of gunpowder was nauseating, especially since the bullet had whizzed by his ear.

Petra sat on the chair and her talon-sharp nails raked back her hair. She stared at him with unrefined hatred and announced dejectedly. "You are lucky to not be dead."

"You got that right."

He should be lying on the floor, his head surrounded by a halo of blood. He shuddered, sensing sensed the ebbing of life from that dead man. Almost a dead man alive for the next few seconds, then gone. Sean reckoned this was his third close call with death since coming to Hamburg. Surviving a fourth was out of the question.

"Why don't you go away?"

"Because that would be easy." Sean stuck the gun behind his back.

"You do not understand anything." The anger vented from deep within her and she screamed, "How can you tell what's good for me or even you? Who made you God?"

"I never said I was anything special."

"Special? You're no saint. You'll never change either. You'll end up dead on a slab like the rest of your kind. Dead, dead, dead with no one to shed a tear either."

Petra rocked from side to side, her knotted hair masking her face, repeating the word 'dead' like a record skipping its track, until she was down to just 'd'. Someone chanting his death mantra, even if it was under their breath, wasn’t good for your karma, but even worse for hers and Sean shouted, "Stop it, Petra."

"Why? To be a good girl? Is that what you want? This is as good as I get"

"That's a lie. Believe me, I know when someone is good or bad."

"What are you Santa Claus?"

"No, but I have been good and I have been bad."

"I guess you are not as big a bastard as you look." snarled Petra.

"You think you're the only one in the world to get the shit kicked out of you. I've been one foot in the grave before. Beaten to the ground outside a New York nightclub with bats. I was on the ground dying or as close to dead as you can get. To this day I have no idea why they stopped. I came to covered in blood with my ribs broken, but I was alive. I searched for the guys who did that with two friends and found them in a bar. We had guns. I could have killed them, but didn't."

"Why?"

Sean touched the scar underneath his eyebrow, reflecting back to the moment when they caught his attackers. The man dared Sean to shoot him, but he had walked away and it was time for Petra to join him.

"Because I'm not a murderer and neither are you."

"I will be."

"Who? SS Tommy? You're too late. He's already dead."

"I will believe that, when I see his body."

"His body in in the Elbe and Kurt is also dead. A heart attack in Geneva. not be possible," Sean said and sat on the bed.

"There is Cali and Lukas."

"Cali is lucky to be alive." Sean understood exactly how she was feeling, but also how she would feel later and said, "He isn't so easy to kill, but SS Tommy tried and failed. Lukas on the other hand. I don't know where he is, but I'm sure Cali will take care of him. They have issues to resolve and resolve only one way."

"But I want my revenge."

"Yes, and I wish I could buy it for you, but I can't and neither can I make you forget your beating, but that the pain will always be with you. Everything we do and is done to us always is. I'd like to say that I will not ever hurt you and hope that you will never hurt me, but that's a promise no one can keep. All I can say is that I love you. I'm leaving here for Paris. We have money. Are you coming or not?"

A second ticked in time.

"Paris."

"It's a good city to forget the past."

"With you?"

"With us?"

Petra stretched out a hand and Sean helped her to her feet. He put his coat over her shoulders and they walked from the room. This thing between them might not last forever, but it seemed like it could. Neither of them would talk about it though, since telling your wish after breaking a wishbone was bad luck and both of them wanted this wish to come true.