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 5

The Lufthansa flight from Frankfort descended through the gray dawn. The plane landed smoothly and taxied across the tarmac. The pilot welcomed the passengers to Hamburg. The doors opened and the other travelers deboarded the plane. Sean remained seated and asked himself, "What am I doing in Germany?"

The word conjured up the Black Forest, Mad Ludwig's castles, the Rhine, beer, knockwurst, koo-koo clocks, lederhosen, Goethe, Bach, Beethoven, Schiller, Mann, Hesse, Wagner, Marlene Dietrich, LILI MARLENE, Rommel, the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad, Ilsa of the SS, and inescapably Hitler and his gang. Before leaving New York, several friends had revealed their slim knowledge of Hamburg by asking, "Didn't the Beatles play there?"

A male steward approached his seat and asked in perfect English, "Are you alright, sir?"

"Yes, just a little disoriented, that's all." Sean stood up with his bag in hand and walked off the plane down the ramp into the near-empty terminal, then proceeded to customs and immigration.

"Passport, bitte."

The officer stamped his passport with a six-month visa and motioned for him to continue through the arrival doors. Neither Kurt nor Bertram were on the other side. He changed $40 into Deutschemarks and went to a phone booth, where he dialed Kurt’s number. Ten rings later he hung up and called again.

No answer and Sean sat on a bench.

A pale-faced police officer in a green uniform passed Sean twice.

The struggle to keep his eyes open lasted a few seconds.

Thirty minutes later Sean snapped awake, as a herd of businessmen in pinstriped suits hurried into the terminal. Nobody had touched his bag and Sean once more called the number without any response. The young policeman approached Sean, who was seized by the paranoid delusion that the NYPD had alerted Interpol to his arrival, but the uniformed officer addressed him in German, then politely asked in English, "Are you lost?"

"No, my friends were supposed to meet me." Sean showed the phone number. "I telephoned them and no one answered."

"Maybe I can help." The officer dialed the number. After thirty seconds he hung up and pressed 'O' and then spoke German too rapidly for Sean. He wrote down an address and said, "Your friends live at Ein Kaiserringstrasse. Maybe twenty minutes away by taxi. It should only cost forty marks."

"Viele Danke." Sean’s dealings with New York cops had ill-prepared him for such cooperation or the German policeman saluting his good-bye.

“Have a good stay in Hamburg.”

"I'll try."

Outside the terminal he walked to a taxi and rapped on the Mercedes’ window, waking the scruffy driver. The back door's lock popped up and Sean sat in the car, which smelled of the driver’s many hours behind the wheel. Some things remained the same from city to city. He cracked the window and handed the address to the driver, who grunted and drove away from the airport. The well-paved road orderly houses with tidy lawns. The passing suburbs could have passed for any affluent city in the western world, except the billboards were in German. Sean read a few, but he once more gave into exhaustion and nodded off, until the taxi stopped on a tree-shaded street.

"Ein Kaiserringstrasse," The driver pointed to a faded blue door in a lopsided brick wall.

"Vierzig mark, bitte."

Sean exited from the taxi and the Mercedes abandoned him to the street's unearthly quiet. A cool fog veiled the white sun and he tasted salt in the air. The house had to be close the Elbe. Unable to find a buzzer Sean pushed the door open with his foot and entered an untended garden.

Creeping ivy strangled twisted oaks. Tall weeds choked the dirt path leading to a Gothic mansion. Cracks crawled up the masonry, paint flaked off the wall in sheets, and the roof was missing sections of stone slates. Sean half-expected the timeworn building to dissolve on the raspy breeze curling through the reed-choked pond surrounded by headless statues.

A Mercedes and Porsche were parked in the driveway and Sean shouted out, "Bertram. Kurt."

The names died in the silent garden.

He climbed the limestone steps to the open front door seeping the smell of must. He yelled the names again. No reply and he stepped inside the mansion, his footsteps creaking on the warped floorboards.

Heavy curtains blocked the light and Sean groped for a light switch against the wall. His fingers tapped a greasy button and electricity blazed from a chandelier precariously fastened to the buckled ceiling.

A clutter of paint tubes and cans in the former dining room surrounded an easel. Empty champagne bottles occupied the far corner. Color-smeared rags carpeted the floor. In the midst of the chaos a painting of a nude brunette with a pageboy haircut viewed through broken glass rested on an elegant chair.

A savage growl vibrated through the house succeeded by a woman's screams. Sean picked up an empty champagne bottle and charged up the crooked stairs.

Down the hallways a woman gasped, "Nein, nein, nein. Nicht wie das."

Inside a bedroom the brunette from the painting stood over a kneeling naked man. The thigh-high black patent leather boots rose above her knees. A studded dog collar encircled her neck and a cuirass of steel chains partially hid her pointed breasts. Metal rings tightly encircled her blunt nipples. A thick belt was looped in her right hand.

A sheen of sweat shone on her skin and a spider web of thin scars latticed her torso. Her heavily made-up eyes and lips coated with a shiny black lacquer failed to mask her facial features having been catastrophically warped like the tectonic plates of the Earth. Neither her deformities nor the man with stringy whitish-blonde hair crawling at her feet detracted from the illusion of her simultaneously being an angel and whore, although Sean cringed with the crack of the belt against the blonde man’s flesh.

Her victim tensed for the next blow. The leather strap ripped across his back and the man flopped onto the floor, the woman saying, "Ich bin ein Mistvieh."

When the brunette turned her head, Sean nearly dropped to his knees to join her slave's devoted worship.

Her cold amber eyes examined the stranger without any alarm before she reached down to strangle the man with the belt. His panting was strained, yet his red face glowed with anticipated pleasure. A video camera in the corner recorded his asphyxiation and played the scene on several televisions. No one was in danger and Sean backed away from the doorway, leaving the empty champagne bottle in the hallway.

Their struggle seemed to intensify with his every step.

Back in the studio Sean cleared a space on the floor. He had slept in worst places and stuck wet paper wads in his ears to block out the noise. He lay on the carpet with his bag under his head. His eyes might have been shut, but the images of this woman unfolded in his mind like crumpled photos of pin-up girls from the ancient Playboy magazines, the creases forming the same tangle of scars across her skin.

Upstairs Petra doubled the thick belt.

"Ich bin Ein Koter," he declared himself a cur and assumed a crouching position with outstretched arms. "Schlag mir. Bitte."

Petra struck Lukas without counting the blows and the belt exploded on his back. The pain reverberated through his trembling limbs. Blood trickled from old wounds and red drops dripped from his chest onto the floor.

Petra panted from exertion and he cried out with pleasure, then murmured the safety word, “Genug.”

“Enough? I have more to give."

Petra’s thighs were flecked with blood.

“That won't be necessary."

"Up to you."

She settled into a chair and stuck her boots underneath his head. He licked them clean, as his tongue departed from the glossy leather to that first raised ridge of scar tissue just above her knee.

"Your groveling disgusts me." Petra directed his attention to whatever he might have missed with a riding crop. Finally Lukas rose to his feet, as if he had snapped out of a trance, and asked, “You ever wonder why?”

“Why what? This?” She snapped the crop against his thigh.

“Yes.”

“I am in it for the money.” Petra unfastened her heavy-metal costume like a gladiator weary from combat. She was strictly in this for the money.

"No I am talking about me.”

“I don't care why you're into it as long as you pay for the session. I am no psychologist.” Petra never asked any of her ‘freier’ questions, but they always wanted to confess their motives and Lukas was no different.

“I’ve tried everything; cocaine, heroin, homosexuality, orgies in search of the ultimate sensation, but only pain makes me feel alive. I thought you of all people would understand that epiphany.”

"I don't understand my life, so why try and to understand the lives of others." Petra touched her right eye and recalled the horror of it popping out. She hated Lukas speaking, as if these meetings bestowed upon him an insight into true suffering, and she said, "Doesn’t your wife make you happy?"

"Happy? Marrying her was a mistake." Lukas stroked the lacerations on his back, as if they were a work of art. "One I am stuck with for the moment. Your friend, Kurt, is very much in love with my wife and if she went with him, I would be free to marry you."

"You really would marry me?" she laughed.

"If Vanessa was out of the way, ja." Lukas put on his shirt. Blood stained the silk.

“You know we are made for one another.”

"I was not made for anyone." She wrapped a robe around her body. "You know the way out. I have to attend to my guest."

"Ah, yes, your guest.” Lukas pulled on his trousers and slipped on his shoes. “Who is he?”

"An American Kurt hired to work at the nightclub." Petra stuck with Kurt’s cover story. Lukas suspected that the American might be involved in Kurt and Cali’s plans and said, "Another American in Hamburg like Wim Wenders' AMERICAN FRIEND.

Petra regarded movies as a pale reflection of life and hoped Lukas spared her a discourse about his beloved cinema.

“Yes, they come and go."

“And what about tomorrow?"

"You’re paying the rent here. You can come and go as you pleased as long as you pay me too." Petra was amazed at his addiction to pain, but she kept a gun upstairs, for Lukas was rumored to have killed two men in Morocco during the 1970s. He was not to be trusted, then again no man was worthy of trust.

Lukas placed an envelope containing 5000 DMs on a table, as if it were a down payment on her soul and left the room without saying another word.

Once he was gone, Petra went downstairs to the studio and nudged the intruder with her naked foot.

Sean opened his eyes.

The brunette’s electric-blue silk nightgown hardly softened her nail-tough exterior and her icy left eye wandered out of synch with the right.

"So you must be the American. Kurt told me you could pass for a young Orson Welles playing a cop."

"That's the Irish in me." Sean stood up and brushed sticky rags from his jeans.

"I'm sorry about the intrusion.”

"Herr Coll, I heard you on the steps.”

"You could have locked the door."

"The expression on your face was too precious for words." The woman walked out of the room. "Come with me, I will show you where to sleep."

Sean trailed her to a room. The windows had a view of the river.

She pointed to the small bed in the corner.

"You can sleep there."

"What about Bertram and Kurt? They were supposed to meet me at the airport."

"It was a late night at the club and they figured you could get it here on your own." She leaned against the door and parted her legs. "We can meet them later." “At the club."

"Where else, but the Malchek?"

"And what is your name?"

The silk robe opened a few inches. A gold chain encircled her waist. The scars covered her belly. She had been spared nothing by her attacker.

"Petra Wessel."

"Wessel? Like Horst Wessel?" Sean referred to the Nazi martyr from the 1930s.

"So you are up on your history, but I am not related to Horst Wessel.”

She stepped away from the door, leaving behind the smell of another man on her skin. Her footsteps climbed the stairs and a door slammed shut to leave him alone in a foreign city.

Hamburg was not New York

Sean shucked off his boots and lay on the bed. Sleep was hardly what he experienced next, but no dreams of H-bombs invaded his dreams and he was happy.

Least for now.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN by Peter Nolan Smith - CHAPTER 7

The noon sun burned through the grim overcast and the Porsche convertible sped along the harbor. Petra was at the wheel. The sports car hit 100 and Sean clung onto the passenger door, fighting the urge to plead, "Nicht so schnell."

Across the Elbe huge machines loaded and unloaded ships with thousands of containers. Sunlight sparkled off the river and Petra accelerated through narrow streets surrounding a bombed out church, explaining, "St. Nikolai was destroyed by the British bombers."

"Bomber Harris believed in total war."

"So did Hitler."

"Both of them failed." The Rathaus or city hall and buildings around the old canal system of the downtown looked like they had been there since Goethe.

"St. Nikolai is just a reminder that no one wins a war."

She shifted into top gear and Sean was pinned to his seat like an astronaut strapped to a V2 rocket.

The sports car broke free of the city and skirted a lake.

"The Aussenalster," said Petra, turning up the music.

German punk.

"Die Toten Hosen."

"Dead Sox. I liked telling Brits that Feldfarben were better than the Sex Pistols."

"You know them?' "And what's that?"

"A punk bar."

Sailboats skimmed the surface and children chased one another in the lakeside playground. along the park. Petra passed a truck with millimeters to spare. He was certain that Petra's right eye was fake.

She turned up the stereo. Industrial noise blared over the back speakers, as the Porsche Targa raced along the park.

"You like this music?"

"Yes, it's very calming."

"Really? You are not telling me the truth."

"This is NTL."

"You know them."

"I worked in nightclubs. DJs play everything. Some good. Some bad. Rechtig?"

Ja, rechtig."

Petra glanced at her passenger. His face bore scars from fighting. The damage was nothing in comparison to hers. She turned off Harvestehuder Weg onto a small street lined by cafes and high-class stores, then swung right on a wider street.

"Now I show you the club."

Her right foot stamped on the gas and the Porsche illegally passed a line of cars at a red light. The road curved left into a commercial zone and Petra pointed out of two-story building painted an icy blue.

"There."

A jagged slash of red streaking across the wall and an unlit neon sign spelled out 'Malchek'.

"The club was designed after CLOCKWORK ORANGE."

The movie based on Anthony Burgess' apocalyptic novel on the collapse of civilization had proved more prophetic than the author could have imagined, considering the advent of punks and skinheads exploiting the emptiness of western civilization.

"It's no Milk Bar."

"It is inside. Very 1969.” The music segued Kraftwerk's AUTOBAHN and the Porsche bat-turned across the pavement. On-coming traffic swerved aside and horns blared, as they headed in the opposite directio, even faster this time.

Sean gripped the dashboard.

"If you have a death wish, gut, but I want to live a few more days."

Petra stamped on the brakes and the car screeched to a halt.

"Maybe you can drive better?" Her nose had been broken more than one place and her chin was unnaturally flat.

"Slower, yes."

Denn du bist in control."

Petra squirmed onto his lap and the curve of her ass melted into his crotch.

An elderly couple walking with a dachshund muttered how this was not the Germany of a half-century ago.

"Ja, besser mitlos Hitler. Sieg Heil."

The old couple regarded him with all the hatred reserved for race traitors.

Sean flipped the finger and squeezed from underneath the brunette to get out of the car.

Petra laughed, "Are you going to walk?"

"No, I'm getting behind the wheel."

Sean pushed back the front seat two inches.

"I didn't think that Americans were so uncool." Petra took off the white leather jacket.

Her nipples were erect under her gossamer silk shirt.

"I've never been cool." Her playing easy to get was just a game to which he didn’t know all the rules.

"Too bad. I like cool."

"I'm sure you do." The steering wheel was cold, almost as if Petra possessed no body heat. His right hand encompassed the stick and his foot goosed the gas.

"So I've seen all the tourist sights. What about the Reeperbahn?"

"Every man wants to go to the Reeperbahn. You are all so predictable."

"What about Times Square?"

"Drugs, pimps, whores, and suckers."

"Sonderboch? That's what we call 'suckers'. The Reeperbahn is better at night, but I bet you that you cannot find the Reeperbahn. How much money do you have in your pocket?"

"Two hundred Marks. All the money I have in the world."

"Then this is the bet. Your two hundred versus making love with a beautiful woman. Believe me, you are getting a good deal."

"Sounds like a bargain to me, but I can't remember the last time I've been lost."

"You know where you are, but being lost has nothing to do with where you are going. Most men never want to admit they're lost."

"That's because sometimes we don't want to be found." Sean looked to the sky. The cardinal points of the compass set in his mind. The Reeperbahn could only be in one direction. "So I'm ready to go."

"One last condition. You have to find it in five minutes."

"No problem." Sean stomped on the gas. The whirling rear wheels scorched the street and the Porsche accelerated away from the curb. The wind blew back Petra's short hair and she said, "Now it is your turn to kill us."

"Not until after the Reeperbahn."

She reached to the console, her hand ready to yank up on the emergency brake. The light ahead turned yellow and her fingers tensed on the grip. Sean's foot pressed down on the gas and the Porsche breezed through the intersection.

"Yellow means fast."

"And red means schneller."

Sean shifted into fourth.

Opposite a concert hall he overtook a queue of cars delayed by a red light.

The malicious glare of every driver reinforced the old myth of how deeply the Germans respected order.

Sean responded by running another light. The Porsche approached a square with the road leading past a large gray statue of a very grim man and he turned the wheel to the right.

"Fucking Bismarck."

"Ehrlich? Bismarck led a Kulturkampf against the rich and the church."

"Realpolitik. I studied that at university. I do like his saying "Politics is the art of the possible" and impossibly we have arrived at our destination."

The street sign said Reeperbahn.

"A very good guess."

"I was my mother's navigator on long trips."

"Momma's boy, park there." Petra pointed to an open spot next to the St. Pauli U-bahn station.

"So I guess I won."

"A lucky man."

"Luck can compete with a good sense of direction."

Sean got out of the car and helped Petra to the sidewalk.

"So where first?"

"Like I said it's too early for the Reeperbahn. We'll go someplace much better."

"Show me the way."

She led him away from the broad avenue to a high metal barrier. A flock of female tourists scrambled to escape water thrown from the other side of the wall. The women shrieked down the street, as if they had just finished an amusement ride. Petra glared at them with disdain.

"Anything wrong?"

"The Reeperbahn was a free-zone for medieval workers. Sailors' brothels were established on the side streets and after World War II the pimps industrializing the sex trade. Herbertstrasse is been sealed off for the prostitutes to work out of windows in small houses. Normal women are denied entry, since they gawk at the whores like freaks, instead of women, who chose to be paid for sex outside of marriage."

"And the government doesn't try to shut it down? In New York the police harass streetwalkers and their 'johns', as if prostitution was a worse crime than murder or drug-dealing."

"Yes, they are hypocrites here too. In 1927 the Weimar government tried to close it. They failed and even the Nazis couldn’t shut it.” Petra pulled him through a narrow opening. Three overweight dominatrixes grabbed Sean, but their menace melted upon their seeing Petra. Each woman greeted her with a hug, then eyed Sean and one commented gutturally in German, "Ein drecksack."

Sean translated the words thanks to Bruder Karl and said, "Die Teufel."

"Die Teufel mit einen kleinen Schlange."

"Satan doesn't have a small cock."

They all laughed and Petra beckoned with an index finger.

"Follow me."

"To heaven or hell."

The brunette escorted him down the cobblestone street. The first-floor picture windows of the two-storey building were inhabited by women appealing to various libertine fantasies from the encyclopedia of sex. Several waved to Petra.

"Everyone seems to know you."

"In a small town there are no strangers, only people you avoid."

Sean was familiar with the distance people created for themselves, though her explanation was far from the truth, for passing a cluster of men discussing prices with a naked woman on her windowsill, they turned to follow Petra’s passage. She had once been one of these women and entered a house with an air of ownership. Tens of thousands of men had preceded him inside. Hundreds had been with her.

"Is this yours?"

"I own part."

"Another house."

"Not a house. Not a home. A brothel."

"And why are we going here?"

"Remember you won the bet."

She climbed the rickety stairs to an unlit landing and stepped into a small room wallpapered with scarlet brocade and furnished with baroque furniture. The drawn drapes were lush satin and he paused to take it in like a schoolboy on a field trip.

"Hast du ein problem?" Petra tilted her head to mask the more damaged side of her face with the half-light and threw her jacket over a chair.

"Ich habe kein problem?"

"Ah, so du konnst ein bissen Deutsche zu sprechen?" Petra pulled Sean inside.

"Enough to understand what that man was saying this morning."

"He is only getting what he paid for." Petra pushed him onto the bed. Her bracelets clanged together, as she undid his shirt.

"I figured as much."

“Is that wrong or right?" She spun on him. "No man can judge my sins, but every trick wants an explanation about how I had started in this business, almost as if the story could make me a better person. I tell them the truth."

"The truth?"

"It's different every time, because mostly what men want is a dirty fairy tale. When I graduated from high school, I understood society sentenced the women of my class to the slavery of 'Kinde-Kuche-Kirche' or 'child-kitchen-church'. Most of my girlfriends daydreamed about marrying rich, but they ended up working at the stores at Jungfernstieg and getting pregnant from their boyfriends before they were twenty. I had vowed never give it away for free. In Hamburg that means taking to the street.”

"Being a prostitute?"

"A whore or Huren." She pushed back her hair. "You can call it what you want. I serviced the car trade around Lange Reihe as a 'Streichenmadchen' or girl of the streets'. I hid my new career from my parents, though no nice girl ever earned the money they found in my pocketbook. Not in a week, let alone a day."

"So you told them a story?"

"Yes."

"A lie?"

"Not a lie, but not the truth. No parent wants to hear the truth."

"Which was?"

"I liked it."

"The sex?"

"No, I liked fooling the men into thinking I liked the sex. I had no trouble closing my eyes, when the man was on top or behind me. I practiced pants of pleasure, faked orgasms, and told the men they were the biggest. One day an electric-blue T-Bird stopped by the curb. The handsome man in the front seat was a welcome change from the usual rut of married men out for a short-time fuck, though I almost walked away, when he asked, "What is a girl like you doing here?" then he flashed a 1000-DM note and said my beauty was wasted on these streets.” "Yes, that evening he brought me to a high-class party. The women regarded me like a tramp, but he told me to stop being scared, because even these women pulled their pants down to go the bathroom. He introduced me to several men, and within minutes I was the queen of the ball. Later Kurt took me aside and said, "These are your new customers. The rich. The famous. It is just as easy to be with a rich man as it is a poor one?"

"Especially if you don't love them."

"Love is for children and dogs. I had no interest in anyone living off my back and Kurt said he wanted nothing from me. Maybe a favor one day. That night he arranged a date with an Exxon executive. That man moved me from the street into an Eppendorfer duplex, where I discreetly entertained Freier or customers. I out-earned all the girls on Lange Reite and I thought it could last forever."

"And it didn't?"

"No." Petra touched the right side of her face and opened the door for an older bleached-blonde woman in a leather harness. She rattled off several sentences in machine-gun German, then announced, "Marta will take care of you."

"Yes, but I thought...." Sean stammered, as Marta stroked his thighs.

Petra asked derisively in a husky voice, "You didn't actually think that we were going to have sex?"

Yes, we had a bet."

"Number one, you are crazy, if you think I cost two hundred marks." she explained what he had said to the girl on the bed, who chuckled harshly in unison with Petra.

"Well, what would I get for two hundred? Ten minutes, five, one?" Sean gently pushed away the older woman. "What about a kiss?"

"A kiss is a such a small thing." Petra signaled Marta to leave and once they were alone, Petra said, “Tell me why you left New York?”

Sean could have just said for a job, but had nothing to hide from Petra and confessed the truth.

“Six months ago I was opening a nightclub. After-hours. We took on a Russian gangster to finance the final touches. It had all sounded good, until he walked into the Continental with my ex-girlfriend.”

“Did you still love her?” Men liked to talk, because it took longer than sex.

Meeting Lisa had played like a badly-written remake of CASABLANCA.

“Yes, and I was too blind to not understand what was happening, until it was too late. I paid off the police. Internal Affairs investigated those cops for corruption. The Russian investor lived off counterfeit money and my partner wore a wire for the FBI. After the Russian's partner was shot dead in front of the club, the police raided the spot and arrested everyone. I had been with my ex- at the Russian's apartment. I fled the country and she said she would join him in Paris.”

“And you believed her?”

“Every word. She said she loved me. I waited in Paris. A week went by, then another, till a month passed without her arrival. Every day I called New York, leaving messages on her answering machine. She had lied about leaving the Russian gangster and I treated the pain of her desertion with cocaine and heroin, each drug taking at a shot at killing me. One April morning I woke in a decrepit shooting gallery on Rue de l'Ouest. I couldn't smell the garbage, hear the wheezing of my lungs, or see the shadowy hands undoing my shoelaces. I had reached the bottom and went cold turkey for five bone-crushing days, then headed south to the Luberon to hike through the ancient villages. At the beginning of May I returned to New York with only one thing on my mind."

"Lisa?"

"Yes."

“Men are fools.”

"About love we are."

“So you came here to forget?”

“Like joining the Foreign Legion,” Sean sighed, then was surprised by Petra's kissing him for the briefest of seconds. "So tell me how much?"

"To fuck me, Herr Ami?"

She leaned against the brocaded wall, hands resting on her hips.

"The price is five thousand Marks."

"Three thousand dollars."

"More or less."

"Then I'll start saving my pfennigs."

"And I’ll hold my breath." She pushed him onto the bed and said in a dusty voice, "You must be tired.”

“Where are you going?”

"Just to see some friends outside. Go to sleep." Her command had a hypnotic effect and his eyelids grew heavy with weariness. He stared up at Petra one last time and closed his eyes.

The brunette walked to the door. She had not lost her touch, but most men would not have refused Marta. She glanced at him again, thinking maybe he wasn't like everyone else, then laughed at even thinking he could be different from all the other men in the world. The slam of the door marked her conviction that all men were dogs even if they dressed like a prince, because Hamburg was a funny way of killing fairy tales and Petra knew all too well how stories ended without happy endings.

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 - CHAPTER 19

TWENTY-TWO

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

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

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

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

"No walking today." asked Murah.

"A little too wet for my taste."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bagman.

Someone who picked up cash for someone else.

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

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

"Four hundred thousand francs?"

"Swiss."

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

"Is there something wrong?"

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

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

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

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

"Alles in Ordnung?" asked Herr Egard.

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

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

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

Actually someone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who are you looking for? The police?"

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

"The taxman?"

"What do they do the taxman look like?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's this all about?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What was that all about?"

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

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

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

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

"He is simply fishing for information."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I have to give it all to Cali."

"Why not me?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How many days has she been gone?"

"Two."

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

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

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

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

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

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 20

Rain splattered on the Opel's windscreen and the steering wheel wobbled each time the tires struck a pothole on the rutted road off the 404. The new woods had been planted in orderly rows to either side. Alex Brucken shook his head. He should not be here, however the baron had insisted on the police officer coming to his mansion to report about his confrontation with the American at the airport. He should have refused the deviation from the usual rendezvous by the Alstersee, except the police officer was also curious to see how the top .00001% lived.

He had first seen little reason for following the American. His working papers out of order was a problem for immigration and his seeing Herr Von Hausen's mistress didn’t not involve the baron's wife's infidelities with Kurt Oster. The money in the case changed everything, but this last chore had seriously overstepped the boundaries of police procedure and endangered his position with Stupo. He was calling it quits, but his honor required his telling that to Lukas Von Hausen face to face.

Alex Brucken swung the wheel to the right too late to avoid a deep puddle. The front end dipped underwater and the ventilation pumped in a gaseous vapor. With the money from this job, he would buy a good second-hand family car. The rest would finance for a down payment on a house out in Wedel, so his children could grow up away from the influences of the Turks and Palestinians crowding the inner city school.

A kilometer from the main road the Opel turned onto a dirt driveway and passed the estate's unoccupied gatehouse. Alex Brucken was disappointed by finding a decaying mansion instead of a fairy tale castle, then the rich lived in another world than people like himself.

Despite what the baron had told him, he was not born yesterday. His name might have protected him from being arrested before, though not from being noted in the police files. Herr Von Hausen had been a junkie, a homosexual, a leftist sympathizer, and was now a member of a banned right-wing organization. It was only a matter of time, till the baron moved from the files to prison.

The Opel braked before the portico. The front door was open. Alex walked inside the mansion, then came to a halt in the darkness. Two sputtering candles let the entrance. The hallway was devoid of any furniture. The faint chords of classical music filtered from upstairs. As his eyes adjusted to the murk, Alex spotted a man in the corner and reached for his 9mm automatic.

"Alex, Alex, there's no need for a gun. It's only me." The baron stepped from the shadows. His hands were mockingly half-raised, as if surrendering himself into custody. "Sorry to startle you."

"I am tired. That's all," Alex said, though was angry for admitting any weakness to this man. He reported about rousting the American at the airport and the case of money. The baron listened silently and at the end said, "It must have been a long day, but I thank you for this work. It meant a lot to me."

Lukas had been worried about the police officer ever since hearing his voice on the telephone. He was obviously having serious misgivings about having performed these extracurricular activities. He could easily become another certainly another problem. During the Seventies Lukas could have shot him dead and dumped the body, claiming the murder to be an act of the Baader-Meinhof Gang or the Red Army. Nowadays a policeman's death would spur a major investigation and that would mean a knock at his door.

"You are wondering why you followed this American and anyone involved with Kurt Oster. As I told you, my wife is involved with the nightclub owner. I love her and hope one day she will see the error of her ways. You have seen my wife. She is beautiful, yes?"

Alex Brucken nodded, though the baron's wife was out of his class. His more immediate concern was both whether Herr Von Hausen's would pay the remainder of his fee.

Lukas turned on a single light, illuminating the desolate hallway.

"You can see to what I have been reduce. My last money was spent to protect the honor of my wife, but it is too late. What you had told me has convinced me of that."

The words 'Last money' assured him that this job was over, but he still had to say, "I can not work for you anymore, Herr Von Hausen."

"And I can not pay you for anymore. I am broke. Not a pfennig left of the Von Hausen fortune. You have no idea what it is to lose the woman you love."

"I am sorry," Alex said blankly, certain the baron was about to stiff him.

"It is not your fault and it is not like a Von Hausen to leave a debt of honor unpaid." The baron handed the police officer a packet of money. "No, do not pity me. I will find a job, maybe a rich heiress. My kind always does."

Alex wanted to check that the money was all there, but this was neither the time nor the place. The sight of a grown man crying, especially a complete stranger, sickened him and he backed down the hallway, saying, "Good luck, sir."

"Yes, I need that," Lukas replied before lowering his face into his hands.

Once the Opel left the yard, Lukas lifted his head and broke into a broad smile. The expression of revulsion on the policeman's face had been priceless. Few Germans could handle another person's emotion and the policeman had been no exception.

Alex Brucken's last information about the American had solved the jigsaw puzzle. Cali had been borrowing large sums of money, which he gave to Kurt, who wired it to a bank in Geneva, where the American picked it up and brought it back to Hamburg. None of the pieces mattered, until you considered the transvestite banker in Hamburg, who was in charge of international wire transfers.

Kurt and Cali had forced the banker in Hamburg misdirect funds to Geneva and the recent sums entering the Swiss account would lull the Geneva bank into a complacency about large amounts of money entering the account.

Once the money wire transfer had been placed into Kurt's account, there remained the last problem of picking up such a large sum of money. Normally the thieves would have pushed the funds through several offshore accounts, till it hit the Bahamas or Cayman Islands, then waited several years before moving the money to another account elsewhere for distribution.

Lukas was counting on impatience.

Kurt and Cali would pick up the money the same day they stole it, which had to mean at the Swiss bank in Geneva. Lukas knew exactly who to call to erect an unexpected detour for the two friends.

The policeman might be a problem later on, though nothing compared to his partner in crime. Eliminating SS Tommy would be difficult, but hardly an impossibility and Lukas laughed, for it would be a pleasure, but then almost everything he did would be soon, because now he possessed a reason to live and no one could take that away from him.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 21

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

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

"It is Greta. Willi's friend."

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

"It is, it is."

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

"No, no, I am outside."

So what is the problem?"

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

"How big?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 23

Kurt's night had been destroyed by his fevered obsession with a woman he could not find. Maybe Vanessa had fallen back in love with her husband. Knowing Lukas the way he did, Kurt ruled out that possibility and visualized Vanessa's naked body with an unknown man. Someone more her kind than an ex-convict from Hamburg.

Unable to sleep, Kurt drove down to the Reeperbahn, figuring if she could be unfaithful, then he would do the same, but upon reaching St. Pauli, he decided that the red-light district had too many eyes and headed to the Hafenstrasse by the river.

He got out of his T-Bird The air was strangely cold for this time of the year and he blew into his hands. The Elbe's black waters slapped against the concrete piers and across the black stretch of water automatic cranes loaded a large container ship. Cars rolled deeper into the Fischmarkt's inky gloom past a gauntlet of female silhouettes lining the cobbled roadside. They were why he came here in the first place. To have a nameless faceless woman to whom the price of admission was only money and not your soul.

A car stopped and its interior lights illuminated the first woman's face, as she leaned over to display her breasts. She was neither young nor pretty, which was typical for the women down here. The Fishmarket was where all the amateurs, housewives seeking some extra cash, and exiles from the Reeperbahn came to meet the Freiers hunting for bargains. Down here they received exactly what they paid for and nothing more.

As he walked down the quay, most of the women viewed the carless man with suspicion and moved away, leaving behind a young redhead in a miniskirt. Headlights lit her youthful face. Her cheek was bruised by a beating and Kurt instantly her as the girl over whom Sean had fought SS Tommy. Kurt even remembered her name from that morning in the Eroscenter and he called out, "Vella."<

The girl turned her head, but her inviting smile changed to a frown. She recognized the owner of the Malchek and didn't want him to see her down here. She turned and fled, her high heels clattering on Hafenstrasse's worn stones.

Kurt started after her, but a big Mercedes sedan blocked his pursuit. The door opened and SS Tommy got out cracking his knuckles like they were snapped electric wires in the rain. He put his arm around the girl and asked her, "Did the big bad man scare you?"

"No, not at all."

"Then why are you running? He is a man and you are a whore." He slapped her on the back of the head. "You are useless."

"Stop it." Kurt took a step forward.

"Why?" SS Tommy grinned, feeling the 9mm strapped to his shoulder. Any other time he would have killed Kurt for kicks. The tide would haul his body out to sea by dawn, as SS Tommy sat down to a steak at the Schlacterei restaurant. Unfortunately the pleasure he would take from killing the nightclub owner would just have to wait till, he was King of the Reeperbahn.

"She belongs someplace better than this," protested Kurt.

"I know, I know, but she has been a bad girl. Several customers complained about her laying on the bed like a starfish. Where better to learn her lesson than this street. Just like you and me, yes? She could use a little training. And who better than these old whores here to teach her all the tricks?" SS Tommy stroked the crying redhead's hair." No more bon-bon suites for you till then. And save your tears, till the truckers come at dawn. Oh, you will be a sight for their whore-sore eyes, meine kleine Bazi Mietze. How they will line up for you and you will love every last one, yes?"

"Yes, Tommy." She had suffered a beating at his hands. She had already serviced ten men here.

"See she is coming back to Papa."

"I am learning my lesson," the redhead replied, thankful for even this brief respite from standing in the dark.

"Hear that. She is a good little whore and that's all I ask from her," SS Tommy chortled with delight. "Kurt, I hear you and Vanessa are through."

SS Tommy was goading him into a fight both by treating this young girl as a piece of meat and mentioning Vanessa's name, but Kurt would be a fool to accommodate him and replied, "No one wins at love all the time."

"Exactly, but what are you doing down here? You can afford better than this. Lucky for you, I have the right rose for you to pluck. Better than the other sluts here, unless dirt is your kick."

SS Tommy lifted her skirt. Her legs were white as her shirt. SS Tommy ripped open her bra, revealing her coned breasts. "Come, baby, show him what you can do."

The redhead undulated against SS Tommy. She would take on anyone to get off this street before the truckers arrived in force.

"Why so disgusted. We knew these streets as boys, but you think you are better than me." It was this betrayal of his class that made SS Tommy despised the nightclub owner more than Lukas, who was born into wealth. "Try her. Barely used. I give her to you. For free, but only the first time. Maybe you too can show her a trick or two. Maybe she is better than Vanessa."

Vella was played the wanton whore for her Alte Strizzi and the pimp smiled accordingly, as she pleaded, "Come on, du Wieberheld, take me home. Take me to a hotel. I promise I will be a good girl or bad, if you like."

She sauntered over to Kurt and threw her arms around his neck. Her groin ground flush into his. If the redhead passed this test, then SS Tommy would install her an apartment to entertain big money clients.

The old whore, Sulka had told her this afternoon, "Talking dirty is as good a turn-on as fucking them." and now Vella whispered a litany of filth in Kurt's ear. The nightclub owner squeezed the soft breasts. The girl's eyes shut in response and a pink tongue lolled over full lips. Her fast learning curve pleased SS Tommy.

Kurt took her by the hand and gave SS Tommy five hundred DMs. "Save your favors. I pay for what I get."

"Whatever you want is good for me." SS Tommy happily stuck the money in his pocket of his leather jacket and walked off to his Mercedes, saying, "Vella, be good."

"Thank you, Kurt. That is your name, yes?" Vella reached down to stroke him, as Sulka had taught her with a banana. This penis leapt to her touch. "I can be whatever you want."

"Do me a favor and shut up, until we get to the hotel." Kurt dragged her back to his T-bird. Vella nodded and said, "Whatever you want."

Vella sat in the front seat of the T-bird and redid her ripped shirt. She would buy a new one tomorrow. Something expensive to make this night disappear, although it hadn't gone as badly as she feared. Her pimp had forgiven her trespass and she had escaped the dawn train of unshaven and unwashed truckers. Kurt's taking her to a cheap Reeperbahn hotel slightly tarnished her bliss, yet Vella was happy, since anyplace was better than walking that street.

Upstairs in the small room the redhead stripped off her dress and slipped out of the flimsy bra and cheap panties. The young redhead was naked, but for her make-up and high heels. Vella smiled at him and said, "You can do anything you want to me, yes?"

Kurt put two-hundred Marks on the bed.

"Not tonight, Vella. I am sorry, but not tonight."

"Please, you have to stay. I don't want to go back to the Fischmarket." Her panic was no act.

Vella's sudden metamorphosis into the young girl she really was melted Kurt's heart. He sat on the bed, head in hands, and began to talk.

Sulka had told her there would be nights like this and Vella lay on the mattress and listened. After an hour of his sorrow, she wished she were back in the Fischmarkt. No one really wants to listen to another person's sins, especially if they couldn't be forgiven by woman or man.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 26

Sean picked up nearly eight hundred thousand Swiss Francs at the bank and Herr Egard regarded the American, as if he never wanted to see him again. His wish would come true today, if Sean could get up the nerve to steal the packet. The banker accompanied him to the Volvo followed by a guard.

"Is anything wrong?"

"No, just making sure the money get to the car safely. Have a good trip."

"Thanks. See you next week."

"Looks like they're worried about someone robbing us," Murah commented, as he wheeled the car into the street.

"They might have a point."

"How so?"

"We haven't changed our routine from day one." Sean checked for anyone following him or her, except the street was empty.

"Yes, with this much money at stake, the risk becomes less of an issue." Murah's tone warned that last week's hesitancy on the bank's steps last week had not gone unnoticed. Thankfully he left it at that and they proceeded to the airport in silence.

The day passed as slowly as any other they had spent in the airport.

Sean buried himself in Isaac B. Singer's THE SLAVE until his flight was ready for boarding. Murah surprisingly showed a ticket at the gate.

"You're going to Hamburg?"

"I have to speak to Kurt in person."

Sean didn't ask what, but it seemed like Kurt wasn't taking any chances on this trip.

Inside the plane Murah signaled for Sean to take the window seat, while he sat guard on the aisle, signifying any chances Sean had for taking this money had been those few seconds a week ago.

After the plane took out, Sean browsed through STERN and stopped on a page advertising diamonds.

A handsome man offered an engagement ring to a lovely woman. He thought about how happy Petra would be to get such a ring. Even with the liquidation of everything he owned, the old BMW, 4000 marks, and his motorcycle in New York, that ring was beyond his means. Sean pondered the possibility of convincing the Yugoslav to split the money between them, but suspected at the mere mention of a theft he would be thrown from the airplane without a parachute.

The plane landed in Hamburg on time and Murah escorted him through the terminal. No one stopped him for questioning and Kurt had met him outside in the T-Bird. One glance told Sean the German was still doing drugs and he looked ready for a return visit to the hospital. His death wish was his own business and Sean handed the aluminum case to Kurt, thinking how all this money wasn't making anything better for him and Sean's stealing it probably wouldn't have benefited him either.

"No problems this time?" Kurt asked, his hands shaking on the steering wheel.

At first Sean thought the question was directed to him, but Murah answered from the back seat, "No problems. Not in Geneva. No here."

Kurt expressed his gratitude to his courier by paying him an extra thousand Marks, then informed him, "Only one more transfer left, probably Friday, then you're free again."

"I can hardly wait." Sean exited from the car and went to his own.

Each week the money from the bank had doubled in amount. Now 800,000 was about what most normal people earn in a lifetime. Next week was probably going to be 1,6000,000 Swiss Francs. How much didn't matter, because there was no way he could pull off this heist by himself. He would have to be satisfied with his courier fee and that fact that Petra and he were now lovers and that was something money couldn't buy.

When he arrived at the apartment, Petra demonstrated how happy she was to see him without resorting to any of the tricks of her previous career and relied strictly on the tenderness of someone who was in love. Sean could only reciprocate in kind. He suggested they go out to eat.

Petra would have preferred to remain where they were, yet didn't argue, since he seemed so happy. Sean dressed in his black suit, while she changed into a light shirt and tan shirt. The gold chains remained in the dresser and the leathers stayed in the closet. "No leather. No gold," asked Sean.

"No, the only way I can be someone new is not be who I was before."

"I wish I could do the same."

"Once we leave here, maybe we can."

"We'll see soon enough." Sean was willing to try with Petra.

They walked outside hand in hand. The spire of the church across the street was a slender needle into the night sky and a few leaves rolled down the sidewalk.

"Autumn," said Sean.

"Not yet." Petra let the warm breeze off the lake blow through her day. "Summer still has some life in it."

Three young girls in mini-skirts passed them and Sean followed them with his eyes, until Petra's fingernails dug into his flesh. He turned sharply to her and said, "Sorry, I didn't know it was against the law to look."

"It isn't, but just remember that when you're with me."

"How could I forget?" Sean held up his palm. "You drew blood."

"Only a little.” Petra took his hand and kissed where the red half-circles.

When they reached the Porsche, she stopped and said, "Funny I should want you so much now after not wanting you at all."

"Me, I wanted you from the first time I saw you." Sean replied, as he sat in the passenger side of the convertible.

"Lusten oder Lieben?" Speaking English all the time was exhausting, since she used at most three hundred words, but Sean's German was worse than a three-year old.

"A little of lust and a lot more of the love."

"Is that what you mean by love at first sight?" Petra slipped behind the wheel of the Porsche.

"Maybe I do." Sean's obsession for Tammi had been cleansed by his love for Petra, because nothing cured a broken heart faster than to falling in love. She caressed her cheek and he asked, "And you?"

"Moglich Ich auch." Sometimes it was too soon to say more than 'maybe', but for both of them the time to say more was not far away.

They drove to St. Pauli under a velvet sky dotted with distant stars and Sean lifted his head.

"Wishing on a star."

"Looking for a meteorite. August is the time of the Pleiades. Where I come from in Maine, the sky is dark enough to see scores of them."

"Too much light in Hamburg."

"Same as New York." The only movement above was a jet plane heading north. "Maybe we could go to the Alps first. I'm sure we can see them there."

"Sounds beautiful."

"Same as you."

"Genug romantik, bitte."

"As you wish."

Petra parked the car on the Reeperbahn and they strolled arm in arm to the Italian restaurant near Herbertstrasse.

Every table in the front was crowded with noisy customers. The maitre de greeted Petra with four kisses on the cheek and gave her a table in back. Several groups of diners spoke in hushed tones and Sean had to ask, "Are you famous or something? Every place we have ever gone, people recognize you. Why?"

"It is an old story and why my face is the way it is. I am amazed you never ask me what happened."

"I thought you would tell me one day."

"And no one else did?" Petra unfolded her napkin and put it on her lap, showing she had been brought up with the same middle-class manners as Sean.

"They said something about a beating, but never why or who."

"Yes, that is the short story of what happened." Petra fingered her left eye.

Glass.

"And the long?"

Before she could answer, the waiter came over with a bottle of wine from the chef. Petra thanked him and allowed Sean to taste the wine, which was exceptionally chilled, if nothing else. When the waiter left, Sean said, "And you were saying?"

"I was organizing the prostitutes to get rid of the pimps. I had some success at first, but then the pimps stopped my campaign by beating me up." Petra kept it short. Telling Sean the gory details about the savage attack would have been too close to reliving the actual event. Her good eye twitched, as she said, "The newspapers made a big deal about my 'crusade', though they were only interested in selling newspapers."

"And what about the girls?"

"The girls? They got the message and so did I. No union, so I went back to being a whore."

"Hollywood would buy the rights to your story." Sean reached over to hold her hand, though she coldly replied, "This is not Hollywood. It is an old story and one I wish to forget."

She lifted her other hand and touched the most damaged side of her face. The pain generated from her empty eye socket served as a reminder of her vow of vengeance. Her face hardened for a second, till she released the thought. "What about you? Why are you here? A bad love story or wanted by the police?"

"A little bit of both. Actually more than a little." Sean told her about Tammi, the cops, and the nightclub, then said, "I've always been unlucky in love."

"Maybe that was only in New York."

"Maybe," Sean answered without telling her of other disasters in Paris, LA, and Miami.

"Maybe your luck will change." "It has so far." Sean kissed Petra on the neck.

A frisson cascaded down her spine.

"Mine too."

"At the roulette wheel."

"Not yet."

The waiter delivered their linguine and the conversation broke off, until Petra asked, "What kind of name is Coll."

"It was Coll, but my great-great-great grandfather wound up on the losing side of the American Revolution. His family disowned him and he fled to Canada, shortening his name to 'Coll'." Sean recounted the story his grandfather had told him. It was a lie, but the tale of murder in the North Woods, which was the truth, was too complicated for one dinner.

"So you are Canadian?"

"No, I am American. My grandfather served as a doctor for the British in World War I and met my grandmother as a field nurse a hospital in France. She was from Maine and after the war they returned to the States." Sean looked across the table.

Petra was staring over his shoulder. A heavy-set man stood up from a table of men and approached them. Sean grabbed a fork. Petra said, "Don't."

The man spoke swiftly in German. Sean didn't understand the words, but read Petra's eyes.

"Listen, we're having dinner, so please return to your table."

"Hah, an American. Why aren't you at a fast food restaurant."

The dark-haired man explained what he had said to his friends in German and they laughed, slapping the table.

Unwilling to start a fight, Sean responded jovially, "Some of us do and some of us don't."

"Amerika, Kulturlos Leute." One of his friends sneered loudly.

Several diners swiveled their heads at the sound of the disturbance. The waiter tried to interfere, but was pushed away by the fat man. While most Germans were good people, but Sean kept running into the worst. Considering where and for whom he worked, he could expect nothing less.

"Petra and I are old friends, are we, Liebsten?"

"We were never Liebsten." Petra remembered this man, his nakedness, what he had wanted, how much he had paid her, how many minutes he had taken. She looked at Sean to warn to make any trouble, but he said, "We have plenty of culture. cowboys, the blues, and pizza."

"That is not Kultur." The man's face was warped by superiority, as he spat out, "Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller. Das ist Kultur."

"Ancient history," Sean replied, resisting the urge to add bombing German cities into rubble to the list, though any reason to be polite had disappeared several seconds ago and Sean didn't give a rat's ass who this man was, where he came from or anything else, for a sliver of a tear shined in Petra's eye.

"Ancient history?" The man pushed away the hands of another waiter. "Better ancient history than 'nigger' history."

"You said what?" Sean put his clenched fists under the table, then said, "Maybe you prefer to talk about the new German culture. Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschewitz."

Those four words wipe off the drunk's smug smile and he would have thrown a punch had his friends not wrestled him away, muttering something about there never having been a Final Solution, but that he had one designed for an 'Auslander'.

The waiters and maitre de hurried over to apologize for the men's behavior.

"Es war nichts. Rechtung, bitte?" Petra asked for the bill and the maitre de said the dinner was on him before retreating from the table.

"Sorry." Sean shrugged. "I guess I shouldn't have mentioned the Nazi thing."

"It wasn’t about Nazis. I fucked that man and hundreds of men just like him in Hamburg. This is not the first time or the last time that will happen."

He handed her a napkin.

"You think a napkin will make me feel better." Petra threw it on the floor and left the restaurant

Sean quickly followed her and found her leaning against the barrier of Herbertstrasse. He touched her hair, then caressed her face. She slapped away his hand. Seeing a meteorite streak across the sky, he wished Petra would forget what had happened in her restaurant and he said, "Petra."

"What?" She demanded with a heart-crushing hostility that cut into his heart.

He swallowed a lump of hurt, then said, "Just that neither of us have been saints, but that's not saying that we can't start over with a clean slate."

"I thought it was possible to change, but those men and the people in the restaurant see me as what I am. A whore and that is all I am."

She was right, but Sean wasn't giving up so easily and told her, "You don't have to be who they want you to be."

"What? You want things to be right, so I can come back to your house and fuck you. For free too. You think you do not have to pay for a woman. You pay, every man does. It could be dinner or flowers or jewelry, but no woman will give it away for free. Or maybe you want to be the whore. I will give you one-thousand DM for a night. That was my fee before they destroyed my face." Her hands struck out to drive him away for his own good.

"I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about you and me. Us." Sean seized his wrist, twisting it hard and finding himself angered by his inability to help her.

"Us? There is no us." A cynical snarl leapt from her throat, then she attacked him. Sean defended himself as best he could without hurting her, but that meant letting down his guard. Petra clipped him with a hard fist and he stepped back to bump into someone.

"Arseloch." It was the fat man. Two other men emerged from the darkness. They were taller than Sean, but he had one advantage. They would want to talk first. Sean was all action.

"So, was jetzt?" The German demanded to the chuckles of his friends. This must have been their idea of a good ending to the night and the man shoved Sean backwards, saying, "Was denkst du?"

Some people might call a 'sucker punch' unfair, but nothing is fair in love and war, so Sean grabbed hold of the drunk's wispy forelock and his right fist impacted on the man's face with the sweetness of driving a baseball over the outfield fence. The man fell back into his friends' arms, while Sean stared at the clump of hair in his left hand. Pinpoints of blood speckled the man's forehead.

Caught off-guard by the scalping, Sean momentarily forgot the other two assailants, but one of them smacked Sean in the head and he dropped on his knees and not to pray. He tried to get to his feet, but his legs were too weak to support him, so he instinctively contracted into a ball. The punches became kicks to his ribs, legs, and back. One boot snapped his head back with an explosive flash strobing into his sockets. He was about to lose consciousness, when a hollow shot rang out.

Sean flinched, but no bullet burned into his body.

Running footsteps replaced the blood roaring in his ears, then the click of high heels. Sean opened his eyes. Petra stood over him, a small-caliber pistol in her hand. She stuck the gun in her purse, then pulled him to his feet and said, "We have to go before the police come."

"Just point me in the right direction." Sean stumbled to his feet and Petra helped him walk down the street. This was the second bad beating he had received in Hamburg and the three men had hurt him, though he had escaped without his nose being broken or a tooth knocked out. At least he had something to be thankful for.

In the car Petra cleaned the blood off his face and said, "Tut mir lied."

"You don't have to apologize, unless you're telling me you want to end this now." Sean gazed into both her eyes. That one of them was glass was unimportant. To Sean they were still the gateways to her soul.

"I've been around the world. I’ve been with many women. I told you. I'm no saint, but with you I'm willing to try. I love you, Petra. I have for a while. I love you. There I said it again."

Petra still couldn't tell him the same thing too, but kissed him tenderly on the lips before asking, "You said you would leave here with me?"

"Yes," was all Sean could say, because it was the truth.

Petra turned on the engine and shifted into first, saying, "Then let's go home."

From a nearby BMW SS Tommy and Lukas watched the couple drive away. The blond pimp turned to his passenger and asked, "Are you satisfied?"

"For now, yes?" Lukas put down the Leica R5 with a 200mm zoom. He had hoped for the beating to go on forever, but had forgotten how tough Petra could be and desired her more than ever.

"You'll be even more satisfied next time," SS Tommy promised, because then he would be the one doing the heavy work and then there would be two targets instead of one. He did some calculating in his head, then added another person to this number. There was no reason to leave Lukas out of that little party.

None at all.

In his mind they were all almost dead men.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 27

The parking lot by the Aussenalster was full, so Kurt stuck the T-Bird across a nearby bicycle path. Several longhaired cyclists admonished the driver for his disregard of their space, until he advanced on them belligerently.

As they pedaled off, Kurt Oster shouted invectives, until he was out of breath. His heart beat fast and a tingling sensation gathered in the tips of his fingers. He really should have obeyed his doctors' orders, but they had no idea what his life was like, otherwise they would have wished him luck and plenty of it.

Several family groups sidestepped onto the grass to avoid being bumped by the man in the satin suit. A few of the women told him he should be more polite, but these days etiquette was low of his list of behavior.

The week had started badly with his near-death experience and Vanessa's disappearance, then rallied with Sean's delivery of the money and Murah's phone call from Chiang Mai in Thailand. $20,000 to the right prison official had effected the release of Herr Egard's son into the Yugoslav's custody. Murah had taken the banker's son to a small guesthouse in Bangkok and re-associated him with heroin, thereby exchanging one prison for a more inescapable cage. Everything was looking up, till receiving a call from Cali saying, "We have a problem."

Hearing those three words had blackened his mood to coal.

Kurt entered the lakeside restaurant and spotted the black man at a table with his back to the wall. While the pimp was dressed for a business meeting, his skin color and notoriety assured his being the other diners' main subject of conversation. Kurt wished they had met somewhere more private, but was glad that Cali was surrounded by empty tables.

Kurt sat down, asking, "What is wrong?"

Cali peered over his sunglasses and focused on Kurt. His friend was in bad shape and probably from drugs.

"Are you okay?"

"I wish everyone would stop asking me that," Kurt snapped, then noted the genuine concern on Cali's face. "I'm fine, really. Just had some trouble sleeping."

"Yes, I can see that." Cali had little patience for drug addicts, even Kurt.

"So?" Kurt sensed his friend's scrutiny and sat up straight, as if he had been caught for cheating in school.

Cali put his hand over his mouth and said, "Willi's gone missing."

"The banker's boyfriend?"

"Exactly."

"How long?"

Several nights ago he was seen running from the police after buying heroin in the Hauptbahnhof. His dealer told this story to one of my whores and she told me."

"And was he arrested?" Kurt shook his head. If it wasn't one thing, then it was another.

"No, he got away."

"Has the banker mentioned Willi's being gone?" Kurt immediately thought back to the policeman stopping Sean and speculated whether on a connection between the two events. In the best of worlds probably not, but this was hardly the best of worlds.

"Yes, but he said there was no problem. That Willi disappears all the time."

"So?"

"You saw the banker in that basement. He would have let us cut off his hands to stay with Willi, so his calmness about Willi's disappearance gives me a funny feeling and not funny 'ha-ha' feeling." Cali sat back and signaled for the waiter they were ready to order.

Kurt reflected on this new tidbit of information, as Cali ordered fresh Atlantic sole for both of them. Once the waiter disappeared, Cali asked without moving his lips, "So what do you think?"

"We have several possibilities. One, your boy, Willi, has found a new lover."

"Not a chance," Cali answered quickly for none of his Hasen had seen Willi at the usual hustling spots.

"He could have run away."

"The banker has been a good payday and promises to be better. Willi is dumb, not stupid."

"If I remember correctly, the boy liked his heroin. Maybe he OD'd."

"No hospitals has admitted anyone fitting his description." While Cali's organization had a tremendous reach into all sorts of places, his inquiry about a junkie Kalbfleisch had risked attracting attention, but with so much to gain, he had no choice.

"Maybe he went home."

"Ha." Cali answered, then said, "The only home Willi knows is the street."

"So if he is not runaway, not home, not with a trick, not dead, not hiding in a drug den, not taken by the police, that leaves one other possibility. Someone took him off the street."

"Proving that someone is on to us."

"Who?"

Cali had composed a list of people who could have betrayed them and said, "Only you, me, and the Schwule banker have any idea what this is all about, unless one of us talked about it."

"I haven't told anyone."

"What about your American?"

"No, he only picks up the money."

"And Petra?"

"She is only there to keep the American amused."

"Are you sure neither of them have put together the pieces."

"I am sure of it."

"Well, someone must have. What about your Vanessa?" Cali had been concerned from the beginning that Kurt had violated the main law of the Reeperbahn and fallen in love with a whore. Not that Vanessa was a whore, but all women are trouble, but never more when you fall in love with another man's wife.

Kurt wracked his mind whether he might have let something slip, then recalled his telling Vanessa he would be taking her away soon. Even if she had told Lukas that, he could not see how her husband could have deduced anything about their money wire theft from that comment. "No, she is totally in the dark, besides it is over between us."

"It is? Did you get tired of her?"

"No, but I haven't seen her for days."

Cali shook his head. The bad news and they were piling up too fast for it to be any good.

"So now we have a second person missing. Has anyone seen Lukas?"

"No."

I think we have suspect number one. Lukas has the motive. Money. And the connection. You to Vanessa to him. Are you sure you said nothing to her?" Cali had also discovered that Lukas had sold a five-carat diamond ring, which had last been seen on Vanessa's finger. There was nothing to gain by telling Kurt this news.

"No." Kurt admitted with an ache in his heart.

Cali rubbed his temples, as he reflected on everything involved with this project.

If someone had grabbed Willi, then they might have their hooks into the banker, which jeopardized the entire scheme. While he had already heard from Hans AKA Greta that the transfer into the account in Switzerland would take place on Friday afternoon, that did not rule out that the banker might have an alternate arrangement.

He had to assume that the transvestite banker had gone over to the other side and was working for two bosses. Cali could have strong-armed Hans into telling him who had snatched Willi, except his abduction might all be in his head and a show of force might blow the entire deal, besides there was another course of action he could take, but only if he kept it to himself. At this point he could trust no one and that meant Kurt as well.

"What are you thinking?" Kurt asked.

Cali signaled him to be quiet, as the waiter brought them their lunches.

When they were alone again, the black man said, "I was wondering whether we should call this off. We have all the money from the transfers."

"Not the expenses for the Thai prison guards, Murah, the flights to Thailand, the hotel rooms in Geneva, the flights back and forth as well as payments to Sean."

"And your debts."

"Yes, and my debts. Everything is in place. We risk nothing by going through with this."

"Your American will pick up the money."

"What's to prevent him from robbing us?"

"He is not going to disappear with our money, is he?

"I will be waiting outside the bank. He is going nowhere without me."

"And the Swiss banker will only give the money to him and no one else."

"Murah is with his son in Thailand. One phone call from Herr Egard's boy will assure his compliance otherwise Murah will take care of him."

"And Murah will do the right thing?"

"You know how the Yugoslavs are about betrayal."

"Yes, I do." He suspected a Yugoslav gang was behind the shooting earlier this summer.

"At worst we know who is taking the money."

"Lukas."

"Yes."

"We have to be very careful. When I had said in the beginning that no one would get hurt, I was only talking about us." Cali lowered his head, so his friend saw the seriousness in his eyes.

"Everyone else doesn't matter, nicht war?"

"I agree." Kurt was angrier than before he entered the restaurant. Lukas had used his wife to fuck with them. Vanessa’s name repeated in his mind. She had told her husband about his stupid dream to save her and he had been a fool to think someone like her would love him. Kurt might have been a fool, but he was far from a fool anymore and asked, "So what now?"

"One, I hunt for Willi. If we find him, then no problem. Second, anyone stick their noses in our business, I will kill them."

If it had been anyone else, then Cali would have walked away from this deal, but he owed Kurt one chance and this was going to be it. If their plans went wrong, the two men had a short list of people who would have to pay for its failure and pay the hard way. Cali only hoped one of them was not Kurt and said, "Three, you stay off the drugs for the next days. I need you straight. It is us against everyone.

"Okay, okay," Cali was too good a friend to lie to and Kurt vowed to stay straight for the next few days, though after leaving the restaurant Kurt hurried to his car, thinking about the packet of cocaine under the seat. He cursed upon seeing the green sticker pasted on his car's front window. It was a soft terrorist act from the Green Party, who believed all cars should be banned from the cities. If he got his hands on a hippie, he would have cut off all their hair with a tire iron. None were in sight, so Kurt could only be angry at himself. He ripped off the sticker and slid into the T-Bird.

Kurt reached down for his stash and spooned two piles of cocaine on the back of his wrist, then thought about what he had promised Cali. He owed his friend this small favor and blew away the cocaine. For once he felt good about not doing the coke and would feel even better once the money was in his hands all his troubles would be solved. If he kept telling himself that, he might believe it one day, because Friday was only a few more days away.