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 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 His bright smile had been replaced by decaying teeth.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

“Having a good time, darling?”

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

“Come dance with me.”

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

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

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

"With you. Anywhere at anytime."

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

Kurt stepped back from Vanessa.

“What is wrong?”

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

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

"Like Lucas?"

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

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

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

"Me?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Kurt wants to take me away."

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

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

"What? Like rob a bank?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Someone knocked on the door.

"Come in."

The door to the library opened for his guest.

Lukas motioned for SS Tommy to sit.

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

"Good evening, Herr Von Hausen."

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

“Embarrassed by me?”

“You wouldn’t fit into this crowd.”

“And Kurt Oster does?”

“He has his uses as do you.”

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

"One day the Reich will rise again."

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

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

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

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

"To be King of the Reeperbahn."

"Those are dangerous words.”

“For you more than me.”

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

"You? How could you help me?"

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

"Everyone knows this?"

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

"Cali does nothing for nothing."

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

"Such as what?"

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

“And you’re asking me to help you?”

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

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

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

“So what is next?”

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

"Is he police?"

"Yes, but he can be trusted."

"A Nazi?"

"Yes. Are you in or not?"

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

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

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

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

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

"When would this happen?"

"Maybe a month. Maybe two."

"Will this cost me any money?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 46

Banging on a locked door in the Marais was a bad idea at most time, but even worst at Two O'clock in the morning. Several windows lit up in buildings across Rue des Ecouffes. A man's head popped out and shouted for silence. A bottle followed his demand. Sean dodged the missile, which shattered on the slabbed sidewalk.

Petra waited down the narrow street outside the BMW.

"Why aren't we staying at the Hotel Lutetia or the Ritz."

"Here is close to the morgue." The real truth was that after several months in Hamburg, he wanted to be as far away from anything German as he could get and the old Jewish quarter fit that prerequisite to a tee.

Sean was about to give up, when an old woman's voice announced, "J'arrive."

The door cracked open and a wizened lady in a timeworn nightgown poked out her head. A young man, her grandson, stood behind her with a baseball bat, obviously unhappy about having his sleep disrupted. He was about to step outside to quell his anger, when his grandmother lifted her hand to stop him. "Calme-toi, Yves. C'est Mssr.Tempo."

"Oui, C'est moi, Madame Condez." Sean was pleased she recognized her lodger of last winter, though her face revealed that she had thought him as almost a dead man, when he had left her hotel in March. Her assumption should have been correct, except he had bucked the odds in New York and Hamburg.

"Avez-vous bargarrez, Mssr?" The old woman's rheumy eyes drank in the swollen bruises on Sean's face. She was ready for an excuse she would not believe, but accept.

"Non, madame, J'ai tombez." Sean touched his cheek and hoped that this was the last time he would be on the losing end for a long time. "J'ai besoin de deux chambres."

"Pas de problem, Mssr." Madame Steinberg had seen plenty of men who had fallen as hard as Sean over her many years in the Marais and waved wearily for him to enter.

"Jus une second." Sean said, then ran up the street to the car.

"So?" Petra was ready to sleep in the car, if necessary.

"So you and Vanessa go inside. Madame Steinberg has rooms for us."

"Where are you going?" Petra asked, as she motioned for Vanessa to get out of the car and took the aluminum case with her.

Sean pointed to the case with Lukas' videos and asked, "What about that?"

"Get rid of that. I don't care how."

"I understand." He had no interest in seeing those films. "I'll be back in thirty minutes."

Sean went to the car and drove away towards the Seine.

The two women were led inside the hotel by the old woman, who said, "We are not the Ritz, but the rooms are clean."

"Yes, it is not the Ritz, but it will be fine."

"And it's better than the back seat of a car." Vanessa could have been offered the Palais de Versailles and still be unhappy. The blonde was so vulnerable, a natural tendency to protect the weak had been re-awakened in Petra, so she found herself asking, "Was ist los?"

"I think being alone might be a little too hard tonight." Vanessa could already feel haunted by one too many faces of people no longer with the living.

"Then you might as well stay with us. Do you have a big room?"

""Quias, avec two lits."

"Parfait." Petra took her by the arm and led her into the better bedroom. "The bed can fit three."

"Will he mind?" Vanessa sniffled, trying to be brave for the thousandth time that day.

"Every man alive wants to be in bed with two women." Petra shut the door and undressed Vanessa. She shut off the lights and the room was swallowed by the shadows. Tucking Vanessa under the covers, Petra smoothed back the blonde hair from the unfurrowed brow.

"Thank you, Petra. Thank you for everything." Vanessa said, as two women sat in the semi-darkness waiting.

One for sleep and another for a man.

Sean parked his BMW on Ile St. Louis,, since the teen-aged gangs of the Marais would most assuredly smash the windows of any car with German plates.

Sean left his things in the car, but took the bag of videos and walked to the stone bridge spanning the river.

Overhead a few stars poked through the luminescent shield without forming any recognizable constellation. The city was slumbering deeply and few cars sped along the opposite quai. Erase them and the lights and he could have been in the Nineteenth Century.

He leaned over the peak of the bridge and stared at the inky river bisecting Paris. The water lapped at the stone arches below and emptied the videos into the Seine. They sank without a traacce and he walked over the cobbled stones to the other side of the bridge, remembering why he was here.

Further around the river's bend was the city's morgue at Quai de la Rapee.

A chill wrapped around him. He could have ended up there during the Spring and no one would have come for his body. All those dreams about the end of the world had only been reminders of what he had been doing to himself and at what risk he had put himself mourning the loss of Tammi.

Suddenly he realized that he had not thought about her for months. His feelings for Petra had replaced that sorrow and suffering. Nothing helps you forget one woman faster than a new love. His entire life was different and all, because of Kurt.

Sure, the German had been setting him up for a fall, but he hadn't been the one to get hurt. The final body count was unimportant as long as Petra and he were not in it.

Sean left the bridge for the Marais. As much as he craved sleep, he wanted Petra more. The city's soft white streetlights lit the way back to his hotel and, if he really knew how, he would have danced every step of the way, because he was in the City of Light and nothing shines brighter than love in Paris.