“It’s me.”
“I thought you were coming to Berlin?”
“I’ve been there.”
“What? You’ve been there?”
“Three days ago. The atmosphere wasn’t so great, so I left again.”
“Tell me, are you completely stupid? You come to Berlin and you can’t even visit your father?”
“I said—”
“That’s no excuse, Neil. I’m dying, and you’ve had a bad day, is that what you’re trying to say?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Boy, sometimes you’re a real idiot.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Does your half brother know about this?”
“No, and I haven’t seen him either.”
“Good. So what’s on your mind?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, I know you and I know what makes you tick. You’re not phoning me to tell me what sort of idiot you are. What’s really going on?”
“Does the name Ragnar Desche mean anything to you?”
“What have you got to do with Desche?!”
“Hey, calm down.”
“What have you got to do with Desche is what I want to know!”
“Nothing. I … Okay, a girlfriend has a problem with him, and I thought the name might mean something to you.”
“Stay away from him.”
“Who is he?”
“Neil, I want you to keep away from him, promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Fine.”
“So?”
“Your grandfather and Ragnar Desche worked together, that was at least fifteen years ago. Import, export. It had mostly to do with goods that the customs men weren’t supposed to know about. Desche was called the logistics guy. They said you could trust him your own soul, he’d stuff it away and give it back to you unharmed a decade later. There was nothing he didn’t store or deliver. Even corpses weren’t a problem.”
“Drugs too?”
“Drugs too, of course. What’s up with you, were you born yesterday, or what? Weapons, antiques, money, and information are goods every bit as much as drugs and people. Desche stayed out of human trafficking, you have to hand him that. Anything that needed to be secured or moved, Desche’s company took care of it. Are you getting the picture?”
“I am.”
“Neil, who’s this girlfriend of yours?”
“A passing acquaintance.”
“Get rid of her.”
“What?”
“I said, get rid of her. If she has a problem with Desche, no one can help her. What has she done?”
“She took something that didn’t belong to her.”
“What’s something?”
“Five kilos of heroin.
“…”
“Ritchie, are you still there?”
“Of course I’m still there. I don’t understand, where do you keep finding these airheads? I thought you had your life under control. Doesn’t your mother teach you anything? Do you want to end up like me? It’s no fun being me, you should have learned that by now.”
“Stay away from the whole thing. No one takes something from Ragnar Desche and gets away with it. No one, you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Does your mother know about this?”
“No, of course not.”
“Say hi from me.”
“Do you want to talk to her? She’s—”
“I’m too tired.”
“You’re tired, but you can talk to me?”
“You’re different.”
“Ritchie, I’m your son and—”
“I know you’re my son, you’re rubbing it in every time we talk.”
“But she—”
“I don’t want her to hear me like this. I don’t care what you think about me, but I want your mother to remember me the way I was. Is that so hard to understand? It’s how I protect her.”
“And what if she doesn’t want to be protected?”
“You don’t know your mother, and anyway it’s strictly between you and me, grow up and sort out your own shit before you start messing around with mine. And now let’s hang up before I go all sentimental on you.”
He hangs up before you can say another word. You stand by the phone, and once again you don’t know what to make of your father. He’s never accepted the role, he’s just Ritchie and nothing more. Ten years ago he was diagnosed with cancer, for eight years he’s been hiding away in Berlin. He doesn’t want to see your mother and he only lets you and your half brother visit him. Ritchie’s thin, he’s ill and the chemo’s made his hair fall out, but as if by magic he clings to life. A dead man walking who doesn’t want anyone standing near him.
“You’re awake already.”
Your mother is standing behind you, tired eyes, tired movements. She turned sixty last year, and you’re sure Ritchie wouldn’t recognize her. She seems to be enfolded in a constant state of tiredness. Sometimes the cloak lifts, when your mother surrounds herself with people, but as soon as she’s alone again, all her strength leaves her and the tiredness settles on her again.
“It’s been a long night,” you say.
“I can see that. Have you had breakfast?”
You kiss her on the cheek and go with her into the kitchen to keep her company as she makes the breakfast. You can’t just disappear now. You’ve taken your father’s place, and that carries obligations. The girls have to wait.
You bring your mother coffee, you hand her the mail and listen. She takes you as you are. Since you finished school, you haven’t done much but spend money, watch movies, and meet friends. Nine years on the pause button. It’s a mystery to you how time could pass so quickly. You planned to study, you wanted to set up a club with a friend, you even tried your hand as a computer programmer. All your plans stayed just that. Plans. Sometimes you wonder if everything would have been different if your father hadn’t left Hamburg. You’re not a loser, you’re just pleased with this way of life—the world expects nothing from you, you expect nothing from the world. Your mother believes you’ll find your way eventually. But what if there is no way? What if you’ve already got there? The son of a rich heiress and a cancer-ridden crook. The end.
Darkness attracts darkness. Maybe that’s why you’re part of this story, who knows. The roots go deep. For three decades your father’s family was a big player in Hamburg’s crime scene. Everyone knew the name of Exner, and it all started with your grandfather Maximilian, also known as Grandpa Max, even better known as the Emperor. He founded his empire in the late 1960s, financed every rising nightclub on the Reeperbahn, and set up a regulation whereby signs were displayed on the barrier to the notorious Herbertstrasse, forbidding access to the prostitute-lined street to minors and women. The Emperor keeps Hamburg clean was his motto. Not only did he collect protection money and promise security for everybody, he also controlled prostitution and made sure that the whores underwent regular medical examinations. He was even in charge of farming out cash-in-hand building work. In the early 1970s he put the first fruit machines and pinball machines in pubs, engaged in property speculation, and extended his empire by moving stolen cars. In all those decades he stayed away from the drug and weapons trade. His two sons from his first marriage were Ruprecht and Ritchie. Ritchie never had the ambition to take up the Emperor’s legacy. He was useful for small-time deals, like when a car had to be taken from A to B, but when it came to the hard stuff or a few people had missed their payments and needed an arm broken, Ruprecht was your man. Ruprecht was two years older than Ritchie and knew what he was doing. For him, there was only the Emperor’s empire, the rest was crumbs from the table.
Who knows where your father would be now if he hadn’t met your mother. Perhaps he’d have spent five years in jail like Ruprecht, or hidden himself away in a little Italian mountain village like your Uncle Fredo. At the end of the 1990s your father turned away from the family, and after Grandpa Max’s death he gave up on his legacy. Perhaps he was saved by money, because your mother has noble blood, owns a villa on the Alster, and doesn’t have to worry what the DAX looks like. But it could also be that your mother showed him another way of enjoying life. Whatever it was, your father’s now sick and alone in Berlin, and afraid to look his great love in the eye. No, you’re really not interested in being like your father.
“Perhaps you should go there,” you say.
Your mother is still holding her cup, even though it’s empty. You lean forward to give her a refill. At any moment your mother’s going to say Yes, perhaps. Your conversations are like games of chess. The openings are always the same.
“Yes, perhaps,” your mother replies and doesn’t really mean it. She gives you a quizzical look.
“How is he?”
“As always. No better, no worse.”
“Do you think his last course of treatment was successful?”
Ask him yourself, you want to answer, but you just shrug. There are days when you want to put your mother in the car and drive to Berlin. You want to ring Ritchie’s doorbell, and go as soon as the door opens and leave the two of them alone. If you were brave enough, if your mother wasn’t resistant to the idea, if the sun rose in the west one day and your mother could crank herself up a bit and overcome her cowardice. You make the next move and say, “You must hate him for hiding.”
“He’s not hiding.”
“Of course he is.”
“He’s like an injured wolf licking his wounds.”
“Mom, it’s been eight years.”
“I know.”
“Why do you torment each other like this?”
She smiles, you hate that smile, it disarms you, makes you the little son who knows nothing of the world.
“Just wait, once you’ve found the right woman, you’ll think differently about your father.”
“You say that every time.”
“And you still haven’t found her.”
Your little dispute is over. Stalemate. Any additional move would lead to superfluous attacks, and you’d rather not expect those of your mother. Let her have her peace. You say you have to go. She doesn’t ask where to, because she knows you’ll be back. You walk around the table and kiss her on the cheek. The saddest woman in the whole of Hamburg and her son.
You left the bank after ten minutes. You had them give you an envelope, and in the envelope there are now six thousand euros. The sum has to be right, because you’re asking a lot in return. You barely know these girls, and don’t think you’ll ever see the money again. If the sum isn’t right, they’ll never go along with your deal, and there has to be a deal. You know your father would say you were mad. I’m doing what I have to do, you think, and you’re about to call Stink when she calls you first.
“Hi,” you say. “I was just about to—”
“Did you rat us out?” she cuts in.
“What?”
Her voice is shrill.
“Two guys turned up after you disappeared, did you sell us out or what?”
“Calm down, I didn’t—”
“Stink, I’m not lying to you. What’s happened?”
Her voice breaks.
“Ruth is … our Ruth is …”
The line goes dead. You look at your phone and don’t know how to react. It rings again. You hear Stink crying, you hear her sobbing.
“Stink, talk to me, what’s happened?”
“Ruth … they’ve … Ruth’s dead …”
“What?”
“Our Ruth is dead.”
You swallow, you narrow your eyes, open them again.
“Where are you now?”
Stink sniffs.
“As if I’d tell you that.”
“Stink, I really have no idea what’s happened.”
One of the girls says something in the background, Stink answers, you don’t understand a word, your thoughts are going round in circles: How can one of them be dead? I’m just an hour away. If I’d stayed there, then …
“Are you still in the café?” you ask.
“It’s crawling with cops now …”
She breaks off, she takes a deep breath, she just needs to know: “You really didn’t rat us out?”
“I swear.”
“Because if you did rat us out, then—”
“Stink, I swear!”
Silence. Voices in the background. Silence.
“Where exactly are you?” she asks.
You tell her which intersection you’re standing at. She hangs up, and you look at the envelope in your hand and wonder for the hundredth time why you’re doing all this. And the answer is right in front of you. If only you could see it.
It takes them ten minutes, they don’t look for a parking spot. The Range Rover is double-parked. The passenger window slides down, and you see Stink. Her eyes are red, her mouth so soft it looks like it’s melting. She waits for you to come over to her. The girls don’t want to risk anything, the engine keeps running, they could take off at any second, so move your ass and get this over with. Go.
You stop beside the car and say you’re sorry.
“How did they find us?” Stink wants to know. “Do you have any idea how they were able to find us?”
The anarchy has vanished from her voice. She was so strong and full of life, you think and want to apologize for something that wasn’t your fault. Say something sensible, psych her up, encourage her.
“I don’t know,” you say, even though you already have an idea what might have happened. Nowadays no one can really hide and it isn’t particularly helpful that they’ve stolen a car. The surveillance state is a joke, because any individual with a decent computer and a few contacts can access information that should be under lock and key. And you’ve had a run-in with Ragnar Desche, you want to tell them. You’re sure that someone like Desche has more than one computer at his disposal to stay on these girls’ heels. Or as your father so nicely put it: No one takes something from Ragnar Desche and gets away with it.
“What exactly happened?”
Stink tells you about the two guys who appeared in the café. She tells you Ruth saved them, and tears drip from her chin and you have to steel yourself not to hug her through the window.
“Ruth was less than five yards behind me, you know, it was all over already, but when I … when I turned around, she was like, she was gone, she was just gone and lying on the ground and that … that big fucker was lying on top of her and …”
Nessi leans forward from the backseat and pulls Stink to her. She wraps her arms around her and you stand there and the sun is beating down on your neck and you feel Nessi’s eyes on you, as she looks over Stink’s shoulder. I had nothing to do with it, you want to reassure her and you say, “I’ve spoken to my father.”
Stink breaks away from Nessi. Schnappi and Taja lean forward. Their eyes are upon you. Four sixteen-year-old girls who look in their grief as if they were six years old.
Kids, you think, shit, they’re just kids.
“My father knows who Ragnar Desche is. He said no one takes anything from Ragnar Desche.”
“Is he in the Mafia or something?” asks Schnappi.
“My uncle isn’t in the Mafia,” says Taja.
“I don’t know what he is,” you lie, “but I think I can help you. I’ve got six thousand euros here, that’ll keep you afloat for a while, and by the time you come back things will be sorted out.”
“And how will things be sorted out?” Nessi asks.
“Leave it to me.”
They hesitate, they stare holes into your head, they worked out long ago that there had to be a catch. Everything has a catch. Stink articulates it.
“And what do you want in return?”
“The key.”
“What?”
“I want the key to the safe-deposit box.”
“For six grand?!”
Stink laughs, it’s good to see her laughing, even if her laughter is fake.
Better than nothing, you think.
“The drugs are worth twenty times that much,” she says. “You know that.”
“I know, but that’s not what this is about.”
“What is it about?”
You speak calmly. You have to convince the girls that you’re calm, because if they see through you for a second they’ll drive away.
“To be honest, what sort of choice do you have? You get a pile of cash from me. What use are the drugs to you? You’re on the run, and the drugs are still in Berlin. Somehow those two things don’t go together very well—or are you planning to go back to Berlin?” Stink avoids your question.
“And what about you? What are you going to do with the drugs?” she asks.
“Some business.”
“You’re not a dealer.”
“Of course I’m not a dealer, but I can still do deals.”
Stink lets her window go up, you pull your hand back, the window shuts with a quiet woop. Your face is reflected in the tinted glass. For a moment you don’t recognize yourself. You look determined, you look like someone who wants something.
If Ritchie could see me now.
When the window comes back down again, you look Nessi in the eyes, and it’s a little as if Stink weren’t in the passenger seat anymore. There’s that tugging in your chest. You wish you could kiss her. Like in a novel where the guy makes time stand still and can do what he wants. Just one kiss would do, you wouldn’t want to touch her any more than that. But let us pause for a second. We’re a bit confused. What’s wrong with you? You’re getting all romantic while these girls are grieving over their friend?
“What are you staring at?” Stink asks.
“Nothing.”
“He’s flirting,” says Nessi.
“I’m not flirting,” you say far too quickly and lower your eyes. “Have you made your minds up?”
They have.
“If we come back and you’ve sold the shit, we want thirty percent.”
“Okay.”
Stink looks stunned.
“What do you mean, okay? Don’t you even want to negotiate?”
“I don’t like negotiating.”
“Fine businessman you are.”
“I know.”
She holds out her hand.
“Give me the money.”
“First the key.”
She hands you the key, you put it in your pocket but don’t give her the money.
“Neil, please don’t fuck with us.”
“There’s one more thing,” you say and open the back door. You get into the car, and you do it so casually that none of the girls can react. Door open, door shut. Schnappi automatically makes room for you. You smell the leather of the car, you smell the girls, their sweetness, their sweat, and their grief; their grief in particular is a cave with velvet walls and hardly enough air to breathe.
“I think you should get out,” says Schnappi.
You don’t get any further than that, because something hard is pressing against your ribs. You look down and see Schnappi’s hand and in her hand the black butt of an automatic weapon and at the end of the automatic weapon there is the barrel and it is pressing against your ribs as if there is a secret passage into your soul.
Exactly seven minutes later you get back out of the car and stand on the passenger side. You’re still not ready to go. You want to ask the girls where they’re headed and whether you’ll ever see each other again. You don’t do it. It would be a bit like inflicting wounds on yourself. They’d never tell you and you’d be insulted.
Save your breath and get out of here.
You’re about to turn away when Nessi reaches past Stink and holds her hand out to you. Your fingers between her fingers. You’re sixteen again and your heart pumps and pumps and wants to absorb the moment. You’d like to offer Nessi a new life, you want to say: Stay here and I’ll take care of you and the kid if you save me in return. Your fingers part, Nessi leans back and puts the car in gear. There’s nothing more to say, no last look, nothing. The car moves past you like a boat leaving the shore, and you stand there with your hands buried in your pockets and hope you know what you’re doing.
Somebody must know.
Take a look at yourself. You’re a hero who has to hold his pants up to keep them from falling down. Although Bruno’s beloved Five-Seven Tactical is made mostly of plastic, with the magazine it weighs a good two pounds. Anyone who’s shoving that much weight down the back of his pants should have a belt, or else he will look like a sad little gangster taking to the streets for the first time.
Do you seriously think you could raise the gun and fire? For Ruth? For a girl you saw today for the first time? Or for Nessi?
Perhaps.
You watch the Range Rover as it drives off, and gradually have a vague idea why you’re doing all this to yourself.
Because it’s right?
Perhaps.