Guilt (13 page)

Atris dragged Buddy out into the street again. The rain was sheeting down. He cursed. The vet had said the dog needed to be kept moving; it would make the medicine work quicker. He had no desire to get wet, so he jammed the lead into the passenger door and drove off slowly. The dog trotted along beside the Maserati. Other cars honked. Atris turned the music up louder. A policeman stopped him. Atris said the dog was sick. The policeman yelled at him, so he pulled the mastiff into the car and drove on.

At the next corner he heard it. It was a dark, ominous rumbling. The mastiff suddenly opened its jaws, panted, howled in pain, then voided itself. It hunched over in the front seat, forced its rear end backwards and up between the armrests, bit into the upholstery, and tore out a large
mouthful. The liquid shit sprayed over the seats, the windows, and the hat rack. The dog spread it around with its paws. Atris braked and leapt out of the car, closing the driver’s door. It lasted twenty minutes. Atris stood in the rain while the car windows steamed up from inside. He kept getting glimpses of the dog’s nose, its red gums, and its tail, he heard its high-pitched yowling, and waves of shit kept hitting the windows. Atris thought about Frank. And about his father, who’d told him while he was still a child that he was too stupid even to walk in a straight line. Atris thought that maybe his father had been right.

Frank woke out of the coma in the prison hospital in Berlin. The task force had overdone it: he had a severely fractured skull, bruises all over his body, and they’d broken his collarbone and his upper right arm. The examining magistrate read him the warrant at his bedside; the only charges were resisting arrest and bodily harm—one of the eight officers had had his little finger broken. The police had found no drugs, but they were convinced these must be somewhere.

I took over his defense. Frank would remain silent. The DA’s office would have a hard time proving drug trafficking. The custody hearing was in thirteen days’ time, and if nothing new turned up, he would be set free.

“You stink of shit,” said Abdul.

Atris had called him. Before that he had searched the Maserati for an hour, and his shirt and pants were smeared
with it. He hadn’t found the key; it must still be inside the mastiff. Atris hadn’t known what to do. Abdul was his cousin; in the family he was rated as intelligent.

“I know I stink of shit. The car stinks of shit, Buddy stinks of shit, I stink of shit. I know that. You don’t have to say it.”

“Atris, you
really
stink of shit,” said Abdul.

Abdul did business out of one of the countless converted spaces under the arches of the Berlin suburban railway. The railroad company rented out these spaces. There were auto body shops, storerooms, and junk dealers. Abdul recycled old tires. He got paid to get rid of them, loaded them onto a truck, and threw them into a ravine he’d discovered in a forest in Brandenburg. He earned good money. Everyone said he was a talented businessman.

Atris told Abdul about the thing with the dog. Abdul said he should bring Buddy inside. The mastiff looked wretched, and its white coat was all brown.

“The damn dog stinks too,” said Abdul.

Atris groaned.

“Tie him to the steel post,” said Abdul.

He showed Atris the shower in the back room, giving him a freshly washed set of coveralls from the city garbage collectors. It was orange.

“What’s this?” said Atris.

“I need it for the recycling work,” said Abdul.

Atris undressed and packed his old things into a garbage bag. Twenty minutes later when he came out of the shower, the first thing he saw was the jack, lying in a pool of blood. Abdul was sitting on a chair, smoking. He pointed to the body of the dog on the floor.

“Sorry, but you’d better get undressed again. If you cut him open, you’ll get a mess all over you again. That’s the last clean set of coveralls.”

“Shit.”

“It’s the only way. The key would never have come out—it’s caught in his stomach. We’ll get another dog.”

“And the Maserati?”

“I’ve already made a phone call. The boys are going to steal another one, exactly the same model. We just have to wait. You’ll get the new one.”

Atris came back to the apartment on the Kurfürstendamm at two o’clock in the morning. He had parked the new Maserati in the underground parking garage. It looked completely different; it was red, not blue, and the seats were black instead of beige. It was going to be hard to explain to Frank.

Atris took the elevator up. The key seemed to stick a little in the door of the apartment, but he was too tired to notice. He couldn’t fight back; he didn’t even try. The woman was petite, she was wearing a hoodie, and he couldn’t see her face. Her pistol was enormous.

“Open your mouth,” she said. Her voice was warm.

She shoved the barrel between Atris’s teeth. It tasted of oil.

“Walk backwards slowly. If you make a false move or I stumble, the back of your head will blow off, so you’d better be careful. Do you understand?”

Atris nodded carefully. Inside his mouth, the bead on the barrel struck his teeth. They went into the living room.

“I’m going to sit down on the stool. You are going to kneel in front of me. Very slowly.” She was talking to him the way a doctor talks to a patient. The woman sat on one of the felt cubes. Atris knelt down next to her. He still had the barrel in his mouth.

“Very good. Now if you do everything right, nothing’s going to happen. I don’t want to kill you, but it doesn’t matter to me whether I do or not. Do you understand?”

Atris nodded again.

“So, I’m going to explain it to you.”

She spoke slowly, slowly enough for Atris to understand it all, and leaned back on the stool, crossing her legs. Atris had to follow her movements and bend his head forward.

“You and your partner bought pills from us. You want to give us 250,000 euros for them. Your partner was arrested on the Autobahn. We’re sorry about that. But you still have to pay the money.”

Atris swallowed. Frank got caught, he thought. He nodded. She waited till she could be sure Atris had got it.

“I’m glad you understand. Now I’m going to ask you a question. After I’m done, you can take the barrel out of your mouth so you can answer. When you’ve finished answering, you put the barrel back in your mouth. It’s quite simple.”

Atris was getting used to the voice. He didn’t have to think. He was just going to do everything the voice said.

“Where is the money?” she said.

Atris opened his mouth and said: “The money’s at the station. Buddy swallowed the key, he shat all over everything, I had to …”

“Quiet,” said the woman. Her voice was sharp. “Put the barrel back in your mouth immediately.”

Atris stopped talking and did as he was told.

“Your story’s too long. I don’t want to listen to a whole novel. All I want is to know where the money is. I’m going to ask you again. I want you to answer in a single sentence. You can take your time to work out the answer. When you know what you want to say, open your mouth and say the sentence. But only one sentence. If you say more than one sentence, I’ll cut your balls off. Do you understand?”

Her voice hadn’t changed. Atris began to sweat.

“Where is the money?”

“In a locker in the main station,” said Atris, and immediately bit down on the steel again.

“Very good, now you’ve got it, this is exactly the way it goes. Now comes the next question. Think about it, open your mouth, say one sentence, and shut it again. Work out your answer. So, here’s the question. Who has the key to the locker?”

“Me,” said Atris and closed his mouth again.

“Do you have it here?”

“Yes.”

“I’m proud of you. We’re getting somewhere. Now comes the next question. Where is your car?”

“In the parking garage.”

“I see we’re getting on with each other. Now it gets a little more complicated. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to stand up, but you’re going to do it very slowly. Do you understand? What matters is doing it all really slowly.
We don’t want the thing to go off because I get scared. If we’re careful, nothing’s going to happen.”

Atris slowly got to his feet. He still had the pistol in his mouth.

“I’m going to take it out of your mouth now. Then you’re going to turn round and walk to the door. I’m behind you. We’re going to drive together to the station now. If the money is there, you can go.”

Atris opened his mouth and she pulled out the barrel.

“Before we go, there’s one thing you need to know. There are special cartridges in the pistol. They contain a drop of nitroglycerin. You’re going to walk ahead of me. If you run, I’ll have to shoot. The nitroglycerin will explode in your body. There will be nothing left of you that anyone can recognize. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Atris. Nothing would make him run.

They took the elevator down. Atris went ahead and opened the door to the parking garage. Someone yelled, “That’s the pig.” The last thing Atris saw was the metal baseball bat. It shone red.

They’d stolen the wrong Maserati. The car belonged to a rapper. He’d been having dinner with his girlfriend in Schlüterstrasse. Afterwards, when he couldn’t find his car, he’d called the police, but the car hadn’t been towed away. His girlfriend got in a bad mood. She wound him up till he called his old friends from Kreuzberg. Muhar El Keitar promised to take care of it.

——

If you didn’t belong to the police, it wasn’t hard to find out who now had the car. El Keitar was the head of a large family. They all came from the same village, and they were Lebanese Kurds. El Keitar wanted the car. He made that clear. His friend the rapper was a famous man now, and he absolutely wanted to help him. The four men who paid Abdul a visit on Muhar El Keitar’s orders didn’t want to kill him; all they wanted to know was who the car had been for. But something went wrong. When they came back, the men said Abdul had tried to fight back. He’d said where the car was, but then it was all over.