Morgue Drawer Four

Forthcoming by Jutta Profijt:

Morgue Drawer Next Door

Morgue Drawer for Rent

Dirt Angels

The day everything began—as I now know—started out horribly, which is to say rock-bottom, and I should’ve taken that as a warning. But, and in my own defense I’ve got to say, that’s how most days used to start. In other words, never before noon, a disgusting taste in my mouth, a thick, furry otter’s pelt on my tongue, construction workers in a race to pound the most nails into my head, and the usual craving for a cigarette, a beer, and a girl.

There wasn’t any beer around, I’d actually have had to stand up to get a cigarette, and I hadn’t gotten laid for a pretty long time. As I lay there semicomatose for a little while, it suddenly occurred to me: I was frigging late. Most days that wasn’t a problem, but on this day I had an important appointment. A job. An important job for an important man. I’d really wanted to do everything right, and now I’d overslept! I guess I was lucky that the pressure building up in my tailpipe interrupted my peaceful slumber. Of course, if Martin were here now he’d say it wasn’t the pressure in my “tailpipe” but in my “bladder,” since Martin likes being so precise. But at the time I didn’t know him yet at all. I would get to know him only a few days later under circumstances that were for me distinctly unpleasant, which is why my wording for biological imperatives was still pretty amateurish and, I now see, imprecise.

If I had suspected that this day would determine the course of the rest of my life, I’d obviously have stayed in bed. But I had no idea, and even looking back I can’t see any signs that might have portended the impending disaster. So I got up and headed toward my demise just as blindly as I was shuffling into the bathroom.

Normally I don’t risk looking into the mirror at this hour, but since I had something planned I eventually subjected my appearance to a critical review. Now, I wouldn’t want you think that I used to express myself in words such as “critical” and “review” right out of bed; I’ve added these words to my active vocabulary only because of Martin. I actually don’t think about much at all right before a shower, and if I do, it’s only monosyllabic grunting and grumbling.

So, I spent a while trying to blink open my eyes that were glued shut with sleep until I could make out where the mirror was hanging, but then I suffered a mild shock as the visage staring back at me came into focus.

As the image sharpened, my recollection of Bennie’s new knife returned. He’d been brandishing the thing, looking for something to slice up and demonstrate how sharp the blade was. His hunting eyes landed—on me. I was standing within reach, and he grabbed my hair with his left hand and gave me a new haircut in a lightning strike. Because I flinched—and only because of that, as Bennie later emphasized—the blade also slit open my left eyebrow as he finished my haircut. So a thin stripe of dried blood trailed down the face in the mirror, from eyebrow to chin, and realizing this hideous countenance was in fact my own, I totally freaked out.

I splashed a good deal of warm water on myself until I looked somewhat civilized again, although I had spent the past five years trying to shed just this kind of civilization that was the result of growing up in my parents’ home. But my important job required an inconspicuous appearance, and so after showering I picked out jeans, a dark jacket, and a wool cap that hid the results of the knife incident on my head pretty well. A final review in the dusty mirror on my wobbly wardrobe revealed the image that I had made such an effort to achieve: a medium-height, inconspicuous, somewhat spindly fellow with longish hair that I had pulled up under my cap. Nondescript appearance, dishwater blond, straight nose, weak chin, and slouchy shoulders. A Joe Schmo even the most curious witnesses wouldn’t be able to give a specific description of. And that’s how I wanted to look, because somehow I thought that that would help me. What total bullshit!

I hoofed down to the parking lot in front of the “Cologne Congress Centre,” which is just the fancy name for the convention center downtown. If you’re standing in the right spot, you can just make out the illuminated spires of Cologne Cathedral and Great St. Martin Church, right across the Rhine from there.

Now, if you want to steal a car, it’s not advisable to drive your own car there and then take off in the stolen car. The cops aren’t as stupid as a lot of people think. They’re pretty quick to check out all the cars parked near the scene of the crime, and then they’ll nab you faster than you can turn around. So keep that in mind; it’s good advice from an expert.

Public transportation is totally the pits. That’s why I went on foot, walking my toes down to stumps and slowly growing blisters on my heels because I’m not the strolling-around type. I mean, what else would God have invented cars for, then? I finally made it to the aforesaid parking lot, and it was in fact full of some of the coolest rides that those yodeling autoworkers in Stuttgart or Munich or wherever bolt together in their fancy high-tech factories. Each with more horsepower than the next—lower, faster, hotter. Special trims, limited editions, and custom jobs to the customers’ specifications. Fifty wet dreams all in one semi-public parking lot without any surveillance to speak of. A parking lot distinguished not by its security but by its proximity to the main entrance. A lot where only VIP visitors can park. A lot with only one single camera covering several hundred square meters, one key cabinet that any nitwit could pry open with their mom’s SuperFitness ID card: i.e., a typical German security disaster. No awareness of the problem even though more than fifty thousand cars are stolen every year in Germany. Before they came out with electronic immobilizers, incidentally, it was twice that. And I rank among those who can handle even the tricky cases.

So in the dimming twilight I walked as inconspicuously as possible at an inconspicuous gait in my inconspicuous outfit through the parking lot, and I took a look around—inconspicuously, of course. And there she was. Until that moment I had never believed there really were people so totally and abysmally stupid. People who would leave a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren in an unmonitored parking lot in front of a convention center, imagining their car will still be there to stroll back to after wrapping up their Mr. Important-Convention-Attendee routine so they can climb into their half-million-euro boat and cruise home to Mommy. But sure enough, there she was, sitting amid the smoking Daimlers, Jags, BMWs, and even a Bentley—the SLR that my client had told me about. Olli wanted it.

Olli’s a car smuggler. Of course he’s not listed in the Yellow Pages under “Car Smugglers.” He’s listed under “Car Repair, Purchase, and Sales,” and basically that’s pretty accurate, too. Only he sells way more cars than he buys because his procurement system proceeds largely without sales contracts and other pesky paperwork. Olli is a really big operator with contacts in Eastern Europe. I’m sure you’re thinking Russia or Poland, but that’s not where his customers are. Nowadays any old cleaning lady is doing business with Russians and Poles; they’re so mainstream now they’ve become white-bread again. Olli does business with a crew from one of those tiny countries; I’m not that good with that corner of the map, I don’t recall the name.

Doesn’t matter. Anyways, Olli knows the whole north-south-east-west car smuggling scene like his own back pocket. He knows me pretty well, too; I used to work for him off and on until we had a stupid run-in with each other this one time because of this thing. Normally it’d be way beneath him to ever take notice of my existence again, but last night he sent one of his tools over to my place. He gave me the job that I was in the middle of executing right now.

I don’t want to give away any details, since stealing an SLR is a delicate matter, and I’m kind of proud of being one of the few guys who has the necessary tricks and talents. So that’s why I won’t pass them on, even though, unfortunately, this knowledge isn’t going to be of any use to me anymore. But to make a long story short: I stole the ride from the parking lot. Unfortunately because of my good night’s sleep and long walk into town, this happened somewhat later than planned, so the fat cats whose wheels were parked in the lot were already marching back out into the lot like tin soldiers in three-piece uniforms right as I started the engine. Now, the sound that an SLR makes cannot be confused with that of pretty much any other car, which is to say that about fifty sets of eyes turned my way as I raced the car out of the lot. In my rearview mirror I could just make out the hint of a wave, like in a stadium, as forty-nine arms pointed in my direction and one hand sank into the front pocket of a suit jacket, presumably to extricate a cell phone and call the cops. But then I lost interest in the scene behind me, focusing on driving my new acquisition fast, but not too fast, through the dark streets of downtown Cologne toward the entrance to the autobahn. During evening rush hour in winter when it’s dark, with freezing drizzle, even a semi can vanish into the thick of things faster than someone who can’t swim vanishes over Niagara Falls, and in that moment I had good reason to think my heist had gone OK.

I resisted the urge to drive too fast, tailgate other drivers, pass on the right, change lanes at the last moment before turning, and all of the other urges that make driving a car so supersonically awesome, because I did not want to catch anybody’s attention. If you’re sitting in a stolen car, you should drive more properly than you would even for your driver’s test. I kept at it. I was going to need twenty-seven minutes to make the agreed rendezvous, and I made it with forty-five seconds to spare. Shit! I could have used another couple of minutes, because before you hand off a stolen car you’ve got to empty it out. You’ve got to dig everything that you can make use of or sell out of the glove compartment, all the storage cubbies and pockets, the trunk, and under the seats. So now I needed to do a turbo pass through the car. Glove compartment: maps, condoms, sunglasses, a set of pens. Under the seats: a wad of cash, couldn’t count it at a glance, no matter, grabbed it. In the trunk: a naked woman.

I slammed the trunk back shut, hyperventilated a bit, opened the trunk again, and looked at her lying there. Half on her back, her knees fully bent, her arms at her sides, her body turned a bit. She was small and delicate, but she totally filled the tiny trunk. I nudged her with my finger; she was ice cold. I pushed one of her arms a bit to the side and jumped when I saw how the underside of her arm was purple. I pressed a finger to the spot where I thought her carotid was: nothing. She had tattoos around her ankles, she was quite pretty even though her makeup was on too thick, and she was dead as a tire iron. I shut the trunk back over her, carefully, as though she might have minded if I slammed it with a loud bang. Then I leaned on the driver’s side door, fumbled a cigarette out of my jacket, lit it, and sucked so deeply that I smoked half the cigarette in one breath.