Morgue Drawer Four (21 page)

I don’t want to bore you with every last detail of our procession through the big-city cathouses, because most of them were neither exciting nor stimulating, just sucky and boring. The interior designers in this industry tend toward a surprisingly uniform ultraplush décor, varying only in the shade—lighter or darker red, with an occasional foray into purple or orange. Martin always sat at the bar, he always ordered a beer that he hardly drank, he always waited for a woman to sit next to him, and he always steered the conversation toward Semira.

“You can call me Semira if you’d like,” was the standard response, cooed and not spoken.

“I’m looking for a specific Semira,” Martin answered with equal consistency. “This one here.”

The business with the drawing was an extremely delicate matter, because the operators of such houses keep a watchful eye on men who behave oddly and give the impression they’re looking to buy something other than love. Martin got kicked out on his ass twice after showing the drawing; after that he got more careful.

Nonetheless, most of the reactions were not the one we were hoping for. No recognition, no additional information. Not to mention that lots of the ladies Martin spoke to had only very limited command of the German language.

Including the tiny blonde who looked like the reason she hadn’t made the cut for the latest James Bond casting call was probably her size: on screen she’d have looked like a hot face on a stick next to any of the hunks who’d had the honor of playing the cocky British spy. She was at least six centimeters shorter than even average height, but she dominated the bar the moment she entered it. She had not only a smoking-hot body that you could clearly see in several places through the outfit she had on. But she also had the whitest, nicest teeth that ever achieved fame in any toothpaste ad and the brightest violet eyes that have ever shone upon a male. If I’d been Martin’s cardiologist, I’d have been extremely concerned about his chances of survival at this moment. His pulse ceased briefly, only to start thundering against his ribs again so hard that I thought I could make out the collar of his coat thumping with each heartbeat.

She sat down on the barstool next to Martin, looked at his glass of beer that had gone flat, and then looked at Martin.

“Two champagnes,” he ordered without missing even a single beat.

Meanwhile I found my seat in the curve of the B-girl’s neck, enjoying the view down her neckline toward her lap, which was only unsubstantially covered by a tiny little sheer skirt.

“What wish can I make come true for you today?” the angelic being asked.

Martin swallowed the half glass of bubbles in one gulp after clinking glasses with her.

“I have an obscure wish,” he stammered. He had to start again twice before getting the sentence out fully and error-free.

“You’re in luck,” she said, laying her hand on Martin’s. “Today I’m making even obscure wishes come true.”

She smiled warmly. Not all frumpy, like lots of others, not with euro signs in her eyes, not tired—no, she smiled warmly. Cheerfully. Radiantly.

Martin was taking his time. Maybe he was unable to do it any other way. Maybe he was just in another dimension, caught in an unearthly plane not subject to time reckoning. Anyways, he didn’t say anything for a long time, sipping on the champagne he had left and staring at this delightful creature.

“What does your obscure wish look like, then?” she asked at some point. “Or would you prefer to tell me
tête-à-tête
?”

I could see an unambiguous
YES
starting to materialize in Martin’s brain, so I yelled, “Stop!”

“What?” he asked me gruffly.

“If you say yes now, it’ll be very, very expensive,” I said.

“Hmm,” Martin mumbled.

“And think of Birgit,” I hastened to add.

“Birgit…”

I realized that Martin wasn’t actually thinking of having sex with this vision of a woman at all; he just wanted to keep staring into her eyes and talking with her.

“Dude, that little charmer sitting on the stool in front of you is a whore,” I said. “She wants to blow you off or…whatever else.”

Martin swallowed and suddenly found his feet back on the ground, briefly wondered how expensive the champagne he’d ordered was, and then he said his line: “I’m looking for a friend.”

He nonchalantly held the drawing out to the angel so she could see it.

“Semira!” She almost yelled it, but she quickly put her hand over her mouth, opened her blue eyes wide, and stared at Martin, taken aback. “What’s happened to her? She and I had plans to go out, but she stood me up, and that’s not like her at all.”

Martin’s heart, which had only just started easing its pace, started pounding harder again.

“Did she work here?” he asked.

The blonde shook her head. “You’re—not a customer of hers?”

Now Martin shook his head, but of course not half as gracefully.

“Is it OK if we keep talking here?” he asked carefully, looking around. Several sinister-looking guys were watching the two of them.

“Oh,” the angel said, sliding down from her stool. “For us it’s OK, but it’s bad for business. Come with me.”

So Martin slid down off his stool, too, and the bartender subtly reminded him it was fine for him to leave—but his sixty euros for the beer and two glasses of champagne should stay behind. Martin paid and followed the blonde outside.

“So, where do you know Semira from?” she asked. “And what do you want from her?”

“I don’t want anything from her,” Martin said. “She’s dead.”

“No!” she gasped, tears filling her enormous eyes. “How?”

“Anaphylactic shock,” Martin said. “That means…”

“I know what it is,” the blonde hissed. Uh-oh, the kitty cat was extending her claws. “And who are you?” she asked.

“Martin Gänsewein. Coroner.”

He offered his hand, and she reflexively shook it and whispered, “Yvonne Kleinewefers.”

Honestly, I couldn’t make head or tail of what was happening here. I was slowly starting to wonder how the blonde fit into this story. She wasn’t your typical lady of the night at a Russian tochka. If she were, she wouldn’t have been allowed to leave the establishment with a customer during working hours. Martin was having similar thoughts, plus he was starting to get cold, so he suggested the nearest place.

“There’s a café over there. Why don’t we get something warm to drink?”

She nodded and followed him.

Martin ordered a chamomile tea, which they didn’t have, a peppermint tea, which they also didn’t have, and before he could further display his in-depth knowledge of other monastery-grown teas and tisanes, Ms. Kleinewefers ordered two coffees.
Basta
.

She also took over the conversation, like a celestial being that had metamorphosed from a tinsel angel to an avenging angel.

“What has happened that would send a coroner through the brothels at night asking questions about Semira?” she asked.

“Didn’t you see Semira’s picture in the newspaper?” Martin asked as a counter-maneuver.

“No, after my nighttime fieldwork and daytime course-work I don’t have terribly much time left over to practice bourgeois self-edification by reading newspapers,” she hissed.

“Fieldwork?” Martin asked, irritated.

“I’m doing my master’s thesis on the expectations of men who go to brothels. What they’re really looking for there, their genuine needs, which don’t necessarily always have to do with sex but which they would like fulfilled,” she rattled out. “My adviser is not really all that sold on it, which is why I’ve been gathering material for some time so that he will approve the topic.”

“You’re doing a master’s in psychology?” Martin asked.

“No, economics.”

Martin took a sip of his coffee, which had just arrived at the table. “Are you trying to put one over on me?” he asked between two coughing fits.

“Ever since Germany legalized prostitution, it’s become a more and more important source of revenue the government can now legally line its pockets with. Even beautiful Cologne with its world-famous cathedral has been levying a ‘pleasure tax’ since 2004, which brings in just under a million euros a year.”

“A sex tax?” Martin stammered. “What, from the…” Evidently his well-cultivated vocabulary was failing him here.

“From the whores, pimps, and bordellos. The tax administration doesn’t care who pays, but a portion of each euro earned in this service industry ends up in the treasury.”

Martin shook his head, speechless.

“Since prostitution is legal now, the Federal Employment Agency can also theoretically find a job placement for an unemployed woman at a brothel now. No one has actually made a placement like that yet, however.”

“Not yet,” Martin mumbled.

“Well, within that context, the question arises how to optimize supply within this very lucrative service industry. As I’m sure you know, expanding services is the future.”

“And you got to know Semira through this, uh, fieldwork?” Martin asked.

She shook her head. “The other way around. I got to know Semira at the university.”

“She was a student?” Martin was getting more and more confused. “But she wasn’t even legally in this country…”

“But she was damned smart. She wasn’t registered, so she couldn’t attend small seminars. But she could attend the large lectures where there are hundreds of students. At a giant university with umpteen thousand students no one notices if the lecture hall is missing a student or has one extra.”

Yvonne had been stirring her coffee the whole time and only now realized she hadn’t even added any sugar to it yet. She remedied this quickly, then took a big gulp.

“Although she was very cautious and didn’t actually want to make friends with anyone at all, not even other students, we sat next to each other a couple of times and got to talking. She told me that she worked as a call girl. That’s how I picked the topic for my thesis.”

“Did she work for an agency, or freelance?” Martin asked.

“For an agency. Or rather, for an agent. I’d have liked to interview him, but she never told me who he is.”

“Then do you know how she originally met this agent?” Martin asked.

“Only that it was more or less a coincidence, because his main line of business is actually something else. ‘High-end luxury,’ I remember how she worded it exactly. Semira was proud that the guy described her as a luxury product, too. Personally I don’t think being classified as a ‘product’ is a compliment.”

“Too bad,” Martin said. “Without the agent we’re pretty much groping in the dark.”

“You still haven’t explained to me what you’re doing here,” Yvonne said.

“Yes, well, that’s also a bit complicated,” Martin said.

That wasn’t cutting it with Yvonne, which she made more than clear by raising an eyebrow.

“Semira did die from anaphylactic shock, but this apparently happened in the course of her professional practice,” Martin began.

Nicely worded. And he stated it totally seriously—with scientific precision, really.

“I suspect the client she was with when she died put her into the trunk of his car in order to secretly spirit the body away. Unfortunately it was an especially valuable car, and unfortunately the car was then stolen. With Semira’s body in the trunk.”

“No!” Yvonne blurted out. “It’s like in a movie!”

“Yes,” Martin agreed. “It seems that two other recent murders have also been committed in connection with this regrettable death, a car thief and Semira’s brother.”

“Oh my God, it just gets worse and worse!” she gasped.

“Which is why I need to find out who the owner of the stolen car is,” Martin said.

Yvonne furrowed her brow and contemplated him for a moment, shaking her head. “But why are you sitting around here in the middle of the night trying to find out who the owner is in such a complicated way? The police must surely be able to do that with the press of a button.”

“That would require knowing the license plate number,” Martin said.

“If the car was so extraordinarily valuable as you say, then it’s not like there will be thousands and thousands of them. Surely it must be possible to get a list of the owners.”

Boy oh boy, this one was really sharp as a tack. Even though she was blonde.

Martin hemmed and hawed. “The police have not yet made…certain connections,” he finally said.

A short pause as our little goldfinch did some serious brooding.

“So you’re out here on your own, then?” Yvonne asked.

Martin nodded.

“Good for you,” she mumbled. “And because you can’t get hold of the list of people who own this model of car from the police, you have to track down Semira’s clients and find the one she was with last?”

Martin nodded, relieved that someone was finally thinking along the same lines as him and didn’t think he was batshit crazy. However, she didn’t know even half of the whole story. About me, for instance.

“Let me see what I can do to help you further,” she said pensively. “The agent’s name would be great, but I don’t know it. I don’t know Semira’s clients’ names, either, of course, since she was very discreet. But she definitely made a few comments that might help us.”

She thought some more and noisily slurped on her coffee.

“Did she have, uh, I mean, well…in what circumstances did she die?” Yvonne asked.

“She was naked when she died, and she had recently had sexual intercourse,” Martin explained very objectively. As far as his reports go, Martin was master of his domain. “She had eaten a hazelnut cookie before or after the sexual intercourse, which triggered her allergic reaction.”

“Protected or unprotected sex?” Yvonne asked.

“Unprotected. But with lubricant, which is why I assumed it was with a client.”

“That stupid girl,” Yvonne mumbled. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But she knew exactly how dangerous sex without a condom is, but she still had clients she didn’t use one with. I always told her…” Yvonne wiped her eyes.

“She was, uh, healthy,” Martin said. “No sexually transmitted diseases, no HIV. She apparently knew which clients she did and didn’t need a condom with.”