The Serenity Murders (16 page)

A long tirade was clearly on its way if I didn’t intervene immediately.

“I know,” I told her. “What about the rosette? What’s on it?”

“I’m checking, darling…But it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s black. Square. It looks like something new age and fashionable. You know, the type girls pin on their clothes here or there. I think the pin is broken. Let me check if it’s in the envelope.”

She put the phone aside, making a racket as she rustled the paper again.

Given the style in which the latest threat had been delivered, it appeared to be my psycho’s doing. He was proving to me that he knew the addresses of my friends, that he could go straight to them if he wanted to. I was curious to find out what he had sent me, though, since he claimed I would remember it…

“Nope! The pin isn’t in the envelope.”

“Anything written on it, or an emblem?”

“There’s nothing written on it. Just a random combination of letters and numbers. Come see for yourself.”

The thing she was describing wasn’t a rosette; it was a computer chip. Ponpon’s relationship with technology is based entirely upon consumption. She buys some piece of modern equipment on a whim, and then promptly fidgets with it, in an attempt to actually
use it, of course, until it’s broken and ends up in the bin. She even complains about the number of buttons on a remote control. On numerous occasions she has called me over when she can’t use something because it’s “not working!” Most recently she was trying to watch a DVD without connecting cables to her DVD player. So you can imagine: she wouldn’t recognize a chip if she saw one.

“I’ll drop by soon,” I said.

“And tell me your latest secret too when you arrive, so that you’re no longer lying about not having anything to hide from me. It’s obvious you’re up to something secretive again.”

Melek was playing hopscotch with the other neighborhood girls. Mrs. Kozalak’s description of her neighbor’s child had been perfect. I immediately recognized Melek among the other kids, even if she wasn’t wearing a gigantic starched ribbon on her head.

She wouldn’t know me, but she knew her Hüseyin Abi. She stopped playing, apologized to her friends in the manner of a grown-up woman, and walked over to us. Clearly we were the news of the day in the neighborhood.

“Hello, Hüseyin Abi,” she said affectionately, straightening her clothes. “Mrs. Kozalak told me you needed to ask me some questions.”

The way she stared at Hüseyin was not at all innocent. It bespoke the bawdy interest in men so blatantly apparent in girls her age. If Ponpon had been there, she’d have called her a “Lolita.”

Before shaking my hand and introducing herself, she looked me up and down, studying me closely in an effort to discern just what I was made of. It was like she was taking an MRI. Her instincts must have been strong, for she quickly sensed what was going on. Until today, she had admired her Hüseyin Abi from afar, and now as she gave me my grade, she graded him too, for hanging out with me. I’d bet you anything we got big fat F’s.

“Please, go ahead,
ağabeyciğim
, I’m listening.”

Some kids are cute; I can tolerate them.
Some
are pretty; I can tolerate them too. But some, like this girl, who are wiseass know-it-alls plus every bit as ugly as Mrs. Kozalak said, well, they are tough to tolerate. She was like those kids in old-fashioned movies. A grown-up and poisoned midget was trapped in her child’s body.

Hüseyin knelt down so as to be able to see Melek’s face as he spoke to her. I was curious to know where he’d learned that. I was certain he didn’t watch those daytime shows that explained the psychology of children.

“Somebody brought an envelope for me yesterday. And gave it to you to take upstairs. Do you remember, Melek, dear?”

“Of course I do, Hüseyin Ağabeyciğim.”

“Can you describe him to us? What did he look like?”

She was definitely a top student in her class. One who tattled on those who talked and were noisy when the teacher wasn’t around, and who, as soon as she got back to the classroom, told on anyone who had said rude words during playtime; one who did her homework to the letter and studied the following day’s topics ahead of time, just to get in the teacher’s good graces.

“Please give me a few minutes to think,” she said.

Her thinking pose consisted of an index finger to the cheek and a sideways tilt of the head. She had also narrowed her eyes. I bet she’d rehearsed this look in front of her mirror.

“It was a young
abla
.”

But our psycho was male!

Now I knelt down too, immediately.

“What did she look like?”

Although I had posed the question, she nevertheless directed her answer at Hüseyin. Clearly she was bent on paying absolutely no attention to me.

“Around twenty, I think. She looked like Ebru Gündeş before she got famous.”

I didn’t remember what Ebru Gündeş looked like before she became famous, but I figured she was a petite brunette with large eyes.

“She had long hair, down to here.”

She motioned, indicating that it was a little longer than shoulder length.

“What did she say to you, dear?” I asked.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said, very grandly, sizing me up again.

A good slap in the face would knock some respect into this girl, but we still had questions to ask, so I contained my annoyance.

“Oh…I’m Burçak,” I said, holding out my hand.

“And I’m Melek,” she said, bending her knee in a slight curtsy.

“And so we’ve met…What did she say to you?”

“What are you to Hüseyin Abi?”

“He’s my friend,” Hüseyin quickly responded, thus relieving me of the need to search for an answer.

“I’ve never seen him before,” she said, looking skeptically at us both.

It was official, signed, and notarized: the girl was openly flirting with Hüseyin and was jealous of me. This must be what is called a woman’s instinct.

“Now let me answer your question,” she said. “We were playing here when that
abla
came on her bike.”

“A bike?”

“Yes,
Un-cle
Burçak, a bike.”

And she’d called me uncle, emphasizing each syllable. While it was true that the younger generations were certainly lacking in the tactfulness department, the case at hand went beyond that; this pint-sized runt, in a fit of jealousy, was openly treating me with an obnoxious attitude.

“She asked us if anyone knew Hüseyin Kozalak. I stepped forward.
I told her Hüseyin Abi and I lived in the same apartment block. She told me she was in a hurry, and that she needed to make it to an exam. She kindly asked me to deliver the envelope to his home.”

The bike, the exam…A girl, a student…What did all this mean?

“What kind of a bike was it, Melek? Can you tell us?” said Hüseyin, moving on to a more fruitful line of questioning.

Melek assumed her thinking pose again.

“Let’s see…It wasn’t really new. If I’m not mistaken, it had gears. And it was blue in color. But it wasn’t a girl’s bike. There was a yellow water bottle where you’d normally put the pump. You know, one of those with a nozzle.”

“You’re a right know-it-all, aren’t you…?” I said.

Placing her hand on her Hüseyin Abi’s shoulder for support, she answered.

“I’m knowledgeable, not a know-it-all.”

Any other time I would have ripped to pieces anyone who back-talked to me like this. But we needed her, so I controlled myself. Besides, the details she remembered, if true, were important. And the girl clearly did have a sharp eye.

I proceeded to pose a question that fell within my own particular area of interest: “Do you remember what she was wearing?”

“She was wearing jeans,” she said, without thinking this time. “And a jean jacket. I don’t remember if they were purple or red but she had shiny, colorful sneakers. Converse sneakers. My mom’s going to buy me a pair this summer.”

A voice inside told me to run and buy two pairs of Converse sneakers for her. The details she was giving us were worth it.

“Anything else?”

“She was wearing a helmet. Like a motorcyclist. Black. With flame stickers on it.”

“You’re a star, Melek,” I said.

She really was. I mean, I wasn’t saying it just to be polite; plus, I had found myself a little moved by her Converse story and I liked her shrewdness.

“I know,” she said. “That’s what everyone says.”

“Thanks a lot, you’ve been a big help,” said Hüseyin.

“Oh, I just remembered: on the side of her helmet was a shiny sticker. The size of a stamp but bright and gleaming.”

Her attention was sharp, her memory spotless. She must have been aware of how ugly she was. We are unbelievably malicious as children. One of her peers at school, or in the neighborhood, who was mad and wanted to hurt her, would have told her. And so she had learned to make up for her ugliness, which would have been brought to her attention at a very young age, with her intelligence and ability to pay attention to detail. I don’t believe that saying about how all beautiful people are dumb, but there is some truth to it. The beautiful don’t need anything else to make others admire them. People just naturally do. And so they don’t need to use their brains. Those who realize they aren’t beautiful seek out, find, develop, and display other qualities in order to impress.

We thanked her.

“Let’s take you to the amusement park or cinema one day,” I said in all sincerity.

“I don’t like the amusement park. It’s always too noisy. But let me consider the cinema offer. I’ll ask my father.”

Where she had learned to speak like a highly intelligent, fully adult midget remained a mystery.

As we approached the car, Hüseyin cried out, “You can’t be serious about inviting her to the cinema!”

“I truly am,” I said. “Why not? If I can’t make it, then the two of you can go. Can’t you see? The girl is madly in love with you.”

N
ow we had the female accomplice to deal with. Based on the information we’d been given, she was probably a university student or something, roaming the very hilly city of Istanbul on a bike. Seeing as she had a helmet, this bike-riding business wasn’t something she did just for pleasure. She had flames and a hologram sticker on her helmet. Those were our clues. Now all we had to do was find her.

First we need to visit to Ponpon to figure out what was on that chip.

Hüseyin knew very well where to go but was worried parking would be bad. He was right. Parking was always problematic in Nişantaşı and Teşvikiye. We were going to have to park in a multistory parking garage and walk two streets down from Ponpon’s apartment.

A strange intuition popped into my head that I couldn’t keep to myself.

“Hüseyin,” I said as we walked to Ponpon’s, “it’s you who knows where I go, what I do.”

“Yes…”

“And you know where all the people I see live…”

“Yeeeah…”

“Look, you even found Ponpon’s house without directions. And the office…”

“I’ve been driving you around for years,” he said proudly. “I should know.”

“And you’ve got a crush on me.”

“Alas, unrequited…”

I stopped and looked at him, narrowing my eyes.

“You’re not the psycho, are you?”

He was baffled.

“Just kidding,” I said. “I was just thinking…You might have planned all this to wriggle your way into my place. If that were the case, you’ve been quite successful. We’re glued to each other like Siamese twins. At this rate, we’ll have to get used to each other. The letter was even delivered to your place.”

“But the phone call!” he said. “I was with you when he called!”

“Oh, but you very well could have had a friend call for you!”

“I swear to God and the heavens above, I’ve done no such thing!”

“I don’t have much faith in those who swear a lot,” I said.

“Goddamn it!” he said, throwing the car keys onto the sidewalk in a rage. “You can’t seriously believe that I could possibly murder another human being.”

He was standing in the middle of the road, screaming his head off. As soon as they heard the word “murder,” everyone in the vicinity snapped to attention. All ears perked up, eager to hear the rest.

“Slow down!” I said. “Everyone’s staring at us.”

“They can stare all they like! What? Do I look like a murderer to you? Look at me!”

I bent down and picked the car keys up off the sidewalk, grabbed Hüseyin by the arm, and started dragging him toward Ponpon. If he went on screaming like this, he’d get more than a simple scolding from me; he’d get the living shit beaten out of him.

“I wouldn’t do it for anyone, not even you. You understand? I
couldn’t. I can’t even stand the Festival of Sacrifice. The only thing I’m capable of killing is a fly. A fly! How could you…Me and murder, for God’s sake, no!”

He was clearly having a bit of a breakdown.

I lowered my voice in an effort to get him to lower his tone.

“All right, all right! Calm down…Let’s sit down and talk about this like two grown adults. It was just a thought.”

Trying to seem innocent, I gave him my sweetest smile. It usually worked.

“You have to admit it was a crazy thought. You got me all worked up!”