You (26 page)

Christ, how can I be so stupid?

You’re standing in this bloody basement, seriously believing you could secretly call the girl of your dreams to warn her about this lunatic. Her name and number are stored on your phone as the last call. How could you?

They’ll find her, and it’s my fault
.

Your arm reaches behind you, you’re about to throw the phone in the pool, a hand grabs you by the wrist.

“Let go,” says the man behind you, and takes it away from you.

And now you haven’t got a phone, and there’s Darian’s father still standing in front of you, except that something’s changed. Something fundamental. He’s got what he wanted, he doesn’t need you anymore.
It’s over
. And yet your panic won’t subside, there’s the unpleasant feeling of having to explain yourself. Quickly, before it’s too late.
Too late for what?
You recoil and bump against the chair, which topples over and goes clattering across the tiled floor. Darian’s father doesn’t move from the spot, his gaze is still fixed firmly
on you.
How come he suddenly looks so tired?
He raises the gun and aims it at your face. You know he won’t shoot. But you don’t know why he’s still threatening you. But that makes it worse, that frightens you.
I’ve got nothing more to offer
. The gun in front of your face is calm. Darian’s father’s eyes are still.
I’m safe
, you think, you hope. The big question is: how can you fool yourself like that?

Can you imagine your best friend and your father standing by a swimming pool, your father holding a gun in his hand and your best friend practically shitting himself? Even if you wanted, your imagination has limits, like your planning. If you’d known what you were setting in motion, you’d never have canceled that evening at the movie, and you’d have crept under a car two days ago, just like Mirko. You’d have done everything differently, and this meeting would never have taken place.

Every Thursday afternoon at the same time you sit at Pepe’s, eating kebabs and drinking ice-cold protein shakes. From five till nine in the evening anyone can get hold of you there. On your left are two cell phones and a book on survival training. You’d rather have an office, but your father reckons you’re a long way from being a businessman. Even though you’re not working for him, you can’t go looking for an office without his permission. Rules are rules. He reckons you have to get to know the streets, because that’s how he started. Squatters and revolutionaries—you can really do without that. We’re not in the eighties anymore, and not in the nineties either, even though the radio tries to kid you otherwise, with all that endless fucked-up retro music. We’re in the new millennium, everything’s different, nothing is the way it used to be, and you’re sitting in a kebab shop because you still haven’t got an office.

On Fridays the guys find you in the park, on the weekends
you’re working exclusively for the Brothers. On Mondays you’re in the amusements on the Kaiserdamm, you particularly like it there in the summer, because of the air conditioning and the girl on the counter who disappears into the bathroom with you if you ask her. She likes muscles, you’ve got muscles, and the two of you suit each other perfectly. On Tuesdays you play golf with the Brothers and Wednesday is your very private day in the gym. If this isn’t life there is no life.

She sits down opposite you.

Mirko called you twenty minutes ago and said he had something for you. You can see he’s got something, probably a massive erection, the way he’s standing there.
Like a full shopping bag that someone’s left on the edge of the road
. The weirdest images always come into your mind as soon as you see Mirko. He is loyal, he wants to make something of himself, and grows and flourishes in your shadow more than any of the other guys so far. He’s your man. You enjoy his guilty conscience. If you threw a stick, he’d be the first to bring it back for you. But if you’re perfectly honest you can easily understand why he ran off that night. They were mean bastards, they would have just beaten up Mirko, it was better for him to get out of the picture, it was better for him not to see your humiliation. You’ve got plans for him. Next year you want to take him on tour with you. He was there when you paid a visit to Bebe, and the guys liked him because he didn’t chatter all the time. Sometimes you wish your father had looked after you the way you look after Mirko now. He’s a logistics guy, basically. No one provides better security than Ragnar Desche. Recently he’s been mostly taking care of the storage and transport of drugs and guns. You know that over the last decade he hasn’t lost a single cartridge or a crumb of cocaine.

Be honest, you’re proud of your father and respect his consistency, but your true idols are two men of a quite different caliber.

The Brothers, Jonas and Axel Krüger, are the dark souls of Berlin. They wanted to take you under their wing the spring before last when you were only sixteen, and it took your father over a year to give you the green light. Since then you’ve been dealing, bringing the money in and getting to know the street from the bottom up. You’re not a logistics expert, you want to get your hands dirty and be like the Brothers. Everything they teach you, you want to teach
Mirko one day. From violence via discipline to obedience. Humor’s a part of it too, of course. That’s why you tell Mirko, “Come on, dude. You’re standing there like a full shopping bag.”

“Very funny.”

“Sit down, come on, sit down.”

Mirko sits down beside the girl. You give Pepe a sign to bring you another shake. Since his shop has been your base, he’s keeping a mixer on the counter. Pepe knows what goes in the shakes. Even if the stuff tastes horrible, you like the fact that Pepe only makes it for you. Healthy doesn’t necessarily taste good, every child learns that.
That’s why it’s so important to grow up
, you think,
then you can eat anything you like
. This kebab, for example, it’s exactly right. Not too much sauce, no onions, and enough coleslaw to make a Russian green with envy. You take a bite, look at the girl, thinking,
Well, Mirko’s found a hot one
. You know her from somewhere, definitely from around here, you probably saw her in one of the clubs or she bought something from your guys. Superficial as you are, it never occurs to you that she’s a good friend of your cousin. You’ve met her twice at a party, her hair was down and she wasn’t wearing sunglasses. Now her eyes are completely hidden behind dark lenses. You can just about make out the pupils.

“Shake?” you ask with your mouth full, tapping against your empty glass.

She says she is not thirsty. You put the kebab on the plate and wipe your mouth. It’s time for business.

“Let’s do some business,” you say.

The girl rummages in her pants pocket and puts a Tic Tac box down on the table. Orange flavor. You’ve always thought it was ridiculous that Tic Tacs are really white, and only look orange because of the packaging. Someone told you it used to be different. Dyes and stuff. As if there was anything harmful about dyes.

“Aha,” you say and take the Tic Tac box and flip it open. The powder is white, you sniff it, it smells like Tic Tacs. Pepe comes with the shake. Green with white foam. You ask him if he wants a Tic Tac. The girl opens her eyes wide. Pepe says,
Sugar no good
, and goes again.

“Did you hear that?” you ask the girl and laugh. “Sugar no good?”

She just looks at you, she obviously has no sense of humor and those oversized sunglasses make her look like an over-the-hill porn star who swallowed too much cum. Mirko, on the other hand, finally has a hint of a grin in the corner of his mouth. Mirko knows what’s funny. The girl says, “We’ve got five kilos.”

You don’t move a muscle. Whatever Mirko has brought here, it seems to be a gold mine. You don’t wonder where the drugs are from, your mouth is too watery and your head is switched to profit. When you ask her about the pills, the girl reaches into her jacket and puts a handful down on the table.

“Are you fucked?” you hiss at her, and sweep the pills from the tabletop into the open palm of your hand. She smiles. Humor is a two-sided blade. You stuff the pills in your jacket. Mirko gives you a funny look, and somehow he reminds you of your mother’s top-loader when she took the washing out and left the machine open to dry. As a child you always wanted to get into the machine and travel through time. Your mother always smacked you when she caught you doing that. Now your mother’s with a Spaniard half her age and her name’s never mentioned at home.

“You look like a washing machine. A top-loader, you know?”

Mirko frowns. Yes, the joke was a bit far-fetched. You look around. It wouldn’t be so great if someone from the drug squad was standing at the bar drinking ayran while you were pulling off the deal of your life.

Fuck me, five kilos!

You tap against the Tic Tac box; some powder trickles onto the back of your hand.

“Everybody look away,” you say, and inhale it.

If you could see your smile you would take a photograph and have it framed. It does the trick, the drug moves through your head like a cold switchblade and makes you feel good.
Damn good
. You tense your upper arms. Great feeling. Steel and flesh. The girl’s probably wondering what it feels like to have arms like that.

“Whoow,” you say, blinking away tears. “And you’ve got five kilos of that? Whoow, that’s
the
stuff.”

The girl gets up.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“To get the rest. You want to buy it, don’t you?”

You bet your sweet ass I do
, you think and bite your tongue to keep it to yourself. You’re confused, you thought she brought the drugs along. You grin at her stupidly. You really want to call yourself a professional? Do you think she’s just going to go walking around the place with five kilos of high-grade drugs?

It’s a good thing the Brothers can’t see you right now.

The girl says she’ll be back at midnight.

She says she wants fifty thousand.

You laugh at her.

“It’s worth more than that,” you explain, which sounds really unprofessional, but the drugs are making you honest, and besides, you want to be a gentleman, because the little bitch is kind of tasty, and maybe one day she’ll feel like snorting a line off your cock. For free, of course.

“I don’t want more,” she says.

“Ah.”

Fifty big ones. Oh my God, the Brothers are going to go crazy. It was so worth canceling the movies for. Mirko hasn’t brought you gold, these are diamonds. But Mirko has a few things to make up to you for.

“Shall we meet here?”

You shake your head. It’ll be jammed in here in an hour. And midnight’s far too early for you. The city’s still wide awake at that time of night. You suggest the park. Lietzensee. At two. The little football field is hidden away, and not even tramps go there at night. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve arranged to meet someone there. The field is hidden way behind an embankment. If two of your guys kept watch, you could hold an orgy there and no one would notice.

“You can have an orgy there at night,” you say.

“You can have an orgy at night anywhere at all,” the girl says as if she did just that every night. “Two o’clock, then?”

“Two.”

She looks from you to Mirko. You’d give a hundred-euro note to see her without those shades.

“Are you coming too?”

“Of course I am.”

She looks at you again.

“You’re not going to rip me off, are you?”

You put a hand on your heart. Of course you’re going to rip her off. She’ll settle for twenty thousand, they always do in the end. And the Brothers will never find out that it was five kilos. Three will be enough to make them weep with happiness. And the pills will make their way into your pocket.

“I’m honest,” you tell her.

When she leaves, you wait till the door closes behind her, then you explode with laughter.

“God, Mirko, what a bitch!”

“Don’t say that.”

You get up, you shake hands.

“You’ve done a great job there, pal, it doesn’t get any better than that, we’re even now, okay?”

Mirko nods, he smiles, the relief is written on his forehead in capital letters. You pull your friend to you so that his thin chest hits your steel plate.

“I’ll pick you up at the pizza stand at a quarter to two.”

You slap him on the back, you’re so fucking high on the drugs that you feel like grabbing Mirko’s backside.
I’m horny
, you think, and let go of Mirko.

“And I can’t make the movies tonight,” you add, waving the Tic Tac box. “I have to test out this stuff a bit more. Denzel can wait.”

Mirko nods, he understands. You hand him your shake as a present, he takes it outside. You look down and seriously have a massive hard-on.

“Hey, Pepe,” you call to him. “Look what Tic Tacs can do!”

Two hours later you’re lying on your bed exhausted from the drugs, the windows are open, you’re king of the city, the wail of an ambulance, a plane heading for Tegel Airport, and the music coming out of the speakers and the deal of the year in your pocket. MTV is on in the background with the sound turned down, a singer is repeatedly slapping herself on the ass as if she is furious that she has an ass. You tap the Tic Tac box, the powder trickles onto the back of your hand.