Potsdamer Platz E-Book

Buddy Giovinazzo

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 504

Beschreibung

'Not since Goodfellas has there been such a brilliant and unique look into the gangster world' - Tony Scott A New York Mafia crime family, known as the Franchise, sets up base on the biggest construction site in Europe, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, setting in train a destructive confrontation with the Russian Mafia. Tony, the youngest hit-man in the history of the Franchise, is sent in first to terrorise the opposition, which he does with catastrophic results when an innocent 14 year old girl is killed. Feeling guilt and shame over a life spent destroying everything he's ever laid his hands on, Tony decides to change after he falls in love with Monica, a medical student from East Berlin. But he finds changing his life of violence and cruelty nearly impossible to do. Torn between his loyalty to the Franchise, his only family, and his feelings of love for Monica and the redemption she can offer, Tony tries to balance a life in both worlds, the criminal and the scarier world of normal life; with tragically mixed results. Action-packed and sexy, Potsdamer Platz reveals the dark world of Berlin after the wall came down - a city of two halves flooded with new money and in the throes of economic transformation, ripe with opportunity for the forces of organised crime.

Leseprobe

Critical Acclaim

‘A brilliant and unique look at a clash of cultures in the gangster world. The Jersey mob comes to Berlin to confront the Russian, Turk, and East German mobsters but The Goodfellas/Sopranos underestimate their competition! Not since Goodfellas has there been such a capitivating story about the mob’ – Tony Scott

For Erich Maas

He who wants the world to remain as it is

Doesn’t want it to remain at all.

(anonymous, Berlin Wall)

1

September 1995.

Lufthansa flight 8257. JFK to Frankfurt. Connecting flight 8835 Frankfurt to Berlin. Arriving Tegel Airport at eleven o’seven AM

The flight arrived three minutes early and I waited on line at the customs gate. I fingered my passport firmly between my thumb and index finger, tried to shake the effects of seven Crown Royals out of my throbbing head as everyone around me looked like they were melting. I shouldn’t have drank so much and I certainly shouldn’t have taken so many pills but there was no way I was making this trip without them; I’d have to find a doctor real soon whom I could trust and rely upon. I checked and rechecked the clear laminate flap on the inside of my passport, still pissed at Hardy for telling me about the time Leo Castillo tried to sneak back into the States with a forged passport until the customs agent noticed his picture had shifted; that’s how Leo got nailed on his murder rap – but then, Leo’s wife and I had a great eight months because of that.

Hardy bumped me from behind and gave me a torpid, dimwitted grin. He was a clumsy stalk of a lout with a big mouth and a bad attitude. I knew they would barely glance at his face before brushing him through the gate.

His head sat like a cinder block on a stiff green uniform; his ball-bearing eyes were the color of chrome and his lips looked like dried worms stuck together in uncertainty. He looked first at the photo, then he looked at me, then back at the photo, then back at me. He was sizing me up; something didn’t feel right to him. He took a small penlight and shined it on the lamination and now I was getting a little spooked. I willed myself with everything inside of me to become the name in that passport.

‘Reason for wisiting Germany?’ he demanded.

‘Vacation.’

‘Guten Tag.’ He slammed a large metal stamper down on an inside page, dropped the passport in front of me and reached past me for Hardy’s.

We retrieved our bags and walked briskly toward the exit where swinging frosted-glass doors opened automatically into a bustling Terminal 8. I almost wished they hadn’t.

Suddenly the signs were in gibberish, the advertisements were unknown to me; nobody here was speaking English! That’s when the foreignness of the whole thing slapped me. Slapped me like an angry whore.

‘You know where we’re goin’?’ Hardy asked, with a young boy’s hopeful lilt in his voice.

‘I’m following the yellow arrow.’

‘How do you know where it’s leadin’?’

‘There’s a picture of a car at the end.’

Five black-skinned men in colorful African robes waited on a ticket line. Two flight attendants, a man and a woman, stood directly in our path, both were blond and over six-feet tall and arguing loudly in each other’s faces.

‘This is fuckin’ nuts,’ Hardy mumbled under his breath, keeping with me stride for stride.

Ten minutes later the sullen men and women standing like chess pieces at the passenger pick-up stand were beginning to notice us; we may as well have been painted green. Hardy was hopping softly back and forth on the balls of his feet, shivering as if he was cold; never a good sign with Hardy; I can tell you from personal experience.

‘Who the fuck we waitin’ for?’ he mumbled.

‘Somebody named Vita.’

‘What kind’a name is Vita?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where the fuck is he?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How the fuck long are we supposed to wait?’

‘As long as we have to.’

‘I still don’t see why the fuck we’re here. Thousands of miles from home. Any two-bit leg-breaker could do this job.’

‘We’re two-bit leg-breakers,’ I reminded him and he chortled, seemed to relax for a moment. But he was right, it had been eating away at me for a while now, the whole setup felt wrong; it had scapegoat written all over it. But I found you got a lot further in life, and tended to live a bit longer, by doing whatever Riccardo Montefiore asked you do to without question.

A tall brown-skinned guy about thirty years old with well-groomed blue-black hair and wearing a dark brown pinstriped suit and brown alligator shoes came running up urgently waving a crumpled piece of paper.

Hardy mumbled, ‘What the fuck is this?’

The guy was anxious and jittery, tugging at his cuff-linked sleeves and looking around before stopping abruptly in front of us and throwing a quick look to the paper in his hand.

‘Do you have ticket for Giants game?’ he said. Words fell out of his mouth like chips of wood, but they were the right chips.

‘I’m a season-ticket holder,’ I answered and the guy let out a sigh of relief.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘You were waiting long not?’

Hardy grumbled, ‘Two fuckin’ hours.’

The guy’s face dropped as if doused with water, I thought he might cry, then just as instantly he let out a laugh, albeit a nervous laugh. ‘Ach so, ha ha ha. The American humor . . . My car parks near.’

He immediately grabbed our bags, motioned to some older brown-skinned spark plug of a guy with a wild gray beard pointing out in all directions like antennae gone insane, and started for a line of cars at the curb.

‘I am Vita,’ he said as he walked. ‘Your flight okay?’

‘Fine,’ I answered, not wanting to be rude during my first twenty minutes in the country.

‘Long no? From USA?’

‘Long enough.’

‘My father waits for you at his office.’

‘Your father?’

‘Yossario.’

That explained a lot. Vita stopped abruptly beside a black four-door BMW sedan. He looked nervously up and down the pick-up stand; once convinced the coast was clear he rushed to the trunk and popped the hood, hoisted our bags in back. With a flourish of his hand he motioned us to get in the car, then hopped in the front passenger seat. Hardy and I shared a glance. The wild-beard guy opened the door for us and we got in. Hardy turned around and watched the airport shrink from view.

‘Shit, this place is smaller than Newark.’

I handed a slip of paper over the front passenger seat.

‘That’s where we want to go,’ I said. ‘Right now.’

Vita looked at the writing on the paper and I heard him gulp, then he looked over at the wild-beard guy and said something in a language that I knew wasn’t German. The wild-beard guy glanced at the slip of paper and turned back to the street in front of him, no expression, no reaction, nothing.

Vita turned around, his face sank as if he was confused. ‘We take you to your flat now,’ he said.

‘No. We don’t want to see our flat. We’d like to get started right away. You got the stuff?’

Vita’s face sank further. I could tell it would be an expression I’d have to get used to; I hoped for his sake I didn’t get used to it too soon.

‘Stoff?’

‘You’re supposed to have something for us. We couldn’t bring them over on the plane.’

He didn’t get it, but a second later he did and said, ‘Ach so . . . I take you to my father now.’

No, maybe he didn’t get it after all. ‘Are the pieces there?’

‘No. We receive them later.’

‘Let’s receive them now.’

‘But . . . ist early. Too soon.’

‘I have very specific instructions. Trust me on this one, Vita. The sooner we put it into play the sooner we can all go home.’

Vita whipped out a cellphone and started punching numbers on the face of it but Hardy ripped it from his hand and chucked it out the window. Vita gasped and looked back in shock.

‘Tony’s the chief tonight,’ Hardy snapped. ‘Now take us where he says.’ Then he sat up straight with his head touching the cushioned top of the BMW. Vita whispered something to the wild-beard guy, who grunted without taking his eyes off the road and made a right turn down a side street. That’s when I noticed his left hand was missing, gone completely; his wrist ended at a seeping-red, freshly bandaged stump. I nudged Hardy who peered around the seat to get a better look, threw me a glance that told me he was impressed.

We drove along a green park of trees and shrubs and churches with tall spires and cracked turquoise bells inside them. The streets were filled with women strolling in long robes and wearing scarves around their heads; brown-skinned children played soccer in a square where old men with gray beards sold fruit and vegetables out of the backs of their cars. Dogs ran freely in the street and every pub had tables and chairs out front with young people drinking coffee and smoking thin brown cigarettes and it seemed like the whole world just stopped working for a minute and took some time to relax.

Hardy stared out of his window at a group of veiled women pushing baby carriages and quipped, ‘Shit, where the fuck are we? Downtown Istanbul!’

Vita turned around and told him, sheepishly, ‘We are in Kreuzberg. The Turkish Viertel.’

Hardy and I waited in the car while Vita and the wild-beard guy went inside.

‘I don’t like it,’ he complained. ‘Why the rush? The mystery? The place ain’t been staked out. We don’t know who the fuck these people are; it could be a setup for all we know.’

He was right, and it was damn foolish of me not to go inside with Vita because if it was a setup Hardy and I would soon be dead.

The back door opened suddenly and a long black duffel bag was dropped at our feet. Vita and the wild-beard guy got in the front and we pulled away. The perfectly cut symmetrical hairline on the back of Vita’s neck told me the little prick had called his father the second he got inside. Hardy unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out an oily black piece of steel.

‘What the fuck is this? We asked for Mac 10s.’

Vita turned around in the front seat. ‘AK 47. Ganz neue. Just as good.’

Hardy checked the firing pin and inspected the cartridge bay, pulled the trigger a few times and spat out disgustedly, ‘No, not just as good! Just as shit! These are Russian. You know the type of quality they got over there in Russia?’

‘We test before you come.’

‘Just because you pulled the trigger don’t mean it won’t jam or misfire. This is bullshit!’

I turned to Hardy; in all matters relating to hardware I deferred to his expertise and judgment, though I’d never known him to squabble over the means of delivery before, having seen him once use a homemade Saturday Night Special that practically blew up in his hand. I whispered, ‘Do you want to put this off for a day?’

Hardy slammed the cartridge into the loading bay and waved me off; he was simply negotiating. Hardy’s not as dumb as I sometimes play him to be.

We drove through crowded streets of small shops and fruit stands where dirty gray buildings had life-size nude statues on top; there were churches and boarded-up factories and trains rumbling by on elevated tracks and Hardy pointed to a tall cylindrical tower with a big silver ball on top and said it looked like it was going to blast off for Mars.

Vita looked back meekly, and said, as if he were talking about the retarded brother you don’t want anyone to know about, ‘We drive into the former East Berlin.’

Streetcars scraped along dug-in metal tracks on cobblestone streets and brown brick buildings sat half-crumbling with chips and gouges missing from the facades and construction scaffolds took up entire blocks and scattered on every other corner were cafés and pubs with plastic lawn-chairs around small tables.

Hardy mumbled, ‘The Lower East Side without the charm and character.’ And in that instant, something snapped inside. Because all the buildings and shops and abandoned lots and crooked narrow alleys made of cobblestone cubes and soft beige dirt – even the names of the streets which I could barely read or pronounce – somehow looked familiar to me, as if I’d been here before; as impossible as I knew that to be. Because I’d never been anywhere before; one time to Washington D.C. when I was fifteen years old, and even then it was only to go to my sister’s funeral. Simmering in my stomach now was the same murky soup of dread I’d cooked up then. I was also pretty damn tired and probably beginning to hallucinate.

We stopped in front of a square yellow building, a newer building than any other on the block. Hardy and I sat there for a moment playing the psyche game: I pictured the guys inside this building doing fucked up things to the people I loved, like raping my daughter and stabbing her mother and dragging their naked bleeding bodies through the potholed streets of Newark New Jersey chained to the back of a Chevrolet. Then for some reason, just for an instant, I saw Riccardo Montefiore sitting in his office three weeks ago, laughing and puffing on his cigar while gripping his asthma inhaler before telling me about his friend in Berlin and how he needed an important favor from someone he could trust.

Vita stood fixing his collar at the front door beside the intercom; Hardy walked up holding an AK 47 in his hands as if he were carrying a box of roses. My look told him to ‘chill the fuck out’ and he slipped the rifle under his jacket, though it still stuck out. Shifting the duffel bag to my left hand I buzzed a couple names on the intercom until a voice answered back and I looked to Vita who spoke German into the box.

The buzzer sounded and Vita pushed open the door, then turned to me and whispered, ‘I tell them we make delivery.’

I followed Vita into a dark spacious hall that led to a thick wooden door. This opened into a cement patio where children’s bicycles and plastic swings and a sandbox with pails and windmills gave me a pang of discomfort; I was hoping this one went off without any complications. We came to another building like the first, a Hinterhaus, Vita said, then went quietly through another spacious hall; the scrape of our shoes on the coarse granite slate made my teeth ache. To the right was a winding wooden staircase and we started up the first flight. I turned and saw the wild-beard guy watching our back; noticed a .44 Magnum and a 9-mm Sig Sauer semi-automatic tucked in the waistband of his pants; they weren’t there when he picked us up.

The third floor was tight and claustrophobic and I found it difficult to breathe as air dropped like clay in my lungs. Vita led us to a door at the far end of the corridor, then stepped back out of the way. Hardy gripped his AK 47 and was hopping back and forth on the balls of his feet and anybody stepping out of their apartment just then was in risk of their life.

I heard voices coming from inside and silently mouthed to Vita, ‘Another way out?’

Hardy whispered over my shoulder, ‘Don’t matter, chief. Don’t wanna be standin’ here all day. Let’s do it.’ Then he pulled a crucifix from under his shirt and kissed it and I wished the Seconals I swallowed on the ride over would kick in about now.

A bald pug with a battered face and a red-leather motorcycle jacket stepped into the hall, took one look at us and reached into his waistband. We were bunched too close for me to swing my rifle so I ripped the .44 from the wild-beard guy’s waist and fired twice into the bald pug’s chest. Wet splats ripped through his ribs and the far wall cracked with a metalic after-ring. The bald pug stood there, frozen upright with his head twitching spastically, as if he were making a stand against what was happening to him, as if his heart were still intact and not shredded into seven separate pieces, then he crumpled to the floor like a clumsy wooden man. I spun around and kicked in the door and Hardy and I charged into the room firing. Three middle-aged men were reaching frantically into a small round safe built into the floor until their chests burst open and the wall puked blood; fleshy chunks of meat and clothing flew like tea bags tossed in the air. Hardy sprayed a tall blond guy and he slammed against the wall with his right hand rising up; the next spray ripped up the wall around him, then his wrist popped suddenly into mist, his hand flew off and spun asymmetrically to the floor like an asteroid in outer space. Hardy blasted into the furniture sending papers and patches of wood flying, while the wild-beard guy shot out the blond guy’s cheeks and left his face a splattered pie of gore.

Something blurred past a back doorway and I took off after it, caught her trying to climb out the window. Behind me Hardy and the wild-beard guy still fired their guns, but sporadically now.

She couldn’t have been older than sixteen with eyes black as night and simple features on milky white skin. Jet-black hair fell like silk onto her shoulders. What she was doing here I couldn’t guess but she had to be somebody’s daughter and shit, these people should know better than to mix their family with their business. Now she stood staring at me, not at me really but at the barrel of my weapon, as if it were the only thing that mattered in the whole wide world to her, as if everything that she ever hoped for or dreamed about was tucked inside this fickle metal tube. And I couldn’t tell who was more terrified by that fact, her or me. As the gunfire ended behind me Hardy called my name.

‘I’m here. Everything’s cool. Let’s check out. No loose ends.’ Then I went into the other room.

Hardy had opened a window, somehow unbroken in the mayhem, and smoke poured out of it like souls escaping Hell. As Hardy poked the bodies with the end of his rifle Vita searched through the file cabinets, pulling out papers and contracts and trying at the same time not to get any blood on his shoes, his face squeezed tight as chunks of brain and skin dripped down the walls and one guy slumped back on the tabletop emptied onto the floor like a toilet overflowing. Hardy kicked the smoldering severed hand over towards the wild-beard guy.

‘Hey Groucho, here’s a souvenir.’

The wild-beard guy laughed coldly and kicked it into the corner, then walked out of the room like a fed cat.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s get outta here.’

Hardy started for the door while Vita grabbed frantically through the cabinets for more papers. I went around and pulled him up by the collar, ‘Let’s go! We didn’t come here to rob the place.’

Vita snatched one last bundle of papers and rushed toward the door as Hardy yelled out from the back room, ‘Hey you!’ followed by a burst of automatic fire.

I came in to see the girl crumpled on the floor gasping for air through punctured lungs, like a fish pulled out of water. Hardy stood next to me, looking down at her body.

‘I heard a sound back here,’ he said. ‘She must’a been hidin’. Guess you missed her.’

I couldn’t speak as her eyes held me firm, boring in with terror and confusion; with betrayal, as if I’d broken some secret pact between us. And as Vita came up behind me I felt his heart pounding furiously in its cage; heard it over the thumping of my own. It seemed like an hour had passed before I said, ‘Come on, we gotta get outta here.’

‘What about her?’ Hardy said. ‘Shame we can’t take her with us, huh?’

I fired one clean shot into her heart and she was still. Hardy watched me with twisted respect, something just west of admiration. Then he gave her one final blast in the face that left her unrecognizable. He chuckled and remarked, ‘Shit, these Russian guns ain’t so bad after all.’

2

‘Welcome to Berlin.’

He handed me a Crown Royal with ice and Hardy got a vodka Martini with a small white onion. This guy did his homework.

‘Your first trip to Germany?’ he asked.

‘First trip anywhere,’ I answered with pride, though I don’t know why. Yossario motioned us both to sit on the plush brown leather couch against the far wall underneath a black velvet painting of a conquistador riding a white horse and holding a lance with a splash of blood on the tip. He was nothing like what I expected, Yossario. For one thing, he was pure blue-collar criminal; short and squat with a ruddy complexion and thick, hard features on a round impish face, stubby callused hands and a portly gut splashing over his worn brown leather belt; he looked more like a union delegate at the Fulton Fish Market – at least before the cleanup last year – than one of Riccardo Montefiore’s business associates. But then, I wasn’t here to question Riccardo Montefiore’s taste in friends; I also had to consider the steady supply of cocaine and heroin that turned up regularly on the streets of Newark smuggled in from Turkey. Yossario had to be connected to that somehow.

No, what did bother me was the fact that Hardy was forced on me for this job. I prided myself on discretion, always a clean job, in and out, no clues; police write it off as an internal matter settled between criminal elements. But Hardy played by a different set of rules, which were no rules at all. He didn’t care who got hurt, and he cast an awful wide net. He enjoyed raising the stakes to an obscene level; that was his signature. The last contract I did with Hardy was a simple affair; we took out Alphonse Lettieri at sunrise in his garage with two shots to the back of the head, clean, professional, we go home. But Hardy gets it into his head that he wants to check out the furniture in the house, so he takes the keys from Alphonse’s pocket and goes inside where he finds Alphonse’s wife sleeping on the couch in the living room. At gunpoint Hardy shook her awake and made her cook him breakfast. I came in to find him sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of eggs and bacon in front of him while Alphonse’s wife was on her knees giving him a blow job. She was whimpering and gagging and Hardy ripped out clumps of her hair then pulled her down on his cock as if he wanted to choke her to death. I told him to stop, that this wasn’t part of the job, but before I could say another word he put a .32 in her ear and told me if I said another word he’d blast her eyes out. I knew he meant it. When he was finished he made her get dressed and took her with him, walked her past her husband slumped over his steering wheel like a rotten sack of fruit, laughed as she let out an anguished sob, then forced her to kiss the corpse goodbye. By the time he shoved her trembling frame into the trunk of his car she was gone, as a woman, as a person, as anything human. Hardy hopped behind the wheel and took off into the quiet South Shore morning, and Alphonse’s wife was never seen or heard from again. For several weeks during the investigation, the police considered her the main suspect in her husband’s murder.

Yossario pulled up a chair from behind his desk and sat in front of us, leaned forward and lowered his voice as if the room were bugged with recording devices; and for all I knew, it just might have been. His English was nearly perfect, much better than his son’s, who was sent home to wash the blood off his shoes.

‘I think you’ve made quite an impresssion on Premig,’ he said and I now noticed a slight lisp when he spoke, his s’s somehow fluttered out of his mouth like feathers, a totally incongruous sound coming from this spark plug of a man. Yossario went on, ‘I’ve never ssseen him sssmile before. Not in ten years.’

‘Premig doesn’t look like much of a smiler,’ I answered, hoping the sound of another voice might make Yossario’s voice seem less comical. Hardy still had specks of blood freckling his face and Yossario offered him a white silk handkerchief. Hardy took it and wiped his cheeks but the specks were dry and nothing came off. Yossario told him to keep the handkerchief.

‘A messsy business this afternoon, eh? We’re not used to this kind of violence in Berlin.’

Hardy took instant offense, ‘What kind of violence are you used to?’

‘Well . . . one needs to be more discreet here in Berlin. We can’t make public acts of retribution. This isn’t America.’

‘You have to trust in Riccardo Montefiore’s judgment,’ I said.

‘I do, but I was expecting more of a defensive posture.’

‘Hey, chief, American violence is based on offense, not defense. We been doin’ it for over two hundred years of bloody conflict. So, you gotta problem with our methods then give us the word and we’re outta here. I don’t need this shit.’

‘Hardy . . .’

‘No, please, you misunderstand,’ Yossario said. ‘I’m not criticizing. I’m just saying it was unexpected, is all. When they come back at us, which they will, it will be swift and brutal. I would have liked to have prepared for retaliation. In the future I’d like to be informed. Is that an unreasonable request?’ He looked at me.

‘No, it isn’t.’

He went on, ‘We’ll have to be on our highest guard from now on. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t mind if you wiped out the whole company and their families. But that didn’t happen, ssso we have to be ready.’

‘There was a young girl, about sixteen years old. She may have gotten hit in the crossfire. Do you have any idea who she might be?’

‘Was ssshe very pretty?’

‘Not anymore,’ Hardy interjected with a grin and Yossario smiled wanly. ‘It may have been Victor Rudiyov’s daughter. How old did you say ssshe was?’

‘She was about sixteen. Black hair, black eyes, smooth complexion.’

Hardy looked at me as Yossario said, ‘Rudiyov’s daughter is fourteen. Could she have been fourteen?’

Hardy shrugged and chuckled, ‘I saw her for a second, then she was meat.’

There was a knock on the door and Vita slipped quietly into the room wearing an ash-gray double-breasted suit and shiny black leather shoes. He smiled crookedly at Hardy and me.

Yossario sighed, ‘I guess it doesn’t matter now; the dead are dead. We move on.’

‘What can we expect from the police?’ I asked and Vita let out a grunt. Yossario glanced up at his son, then back to me.

‘The police are really no presence here. Especially in Kreuzberg. The other side will clean up as much as they can. There might be an official investigation, but it will pass.’

‘What are you doing to protect your places?’ I asked.

‘I’ve made arrangements. We’ll have enough men to handle it.’

‘First thing tomorrow morning I’d like to see the setup. The building sites and the warehouses, any potential targets.’

‘Yes, of courssse.’ Then Yossario sat back and started going on about his appreciation for our coming out to help him and how lucky he is to have a friend like Riccardo Montefiore and how sorry he is that it had to come down to this and that anything he can do to make our stay more comfortable blah blah blah and my eyes began to glaze over until I noticed a thin line of blood appear on his upper lip; it dripped past both lips and landed on his knee. Yossario was quite unaware of it until Hardy leaned forward and interrupted, ‘Excuse me, but you’re bleedin’.’

Then he offered him the handkerchief back.

Yossario touched his nose and the warm juice easing out of it and Vita grabbed the handkerchief and put it to his father’s face, spoke urgently to him, but Yossario seemed more concerned with the drops of blood staining his pants.

Yossario explained to us, ‘It’s a condition I’ve had from when I was a child; there’s nothing I can do about it. Some days it bleeds, some days it doesn’t.’

Vita didn’t seem to agree, but not in any language I could recognize. Yossario brushed him off. ‘Anyway, you gentlemen must be exhausted. Why don’t you settle into your flat now, clean up, get some rest?’

‘Yeah, that’s a good idea. We’d like to wash up.’ And glancing at Hardy with the specks of blood on his cheeks and Yossario with a red Hitler mustache, I had to wonder what the fuck I had gotten myself into.

3

Vita motioned for Premig and four other guys to join us. Two of them carried our bags and together they led us around the corner keeping a constant circle of bodies around us at all times; we looked like the President and Vice President of the United States; it was kind of cool.

We walked past a social club and a pub and restaurant and a quaint Turkish bakery where a sad-looking girl with long black hair stood in the doorway holding a crying baby and calling out to one of the bodyguards. I caught a glance at Hardy checking her out and hoped for her sake that she wasn’t his type.

Vita led us into a green park along a cobblestone walkway where groups of men and women wearing faded paisley robes sat around portable barbecues grilling lamb while their kids played soccer in a dried-out dug-out pool. Several kids called out to the bodyguards and the one to my left with a long gray ponytail yelled back until Vita glared at him and he shut up. We walked past a row of tall shrubs and trees and at the end of the row was a clearing where a huge rectangular building with six large windows overlooked the park; its brick walls were chipped and crumbling and stepping up the narrow walkway I saw a young woman with a black scarf on her head wheeling a baby carriage and when she looked up her eyes were the black eyes of the girl killed in the office. My knees buckled suddenly and all the bodyguards dove to the ground and pulled their guns as mothers clutched their children and husbands clutched their wives and people cried and yelled and hid behind trees and it seemed like the whole fucking place just went nuts for a minute. Hardy stood there watching it all with an amused grin; he didn’t even flinch. Hardy wasn’t gonna kiss dirt over some poor kid’s popped balloon. Vita was the first one up barking orders as the bodyguards regrouped and rushed us into the building and seeing the fear and caution on everyone’s face made me think that Hardy and I would probably be here longer than the weekend.

The inside stairs were warped and graffiti covered the walls and there was a large wooden ladder leaning against a wire-glass window with a bucket of black water underneath it; as we climbed up the stairs to the second floor, Hardy pointed out some carving in the wall that read ‘Fuck the Police’.

‘Hey, Tony, check it out. Different things are the same all over.’ He ran his finger into the groove of gouged-out plaster. At the second floor Vita took out a set of keys and unlocked several locks that led through a cement hallway at the end of which was our flat. He opened the door and behind it were five huge rooms of brand new furniture and wall-to-wall plush carpeting; there was a large-screen TV and VCR and a stereo system and couches and glass coffee tables and two of the rooms had large fluffy beds with night tables beside them.

Hardy stood in the doorway with a satisfied grin. ‘I think I’m gonna like this job,’ he said and Vita gave him a smile before telling him, ‘There is the phone. Telefonieren where you like in the world. What you need, you ask me. I get it.’

Vita stepped over to the tall picture windows overlooking the park and pointed to the view and I rushed up and shoved him against the wall and all the bodyguards froze for a moment; nobody knew what to do. Vita looked at me hurt and confused.

‘Vita, after this afternoon, we’re at war. Everyone is a target. No view. No windows. Nobody walks past an uncovered window anymore. Anybody in that park could get a clear shot at one of us; they could chuck a gasoline cocktail through the fucking window and take out all of us. Understand?’

He nodded.

‘I want long black curtains over every window. Make sure they’re thick. I don’t want anyone to be able to see inside. Whose place is this?’

‘My father is owner.’ Vita turned to the guy with the long gray ponytail and spoke to him while pointing to the windows. I followed Hardy into the kitchen where the counters and cabinets were hospital white and sparkling with cleanliness and opening up the refrigerator Hardy let out a sigh. It was filled with packages of meat and beer and cheese and cake and candy and juice and milk and vegetables and breads and condiments and Hardy pulled a bottle of ketchup out of the door.

‘Hey Tony, look, they got Heinz!’

I started checking out the security of the place. There was only one entrance and luckily the windows had been newly installed with working locks and peeking over the windowsill it looked like fucking hunting season outside with the trees and shrubs offering easy cover to anyone wanting revenge.

In the kitchen Hardy opened a bottle of liquor and I heard the soft metal crack of the cap followed by the sound of liquid chugging down his cavernous throat. ‘Any of you guys speak English?’

‘Ein bisschen,’ someone replied.

‘What? . . . You know, English?’

Vita stepped in, ‘He say he speaks a little English.’ Vita turned back to me and said, ‘The black for windows comes soon. You sleep. I have two men watch outside, for you. Okay?’

Vita slapped the keys into my palm and left with the bodyguards as Hardy stepped out of the kitchen sniffing his blackened hands.

‘I love the smell of cordite. But those Russian guns are a fuckin’ mess.’

He walked into the bathroom and turned on the water. Looking at himself in the mirror, he called, ‘Hey! I got freckles. Why didn’t you tell me I had so much blood on my face?!’

‘It looks good on you. You look like Huckleberry Finn.’

Hardy washed his hands and face in the sink while I put my suitcase on the bed and opened it. I took out several Chapman locks and a portable tool kit with accessories and Hardy went to the door and fumbled around with the doorknob, shook his head and told me to use the Amsterdam.

He went into the larger bedroom and laid his long frame flat out on the bed, clothes and shoes included, and a minute later he was snoring like a soggy wet blanket being torn in half.

Premig and the long-ponytail guy came back with a bundle of thick black material that looked like theater curtains and proceeded to hang the cloth over the windows. Two other guys stood guard outside our door while several others stood watch in the park.

I went into the bathroom, popped four Seconals and sucked down a handful of water, rinsed my face then came out to see the apartment looking like a funeral parlor. Premig had a box cutter and proceeded to slice long slits in the curtains so that I or Hardy could look out without being detected. I gave him a nod of approval; then when he left I went to bed.

I dreamed of happy times when I was a kid and playing stickball in the street with my sister Carrie. But then the world turned upside down and I was walking with my sister in a hospital corridor where the walls seemed to go on forever until we came to a tall counter where a nurse stood talking on a telephone. My sister turned to me and said, ‘Daddy tried to kill himself.’

‘No he didn’t.’

‘I heard Mommy and Aunt Diane talking about it. He took poison.’

‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘Yes, he would.’

‘Is he gonna die?’

My mother appeared beside me. ‘Don’t be telling your brother stories like that,’ she gently reprimanded my sister. ‘Of course your father will live.’

‘Why did Daddy try to kill himself?’

‘Because he’s unhappy.’

My mother led us to the counter and it rippled like blurry gray water and my father appeared lying in his bed with a tube in his arm and a smile on his face, but he seemed in a trance, as if whatever he was seeing was in a different room or on another planet. I watched him silently work out equations of reason and sanity in the back recesses of his troubled mind, while on the cold tile floor my sister slept in her blue cotton dress that was faded from years of wash and wearing. She wasn’t wearing any panties.

‘What do you see, Daddy?’

My father’s expression never changed; his eyes didn’t focus on anything except the mysterious film clips playing on the inside of his brain. With a lavender whisper he told me, ‘I’ve seen the end of the world, Anthony. It’s not a pretty sight.’ Tears leaked from his eyes and flew like dragonflies into the air and one came straight at my heart like a baseball thrown right down the middle and I creamed it with the green cut-off broom handle we used as a bat. The new pink Spaulding went soaring over the pavement until it bounced off Dougie Schwick’s father’s gray Impala and rolled into Mrs Henry’s rosebush and by that time I was on my way to third base and Carrie was cheering me to go home because she wanted to see me get my first home run. As the ball was retrieved and thrown towards home plate I had already crossed the blue chalk-drawn pentagon to the joyous screams of my sister, Carrie, who was the pitcher on the opposing team.

By the time I awoke to Vita’s knocking on the door it was nighttime. We rode over to Yossario’s apartment with Premig driving and Vita in the passenger seat and four other guys following in a car behind us. Colored neon lights flashed on restaurant windows and a pack of dogs roamed through an alley like a gang of kids hell-bent on felony; people on the street were jittery and suspicious, they stopped what they were doing and stared at our car as it drove by.

‘What’s up?’ I asked Vita.

‘It seems to have made quite a problem. The girl especially.’

Hardy piped up, ‘Good. That was the point.’

‘Yes. I am afraid you are right. They killed two of my cousins this afternoon. Cut them to . . . pieces.’

‘Why weren’t they armed and on their guard?’ I asked.

‘School children do not carry guns in Berlin.’

That was a good answer.

‘When did this happen?’ I asked.

‘After three o’clock. It will be on TV not. We take care of it . . . I just come from talk to their Eltern.’ Vita said this with anger. Premig didn’t have any reaction and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, his face could have been made of smoke. Hardy took out the 9-mm Glock that Vita had given him at the apartment and released the safety, stood the gun on his knee. I sat back on the seat and enjoyed the fear in everyone else.

Riccardo Montefiore stood in front of the wine rack playing with the dozen or so poker chips he kept on his desk for occasions like this. The dark red bottles of wine laying on their sides and pointing like gun barrels only added to the effect for Angel Mariano Ebbens. Angel ran cocaine and crack for the Franchise and though he wasn’t caught stealing money from the Franchise, he was caught selling his own private supply in competition with the Franchise, which was the same as stealing from the Franchise. For that he now sat cuffed to a chair, his mouth hanging open in astonishment, eyes swollen and bloodshot, the pupils darting in denial. Riccardo Montefiore asked him one last time to tell him exactly what transpired. Angel swore on his mother’s grave and his sister’s honor, babbling incoherently about loyalty and friendship and years of devoted service and when Riccardo Montefiore let the fist of chips drop single-file into his palm with a sound not unlike someone clearing their throat, I cracked Angel on the ear with a cast-iron frying pan. He shrieked and jerked his head and a second later blood began to fill in his ear, but at least he wasn’t babbling anymore. I leaned in to his face, tried to reason with him, gently, in his good ear – I liked Angel and had nothing against him.

‘Angel, I want you to listen to me. Nobody wants to do anything to you. This is a lot of trouble, and a lot of effort. We just want to understand the problem. That way we can fix it.’

Angel looked at me with a cross of pain, fear and hatred, but he was listening.

‘You were a good worker; nobody had any complaints with you, until recently, and no matter who we might get to replace you, the same problem might come up again, right? So let’s fix the thing and get it over with. We got a good thing going here, everybody’s making a ton of fucking money and nobody wants to fuck up a good thing.’

Angel swallowed hard and with it went some of the hatred. He looked at me with pleading, sorry eyes; he was going to talk.

When he was finished Riccardo Montefiore nodded his head and I began putting on my industrial rubber gloves, slipped on my plastic face-shield – I was working with acids at the time. Angel looked first at Riccardo Montefiore then at me, ‘You’re gonna let me go now, right? We’re gonna fix the problem and move on, right?’

I carefully took out the different bottles and stood them on the table next to Angel, lined up according to caustic characteristics. Angel watched me in horror, his lower lip swelled and began to quiver, his eyes became dripping cherries. Before he could find the words to begin the plea for his life, I leaned in and told him, ‘Angel, you stole from the Franchise, that’s the same as stealing from everyone’s pockets. Some of these people got kids, families to take care of. And you’re depriving them of that. Imagine if I came into your mother’s house and just stole money from her; how would you feel? That’s what we’re dealing with here.’

Riccardo Montefiore sipped his wine, gently bounced his chips in his manicured left hand; wore a sated, complacent smile; he liked it when I rationalized. I only felt it was fair; I didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings. By the time Angel told us where his stash was hidden, his face had only three layers of skin left. That’s how I met Hardy. He was the one called in to hold Angel steady while I worked on him, then drive him to the hospital, which was code for never to be seen again.

Premig stopped the car in front of a group of young Turks in designer suits standing in front of a tall orange building. Two guys in wheelchairs spun around toward the street in synchronicity as if connected by an invisible gear. The car behind us pulled up and the four guys got out and joined the group out front and now there were a dozen tough-looking guys in designer suits sneering at each other and reaching nervously into their jackets and it looked like the Turkish version of The Godfather. I was hoping not to become Fredo Corleone.

Hardy and I got out of the car and everyone stepped back. I looked up at the building. It was newly renovated, nestled in-between two old gray buildings of soot-covered concrete. There were colorful flowers painted on the upper floors, simple blossoms of orange and green mixed with blue and red as though painted by happy kids in kindergarten. The windows were lit up on every floor except the third floor, which was completely covered over with black curtains. Hardy gave me a nudge. Vita grabbed one of the young Turks and spoke angrily in his ear while the others stood there gaping at us. Nobody said a word or made a move, but there was an undercurrent of hostility; what had taken place here today really freaked everybody out. Vita went into the lobby and we followed him, Premig hovering constantly at my back with his handless stump in his jacket pocket. In the elevator Vita wouldn’t meet my eyes; I wasn’t sure if he was pissed at me or pissed at the Russians who killed his cousins, but in any event he’d better get over it real quick.

He led us through a narrow corridor where the floor was made of highly polished thin slats of wood like in a bowling alley. A tall wooden door with diamond-shaped panels carved into it opened into a spacious living room of off-white walls adorned with black-velvet paintings. Gray metal tubes shone yellow light down on naked Amazonian women carrying swords and standing victorious over defeated armies of broken, crying men. Hanging by itself on one wall was a gold-framed portrait of Elvis when he was thin.

Yossario stepped in from a side door wearing a silk paisley shirt and pressed khaki pants. ‘Do you like art?’ he said. His nose wasn’t bleeding this time. ‘Sssome of them are originals.’

‘I like naked chicks in paintings,’ Hardy remarked. ‘They’re always cool.’

‘Yes, they are, aren’t they. My ssson finds them distasteful.’

‘Insulting to Islam,’ Vita confirmed.

‘Issslam is insulted! My well-intentioned, ssstudious son should enjoy the fruits of life more readily,’ Yossario said with a chuckle.

Hardy pointed to one painting in particular, a naked blonde-haired, blue-eyed young child straddling a sharpened spear and standing in a battlefield of dead hacked-up bodies, her shimmering wide eyes staring out over the miles of flesh with a vacant, innocent stare. ‘Is that what German girls look like?’

‘They come in a wide variety,’ Yossario answered dryly, then pivoted toward his son. ‘Vita, if it’s not insulting to Islam, would you make our guests some drinks?’

Vita left but he didn’t seem offended by the request.

Near the far wall was a long table set for a formal dinner; four tall chairs had place settings of china, crystal and silver.

‘I’m sorry to hear about the kids this afternoon,’ I said, but Yossario behaved as if he hadn’t heard me. Instead he said, ‘I’d like to show you something,’ and led us into a room at the rear of the house.

A glass rectangular display case took up the middle of the den; inside it was a miniature mock-up of an office complex on a painted street. There were tiny model cars at the curb and trees and bushes surrounding the buildings with wire-stick people in walking poses on the sidewalk.

Vita came in with our drinks and I looked to Yossario who started speaking.

‘Thisss is the cause of all the trouble. We won a government contract to build a complex of office buildings on the Potsssdamer Platz, in the former East Berlin. A very lucrative contract, and if we deliver on time, and on budget, it getsss us more government contracts in the future. There are sssome unworthy people who would like to have this contract for themssselves.’ Yossario stopped and looked at me, then at Hardy. He was stewing inside. I could see the muscles in his jaw tightening, but he tried to keep it hidden; it took a lot of effort to do so.

‘My youngest brother, Dahrel, was killed by a falling steel beam, on a sssite that had no steel beams. The body of Circon, my second brother, is still not found. Several friends have been crippled. And now the two children murdered today. I want to keep my family alive, and my business intact. I don’t want children murdered anymore.’

I wondered if that included the Russian girl.

Dinner was something called cous cous which was no more than ground-up rice with vegetables and lamb mixed in and when Hardy called it Turkish stew Yossario let out peels of laughter. By dessert Yossario had drank two bottles of wine while Hardy had downed five vodka Martinis; I was content to blitz out on the four Seconals I took in the bathroom before dinner. Vita drank some kind of yogurt drink that looked like puke. Yossario sat at the end of the table, his head like a giant plum leaning on the back of his chair. Over dinner he talked about how he got started in life.

Though Vita must have heard this story a thousand times before, he listened in awe as his old man recounted how he came over to Berlin as a young teenager with his father in the early sixties, an exodus of Turks pouring in by the tens of thousands for the massive construction projects taking place in the western part of the city. Thirty-five years later the Turks had formed their own pocket of home with most of them settling here in Kreuzberg, and they had kids and there was plenty of work and life was easier until soon Turkey was just a distant memory of hunger and poverty and joblessness. Yossario and his two brothers arrived with next to nothing and he told of how they grew up with the shadow of construction over their heads and how once they got their jobs they worked from morning till night carrying bricks and digging ditches and doing all the shit work the Germans didn’t want to do, working until their backs were cracking in half. And after eleven years they scraped together enough to start their own company, doing brickwork and putting tarpaper roofs on damaged buildings. He talked of how hard it was back then and how all their friends said they were crazy because of the sacrifices they made and how their families went hungry and cold and suffered deprivation until little by little they clawed their way up but it wasn’t until the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Berlin Wall that things got so good.

‘In a way, your country did no favor to the world by defeating communism,’ he said, leaning forward in his chair, keeping his forefingers pressed against both lips, his thumbs forming a triangle underneath them. ‘It was better when we knew where the enemy was, when the wall protected us. Now they’re everywhere. You unleashed the filthiessst of people, and that’sss what brings us here today.’

Hardy seemed to shake himself awake at these last sentences.

‘Are these real communists we’re dealin’ with?’

‘Former GDR officials.’

‘GDR? What’s that?’

‘German Democratic Republic.’

‘I don’t understand. Are they democrats or republicans?’

‘Neither. They become whatever suits their needs.’

‘What does a guy hafta do to get a straight fuckin’ answer around here?!’

‘They’re Stasi. The sssecret police. The Russians are behind them.’

‘Russians. That’s all I need to know. I hate the fuckin’ Russians. I lost a great uncle in the Korean War. You know who killed him?’

‘The North Koreans,’ I answered dryly.

‘Fuck no!’ Hardy barked, ‘The Russians were behind that.’

Yossario looked like he might respond, but instead shook his head. ‘Well, anyway, that’s what brings us here today. Self-preservation.’

‘How did you hook up with Riccardo Montefiore?’

‘I know Riccardo’s wife, from when she was a little girl.’

‘Lucretia Montefiore?’

‘Yes. Her family name is Tigrit. Her father came from the same village as my father. Just outside Istanbul.’

Hardy asked, ‘Istanbul? Turkey?’

‘Yes. She was born in Turkey but raised here in Berlin.’

Hardy’s face lit up wickedly. ‘Hey Tony, check it out, the Countess is a sand nigger!’ Vita looked like he’d been slapped, but Yossario sipped his wine, didn’t acknowledge Hardy’s crack in any way; sometimes with Hardy that was the best way to go.

‘I don’t understand something,’ I said, truly curious. ‘Why do you need us? Why not do the job yourself?’

Yossario chuckled; the question amused him. ‘This is a family business. I’m a family man. This is for my children, and my nephews and nieces, and their children. I am not an army. You’ve ssseen them outside, everyone with guns. Well, no one carried a gun in their life until two weeks ago. Half of them would ssshoot themselves in the foot if they had to fire them.’

‘Premig seemed pretty comfortable with a gun.’

‘Premig was a colonel in the Turkish army for fifteen years. The others are . . . teenagers, workers. Lambs to slaughter. That’s why you’re here. To let them know that we will fight back to protect what is ours. Nobody pushes around the Americans, and with Riccardo Montefiore as our partner, nobody will push us around either.’

But I wondered if he knew truly what he had bargained away, and then I wondered why Riccardo Montefiore would even want to own a dinky little family-run construction company, in a country where he had no real contacts and certainly no base of operations to work it from. The logistics alone of running a criminal organization were immense.

Just as I was about to wonder something else some well-dressed guy with bushy blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses stepped in, all smiley and cheery and goofy as if he were about to break out in song. He stopped in front of me, stuck out his hand and announced, ‘Hi. I’m Heinrich.’

I lifted three tired fingers and he gripped them tightly.

Hardy shoveled cold lamb into his mouth without looking up from his plate. Hardy hated pretty boys.

Yossario put his hand out as if displaying a new car.

‘Heinrich is the owner, on paper, of the company. A certain number of government contracts are awarded to German-owned companies and Heinrich, through his inssside friends, gets these government contracts for us. Then he sssubcontracts them out to the smaller companies which I own directly, and where we can put our own labor to work. For this he ssshares in all our good fortune.’

‘We’re all working together for the same goals,’ Heinrich said in perfect English, sounding not unlike a corporate spokesman.

We retired to the main living room which was separated from the dining room by three rooms in between. I hadn’t seen a bedroom or anything that would lead me to believe that someone slept here.

Stepping into the main living room was to be smacked in the face again with the pornographic velvet paintings so incongruous hanging over the fine leather couches and modern coffee tables. Hardy went over to his favorite painting and Heinrich strolled up beside him. While Yossario told me he was in New York City once and that he stayed in a hotel near Central Park, I listened to Heinrich croon to Hardy.

‘Pure innocence. Like a budding rose. Yet surrounded by madness and depravity. There’s a sublime majesty about a young girl on the edge of sexual devastation. Don’t you agree?’

‘What are you? A fuckin’ poet?!’

‘No. A pedophile.’

Hardy threw him a sideways glance, then burst out laughing.

Vita stepped in carrying a large sterling silver service tray with a coffee-set on top. Heinrich looked Hardy square in the eyes and told him, ‘My cousin owns a club in Neukölln; I think you’d like it. It’s a private place. He specializes in the sort of things you might be interested in.’ Then he slipped him a round green business card and said over his shoulder, ‘Ask for Volker. He’s my cousin. Of course you’re my personal guest, you pay for nothing. It’s all on the house.’

Hardy looked down at the green circle framed by his forefingers and thumbs, then up at Heinrich strolling over to the couch and the coffee.

It was a masterful performance. Heinrich knew what to be and when to be it; he pulled all the right strings, like a fucking puppeteer. And his English was incredible. I shouldn’t underestimate him.

4

Next morning, Vita and Premig took us in the car through the city while Yossario went to sit with the parents of the two cousins killed the day before. The sky was dense with gray clouds hanging just above the building tops; they painted the streets a neutral tone of despair. Graffiti covered every billboard and empty space, storefronts were plastered with layer upon layer of posters that had been glued poorly and were now peeling off. On a large crowded square sat a fruit and vegetable market, overhead an orange train roared by on an elevated platform. We drove on a narrow two-lane straightway into a traffic circle where Premig made a left turn under the overpass and a beige taxi sat in front of us up on a jack, its driver changing a flat tire in the left lane. Premig rolled down his window and yelled in Turkish and the taxi driver yelled back and Vita looked over at Premig who shut his mouth and fixed his eyes on the road. Hardy chuckled and yelled out his window, ‘Go fuck your mother!’

We were headed for something called Potsdamer Platz