Odysseus Haiku

Last week I headed uptown to Weill Cornell for blood work

Then to to the Metropolitan Museum and Explorer Club to write in peace. The synopsis of ALMOST A DEAD MAN. Over 100,000 words reduced to 800.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN

A SYNOPSIS 

BY 

PETER NOLAN SMITH

Hamburg. Night. June. 1982. The Elbe River. The desolate docks. An empty basement, A chic woman on a chair. A black man circles Greta. Sex photos in his hand. The wig slips off Hans’ head. The banker has been embezzling funds to pay for sex with a street boy, Willi. The next audit. Prison for Hans. Cali, a Reeperbahn pimp, and his handsome friend, Kurt, offer an out. Transfer a money wire to a foreign account. He nods his head.

Kurt contacts a failed poet to come work at BSIRs. Sean Coll. A key witness for a NYPD Internal Affairs’ investigation for two murders outside an after-hours club. One a dirty cop. The other a Russian gangster. A Lufthansa ticket waits at JFK. Who pulled the trigger a mystery, but Sean has a good idea who. He leaves for Germany the next day.

A summer solstice party at Lucas Von Brucken’s decrepit forest estate. Close to the East Germany border. The edge of World War III. 

Lukas. Pfennigless. Still a decadent aristocrat. Vanessa, his young angelic wife, dances with Kurt, a butcher’s bastard stepson. Kurt offers the Grad Student a new life.

His police spy saw Cali and Kurt with the banker. Something was afoot. Kurt and Vanessa just clogs in his plot to steal the money wire transfer. His muscle. SS Tommy, Cali’ murderous henchman. The prize. Cali’s reign of the ErosCenter, St. Pauli’s most lucrative brothel.

Lotte Wessel, a scarred dominatrix. Masked pimps beat her for unionizing the Eroscenter women. A losing streak at a hotel casino. Busted. Kurt by the pool. No one knows the sources of his money. Her services are needed to keep Sean Coll here. No sex. 5000 Deutschmarks. More later. Revenge. Her only meaning in life. She takes the 5000.

A day later Sean in Hamburg. No one at the airport. A taxi to a Elbe forlorn mansion. Inside Lotte in leather whips a naked Lukas. Sean says nothing. Lotte looks at him. Her eyes say stupid American. 

Later Lotte’s Porsche tour of the city. Prosperous unlike bankrupt New York. The club, BSirs, successful. The crowd, publishers, rock stars, models, young, wealthy. A smattering of pimps with their girls. His high school German useless. Sean drinks himself into oblivion.

Sean wakes in the mansion. Music. Lukas painting a naked Lotte. All on video TVs. Scars lace her body. Lukas insults Sean. Kurt’s arrival stops any altercation. Outside Kurt warns Lukas has killed people. Sean has never broken the 5th Commandment.

Sean gets a chic penthouse studio and a VW. A visit to the Eroscenter. Even midday the brothel is busy. Kurt leaves him with Cali, annoyed by the question why he stays in Germany.

“Go where? America with the KKK. Africa? No, here is the only place a black man can be king. The Reeperbahn.”

Kurt and Vanessa. The nude beach of Sylt on the Atlantic. A photographer on the dunes. Kurt has seen him before. A cop.

Cali, the King of the Reeperbahn. He will always remember Kurt’s protection as young boys.

Bsir’s. A success. After midnight many pimps. SS Tommy with Vella, a very young redhead from Bavaria. Sean tells the blonde muscle-builder that he find someone older. SS Tommy slugs Sean. Semi KO. No one stands up to the enforcer and Lotte nurses him at home. All men are men. Dangerous to women and themselves.

In the ErosCenter Cali advises SS Tommy to stay away from the American.

A Swiss banker at home. A Sunday call from Kurt, informing him that his son in a Bangkok prison is close to freedom.

Sean wakes to a silent city. Marchers against Pershing Missiles’ deployment. Lotte returns with food wearing his clothing. Her scars invisible to his eyes. Lotte warns Sean not to trust Kurt. The German brings him to the airport. His first trip to Geneva to pick up money at a bank.

Lukas humiliates Lotte at the studio. He has been using her. She only a tool. He leaves with the videos. The paintings are hers.

The trip to Geneva. Seamless. Back in Hamburg with 200,000 Deutschmarks. The most money he has seen. He gives to Kurt outside the terminal.

Cali’s meeting with a loanshark at the ErosCenter increases SS Tommy’s interest in Lukas’ plot. Something big in the works.

Weeks go by. Vanessa and Kurt need have sex. Sean goes bi-monthly to Geneva. Each trip more money. Temptation. Alex Brucken, a police detective at the airport. Asking questions. Hamburg more and more like New York.

Alex is not happy. This job no longer tracking a man’s wife. He wants out.

The banker calls Cali. Panic. The audit. Next week. Cali has everything in place for the crime.

Kurt at the Von Brucken mansion. Vanessa MIA. The doors locked. He had been a fool. Vanessa has been trapped by Lukas. Cinderella. Kurt on Drugs. Later he picks up Vella on the street. Just to talk.

Summer over. The club empties. Only pimp and their whores. Lotte wants to go. Revenge is more important. Only one more trip to Geneva. The go. Anywhere but Hamburg.

His sister with the Justice Department informs him the FBI want him for questioning. New York is out of the question. Lotte and he make love finally. Kurt ODs. Sean rescues him. One more trip. Enough.

The banker’s hustler Willi is kidnapped by SS Tommy. The safe house. A bunker on the Von Brucken estate. Vanessa by the window. Tomorrow he will ship her to the Emirates. 

Sean on a plane with a million dollars. Direct flight. Temptation. Only Lotte is keeping him here.

SS Tommy and Lukas have Sean attacked. Lotte saves him.

Tomorrow Lukas flies to the Caymans to get the money.

The ticking clock. Cali and Kurt agree this is the week. Willi missing is a problem. Cali suspects interference, but the theft is still a go.

To save Willi the banker sends a fortune to Lukas’ account. SS Tommy takes him to his lover. He stages a murder-suicide to get rid of them both.

In Geneva the banker has nothing for Sean. Kurt outside. The news. The drugs. Heart attack. DOA. Cali tells him to leave the body in Geneva. His henchmen will take Kurt to Paris. Lotte is safe with Cali’s henchman. No one is safe from the pimps.

Lotte escapes from the old pimp. She now knows who attacked her. SS Tommy. He is a dead man. She at the ErosCenter wreaks her revenge. SS Tommy MIA.

SS Tommy breaks into the mansion with an ax. Vanessa his prisoner. Cali suspecting his henchman has follows him. Fight. A shot. Ax to Cali’s side. Almost a dead man. Vanessa kills SS Tommy. 

“Where is Kurt?”

“Paris.”

Sean arrives in Hamburg. The Women of the ErosCenter are in rebellion.  Lotte has savaged the other attacker.  No male is safe. She is not at the mansion. The detective confronts him. Not officially. He goes to her home away from home. The casino.

A doctor tends to Cali. In a studio next to Sean’s apartment. No hospital. Vanessa is in shock. He has yet to tell her Kurt is dead.

Lotte in a hotel room. Luger in her hand. Ready to kill the next man to enter. SS Tommy # 1. Every other male # 2. The first man. 

Sean. She pulls the trigger. Misses. Sean calms her down. She is no saint. Neither is he.

The police have been called to the forest. Two dead bodies in an Audi. Murder-suicide. Police investigate. The mansion door broken. Blood on the floor. The detective had a bad feeling. Lukas’ wife missing. The Baron has returned from the Caymans. Playing the sorrowful husband. The detective doesn’t buy it, but lets the Baron go.

Lukas drives to the house on the Elbe. He overpowers Sean and drags Lotte from the house. Cali arrives in time, but in no shape to fight Lukas. The detective arrives to stop the carnage. He sends away Sean, Lotte, and Cali. Just him and Lukas. One bullet ends Lukas’ life. Not better or worse.

Night time on the autobahn. Out of Germany into France. Paris. The morgue. Kurt on a slab. It didn’t have to be this way, but it is. Cremation in Pere Lachaise cemetery. The story is over. Another begins.

Later at the Explorers Club I redacted Homer's Odyssey's 140,000 words to a haiku.

Fall of Troy
Ulysses
Sails away
Ten years later
Home
Kills all

Sixteen syllables.

Count them

THE CALL OF WILD by Peter Nolan Smith

My life was once ruled by the night. I haunted concerts, bars, clubs, and parties from dusk to dawn from the 60s into the 90s. My retirement from the late life occurred around the turn of the century and the birth of my children completed the process in fear of Chris Rock's curse of being the oldest man in the club.

Last evening I came home from work. My plans for the evening were dinner, a little writing, a glass or two of wine, and then hit my to bed read THE SAVAGE FURY, a non-fiction book about racism, dirty cops, and injustice in New York of the 60s and 70s.

This destiny was disrupted by a phone call from the 347 area code.

A New York City cell phone.

I answered the call and a gravelly voice spoke several indecipherable words.

"Who's this?" Only my wife called at his hour and I was a little annoyed, until I deciphered the thick Delta slang. "Homer, that you?"

"Course it's me. Who you think it was?" Homer was a regular from Frank's Lounge. The rest of the crew loved to rib him about his Deep South drawl, but he was the real thing from Philadelphia, Mississippi.

The wrong side of the tracks part of town.

"Had no idea." Homer and I had a bar stool relationship. 660 Fulton was our universe. He drank Beck's. I drank Stella. Our conversation were face-to-face and this was our first conversation on a phone.

"What's up?"

"I got that thing." His voice dropped to a whisper, as if his cellphone was taped by the NSA seeking 'Ssippi separatists.

"Thing?" I was confounded by 'thing'.

"You know, the shine."

"Shine." The syllable referred to the elixir of the South, Moonshine otherwise known as Mountain Dew or Ole Brokehead.

"What else you think I'm talking 'bout?"

Several months ago the bartender's husband brought up several jars from NC. The 'shine was favored with peaches. We drank the demon liquor with reverence and I remarked that I was in the market for some 'shine. Homer had finally answered my need.

"How much?"

"A gallon for $35."

"I'm in." A liter of Scotch cost the same and I was stashing this 'shine for an emergency and judging from the state of the world and the rising cost of everything under the sun a gallon of distilled corn liquor was a good investment.

"I'll be at the bar in an hour." Homer was good to his word and upon my arrival at Frank's he put the gallon of shine in my hands.

"It's plastic." I had been expecting a hillbilly ceramic jug

"Damn, boy, of course it's plastic. Glass breaks." He shook the bottle. "See them bubbles vanish quick. That means the 'shine is strong."

"And if you take a match to it and it burns blue, then it's clean." LA said from his computer. The forty year-old worked around the corner. His second office was the window table at Frank's, which was our living room.

"Don't you be lighting no matches around 'shine in my bar." Tyrone was in charge of the joint. 'Shine was highly flammable and the health departments of the Deep South condemned the safety of drinking 'white lightning'.

"Shine ain't dangerous is you don't mistreat it."

"I seen friends drink themselfs blind, but that was a bad batch. This is a good 'un."

Homer lifted his finger. The Mississippian had earned his respect. He was seventy-five without a gray hair on his head. He leaned over to me and said, "Put that under the bar stool. You can only drink in a bar what the bar serves, unless Tyrone ain't here and then we do what we want."

"What proof is it?"

"I ain't no chemist, but it's probably 95% alcohol."

"95%."

"Maybe more. It ain't no toy. Now do what I say and put it away before we start sippin'."

I planted the jug between my feet. I had intended to go to sleep at a decent hour. I watched basketball until midnight and bid good-night to Homer, Tyrone, and LA.

"You be careful with that 'shine." Homer wagged a finger. "You got work tomorrow."

"I'll just take it out for a test-drive."

"If it burns your throat it's no good, but if it only burns in your stomach than it's the real thing." LA was a Lakers fan. I was die-hard Celtic Green. He was only worried about me, so he'd have someone to ride during the NBA finals.

"Thanks for the warning." My place was a long two blocks away. Four beers ran through my system like liquid Drano, but the cops were patrolling my street for public urinators. At home I relieved myself in the bathroom and then cracked the cap of the 'shine.

The fumes cleared my head.

A single sip quenched my curiosity, but I resisted the siren call of its magic.

The Call of Wild was for the weekend and then it was time to howl at the moon.

Yee-hah.