Passing Through Koln - 2011

Published Dec 25, 2011

Back in December 1982 a Paris-bound train approached the Rhine Bridge into Koln. A dark dawn sky shod the winter morning sky. Building lights rimmed the overflowing river. I sat on the left side of the DeutscheBahn passenger car. The six-seat compartment was all mine. Few people took the midnight milk train from Hamburg. It stopped at every station.

Two bags lay at my feet. They held everything that I hadn't wanted to leave in Hamburg. That northern city lived on even less light than Koln. The nightclub at which I had worked was in a slump. The pimps of the Reeperbahn had driven away our 'good' customers. The owner had said that they spent money, although he hadn't paid my commission for the last two months.

SS Tommy was the owner's muscle.

Two days earlier the blonde bodybuilder presented a bill for 10,000 Deutschmarks about $6000. The itemized bill listed my intimacy with a bikini model in detail. I was thinking free love. Hamburg wasn't that kind of city. I handed over SS Tommy the keys to my BMW 2002, which I had crashed orange sets car a week ago in a forest north of the city. It wasn't going anywhere without a tow.

The train crossed the bridge and the silhouette of the medieval cathedral loomed out of the murk. Thousands of workers and hundreds of skilled artisans had spent over a hundred years erecting the massive monument to Christianity. The US Eighth Air Force had conducted bombing raids on the city during World War II. The generals said they avoided targeting the cathedral, but aerial photos show that everything around the gothic structure had been leveled and the towers bore the scares of bombs, showing that those masons and workers knew how to build something to stand the passage of time good and bad. It had survived the bombing raids of World War II relatively unscratched and served as a beacon to the faithful. I was not one of them, but I respected the beauty of its grandeur.

The train stopped in the station. I pulled my hat over my face, fearing that SS Tommy had notified his Gestapo compatriots in Cologne about a fleeing American. The doors closed without a rush of Zuhalterei and the train pulled out of the station. Paris was eight hours away. I already had arrived to safety.

The color of the sky was gray.

All over Europe, but Paris was a city made for that color.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER FIVE

For the past forty years Hollywood had scorchingly portrayed every German as a Nazi. Most young Germans were no different than Americans, wanting the war to be over for good. 'Germany' to Sean conjured up the Black Forest, Mad Ludwig's castles, the Rhine, beer, knockwurst, koo-koo clocks, lederhosen, Goethe, Bach, Beethoven, Schiller, Mann, Hesse, Wagner, Marlene Dietrich, LILI MARLENE, Rommel, the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad, Ilsa of the SS, and inescapably Hitler. Not once in his life had he ever thought about visiting this city. Even after seeing AN AMERICAN FRIEND.

He left his motorcycle on East 11th Street and Avenue D. A dangerous block. Uncle Carmine owned a lot there. It was safe. The Sicilian plumber had once been a merchant marine. He smiled upon hearing Sean’s plan.

“Hamburg, I went there a few times in the Sixties.”

“You see the Beatles there.?”

“No, I only had time to visit the whores and they were plenty of those and pimps. A nasty town. Be careful. It was safe, but some parts were as bad as the East Village. Who you have staying at your place?”

“A young Swedish weightlifter.”

“Swedes are good subleasees. Clean. Pay on time. Any problems call me.” He knew all about his problems with the 9th Precinct.

“If anyone asks about me, tell them I’m in Hamburg.”

“Better I say nothing.” Like most Sicilians honored the traditions of omertà or holding his sand. Sean went back to his apartment and packed a bag, then dressed in a black shirt, suede shoes, and an midnight blue English suit. His mother had bought it for his college graduation. Sine laude. His Swedish subleasee sat in the chair by the window. He wished he was him. Before leaving for JFK the young man asked Sean, "Didn't the Beatles play there?”

“Yes."

Everyone knew that.

Sean took a taxi to JFK. No one asked him anything at Immigration or Customs. He was dressed as a good citizen. His bag only had clothing and a journal. It told everything and more. The trans-Atlantic flight was on schedule and took off on time and for the first time in weeks he fell asleep with all his cares in the world behind him.

A little after dawn the Lufthansa flight from Frankfort slipped beneath the European overcast and landed at his destination on time. All the travel books mentioned the Star Club and proclaimed Hamburg as a vibrant port city. Now he was there.

As the 747 taxied through the morning mist Sean had asked himself,, ”What am I doing in Germany?"

Going back to New York was not an option, yet Sean remained in his seat, as the other passengers deboarded the plane. The flight crew motioned for him to leave and Sean walked off the 747 into the nearly empty terminal. After retrieving his one bag, he approached customs and immigration.

"Passport, bitte." The officer regarded his papers and stamped a six-month visa in his passport. He passed through the arrival doors. Unknown faces greeted Sean. No Kurt or Bertram. He was exactly where and when he should be. He went to a phone booth and he dialed Kurt’s number. There was no answer.

The other passengers and their families vacated the terminal. A pale-faced police officer in a green uniform passed Sean. Loitering in an airport terminal wasn’t a crime be a crime and he was too tired to worry about setting a bad example. He sat on a bench. The struggle to keep his eyes open lasted only a few seconds.

Thirty minutes later a herd of businessmen in pinstriped suits hurried into the terminal. Sean snapped awake. His bag was at his feet, attesting to Germans’ honesty, if nothing else.

A young policeman walked past him and a paranoia-driven delusion that the long arm of the NYPD had alerted Interpol to his arrival seized him. He sat upright, as the uniformed officer addressed him in German, then politely asked in English, "Are you lost?"

Sean lifted a piece of paper.

“No, my friends were supposed to meet me. I didn’t know how to call them.”

"Maybe I can help." The officer looked at the paper and dialed the number.

After thirty seconds he hung up and pressed 'O' and then spoke German too rapidly for Sean. He wrote down an address and said, "Your friends live on Kaiserringstrasse. Maybe twenty minutes by taxi. It should cost forty marks."

"Viele Danke." Sean’s dealings with New York cops had ill-prepared such cooperation or the German policeman wishing his good-bye. “Have a good stay in Hamburg.”

Outside the terminal he walked to a waiting taxi. A rap on the Mercedes’ window, woke the scruffy driver. The back door's lock popped up and Sean sat in the rear. The car smelled of the driver’s hours behind the wheel. Some things remained the same from city to city. He cracked the window and handed the address to the driver, who grunted and drove away from the airport.

The road was smooth and the streets were inordinately clean. The houses were orderly and their lawns were well-manicured. The passing suburbs could have passed for any affluent city in the western world, except the billboards were in German. Sean read a few, but soon gave into exhaustion and didn't open his eyes, until the taxi stopped before a high brick wall on a tree-shaded street.

"Ein Kaiserringstrasse," The driver pointed to a faded blue door and told his passenger, "Vierzig mark, bitte."

The Mercedes abandoned him to the quiet street. A cool mist veiled the white sun and sea salt was in the air. The house was close to the Elbe River. There was no buzzer.Sean pushed the door open with his foot and entered a neglected garden.

Tall weeds choked the yard. Creeping ivy strangled twisted oaks. A dirt path led through the wasteland to a Gothic mansion. Cracks crawled up the masonry, paint flaked off the wall in sheets, and the roof missed many shingles.

Only the BMW and Porsche in the driveway suggested any inhabitants and Sean climbed the crumbling limestone steps, expecting the timeworn building to dissolve into thin air, as a raspy breeze curled through the reeds by an algae-choked pond surrounded by statues of headless nymphs. Sean shivered and called out, "Bertram. Kurt."

The names died without any echo from the garden.

The front door was ajar and the musty air from within the house was tainted by the sting of fresh paint. He called out again and stepped inside, his footsteps creaking across the warped floorboards. Heavy curtains blocked the light from the first room and Sean groped for a light switch against the wall. His fingers tapped a greasy button and electricity blazed from a chandelier precariously fastened to the buckled ceiling.

A clutter of paint tubes and cans in the former dining room surrounded an easel. Empty champagne bottles stood in the far corner. Color-smeared rags partially carpeted the floor. In the midst of the chaos a painting of a nude brunette with a pageboy haircut viewed through broken glass rested on an once-elegant chair.

"Anyone here?" Sean's voice quickly drowned in the neglect, as he admired the voyeuristic skill with which the artist had captured the shattered woman’s wantonness. Sean dropped his bag on the floor. He had slept in worst places, except a savage growl vibrated through the house to be succeeded by a woman's guttural cries. Sean picked up an empty champagne bottle, then charged up the crooked stairs down the gloomy second-floor hallway to where the woman gasped, "Nein, nein, nein. Nicht wie das."

Sean peered into the room. Sputtering candles lit the near-naked brunette from the painting. A pale-skinned man was on his knees and she was far from helpless.

Thigh-high black patent leather boots with stiletto heels rose above her knees. A studded dog collar encircled her neck. The cuirass of steel chains draped across her chest partially hid her pointed breasts. Metal rings tightly encircled their tips, so her blunt nipples were achingly erect. A belt was looped in her right hand. On most women the entire ensemble was a folly, but the brunette pulled her attire, as if it were her second skin.

A spider web of thin scars latticed her torso. None had been accidental. Her heavily made-up eyes and lips coated with a shiny black lacquer failed to disguise her facial features had been catastrophically warped like the tectonic plates of the Earth. Neither her deformities nor the man with stringy whitish-blonde hair crawling at her feet detracted from the illusion of her simultaneously being an angel and whore, although Sean cringed, as the belt repeatedly cracked against the man’s flesh.

Her victim sagged forward, as he tensed for the next blow. The leather fell again and again, ripping mercilessly into the flesh. The man grabbed onto the iron bedstead. She knocked away his hands and he flopped onto the floor. Her talon-tipped fingers wrapped around the man's hair, as she said, "Ja, nichts, du bist nichts, mein Mistvieh."

When the brunette turned her head, Sean nearly kneeled to join the slavish worship. A sheen of sweat on her skin shone in the candlelight, as the cold amber eyes examined the stranger without any alarm before she brunette reached down to strangle the man. His panting was strained, yet his red face glowed with anticipated pleasure. A video camera in the corner recorded the entire erotic asphyxiation. The images played on a TV screen. Sean was embarrassed by his arousal of their elaborate ritual and backed away from the doorway.

On his way down the stairs their struggle seemed to intensify.

Back in the painting studio he lay on the carpet and stuck wet paper wads in his ears to block out the noise. His eyes were shut, but the images of this woman unfolded in his mind like crumpled photos of pin-up girls from the ancient Playboy magazines, the creases forming the same tangle of scars across her skin.

Upstairs Petra doubled the thick belt in her hand. A whip was more effective, except Lukas' back had not recovered from the severe lacerations of their previous appointment. Only Petra Wessel had the proper motive to exact the proper penance from his flesh.

"Koter." Petra pushed off Lukas like a dog in heat.

"Ich bin Ein Koter." He declared himself a cur and assumed a crouching position with outstretched arms. "Schlag mir. Bitte."

Petra had long ago perceived someone being 'top' to another's 'bottom' hardly demarcated who was master and who was slave. She showed no mercy for Lukas. The belt smacked explosively on his back. The pain reverberated through his trembling limbs. At number ten Petra halted for several seconds. His old wounds had re-opened and the blood trickled down his back to form a red delta at the base of his spine. Lukas watched the red drops drip from his chest to the stone floor and Petra dug her spike heel into his calf mercilessly. "Willst du mehr?" Lukas nodded. His breathing paced ragged at twenty, his skin gleamed with blood and sweat at thirty, his hands shook at forty, then at fifty he cried out with pleasure, as the release of endomorphins pulsated from his back like a priceless morphine shot and he murmured the safety word.

Petra stopped and panted from exertion. Her thighs were flecked with blood. She lowered the belt to her side and sat on the chair, sticking her boots underneath his head. He licked them clean, as his tongue departed from the glossy leather to that first raised ridge of scar tissue slightly above her knee.

Petra directed his attention to whatever he had missed with a riding crop, telling Lukas that he was a good dog, which signaled this session’s end. Lukas got to his feet, as if he had snapped out of a trance and asked, “You ever wonder why?”

“Why what?” Petra unfastened her outfit like a gladiator weary from combat.

"Why the pain?" Lukas wiped away the blood with a towel without exhibiting any discomfort from his new wounds, as if to prove invulnerability.

“I’m no psychologist.” Petra never asked any ‘freier’ questions, but the customers always wanted to confess their motives and Lukas was no different. “I’ve tried everything; cocaine, heroin, homosexuality, orgies in search of the ultimate sensation, but only pain makes me feel alive. I thought you of all people would understand that epiphany.”

Before Petra had luckily passed out from her beating, each blow from her assailants had dragged her through an intense agony, She touched her left eye instinctively, recalling the horror of it popping out. She hated Lukas speaking, as if these meetings bestowed upon him an insight into true suffering, because she possessed a realistic grasp of the truth and countered, "Doesn’t your wife make you happy?"

"Marrying her was a mistake." Lukas stroked the lacerations on his back, as if they were a work of art. "One I am stuck with at the moment. Your friend, Kurt, is very much in love with my wife, but if she went with him, then I will be free to marry you."

"You would marry me?" While men had offered to rescue her from a life of sin, none had proposed marriage. An elopement with Petra would scandalize all of Hamburg, but Lukas was a big a fool as any ‘trick’, if he believed her salvation could be achieved through a sacrament.

"If Vanessa was out of the way, I will." Lukas had gained nothing from Vanessa other than having a wife other men wanted. He put on his shirt, the silk blotting with splotches of red. Petra will never take him seriously, until his wife was out of the way. “You know we are made for one another.”

"Do not say that." She threw Lukas his clothes. "I have to attend to my guest."

"Ah, yes, your guest.” Lukas pulled on his trousers and slipped on his shoes. “Who is he?”

"Kurt hired him to work at the nightclub." Petra stuck with Kurt’s cover story.

"Another American in Hamburg," Lukas stated in reference to Wim Wenders' AMERICAN FRIEND.

Petra regarded movies as a pale reflection of life and hoped, Lukas would leave without launching into a discourse about his beloved cinema. “Yes, they come and go."

As he crossed his tie, Lukas smiled inwardly, since the American might be involved in Kurt and Cali’s plans and he asked, "What about tomorrow?"

"You’re paying the rent here. You can come and go as you pleased as long as you pay for my time too." Petra was amazed at his capacity for pain as well as his paying an exorbitant price for one session. His obsession for pain did not prevent her from keeping a gun at her bedside, because Lukas was rumored to have killed two men in Morocco during the 1970s. He was not to be trusted, then again no man was.

Lukas lay an envelope containing 5000 DMs on a table, as if it were a down payment on her soul and left the room without another word. Once certain he had left the house, Petra went downstairs to the studio. The American was sleeping on the floor. She pulled open a curtain and nudged him with her naked foot.

Sean sat up and opened his eyes.

The brunette’s electric-blue silk nightgown barely softened her nail-tough exterior. Without her high heels she was his height. Heavy gold bracelets, earrings, and chains on her wrists, neck, waist, and ears indicated a distrust of banks. She examined him with narrowed eyes and said, "Kurt told me you could pass for a young Orson Welles playing a cop."

"That's the Irish in me." Sean stood up and brushed the sticky rags from his jeans.

"Coll isn’t an Irish name." Her left eye was icier than the right and Sean noticed its movement was out of synch with the right. In fact the color didn’t match the other and he suspected it was fake. "No, my grandfather used an alias to cross the border into America. Somehow it stuck. I'm sorry about the intrusion.”

"Herr Coll, I heard you on the steps." She folded her arms, pushing her breasts together, then smiled mockingly to infuriate Sean, who said, "You could have locked the door."

"And spoil the mood?" The woman walked out of the room. "Come with me, I will show you where to sleep."

Sean trailed her to the neighboring room. The windows gave a view of a fog-shrouded tanker on the river. She pointed to the small bed in the corner.

"You can sleep there."

"What about Bertram and Kurt? They were supposed to meet me at the airport."

"It was a late night at the club and you managed to get here on your own."

She leaned against the door, her legs apart, so the silk lay against her pelvis. He hadn’t slept with a woman since Lisa six months ago. Her stance warned he should save his offer for a more accommodating woman.

“Guess they were right. What is your name?"

"My name?" The silk robe slipped from her left shoulder, revealing a rounded breast, its nipple swollen. The shiny blue material further separated to show her soft belly bisected by a gold chain. Her left hand closed the robe and said, "Petra Wessel."

"Wessel? Like Horst Wessel?" Sean referred to the old Nazi martyr from the 1930s.

"So you are up on your history.” Maybe if the Nazis had won, she might have been royalty, but those ghosts are better left dead and buried. “Maybe we can have a test someday."

She stepped away from the door, leaving behind the musky smell of another man on her skin. Her footsteps climbed the stairs and a door slammed shut. It was a foreign city, a haunting house, a strange way to wake up, and this woman. For today his problems had been left in New York. Sean took off his boots and lay on the bed. Sleep was hardly what he experienced next, but no dreams of H-bombs invaded his dreams and he was happy.

Least for now. SIX The Peugeot 405 labored up the hills to Joux Plateau through the villages above Lac Leman and the summer wind combed through golden hay. Cows grazed in the pastures, their tails swinging lazily, while farmers tended to their chores. Tourists loved the bucolic scenery, but this was not a joyride for the gray man behind the wheel.

Almost A Dead Man - Chapter 1

ONE

The damp scurry of claws across the floor startled the woman on the battered chair and she lifted her black stiletto heels in horror. Rats were the least of her problems. Over the phone her lover had suggested a nocturnal rendezvous in Hamburg’s harbor district. The woman had expected rough sex. Instead two men had been waiting in the disused warehouse. Now in a damp basement she pleaded, “Please let me go, I haven’t done anything wrong?”

"Nothing wrong?” The black man in the spotless jogging suit circled the chair. Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. He swatted the 40-watt bulb dangling from the rafter, then tapped the woman’s gaunt face.

“Are you a saint?”

“No, I am far from a saint.” The expensive wig flopped onto a folded lap.

“These are very arty.” The muscled interrogator slapped a set of grainy photos. “I can’t see that you are a man and your friend’s skin almost is as white as ivory in black and white. Very good composition.”

“They are only souvenirs.” The thirty-two year old banker shivered in the slick plastic dress. He had dressed for sex, not an interrogation by Hamburg’s most notorious pimp.

“Expensive souvenirs, nicht war?” A private collector might pay $20 for the explicit photos. They were worth much more to the right people.

“Yes, they are.” The wicked weekend in a St. Pauli hotel had cost over 2000 Deutschmarks or half his monthly salary. The photos’ cheap thrill had failed to satisfy his desires and Hans had raided various accounts within the bank to supplement his perversions for the past two months. He had yet to add up how much.

“And now you are in trouble.” The black man was as tired as his vicious role as any actor performing Hamlet for the ten-thousandth time. Still his audience flinched on cue, when he dropped the lurid snapshots on the man's skirted lap.

“You know who I am, yes?”

"You are Cali Nordstrum." The newspapers regularly featured stories about the pimps. Only last week he had escaped a murder attempt. The police had no leads on the identity of the failed assassin. The list of suspects ran into the hundreds.

"Stop your sniffling. Some of my best friends are Transvestis and Schwules.” Cali backed away and his scarred black face melted into the gloom. “We are not here to hurt you or blackmail you, but because my best hustler has fallen for you."

"Es tut mir lied." The transvestite buried his veiny hands in the fake hair like a muff. "All I want is to protect Willi. I can pay you."

"I am not running a marriage service for the Huren or Husen of the Reeperbahn.” Cali lunged forward like a cobra and the man on the stool toppled backwards. The pimp caught his arm. "Maybe I'll send Willi away.”

"Not that." A high heel slipped off his foot. "I will do whatever you ask.”

“Whatever?” Cali kicked the shoe into the corner.

Two months ago his best rentboy had mentioned a cross-dressing client bragging about paying for sex with pilfering funds from a leading bank. The pimp related the Kalbflesch's story to his partner in crime, who suggested that the hustler discover his lover’s actual position in the bank. Several days later Willi Stief learned Hans Roth oversaw money transfers throughout the Europe. Cali advised the hustler to fall in love with the banker. A month of delightful deceit led Hans Roth to this basement. There was only one way out and Cali crouched by the chair. "Do you have an open mind?"

For ten years Hans had protected his name, job, and family from disgrace. Liaisons with street boys lasted one night. Sex with Willi had incarnated his true persona and he asked hopefully, "Why?"

"First, you are woman trapped in a man's body. Second, Willi is too expensive for your salary,” Cali explained, because most people required more than one motive to cross the line from good to bad.

“Finally you have been stealing money you can never repay to the bank."

“Willi told you everything.” Tears seeped from Han’s eyes.

"Only because we can help each other." Cali mapped out his scheme with the persuasiveness of an airline ticket salesman selling the last helicopter seat at the Fall of Saigon. “This is a chance to get enough money for you and Willi. No one will think of searching for you in Thailand. Not as a woman. Were you lying about your commitment to Willi?"

"No." The man’s Adam’s apple gulped in hope. The desperate always bet on long shots.

"Your first name is Hans, yes?"

"I prefer Greta."

"Greta, I am a better friend than enemy. You can contact me at this number in an emergency. Tell Willi nothing. This is 'our' secret." He handed the banker a wad of 100-DM notes. "Give him this slowly. It will come out of your cut later."

“I’ll follow your every command.” His hand reached for the money and Cali snatched the man’s ear so hard that the cartilage partially snapped from the skull. A butcher at the city slaughterhouse had taught him the trick. The ear staying on Hans’ head was not a sign of weakness. This had only been a warning.

"Greta, you understand there's no backing out?"

"Yes," Hans said through watery eyes and Cali released him.

“What else?"

"Thank you.” The young man arranged his wig. He had started wearing dresses after playing with his sister’s dolls. The material was softer than his trousers and shirts. Lingerie on a man was not a sin. Only a forbidden nocturnal pleasures with Willi.

"Thank me, when this is all over." Cali nodded and his friend opened the basement door for a young black leather angel with bleached white hair. Willi was pretty, although heroin had got the better of his youth. The black pimp hated drugs. They cut into productivity. His associates became sloppy. Mistakes cost time, money, and lives in his business.

The banker was blind to Willi’s deterioration. They embraced as man and woman. They boith had earned privacy.

“Let’s leave the lovers alone.”

Neither his friend nor he needed to witness the hustler’s performance. On the stairway Kurt Oster pulled out a cigarette. The flame from a gold lighter illuminated a rugged face.

"Are we really going to cut him in?”

"Just because we are criminals doesn't mean we have to be dishonest." In the beginning it was always luckier to believe no one was going to get hurt. “Everyone will get what they deserve. I’ll see to that.”

He climbed from the basement. He hated the the smoke. Cigarettes killed thousands of people every year. The police never arrested the manufacturers. Persecuting the pimps made better headlines. Sex and crime sold well for the Hamburger Morgenblatt.

From the warehouse loading dock he surveyed the street. Only three cars were in sight. None were running and no one sat behind the wheel. It was a hot night for June.

“Anything wrong?” Kurt flicked the cigarette at his shadow on the cobblestones.

“Someone is out there.” He felt eyes on him everywhere.

“No one comes to the harbor at night.”

The two walked to Cali’s 1982 Mercedes-Benz 380SL.

“We did.”

Cali’s premonitions were his early radar warning.

“And we haven’t done anything wrong.”

Kurt’s reddish hair had been cut two days ago in Milan. The jean jacket came from World’s End, a punk s on the King’s Road and the gold-buckled loafers were from GUcci in Milan. Only one shop in Paris carried 501 jeans. Kurt drove a 1961 Thunderbird. He had purchased after seeing Wim Wender’s AMERICAN FRIEND. He had expensive tastes in women too.

“Yet?” Cali spoke German, ate sausages, liked Schlager rock. His black skin condemned that he was an Auslander to nearly every German, except one person and that person wasn’t his mother. Kurt and he had been friends from a tough childhood on Hafenstrasse by the Elbe.

“Which is why I have an American for the Sonderboch.” German police loved arresting international criminals. “Someone from Hamburg might suspect something, but the American nothing.”

“Is he stupid?” A sucker to hold the bag might buy them a few hours’ head start, if things went bad.

"No, worse. Broken-hearted."

"Ach." Nothing blinded a man more completely than love. Kurt added another missing ingredient.

"Plus Petra will act as the lure."

"Are you mad? She is dangerous.”

"The greater the risk, the greater the gain.”

"Just once I would like someone to lie to me." Cali held no illusion about this enterprise ending in failure. The State severely punished bank robbery. His associates imposed the death penalty.

“I’ve never lied to you.”

“Not once?” His Swiss bank account he’d enough to finance flight, but not in Europe.

“Not about anything important.” Kurt was overextended to several loansharks. The money from this robbery was all he needed to get the woman of his dreams and she had been chosen from the stars.

“You don’t want to do this, I understand.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Last week Cali had exited from Cuneo,a Italian restaurant off the Reeperbahn. A 5-DM coin lay in the gutter. He had been raised poor and bent over to pick up the Sechser. An unseen gunman pumped five shots over his head from a BMW. He saw the face in the car. Cali had never seen before seen the man. He had many enemies.

The next day he had ordered a Jurnfernstieg jeweler to dip the lucky piece in gold for a medallion. The preceding King of the Reeperbahn had died in his bed, because a rival had stabbed him in the heart. He had been thirty-six. Leaving a good-looking corpse was the goal of a fool.

“I could use a long holiday and stealing millions isn’t any different from stealing an apple. The trick is not getting caught.”

"At least not by the wrong people." Neither were worried about the police. A score like this one attracted another kind of trouble.

Kurt’s daydream upset Cali. His friend should have been concentrating on the job ahead, instead of another man’s wife. He popped open the trunk of the Benz. Cali loved the new car smell. He reached into the trunk's secret compartment and handed over a manila envelope.

“That enough money?”

"For now it is.” The thickness was more than enough to open an account in Switzerland. Within one month it will grow into several million Deutschmarks. One plus one sometimes equal more than two, but that equation needed a few more people.

“Never.” Kurt tucked the envelope inside his jacket. People feared them, but no one offered them respect. Millions changed their opinions.

Cali was placing his life in his friend’s hand again. They had grown up on the docks. Neither of them had known their fathers. Maybe Kurt might now pass for Mittel-Klasse, but pimps and whores were Cali’s life. Few of his fellow 'Zuhalterei' had completed high school.

SS Tommy, his right-hand man, oversaw their control of half Hamburg's prostitutes with violence. The bodybuilder had paid cash for his Ferrari 308 GTSI. Mack 'Die Alte’, his enforcer, beat the rival pimps into submission. His recent investment in Pattaya’s go-go bars had earned him a fortune.

Cali’s fellow pimps understood the extreme measures necessary to control Hamburg's streetwalkers, part-time call girls, gay rent-boys, and underage 'Strichmadchens'. Fear was his greatest defense against their turning on the illegitimate son of a black US Army sergeant was an 'Auslander'. That and no mercy.

“This is me and you.”

“Against the world.”

“As always.” They shook hands to seal their childhood pact once again. He walked to his electric-blue 1960 T-bird, lost in the dream of a better world to come. Cali checked the street again. No one was there. No one he could see, but it paid to act, as if someone was there, because that way the unexpected came as no surprise.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 3 by Peter Nolan Smith

That night I stopped at a disco on Rue Montmartre, intending to wait out Brigitte's early morning departure. Philippe's previous girlfriend danced with a natural wantonness to WARM LEATHERETTE. Her partner was a famous French singer. My eyes x-ed him from the club.

Honey-hued skin covered the teenager's long lean limbs. Lisa had possessed the same boyish body. Candia noticed my staring and I turned to the bar. The cold beer in my hand was empty and I would have left, if Candia hadn't accosted me.

"Your friend Che says you're good in bed."

"She was exaggerating." Lying was more like it.

"She didn't seem the type to joke about sex." A finger toyed with a froth of golden hair. "And I saw the way you looked at me."

"My cousin says you can tell how someone fucks by the way they dance." I was trying to scare the half-Puerto Rican/Jewish teenager from any entanglement with someone almost twice her age, but Candia simply smiled and said, "Long and hard."

"Shouldn't you be home?"

"Girls like me aren't expect to be Cinderella." A kiss led to my hotel, where she stripped off my clothes with teenage hunger. She emerged the victor. On sweat-damp sheets Candia said, "You weren't half-bad."

"Not the best?" My flesh was scrapped raw.

"My ex was huge." She stroked me to a painful hardness and lay on her stomach with her ass in the air. "I like it from behind. It makes you seem bigger."

I attributed the marathon to her half-Puerto Rican/half Jewish blood. As she got dressed, I thought that was it, instead she said, "You have no one and I have no one. Everyone else does. Winter is coming on. I don't like sleeping in a cold bed. You want to live with me?"

"What about love?" Staking my heart on a teenager's whim was a risky proposal. My other choice was more of the same of the months before last night. I played the long odds.

"I think you know the difference." She kissed my cheek once and went to the door. "Most men do by your age. So what will it be? Me or a long cold winter?"

"Warm in bed sounds good."

Candia went home to inform her mother, while I crossed the river to Brigitte's apartment. She considered my moving as a betrayal of her dog's love. As a friend she should have wished me good luck, stead she said,

"What does a man want from a woman? To be his bride? The mother of his children? What can that little bitch know about love?"

"About as much as anyone." No formula predicted the paths of the heart.

"You think sex will help you forget that girl from Buffalo?" Brigitte's jealousy was more deep-rooted. "Fucking is not the answer."

"Neither is sleeping alone." I packed my bags in five minutes. Angus whined his good-bye and Brigitte asked for the keys. One word would have saved my long train ride to the 15th arrondisement, except the door shut and I heard the TV telling the news. I walked out of the building and caught a taxi on the bridge.

The driver knew the address. Candia's atelier at the artist refuge La Ruche was located across from Paris' Lost and Found Bureau. Her airy 1930s artist loft contrasted with the quartier's dreary buildings. My house-warming gifts were a stereo tape deck and an unspoken vow of fidelity. Candia slept in my arms surrounded by Mickey Mouse dolls. My French improved in bed, although the honeymoon period had a short shelf-life.

I stole books about love and sex. The millions of words failed to answer any question about love. Candia sensed my malaise and suggested a psychiatrist, who prescribed pills. The downers offered more emptiness and I threw them into the gutter.

We ate boudin with her mother on Sundays and dined at cous-cous restaurants on Monday. We vacationed twice in Normandy. Our reflection in the store windows mirrored those of content couples as long as I didn't look in our eyes.

Bernard opened a dance club near Opera. Le Reve's plush decor harkened back to the 50s. The young rich loved the mix of soul and classic French hits stitched together by Bernard's world hits. We hired a young black bouncer to handle the voyous. Jacques had run with several gangs from the outer suburbs. A two-year stint in prison had not soured his smile. The young girls from the good neighborhoods thought the muscular Martiniquean handsome and came in droves to try their luck.

These beauties in turn attracted men who brought them drinks. A glass of champagne cost $20 and Le Reve coined money.

A week after the opening an older man entered with two dowdy women in fluffy coats. His nose was splayed across his upper lip like a wet sox. An argument ensued with the cashier about the cover charge.

"Give one reason you don't have to pay and you can come in for free." I could tell he had been someone once. "All you have to say is you're friends with Moses and you're in."

"We never pay," the ex-fighter rasped in a punished voice. "Not to un putain Amerlot."

"Fucking American." The insult was rewarded with an immediate response. "Jacques, escort these frogs out of the club."

Puzzlement mired on Jacques' face and the fiftyish blonde woman glared with disbelief. She looked very familiar and I ran out to say they could come in, except they had already reached the boulevard.

"So can you explain why you threw out Brigitte Bardot?" Bernard asked at the door.

"Brigitte Bardot?" The boxer's companion re-assembled into the legendary sex symbol of AND GOD CREATED WOMEN as would anyone who was Brigitte Bardot.

The story of her rejection hit the morning papers and I expected the Paris Police to begin deportation proceedings, instead the passage of time had rendered the animal lover's beauty passe to today's youth and our business doubled with their appreciation of my indiscretion, though Bernard suggested that I be more tact in the future.

"We will be old one day too."

At home the story between Candia and me was fraying at the edges, for the happiness of a relationship can be measured by the distance between a man and woman in bed and my arrivals near dawn earned Candia's back. Our lovemaking diminished to a monastic stalemate and her silence indicted every man as a potential threat.

We needed time apart and Candia spent the summer modeling in Japan. I called Tokyo every night. Her rare pick-ups mimicked Lisa's vanishing act in Europe and my imagination painted of a pantheon of Japanese men eating sushi off her body. Sherri came to perform a series of lesbian films in Versailles. This time she was alone. Che had run off with a man.

"Why are we unlucky in love?" I asked at La Coupole Brasserie.

"We are lucky in love. It's relationships we suck at," Sherri eyed a fresh-faced Sorbonne student, then her lids drifted across her irises. She was treating her pain with drugs. "At least long relationships."

"Any time I've been faithful to a woman, it's ended badly." Most of my romances had ended like a 747 cartwheeling into an Iowa cornfield.

"Any time you have been unfaithful you've achieved the same result." Her remedy for a broken heart was an orgy of women topped by heroin.

"Meaning?" My remedy was more wine.

"Meaning you shouldn't worry so much about love." Sherri autographed a waiter's bill. She had fans everywhere. "You can't do anything about the things you can't do anything about."

"So nothingness is easier to achieve than somethingness." I envisoned sitting in bed alone with the clock ticking out the seconds at the speed of a 45 spinning at 16 RPMs.

"No, some things you can't change, because they're beyond your power."

"So I should do nothing."

"Something will happen when you least expect it."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then I'll push your wheelchair down the stairs when you're 80."

"That a promise?" Earlier would be better.

"We're family. Remember?" At least Sherri had Boo although parrots usually outlive their owners.

"Cousin and cousin."

"Forever."

Sherri huffed some Persian Brown and nodded into the brasserie banquet.

I ordered another bottle of Sancerre. I leaned against Sherri after the second. I don't receall how I got back to Impasse Dantzig. I slipped into bed and thought about my life.

At thirty-two I should have had a wife, a car, and kids plus a dog and bills.

I probably should have drunk another bottle of wine.

I reached over for Candia. The bed was empty. She was still in Japan. I dressed quietly and went to the phone booth in front of the Bureau Des Choses Trouves et Perdus. I dropped several 10-Francs cons and the slot and came home. My father answered and asked, "When are you going to settle down?"

"You mean move to Boston and live like everyone else?"

"It worked for your mother and me."

"I'll give some thought."

"You're only thirty-two. Don't throw the rest of your life away."

"I won't." I didn't have the heart to tell him that living with a teenager in Paris was as settled as I could manage in 1984. He was a 9-to-5 guy and loved my mother at first sight.

Candia returned in late August. We didn't have much time left. The phone rang at odd hours. If I answered, the caller hung up.

Suspicions bred accusations bound by resentment and we would have probably broken up, except Middle East terrorists bombed Paris to gain freedom for three imprisoned comrades.

A Sunday night explosion on Rue Faux barely scratched its target and no one had been injured, however the rest of the street got off less fortunate than the Israeli bank. The blast shattered every window on the block, charred a dozen cars, and shoved our nightclub's ornate entrance onto the dance floor.

"On a la chance." Bernard gingerly ran his finger over the blistered woodwork.

"Yes, we were damn lucky." If Le Reve had been open, the casualty list would have topped a hundred. The possibility of a thirty-two year-old American heading the 'dead' list didn't deter a police inspector from interrogating un estranger as the primary suspect.

"Merely a formality."

"Do I need a lawyer?" I asked the policeman and he shook his head with a laugh. "Not unless you are guilty."

Bernard agreed with this assessment and advised to do nothing until charged or arrested. As a French citizen he was familiar with the Napoleonic legal aberration of guilty until proven innocent. His nonchalance demeanor evaporated with the contractor's estimate that the repairs would take at least a month.

"This is impossible." He ranted against the sloth of French workers. A few glasses of cognac redirected his rancor to the real culprits. "C'est le guerre."

And the war killed and maimed innocent people throughout the French capitol in revenge for the victims of a murderous foreign war. Thesocialist government played tough guy. Having escaped one bombing I imagined lightning wouldn't strike twice and resumed my normal walks around the city.

Two days later I had a coffee at the Cafe Tartine in St. Paul. I visited the Eglise St. Gervais and lit a few candles for peace. I might ahve been an atheist, but childhood habits died hard. I walked across the courtyard of the Hotel de Ville, enjoying the spring sun on my skin.

A powerful detonation knocked me off my feet. The ringing in my ears was replaced by the cries and I ran to the post office to extract the wounded from the debris. At home I washed off the dust and decided to not give the terrorists a third shot and bunkered for the siege's duration at Candia's apartment.

Two days later the modeling agency cancelled her bookings. The seventeen year-old was more bored than scared by this enforced confinement. Her phone conversations were conducted in whispers.

"We should go to America." Only one hope existed for us.

"You think I can work in New York?" Candia's career was in a state of stagnation, since the better-paying commercials and editorial work in France were reserved for girls with Caucasian roots.

"They love girls like you there." A mulatto stood a slightly better chance in America, plus a friend was the photo editor for Details and another comrade shot photos for Elle.

"New York has to be safer than Paris."

"Fantastique. I want to visit Disneyworld." She squealed with teenage delight.

"Yes, we can go see Mickey." I didn't explain Orlando was over 1200 miles from New York and reaped the benefits of that deceit in bed.

In the morning I opened the atelier windows. A soft breeze carried the traces of Africa. I listened for anything else and heard no explosions. At noon Radio Nova announced Mitterand's government had freed the Lebanese prisoners. Hearing the news, Candia hugged a Mickey Mouse doll.

"What about Disneyworld?"

"We can go after the summer." I had a business to run.

"You promise we see Mickey." Her feet stamped on the floor.

"I have to check on the nightclub." I dressed quickly. Dishes flying at my head completed her rage.

"You can sleep at the club tonight, if you love that place so much."

Her suggestion was an order to be disobeyed. Flowers and a nice dinner would earn a reprieve, but she wouldn't forget my promise to visit Disneyworld until passing through the turnstiles of the Magic Kingdom. Women have an unforgiving memory and I had learned to regard that a blessing as much as a curse.

SNOW-WHIGGITY by Gianni Rage

Gianni Rage posted this poesie. It tells of a time of the back then before the rich ruled Manhattan. It was our city and for a good reason. People like hookers, pimps, and dope fiends. They protected us from the rich. enjoy SNOW-WHIGGITY by Gianni Rage It doesn't have a title ironically, that was not really a poem…I was going to write it as poesies but opted for something more linear and prosaic…I will definitely have a look at this!!I am almost like a changed man with this weather…I feel like writing tonight… A fairytale. About a hooker. A hooker named Snow-Whiggity… This is back in the day when NYC was actually still a city, not a giant terrarium… The whole thing takes place on 23rd St. Snow-Whiggity has a mean, gay pimp named Evil Queen… She wants to get away from him but it is hard because she is a dope fiend. Then she is hired for a party by "seven little men"---seven very small Puerto Ricans…. They are so impressed with her that they let her live in their social club on 9th Ave. Snow-Whiggity has it made…she can now turn all of her tricks in comfort…and keep her own damn money 'cuz the little men don't ask her for nothin' She even does a porno flick with them as a laugh. But Evil Queen finds her and manages to slip her a hot shot… She turns blue and goes unconscious, and the seven little men think she is dead. So they do the only thing you could do with a dead junkie hooker in those days, which is drag her dead ass down to the West Side Highway and make it look like a hit-and-run… But the little men like her too much to be that cold. So they lay her in an old refrigerator box and pin a note to it. But of course she is not actually dead, the dope was just REAL GOOD… And she wakes up to find a brand new, handsome, young, straight pimp named Prince Charming leaning over her… And the seven little men take out Evil Queen. And everybody lives happily ever after

THE BOUQUET OF RUINS by Peter Nolan Smith

In the autumn of 1982 I was working at a nightclub in Hamburg. The sleek nightclub had been designed by the playboy front man to mimic CLOCKWORK ORANGE’s Milk Bar and Jurgen’s fashionable crowd loved it throughout the summer, however the club’s actual owner was Cali, the black leader of the GMbH, a ruthless gang of pimps. The season changed early this far north and every day the night conquered a few more minutes of light and our once-popular club on Eppendoffer Weg was deserted by the attractive youth, the esoteric intelligentsia, and the wicked rich, who sought comfort in their homes.

Pimps and off-duty prostitutes from the Reeperbahn replaced the high-class and they were lorded over by Cali's righthand man, SS Tommy, who resembled a pit bull on steroids. This enforcer was rumored to have buried several men alive for non-payment of debts. A bitter rival had been bathed in acid. SS Tommy had his own table in BSIRs. I smiled every night, as he ordered bottles of sekt. He never paid the bill.

“We’ll get the money one way or another.” Jurgen was a native to Hamburg. He knew how things were done.

“As you like.” My percentage of the profits was 5%. SS Tommy’s rechtung was over 20,000 DMs. I figured that he owed me 1000 DMs and joked about it with the girl I took home twice a week.

Astrid was a beautiful lingerie model. The blonde twenty year-old was studying fashion at the University. Her dramatic overbite and an aquiline nose stole any chance at being called beautiful. I lived by the harbor and the sea air mixed with the smell of oranges on her flesh.

She laughed at the idea of SS Tommy in my debt.

“But never say this to him.” She frowned stripping off her dress.

“Never.”

"Nie?" She wanted to make sure.

"What do I have to say to that animal?"

Nichts, if you know what's good for you."

I knew my place in the feeding chain and managed to keep my distance from the monster at the club.

As an early winter transformed to the city into a dark industrial wasteland, Henri, the DJ from Paris, and I were counting the days until we called it quits, only I wasn’t telling management about my departure in case I wanted to come back after the holidays. Good-paying jobs for foreigners without the proper papers were difficult to find in Europe.

Henri left for Paris. He had no intentions of coming back. The French don't belong in Germany and neither did I. I planned my departure.

Only one person deserved an ‘auf wiedersehen’.

“I may be leaving,” I told Astrid after a lengthy session nearing dawn.

“Are you going for good?” She dressed conservatively for school and stuffed her nightclothes in a large leather bag.

“Yes.” I lay in bed thinking that I’d miss her in Paris.

“And you are not coming back?”

“Not a chance.” I had had enough of Germany for this year.

“When?”

“Soon.”

Astrid kissed me on the lips and I returned to sleep.

That night SS Tommy showed up at the bar early. BSIR had few customers and all of them avoided the six-foot enforcer for the GMbH. Astrid stood at the door dressed in a fur with very little else underneath. She normally never showed until after midnight.

Tommy waved me over to the bar and slapped a bill on the bar.

It was written in German.

“What’s this?”

“Die Rechtung.” His scarred finger jabbed the top of the bill.

The total came to almost 10,000 DMs or $6500 US, which was $2000 more than my bank account.

“I can see that.” I had learned German in high school. The list consisted of charges for sex. “What’s it have to do with me?”

“This is what you owe for the nights with Astrid.” Tommy smiled, as if he had told the punchline of a long joke.

“Astrid? I didn’t know she worked for you.”

She smiled at me with a crooked grin.

“Not all our girls work the Eros Center.”

The GMbH ran a string of 200 women on the Reeperbahn. Each one was expected to have sex five times a night. 200 DMs times five times two hundred women came to $100,000 a night. The take wasn't all his, but SS Tommy owned three Ferraris.

“Is everything in order?”

"Alles is klar."

I looked over to Astrid. Her eyes said that she could do nothing.

“I didn’t know a 69 cost 200 DMs.”

“And that is cheap.” SS Tommy pointed out several more costly sexual feats. “I deducted 20% since you work for Nigger Cali.

“Thanks.” 20% extra was a bargain, if you had the money for the full amount.

“And the bill is not negotiable.” SS Tommy folded with muscled arms

“She never said anything about working for you,” I said in rough German.

“Everyone in Hamburg works for someone.” Zuhalters were well-known for their violence and SS Tommy had a well-earned reputation for a short fuse.

I had to offer him a gesture.... TO CONTINUE READING THE BOUQUET OF RUINS ON KINDLE FOR $0.99, PLEASE PURCHASE GERMANY AND OTHER PLACES ON KINDLE BY GOING TO THE FOLLOWING URL http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KDN63Y6

Even the Bad get to Be Good

My friend Fabo has heart of gold. This young Belgian is happiest with a Heineken in his hand and his eye on Gai, the Rubenesque beauty of the Buffalo Bar. He’s loved her forever. She loves him too in her own way. A long time.

I like drinking with Fabo, because he doesn’t talk the usual line of bullshit or merde, since we converse in French. He’s lucky enough to work on a oil exploration ship. One month in Pattaya. One month off-shore.

His haunts are the same as mine.

Welkom on Soi 3 daytime. Buffalo Bar nights.

Last month I found him in Welkom Inn’s garden in the early afternoon. Several empty Heinikens on the table. Alone. All the day shift girls keeping their distance.

He did not look happy. Most farangs flee sad stories in Pattaya as if sooner or later they would be asked for a loan. Fabo had a good job and I was broke, so there was no danger of my having to shed money for his company. I sat down and asked, “What’s the problem?"

“Poo’s been arrested for ja bah.” Poo was his wife. Ex-entertainer at the Welkom Inn. Fabo explained the police had come to their house to quell a family disturbance and Poo had been tested positive with the color purple showing for her urine sample. Straight to jail. The telephone rang and lifted his finger. “I have to go. My German cousin is helping me get her out of jail.”

The German was no cousin.

I said nothing as Fabo got on a motorcycle to meet the German.

Better him than me, because the German had a hair up his ass for me.

Why?

Because he came from Hamburg.

The German was Poo’s ex. He had left his Doberman with them, because pets weren’t allowed in his apartment. The German showed up every few days to make sure the dog was okay. It was a strange arrangement. Pattaya has thousands of them. Something sounded familiar about Lucien and when Fabo had a birthday party for Poo, I realized what upon seeing him.

Lucien was my height, but pumped by a gym. No steroids. Gym only. He was no fake tough guy. His body looked like he had been dropped through a meat grinder. His left arm bore the scars of many knife fights. His nose followed the route of an alpine pass. His eyes bore the perfume of murder. I greeted him in German.

“Why do you speak German?” His voice reeked of suspicion.

“I lived in Hamburg in 1982. Worked at a nightclub for a pimp. Nigger Kali.”

“Nigger Kali?”

I didn’t say the name often.

Nigger Kali was a pimp for the Gmbh. Hamburg’s biggest gang. He had been shot too many times to die from anything other than a peaceful death. “Yes, he worked for Thomas Bond.”

“Thomas Bond was my teacher.” Lucien’s eyes narrowed to razor blades.

“You stay here. You not go away. Are you police?” His fingers dug into my thigh like icepicks.

“No, I was the Tursteher.” I had earned my living as a doorman in New York, Paris, London, and Germany. I was no criminal. Maybe smalltime, but small time only. I had lived in Hamburg for a year. Summer was sunny and warm. Winter was dark and wet. Despressing too.

Nearing Christmas a pimp, SS Tommy, presented a bill for 20,000 Marks.

For sleeping with a girl.

Her never saying she worked for him didn’t matter to SS Tommy. He wanted his money. I gave him the keys to my VW and said I would have the rest tomorrow. I caught the midnight train to Paris that evening. I didn’t mentioned his name to Lucien.

“I don’t believe you. You are maybe police.” He stared at me with his head tilted. “You can’t look me in the eyes.”

“I never lie.” I could only see one eye. “Telling the truth is easier.”

The leader of a Thai motorcycle gang showed up. Lucien stood up to wai his comrade. I decided this was time to leave.

Fabo later said Lucien missed me.

I missed him too like anyone misses someone wanting to kill them, for he was a man to avoid and be seen avoiding, however after that teary departure at the Welkom Inn, I met Fabo at the Buffalo, which he calls ‘le campange’ or the country. It had once been surrounded by coconut trees instead of the townhouses of today.

He was in a better mood.

“Now I can tell you story.” Fabo ordered us beers. “You know Lucien leaves dog with Poo. He comes every day. Friends of Poo are no good. They do jah bah. One day they start fight with Lucien. he beats them up. They decide that if they kill the dog, Lucien won’t come see Poo.”

“That’s some stupid thinking.”

“I did not say they were smart.” Fabo shrugged pleasantly, as if he acknowledged he was glad not to have seen this scene. “Lucien discovers his dog is dead and beats up the boys again. The police come. They are friends with Lucien. They arrest the boys, who say that Poo is taking jah bah.”

The story was getting sordid and it was heading toward more sordid.

“She had to go to jail. Now she comes out. 20,000 baht. have to be clean one year. If not, back to the monkey house. Lucien helps me with the judge. He knows everyone.”

“Good.” I could have told him the truth. ie that Poo won’t be able to say off the gear for a year. No sense. He knows that already, but I was surprised at how good Lucien had been through the entire affair. Fabo had been driven back and forth to Chonburi prison on the German’s bike. Many times.

And they say there are no good Germans.

Even the bad ones are good sometimes, especially if they make my friend Fabo happy.