Morgue Drawer Four (15 page)

“No, no,” my do-gooder here hastened to reassure them. “He only passed on a piece of information. He didn’t have anything to do with the crime.”

Nice phrasing there, if he was talking about this case that I had taken over the lead on, because near as I can recall there wasn’t another case where I’d have passed on any valuable information to him.

“So you’re with the police?” my father asked.

“From the forensics unit,” Martin said. I had the impression that he wasn’t using this circumlocution for the first time.

“How was he doing, then?” Mom asked. “Was he OK?”

“Yes, he was doing well,” Martin said, but I sensed that the question was throwing him off track a bit. In fact, he had absolutely no idea how I was doing, or rather, had been doing. He had never asked me what my life had been like. Or where I’d lived. And that made me wonder what was actually going to happen with my apartment.

“What are they going to do with my apartment?” I asked.

“His apartment looked so…” My mother was searching for the right words. “So depressing.”

“A shithole,” my father said, correcting her.

Martin was terribly embarrassed; he didn’t know what he was supposed to say.

“It was a temporary solution,” Martin finally said.

“On his way to homelessness,” my father said. “He threw in the towel on his apprenticeship.”

Yeah, well, Einstein dropped out of school, too, as I always used to retort back in the days before he threw me out of the house. “Anyone who eats at my table must finish his apprenticeship,” was what he would say.

“The master mechanic is always picking on me,” I would say. “Well then he must have a reason to,” my father said.

He was right, of course. The master mechanic was envious. I was the best auto freak who had ever worked in that dive. I only needed to listen to an engine to know what was wrong with it. DTC reader software, inspection checklists: kids’ stuff. Me, I would turn the key and just know what was up. Plus, I could break into any car within thirty seconds. They dispatched me just three weeks into my apprenticeship when a customer lost his key. Me. Not the master mechanic. This kind of cramped his style, which I didn’t know at the time, because he used to go squeeze in a lay every time he left the workshop. That’s why it always took him so long when he was sent out. Because he had at least eight fillies raring to go, who were all apparently just waiting for some yuppie to accidentally toss his car keys into the trash along with his burger wrapper. And then the master mechanic would be off to help both the yuppie and some über-horny little mouse right after that.

And then I came along. I could break into cars like a world champion, and I’d be back at the workshop in less than thirty minutes. The owner liked that, but the master mechanic didn’t. From then on every day meant putting up with the master mechanic’s hazing.

And that’s not even mentioning the meager pay. So one day after I’d pulled the emergency car-door-opening routine for, let’s say, a third customer, I got even more shit unloaded on me at work, and then the stress from my mom at home was of course pissing me off, too, and I just hit my limit, ditched the apprenticeship, and moved out. That was four years ago. My mother didn’t even try to get in touch with me, presumably because my father forbade her. That’s how things were at our house.

Here and now I’d hit my limit again. My father made me sick, although I somehow felt sorry for my mother, even though at the same time I despised her. What kind of mother lets someone forbid her from getting in touch with her only child? I didn’t want anything else to do with either of them.

“Martin, stop lying to people and start paying attention to more important things,” I said.

Martin said goodbye to my parents and slowly walked toward the exit.

“Kitty corner behind you to the right is a girl,” I said, and Martin turned around with a jerk.

“I think her name is Miriam, or something like that.”

“Who is she?” Martin asked.

“The sister of a former buddy,” I said. “I want to know what she’s doing at my funeral.”

“You don’t mean you want me to just walk over to her and ask that?” Martin said.

“Well, yeah, dude,” I replied. “There’s got to be a reason, because I hardly knew her. Maybe her being here has something to do with my murder.”

Martin hesitated. All of this was terribly embarrassing to him, I could sense that clearly.

“Well, get going,” I pressed, and he gave in.

She was still standing a ways back from the grave, from my grave to be exact, and as we came closer we could see she had tears in her eyes. What the?

“Hello. My name is Martin Gänsewein.”

She had masterful self-control and didn’t start giggling or grinning or anything on mention of his silly name. She just nodded at him.

“Did you know him well?” Martin asked politely.

Miriam, who I was still hoping was named Miriam, since she didn’t introduce herself, sniffled. And shook her head.

“I did,” Martin said. “He told me about you.”

Her flood of tears redoubled.

“You’re the sister of the artist, right?”

“Artist?” She looked at him like he’d just informed her that a large, green mushroom was growing out of the top of her head. “He called Gugi an artist?”

Martin was somewhat annoyed by her completely dumb-founded expression, and I was annoyed because he had apparently taken note of my whole stream of thoughts from before, which I now found a little embarrassing.

“Yes, an artist. That’s what he called him,” Martin confirmed, hesitating as though he had to think back and make sure he’d noted the right information under the right name.

Miriam erupted into loud bawling.

“He always used to make fun of Gugi and I, especially of Gugi,” she sobbed. “Because of his speech impediment.”

Of Gugi and
ME
! roared Martin’s internal grammar check, but he held back.

I did not! I screamed inside, but I kept my trap shut, too.

“I’m sure he was just teasing,” Martin suggested, but his intonation expressed his doubt just as clearly as his face.

“Did you use to make fun of him?” he asked me sternly.

“Within the normal range,” I said.

“So, that would be a yes,” Martin determined. Disappointedly, I noticed. “I’m thinking that you were a pretty big asshole while you were alive, huh.”

Hearing the word
asshole
within the convolutions of Martin’s brain, at the edge of my open grave to boot, nearly cost me all my self-control. Only Miriam’s presence saved me—and Martin.

“Just ask her why she’s here,” I said. Miriam beat him to it. “I liked him, despite all that,” she whispered.

“Oh,” Martin said. “I’m sorry.”

And that’s exactly how he meant it, too, that dickface. He was sorry she had liked such an asshole. If this guy was supposed to be my only friend on earth, then I’d rather not have any more friends. None at all. That would clearly be better.

“He could also be funny,” she mumbled.

“See?” I said.

“Somehow he was a loser, too, but still sweet,” she said.

“I was not a loser,” I roared.

“Yes,” Martin said, fervently. “He really was a loser.”

“Traitor,” I yelled.

“But sweet,” Miriam repeated.

“Do you need a ride anywhere?” Martin asked.

Now he was making his move—that is not right! I was angry, furious, enraged. I was beyond pissed off. I…

OK, I’ll be honest: I was mad at myself. For years I’d been hauling whatever worthless skanks into bed with me, as long as they had gigantic tits and opened the gas cap when the nozzle came. Meanwhile here was a rather mousy but undoubtedly very sweet girl like Miriam who had somehow liked me, and I had no clue. And even if I had, I’d have presumably given her the brush-off with a dirty grin on my face because the dimensions of her breasts fell far short of my minimum standard. And what else mattered when it came to women?

Suddenly I made myself sick. Really. Here I was, standing at my own grave wondering how much of the shit that had happened in my life was actually my fault. Thoughts like these aren’t really particularly pleasant when you’re alive, but if you ask yourself these questions in time you can still change something. Become a better person, et cetera. But in my case: too late! No insight, however clever it might be, could help me now.

My brain waves were definitely headed in the wrong direction, because I didn’t want to go all sentimental again, like those old ladies who rake the graves and plant those ugly, purple-colored weeds on them that look like they were the only plant that managed to survive a nuclear war. So I banished all thoughts like that from my mind and whooshed along behind Martin and Miriam, who walked back up to my grave and looked at it for a short moment, staring at the shiny black coffin, and then turned toward the exit. And that’s when we saw him.

My funeral was turning into a kind of class reunion. But this particular guest was neither invited nor welcome. Miriam saw him at the same time I did, and she whispered, “Oh, shit,” although such words wouldn’t normally pass her lips.

Pablo. Greasy as ever, his longish black crimps glued down to his head with some kind of glistening slime, acne scars all over his face, and seven or maybe more gold hoops through his left ear. Someone in an extremely inebriated state once suggested that he get a ring through his nose, too. Twenty-four hours and a few strong blows to the back of the head later that someone woke up to find he had a ring through
his
nose. Since then no one has cracked any more jokes about the ugliest toro north of the Pyrenees.

Now here was Pablo at the cemetery. The Pablo who had, over the course of two years, sold me certain substances that were subject to trade restrictions pursuant to the Controlled Substances Act. The Pablo who was of the firm conviction that I had landed him in the pen. The Pablo who several interviewed persons had assumed was the one who had pushed me to my death.

Miriam had apparently also heard this rumor because she started laying into him like a madwoman.

“You dare show up here?” she yelled, taking long strides toward him. “Couldn’t you tell from the bridge that he was dead?”

Pablo just kept leaning against the tree, pretending not to hear her.

“Who is that?” Martin asked, and I quickly filled him in. Martin was anything but enthusiastic.

Meanwhile Miriam had reached Pablo. She stood in front of him at arm’s length, hands on her hips, and glared at him. God’s avenging angel in sneakers!

“How perverted are you, that you would dare to show your face here at his funeral?” she asked.

“I want to be sure he’s dead,” Pablo calmly replied. Incidentally, he had no accent; if anything he sounded like he was from just an hour or so north of Cologne, from the Ruhr, and not from Barcelona. “I wasn’t the one who bumped him off.”

“Right, like I should believe you?” Miriam snarled. “Half of town thinks it was you.”

“Half of town is saying it was me so no one will notice it was them,” Pablo said. “In any case, I wouldn’t have broken just his neck.”

Martin, who had stopped a few steps back, winced. Welcome to real life, Buddy.

Miriam and Pablo continued their shouting match, and I thought Miriam held her own pretty well. Actually, I suddenly thought she was very attractive and brave and all that. She actually had me stuck in a trance for a while so I didn’t notice one important fact: the setting of the scene had shifted almost without anyone noticing. Pablo was doing it very slickly, but as a dealer in illegal drugs one of course has to be pretty damned careful. In that line of work you develop an eye for dark corners that cannot be seen into from where other people are standing. He had pulled back into a dark corner like that by repeatedly taking just one small step, and then another, and Miriam and Martin had followed him like rats behind the Pied Piper. Before I could warn Martin, it happened. Pablo grabbed Miriam by the hair and pulled her with him two steps back into the bushes, and then we heard an open palm slap against a face.

“Hey,” Martin yelled, taking a half step forward but stopping again and mumbling, “Shit, this can’t be happening,” but then he shot forward anyway. Given his frame of mind, I don’t need to comment further—he had let the S-word pass his lips, after all. And in this succinct and pithy assessment of the situation he was completely correct.

Pablo had hit Miriam on the side of the head twice, making her cheeks flush red, and then she tried to land a sharp kick right in the middle of his favorite intersection. He had turned around, grabbed hold of her foot, and threw her down in one swift motion. He was kneeling on her legs when Martin arrived on the scene.

Martin apparently has never seen
Die Hard
. Or
Terminator, Triple X,
or the other summer blockbusters with more dead people in them than assistant directors. At most he’s seen one
James Bond
movie, but then I bet only one with one of the older gentlemen like Sean Connery or Roger Moore. That was Martin’s handicap. Because he tried talking to Pablo, when any movie aficionado with better than 20/800 vision could see the only way to move forward was with sheer force. So Martin had hardly opened his mouth when Pablo’s fist slammed into his cheekbone.

It didn’t shatter anything. It’s not like in the movies, where the whole jaw breaks and what not. Instead, a different response is completely normal, which they always get totally wrong in the movies. The guy who receives a real swing to the cheekbone ends up toppling over in the mud.

And that’s where he lies for a little while, in most cases. So, too, with Martin.

Meanwhile Miriam had dug her fingernails into Pablo’s ugly mug and scratched several nice, long welts into him. As he turned back to her, she punched him in his soft parts with her right hand. You see, women can not only kick where it hurts; they can also punch. Pablo hadn’t counted on that. He was still crouching on top of her legs holding her down, but after that last blow to his chicken nuggets his face turned pale as death and he slowly slumped to the side. Martin struggled back to his feet, Miriam frantically pulled her legs free, rolled over, and stood on both feet before the rest of us could really see how she’d done that. She tugged Martin by his hood out of reach of Pablo’s legs, but she wasn’t fast enough. The heel of Pablo’s shoe somehow hit Martin’s shin, he howled but didn’t fall down again, instead limping along as fast as he could behind Miriam.