The Serenity Murders (23 page)

N
ext stop, the Blue Sky Hotel in Taksim. I knew the manager. He’d give me a deep discount.

I went up to my room and, after making the phone calls I needed to make without my psycho listening in, I headed straight to an Internet café. I had a lot to do.

As a precaution in case my Internet user IDs were also being traced, I created a new e-mail account.

I sent an urgent request for help to the Web-Guerrillas group, where good and evil hackers from all walks of life gathered. “Someone is accessing and using my computer, what should I do?” I asked. Suggestions would pour in before the end of the day.

Then I sent Jihad2000 a separate, private message. Of course, I took advantage of the opportunity to tell him just how much he had let me down. I explained at length that the situation was much more serious than he’d made it seem, that I really needed help, that if we were still friends now was the time for him to prove it, and exactly what it was I expected him to do. I was sure he’d be at his computer even in his sleep.

Sure enough, while I was still looking at a few Web sites, a short and simple reply from Jihad2000 arrived: “Okay.” One thing down.

Once I had finished, I went to the brasserie at the Marmara Hotel.
I ordered myself a ritz salad and a mineral water. Considering all of the food I had consumed over the previous couple of days, I’d best watch what I was eating.

I was now ready to turn on my mobile, which had been switched off since the night before. I was ready to hear from my psycho again.

As I sipped my mineral water and waited for my salad, a series of text messages,
his
text messages, were delivered to my in-box. He was raging. Each message got more and more angry.

Just when my salad arrived at the table, my phone rang. It came from yet another pay-as-you-go number.

“Like the recordings?” he asked in his croaking voice.

Of course, if he was listening in on my house, he knew I’d listened to the disc.

“Interesting,” I said.

“You’re just too
cool
for your own good, now, aren’t you? Interesting? Hah! They’re exquisite! Absolute perfection!”

“You’re a lousy piece of shit,” I said in a low voice. “It was pathetic of you to cut up my bras.”

“You don’t need them, you’re a man.”

“I get to decide what I wear,” I said. “Setting the car on fire was unnecessary too. Hüseyin hasn’t done anything to you.”

“Now you’re defending him just because he screwed you twice. Was it really worth being fucked? Did it give you inner peace, him fucking you like that, huh?”

Oh, so we were getting vulgar. I was ready to talk dirty.

“I’m sure your cock is tiny. I bet you can’t even get it up.”

Accusations of sexual inadequacy due to an itty-bitty malfunctioning wiener are enough to send a knife through the heart of any man. As a man myself, that much at least I knew for sure.

There was the silence I expected.

“You’re wrong,” he said.

“Your silence tells me that I’m not. Or maybe you were taking a look. So is it still in place?”

“Tonight,” he said, in his thoroughly pissed off psycho voice, “Hüseyin dies!”

That had gotten him worked up; I could switch off my mobile now.

When I finished my salad I went upstairs to the lobby. There were phones on the side wall. I dialed Jihad2000’s number.

“So?” I asked as soon as he picked up.

“Right,” he said. “I was able to pick up the base station he’s calling through. It’s in your neighborhood.”

“No shit! I know that already,
ayol
. The man is spying on my home. Of course he’d be calling from the same neighborhood.”

“I’m not the CIA or Mossad. Don’t overrate me. Mine is just an amateur home system. This is the best I can do. I can’t give you an exact location.”

It was impossible to miss the bitterness in his voice.

“Sorry,” I said. “That’s not what I meant. Thank you. By the way, how are you?”

“Compared to you, I’m good. I take on the jobs you lot turn your noses up at. Luckily I’m not stuck with another psycho like you.”

With that, he reminded me of a previous stalker, in what had been another unpleasant scenario. Jihad2000 and I had first met thanks to similar threatening messages, written by none other than Jihad2000 himself.

“Let’s not go down that road,” he said when I reminded him. “It was an aggression rooted in suppression. I’ve overcome it, thanks to you.”

It was kind of him to credit me.

“I’m seeing Pamir in a while,” he said. “Going to her place…For the first time. Seeing as there’s no hope with you…”

I wished him a wonderful time. I couldn’t expect everyone to live a monk’s life just because I was being sucked into a whirlpool of terror.

But I had urgent plans to make.

W
hen Hüseyin arrived, I was lying on my bed in the hotel room, reading a book. I had tried watching television to relax my mind, and when I couldn’t find anything of interest to me, I’d gone out to buy a pay-as-you-go SIM card and a book. As the book’s description promised, it would leave the reader breathless. Before I knew it, I’d already breezed through a third of it. It was just what I needed.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” he said. “But when Yılmaz handed me your note, I came as quickly as I could. Why are we staying at a hotel?” he continued, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

I put the book down and turned sideways. Placing my elbow on the bed, I rested my head in my hand. I smiled as adorably as Audrey would have.

“You first,” I said. “How was your day? Did you sort everything out?”

First he took off his shoes, then his socks, and then he stretched his legs out on to the bed.

“Tiring,” he said, exhaling a long sigh. “I’m not used to running around…I always sit at the wheel…”

He told me that he’d sorted out quite a lot. He’d even found a car he liked.

If he could get the money together, it could be running in four or five days, and he could get back to work.

“How much do you need?”

He was lying next to me, staring at the ceiling, twitching his tired toes.

“I can’t ask you for money,” he said. “I just can’t.”

I laughed. Him and his pride.

“I didn’t say I was going to give it to you. I just asked how much you needed.”

“A lot,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling. “I mean, for me it is.”

Of course I had to lend him money. What had happened to him was all my fault. But I had to find a way to overcome the tension generated by his manly pride.

“I’ll lend it to you,” I said. “You can pay me back whenever. You know I’ve got money.”

“I can tell because we’re staying at a hotel,” he said with a laugh.

“I’m serious,” I said, to convince him.

He turned his gaze from the ceiling to me.

I could tell he was weighing our relationship. If he owed me money he would be the one in debt to the relationship. I knew he didn’t want this. While he thought of himself as lower than me on a number of levels, him owing me money too could jeopardize the relationship even more. On the other hand, he needed the money. If he got money from a pawnbroker or a bank he’d have to pay it back with interest.

“It’s better if I handle it myself,” he said calmly. “It looks like it’s going to work out. If it doesn’t, I’ll let you know.”

“I could give it to you, rather than you taking out a loan from the bank.”

“We’ll see,” he said. “If I can’t…”

I didn’t mention that the psycho was planning to kill him tonight. What could he do if he did know?

Here we were lying side by side, a polite tension between us. He didn’t have the energy for sex, and I had no inclination for it. If Andelip Turhan’s mediumistic eyes were to see us like this, she’d probably say,
The tension between you is palpable
. Whereas Vildan Karaca, the feng shui master, would try to melt it away with all sorts of different crystals.

“Come on, let’s go see the girls and have your aura cleansed,” I said. “We have nothing else to do until nine o’clock.”

“What are we doing at nine?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Pamir called and said she has a surprise for us. She and Jihad2000 must have found something. We’re going to meet them at my place.”

B
y the time it was almost nine, Hüseyin’s aura had been cleansed and we had both filled our stomachs. Bursting with powerful energy, we were ready for Pamir’s surprise.

We hailed a passing taxi, to Hüseyin’s sad chagrin.

I had already begun to sense something strange was happening as we drew closer to my place. There were far too many taxis lined up near the pavement, and far too much activity, unusual for our narrow little street.

There were our girls, gathered in a crowd in front of my apartment building. They appeared greater in number than they really were due to the size of the narrow street, barely enough for two cars to pass each other.

The watchman Yılmaz Karataş was standing behind the glass door of the building, his hands on his waist, observing the girls with a concerned look on his face, trying to figure out what was going on.

What was happening? Had the girls decided to gang up to protect me?

There was a commotion in the group when they noticed I had arrived.

I saluted them all as I stepped out of the cab. I felt like a king saluting his people, a queen saluting her subjects.

All the girls and some other people from the club were there waiting. Hasan and Pamir stood side by side outside the building door. What was Hasan doing here? What could those two possibly have conjured up? It seemed Pamir had gotten carried away playing the dominatrix in Jihad2000’s arms and gone over the top. The crowd, thirsty for an outburst, was the product of Pamir’s extreme shrewdness and Hasan’s gossip network. Whatever it was they had in mind, it was sure to be a shocking surprise.

Pamir stepped forward as soon as she saw me. She was like a dignified general waiting for a command.

Murmurs rose from the group.

“How’s it going,
abla
?” Pamir said with a proud look on her face before kissing me.

“What’s going on,
ayol
?” I asked, without seeing any need to hide my confusion.

“Just you wait,” she said, giving me a smart-ass wink.

She raised her hand for silence. “In a moment, I’m going to make a statement and explain everything,” she said. “But please, give me a minute.”

The response was a mingling of discontented grumbles and mumbles of curiosity.

“Sir, who are all these…these…?” said Yılmaz, standing behind the apartment door, his eyes wide in astonishment.

I turned around to look at the crowd again. He was right in not knowing what to call them. The girls were each as colorful as could be; big and tall, they stood like Amazons ready for battle. The diversity in clothes, makeup, and wigs was truly indescribable.

“Transvestites,” I said. “My friends.”

One could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t approve of the girls and that this gathering was not to his liking. “
Ma
Ş
allah
, there are so many of them,” he said, smiling halfheartedly. There was that missing tooth again.

Pamir pushed me into the building. Hasan followed, and we almost knocked Yılmaz Karataş over. As he stepped back, peeking at the notes he was holding in his hand, he recounted in a single breath everything that had happened during the day, who went in and out of the building, and everyone who had passed by. My eyes lit up when I heard the word “bicycle.”

“We’re going to catch your psycho on the job,
abla
,” Pamir began, her eyes shining with excitement as she explained. “We know he’s here. The bastard is hiding somewhere in these two streets.”

It was a genius plan, if you asked her. My mind boggled at her organizational skills.

“I’ve sent news to all our girls and all the taxi drivers that know Hüseyin. They’re on their way…”

Are you mad?
I wanted to ask her, but not a single word escaped my mouth. My eyes were wide with astonishment; I simply listened. Hasan nodded at everything she said, and Yılmaz Karataş, who was clearly struggling to grasp what was going on, kept asking questions that were left unanswered.