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  INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR JAKOB ARJOUNI

  “Jakob Arjouni’s downbeat detective Kemel Kayankaya has proved as enigmatic as Columbo, as erudite as Marlowe and occasionally, as crazed as Hammett’s Continental Op.… Arjouni forges both a gripping caper and a haunting indictment of the madness of nationalism, illuminated by brilliant use of language: magnificent.”

  —The Guardian (England)

  “Pitch-black noir.”

  —La Depeche (France)

  “This is sharp, witty writing, packed with life and colour that bursts through in Anthea Bell’s translation.… This lively, gripping book sets a high standard for the crime novel as the best of modern literature.”

  —The Independent (England)

  “A worthy grandson of Marlowe and Spade.”

  —Der Stern (Germany)

  “Jakob Arjouni writes the best urban thrillers since Raymond Chandler.”

  —Tempo (England)

  “This is true hardboiled detective fiction, realistic, violent and occasionally funny, with a hero who lives up to the best traditions of the genre.”

  —The Telegraph (England)

  “A genuine storyteller who beguiles his readers without the need of tricks.”

  —L’Unita (Italy)

  “A good thriller doesn’t need a specific milieu but it can be so much more satisfying when it has one. Jakob Arjouni was born and bred in Frankfurt and does a remarkable job of turning what is often considered Germany’s most boring city, into a vivid setting for violent crime capers … This is Arjouni’s fourth Kayankaya novel and they deserve to be better known in the English-speaking world.… If you like your investigators tough and sassy, Kayankaya is your guide.”

  —Sunday Times of London

  Other books by the same author

  Magic Hoffman

  Happy Birthday, Turk!

  More Beer

  One Man, One Murder

  Idiots – Five Fairy Tales & Other Stories

  Chez Max

  Originally published as Kismet: Ein Kayankaya-Roman

  © Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich, Switzerland

  Translation © Anthea Bell

  This edition © 2010 Melville House Publishing

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  www.mhpbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:

  Arjouni, Jakob.

  [Kismet. English]

  Kismet / Jakob Arjouni; translated [from the German] by Anthea Bell.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-61219-099-0

  1. Private investigators—Germany—Fiction. 2. Immigrants—Germany—Fiction. 3. Extortion—Fiction. 4. Frankfurt am Main (Germany)—Fiction. I. Bell, Anthea. II. Title.

  PT2661.R45K5713 2010

  833.914—dc22

  2010025931

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  May 1998

  Chapter 1

  Slibulsky and I were crammed into the china cupboard, emptied for the purpose, of a small Brazilian restaurant on the outskirts of the Frankfurt railway station district, waiting for a couple of racketeers to show up demanding protection money.

  The cupboard was about one metre twenty wide and seventy centimetres deep. Neither Slibulsky nor I would be giving the clothing industry cause for concern about the sales of their XL sizes. Furthermore, we were wearing bulletproof vests, and when it came to the crunch we hoped at least to get a pistol and a shotgun into position where we wouldn’t shoot ourselves in the foot or blast our own heads off. I could just imagine the racketeers entering the restaurant, hearing pitiful cries in the corner after a while, and opening the cupboard door to find two total idiots squashed inside, arms and legs flailing helplessly. And I pictured Romario’s face at this sight. Romario was the owner and manager of the Saudade, and he had appealed to me for help.

  I’d known Romario since his first gastronomic venture running a snack bar in Sachsenhausen. Until now he’d only been an acquaintance. I was glad to know him when I was skint and he stood me dinner. I wasn’t so glad when I was in funds and met him in a bar and he came to sit at the same table, and we had to talk about something or other just because we knew each other. So if this evening’s operation came into the category of a favour done for a friend, then it was mainly because Romario hadn’t offered me any payment and I couldn’t really ask for any either.

  Just after midnight. We’d stationed ourselves here half an hour ago, and for about the last twenty minutes my legs had been going to sleep. It was unusually warm for early May. Daytime temperatures were up to twenty-seven degrees, and by night they didn’t fall below fifteen. Which did not keep Romario from turning his central heating up to maximum – from force of habit and because complaining about the German weather was, in a way, one of his last links with Brazil. He’d lived in Frankfurt for the last twenty years, he went to the Côte d’Azur on holiday, and I didn’t know if overcooked sweet-and-sour chicken and tough pork chops with canned peas were typical specialities of Brazil, but you couldn’t really wish them on his native land. Anyway, the whole city might be going around in T-shirts, his customers might be dying of heatstroke, but Romario insisted that it was always cold in Germany and the sun always shone in Brazil – whether he was in a generally bad or a generally good mood.

  So I wasn’t going to make any money out of this, I couldn’t feel my legs any more, the temperature inside the cupboard was approaching jungle heat, and from time to time I heard this barely audible hissing.

  ‘Slibulsky?’

  ‘Hm?’ Brief, unemotional. The sweet he was sucking clicked against his teeth.

  ‘What did you have for supper?’

  ‘Supper? What do you mean? Can’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t remember what was on the plate in front of you a few hours ago?’

  He cleared his throat, the way other people might give a little whistle or roll their eyes, indicating that they’ll try to answer your question in friendly tones, but naturally it doesn’t for a moment interest them.

  ‘Let’s see … oh yes, I know. Cheese. Handkäse. That was it. Gina went shopping this morning and …’

  ‘Handkäse with onions.’ And you can’t get much smellier than Handkäse anyway.

  ‘Of course with onions. You don’t eat cheese with strawberries, do you?’

  I put a good deal of effort into giving him as contemptuous a glance as I could in the dim light of the cupboard.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you we’d be spending some time together in this hole?’

  ‘Yup, I believe you did mention it. Although I remembered the cupboard as kind of larger.’

  ‘Oh yes? Like how large? I mean, how big does a cupboard have to be for two people, one of whom has just been stuffing himself with onions, to breathe easily inside it?’

  In what little light filtered through the keyhole and some cracks in the sides of the cupboard, I saw Slibulsky make a face. ‘I thought we were here to scare off some sort of Mafia characters? With our guns and bulletproof vests, like the good guys we are. But maybe Miss Ka
yankaya fancies running a hairdressing salon instead of a detective agency?’

  What did I say to that? Best ignore it. I told him, ‘I’ve got sweat running down my face and into my mouth, I have a feeling your stink is condensing, and I don’t reckon the good guys have to put up with other people farting.’

  Slibulsky chuckled.

  Cursing quietly, I bent to look through the keyhole. I could see Romario’s bandaged arm the other side of it. He was sitting at the bar doing something with a calculator and a notepad, as if cashing up for the evening after closing the restaurant. In fact he was too nervous to add up so much as the price of a couple of beers. They’d paid him their first visit a week ago: two strikingly well-dressed young men not much older than twenty-five, waving pistols and a note saying: This is a polite request for your monthly donation of 6,000 DM to the Army of Reason, payable on the first of each month. Thanking you in advance. They didn’t say a word, they just smiled – at least until Romario had read the note, handed it back, and believing, not least in view of the sheer size of the sum, that he was dealing with a couple of novices said, ‘Sorry, I don’t see how I can go along with your request.’

  Whereupon they stopped smiling, shoved the barrels of their pistols into his belly, crumpled up the note, stuffed it into Romario’s mouth and forced him to chew and swallow it. Then they wrote Back the day after tomorrow on the bar in black felt pen, and went away.

  In spite of this little demonstration, Romario didn’t really take the matter seriously. He’d been running his place here near the railway station too long to panic the first time a couple of young tearaways tried extortion. As everyone knows, the big protection rackets, the ones you have to take seriously, have a whole crowd of small-time con men following in their wake, thinking they might as well give it a try. Like when you’re sixteen you say hey, why not just take a look and see if that bike over there is padlocked.

  Romario threw up the note he’d swallowed, knocked two nails into the side of the bar and hung his pistol on them. When they came back they’d see how a real man dealt with such outrageous demands. But they didn’t come in the evening, as he had expected, and Romario wasn’t behind the bar. It was morning, and he was in the kitchen putting meat in a marinade with oil and seasonings when they suddenly turned up. Still smiling, and with another note. Your monthly donation to the Army of Reason is now due. Many thanks for your commitment to this good cause.

  When Romario, with the pistols pointing at him and his hands in the marinade, said he didn’t have six thousand marks, just how much profit a month did they think a little place like this made, he might as well close down right away if he paid up, they twisted his arms behind his back, tied him to the radiator, and nipped his thumb off with a pair of pliers. The cleaning lady found Romario lying unconscious in a pool of blood. His thumb was on the bar, with the words Back on Thursday written beside it.

  This was Thursday, and the bandage round Romario’s arm looked bright white against the wood-panelled wall. They’d sewn his thumb back on at the hospital. The doctor hadn’t been able to say whether he was likely to keep it, and how much use it would still be if he did. Romario’s explanation that he’d done it chopping onions was received with scepticism, but it had stopped the hospital reporting the incident to the police. Now and then Romario glanced at the china cupboard as if to make sure that we hadn’t disappeared through some crack in it. Whenever he did that I knocked my Beretta quietly against the door to reassure him. Cutting off his thumb was a brutal business and I was sorry about it, no question. I didn’t want to stop and work out whether I was particularly sorry because, but for that injury, a flat-rate payment plus expenses might at least not have been beyond the bounds of possibility.

  The hissing sound came again.

  ‘Slibulsky, you’re an arsehole!’

  ‘And you’re a fucking queen.’

  I sighed. ‘If I was, I expect I’d have hired this cupboard on purpose to be shut up with you and your fragrant aroma.’

  ‘Oh yeah? The things you know about … is that the way a man starts thinking when he’s gone without a girlfriend so long?’

  ‘Oh, Slibulsky.’

  ‘And don’t say “Oh, Slibulsky” every time I mention it. If you ask me …’

  ‘Quiet!’

  A car had drawn up outside. The engine was switched off; doors slammed. Soon afterwards feet climbed the steps, stopped briefly, then there was a knock. Romario rose from the bar stool and went to open the door. I took the safety catch off my pistol. In so far as it was possible in the cupboard, Slibulsky got on his marks as if to run the hundred metres, ready to leap out with his shotgun levelled. Through a second hole in the cupboard, one we had bored on purpose, I saw two young men in cream linen suits coming into the bar in silence. Both had pale, cleans-haven faces and thick fair hair with short back and sides. At first sight they looked as German as the young men on the German Mail advertising posters, so the obvious deduction that they never said a word because they didn’t know any words in German seemed to have been wrong.

  One of them handed Romario a note. Romario read it and waved them over to the bar. Black automatics gleamed in their hands. We’d hoped they would leave the pistols in their holsters – now Slibulsky and I would have to delay our appearance until Romario was out of the firing line. Romario knew that.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ I heard him ask, his voice trembling slightly. I saw them both shake their heads. One pointed with emphasis to the note in Romario’s hand.

  ‘Sure, right away. I’d just like to know whether this monthly donation will really settle everything?’

  They nodded.

  ‘And if … well, suppose there’s other organisations asking for, er, donations … I mean, does this payment mean you give me some kind of protection?’

  They nodded again and raised their pistols, smiling.

  ‘Fine, so where do I reach you if I need you?’

  One pointed the barrel of his pistol at his ear and his eyes, which probably meant: we know what goes on in this city, no need to call us, we’ll call you.

  Where did these characters come from? I knew German, Turkish, Italian, Albanian, Russian and Chinese racketeers who extorted protection money – but speechless racketeers were something new.

  ‘Okay,’ said Romario, ‘then let’s see about …’

  ‘Then let’s see about’ was our signal. While Romario flung himself to the floor behind the bar with a single movement, and then crawled towards the kitchen door, Slibulsky and I burst out of the cupboard shouting, ‘Hands up and drop your guns!’

  However, they did neither, and if I hadn’t got hold of bulletproof vests for us, that would have been the last mild spring night we ever saw. They fired at once. I felt the bullets hit my chest, threw myself to one side and fired back. We’d agreed in advance to aim at their heads if it came to a shoot-out; after all, we weren’t the only ones who could lay hands on bulletproof vests. I hit one of them under the chin. Blood spurted over his cream suit, he dropped his gun and clutched his neck with both hands as if trying to strangle himself. He swayed briefly, fell backwards and hit the floor. Slibulsky blasted the other man’s forehead away with his shotgun. The wooden panelling was peppered with a hail of shot. While the man who had lost his forehead was still falling I got behind the bar and switched off all the lights.

  In the dark I called, ‘Romario!’

  ‘Here,’ came a voice from the kitchen.

  ‘Slibulsky?’

  ‘Oh, shit!’

  I went to the window, peered past the curtain at the street and the buildings opposite. No pedestrians, no lights coming on, all quiet. There was stertorous breathing behind me, not very loud.

  I snapped my lighter on and bent over the man who was still clutching his neck. Blood was running through his fingers. His large, pale eyes looked at me, bewildered.

  ‘Who sent you?’ He didn’t react.

  ‘I can call a doctor or not, as the case may be. I
want your boss’s name!’

  But he couldn’t hear me any more. His hands dropped from his neck, his head fell to one side, and he made one last choking, gurgling sound. Then there was nothing to be heard but the hiss of my lighter. The flame cast a yellow light on the dead man’s face. It was made up, or anyway powdered, that’s why it had looked so pale just now. The skin was darker on the ears and the ragged remains of his throat. I closed his eyes. A young, pretty face with long lashes and full lips. I let the lighter go out and stared into the darkness. It wasn’t the first corpse I’d seen, or the first time I’d been in a gunfight with fatal consequences either – but this was the first human being I’d killed with my own hands.

  I felt his chest. Like us, he was indeed wearing a bulletproof vest. So the only place to shoot without killing would have been his legs. If he’d realised in time that he couldn’t wound his opponent’s chest, would he have spared my head? And do injured legs stop a man shooting in a life-and-death situation?

  A strip of faint yellow light fell into the room. When I turned my head Romario was standing beside me. The light came from a street lamp outside the kitchen window. Romario was hugging himself with his unbandaged arm as if he were freezing. Lips pressed tight, he looked at the body.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Er …’ And added, for something to say, ‘It all happened so fast.’

  He kept looking down. ‘If that Army of Reason thing really exists, whatever’s behind it, then this,’ he said, jerking his chin in the direction of the body, ‘this means I’m finished in Frankfurt.’

  ‘Mm,’ I said noncommittally, getting up and lighting a cigarette. We stood in the dim light like that for a while, listening to the noises in the street. Cars drove past, further away a tram rattled along.

  I asked, ‘Got any large plastic bin liners?’

  ‘In the kitchen.’

  I trod out my cigarette. ‘Okay. While Slibulsky and I get rid of the bodies you clean this place up, put a notice on the door saying Gone On Holiday, and go home. And tomorrow get out on the first train or flight.’