Until the Debt Is Paid (17 page)

Zoe took an evidence bag from Forensics and filled it with fibers from an old sweater. She put on a white lab coat with her name printed on it, and she slipped into white clogs. She looked like the perfect stereotype of a scientist. She hadn’t felt this stupid since she was eight and wore a pointy princess hat and veil for Mardi Gras.

Still, she felt okay about the plan as Jan had laid it out. She strolled past the guards at the entrance, giving a little wave, and made for the investigations room. A light was on, and Patrick was looking at a photo. He looked exhausted, but the energy drinks on the table told Zoe he wasn’t intending to go home.

She cursed to herself, fighting an urge to just toss the evidence bag on the floor. She had to photograph that notebook. With Patrick in the room, it was impossible.

She caught her breath, disappeared into the next room, and called Jan. He picked up after the second ring.

“What’s up?”

“I got a little problem. It could be solved, if you tell me what kind of car Patrick drives.”

“Why you want to know—”

“Quit babbling. Model and color.”

“Audi A3, metallic blue. Rear right, there’s a Coldplay sticker.”

“Thanks,” she said and hung up.

“Coldplay,” she grunted. “Then it won’t be too bad about that clunker.”

She left the station and made her way into the neighboring park. For this, she was going to need a little help.

Patrick laid photos out on the table. He sat down and was taking a sip of the nasty-tasting energy drink when a car alarm went off. He went to the window and pushed the curtains aside. The lights of a dark-colored car were blinking wildly. With horror, he saw why. A skater was using the Audi’s hood as a ramp. Only now did he realize it was his car.

“Damn bastards,” Patrick hollered. He ran out of the room and sprinted down the corridor for the exit, his fatigue totally gone. At the entrance, a young woman in a white lab coat held the door open for him. She held an evidence bag in her hand and had on weird shoes.

He sputtered a quick “thanks” without stopping. Then he was out on the street. The skater was about to make another jump. He’d show the little shit. This would be his last run.

“Say again? You got a few kids to trash that detective’s car?” Chandu said.

“It wasn’t that hard,” said Zoe. “I told them the pig had nabbed my brother skating, just because he’d bumped into a pedestrian on the Ku’damm. They started freaking out about it. I had to hear about the surveillance state, skaters being oppressed, and the fascist police structure; by then they were all piss and vinegar. Once I added in a few more euros for a case of Red Bull, the deal was done. Barely ten minutes later Patrick came flying out like Superman and ran after them in hot pursuit.”

“Then what?” Jan asked.

“CID offices were as good as dead. In Homicide, the book was lying there in a box along with other evidence.”

“Did you take photos of all the pages?”

“Yes,” she said with pride, holding up her cell. “In color and in focus.” She tossed the phone to Max and stood. “Now, I gotta get to work. I’ll be here tomorrow at nine. Pretty early for a Sunday, but I can hang.”

Before she left, she turned to Chandu. “Buy some croissants, will you? Without breakfast, I get cranky.”

With that, the door shut. Silence reigned for a moment.

“Well, guess I’ll get after it,” Max said to break the silence. He connected the phone to his laptop.

Chapter 11

Jan stirred his coffee, half asleep. He’d spent the night looking over the illegible writing in Michael Josseck’s notebooks with Max and entering it all into the computer. The hacker had eventually cracked the code. It had been a simple character shift.

A loud knock on the door made Jan jump. Chandu came out of the kitchen and opened the door.

“Morning,” Zoe said. She tossed her jacket on a chair, opened a window, and sat in an armchair.

“Black with a spoonful of sugar,” she shouted after Chandu. “Hopefully you remembered my croissants.”

Chandu’s response was a crabby growl.

“Well, Maximum Computer Freak,” Zoe said. “Find out anything?”

“The photos were good ones,” Max replied wearily. “You do seem to have certain talents.”

“I’m about to smack you upside your—”

“Please, no fighting,” Jan broke in. “I’m too tired.

Before Zoe could talk back, Chandu handed her a cup of steaming hot coffee. “Here, Sunshine.”

Zoe took the cup without responding and took a sip. The coffee clearly calmed her.

“So,” Max began, turning on the projector. A photo of Josseck’s notes appeared. “That notebook was packed. After we deciphered the code, it turned out to be a bribe log, including cash amounts and dates of payment. That’s the bomb right there, but it doesn’t help us find the killer. Anyone he was bribing wouldn’t want him out of the game. Who would murder a cow he could milk?”

“Maybe Josseck wanted to take the bribes public,” Zoe said.

“Unlikely,” Jan said. “Evidently, a large part of his jobs came via bribes. If he’d made that public, he would have gone broke immediately. Not to mention he’d be under criminal investigation.”

“More interesting were the addresses and phone numbers,” Max continued. “I haven’t had time to check the background on each one, but they don’t seem to fully match the list of people he paid off. So who do they belong to? Maybe our murderer’s among them.”

Max clicked his remote and a list with names and phone numbers appeared. “Do these names mean anything to you guys?”

Jan added, “I looked through the list but—”

“Goddamn it,” Chandu interrupted. Their eyes found the big man.

“You know someone?”

He nodded. “Nathan Lefort. Better known as French Nat.”

“What’s his deal?”

“A goddamn son of a bitch. Lefort comes from Algeria originally, I think, or maybe Tunisia. He was a pimp in Marseille for a long time before coming to Berlin. Assembled himself a little gang of buddies, running a prostitution ring with illegals who could only be booked over the Internet. Exclusive, for people with special requests.”

“Special how?” Zoe asked.

“Any and every sexual deviancy, most of which you can’t even imagine.”

“I can imagine.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Then we should talk to him,” Max said.

“It’s not that easy,” Jan interjected. “If Nat is some underworld big shot, he’s never going out the door without a bodyguard. It’s not as if he’s going to provide us the info like it’s his civic duty.”

“I got an idea,” Chandu said, looking at the clock. “I just have to make a call, but what do you guys think about a little café breakfast? We might just meet a few interesting people.”

Jan sat in a wicker chair, sipping an espresso. It was a lovely morning. The sun warmed his face and the wind caressed his cheeks. Only the smoke from Zoe’s cigarette disrupted the harmony. He watched as the medical examiner coated a croissant with Nutella, poured cherry jam on it, and then ate it with her scrambled eggs.

“You know what cholesterol is?” Jan asked her.

“You know what my heels could do to your shins?” she replied with her mouth full.

Jan gazed around. The café was full of customers. Children played out on the green. A riled-up dog’s bark mingled with the beats coming from an Opel with its stereo way too loud.

Jan had hidden his hair under a cap. He was wearing narrow sunglasses and several days’ worth of stubble. Despite this camouflage, he did not feel secure. He used to enjoy summer mornings like this. Starting off Sunday in a café, enjoying the warm temperatures and the food. Now his eyes darted around, out of fear that a police vehicle could pass through Leipziger Platz.

Jan heard Chandu’s voice in his ear: “Turn your head to the left.” His friend sat in a car not far from them, staking out the street. Max had attached a tiny camera to Jan’s sunglasses, feeding a picture to a monitor Chandu had mounted on the dash.

“The guy with jaw-length, blow-dried-back hair.”

Jan turned inconspicuously. The man might have been attractive if his nose were smaller and his teeth weren’t yellowed.

“The one with the open shirt and glitzy Rolex?” Zoe whispered into the microphone under her collar.

“Yes.”

“Oh, dude. Like in some bad movie.”

Nathan Lefort sat down at a table. Following him was a Mediterranean-looking man, about Chandu’s size.

“I was right. This joint is the son-of-a-bitch’s breakfast spot.”

“What now?” Zoe said. “We’re not finding out anything watching him drink coffee.”

“Bisacodyl,” Chandu said.

Zoe raised her eyebrows. “What’s a laxative have to do with it?”

“I know two of the servers. For a kindly gratuity, they’ll help us cause problems with our friend’s digestion. Plus, they’ve been wanting to get back at the not-so-charming Frenchman for a while now.”

“Where did you get the bisacodyl?”

“Here and there,” Chandu hedged.

Zoe kept at it. “Then what? We analyze his stool?”

“Please have a little more faith in my plan,” Chandu said. “I’ll sneak in the back and wait in the restroom while Jan stalls the bodyguard. You stay in your seat, so our man Max can record it all from your lapel camera. Some other guys might be coming wanting to meet up with Nathan.”

A blonde woman approached Nathan’s table and took his order. After she’d turned back around, French Nat stuck out his tongue at her lewdly and laughed out loud about it.

“Nice guy,” Zoe remarked.

“Don’t stare at him so much,” Jan warned. “Types like that are paranoid.”

Jan nervously tapped his fingers on the table. He hated sitting here doing nothing while the others did all the work. The server finally brought two coffees to Nathan’s table.

“Is she one of the ones you know?” Zoe asked.

“Yes,” Chandu replied. “That’s Sandra. Sweet thing, really gets up and goes. You can’t imagine what she—”

“Don’t want to know,” Zoe cut him off. “Main thing is, she got the bisacodyl in there. If she did, you should head on in. That stuff works fast.”

Jan checked the time. The plan was not perfect. Countless things that might go wrong had occurred to him, but this was their only chance to get close to Nathan. Jan would have liked to interrogate the Frenchman personally, but two people waiting for him in the men’s restroom would have been too conspicuous. Besides, Nathan had been in the French Foreign Legion, so Chandu was the better choice. Jan only had to keep the bodyguard at bay.

Chandu was waiting in a stall in the men’s room. His legs anxiously shifted back and forth. He composed himself like before a fight, blocking all else out. This Nathan was no weakling. Anyone who’d fought with the Foreign Legion for ten years knew all the tricks. In a fistfight he’d slaughter the Frenchman, but Nat was sure to have a knife or even a piece on him.

Everything had to go just right. The café was busy and bright, not some dark, secluded underpass. If just one customer came into the restroom along with Nathan, the whole thing was finished. Chandu had only one shot. He had to overpower the Frenchman before he knew what was coming.

“He’s getting up,” he heard Jan say in his earpiece. “The way he’s holding his stomach, our pharmaceutical magic is working.”

The door to the men’s restroom opened. A man was cursing in French.

Chandu bounded out of the stall, lunging at the startled Nathan. He grabbed the Frenchman by the collar and kicked open the stall door. Chandu rammed Nathan’s head into the toilet bowl and flushed. Nathan twisted and jerked to fight Chandu’s hold, but Chandu drove his knee into Nathan’s shoulders and held him down. Once the water emptied, he pulled Nathan up and slammed Nathan’s forehead against the stall wall. Then he plunged the Frenchman’s head back into the toilet again. The Frenchman floundered in Chandu’s tight grip. The African was merciless. He counted to ten, then yanked Nathan from the bowl and looked him in the eyes.

“Listen up, son of a bitch. You’re going to answer a few questions. I don’t like an answer? I drown you in this toilet.”

Nathan’s eyes were wide with fear. He coughed up water. Blood ran from his forehead. And he nodded.

Nathan’s bodyguard seemed to suspect nothing. The thug drank his coffee leisurely, setting his feet up on the chair opposite. He pulled a pack from his shirt and lit a cigarette.

The things Jan was hearing through his earpiece made him cringe.

“Your homeboy is not too squeamish,” Zoe remarked, grinning. “When he’s done with that asshole, he’ll have to go have that talk with my neighbor.”

After the bodyguard had allowed himself a couple puffs, he glanced toward the restroom, looking anxious. Evidently his boss’s toilet break was lasting too long.

“Damn it,” Jan said. “I’m going over to him.” He stood.

“Just wait,” Zoe said, trying to hold him back.

Jan shook his head. He didn’t want to take any risks. Chandu needed every second. Jan maneuvered around the chairs and tables till he was at the bodyguard’s table. The man was about to rise, but Jan sat down and showed his police badge.

“Berlin Detectives,” he said. “Please remain seated.”

The man was taken off guard. He looked around as if reconning possible escape routes, but he sat back down in his chair.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” the man said.

“Possibly,” Jan said, “but we’ve received a terror warning, so we’re watching all public squares and gathering places.”

The bodyguard reared up. “I look like a fuckin’ A-rab?” He’d clearly recovered from his initial shock. “What, you think I got a bomb strapped on under my shirt?”

The toilet flushing roared in Jan’s ear. He could barely focus on their conversation.

“Measures include weapons checks. Are you carrying a weapon on you?”

“Not a one,” the man said, holding up his hands. “I swear.”

“So what’s making that bulge in your jacket, at the left hip?”

The bodyguard turned his head toward the street again. He seemed to be entertaining more thoughts of fleeing.

“It’s jus’ a little club I got,” he whispered. “No one’s assassinating anyone with a thing like that.”

“A little club.” Jan raised his eyebrows, disapproving. “You planning on killing your own breakfast? Why else would you carry that on you, and at a place like this?”

Jan could practically see the man’s thoughts racing. Meantime, Nathan had become talkative. Jan had to play for more time.

“There’s a few bad guys in Berlin,” the bodyguard explained. “It’s jus’ self-protection.”

“Can I see this club?”

The man grumbled something and set a slim plastic stick on the table. Jan knew the style of weapon. It could be whipped out in one quick movement. At its tip was a heavy, round ball, good for breaking bones. Jan took a good, long look at the blackjack.