Chapter 12
‘Frank! Good to hear from you so soon. I’d have thought you and your family would be enjoying the excellent weather. It’s so conducive to frolicking on the beach. How is Marit? And the children, if I may call them that. Goodness, they’re almost adults, aren’t they? Are you at home?’
Milan Krulis sat comfortably in his office. The Muzak was off and the building was quiet except for the tinny sound of a Hungarian rhapsody on his desk. The Dictaphone served a variety of purposes and Milan favoured the passionate embrace of his national music. His pencil continued to scribble numbers into a ledger.
‘No, Mil, I’m up the road in a phone box. Are you busy?’
‘Come down if you wish. We can lunch and talk.’
‘Max and his son are with me. Ok?’
‘No sweat, Frank. Five minutes?’
‘Five minutes.’
Milan pressed the line dead and immediately dialled. The gravel throat answered the red phone in the boarding house passageway. Milan politely gave his message and waited.
‘Dorfman.’ The flat voice grunted through sleep.
‘Hans, if I send a car, can you be ready?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you, Hans. Come prepared as usual.’ said Milan. ‘Frank and Max will be here.’
‘Good.’
When Milan had hung up he realised it was the first time there had been a trace of animation in Dorfman’s voice.
*
Hans Dorfman took no breakfast. His habit was to roll into bed after dawn and to sleep till evening. A diet of hamburgers, chips and beer kept him alive. He never used a knife or fork to eat and never did he join the dinner folk of the paint-peeled slum of a boarding house.
The cupboard was a lonely piece of furniture inside the cramped room. Hans opened the top drawer and removed his shaver and toothbrush. With a towel on his shoulder he poked his thin, pale face into the passageway. The bathroom was fourteen paces away and he reached twelve when the woman with twins stepped into the hall. Hans glanced quickly into her untidy room with its waterbed and toys. She was young with a dimpled chin.
‘Hallo Hans.’
She smiled as he pushed past her and her twins and locked himself inside the bathroom. ‘Shit!’ she whispered to her uncomprehending twins. ‘He’s weird. Must be the only guy I know who wears his suit to the shithouse.’ The twins were herded back into their room.
Hans Dorfman’s suit was for all seasons and reasons. It was all he wore. Dark blue with pin stripes, with an almost invisible gravy stain on the lapels, the suit afforded his entrance to most clubs. He kept it immaculately pressed, cleaning it himself with an aerosol dry cleaner. The suit provided perpetual camouflage for his weapon.
After locking the door behind him, he unstrapped the holster with its Beretta and removed it with his coat. He slung them together over the doorknob. Then he turned the tap on. Water poured grudgingly into the porcelain tub. A hint of steam rose from the spluttering trickle. His face in the mirror was bleak in the yellow light.
A bass guitar resonated from the hollow of the boarding house. It reminded Hans of the toneless bang of a biscuit tin. From outside the door came sounds of queuing boarders. He washed, shaved and dried his face, then re-strapped the Beretta and put on his coat. He was about to open the door when he changed his mind.
Returning to the tub he tugged at the plug chain and watched the filmy dregs gurgling down the drain. He stood closer to the rim of the basin, unzipped his fly and smiled as the stream of warm amber urine bubbled into the final vestiges of shave water. Then he fastened his fly and let himself out into the passageway, past his fellow boarders and out onto the street.
The black Ford LTD was just pulling into the curb and a uniformed chauffeur gestured for Hans to get in. The limousine purred away and Hans touched its luxury with his eyes. He sat still and with little interest watched the outside pass by.
‘Saints’ve got an uphill battle today, eh?’ remarked the driver comradely.
‘Just drive, pal!’ spoke Hans Dorfman in the manner of someone talking to a dog.
*
‘Tseridis? Yes, of course I know him, Frank.’
‘He’s the fish we want.’
Milan raised his eyebrows and produced rows of creases in his forehead. Behind the earnest faces of Max and his son the harbour shone blue and white in the afternoon sun as the ever-changing patchwork of sails glided slowly to the Heads.
‘Oh?’ Milan poured wine and offered the bottle label for inspection. ‘You are certain, of course?’
Max showed no interest in the brown label and its foreign language. Frank moved from the Persian and nodded as he took the bottle. ‘Absolutely.’ He let it stand in the ice bucket and Milan nodded appreciatively.
Rane sat still. His attention was on the fabled businessman. Was there anything to warrant the respect he received? He had read of the notorious Mr Cruel and it was difficult to equate this wizened elf with the media images.
‘Well?’ Milan spread his hands, pope like, toward his guests. ‘Pray, where do we go from here?’
Max ignited his face and flared at Milan. ‘We just don’t wanna go bump in the fuckin’ night, mate.’
‘Aah!’ Milan said with a cunning smile. ‘You may need a torch perhaps?’
Frank and Max laughed but the humour did not carry to Rane. Frank replied, ‘Anything to blow his mind.’
Rane’s grin was stretched by hard lips as intentions were dawning.
‘Well, we seem to know where to go ... ’ Milan began as the red light on his telephone glowed. ‘Excuse me, please, gentlemen.’ He lifted the receiver and spoke his name. He listened for a short time and hung up. ‘One of our friends.’ Milan opened his mouth and, as if thinking better of it, said, ‘He’s on his way up. Shall we wait?’
Max shrugged his giant shoulders and kept silent, the way silence dominates elevators. Frank found the Persian again and studied its patterns. In moments the office door swung open and Hans Dorfman slid in. Both Frank and Max reacted as if their team had scored a try. They laughed and whooped, loquacious as drunks at a dogfight. They hugged and pumped his back and punched his shoulders and shouted his name.
Hans Dorfman lapped it up. He returned their enthusiasm with a hint of a smile emerging reluctantly on his terse face. He had given his friends his soul for a while.
*
Outside in the courtyard, jazz thumped in tight discipline with the snare pacing and the brass trying to catch up. Seats were full and the bar was crowded. Shadows covered the bar as the courtyard bathed in splendid sunshine.
‘That one! Blue shades. In the corner.’ Hans Dorfman’s lips tightened as he flicked his head minutely in the direction of the courtyard. His eyes were hidden behind tiny black glasses. He was the image of a B-grade movie killer and he courted this effigy.
They stared at her from the private lounge above the courtyard. She was vacant of expression as she pulled errant pubic hair from her crotch. Two women sat with her and they were talking in wild animation.
A plan had erupted from their short time at the pub. They prepared the structure for the entrapment of Tseridis. It would be early Sunday morning and it would be a pernicious act of revenge. There was no alternative. Rane would be home in bed and he would be able to continue his life unfettered by the violence of retribution. The rationale for revenge exonerated the act.
The bearded giant thought of McLuhan and his putty body between the starch of hospital sheets. His son hated starch and yet he couldn’t ask the nurse to unstarch them. Besides, as Max acceded bitterly, his boy’s body would remain ignorant of the affront.
‘Yes,’ Milan was speaking in a voice far away, ‘even within your tragedy your life blossoms. You escape decay. The romance of history is especially illustrated by acts of altruism. Concern for ... no, it’s something more, it’s ... ’
‘Bull-fuckin’-shit, Mil.’ Max stated without rancour.
‘Why, Max? Why is it bullshit?’ Milan looked from Max to the window and saw himself there, looking back at himself. The window had been shut against the music. ‘What motivates you? Concern for your son? No? It’s more than that, isn’t it?’ Without waiting for a reply Milan ploughed on. ‘It’s love, isn’t it? With altruism there’s no self. It is finished.’ He nodded his head repeatedly and eyed each of his companions seriously. ‘Jesus was an altruist.’
‘I agree.’ Max tucked his massive legs under his chair and leaned on the table. ‘Christianity survives principally because of the fuckin’ altruism of Christ. That sort of fuckin’ bullshit appeals to the downtrodden.’
‘So where’s the difficulty, Max?’ Milan asked honestly.
‘Who has known, seen, or even been known to have invented an altruistic lawyer?’
‘Max, they exist because they serve society in decay.’
‘Yeah!’ interrupted Frank with a smile. ‘Go on, Mil, tell us the one about the lawyers, will you?’
‘Thank you, Frank Donleavy.’ retorted Milan, smiling with all of his face launched into action. ‘This city was rotting until I roamed the misty back streets of sin.’
‘And fuckin’ Dracula Krulis fixed the rot by fuckin’ suckin’ the rot from every fuckin’ cunt in the fuckin’ cunt of a place, hey?’ Max edged him on, tauntingly, with laughter.
‘You jest not, my friend.’ Milan replied with wise contempt. ‘What do they contribute to society? These lawyers? Hey? Their only value is that of a scavenger. The jackals and vultures of society. The lawyer literally picks at the bones of the unfortunate. At a profit, mind you.’
No one answered. No one had the capacity to be stirred by Milan’s predilections for social dramatics. They were intent on revenge and only humour could break their violent concentration.
‘I, too, supply the needs of a decaying society. I don’t advertise. The client is panting at my door. So why are they treated differently from myself?’ Milan brandished his cudgel as the Ancient Mariner of The Cross, as if forever expecting an audience for his tales of distress. ‘Who castigates them? Do they wear public and constant ridicule? Who judges the judge? Who forgives the priest?’
The band had come to rest. The next ten-minute break lasted an hour. The stampede to the bar had eased and the mood was festive. Beer flowed as they moved toward Sunday.
‘How do you justify this?’ Max asked suddenly.
‘Well, speaking euphemistically,’ Milan answered a bit unsteadily, ‘ the human being remains nature’s lone vengeful animal.’
‘That’s justification?’ Max laughed sceptically.
‘My friend of long ago, I salute you and I love you, but there is no doubt that justification lies in the fact that, not even in your wildest imagination, could you contemplate a person such as Tseridis not having power lines connected to the inner circuitry of the judiciary? Do you think, no, you couldn’t possibly, but just suppose you thought that Tseridis has existed with his code of behaviour without the connivance of the pillars of society, you would quickly arrive at the conclusion that you were wrong. Why, his payments extend to many an illustrious political merchant who insidiously manoeuvres things his way.
‘How can you have faith in the status quo? The system has been perfected since the days of the Rum Trade when this great country was a colony of penurious peasants from Britain. Why, the landed aristocracy has maintained its grip on the economic and political power structures of this nation and it’s damn well not going to relinquish it to hordes of the dreaming middle class.
‘The system itself moulds the rot. It’s only wordplay about their ridding our society of all traces of animalism. The canine penis penetrates as effectively as the human prick, and it matters not a snot how much we voodoo the lower aspects of our nature, those very laws, the taboos of voodoo are evidence of what we really are. We are captives of our basest instincts.
‘Forget about the turn of the alternate cheek, Max. That’s for those who couldn’t win the fight under any circumstances.
‘Men of power have their enemies and sometimes it is necessary to attack those enemies. This must be carried out surreptitiously. This task occasionally lands with me. These people attack their enemies through me. I am a conduit for greed and the pursuit of power. I am an indispensable component of the political and social process and as such I am afforded a certain amount of immunity or protection. I manage my business within clearly defined parameters and I am a disciplinary force for those who transgress my standards, my ethics, so to speak.
‘I abhor the drug trade. It is society’s Draino. Pour it into the human system and humankind will vanish. Yet while I am vilified by this junket of jingoistic journalists it is they who procrastinate on the more serious issues of drug abuse and of corruption because of the drug trade. The creation of laws that produce and maintain the conditions extant for the drug trade are to blame and the journalists ignore this vital and dangerous connection.
‘The convolutions of irony are endless, my friends.’
His homily was over. His quest for understanding was an apology. He was not among their tribulations though he felt somewhere they had respect for him in their eyes. The three young women had been joined by a young man with a hairy chest and a gold something dangling in his down. They were animated by some activity under their table. Thunder sounded loudly. They stopped talking and listened to the afternoon changing its tune.
