All at once, the whole group around the bed jumped back. When the old man started hacking. He had one of those thumb-sized tubes sticking out of or into a hole in his throat. For breathing and all, I think. They’d pulled out the tube because of complications, and now he started rattling and squirting bile and puke and even some blood. And after the first big torrent, all of them went back to the man, and the resident there cracked some kind of joke. I didn’t understand it because of the acoustics, glued as I was to the doorway and ogling Yvonne, and then she started laughing. Her laughter sounded like one of those wind chimes or whatever they’re called. Like a rainstorm in summer, sprinkling down on my exposed brain, calming me and giving the feeling that this miserable life was somehow bearable. As long as I could listen to her laughter. Yvonne’s laugh is actually more like a choppy cackle if you take a sober look at it, yet I’d never heard anything more beautiful. In that moment I wished I’d made the joke and not the asshole resident, and she was laughing at my joke.
Nobody there called out for me to help. No one even noticed I was there because they were so busy with the bag of bones in the bed. The geezer died. The doctor recorded the time of death, and they joked they’d all have to change their clothes now. I’d snuck out into the corridor. By the door. I didn’t want to stand there completely useless. Later that day, smoking outside, I saw Yvonne again and I talked to her.
“Here it is. In there,” Kai says, following the Google Maps route on his display.
Everything had to go superfast. Kai called me right after he spotted the Braunschweig son of a bitch’s Facebook post. I was sitting on the crapper, and as always when you have to take a dump in a hurry, the shit turns out messy and horrible, not one of those nice, slick turds that glide out your anus just like that, so all you have to do is wipe and you’re good. Nope, of course, first I had to rip off what felt like fifty sheets’ worth of paper from the roll. Then I got up to speed. Packed my mouth guard, jumped into a comfortable jogging suit. While I was doing that, Kai called Jojo and Ulf. Ulf had to cancel because he was eating with Saskia and her parents. Jojo immediately said yes. I picked him up and we drove over to Kai in Hannover. Only then did I realize that under no circumstance did I want to drive into Braunschweig with my own beater. Hannover tags. We might as well have sprayed a big fat 96 on the hood. So I went back and forth on it. Taxis are too expensive and unreliable. Trains unreliable and have set departure times. Stealing a car would have taken too long because none of us knew how to get into one of those new things with electronic locks. And then I thought of the VW van from my uncle’s gym, which we also use to drive to the battles. A simple, black thing. Can’t be pegged. Besides, it didn’t have Hannover plates because Axel had it registered with some loser stooge because of some illegal shit he’d done with it. So we go to the gym and thank God the van was parked there. Grabbed the keys and race off.
We’re on the west expressway from the Braunschweig North interchange, and now take a left from the highway into an industrial area. A garden allotment area emerges behind the yellow glow of the streetlights.
“Still can’t believe you stole the van from the gym,” Jojo says and grabs my backrest again.
“Jojo, man, get your paw off right now before I hack it off. I just told you it makes me nervous”—he pulls his hand back—“and I didn’t steal it, of course. Just borrowed it.”
Kai giggles. “Yeah, for extra-ordinary off-duty activities.”
“So to speak.”
“Shouldn’t we at least let him know we—”
“Are you nuts, Jojo?! Then we should just climb right into the casket. Axel can’t know anything about it. At least not right away.”
“Okay, okay, drive a little slower,” Kai says and licks his upper lip. “We should be there any minute. Over on the left.”
I take my foot off the gas, letting us putter along without being too slow. After all, we aren’t here for some damn drive-by shooting. We look anxiously out the side window. There’s a small gap on the sidewalk where the pink neon light of a sign between two long factory or storage buildings reflects in the puddles on the street. It slowly glides into view. The neon sign shines in cursive writing: Lucky Luke.
“What do you want to bet they didn’t get permission from the copyright holders?” Kai whispers.
I say, “Shhhh!”
There are only a couple of cars in the gravel lot, which is also covered in puddles. A bouncer is standing under an aluminum awning. Next to him is a group of girls in miniskirts and little leather jackets, huddled together. I ask myself what kind of ho you have to be to wear a miniskirt in this weather. There’s a broad window in the wall behind the bouncer that’s covered from the inside.
“They must already be inside,” Kai whispered when we rolled past Lucky Luke, and the wall of a warehouse pushes into our field of vision. The weakly illuminated street opens onto a three-way stop. I turn the bus around and park on the side of the street. Luckily, the streetlamps overhead don’t work, and we’re sitting fairly safe in the dark.
“I feel like one of those private eyes from a black-and-white movie,” Jojo says and pokes his head into the front.
“What now?” Kai asks and tosses his phone in the air. It does a few flips and he casually catches it. The next time he throws it, I grab it out of the air.
“Hey!”
“Wait a sec. Let me look at the post again.”
He reaches over and fingers the Braunschweig profile on the display. I set the brightness to the lowest level.
The fucker had posted: “Pre-game waaaarm-up at Lucky Luke!!!” Then linked a couple of names that told me nothing.
“You wanna take a look inside?”
“Shut it, please.”
There’s even a link to Lucky Luke. I tap on it and the bar’s profile appears. I scroll down through stupid party pictures from random theme nights, ladies’ nights, and all-you-can-drink vodka parties. Then I find what I was looking for: in one of the posts the owner announces a separate smoking lounge.
“Aha,” I say triumphantly and not entirely unsatisfied with myself and show the post to Kai and Jojo.
“What’s that supposed to tell us?” Jojo asks.
“It tells us, dear Joachim, that the curmudgeon to my left is a damn Columbo,” Kai replies.
“Sure, but why exactly?”
“They have a smoking lounge, Jojo. That meeeeans: the only chance we have to catch those sons of bitches is when they come out from their pre-game”—I point over the bar—“to go to some random club. But that could take some time because the post from that guy is only two hours old.”
“I get it, because there’s a smoking lounge they won’t come outside to smoke.”