Hooligan Read online

  ———

  I almost feel like a salt-of-the-earth working man when the alarm makes me roll out of bed at four thirty in the morning, to knock back a quick cup of coffee and then roll down the highway, half asleep, to my construction job. But that’s where the comparison breaks down. I don’t work in construction but rather a knucklehead gym, and it was my uncle calling, not the alarm, that yanked me out of my hammock.

  “Heiko, get up. You need to come to the gym right now. You have to give me a hand with something. Get your ass up and don’t fall back asleep!”

  He personally meets me up at the driver-side door and pulls on my arm, tugging me inside. There’s a pile of cigarette butts next to the back door, smoked down to the filter.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, and notice that the thing that had been scratching my neck the whole way was the label of my sweatshirt. It’s on backwards. While I slip out of the sleeves and rotate it around my body till it’s right, Axel explains the situation: “Check it out, it’s like this. One of the Angels called me earlier. Said he had a tip from a friend in the drug squad—”

  “The rockers have pals in the police department?” I ask.

  “Pals, friends, informants. Doesn’t make a fucking difference right now. Listen to me, for fuck’s sake! Anyway, they’re really worked up right now. Reason for existence or some sort of bullshit. There’ll be raids conducted all over the state today. Don’t know who they have it from. Maybe it has something to do with the van. Fuck!” My legs suddenly start to tingle. As if they’re telling me to run. “Anyway. We’re on the list too. You have to help me get rid of a couple things before they come over.”

  “And when is that?” I look at the clock on the wall. Five twenty.

  “He couldn’t say exactly, but before eight for sure. Come on!”

  He pulls stacks of paper from the file cabinet, and just when I think that’s all of it, he goes somewhere else and gets just as much paper as before. And plastic bags full of vials and pills.

  “Fuck, where was all that?”

  “Stop asking retarded questions. Run that shredder!” He points to the big office shredder, a massive white block, as big as a copy machine that dominates a corner of the office. I’d always asked myself why he needed such a huge paper shredder. Well, there you have it, I think to myself, and start pushing stacks of paper through. The machine is running at top speed. Rattling like a tractor or a mower whose blades kept hitting rocks. I don’t have much time to look over the contents of the papers. Seems more like scratch paper. Bullshit scrawled all over. Most of it looks like some sort of lists of names and corresponding numbers or sums of money. Some of them, this much I could gather, not peanuts. Once a bucket is full, I take it to the showers and dump it out on the tiles there, sloped down toward the drain in the middle. Then I douse it with lighter fluid and light it up. When the scraps of paper have burned down, I turn on the showers. My uncle says we don’t have to worry about clogging the drain right now, but the drain is nothing more than a big pipe in the ground with a large grill attached. It’s not going to clog that fast.

  “They’ll smell it,” I say and wipe the sweat from my forehead.

  “Smell what?”

  “Well, that someone was playing with fire. Know right away what went down.”

  “So what,” he yells from the office, “does that give them any evidence? Nope! So shut up and keep at it!”

  Because the shredder is the hardest working employee this morning, I’ve soon destroyed all the paperwork. While I’m at it, my uncle’s busy using all the toilets in the building to dump bags of drugs and flush them down.

  The whole time he’s babbling away: “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Break my neck. Break my bones.”

  Once in a while, I see him pause, pick out certain pills from the bag, and throw them down the hatch. I help him flush. A rainbow of pills swirls down the drain. Even after he’s stopped talking to himself, I think about his words. All these years, I’ve never asked what actually goes on in here or what I may be missing. I wasn’t tremendously interested or just thought it was okay. My god, letting the bikers hawk their wares here. But I wouldn’t have done it differently if I was the boss. But that’s exactly it! Who’s actually the boss? Or bosses? Then for some odd reason, I think of an old TV series with a similar name. I think it was Who’s the Boss? Fuck if I know why I thought of that. Just occurred to me.

  And then we’re done with all the shit and Axel has collapsed against the wall next to his private throne. I think it was less from exhaustion. More from panic. Or dread. Not necessarily because of the fucking cops that were about to show up here. They didn’t have anything on him anymore. But maybe frightened of other people.

  We’re sitting in the space behind the back door and treating ourselves to a coffee, accompanied by a good morning beer. I look at my uncle. He’s on a folding chair that’s dangerously close to splitting because of the mass of muscle it has to bear. Axel’s sitting so bowlegged, it’s as if he has bull’s gonads as big as bowling balls. He’s wearing a pair of black jogging pants with snaps open halfway up his calves. Almost like he’s wearing bell bottoms. His salmon-colored shirt, which clearly needs ironing, is also unbuttoned. Two rivulets of sweat run along the open collar, down to below his chest. He has his elbows propped on his knees. His forehead resting on the palm of one hand. Somewhere beneath there’s still eyes in his sockets and maybe they’re already seeing rather unpleasant things coming his way. His neck is so red. How can it be so red? As if someone had skinned a baboon’s butt and refashioned it as his neck brace.

  And then I just say it: “I have the van.”

  Any second I expect to catch his fist with my face. But all he does is slowly lift his head.

  “Say that again.”

  Something has to happen now. Hit me! Then it’s over.

  “Say that again.” He repeats himself.

  I keep the others out of it. “There was this opportunity that presented itself. Looked like a sure thing. There were … complications.”

  “What kind of opportunity?” he asked. His voice was as calm as a storm behind a mountain ridge.

  “Some guy from Braunschweig wasn’t careful. Posted all kinds of shit on the web. Open to everyone. I just had to do something. I mean … they’re from Braunschweig. You only get an opportunity like that once in life—” My rib cage blocked. Tightened. Breathing was hard. “I fucked it up. But it wasn’t just my fault! I couldn’t have known that two cars full would suddenly roll up!”

  His gaze pierced me. It’s a miracle his head didn’t fall back. Like with a shotgun that kicks.

  “And the van?”

  “We had to run. Couldn’t save it, and had to leave it there. Went back a couple days ago. Couldn’t do nothin’.”

  I show him the picture of the VW on my phone. Any second I expect it to melt away in his hand or be crushed like a can of beer, but he just hands it back.

  He sighs loudly. Then he says, “The vehicle is registered with a guy in Hildesheim. A junky. You know that. Right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I sent people around to his place. I sent Tomek over there. To find out if he’d sold the car for cash.”

  He doesn’t need to say anything else. Don’t even want to know what Tomek and whoever else was along did to the guy. A long silence follows. I can see the hairs on my forearm standing on end.

  Then my uncle says, “You’d better go now, Heiko.”

  I do as I’m told. Get up slowly and retreat. No sudden movements. I’m afraid he could attack me, like a puma with rabies.

  “One more thing,” he says and I stop.

  “Why the van? Why not your own car?”

  “No Hannover plates.”

  He closes his eyes, nods, and his mouth even makes a tiny motion upward. “Okay, sure, understand. Smart.” The moment passes. “Go.” And I go.

  After turning from the side street where Wotan is located, I see several police cars and a van in my rearview mirror,
coming down the street without their lights on. They turn off toward the gym.

  ———

  The driveway to Arnim’s house is full of dark, boxy transport vans. Plates from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Serbia, Lithuania, hell if I know. The cocksuckers have boxed me in. Arnim should hire a fucking valet service. The smell of zoo, animal shit and urine, penetrates the house and coats everything. I climb the narrow, creaking stairs. Brought the bucket I always use to bring Siegfried his bones. I hear people speaking Russian in the kitchen. Arnim has tried to teach me some over the years. But it never amounted to any more than standard stuff like “hello,” “thanks,” and various insults and curse words. Never really wanted to learn Russian. Think it’s better if I don’t understand what Arnim’s visitors are saying every year or half year. The conversation falls silent when I come into the kitchen. The three guys with typical Russian canister-shaped skulls and cruel faces stare at me. I’d like to tell them that they can keep on talking shit because I don’t understand a word. But they don’t speak any German, either. Probably not even English. They blink at me from underneath their Neanderthal-like foreheads. One of them has a harelip beneath his mustache, splitting his upper lip. It looks like someone’s tied a thread from his gums, out his mouth, and over his head, pulling it back. He’s wearing a baby-blue Camp David shirt, unbuttoned. I can recognize horizontal stab scars on his small pot belly. The next one is wearing an army-gray vest covered with pockets. His bare arms make it look as though he’s wearing a fucking tight, patterned long-sleeve shirt. All of it tattoos. Tanks, howitzers, those Russian churches with onion-shaped towers, ornamented crosses, and countless broads with big racks. The third guy, who’s supporting himself on the sink with his seven remaining fingers, has a goatee. Splotches on his face that look like burns and a scar along his throat like a tight necklace.

  “Privyet,” I say.

  They only nod grimly. I walk into the yard. The camouflage netting is back up. Arnim is standing with a couple of other people around the pit where his fucking tiger is supposed to live soon. The oversized wooden cover is pushed to the side. He explains something in Russian, fat chest extra swollen with pride. Really cleaned up today, even putting on a shirt to match his stained cargo shorts and the flip-flops. He’d set up industrial-strength construction floodlights pointed toward the ground, providing indirect lighting that reached the faces of those present but left their eye sockets with shadows. Makes these figures seem even more dodgy than they already were. This is the true dregs of society. Yet the press is always picking on us. If they only knew. At least we smash each other’s faces in and don’t have it done by some poor shitty animals who have no choice. Nights like these, I sometimes wish the cops would roll in and lock up all these thugs. But that never happens. Arnim is just too careful. He organizes these fights here too infrequently. Precisely because it’s so risky in Germany. The scene mostly happens in the former East Bloc states, the Balkans, and over toward Turkey. It’s much easier to grease the police’s palms there. If they’re not already standing in the arena in the first place with some banana republic’s funny money clutched in their hands. He told me once there’re only two other guys in the whole country who hold animal fights on this scale. One behind Hamburg. The other near Frankfurt, by the Polish border. But they just do dogs, he said, it’s boring, my boy, you have to offer people something, my boy. It makes me think of my first year living with Arnim. All of it was completely new to me, so I looked in as it was going on, behind the shed. Thought I was imagining when they had a fucking brown bear fight against two pit bulls. Even tag-teaming, the dogs didn’t have a snowball’s chance. After they’d tranquilized the victorious bear and pulled out the tattered carcasses, and I popped behind the shed to barf, I just wanted out. I haven’t let myself be drawn into that shit ever since. All the fucking creatures we’ve had here. That bear, sure. But we’ve also had wolves. And a fucking steer! And then two years ago there was that old, feral male chimpanzee. It’d been brought here by some Armenian who stank of drug and weapons money. He’d showed up with a bevy of bodyguards and had Arnim doing his bidding. He even had an arsenal of weapons for the fucking ape! I saw how he presented the animal to Arnim. Razor blades attached to leather arm cuffs and twisted shit like that. Couldn’t keep my eyes shut that night. Till they left with the chimp. But before that. Lay in my darkened room and had to listen to the monkey howling nonstop. Fucking hell! But that was the good thing: toward morning, just before it got light, the whole filthy squad of gangsters packed up their animals and fucked off. At least there was that. That morning I had half a mind to sneak down into the living room and wrap my hands around Arnim’s neck, while he was down there sawing logs. Squeeze tight till all the air had slipped from his lungs and his eyeballs were bulging from their sockets. But I just buried my head under my pillow. Things like that pass. And then you just skip out for a night or turn up the music in your headphones till they’re ready to bust.

  There’s a travel cage with thick bars against the wall of the shed that Arnim cleared out during the day. The dogs are slowly waking up. They’re pumped full of tranquilizers for the long trips from all those banana republics. Looks like things could get started soon. I walk over to Arnim, who’s pulling the lid over the pit again. Then one of his guests tests how much weight it can support by bouncing on it and gives a thumb’s up.

  “Hey, Arnim, I’m about to head out. Just so you’re not looking for me.”

  “What?! But things are about to get wild here, my boy!”

  “Yeah, no, forget about it. I don’t need that.”

  “Oh well, then get lost. Can’t make anything off you anyway.”

  When I come back through the kitchen, the harelip and tittyarms are still sitting there. Harelip yells something. Doesn’t seem to be directed at me. I walk past him. Goatee man is in the living room and is bent over, probing the sofa cushions and the spaces between them. His shirt’s slipped up. The butt of a pistol pokes out of his waistband. He looks around, sees me, and pushes himself away from the sofa. We’re standing face to face. He smiles at me. Clearly trying to provoke.

  “Me nothing,” he says with a shaky accent and holds up his hands.

  Maybe to show me he doesn’t have anything or wasn’t looking for anything. Then he places his pointer in front of that nasty kisser and says, “Shhhh,” winking at me. I go upstairs. Then I toss a couple things into my duffel bag, call Kai, and ask if he can pick me up with his car from the train station in Wunstorf. There haven’t been any trains running for hours. I say he shouldn’t ask such stupid questions, and whether he’ll fucking pick me up or not. We agree to meet there in an hour. I leave the room, lock the door, and add the two padlocks I’ve installed extra for nights like these. Inside there are two more that you just have to click. On the outside you need keys, otherwise they don’t lock. I’m not so retarded that I’d let myself be locked inside my own room. Goatee man is back at it when I go down the stairs. Don’t give a fuck. And he could care less that I see him. I slam the porch door shut, but it immediately swings open again. Then I find my way to the country road with my flashlight and from there, on to the station.

  ———

  “Just moved in and there’s already a ruckus! Unbelievable!”

  “Shut your trap!” Kai bellowed at my new neighbor in the prefab high-rise, one door down, and called him an old geezer or something like that. I pulled him back into my place and yelled at him, wanting to know what it was about. He’d probably call the cops and they’d kick me out, but then I had to laugh anyway, and we laughed our asses off, cracking up about the old fucker with a stick up his ass. Kai had been nice enough to bring along something to celebrate with, and I’d already knocked back two ecstasy and blazed three blunts thick as my thumb. The whole apartment stank of weed and skunky beer. Ulf was rolling the next one. On my new couch, which we had found on the side of the street on the way here. We all pitched in, and it went in the elevator to the sixth floor. Everything was
perfect. Just the way it was supposed to be. Summer vacation in my sights. But I hadn’t gone to school for a couple weeks anyway. Since I’d moved out. Just had to celebrate finally escaping Hans’s stinking cottage.

  “Now put down the fucking phone for a sec and finish rolling that thing!” Kai bellowed at Ulf, who’d been exchanging messages the whole time with Saskia, his new flame. “It’s about time we listened to some nice Rotterdam tunes.”

  Kai cranked up the volume on my stereo and ear-blasting Gabba techno boomed out of the speakers, which were having trouble dealing with the racket and were noticeably humming.

  We were yelling over each other, and I flopped down on the couch next to Ulf, who had the grass fall out of his paper. His furious face protested, but I couldn’t understand a word through the hardcore noise. Then I saw my phone light up. The light from the display glistened through a page from an open porn mag. It was Jojo. I jumped over to the stereo and turned it down. Kai threw everything at me he could find. I fended off coins and cigarette butts with one hand and picked up.

  “Jojo, where you at? We’ve already almost killed everything we have.”

  “Heiko? Heiko, don’t yell so loud. We’re on the road. My dad is driving us. Me and the man of the day.”

  His voice cracked a couple times.

  I said, “Huh?” or something like that.