Free The Snowman by Jörg Fauser Page B

93631 – 47345” – “this stuff is more powerful than any of the people who sell it” – “51120 – 43943 – 37518 – 65343” – “I could use a man like you,” said a hyena, snapping at his throat. He woke up bathed in sweat. Dawn was slowly crawling over the rooftops and the red eye went out. But he knew the controllers were everywhere, checking up on him.

13
    Monday, mid-day, bright sun, little Bavarian clouds, a blue and white sky. Blum bought a used sample case from a Turk, artificial leather, black, 21 × 14 inches, DM 85.
    â€œAnything else, sir?”
    â€œDo you have a good knife?”
    The man smiled broadly and showed his collection. Blum chose one with a mother-of-pearl handle, 9 inches long, made in Solingen, sharp as a razor blade. The man oiled the flick mechanism.
    â€œThat way you’re one tenth of a second faster, friend.”
    In his hotel room, Blum packed the cans into the case. It neatly took twenty, and indeed would have taken twenty-one, but he wasn’t greedy. He stowed one tablet tube full of the powder and the can it came from in his trouser pockets. You had to have something at the ready. At the reception desk he asked about the blonde. The clerk acted as if he knew nothing about her. A busload of Swedish women surged through the revolving doors into the hotel. Blondes, drunk; they came cheaper by the dozen. They were not to Blum’s taste. He left no tip.
    Another light beer in the rail station buffet, the sample case on a chair beside him. Around here Munich was still the capital of junk-shops and cattle dealers, North Africans and Hopfperle beer. Bullnecked men from the Allgäu, looking over the top of the Memminger Boten newspaper, watched the Macedonian pickpocketsmiming intimate relations with the big-bosomed waitresses, and itinerant quack doctors from Bohemia were recruiting assistants from among the unemployed sons of the Anatolian garbage men. The finishing touch was put to Blum’s mid-day contentment by the appearance of the Salvation Army. Six plump-cheeked girls sang, “Hallelujah, God be with you”, and a martial gentleman who must hold the rank of field marshal at least distributed a tract from which Blum learned that Bob Dylan the protest singer had been born again. It seemed a suitable conclusion to the 1970s, just as the cocaine in Blum’s sample case promised a good beginning to the 1980s. Blum rewarded the Salvation Army with a five-mark piece and went to catch his Intercity 624, departing 13.16 hours (Würzburg – Frankfurt am Main – Cologne – Wuppertal – Dortmund).
    Of course they could be anywhere, he thought, looking at the man in the blue maxi-coat standing by the sausage stall and immersed in the Corriere della Sera – Rossi, or the people he had pinched the stuff from or meant to pinch it from, or friend Hermes, Madame Renée, and of course the police, the Federal German CID, the Federal Intelligence Agency, Interpol, the CIA, how’s things, Mr Hackensack – and that’s just what they’ll assume, they’ll assume you’re going to crack up, give in, surrender, take the coke back to counter 1 at the left-luggage office for safekeeping and send the receipt to the Phoenicia. Paranoia, that’s the word. Persecution mania. Those pangs at the heart, this ache in the kidneys, the tingling up your backbone, the itch under your scalp, all just persecution mania. Keep cool. You’ve made up your mind to see this thing through, so do that, go to the dining car with the depressed look of a traveller in thermal underwear, no business deal done all last week, these chemicalswill finish us off, the wife’s got the curse, Hertha Football Club has lost again, and a long week in Wuppertal is staring you in your beer-fuddled face.
    â€œA Pils, waiter, nice and cold.”
    That was the right kind of tone. Now just a little more distaste