The Serenity Murders (26 page)

Şükrü, who approached us to refresh our drinks, encouraged by the cheerful look on my face, told me he’d like to speak to me
in private
, when I had a minute.

“Right away,” I said.

I am always sensitive when it comes to the plight of my workers.

We made our way upstairs, him ahead, me following.

He began talking, rubbing his hands together as he spoke.

“Boss, I know you’ve got a lot to deal with these days.”

“Go ahead Şükrü, dear,” I said. “I always have time to listen.”

I myself was shocked at how reasonable I sounded. Or was Şükrü popping Prozac pills into my Virgin Marys?

“There’s someone,” he said, looking down.

Based on the intro, I was betting he had the hots for an underage boy again. That was the problem with Şükrü. Whenever he found a young, skinny, girlish boy with slightly long hair, he instantly fell for him. He would become mad with desire, absolutely smitten, talk about the amorous object of his affections for days, take pictures, send gifts…

“Who is it this time?” I asked. “Which high school did you meet him in front of?”

He gave me a reproachful look.

“This one’s not like that,” he answered. “He’s a college graduate. He’s got a job too. He’s really smart.”

Now, that was a radical change for sure. The boy had to be over twenty, at least. I was sure Şükrü had pointed out the boy’s intelligence in order to win my approval.

“We met at a pub.”

Fine. People at that age were free to go to a pub for a pint and flirt with each other if they wished.

“That’s nice,” I said, waiting for him to spit out the rest. He certainly hadn’t insisted on speaking with me
in private
just so he could tell me this.

“He admires you,” he said.

“Well, isn’t that sweet,” I said, instantly loosening up.

Why and how he had become my admirer was not important in the least. He could have seen me from a distance, walking down the street. Never mind the why or wherefore, being admired is always,
always
good for the soul.

“He wants to meet you, but he’s too chicken…”

Now, what on earth did that mean? I knew people said I was stuck-up, arrogant, cool, and sometimes even insolent, but these weren’t reasons for people to fear me!

“Why,
ayol
?” I asked.

“He met you once before but you brushed him off…”

“Well, darling, I can’t sit and listen to the life story of every Tom, Dick, and Harry I encounter, or talk to them for hours about the films I like, the singers I adore, the memories I have of certain songs and whatnot, can I? It must have been bad timing.”

There are types like that: all they do is chitchat all day long, recounting this, sharing that…Just fifteen, twenty minutes into an initial conversation and all of a sudden it’s,
Oh, let’s be chums
, or even worse,
Let’s be the best of chums
. I simply have no patience for this.

“But he really admires you,” he said, his eyes narrowing in their sockets. “You’d be impressed if you spoke to him.”

If he was as skinny as a stick, no shoulders, had long hair, and looked like a girl, I was sure to have brushed him off. If I wanted to be with girls and women, I would. I don’t fancy effeminate men.

“Why,
ayol
?” I said.

“He wants to meet you.”

The Şükrü I knew wouldn’t talk about stuff like this so openly. Not unless he was piss drunk. And he didn’t look drunk.

“Your boyfriend,” I said, “wants to be with me. And you…are fixing us up?”

This was strange.

“Not like that,” he said. “It’s not sex that he wants. He wants to
meet you, talk to you, tell you about himself. He’s got something he wants to ask you, a request of you. He says he’ll end our relationship if I don’t set this up. My relationship is at stake…”

What did he mean, he only wanted to talk? And what to make of this “request”?

“That’s ridiculous,
ayol
. How pathetic is that! If he loves you…What sort of a relationship do the two you have anyway?”

“That’s the whole point! He doesn’t love me,
I
love him. I’d do anything not to lose him. Please, just this once…”

“Ay, don’t be ridiculous, Şükrü.” I was getting angry.

“Still, if you were to meet him and see…He’s a smart, intelligent guy. Maybe you’d get along?”

I started to laugh, purely out of frustration. Just a few moments earlier, downstairs with Belinda D., I’d finally managed to unwind, and now here I was, once again as tense as could be. Frankly, this new admirer business was really getting on my nerves.

“Forget it!” I said, standing up to indicate to him that the conversation was over. “Act a bit professional. Learn to separate your work from your private life!”

It was hard for the words that had just escaped my mouth to sound believable, since not even I found them convincing.

Dump Truck Beyza caught me at the top of the stairs.

“
Abla
, for God’s sake, make that Osman play more lively stuff. That wailing fiddle’s about to put me to sleep. And I’ve got a customer, you know. I need to get out there on the dance floor and work my magic!”

Aykut’s CD had finished, and because Osman was too scared to play anything else, he’d started playing it again, from the beginning. I signaled at him as I walked passed the DJ cabin. He’d switch on the spotlights and start playing something more animated in a moment.

I had already started napping in the taxi on our way back to the
hotel when Hüseyin, whose shoulder I’d rested my head against, awoke me by bringing up that annoying topic again.

“Şükrü’s twink is an admirer of yours, apparently,” he said.

“Oh, please, don’t you start too,” I said, without lifting my head. I really didn’t have the energy.

“He was at the bar tonight, you must have seen him,” he said.

I couldn’t possibly notice every person who came in. Besides, it had been darker than usual, as per my orders.

“So, is he a looker?” I asked, just to make conversation.

“He’s…ordinary…I think he’s someone from our neighborhood…You’d recognize him if you saw him.”

I was terribly drowsy.

W
e were planning on going straight to sleep, wrapped in a platonic embrace, like brother and sister. We were both tired.

I was just about to fall asleep when Hüseyin began to show signs of distress, tossing and turning in bed.

“I feel sick to my stomach,” he said.

It was psychological. Psychosomatic symptoms were different in all of us. I, for example, would get piercing headaches often when I was under stress.

“Let me do Reiki on you,” I said, placing my hands on his solar plexus chakra. I could feel it sucking up energy immediately. My hands instantly began heating up. His body was ice-cold, but he was sweating.

Hüseyin couldn’t bear it any longer; he got up and rushed to the bathroom. I could hear him retching his poor guts out.

I lit the bedside lamp and sat up in bed. I couldn’t just turn around and go back to sleep when the man was in such an awful state.

“It must have been something I ate,” I heard him say over the sound of running water.

He made his way back into the bedroom, and I could see that his forehead was covered in beads of sweat.

We had eaten the same food. There was nothing wrong with me.

“What did you drink?” I asked.

“Coke,” he said.

He hurried back to the bathroom.

I got out of bed and walked over to his side. He was sitting on the floor, his head over the toilet bowl. He looked pale, but was quickly turning green. His condition appeared far from normal.

“It’s blood…” he said, choking.

In a panic, I drew closer to see. It was true: he was literally puking blood.

We had to get to the hospital. The night porter at the reception desk helped me carry Hüseyin. We ruined the carpets in the elevator. We jumped into a cab and went straight to the emergency room.

Hüseyin had been poisoned. It wasn’t food poisoning; it was pesticides. Deadly pesticides. If we hadn’t made it to the hospital in time, it would have been fatal. His stomach was pumped and he was put on a drip.

By the time I went outside to get some fresh air and to regain my composure, the sun was already up. Our psycho had done exactly what he’d said he would and tried to finish Hüseyin off before the night was through.

But who had given Hüseyin the poison, and when?

He had been with me at the club all night. Besides, pesticides took effect right away. He couldn’t have been given them earlier.

I went into the patisserie opposite the hospital and ordered a cup of coffee. The smell of freshly baked
poğaça
and
çörek
whetted my appetite. So I ordered a cheese
poğaça
. I hadn’t slept a wink. I needed caffeine. And I was hungry as a wolf. I sank my teeth into the
poğaça
. It was as soft as a sponge. It melted in my mouth. I postponed
any thoughts of maintaining my figure, and thus the guilt I would feel for consuming so much fat, until later on. I considered ordering another one, but quickly came to my senses.
Don’t overdo it
, I told myself.

I tried to re-create the night before in my head, like a movie. We’d had dinner, then gathered in the street for the neighborhood search operation. Then there was the police station, the tea at the station…Sure, the tea was awful, but the police station wasn’t exactly the best place to poison someone. And besides, we’d all drunk the same tea. Hüseyin had been outside while I was talking with Selçuk. But Hasan had been with him. Maybe they’d eaten or drunk something while waiting for me.

I’d call Hasan and find out once I’d finished my coffee.

Then we were at the club. He was behind the bar, next to Şükrü, I was next to Belinda D. Then I’d had the lights turned down. There was always so much traffic at the bar, people standing there and having their drinks, or walking up to order new ones. Hüseyin must have made small talk with them. There was no way Şükrü could have put poison in his Coke. He’s too much of a coward to even think about such things, let alone do them. Afterward, I had gone upstairs with Şükrü, leaving Hüseyin alone at the bar. I didn’t remember seeing Hüseyin after I came down. I hadn’t paid attention to what he was doing until we left the bar together.

Someone who came to the bar must have put poison in his Coke.

Our psycho or one of his accomplices had been within arm’s reach of us tonight, had infiltrated our castle, put poison in Hüseyin’s Coke under our very noses, and fled.
Well, bravo
, I said to myself. Our security system was marvelous! We behaved as if there were some kind of protective shield that was activated as soon as we walked through the club’s door, keeping us safe from all the dangers of the outside world. The girls, the customers, me…we
were all so carefree. But there you have it, someone with such evil intentions was able to pass through the same protective shields, penetrate our shelter, and do as he pleased. How blind could we be? Was the outside world really not the remote place we believed it to be? In this vast city of Istanbul, could we not create a tiny little itsy-bitsy heaven for ourselves, one measuring just one hundred and sixty square meters?

I
had to go home. Hüseyin needed clean clothes. All his clothes were covered in puke and blood. They had given him a surgical smock to wear at the hospital; the rest of his body was naked. We were in such a rush we had even left his shoes at the hotel. I had called Hasan and asked him to stay by Hüseyin’s side. He was still half asleep but came without complaining. He was aware of how serious the situation was. At times like this, Hasan was capable of turning off his amateur histrionics and becoming coolheaded and commonsensical. I hadn’t asked for much, just for him to stay with Hüseyin while I left to sort out a few things. He could even fall asleep if he wished. Hüseyin had been sedated anyway; he was fast asleep. He clearly wasn’t going to open his eyes for quite some time, and would need no special assistance.

I was the one still up, who hadn’t slept and was completely exhausted. There was a ceaseless droning in my head. My eyes kept twitching. I could feel a muscle pulsing in my temple.