The Serenity Murders (4 page)

As usual the fruit and vegetable dealer Gazanfer was trying to pass off his quietness as politeness, occasionally lifting his
rakı
glass to greet the girls. He’s a good customer, generous with his tips, reserved in his demands. He tries each girl one by one. The girls like him. His record is spotless.

At one point, şirin Güney, the yoga expert, walked up to me in a panic and asked, “Where’s the ladies’ room?” The truth is, we have no ladies’ room; we have only one single restroom. In protest against sexual discrimination, we had not separated the toilets. Besides, it saves us space.

She giggled upon hearing my reply, as if I had said something funny. “Well, let’s give it a go, then,” she said. I’ve always found her to be a bit shallow, and although I’ve known her for years, I’ve preferred to keep my distance.

She caught up with me again on her way back from the toilet. She was still giggling. It seemed she’d had a generous helping of alcohol.

“What a fabulous idea to have mirrors fitted behind the urinals! And no screens either…”

What she thought was a mirror was actually stainless steel, but it served the same purpose. After all, ours was a venue that, striving to be
cool
, bore the marks of a designer’s touch. We deserved that extra bit of quality. She had clearly found it difficult to take her eyes off of what she had seen, and had immediately begun comparing it to her boyfriend, Cavit Ateş. Cavit was a man who not only had a big build, but was overweight with a fat belly to boot. No matter what size it was, it was going to look small in proportion to his body. For God’s sake, didn’t these women ever watch porn, look at pictures, buy a
Playgirl
magazine? Even when you’re buying tomatoes from the market you look, touch, compare, and
then
choose.

As I walked about conducting my managerial duties, my gaze frequently landed upon Bahadır, and each time it did, our eyes met. Sure, he was holding Gül’s hand, stroking her long blond hair, but he emitted a covert signal that did not escape my attention. Best not to give it a name. I had utmost love and respect for Gül. But I just could not keep my eyes off the lad.

Later that night Belinda D. and her husband Naim arrived. Belinda D. was an indisputable authority on Turkish pop music, and her most recent book, her most comprehensive to date, was titled
Superstar
. It was she who decreed which songs sank and which songs swam. Some called her the Herodotus of Turkish pop, others a reaper, due to her fine, highly selective taste. My personal favorite nickname for her was Hammurabi, which she was awarded owing to her declaration of the standards and rules of Turkish pop. The singers, composers, and production companies that feared Belinda D.’s malice had their books kept by her invisible husband, and rumor had it that he earned his keep solely from those who’d been touched by the magic wand of his wife.

I rushed over to greet them.

Belinda D., always high in spirits, was nervous. She gasped for breath as she spoke.

“Darling, I just found out, I don’t know what to say. Someone shot Süheyl.”

Yes, Süheyl, the very same Süheyl Arkın whose program I had been on that night.

I
t was quite natural for Süheyl, who made a habit of probing controversial topics, to have lots of enemies. But it certainly wasn’t natural for him to have been shot. He wasn’t dead, but he was seriously wounded. He had been taken to the hospital, and the shooter had of course fled without leaving a trace.

I would go visit him with a huge bunch of flowers first thing in the morning. In my mind, I quickly struck a bargain and decided to buy carnations if they were cheap, and if not, anemones.

I was alone when I woke up. Bahadır had accompanied me in all my dreams. We ran together hand in hand in the countryside, squabbled over games of Scrabble, lit fires on the beach and watched the sunset in each other’s arms, animated
Kama Sutra
positions, sloppily ate spaghetti bolognese out of the same bowl; in brief, we did everything that lovers do together. The strange thing was, I couldn’t recall his face or other important attributes.

I sat at the computer, coffee in hand. I hadn’t yet pulled myself together, even though it was already past midday. I’d received a slew of messages, as per usual. The group of hackers called the Web-Guerrillas, of which I was an active member, had wasted no time posting messages, half of which were filled with useless clues; the other half, however, were promising.

My eternal fan and rival, Jihad2000, who had recently become
my friend as well, had sent me three messages, the last of which was clearly marked “urgent” in the subject field. I read that one first.

“What’s going on? What are all these threatening messages pouring in for you? If there’s anything I can do, I’m at your disposal,” it read. What threatening messages was he talking about? What was pouring in? I knew he liked reading my messages. Although he had promised several times never to do it again, he was incapable of controlling himself, or of reining in his curiosity, or of restraining his sense of rivalry. And so he hacked into my account and logged in to read my messages before I had a chance to do so myself. Although this did give me a sense of protection, it also annoyed the living daylights out of me. I had a few addresses he still hadn’t managed to access, but with his talent and patience, he’d access those too soon enough. Of that I was certain.

Jihad2000’s other messages pointed to the source of the threat. The psycho viewer who had called the show had found my e-mail address and sent me a threatening message every hour. Apparently there was no room on this earth for me and my kind. He was going to wipe us out. Those who influenced me, those who had made it possible for me to achieve inner peace (this bit he had typed in capital letters and put in quotation marks), would get their due too. He had copied all the names I had published on my Web site, and heralded the fabulous news that he would murder someone each week until I found him.

The one sent at 3:16 in the morning was a notification of his accomplishment.

“Strike one! I shot Süheyl Arkın, the closet-case faggot who flaunts you and your kind in front of the public as if you were some kind of hot shit. I’ll have more news for you soon!”

A cramp gripped my stomach as I read his words. What a truly wonderful start to the day. I headed straight for the shower. By the time I got out, my remaining coffee was cold.

Still wearing my bathrobe, I sat back down at the computer. My stomach was growling, but my curiosity outweighed my hunger. First, using classic hacking methods, I tried finding his address, his connecting computer. Our psycho was smart. He had connected from a different area, with a different computer, each time. Clearly, he was using Internet cafés. That’s what I’d do if I were him: the best way not to leave a trace. The messages had been sent from providers such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Freemail, and so on, where you could create an account easily without providing any sort of personal information whatsoever.

“Let’s see if you have the guts to find some ‘inner peace’ now,” it said. He addressed me as an “enemy of peace,” which I didn’t believe I deserved at all. “It’s you and your kind that disturb the peace.”

My head had started to ache. I looked at the list of names; it was a veritable who’s who of my illustrious life. On my Web site, besides those whose names I had mentioned on the program, I had listed the names of people I didn’t know, of whom I was just an admirer or whom I held in high regard. Instead of taking the easy route and simply copied and pasted the list, he had actually examined it and copied one by one only those names he deemed appropriate targets for his cause.

My site was actually dedicated to Audrey Hepburn. It had her photographs, biography, filmography, in short, everything about her. John Pruitt was also prominently featured as the ideal man. Besides these two, there was of course my Reiki master Gül Tamay; my aikido tutor, the tai-chi master Sermet Kılıç; my gushing fount of love and joie de vivre, Zekeriya “Ponpon” Güney; and the one and only hypnotherapist in the country, NLP
¹
expert Cem Yeğenoğlu, who was only on there because he had insisted.
From the list in his threatening message my menace had specifically excluded foreigners like the mortician from New York, my makeup master Alberto Maggiore, and my personal development guru Will Schutz.

I checked the program that tracked visitors to my Web site. There had been visitors whom I knew; but for the most part, it revealed dozens of anonymous addresses. Scanning all these from start to finish, tracking them, would be enough to make one lose one’s wits.

When Jihad2000 failed to respond in his chat room, I decided to give him a call. I was sure he would have thought of everything I had, and done even more than I had already done. His private line, the one his mother didn’t answer, rang and rang. He was probably in the bath or using the toilet. I sent him a message coded “urgent urgent urgent” which read, “Call me,” and got off the computer.

I suddenly realized why I’d been feeling empty all morning: There was no music! Wimpy Ferdı downstairs hadn’t yet begun blasting his music yet. He may have been a nosy neighbor, but devoid of manners he was not. I’d had a run-in with him once when he moved in the previous year, and that had done the trick. He does not commence with his roaring, wall-shaking rock music until he’s heard noises coming from my apartment first.

Silence wasn’t doing me any good. I quickly reached out to the Handel shelf and pulled out the
Athalia
oratorio. The beauty of baroque music filled my home like sunlight. Emma Kirkby’s angelic tone, Joan Sutherland’s nightingale soprano, little Aled Jones’s hair-raising, prepubescent soprano together with Anthony Rolfe Johnson’s tenor; it was simply perfection. The conductor Christopher Hogwood, the man responsible for launching the authentic instruments movement, had once again made a recording that would be a milestone in classical music.

Accompanied by this angelic group, I could now sit and think, and begin making plans.

If this psycho was serious, I mean, if he really was the one who shot Süheyl Arkın, then we were in deep shit. As Süheyl Arkın had considered it his duty to turn over stones that were not meant to be touched, there was of course the possibility that he had been shot by some other offended soul, in which case my psycho would be taking credit for someone else’s work.

When someone like Süheyl Arkın, the apple of the media’s eye, was shot, the police would waste no time in finding a suspect.

I answered the ringing phone thinking it would be Jihad2000, but it wasn’t; it was Ponpon.

“
Ayolcuğum
, darling…You can’t possibly imagine how proud I felt as I watched you. You spoke just as fluently as myself. I just watched the video recording again and, believe me, I couldn’t find a single flaw.”

“Stop exaggerating,
ayol
,” I said. “For one, the lights were completely wrong. Whenever I turned my head you could see the sagging skin on my neck. Plus, I was nervous, and so I spoke in a rush. What’s more, the shadow of my eyelashes fell on my face.”

The girls had told me all this one by one last night. I hadn’t forgotten, and was now reporting it all to Ponpon.

“Oh, you’re exaggerating,” she said. “Come on, get up and get yourself over here. You can pick up your cassette and we can eat together. I made delicious courgette
börek
. It’ll be out of the oven in a short while. I put yogurt…”

Ponpon sure knew how to make a girl’s mouth water. The way she described courgette
börek
…

“I’m expecting a phone call.”

“Just redirect it,
ayolcuğum
…”

“And then I have to go to the hospital. You know they shot the program host, Süheyl Arkın.”

I was doing my best to bid that courgette
börek
a tearless farewell.

“All right, you have no intention of coming. It’s up to you, cream puff. I’m not going to insist. Come if you want, don’t if you don’t. I’ve issued my invitation.”

And slam, she hangs up on me. You can never tell when or at what Ponpon will be offended. My hand reached out to the phone to call and try to make it up to her, the smell of courgette
börek
filled my nostrils, and my stomach growled, but my distress over what to do about the threat hurling psycho outweighed all else.

I called Mehmet and suggested we go to the hospital together. After all, he too was one of the three people to be threatened.

“I’d like to, but unfortunately, I don’t have time,” he said. “I’m flying to Rio de Janeiro tonight.”

I knew he lived there six months a year.

“It won’t take long, just fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“Still, I can’t.”

“But you’ve been threatened too…”

“Exactly, that’s why I’m leaving. There’s no need for me to walk around here like a target. I was going to leave anyway, now I’m just leaving two days earlier than planned. Write to me if you find anything. I’ll be checking my e-mail. I’m sure you’ll have solved the case and tracked down the psycho by the time I’m back.”