The Deadly Controversy

Pico and Peter traveled to Zurich to pick up the money, which Peter put in his travel bag and then never let it out of his hand. They strolled around in the city, sat in the coffee houses, and fed the swans on the lakeshore. Peter pondered and mused half aloud to himself why so little had arrived; he went through his list in his head to pick out those who had resisted his threats. Pico remained silent, while Peter raged inwardly, seething against his victims. Evening gradually fell again; they hurried to catch the night train to Vienna.

The wine makes everything worse, Pico thought as they sat drinking in Peter's apartment. He drank carefully and wait, Peter immediately began to evaluate the booty and carelessly downed the wine. He studied the bank statement in detail and checked off the names on his list. With some names he made question marks, underlined them angrily or drew squiggles around the names. He just couldn't believe that this one or that one had resisted. Pico stayed silently in the background until Peter finished.

"I think that's all of them" said Pico, "there can be a few stragglers at most, but nothing major. We should get out of here now!" Peter shook stubbornly his head. "They'll pay, all of them!" he hissed obstinately, half‐reading aloud the names of the outstanding payments. Pico was dog‐tired from the long drive, he was tired from the red wine and he didn't have a good feeling about the whole thing. He told Peter that, too.

For a while he listened to Peter's lecturing, who was getting more and more into the fantasy of doing the thing again, with much higher amounts, with much larger sums. The wine made Peter more and more megalomaniac. Pico shook his head and interjected again and again that something like this only happen once and only if you leave immediately, preferably to Argentina or somewhere else in South America or the Far East. He thought about the third and most difficult part, the release of the videos. He was sure that Peter, when he was sobered up and come to his senses, would then immediately leave for Amsterdam, to Angel. He was to be wrong.

Peter had drunk far too much in the meantime and was getting deeper and deeper into his thoughts of revenge. There was no turning back, and what was that stupid Pico babbling about stopping and running away?! No, he would not leave until everyone had paid, everyone! He rummaged in a drawer and took out a heavy automatic pistol, slamming it down on the table in front of Pico, whose eyes widened in horror. "They Pay! all of them!" he thundered, slamming with the gun again on the tabletop. Pico was frozen in shock and could not take his eyes off the gun. He had never touched a gun before.

"What do you need that for?" he asked after a while, whispering so as not to wake the evil that lurked somewhere in the room.

Peter enjoyed his new position of power, which his drunkenness made him believe. Nonchalantly he waved the heavy pistol in his hand and said with a heavy tongue: "Actually, I had planned everything differently. Angel has already left for Amsterdam, and if everything works out with the money, I will drive to the Danube at night, deposit shoes, clothes and a farewell letter on a bank, which will make it easy for the police to declare me dead. Stay with Angel for a while before moving on. Out, to golden freedom!" Peter reached for his wine glass briskly and toasted an imaginary counterpart before putting the red wine to his lips with a sweeping gesture and drank it down greedily.

Pico had become more and more uncomfortable at these words, because either Peter in his steam didn't know at all anymore where was up and where was down, or he considered him totally naive. Of course, Peter knew as well as he did that without a corpse one would hardly declare someone dead without a body. And where was Peter supposed to get a corpse? It became all too clear to Pico that Peter had only to hold his automatic close enough to his head to have a corpse with a totally mangled face, and that could probably be done quite easily. He was also already slightly drunk and panicked, although he should have told himself that there was no acute danger yet. But Pico panicked easily, had to gain time to be able to run away.

"The suicide note," he gasped, "the suicide note — surely it doesn't exist yet, does it?!" He hoped to bring Peter back down to earth by mentioning such trivial facts. But again he was mistaken. Peter casually stood up and picked up an envelope that had been inconspicuously wedged between two books. He almost seemed a little annoyed. "There!" he barked, "the suicide note!" As if under compulsion, Pico glanced at the sheet and read: "I can't go on, I can't stand it any longer. I have gone too far! Forgive me!" Peter's handwriting. Peter's signature.

So short and sweet — but it would do. Pico ran over the situation in his head, suspecting that the police might be more likely to assume the truth in such a simple yet confused‐looking suicide note than in a highly complicated, beautifully drafted text that would indicate cool calculation rather than confusion and desperation. Peter carefully tucked the suicide note back on the shelf and came over to the table. Resolutely he downed the red wine and muttered, "Why should they investigate at any length — all the indications of a suicide and a suicide note: stamp under it, file closed! Bang! Case closed! Just no unnecessary work!"

Probably everything would have turned out differently if Pico had not expressed his doubts. His doubts that a suicide without a body does not disappear so easily in the drawer. They would certainly search with divers, fire department and water police to search the entire banks of the Danube. For days, maybe weeks. And without a body ...

He immediately fell silent as he felt the cold, hard muzzle of the pistol against his temple felt. In the seemingly endless seconds, panic‐stricken thoughts rolled over in Pico's brain.

The end, the real end!

But nothing happened. Pico felt the hard thing on his temple wobble slightly as Peter drank. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, "If you need a body, then that's not a problem, isnt'it?"

Probably everything would really have been different if Pico hadn't been under such a stress and had he noticed in time that Peter had only made a bad joke. So he was really full of mortal fear and uttered a shrill, animalistic scream. The speed with which he jumped up took Peter completely by surprise. Pico clawed with both hands at the first thing he saw in front of him, clutched Peter's hand with the gun and pushed it away from him. Almost as if in a trance, he saw the muzzle bore into Peter's chest, then only heard the bright, muffled bang.

Like two dancers, they faced each other, frozen in a strangely twisted choreography. Pico slowly let go of Peter. Peter, with a puzzled expression on his face, slowly spun on his axis and sank in a slow pirouette onto the chair. His hand with the pistol dropped powerlessly, and the pistol rumbled to the floor. He reached with an astonished expression for his chest, from which the blood was beginning to flow slowly, over his shirt onto the belt buckle and then onto the seat between his thighs. Astonished, he looked at Pico and wanted to say something, but his mouth remained open. He exhaled, the last time, and the air escaped with a ghastly sound, then his head fell on his chest.

Pico stood rigid and silent. What had happened? How could this have happened? His head, in which until a split second ago the thoughts had been racing full of panic had rolled over, was suddenly as empty swept. He couldn't think of anything, just stared at Peter, who had just died within a fraction of a second. He just stared at Peter, who had just died within fractions of a second, stared at the blood that was now slowly dripping onto the floor. He did not dare to touch Peter and determine whether he was perhaps still alive — no, Peter was surely dead. Pico stood undecided and stared at the pool of blood that was gradually growing larger under the chair.

He did not know later how much time had passed before he woke up from this torpor. His first thought was of the video, he quickly stepped to the shelf and found it immediately, then rummaged through the shelves for a few more minutes and found another tape. There was no other video tape anywhere to be found. When he turned around again, he saw that Peter's body was slowly turning to the side. He feared Peter would fall to the floor, but the body remained bent over, hanging bent over the armrest. He picked up Peter's victims list, jammed it in his pocket. In a wild panic, Pico raced out of Peter's apartment and ran out into the night.

He didn't stop running until he had almost reached home. He had to stop for a few seconds to catch his breath, and tried to get a grip on his thoughts, or rather to get a clear thought out of his head. Peter was dead, and he was to blame. He would be locked up, and if he ever get out, he would be a very, very old man. Pico shuddered at the thought. It was an accident, a real accident, but only Peter and he knew that.

Slowly he walked to his apartment, then made himself a strong tea and smoked in silence. There was probably nothing he could do, nothing but sit there and wait for them to come. At least he had taken the videotapes with him, he would have been embarrassed if they had found them at Peter's.

Suddenly a thought popped into his head. First vague, then bright and clear. Quickly he got dressed again, put the large orange envelope in his coat pocket and rushed back to Peter's apartment. At the apartment door, which was only ajar, he stopped and waited until his heart stopped its fearful galloping thump. No, it was dead silent, nothing stirred. Apparently no one had been there in the meantime.

Peter was still lying over the armrest, the pool of blood under the chair seemed to have grown darker. Peter pulled the envelope with the 120,000 shillings out of his coat pocket and slid it between the books on the shelf, then he took Peter's suicide note out of the envelope and put it on the table. He searched all the cupboards and the big shelf again, but he couldn't find any more videotapes. He stared at Peter for ten minutes, but he was dead, dead as a doornail. He looked around again carefully, took Peter's travel bag with all the Dollars and went home again. This time he pulled Peter's door shut behind him after making sure the apartment key was inside.

Naturally, he immediately checked what was on the tapes. He was initially reassured that they were his originals. He hadn't found any copies, so Peter must have lied to him. Most of them, he noted with satisfaction, only depicted Sonja alone masturbating and having orgasms. She could do it better every time. But there were also some sequences where he masturbated Sonja's vagina with his thumb. He was annoyed, because he was clearly recognizable. And then the most embarrassing shot of him fucking her, fucking her mercilessly. He watched it several times. Sonja coming to a violent orgasm, an orgasm that lasted until the end of the fucking, for a good ten minutes. It was really insanely exciting, but at the same time terrifying, how the girl's body was torn apart by the orgasms again and again. How she desperately tried to stop the fucking. Him and his cock whipping the little girl relentlessly from orgasm to orgasm. The little girl kept fainting, it was too much for her body. She was really passed out when he finally came to squirt. His balls danced excitedly as he squirted into the little virgin for what seemed like an eternity. Only after the 14th squirt inside did he roll to the side. Sonja woke up and hastily got dressed. Pico had to watch this rape a dozen times before he hid the tapes.

Under the false tiled stove in the small room was a cavity where Uncle Aldo had already hidden his treasures during the war. Pico crawled around the stove on all fours until he found the right tile. He had to squeeze the pornographic pictures he had hoarded and the videotapes very tightly, because otherwise he wouldn't have been able to stow everything in there. But after a few minutes, all the compromising material was gone, for the time being. Later he would certainly have to think of something else. He stacked the money in a smaller travel bag and hid it in the anteroom, behind the suitcases and bags in the coat closet.

He could hardly sleep, just nodding off for minutes at a time, then drinking tea again, smoking. Only when the morning began to gray did his head sink onto his forearms. It was almost noon when the doorbell rang.

He was almost relieved when he invited the two detectives in. They gave their names, showed their IDs, and looked around the rooms first before sitting down at the kitchen table. Pico was dead tired, but composed and surprisingly calm. He stood next to the officers with a questioning face as they looked around wordlessly. He looked at them again as they sat down and then asked, because it seemed the most natural question, "What is this about, please?"

The two looked at each other, then the older one nodded. Did he know a certain Peter Weichsler, to which he replied in the affirmative. Where he knew him from, the older one asked, and immediately followed up by asking if they could smoke. But the question seemed to come from pure routine, because the ashtray, full to the brim, was still on the table. Pico nodded, and they all three smoked, silently. Did they want a drink, Pico asked, but they declined. So, the older one asked, again, how he knew Peter. Why, what about Weichsler? Pico asked dully, and when the two were silent, he said he knew Peter from sailing trips. They had met on the exam cruise, done six or seven cruises together after that and would meet casually once‐twice a month, mostly in the surrounding pubs.

Pico asked again what was wrong with Peter, nothing had happened to him!? The officers were silent at first, then the older one said that Weichsler had apparently taken his own life. Peter flinched and half stood up, shaking his head. But, said the officer, Weichsler probably shot himself in the early hours of the morning. "I don't believe it!" exclaimed Pico, genuinely startled, for now they were in the midst of disaster, in the midst of the most dangerous area. He slumped back on the chair and shook his head repeatedly. "Last night, we drank together for a long time" said Pico shaking his head, knowing that he had to stay very close to the truth if he wanted to have even the slightest chance.

"Yes, we know," said the younger man, and this was the first thing he said that morning. "The neighbors told us right away that you had been there until almost midnight and that it had been pretty noisy too!" The younger one didn't seem as jovial as the other, perhaps he also knew more. Pico suddenly felt he had to be very careful.

Actually, they hadn't been loud at all, Pico said, or not particularly. One had presumably no longer paid attention after some glasses of wine whether one disturbed the neighbors. Then the older one asked if he had noticed anything about Weichsler. Pico wiggled his head and said vaguely, not really. He asked if he knew Peter's gun, but he could calmly answer no. He had never touched the devil's thing, so he lied. No, they didn't know each other that well, he didn't know very much about Peter, he said and pretended to think about how little he knew Peter. The younger man inquired and wanted to know what exactly it had been about yesterday.

Peter knew he had to lie now, and cleverly too. He stammered something about "this and that," then said that on these long evenings they would reminisce about old memories of sailing trips they had taken together, but the range extended to the political issues of the day. Actually, they chatted the whole evening, without a specific topic, but just about everything. Whether they talked about money, the younger one asked, looking at him somberly.

Oh, the money, said Pico. No, that would have been the day before yesterday or two days ago. He was embarrassed to talk about it, he said. "There's nothing embarrassing there," the younger man growled, "you have to tell us everything, everything!" Pico said that he had retired, but that he was not allowed to talk to anyone about the bank or bank customers to anyone, it was like keeping the confessional secret. The younger man looked at him sternly, very sternly. Pico looked at him for a few seconds until he felt uncomfortable, then he told the two of them the same story with which he had already lured Dr. Kantor and the stupid Herzog. And that he could not, of course, give any exact information about the alleged inheritance Peter had always kept a very low profile and had avoided any details.

So, what about the money now, the younger official asked, visibly impatient. Peter explained that, as a good friend, he had wanted to do him a kindness and opened an anonymous account at the Kantor‐Bank for Peter. Then Peter behaved more and more strangely and just two days ago, he demanded that he get his money back. So he took the money back from the bank and gave it to Peter. He also reproached Peter that evening (and Pico cleverly wove in that it might have been the noisy evening that the neighbors had mentioned), because that evening he had once said loud and clear that he had made a completely fool of himself at the bank. First he told the bank how trustworthy Peter was, and two days later the account was closed again because Peter was acting like a moody prima ballerina and no longer knew what he wanted to do with his savings.

And you can prove all that, the official checked to see if he had anything. He thinks so, said Pico, because in the bank would be the receipts and possibly also a conversation note to find; that was so usual. He had given the money to Peter right away, it must be in the apartment, perhaps still in an envelope from the Kantor‐Bank, 120,000 shillings. The older nodded and confirmed that they had secured the envelope and the same amount.

The younger one glanced at him, almost a little incensed, for apparently he was pursuing a different strategy. He turned back to Pico and asked if he had a letter from Peter, something handwritten. Pico at first denied it, they had never written letters to each other, but then he said, "Just a moment!", went to the bookshelf and picked out a beautiful coffee‐table book about historic Windjammers and Old Ships. Peter had given it to him once for Christmas, he explained, and there was a handwritten dedication on the front page. The official looked at it closely, then asked if he could take it, to which Pico shrugged and said yes. Would he get the book back? The officer said as soon as the investigation was over, then he tore a sheet from his notepad, wrote "Weichsler/Rizzi" and Pico's address on it, and put the sheet into the coffee table book. They sat in silence and smoked.

He would hear from them again, the younger man said, perhaps he would also have to go to the police station for further questioning, but then he would receive a written summons. They stood up. Pico nodded, his throat tightening. In a moment the officer would say he could not leave town without his permission, but nothing of the sort happened. At the door, the officer turned again and looked inquiringly at Pico. "You really noticed nothing about Weichsler last night?" Pico froze, then shook his head. No, it was business as usual, Peter had been drinking heavily, as usual, and, of course, gloating over everyone, because that's what he always did. Peter always blamed "them" and "they" for his professional downfall, as well as for all other misery. Peter always blamed "them" and "they," but that he would kill himself right away, no, he never thought that, Pico said. He would never have believed that Peter could get so carried away with his tirades.

"I was just talking to my wife again today at breakfast about the fact that suicides always announce their deed beforehand — it will probably be no different with Weichsler, I said", said the older. Pico noticed only now that the official seemed to be rather clumsily imitating the television hero Inspector Columbo. But perhaps he was again only deceived by his nerves, which were stretched to breaking point.

No, Peter had not announced anything, not to him. Otherwise he would not have calmly gone home, yesterday evening, but would have sat with him all night, if it had to be, to talk him out of the nonsense. Pico paused and pretended to think for a long time. "I'd do that for any friend or buddy, that's the way it should be!" groaned Pico. The older man nodded in agreement. The thought that they might take him away and find out by some technical method that there were traces of gunpowder on his hand choked his throat. It would be over, Pico thought, and the sudden self‐pity brought water to his eyes.

"Damn it," he said in an angry undertone, "how can you be so stupid!"

The officers looked at each other meaningfully, the older one jovially put his hand on Pico's shoulder and shook it chummily, then they nodded goodbye and left. Pico remained standing motionless for a few seconds, then he sat down. His nerves were shot, he wanted an acquittal, right now, but there was nothing he could do. He could only wait and hope they found nothing and closed the case.

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