he narrowed alarmed his eyes.
"Crap!" Michael Herold cursed silently. "Very big crap!" Before him stood the bald-headed G.O.S. pig from Leos Sex Shop, and the guy had him immediately recognized.
5. BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY
Elzbieta Oblonsky looked up to the windows of her flat at the fourth floor. "This is pure madness," pounded the blood behind her temple. I'm really abandoned of all my good senses! I can't go back in my apartment!
Elzbieta clenched her fists and hid her slim body again behind the chestnut. Protected from the tree trunk, she glanced at the car of her best girl friend, and heard promptly Danuta's anxious voice: "Please Ela! The Golf is just one month old! So for heaven's sake, drive carefully! Janozc explodes, if he discovered a scratch!”
"Oh my god, Dana! A scratch in the car paint; that is your only concern?" Elzbieta involuntarily shook her head and turned her attention again to the house opposite. Nothing moved there, everything seemed unchanged, apart from a scaffold, which reached up to the first floor.
Elzbieta Oblonsky felt a strong urge for a hysterical laughter. This was typical again! She was just half a day away from her apartment, and already started the work, that the owner had announced so long before. Was it not enough, that the masons had plastered the backyard for months?
Frustrated Elzbieta ran across the street, and entered the building, that now appears so strange to her. "Good Lord," she complained, as she ascended the freshly painted staircase. "Why I had not the necessary power, to stop Leo?" For a moment, she feels again a familiar despair, but then she stretched vigorously her narrow shoulders. She would cry later, she comforted herself. Very much later! When Leo's strong arms hold her tight!
Elzbieta Oblonsky wiped a single tear from her cheek and opened her apartment. Without her shoes cleaning off, she ran down the hall, and stopped before the little chamber, that Leo had furnished as his office. Undecided, she stared for a moment on the silver-gray painted door, and tried to calm her guilty conscience.
"You stupid cow," she scolded herself. "What are you so upset? Leo's prohibitions are no longer valid!" Everything, everything had changed, since her little world was falling apart, and this includes the unwritten laws of her husband.
Leopold and his dirty secrets! Involuntarily twitches Elzbieta together. How often has Leo taught her, with bad words and blows, to let her curious fingers from his documents. The memories of these tantrums were so deep, that she now requires all their forces, to open the forbidden door.
"Bad, bad girl," she whispered, and walked with an almost childlike glee into the narrow space. Without hesitation, she rolled the office chair to the side, and pulled out the top drawer of the secretary. Immediately swelled up to her Leos correspondence, and Elzbieta glanced in surprise on the unknown names and addresses on the letterheads. Becoming more and more impatient, she pushed the many papers aside, until she finally discovered the expected envelope.
Elzbieta hastily opened the brown paper envelope, and poured out two bank cards and a stack of stapled together account statements, on the desk surface. The first sheet showed in "having" a sum of 45,000 DM and Elzbieta smiled smugly. "God, how naive Leo was sometimes. Had he really believed that she knows nothing of his oh-so-secret black money?”
Carelessly, she stuffed the credit card in her purse, and shakes the next brass handle. If she really wanted track down her husband, she needs his special notebook. He had the gray book always kept secret from her, and now, it lay completely unprotected under a pile of colorful plastic folder. Excited, she opened the leather cover, and stared at the phone numbers, that was listed in red ink. So, that was Leo's infamous contacts: Names of people, which know very well, where he was hiding this time.
Elzbieta coughed a wicked little laugh. The money and the connections of her husband had she taken, and now was it time for the tool of doom. Determined, she pulled out the bottom drawer, and opened the mysteriously shoebox, that was waiting there. In it was a shapeless bundle, wrapped in oil paper, and she lifted it out carefully. Very slowly, she wrapped the temporary protective cover from Leo’s heirloom, and held it into the light. On the handle of the Mauser shine clearly a bad removed Nazi emblem, and grease smeared the handles. Elzbieta contemptuously curled her mouth. Leo's glorious father had captured the gun in the great patriotic war, and now the holy relict rested for so many decades in a profane card box.
Disgusted, stowed Elzbieta the weapon in her purse, locked it, and with the click of the buckle rang the apartment bell. Like the trumpets of the last judgment, they ring through the quiet rooms, and Elzbieta died almost at a heartbeat. "Ring, ring" shrilled again the familiar triad bell, pressed very impatient, and very short.
Elzbieta bit her lips and immediately sparkled blood from the tiny cut. Mechanically she dabbed the drops, while an unusual peace flooded her troubled senses. Like a well-functioning machine, that knows no fears, nor disturbing emotions, Elzbieta carefully put the bag on the secretary, and kicked off her shoes. She gently put one foot down in front of the other, and tiptoed into the corridor. Before the door she stopped, holds her breath, and peered through the peephole. An unknown young man lurked in the middle of the half-landing, and waited, without any doubts, onto some reaction of the neighbors.
But nothing happened behind the closed doors and the guy turned slowly his head. He fixed bored the peephole, and Elzbieta could feel how his gaze wanders over her bare skin. Shaken from a rising horror, she pressed the right eye against the spy, while the man pulled a set of keys calmly from a leather pouch.
“Lock picks, a damned lock pick," Elzbieta stifled a scream. The guy holds a burglary tool in his hand! Shocked, she stepped back, and cold metal touched her upper arm.
The Chain! My God, she had forgotten to submit the chain! Excited, she tried as quiet as possible, to close the chain, but the damn part slipped from her moist hand. It beat jingling against the door frame, and on the stairway grin the bastard full of satisfaction. Mercilessly, his cold eyes sent a message through the thin wood: "Nice, that you are at home baby! Soon, very soon, we both have a good time!"
Elzbieta spun around in uncontrolled fear. Chased from thousand furies, she ran back into Leo's room, slipped hastily into her shoes, and grabbed her bag. The weight of the Dior-Creation reminded her ominously on the weapon, and Elzbieta shook her head. No, no, that was something, she could not even think of! And then, the apartment guarded a special door bolt, an absolutely safe part, according to the manufacturer!
From the corridor came a metallic bang and the stranger bursts with a corkscrew-shaped drill the cylinder from the lock. Casually, he squeezed down the door handle, and immediately he felt the expected resistance of the steel chain. Grinning, the intruder took note of the additional security, and opened his jacket.
In the living room Elzbieta tears the window open, and stared desperately into the night. Prior to her face hung a plank, besmirched with mortar, and when she strained her eyes, she saw the outlines of other wooden boards. Thank God, the scaffolding was not removed, despite the completed renovation! Within the to the roof reaching structure lead several stairways down to the courtyard and Elzbieta squeezed ruthlessly her left knee between the sacred cacti of her husband. Good, that she wears today a pair of jeans!
Half crouching on the wide flower bench, Ms Oblonsky scrutinizes the dark courtyard, and then an iron fist pressed her poor heart. Exactly at the newly created playground glowed a cigarette, and a man walked slowly past Bachhulkes ground floor apartment. Totally uninhibited, he watched the windows, while his buddy at the stairway pulled out a long side cutter from his leather jacket. Without a thought on any eavesdropper from the neighboring apartments, he took the tool, an ugly noise sounded, and the sharpened steel jaws cut easily through the chain. Her two halves popped against the door, and Elzbieta winced at the ominous sound, like under a whip strike.
"Oh my God," she whispered distraught. If not a miracle happens, she saved nothing, absolutely nothing, from the greedy hands of the mercenary!
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