Crime Read Free Page B

who had a plan. His name was Manólis. It was a good plan, but Manólis “was nuts.”
    Manólis came from a Greek family that owned a string of restaurants and Internet cafés in Kreuzberg and Neukölln. He had passed his high school diploma and started to study history, with a sideline in drugs. A few years ago, something had gone wrong. The suitcase that was supposed to have cocaine in it turned out to be full of paper and sand. The buyer fired at Manólis when he tried to flee in his car with the money. The buyer was a lousy shot, and eight of the nine bullets missed. The ninth penetrated the back of Manólis’s skull and lodged there. It was still in Manólis’s head when he collided with a squad car. It wasn’t till he was in the hospital that the doctors discovered it, and since then Manólis had had a problem. After the operation, he announced to his family that he was now a Finn, celebrated the sixth of December every year as Finland’s national holiday, and tried in vain to learn the language. Besides this, he had moments when he was completely out of it, so perhaps his plan wasn’t really a fully worked-out one.
    But Samir still thought it had some potential. Manólis’s sister had a friend who worked as a cleaning lady in a villa in Dahlem. She was in urgent need of money, so all she wanted from Manólis was a small cut if he broke into the house. She knew the alarm code and the one for the electronic lock, she knew where the safe was, and, most important, she knew that the owner would soon be away from Berlin for four days. Samir and Özcan agreed immediately.
    The night before the break-in, Samir slept badly, dreaming about Manólis and Finland. When he woke, it was two in the afternoon. He said, “Fuck judges,” and chased his girlfriend out of bed. At four o’clock, he had to be at the anti-violence class.
    Özcan picked up the others at 2:00 a.m. Manólis had fallen asleep, and Samir and Özcan had to wait outside his door for twenty minutes. It was cold; the car windows misted up. They got lost and screamed at one another. It was almost three o’clock when they reached Dahlem. They pulled the black ski masks on in the car; the masks were too big and slipped down and scratched, and they were sweating underneath them. Özcan got a tangle of wool fluff in his mouth and spat it out onto the dashboard. They put on latex gloves and ran across the gravel path to the entrance of the villa.
    Manólis punched in the code on the lock pad. The door opened with a click. The alarm was in the entryway. After Manólis had fed in a combination of numbers, the little lights switched from red to green. Özcan had to laugh. “Özcan’s Eleven,” he said out loud. He loved movies. The tension eased. It had never been so easy. The front door clicked shut; they were standing in darkness.
    They couldn’t find the light switch. Samir tripped on a step and hit his left eyebrow on a hat tree. Özcan stumbled over Samir’s feet and grabbed his back for support as he fell. Samir groaned under his weight. Manólis was still standing, but he had forgotten the flashlights.
    Their eyes adjusted to the darkness. Samir wiped the blood off his face. Finally, Manólis found the light switch. The interior of the house was Japanese—Samir and Özcan just didn’t see how anyone could live this way. It took them only a few minutes to locate the safe—the description they’d been given was a good one. They used crowbars to pry it out of the wall, then dragged it to the car. Manólis wanted to go back into the house—he’d discovered the kitchen and he was hungry. They argued about it for a long time, until Samir decided it was too dangerous. They could easily stop at a café on the way back. Manólis grumbled.
    They tried to open the safe in a cellar in Neukölln. They had some familiarity with heavily armored safes, but this one resisted them. Özcan had to borrow his brother-in-law’s high-powered drill. Four hours later,