Baksheesh (25 page)

But this conclusion still didn't completely satisfy me. I was now back together with Selim, so why was I still… It was the murders, of course. Those two murders were enough to make your hair curl. It was because I was taking this detective business too seriously, wasn't it? After all, what did it matter to me if a man and a woman got killed?

Indeed, what did it matter?

 

Ah, if only I could make myself believe what was happening to me!

An hour later, I found myself in a bar sitting at a table opposite Selim's fixer, Baki, the fattest man still capable of walking that I'd ever seen. Since he couldn't fit on a normal-sized chair, he had an extra-large one. Or rather an armchair. Speaking left him breathless. His shirt must have been at least size 70 – if such a size existed. The buttonholes were strained to the limit, as if two strong hands were pulling at his shirt on either side. In between, his pale pink skin was showing through. And some chest hair. It wasn't disgusting. It was almost interesting, actually. He was more like a curious creature worthy of lengthy examination and study, rather than a human being. He was panting through his mouth like a dog. Every pant left him out of breath, and he would put his tongue out slightly, again like a dog. His head looked small on top of his body, yet it was twice the size of mine. What I mean is that it was small in relation to the size of his body.

He was leaning on the desk with his fingers, which were the size of Chiquita bananas, and seemed to take strength from this support as he spoke.

“Why are you interested in these regulations?”

Waiters were rushing around getting the bar ready for the evening. One of them came up to us.

“Shall I order in some tea, boss?”

“Do you want anything to eat? The meze are fresh. I can get the boys to bring some over?”

“Tea would be nice, but I'm not hungry,” I said. In fact, I hadn't eaten anything since the pizza of the previous evening, but sitting opposite such a fat man makes you lose your appetite.

He said he would just have tea as well.

“I've started a diet. Doctor's orders. Lost three kilos,” he said.

I smiled, shaking my head and thinking it must be like an ocean losing a spoonful of water.

“Kilos are so easy to gain, so difficult to lose,” he said, pointing to his belly.

I tried not to look at the pink skin between the buttonholes and smiled again.

“So, what are you to Selim Bey?”

“I'm his girlfriend,” I said.

“He's a good client of mine. An honourable person. He was very helpful to me at one time. My brother was a real menace. Good head on his shoulders, but got himself involved in party politics.”

“If he had a good mind, he was probably involved in left-wing politics,” I said.

Baki Bey made no response to this comment, but merely raised his hand from his belly, with some difficulty, to stroke his cheek.

“Selim Bey doesn't get involved in political matters,” he remarked.

“True, he deals with commercial cases,” I said.

“Take me, I never touch meat or kebabs. My expertise is in fish, so we do fish. Everyone should do what they're best at. That's the way to success. I can tell the freshness of fish from twenty metres away. I only serve fish at my restaurants. What would be the point of opening a kebab shop just because they do good business, eh?”

He leant forward over his belly and put a couple of sweeteners in his tea.

“Why are you interested in these council regulations?” he repeated.

I'd thought up an answer to this question before I came.

“I have a bookshop, in Kuledibi. Business isn't too bad, but…”

“Things will get better, God willing,” he said.

“Well, a friend of mine suggested opening a bar around here. We haven't actually found anywhere yet, but when Selim mentioned you I thought I should find out how to establish connections with the council.”

“It's good you came to me before finding a place. You have to take certain things into consideration. For instance, the premises you choose should be no closer than a hundred metres to a place of worship, school or training centre. By place of worship, I mean all of them: mosques, churches and synagogues. They're adamant about applying this rule. When you find a place, check that it'll be approved before you sign a lease. Once you've signed, it's expensive to get out of it.”

“There's nowhere in Beyoğlu without a nearby place of worship or school, so it must be impossible to open a bar here.”

“It's difficult, of course. That's why people usually take over a place that already has a licence. But of course that pushes the price up. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars here. That's how it is. It's difficult to get started. There's the council, the police, the mafia, it's never-ending. Night work is difficult. Even harder for a woman. You'd be starting work just as Selim was coming home. Bar work doesn't go with family life.”

I sipped my tea.

“So, licences aren't often granted,” I said, “if it's all so tightly controlled.”

“It's not as bad as it was. Some people run places illegally, without a licence. There are bars in unimaginable places, where youngsters listen to their strange loud music, drink beer and take all kinds of drugs. If the police turn up to check them out, the owners push a few notes their way and the police turn a blind eye. That's how it works: you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.
I have an apartment here on Ä°stiklal Caddesi. Someone opened one of those illegal bars in the basement and the music goes on all night – boom boom boom… I'm sorry, but it does your head in. I spent a year trying to get it closed down. In the end, I took them to court. But they'd made sure the police were kept onside. And if you went to the council, they just said, ‘We don't have the authority to do anything.' It was dreadful. Who else could you go to? I rent the apartment out now. It has a wonderful view of the Bosphorus, and I did the inside up really well. But tenants never stay more than a month. Nobody can bear to stay with that din going on. They sell beer at that bar for a couple of cents a time. How do they make it pay? They're obviously selling something else. But you can't prove it. And if you do, what then? The police are already mixed up in it. If they weren't, do you think the drugs merry-go-round would keep going? They all just fill their pockets and look on. They're shameless, the lot of them.”

“So if you're not involved with licences any more, what is it that you do with the council?”

“Oh, miss, there's plenty of work all right. For instance, if a shop is penalized for playing loud music and told to close down, then the owner comes to me to have the order lifted. I also have connections at the Fire Department. I can help with getting permits from there. Oh, all sorts of things crop up…”

“How does the council land allocation business work?”

“Ah, now you're talking about the big stuff. That's out of my reach. You have to go very high up for that.”

“Council Chairman?”

“You can't do it at District Council level. My guess is you need contacts on the Greater City Council. They never make land allocations to the people who present the applications. Lots of money changes hands and you need lots of contacts. Getting a land allocation for, say, a sports club or a nice peaceful house isn't at all easy, especially for residential buildings.”

“What about cooperatives?”

“I can't say it never happens, because it does. For instance, Şişli Council made a land allocation to a cooperative called Baro Cooperative. But because it was an area with a lot of illegal housing, it was so expensive to clear that they never managed to start the building work. I'm talking about six or seven years ago, when the land allocation was made. I don't mean that land allocations aren't profitable. But if a council gives an allocation for a place that's certain to be good for business, then it always goes to someone in their own circles. It would never be to Baro Cooperative or the Chamber of Physicians, and certainly not to the likes of you and me.”

“For a council land allocation in the Beyoğlu area, who would I—” I didn't manage to finish my question.

“So have you given up on the idea of opening a bar?”

“No, I'm asking because I'm curious.”

“These things take a lot of work. I don't know what the procedure is. But I'll stick my neck out and say that I think it's all down to the chairman or the vice-chairman. Beyoğlu is in the hands of the religious lot at the moment. It was different before, when the social democrats were in. You could sit down with your man and come to an arrangement. He told you what his cut should be and you paid him in cash, finished. The religious lot are different. They don't accept money themselves. Part of any bribe goes into party funds and part goes into their pockets. Have the social democrats ever got anywhere? No. Why? Because all they think about is lining their own pockets. The religious lot aren't like that. They prop up the party. Every time they gain something for themselves, they gain something for the party. When I say party, I don't mean directly to the party. For instance, the party has a sports club that's possibly the richest one in Turkey. It brings in huge amounts of money. They say, ‘Go and make a donation for so much to the Haliç Sports Club, and then come
back.' That's their method. Not one of them actually handles any money. But if you go to them with a donation receipt from the Sports Club and lay it down on the table, the job's done. That's the procedure. You can't get anywhere without doing that. And if you get on the wrong side of these men or start arguing with them about anything, then forget it. It's not something that's open to just anyone, because they don't take money from just anyone. They only say ‘Go and make your donation, then come back' to people they trust. Otherwise, I'd be making donations. So would every Hasan, Ahmet and Mehmet. No, they don't tell everyone how it's done, because they don't want everyone getting in on it. My man trusts me, but he wouldn't trust anyone else. That's why people who have business with the council come to me. Not to get it done free. I wouldn't do it for nothing, nobody would…”

“So it's Haliç Sports Club,” I said. It didn't take me long to remember where I'd heard that name recently.

“All that money, and their football team is still rubbish. No better than a local team. I've been there and seen the place. They have separate facilities like swimming pools and tennis courts for men and women. That's what they're like. They're into everything. Sports and education. They want the girls to go to university in headscarves. You might ask, ‘Aren't your women supposed to stay at home and raise children?' But they have a ready answer. They say, ‘If mothers are to raise children, they must be cultured.' See? They have it all planned. They're now grooming future mothers who will raise the next generation. This generation hasn't produced anyone anyway. They're all just local tough guys. They get votes from the lowest social levels. Only ignorant peasants fresh from the villages vote for them. Why? Because they think, ‘I've got nothing in this world, so I'll try for more in the next.' These men buy votes by giving people work, money, gold or title deeds for paradise. I've actually seen it with my own eyes. I've seen them hand out title deeds for paradise.
They give you a certificate and make you swear on the Koran to give them your vote. My missus is as pure as they come, a true Muslim. Even she was going to give them her vote, but I managed to change her mind, with some difficulty. Our family are traditionally Atatürk supporters. My dear father, God bless his soul, was always talking about what the Greek infidels did. We're from Sakız Island where we used to live among them. Atatürk saved us from the hands of those infidels, so why would I vote for his enemies now? No way.”

“How do you manage to do business with the council, when you talk like that?”

“Everyone knows what I am. I sell alcohol in my bars and restaurants, and I'm an evening drinker myself. I've nothing to hide, thank God. Hide from what, anyway? They're the ones that conceal their true faces. They're hypocrites. I'm an honest man, a better Muslim than the lot of them. That's what I tell the missus. On the Day of Judgement, when I'm playing with nymphs in paradise, they'll be burning in hell. Those men aren't going to decide who goes to paradise. Being a Muslim is all about being straight and honest, isn't it? You don't become a Muslim by growing a beard and winding a piece of cloth around your head.”

“So you manage to deal with them because they trust you, is that right?”

“Of course it is. They don't trust each other, but they need somebody they can trust. They're not going to trust anyone they know to be exactly like themselves, are they? They all know what their colleagues are up to. Every one of them is just after a few bucks. A decent man wouldn't last a day with them. Things go on that not even the Devil would dream up. I've no documentation, otherwise I wouldn't hesitate for a moment. I'm not interested in money or anything. I'd expose the lot of them, but I've no documentation. Who was it who said, ‘Is there any such thing
as a bribe document?' That's how it is. I've channelled billions into Haliç Sports.”

With some difficulty, he reached over his belly to clasp his tea glass with his chubby fingers. “I've talked so much my tea's gone cold. I'm like the loudmouth whose cigarette burns away to nothing. Waiter,” he called out to no one in particular. “This tea tastes like dishwater, bring us two more. Or would you prefer coffee?”

“No, I'm fine,” I said.