Copenhagen Noir

It was fascinating, she had to stop and stare through the shop windows. A Christmas manger scene with the tiny baby Jesus-surrounded by dildos. A blow-up sex doll with a silicone pussy wrapped in a chain of red heart-shaped Christmas lights. Handcuffs, leather whips, half-masks, and chastity belts hung on a plastic Christmas tree with a star on top and icicles covering it.

At the shelter, the Men’s Home, the guests for the night had already begun to gather. Hoarse voices, the clinking of bottles, and tubercular coughs rose from the group of ragged, dirty, homeless figures. Claire decided to cross the street to the other sidewalk.

There was more dignity to the slick black kings of the street, who in two-and three-man groups marked off their territories, while the black females busied themselves braiding hair in salons, the walls covered with wigs and hairpieces of all colors.

The African hair salons were something new, thought Claire, who hadn’t sat foot in Vesterbro since she left as an eight-year-old.

A drunk wearing only an open leather vest on his upper body tumbled out from one of the half-basement tattoo shops and knocked into her. His skin was totally and colorfully illustrated from his bald head to his waist.

More sex shops, more Asian grills, more stores with weird combinations of souvenirs, Christmas decorations, porn underwear and sex toys, more bars, more brothels.

At Skelbækgade, the street prostitutes-the lowest in the pecking order, the most desperate-were already busy. Addicts and Africans, as far as she could tell. Several men walked back and forth, openly sizing them up, while others crept past in their cars.

The nine-to-five shift, they called these early sex customers, when she was a kid.

At the spot on Istedgade where the place begins to look respectable again, she turned right, down a side street.

She stopped when a text message beeped in. It was John, from Rio: All’s well, dear. Brazil is the land of opportunity. Great deals. Looking forward to getting home December 9. Hug and kiss.

She answered at once: Thanks, hon. On the way to new fitness center. Trying to get in shape for Christmas. Take good care of yourself.

The fitness center was to be her alibi. She had a membership card in her pocket.

“Wow! You’ve got class!” Bonnie said, looking almost lovingly at her as she pulled her in through the hallway to the reception area.

Ikea, Claire Winther noted. Cheap, but light and clean and less sleazy than she had expected. A beige corner sofa and a coffee table with porn magazines. A counter with a coffee maker and plastic cups. A flatscreen on the wall, fastened to a swinging arm.

“Here’s where we receive customers, who come in only by appointment. They call or book on the net. As a rule, anyway. If it’s totally dead we’ll take them in off the street. I keep track of the shift schedule and the appointments and do the books, and most of the time I’m sitting right there.”

Bonnie pointed at the chair and desk behind the counter.

A madam, Claire thought.

Bonnie was closer to sixty than fifty. She was overweight in the way alcoholics can be, a bulging stomach and thin arms and legs, her face ruddy and spongy with large pores that looked even larger because of her makeup, and she spoke with a hoarse, nasal voice.

She continued: “Five of us are full-time. Take that back, five of us were full-time. Alette, our Danish girl, died two weeks ago. Sad story. There’s so much bad heroin around right now. Not that Alette was an addict, no no, she only fixed once in a while to feel good, she just got unlucky… You don’t look like…?”

Claire shook her head. “No, I stick with the supermarket drugs you can get in Brugsen,” she answered.

“Good, because drugs-they’ll just take you farther and farther down!” Bonnie put a protective arm around Claire’s shoulder, looked her right in the eye, and almost whispered: “I can’t count how many I’ve seen kick the bucket with their stilettos on…” Then she continued, more businesslike: “Right now we have two Thais and one Romanian, sweet girls, all of them, but the Thais don’t understand Danish. They’re here on tourist visas-three months at a shot. Theresa from Romania has a residency permit here and speaks pidgin Danish. Problem is, more and more of our customers only want Danish girls. It’s all this talk about trafficking that’s scaring them. God’s sake, the foreign girls beg for a job, and now for example we’re saying no to all the African girls, so they’re on the street-painting the town red, as they say.”