Private Berlin (Private 5)

They went through wooden doors carved with explicit scenes from the Kama Sutra into a surprisingly utilitarian and small lobby. Loud disco music played somewhere beyond the room.

Two older women sat behind a counter at one end of the lobby. Stacks of Turkish towels and robes were piled on shelves behind them. They eyed Burkhart and then Mattie and then each other.

One smiled knowingly.

The other shrugged and said, “Sixty-five-euro admission fee. You get use of the facilities, dinner, and coffee and soft drinks. The girls are extra. Fifty euros for half an hour of straight loving. Fifty euros to climax orally. One hundred euros for thirty minutes of anal eroticism.”

She said this all while smirking at Mattie, who refused to react even when the woman said to her, “You want them to go down on you, honey? Negotiate.”

CHAPTER 79

MATTIE PULLED OUT her badge.

The lady behind the counter stiffened. “This is a legal establishment.”

“We’re not police,” Burkhart growled. “We’re investigators with Private Berlin.”

Mattie added: “We’re looking into the disappearance of one of your workers, Ilse Frei, and the murder of a man we believe came here looking for her last Tuesday.”

“I don’t know—” she began.

“I remember him,” the other old woman said. “He paid his way in, talked with several of the girls, and left in a hurry.”

“You know who he spoke with?”

“No. But go inside and find Michelle. Michelle knows all.”

Burkhart and Mattie moved toward the door into the brothel.

“No. Rules are rules,” the lady behind the counter said, holding out a robe to Mattie and a towel to Burkhart. “If you want to take a walk through Paradise, you pay and you change out of your street clothes.”

Mattie thought to protest, but Burkhart said, “You take Visa?”

“Of course,” the woman said and cackled.

A few moments later they walked through a door into a T-shaped hallway with signs for men’s and women’s locker rooms.

Mattie soon found herself in an empty and surprisingly clean locker facility that easily rivaled the one where she worked out. She hesitated but then took off her jeans and blouse and hung them with her holster and gun in the locker.

She put on the robe, which was entirely too large for her, and she had to cinch it tight about her waist. S

he found a pair of sanitized rubber sandals and headed toward a staircase at the other end of the locker room that featured an arrow and the word Spa.

At the top of the stairs, Mattie emerged into a large room with pools and Jacuzzis and exotic flowers growing everywhere. There were beautiful naked women walking around and floating in the pools.

A dozen men dressed only in towels around their waists mingled about, appraising the women. Burkhart was one of them. He stood near a bank of orchids, behind it actually. The towel they’d given him was barely enough to cover his massive physique, and he was holding on to both ends of it for dear life.

Mattie couldn’t help it. She started laughing. “Don’t slip,” she said.

“You coulda stayed in the car, made this much easier,” Burkhart shot back.

“And miss the expression on your face?”

A tall blond woman with large natural breasts strolled up to them. She put her ruby fingernails on Burkhart’s chest, looked at Mattie, and said in a Hungarian accent, “Is the rest of him as big?”

Mattie fought off a smile. “I wouldn’t know.”

The blonde’s eyes sparkled. “First date and you agree to come to Paradise? You must be sexy, girl. So, you want to party with Michelle?”