Dieter cracks his knuckles for emphasis.
"Sure," McGrave says.
He drops his Mentos into his bottle of Diet Coke and walks away from the bar. An instant later, the bottle explodes, spewing an enormous geyser of foam, startling everyone in the place but McGrave, who uses the distraction to take Burly's gun, elbow Dieter hard in the throat, and knock Burly to the floor.
The dancers stop dancing. Everyone turns and stares. But the music is still playing and it actually isn't a bad soundtrack for what is going down.
McGrave puts the gun in Burly's face with one hand and holds up his badge with the other for everyone in the place to see, especially Maria.
"LAPD. Everybody take it easy."
McGrave glances at Dieter, who is wide-eyed, gurgling, and desperately clutching his throat, and decides the bouncer presents no threat. He looks down at Burly.
"Who was the dead guy to you?"
"My partner in this club," Burly says.
"What was he doing in Los Angeles?"
"Vacation."
McGrave shoots the floor next to Burly's head. People drop down and take cover. Others scramble for the door.
Maria tenses up, but her gaze drifts to a well-dressed man in a perfectly tailored Brioni suit sitting alone and stock-still at a table, holding his glass. He looks like a male model advertising whiskey.
"Try again," McGrave says to Burly.
"On a job. With the man."
"What man?"
Maria is paying no attention to McGrave. She's watching the well-dressed customer, who is glancing furtively at the back door.
"I don't know his name," Burly says.
McGrave presses the gun to Burly's forehead and cocks the trigger. "How do I find him?"
Burly spits it out in a panic. "You don't. He finds you. He has an agent, Hans Beimler. You meet Beimler. If he likes the job, he sets up a meet with the man."
"Where's Beimler?"
"Tequila's. On the beach at Mьhlenstrasse."
The well-dressed man bolts for the back door. Maria leaps over the bar, no mean feat in her dress, and runs across the club after him, holding her pendant to her mouth and talking into it.
"Verdammt! Schmidt rennt. Alle Einheiten rein! Los!"
McGrave runs after her, going out the back door just as Stefan, Heinrich, and dozens of uniformed Polizei in their green uniforms swarm in.
The well-dressed man gets into a four-door Porsche Panamera parked in the back alley and drives off.
Marie curses and dashes to a tiny dented Opel Astra that's not half as nice, or as aerodynamic, as the trash Dumpster that it's parked beside. She starts the car and is about to go when McGrave hops into the passenger seat.
"Detective John McGrave, LAPD." He clips his badge to a chain around his neck and smiles at her.
She glares at him. "Kriminalkommissar Maria Vogt, Berlin Polizei."
She floors it.
The Porsche speeds out onto the grand tree-lined boulevard, the Opel right behind it. The two cars weave through the traffic on the Ku'damm, past the posh shops, the gourmet restaurants, and the wooden kiosks that sell tourist trinkets.
Maria drives with concentration and skill, using the manual transmission like a pro. The Opel has more guts under the hood than McGrave would ever have guessed.
"What are you doing in Berlin?" she asks.
"A takedown crew from here blew a heist in LA. The crew got killed, the leader got away. I think he's back here now," McGrave says, keeping his eye on the Porsche. "So who are we chasing?"
"Arno Schmidt, an international drug trafficker."
McGrave nods. "Cool."
God, she hates this guy. "How did you know I was a police officer?"
"That's like asking how I know you're a woman."
"It's that obvious?"
He glances at her and lets his gaze drift up and down her body. "Abundantly."
"Arschloch," she says.
"What does that mean?"
"It's German for 'thank you.'"
The Porsche is ahead of them but getting bogged down in the traffic. Maria steers the Opel up onto the sidewalk, leaning on her horn to warn people, who scatter out of her path.
She gains on the Porsche. "You knew you'd find a cop inside."
"I spotted the surveillance outside the strip club, so I knew the cop inside would be the woman wearing the most clothes."
That doesn't make her feel any better. "This undercover operation took six months to set up and you ruined it in sixty seconds. What brought you to the club?"
"Otto's tattoo. He was one of the thieves in the crew."
"So that's why he invested in the club. He was using it to launder the money he got from his share of the stolen goods."