by Wolf Haas
And the next moment saw Brenner throwing up. And the next moment Brenner knew that the next moment would find him unconscious.
Through the thick glass panel that separated the passenger compartment from the driver’s cab, he could still see Junior shifting into reverse and trying to back out of the Magic Moment.
The sudden movement threw Brenner off balance, but he caught himself on the IV pole. But in catching himself, he broke the IV pole off its base. Brenner tried to thrash the glass partition with IV pole now. But something like this had never happened to Brenner before. Because today the IV pole was made of rubber! And his arms were rubber arms, too, today!
But the window wouldn’t break no matter how hard he thrashed, Brenner consoled himself, because it, too, was made of rubber today. And all the while, Brenner watched as Junior tried to back out of the Magic Moment once again.
A second later there was a crack so loud that in his stupor Brenner thought: Best Wishes from the Transmission. Even though he’d never heard a transmission crack like this before. It was as if, instead of an eardrum, Brenner had the whole window display in his ear, but his ear was too small to accommodate it, and the pressure suddenly shattered the glass into hundreds of thousands of minuscule pieces.
Doesn’t matter how much you throttle the gears, a transmission just doesn’t crack like that, Brenner thought. And maybe it’s on account of the carbon monoxide poisoning that I heard the transmission crack as loud as I did. Maybe the carbon monoxide is just acutely sharpening my hearing right before it shatters my nerves into a hundred thousand pieces.
Or maybe Junior just drove straight into the 740. Maybe he didn’t waste any time trying to back out. Maybe he just rammed the 740 onto its side like a snowplow. After all, if one car crashes into another car, that produces a powerful crash. Impossible, though, that it would shatter your eardrum.
Maybe nothing crashed, Brenner consoled himself: Neither the transmission, nor the 740, and the only crashing I’m hearing is my poisoned organs as I die.
Maybe the hereafter’s located in a noisy part of town, and that’s why my skull is buzzing like I’ve been strapped to the great bell of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the famous bell from the new year’s eve show on TV.
You can’t be mad at Brenner for getting a little hysterical in a situation like this. True, he should’ve known that Junior would lock him in. Nevertheless, whether he should’ve or not, if you were in Brenner’s shoes, you wouldn’t have kept calm exactly, either.
On the other hand, it can’t be denied that the poison has its advantages, too, because he couldn’t feel his broken rib at all anymore.
And about that bell, you know, the Glocke that always rings in the new year over here on TV, I have my own theory why that occurred to him now, listen up. His gun was a Glock, and as he marched alongside Lungauer now, taking long strides together toward the end of their lives, maybe out of some sense of solidarity, he started mixing up his words, too.
What I’m trying to say is this: he just wished he had his Glock on him. With his gun, he definitely would’ve been able to shoot right through the glass partition to the driver’s cab. But alas. He’d taken his Glock out of the pocket of his uniform yesterday because it’d been pressing a blunt weight on his broken rib.
Driven to despair, and yet, a faint shimmer of hope for Brenner. Because the air seemed to be getting a little bit better now.
Maybe a little fresh air is getting in through the shattered windshield in the driver’s cab, Brenner thought in his monoxide-rush. Maybe it was the crack of the windshield shattering that I heard. Maybe I’m just mixing up my words.
Maybe the thing that I call “skull” is what’s raining through the burst partition now and crashing against the rear door of the ambulance, causing the entire vehicle to reverberate like that famous New Year’s Glocke. And bloodying the whole interior with dark splatter—like in those turboorange-presses where you feed in ten blood oranges and a second later you’ve got a liter of blood orange juice.
Because the little slice of Junior’s head that was still intact was truly like an orange peel that had been sucked dry and was now slowly sliding down the rear door. And his mustache, well, I’ll only say this much: it looked as if someone had tried to open a beer bottle with it.
And one thing to be said in all seriousness. For all the things that you could charge Junior with—embezzlement and murder, and strangling Bimbo in the end, too—he had more brains than those two kamikaze drivers from the Gaudenzdorfer Gürtel put together. One quick glance could’ve told you that.
Needless to say, though, Brenner couldn’t see very much. First the poison had pressed his eyes shut, and then, the New Year’s Glocke had flattened them into discs. And when he finally managed to squeeze them open slit-wide, an image appeared in that slit, which, compared to the brain on the rear door, almost seemed normal to him.
Because Herr Oswald was kneeling on the passenger seat on the other side of the now-partitionless partition. And holding Bimbo’s Schweizerkracher with both hands. He was trembling so severely that Brenner was afraid the Schweizerkracher might accidentally go off a second time. And no wonder Herr Oswald was in shock. Because lightning like this only strikes once! All his life spent gazing, and then the first time he takes a shot, instant bull’s eye—auf wiedersehen to Junior’s skull and the partition in one fell swoop. I’ve got to say: Hats off!
And all the sudden, streaming faintly from the 740, Brenner could hear the tape that Klara had made for him thirty years ago in Puntigam:
“O sacred head sore wounded defiled and put to scorn;
O kingly head surrounded with mocking crown of thorn.”
One thing you can’t forget. The entire 590 was still resounding from the gunshot like one of those Asian gongs before the movies start. For Brenner, it wasn’t like sitting in the movie theater, though—it was like he was sitting in the middle of the gong.
And street noise joined the Asian gong now, and the excited chatter of onlookers and honking from all directions, as though the Danube Isle Fest had the entire city of Vienna erupting all at once. It all blended together into an avalanche of sound, as if somebody had taken Brenner’s eardrum and pulled it right down over his ears. And all the while, Klara’s choir in the background:
“What sorrow mars thy grandeur?
Can death thy bloom deflower?
O countenance whose splendor
The hosts of heaven adore!”
Brenner looked Herr Oswald in the eye, and Herr Oswald looked Brenner in the eye, and the choir sang, and the drivers honked, and the curious onlookers encircled the vehicle, and a few nosy ones even stuck their heads in through the open passenger-side door and immediately reeled back around when they saw the Schweizerkracher swaying perilously in Herr Oswald’s hands, and Herr Oswald didn’t say anything, and Brenner didn’t say anything, and Lungauer didn’t say anything, and Junior wouldn’t say anything ever again, and the choir sang:
“Thy beauty, long-desirèd,
hath vanished from our sight;
thy power is all expirèd,
and quenched the light of light.
Ah me! for whom thou diest,
hide not so far thy grace:
show me, O Love most highest,
the brightness of thy face.”
Brenner heard only the distant choir. And just beyond the choir, he heard the police sirens which—I’d almost call it dotting the “i”—blended into this sublime experience of music now, too.
“I pray thee, Jesus, own me,
me, Shepherd good, for thine;
who to thy fold hast won me,
and fed with truth divine.
Me guilty, me refuse not,
incline thy face to me.”
While the choir kept its distance, the police sirens got closer. And Brenner could almost feel the sirens overtaking the choir, closer and closer now. But not quite yet. The choir was still closer. The sirens had yet to overtake the choir.
And the chatter of the onlookers was closer than the choir. And Herr Oswald’s hyperventilating was closer than the chatter. And Lungauer’s snoring was closer than the hyperventilating. And the buzz of the Asian gong was closer than the snoring, and the deafening heartbeat—as if a drummer had set up his bass drum in Brenner’s ear—was closer than the Asian gong. Though Brenner had never before experienced such sublime music, he prepared himself for the eventuality that it might be his last, this sublimely deafening experience, and he might never hear another thing for as long as he lived. But for this one second he was alive and could still hear:
“In thy most bitter passion
my heart to share doth cry,
with thee for my salvation
upon the cross to die.”
And then Brenner didn’t hear any more music. Just a bang that was a hundred times closer than the heart-drum in his ear. The choir, though, absolutely silent. Because with a single bullet, Herr Oswald had shot the whole choir dead.
“The only vehicle with quadrophonic sound,” Brenner yelled, because these days when your hearing’s as poor as his now was, you automatically talk a little louder, “and you shot it to pieces!”
Herr Oswald didn’t say anything. He just let the Schweizerkracher drop.
“Watch out!” Brenner shouted.
Herr Oswald didn’t say anything.
“How are you?” Brenner cried over the din in his ears. Because he really would’ve been interested to know how a person feels when his whole life long he’s known only watching, and then in an instant, he gets brutally thrust into doing.
But Herr Oswald didn’t say anything and wouldn’t open up, either.
“Good,” a voice from behind Brenner answered instead. At first Brenner thought the brain on the tailgate was talking to him. Needless to say, though, it was just Lungauer, who—thanks to the shot that Herr Oswald silenced the quadrophonic sound system with—finally awoke.
“Good day,” Lungauer said in his polite manner to Brenner.
“I wouldn’t know,” Brenner answered.
But today, Lungauer was too tired to laugh.
CHAPTER 17
Two days they detained Brenner at the police station until they believed his story. Maybe a little revenge was at play, too. Why they didn’t let him go for so long. Because he was the one to solve the murder and not them. Practically, showed up his ex-colleagues a little.
And who knows how long the case would’ve dragged on without Junior’s silver bracelet? But thank god they investigated the bracelet so thoroughly. Because on the inner band the word LOVE had been engraved, and it must’ve got sprayed with a little blood when Junior cinched Bimbo’s gold chain around his neck in the 740 garage. Because in the engraved letters the police lab found a little dried Bimbo blood.
Saturday night and Brenner was back on the streets, a free man again.
He got on the U1 and rode it out to Danube Isle. Third day of the festival today, and in the newspapers he’d read that on the first two days alone there’d been over a million visitors to the island.
When he got off at the convention center, he only had to take a couple of steps before he was completely enveloped by the crowds. You’ve got to picture it for a second: usually you head to the isle because you’re in need of some open air to move around in. During Isle Fest, though, all ten of its kilometers, like sardines in oil.
The event tents were only fifty meters apart, but you needed an hour to get from one to the next. And on the way there, you inevitably stepped on a Käsekrainer five times or slipped in mustard, every ten meters somebody spilling beer on your head, and it actually starts to feel strange if nobody’s stepping on your toes.
Believe it or not, though, it suited Brenner just fine today. After two days in a cell at the police station, he actually had considerably more personal space there than he did here on the famous local isle, no comparison at all. Somehow, though, he just needed the proximity of people right now.
The biggest advantage was that he was unable to fall over. Because at the Danube Isle Fest, you’ve got people standing so close to you everywhere you turn that you automatically get propped up. On the other hand, it has its dangers, too. Because a drunk who’s lost consciousness actually needs to fall over, just the body’s natural defense mechanism, and that’s why there are always so many deaths at the festival, on account of the unconscious people not falling over when they need to.
Brenner wasn’t drunk, though. He was just tired from two sleepless days spent in an interrogation room. Not what you’re thinking, though, torture. Although needless to say, certain methods that the Vienna police are a little notorious for. The old water-bucket method, for example. The Vienna police enjoy studying the critical reports on torture coming out of Latin America these days, and then trying it out for themselves. They don’t mean anything bad by it—just some juvenile copycat mentality.
But with Brenner, you can rest assured, everything, by the book. Even a doctor for his broken rib. There was a completely different reason for why he didn’t sleep, practically self-flagellation. Because he couldn’t quit going back over the story, over and over again, from beginning to end.
How Junior had resorted to falsifying wills in order to stay number one in the EMS game. How he’d taken Lungauer out of commission when it got to be too much and Lungauer wanted out.
How Irmi had remained a problem for them, though. How Bimbo had instructed Stenzl, Junior’s puppet at the blood bank, to keep Irmi occupied there a full five minutes. And how he’d shot right through Stenzl, ice-cold.
How Bimbo then became so cocky that Junior decided to clean up the whole case himself by giving Bimbo’s chain a cinch. And how he’d tried to pit Brenner and Pro Med and the police all against each other so that none of them would come up with the idea of suspecting him.
I don’t know, maybe it was the shock that kept Brenner in this state of chronic rehashing. Because when a head goes zipping past your nose, it’s not exactly an everyday kind of thing. Or was it just some residual side effect of the carbon monoxide in the 590?
His hope had been that, penned in among a hundred thousand normal people, he’d start to feel like himself again here on Danube Isle. He trundled on, from one tent to the next. Concerts, skits, wherever he ended up, he’d watch, but he didn’t fully take in any of it. Except for the hundreds of Rapid Response and Pro Med vehicles parked all over the place—on standby to go plowing through the throngs with their lights flashing. He didn’t recognize any of his co-workers among the masses, though.
Around midnight, a Viennese rock singer went on, the closing act and headliner, and all the sudden Brenner realized who fat Nuttinger had reminded him of this whole time.
Brenner wasn’t listening very closely, though. He just let himself get shoved aimlessly through the festivities by the crowds. Although I have to say, his feelings must’ve betrayed him a little. I mean, how aimless could he really have been? Or did Brenner’s own will sway the throngs of people a little, too? Anyhow, suddenly he was standing right out in front of the Pro Med tent.
And then, he was standing eye to eye with Stenzl.
Stenzl stared at Brenner, and Brenner stared at Stenzl. From a distance of maybe two meters at most. But neither said a word. Not even a sign of recognition. And to this day I’m not sure if Stenzl saw Brenner or not. Because in a crowd like this, you could overlook your best friend standing two meters away from you.
And needless to say, Stenzl’s best friend was not Brenner. Even if Brenner had in fact cleared up his brother’s murder. Even if Stenzl had since learned that his suspicions about Brenner had been unfounded. But who likes being locked in his own basement for a whole day with three stooges from the cement works?
Even though it didn’t do the Pro Med chief any harm; quite the contrary. It was looking like a sure thing that he’d finally be number one in emergency medical services now. With the triumphant air of an admiral, he stood amid a sea of drunks and stared at Brenne
r.
Brenner thought about what he could say to him.
A good thing you had me beat up by those Watzek workers, I could say, he thought.
Brenner still wasn’t sure if the Pro Meddler even saw him.
If your men hadn’t carried me back to the Response Center, then Junior wouldn’t have put me on his three-week retribution plan, I could say. Then I wouldn’t have met Klara. She was my high school girlfriend back in Puntigam who once made me a mix tape.
I’d rather not tell him that part, though, Brenner said to himself. He still wasn’t sure if Stenzl saw him.
A good thing your guys beat me up because, otherwise, Lil’ Berti wouldn’t have ventured to find out who beat me up, I could say, Brenner thought. Then I wouldn’t have gone looking for Berti at the Golden Heart. Then Angelika wouldn’t have told me about Lungauer. And then we still wouldn’t know to this day that it was Junior who was responsible for the deaths of your brother and Irmi and Bimbo.
That’s how I’ll start, Brenner decided.
But, at just that moment, Stenzl went off howling like a lunatic.
That was meant for a drunk who’d just puked on a Pro Med bumper, though. And then, Brenner was carried farther along by the throngs again, and he heard a little more of the musical stylings of fat Nuttinger.
After the concert, the crowds gradually dissipated, and Brenner lay down in the grass beside a litter of Coke bottles and beer cups and paper plates and dog shit and drunks.
He didn’t wake up until early the next morning when the cleaning crews came through to clear all the crap off the island. He watched as the workers collected the trash and threw it into the orange garbage trucks. And he was surprised by how easily the street-sweepers scrubbed the asphalt pathways clean.
Inches from Brenner’s nose, a trash collector pierced a Sunday Kronenzeitung with a metal nabber and stuffed it into a black trash bag. It was yesterday’s edition; Brenner had already read it. The front page announced Rapid Response’s new director, a retired city councilman and the former volunteer chief of the Vorarlberg chapter of the Rapid Response, so, basically a new beginning. And a polite person, too, who even visited Brenner while he was in custody.
