by Wolf Haas
“Where’s the boss been this whole time?” Brenner asked her.
“Not back yet from his checkup.”
“I’m not talking about the old man. The manager’s husband.”
“Not Porsche Pauli, though.”
Porsche Pauli. That got Brenner thinking to himself, I’m glad I don’t live out here in the country, because at least I don’t have a nickname like that.
“The way I see it, everybody’s my boss. So I’m not the type to call the shots here. When you’re a waitress, everybody’s your boss anyway. Porsche Pauli, though, is not my boss.”
“You mean, the old man’s still the boss?”
“The manager’s the boss. But now I need to hurry up and eat my frankfurters, before they get cold,” the waitress says and walks back over to the bar.
“But the manager is, in fact, just the daughter-in-law,” Brenner said, while she prepared her frankfurters at the bar.
“And the only one here who can run a business,” the waitress said. “Or did you think that Porsche Pauli could run a business like this?”
“Why don’t you and your frankfurters have a seat over here with me?”
“If it wouldn’t bother you,” the waitress said and walked back to the table with her steaming plate of sausages. And she nearly had to spit the first bite out—that’s how hot they were. But one, two hasty chewing motions with an open mouth and a few controlled breaths and down it went.
“There’s nothing better than frankfurters. When they’re hot, that is.”
“Those are hot, all right,” Brenner said and stared in amazement as she gobbled down the next bite and the next, each far too hot.
“They have to be.”
“Maybe that’s why I’ve never liked the taste of frankfurters. Because I always eat them too cold.”
“In Frankfurt they call them ‘wieners,’ and in Vienna, they’re ‘frankfurters,’ ” the waitress said through a mouthful. “And do you know why?”
“Nobody wants to be the sausage.”
“That would explain it, too,” the waitress laughed. “But I’m going to tell it to you like this: a Viennese butcher invented the sausage. And his name was Frankfurter.”
“You’d like to think they’ve just always existed.”
“No, no. Invented. In Vienna. By Frankfurter.”
“Do you always eat your sausages without a bun?”
“Always! Never eat a sausage on a bun.”
“If you like sausages so much, then Porsche Pauli must be your best friend.”
“You can say that again, dumplin’—that Porsche Pauli’s a real weenie. And a cold one at that,” the waitress laughed, because, for her, it was evidently time to drop the formalities.
But Brenner was still a little uncertain about whether he was ready to do the same. Maybe you’re familiar with this, when someone gets chummy all of a sudden, but you can’t quite bring yourself to reciprocate. So Brenner simply changed the subject: “Where’s Porsche Pauli been this whole time?”
The waitress gave an ambivalent shrug of her shoulders. “Since the bribery scandal broke, he doesn’t dare show his face back home anymore.”
“You think he had something to do with Ortovic’s death … dumplin’?”
Ah, that first attempt at familiarity. It always tickles the palate a bit, not unlike when you put something too hot in your mouth.
“Don’t make me laugh,” was all the waitress said.
And then they heard someone unlocking the door from the outside. Because there was one small detail that Brenner hadn’t been entirely honest with the inspector about.
“Train had a fifteen-minute delay,” old man Löschenkohl said, cursing as he came in.
The old man sat down at Brenner’s table, and the waitress brought him a glass of water.
“Will you join me in having a bite to eat?” he asked Brenner.
Needless to say, a double opportunity for Brenner now. First of all, he wanted to see if he could get Löschenkohl talking a little before he told him the story about Ortovic’s head. That way, maybe he’d find something else out about the bribery scandal surrounding the old man’s son. Second of all: “A couple of frankfurters.”
Because even though he wasn’t the least bit hungry, the waitress’s appetite was contagious.
“Hey, Toni, a couple frankfurters, no bun, one beer!”
Löschenkohl yelled to the waitress from across the deserted restaurant.
“And for you?” Brenner asked.
“I’m not eating anything else today. The doctor said I have to watch my eating. It’s all getting to be too much for me. I can only hope that you’ll find my daughter-in-law soon. The business is just too much for me to handle on my own.”
“And your son?”
How long do frankfurters take? If you want them to be good, at least ten minutes. Because you don’t actually cook them, or else they’ll split open on you. Just until they’re heated through. And that’s where a lot of people go wrong, they don’t let them simmer long enough. And if they’re supposed to be really hot, then you’ve got to let them simmer for at least ten minutes.
Now why’s that so important? Because the whole time the frankfurters were cooking, old man Löschenkohl didn’t say a word. Although he understood the question perfectly well. No answer for at least ten minutes. And when the frankfurters arrived, they were steaming—you could tell right away that, back in the kitchen, the waitress had personally seen to it that they be simmered long enough.
Brenner bit fearlessly into the sausage, though, just so he could say to old man Löschenkohl: “Now I’ve gone and burned my mouth.”
“You should wait a little longer.”
Brenner nodded and blew on his steaming frankfurter, but before he took a bite he said, “And how much longer should I wait before you answer my question about your son?”
“About my son? So you didn’t burn your mouth after all. No, it’s just that—I’m just, you know. In my head.”
“Don’t get me wrong. It’s just that if I’m going to find your daughter-in-law, then I need to know as much as possible about her. And her husband, too, of course.”
“All right, okay.”
“I was down on the soccer field today. Practice.”
“Mm-hmm, soccer, the boys, practice.”
“I got to talking a little with the coach there,” Brenner lied. “He told me your son’s mixed up in a bribery scandal.”
“A bunch of nonsense.”
“Is it not true?”
Now, picture Brenner feeling with his tongue for whether little patches of skin were peeling off the roof of his mouth—that’s how hot the frankfurters were.
“Unfortunately, yes, it’s true that my son got into that mess.”
“And he hasn’t been home since?”
“No, no. It’s been longer than that since he’s been here. Got married four years ago. So he hasn’t been here since then.”
“But his wife still runs the business here?”
“Yeah. His wife stayed. But him, always on the move. Married a competent woman. Because she’s a good one who’s always had to work. And him, a disappearing act.”
“What was your son doing that whole time, then?”
“You’ll have to ask him that. Nothing good. Only comes home when he needs money. Or now. He’s worried about his wife, of course. Doesn’t care all year long, but when she disappears, that’s too much for him. For once he’ll have to do some work himself. Instead of tooling around in his Porsche.”
Then Löschenkohl got very quiet again. Brenner was starting to notice just how often the old man could drop off from one second to the next.
A poor old man, Brenner thought, must be awfully lonely, and why should I keep pestering him about his son. When he won’t tell me the truth anyway. A father telling you the truth about his son—you’re not apt to experience that very often. Because assuming he’d even be able to—where are you going to find a father today who ev
en knows something about his son? You see, right back where we started.
When Brenner had finished his sausages, he simply got up and left the silent old man sitting there. But it was at that exact moment—or maybe was it because the soft jolt of the table woke him back up?—that old man Löschenkohl said:
“Ferdl.”
“What Ferdl?”
“From the soccer team, the coach. You did say that he’s the one who told you all that.”
“The coach, right. His name’s Ferdl?”
“He’s a bus driver by day. They’re always taking bus trips down Yugo-ways. Senior citizens, gratis. So, they don’t have to pay anything for the trip, the seniors.”
“And then they sell them some kind of miracle pillow for twenty thousand schillings,” Brenner said, because his Aunt Emmi back in Puntigam went on one of these trips and came back with a miracle pillow. Emmi wasn’t sorry about the money for long, though, because she dropped dead shortly thereafter, standing in line at the Easter confessional. Sixty-seven years old, that’s no age for a woman.
“Ferdl’s always a real entertainer on those bus trips,” Löschenkohl wasn’t going to let Brenner distract him from what he wanted to say. “That man can tell jokes, unbelievable. The old widows all fall in love with him.”
“It’s good for business.”
“But in the locker room,” Löschenkohl said, a little softer now, because he’s the kind of person who, just by getting a little quieter, could bring you up short. “In the locker room—and everybody down here knows it—there, it’s like he’s a different man. You can’t get a word out of him.”
“Aha.”
“Do you want me to be honest with you?”
And Brenner: “If you want me to find your daughter-in-law.”
And old man Löschenkohl: “Then you’re going to have to be honest with me, too. Because all that about Ortovic’s head was already on the seven o’clock news. You didn’t need to dish up some story about Ferdl to me. Because maybe my son bribed Ortovic. But decapitate him—he doesn’t have what it takes.”
Brenner was just standing there, caught awkwardly between the table and the bench, because Löschenkohl had started talking to him when he was in the middle of getting up. And now, needless to say, doubly awkward. And for a full minute he didn’t know: should I sit back down or should I go, what’ll look stupider?
But old man Löschenkohl was god-knows-where in his thoughts again, and by now, Brenner realized that his left leg had fallen asleep, and so Coach Ferdl was of help to him after all:
“And one more time!” Brenner shouted silently at himself and gave his sleeping leg a jolt. Then, like a fouled kicker, he limped off to the staff’s quarters.
CHAPTER 5
MAGNIFICENT DAYCATION TO SLOVENIA. ONLY 148 SCHILLINGS! WITH SLOVENIAN EASY LISTENING AND FOLKLORE PERFORMANCE. ROUNDTRIP TRAVEL IN STATE-OF-THE-ART CHARTER BUS WITH PANORAMIC WINDOWS.
** LADIES WILL RECEIVE: 1 LARGE HANDBAG WITH INTERIOR POCKET AND MATCHING COSMETICS CASE IN THIS SEASON’S LATEST FAUX-CROCODILE LOOK
** GENTLEMEN WILL RECEIVE: 1 KEYRING, 1 BILLFOLD, AND DUAL-COMPARTMENT BRIEFCASE IN THIS SEASON’S LATEST FAUX-CROCODILE LOOK
** HOME DECOR SHOW COURTESY OF THE VOGL-VERSAND FIRM, MUNICH (PARTICIPATION OPTIONAL)
WE’LL BE HANDING OUT THESE GIFTS—AND MORE!—DIRECTLY TO OUR LOYAL CUSTOMERS DURING OUR ANNIVERSARY TRIP!
PLEASE MARK YOUR PREFERRED POINT OF DEPARTURE:
GLEISDORF
SINABELKIRCHEN
ILZ
RIEGERSBURG
FELDBACH (TRAIN STATION)
BAD GLEICHENBERG
HALBENRAIN
BAD RADKERSBURG (CENTRAL SQUARE)
When Brenner got on at Halbenrain, the bus was nearly full already. The driver looked a little confused, and so immediately Brenner felt like he’d been caught doing something. Because these days when you get on a crowded bus as a newcomer, you already have the feeling that the other people have just always been there. And if one of them looks at you oddly, well, it can seem like you’ve been caught doing something, if that’s your tendency.
And Brenner had good reason to feel this way. He was afraid Coach Ferdl might recognize him and guess that Brenner wanted to get him talking.
But no chance of Ferdl recognizing anyone. And when Brenner scanned the other people on the bus, he knew right away, of course, why the confused look. Because, except for Brenner, all the passengers—practically old folks’ home.
There was only one young woman there, in a bright-green suit and with dyed blond hair, but the sheer blondness of it made it look more like a straw wig.
“You must be Herr Brenner?” she said, because she was part of the bus, and Brenner didn’t even have time to nod before she bellowed into a microphone: “Join me in welcoming Herr Brenner from Klöch.”
Needless to say, very embarrassing, the old folks all applauding obediently. Brenner would’ve liked to turn right around and get off the bus, but not a chance.
“There are still three seats in the back,” the hostess bellowed into her damn microphone, even though Brenner was standing all of a foot and a half away from her. Needless to say, a problem. What am I doing in the back of the bus, Brenner thought, when I’d like to be having a chat with the driver. So, real sly now, he says to the hostess:
“I don’t do so well on tour buses. Couldn’t I, maybe, here up front—”
You can stop right there. The seniors in the front seats, well—their pacemakers nearly leapt out of their chests when they heard that. Because they always feel terrible on buses, as a matter of fact, and now some young upstart comes along and wants to take their hard-fought seats up front away from them.
The hostess didn’t even condescend to answer and Brenner went bravely to the back without any further fuss. Because Brenner knew from his time on the force that there’s nothing more dangerous than old folks with canes. Cane or bayonet, once you have it stuck in your stomach, it’s often just a matter of interpretation. So he consoled himself: I’ll still be able to draw Ferdl out when we stop in Maribor.
They were barely over the border when the hostess began to spout off into her microphone. Because she had to warm up the crowd. And more importantly, pass out the gifts.
Brenner looked out the window at their surroundings, and needless to say: it looked exactly the same on this side of the border as it did on the other side of the border. Then, he noticed that on the seat-back in front of him another microphone had been mounted, and he could interrupt the hostess with it: “Thou shalt not work so hard for tips!”
His deep, godlike voice gave the seniors such a scare that several of them dropped dead on the spot. And the others weren’t any better off, either, because they got eaten alive by the crocodile-skin bags that the hostess had given them.
When Brenner woke up, they were already in Maribor’s Central Square.
They were given an hour’s time for sightseeing in the city, and then, at one o’clock, lunch followed by shopping. Optional, of course, but the lunch was a good value, so everybody went along, well-behaved, except for one woman—and, well, she’d gotten herself lost in Maribor.
Meanwhile, the hostess and the coach had built a small stage in the dining room, and needless to say, microphones weren’t in short supply. Over lunch, the seniors were getting curious about what kind of secrets awaited them.
And once the coffee was on the table, the hostess and coach set about peddling their wares—a miracle blanket that you cover yourself with and two weeks later, no more rheumatism. It cost six thousand schillings, so the five schillings that they’d already forked out for lunch—already recouped. Because the seniors who bought them, well, they all must’ve had terrible cases of rheumatism.
Or maybe it was just Ferdl’s charm. Because the hostess took over the more informative part, but Ferdl—his commentary made the old ladies blush.
“And one more time!” Ferdl called out after every six-thousand-schilling blanket—an
d the next grandma would already have her new faux-crocodile bag open and would be shelling out six thousand schillings. Because you don’t want to sit there looking stingy, either, like you were only taking advantage of the cheap trip, and the driver—real nice guy. Just two hours earlier they were ready to nail Brenner to the stake, but now the old folks were quick to show their magnanimous sides again.
“That last shirt didn’t have any pockets,” the old man sitting vis-à-vis Brenner said.
Brenner didn’t quite know what he should say to that, because what do you say to an old man who makes an announcement like that. Doesn’t matter anyway—the old man wasn’t expecting an answer. He was the one who talked himself into buying that last shirt, and he was already making his way over to Ferdl now.
And at that moment the woman who’d gotten lost in Maribor burst into the dining room and right up onto the stage. You couldn’t have looked fast enough—already had her rheumatism blanket.
“And one more time!” Ferdl called out.
Once all the blankets—and then an entire stack of gewgaws—were gone, the seniors were permitted another half an hour of walking around, and then it was back on the bus—and don’t be late.
That’s just Ferdl’s charm—like old man Löschenkohl was talking about, Brenner thought. And if I’m not quick now, then I’ll be sitting in the back of the bus again, while Ferdl silently spins his steering wheel up front, and I still won’t know why Löschenkohl junior bribed Ortovic.
That’s why Brenner simply stayed in his seat there in the dining room. The seniors were out strolling, and Ferdl and the hostess were up front, taking down their altar.
At first the hostess masked a dirty look. And then Ferdl did the same, but just for a few seconds. And then a blatantly dirty look from Ferdl, but just a few seconds again. And then Ferdl: “Journalist, right?”
“Why a journalist?”
“I can smell a journalist ten kilometers upwind.”
“And here I didn’t even feel a breeze.”
Needless to say, the look. They can’t kill, though—that’s been proven. That’s why Brenner was still alive.
Ferdl had had just about enough of these tabloid journalists. There was nothing the club needed less right now than that old bribery scandal with Ortovic getting dragged back up again.
