by Wolf Haas
But please, that’s not what we’re talking about. Brenner didn’t waste his breath over it, either, even though it was happening more and more frequently. Brenner just quietly thought, as soon as Jacky’s healthy again, this romance will be over.
But a person can be mistaken. Because a month later, Jacky was already Herr Doctor, the honors conferred at City Hall, and Brenner had to serve as his best man. And it wasn’t long before Jacky proved to be one of the best hosts that Graz society had ever seen, and his photo always in the gossip papers right next to Caroline of Monaco.
And watch what I’m telling you: people should talk quietly, cocaine or no cocaine. I say, it’s not just the cocaine that makes Jacky so popular with the better folk of Graz. No, in the end, it’s still because Jacky just has a nice way about him.
But liking a sharp, affable person and having to share a room with him for a week are two completely different things. Now, Brenner had been longing for the day when he’d be released from the hospital. He was just glad he’d finally be able to sleep alone again. And you see, that’s why I always say, you shouldn’t be glad too soon.
When he was packing up his things, he came across the Vienna phone number that the waitress had written down for him. The number that he’d been thinking was Helene Jurasic’s the whole time. But then she told him that she’d never once called Löschenkohl’s.
So Brenner thought, I’ll give it a try here from the hospital before I go. Because it had him intrigued, whose number could it be. But he dialed the first few digits and got an intercept message. Second try, same thing.
“Not home, eh?” Jacky grinned over from his bed, because he had to stay a few more days.
“Wrong number.”
“The number you have dialed is not in service,” Jacky laughed.
Brenner was thinking Jacky’s success with the head doctor was starting to go to his head a little. Honestly, though, I can understand it. Nowadays, when you rise from being the son of a bathroom attendant to the future husband of the head doctor, it takes a little while to fully digest.
But Jacky wasn’t giving up now. And you see, it was good that Brenner had told him every little detail. Even the bit about the waitress at Löschenkohl’s taking down a phone number for him.
“Let me see that number,” Jacky said and reached for the piece of paper on the nightstand. “Is this your handwriting?”
“No, the waitress’s.”
“Horvath?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s not the Vienna area code.”
“But it says ‘Vienna.’ ”
“No, it says ‘Viennese.’ ”
“Exactly, it says ‘Viennese.’ ”
Brenner had everything packed, and he was about ready to be on his way now. And anyway, the number just didn’t interest him. But Jacky had to play the detective. He went looking for something in the drawer of his nightstand, and then he pulled out the folded-up obituary for Löschenkohl’s daughter-in-law that his mother had brought him.
“Take a look at this,” Jacky said.
And while Brenner was reading “… we announce with deep sadness that Angelika Löschenkohl, born in Vienna, died suddenly,” Jacky had already taken the telephone receiver and dialed the number on the note, without the Vienna area code.
“It’s ringing,” he said and passed the phone over.
When Brenner left the hospital half an hour later, the shoe seller was standing out in the parking lot in the sunshine. She had sunglasses on and half a kilo of lipstick on her face. Her smile had to have been for him because there was nobody standing behind him.
And what should I say: old man Löschenkohl had had this tragic disability ever since his sixteenth birthday. And Brenner, in the middle of the parking lot, well, the opposite problem now. Utterly embarrassing. And at his age, too. But nothing he could do about it. His knees may have been growing softer with every step. But otherwise—talk about a bone man.
Wanting out of stressful detective work, Simon Brenner takes a job as a chauffeur, shuttling a toddler back and forth on the Autobahn between her high-powered executive parents. But then the little girl is kidnapped, and he’s back in the game again. Told with sharp-edged wit, suspense that’s even sharper, and one of the most quirky, hilarious, and compelling narrative voices ever.
978-1-61219-113-3 $14.95 US/$14.95 CAN
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