by John Brady
“It was Speckbauer said that: ‘Felix the Second.’ You’ve got to be double careful, I tell you. Bad enough he’s a big wheel from Zentrale, but he’s like the Holy Spirit or something. Knows everything. I’ve got to go I’ve got leberknodel suppe getting cold.”
Felix adjusted the volume on the mouthpiece of his walkietalkie and told Korschak he was back on the road. He put Helpless Hans, the whole two hours of his stupid but instructive antics, and the posters, in the car. Scheisse: the box of bookmarks was full he’d forgotten to hand them out.
TEN
“They want to meet over coffee,” Felix said to Gebhart.
“But somewhere else.”
“You’re not making sense,” said Gebhart. “Did they knock you around in there or something? What’s going on?”
Speckbauer came out of the klo. He had combed his hair.
“Can we borrow the kid here, Sepp?”
“A duty call, you want him for?”
“Naturlich. It’s a few details concerning the business yesterday.
You’re senior here at the moment?”
Gebhart hesitated. Korschak pretended to be studying court documents. Even he wasn’t that dumb that he wouldn’t have picked up the tone in Speckbauer’s question.
“No reason why not,” he said. “But not for too long.”
He looked at Felix.
“Give me a minute with him; see what he needs to hand off.”
“Absolutely,” said Speckbauer, and stepped aside. “Half an hour?”
Gebhart motioned Felix over to his desk.
“What have you done, kid?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. They’re yapping and then pitching in a weird question every now and then.”
“That guy with the shades, you know about him yet?”
Felix nodded.
“He went through the wars, I tell you. I phoned a guy I joined with, in Strassgangerstrasse. He knew this guy right away. Nearly got toasted. Wife left him; about a hundred operations. They called him the Mummy, I hear. Speckbauer is a bigwig of some kind. They give him offices, a budget, a bunch of gadgets. He has lines to important people, so off he goes and does his own thing. Has he…?”
Felix shook his head.
“My friend thinks that Speckbauer is part of a group. They work with the guys in the BP or the James Bonds out of the C.I.S.
They sit down with suits from Interpol every month, in Munich mostly, or Brussels, and they talk about satellites and syndicates and poppies and prostitutes. Are you getting any of this?”
“Bits. But what does this have to do with yesterday?”
“Well, ask him,” said Gebhart. “I’d be interested to see how he handles that one. All I’m saying is, these two are not Peter and Paul cops. Watch what you say. Come straight to me or Schroek when you get back so we can figure out what the hell to do about them.”
Felix glanced over at Speckbauer and Franz. Speckbauer leaned against an opposite wall of the hallway, apparently examining his shoes and murmuring to the other. Speckbauer held a large envelope under his armpit.
“Okay, Felix,” said Gebhart, replacing papers with others and closing a folder. “But you have to be there for the two o’clock.
You’re the officer issuing, so it’s in person or the guy can ask for a walk from the judge.”
“Thank you, Bezirkinspektor Gebhart.”
“Don’t be an arschloch,” he heard Gebi whisper as he passed.
ELEVEN
The three policemen stood in the Gasse, the laneway, outside the post for a moment.
“There’s a konditorei next to the SPAR,” said Felix. “That’s pretty well it for restaurants here.”
“An excellent choice, then,” said Speckbauer.
There were a few German plates on the cars parked around the platz. Felix returned a greeting from the jaded-looking woman who ran a small blumen shop. She was still a practising hippie according to Gebi, big into flower-power.
“Charming little place,” said Speckbauer. “But kind of compact, isn’t it?”
“Pretty much so.”
“It has to be the smallest Gendarmerie post in the province,” added Speckbauer.
Speckbauer looked up and down the street.
“There’s a rumour it’ll be closed up when we amalgamate with the Polizei.”
Speckbauer’s smile lingered.
“Ach,” he said. “I have the feeling you’re ready for bigger things. But wait your timing in joining up was good. The new police service will open things up.”
“So I have been told.”
“And you know this area? The people, hereabouts?”
“Sort of,” said Felix. “More each day.”
“But the general area,” Speckbauer went on. “Up the mountains, like yesterday?”
Felix remembered Gebi’s caution. He tried to calibrate his answer.
“Well, some, I suppose.”
“You grew up there though.”
“You mean right here? No.”
“St. Kristoff.”
“Yes. That’s where.”
“You knew the Himmelfarbs before yesterday?”
“No. Not personally.”
“But you know your way around, all up there?”
Felix met his gaze.
“It’s been a few years,” he said. “The university thing, and so forth, in Graz.”
Speckbauer nodded at this, the air of kindly interest and the smile undiminished.
Felix held the door of the konditorei for them. He caught a glimpse of graft scars up close as Franz passed. A faint scent of medicine or some hospital smell was left in the air after he passed.
Konditorei Fischbach had made itself over last year, Gebhart had told him. Apparently it had been a dark kitcheny place that hadn’t changed since the Archduke had gotten in the way of a bullet. Now it had gone almost techno.
“Lieber Gott,” said Speckbauer. “A space station?”
The woman behind the counter was the daughter, and she was the brainchild of the reno, Felix had heard. She went with the belief that the new parts factories would be bringing people to the area, even to this sleepy corner.
There were two thirtyish women at a table near the far end. The smell of baking was strong.
“Gruss,” said the woman and nodded at Felix. She pushed back a strand of gelled hair that fell over her eyes like a batwing.
“Servus,” said Speckbauer, brightly. “Coffee I think: a grossen braunen, if you please, gnadige frau.”
She glanced at Felix to see if the old-fashioned courtesy was genuine.
“Melange for me,” he said.
“Mineral water also,” Speckbauer added. “For my associate here.”
Franz moved into the booth slowly. Felix thought he heard him sigh once.
“Watch and make sure that she doesn’t spike the coffees,” said Speckbauer. “Right Franzi?”
Franz nodded.
“Ah, but why complicate matters?” said Speckbauer then, and turned to watch a van negotiating the lane to the side.
The music was techno, a continuous tattoo with heavy backing.
It sounded like an electronic string section made of tired banshees.
Speckbauer began to hum something, tapping his finger rhythmically on the envelope. Felix still couldn’t see Franzi’s eyes behind the sunglasses. Still he felt sure he was eyeing the two women across from them.
“So,” said Speckbauer, and drew his elbows up on the table.
“How’d you like it so far?”
Felix didn’t know what to say.
“My duties?”
“Yes, your duties.”
“Well, there’s a variety of them I hadn’t expected, Herr Oberstleutnant.”
“Oberstleutnant?” said Speckbauer. “You know the rank? It didn’t come up in yesterday’s chat, at the farm. Yesterday I was Horst and you were Felix.”
“Correct, er.”
“Let’s go back to that. No rigmarole, p
lease. Even in suits we’re still Gendarmes.”
“I understand.”
“Good. We have enough things to make us unbehaglich, don’t we? And stress can kill. Isn’t that so, Franz? The stress?”
“Terrible harm,” said Franz, tonelessly.
The waitress/owner was prompt with the coffees. She laid napkins and a plate of wafer biscuits.
“Mannerschnitte, how could I forget,” said Speckbauer.
“They are complimentary,” she said.
Speckbauer told her she was very kind, and that he would be telling everyone he knew to go to this restaurant. Felix stirred his sugar in and wondered if she were trying to make up for something earlier. Maybe she hadn’t taken the two for cops when they came in.
Speckbauer tore open his sachet of brown sugar.
“Did you know Franz is also a Leutnant?” he asked. “No? But he wears it lightly. He’s the deep thinker. I am the talker. And the sunglasses? You were too polite to ask, I think. So, I will tell you.
Franz’ favourite movie is The Matrix. So there. The American dreck wins, all the time. You like that new Clint Eastwood one, the girl boxer…?”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“Before your time, maybe. Franz? Clint Eastwood. Yes, or no?”
“No. I told you before. I suspect he is a latent homosexual.”
“Franz is well educated. Night school. I made him go. Isn’t that funny? I mean funny peculiar, of course.”
Felix made a noncommittal gesture.
“Damn but that is a fine coffee,” said Speckbauer, and sucked at the ends of his moustache.
“Franz was feeling sorry for himself, you see,” he went on. “So I kicked his arsch around the room quite a number of times. Right, Franzi?”
“Just so. Many times.”
“I had rank on him then. But now he caught up. You can see how outspoken he is. Tactless insolent, actually. Some days he is unbearable. Yesterday, for example. See, did you hear him say a word yesterday? All those hours up at that delightful farm five million kilometres from dreary city civilization as we know it?”
“No, actually.”
“Do you speak Italian, Felix?”
Felix tried not to react to the sudden shift.
“No.”
“Not even a bit? Mi amore, that sort of endearment?”
Felix shrugged.
“ Cappuccino,” Speckbauer said. “ Ciao, bambino. Carabinieri, maybe?”
“They are police, that I know.”
“Indeed they are. Franz, how do you rate our friends in the Carabinieri? Give us out of five only the last couple of years, with our team, our side.”
Franz held up three fingers.
“They are only good when we can see what the hell they’re doing. If you go to, I don’t know, Sicily or Calabria, well all bets are off. Where is Giuliana from?”
“Giuliana who?”
And Speckbauer exploded into laughter.
Felix was surprised to realize that his own anger soon disappeared. He looked over to Franz who was wiping the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin. His mouth was like a slash, thin-lipped.
There was something of the alien look to him.
“Keep going,” Franz murmured. “He likes it when you kick back.”
Speckbauer’s laughter subsided and he stopped shaking. He rubbed at the corners of his eyes with his knuckles.
“Good,” he said, and lifted his cup again. “It’s been a while since we had that. Did Gebhart warn you?”
“He said to smarten up and mind my manners.”
“Lovely. Solid advice indeed. Been to Zagreb, have you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because in Zagreb I heard there were problems, gangsters probably.”
“Okay,” said Speckbauer. “But that has changed for tourists anyway. I forgot, sorry. You’d have been a kid when the crap hit the fan there. Been to Sarajevo?”
“Same, no.”
“Slovenia? Laibach, Lyubanya they call it there?”
“Sure. Maybe a dozen times since I was a kid.”
“Family trips? Dad driving, like?”
“Most of them.”
“You went on a bash or two though, surely. Come on the student drinking weekends? Really, now.”
“I don’t get this,” said Felix. “Is this some kind of a test?”
“No, no. Why, do you have a problem chatting with colleagues?”
Felix said nothing.
“Sure we’re from the big Zentrale and all that. But we’re on the same team. You remember provincial headquarters?”
“Of course,” said Felix.
“Ah, those were the days, for me too. Soccer, training, the firing range. All that.”
Felix nodded.
“But what a day yesterday, no? I don’t remember getting any training for that. Do you?”
“No. It was bad, all right.”
Speckbauer nodded sympathetically.
“Bet you never saw things like that before. Upsetting, no?”
Felix nodded. He wondered if it was a hint about him puking.
Speckbauer got up.
“So tell me, Felix. Are you good on faces?”
“It’s hard to say. We did the points of comparison training and things of that nature. But it takes practice, I would think. Or experience.”
“Indeed. And how well you put it.”
Speckbauer stretched.
“Okay then,” he said. “Franzi? Exhibit A?”
Franz made a final few slow dabs at his lips with the napkin.
“Remember I said that Franzi here is the thinker, Felix? And I am the talker? Franz doesn’t like to talk much. He likes to save his energy. Weird, uh?”
Felix watched Franzi drink more mineral water. He heard noisy gulps.
“He is not really the guy in The Matrix, Felix, I must confess.
It’s a story, a little spielerei we have. The shades are quite necessary.
Franz and daylight are not compatible. But he is not a vampire. Are you Franzi?”
Franz shook his head. His baby finger worked at a piece of food lodged in his front teeth. His other hand came up and pushed his sunglasses up off his nose. Felix took in the shiny white skin, the wandering lines that sometimes had pink edges. The eyes were from science fiction, but Franz let the glasses down again.
“Franz doesn’t cry. I suppose part of his job is to make others cry. But he cannot produce tears, or to be more accurate ‘express’ them. Is ‘express’ a doctor word, Franzi?”
“I believe it is.”
“Ah, so indeed. There was damage done there. The grafts cannot fix that apparently. And Franz has troubles putting out enough fluids there. Am I saying it right, Franzi?”
“Most. Enough.”
“I should practice more maybe. But the winter is hard on him, and the wind too. There are little bottles he applies quite often. I tell you all this Felix, so…?”
“So you can tell me something else, or ask me, afterwards?”
Speckbauer made a gentle smile.
“Sehr gut. Anyway. When they set Franz on fire they were hoping that that was the last of him. But they did not know our Franz.
What’s the name of that fountain again, Franz?”
“Mandusevac.”
“And a filthy fountain it was. But right in a square, a main one too: they don’t care, you see. Jelacica, that’s the place, the square.
We had a meeting there, didn’t we?”
Franz nodded.
“Well, Franz was out of the car and into that cesspool as fast as, well, as fast as Hermann Maier down that slalom. A hell of an achievement, I tell you. Better than any gold medal Klammer or any of those ski genius boys can pull off in Kitzbuhel. The prize? Way better. Right, Franz?”
Again Franz nodded.
“He got to keep his eyesight. Well most of it.”
“Which I guess makes it maybe a little ironic here,” Speckbauer went
on. “He gets to see the face of the guy who did it to him.”
“You mean yesterday?”
“Franzi, you still think, you know?”
“Hard to be sure,” said Franz. “Like the Chinaman said. You know?”
“I don’t get it,” said Felix.
“Right. It’s an old joke. A Chinese guy flies to Vienna. It’s his first time out of China, no? An ORF guy is there to interview him, you know: millions of tourists from China, billions of shillings what am I saying, Euro dancing in the brains of the Tourism Department. Are you with me?”
“Sort of.”
“Good enough. So the interviewer gets the camera on the Chinaman. He sticks a microphone under his nose oh, I didn’t tell you this Chinaman has been studying German since birth, did I? and asks the fateful question: ‘What are your first impressions of us Austrians?’ What do you think he said?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re thinking dirndl? Cowbells? Sacher torte, decent coffee?
Strauss, maybe. Skiing? None of that Hitler crap, obviously. What do you think the guy said?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well, this is what he said: ‘These Austrians, they all look the same to me.’”
Speckbauer didn’t laugh. Nor did he smile. He remained intensely interested, it seemed to Felix, in a passing tractor that did not slow as it wheeled by the konditorei.
After seconds passed with no response from Felix, Speckbauer leaned in.
“What this means is that these two characters up in the woods could be any of them. ‘Them’? Well, we don’t really know ‘them.’
‘Them’ seems to start just southeast of here. Remember, before the Slovenes got into the EU club, when they had the border post?
You rolled up to the border post and seeing all that Russianlooking alphabet starting just the far side of the barrier? The Cyrillic words…?”
He sat back and eyed Franz a moment.
“But this much I do know. I want Franzi here to be able to use those eyes of his to see the face, or the faces of the men who sprayed the gasoline in the car and threw a match in on him. Verstehst? Got that?”
“I think so.”
“Good. And I don’t much care how we find them.”
Speckbauer looked around the restaurant again, and stretched.
