Come, Sweet Death Read online

  It’s almost like if you’ve ever thought about thinking. Try it sometime: while you’re thinking, simultaneously think about your thinking! You’ll see, the ganglia salad will be tossed sooner than you think.

  I’ve been told that not even the brightest brain doctors know how they think. And that’s why I can’t explain it to you today, at least not in a generally applicable way. Because Brenner had his own methods. And for that I don’t even need any medical jargon to explain Brenner’s method of thinking to you. Because for his method, there’s just one very simple word. And that word is “mopes.”

  And when Brenner had a problem that he couldn’t solve, he fell into a slump that he couldn’t climb back out of.

  “What’re your two cents about Junior still not letting us get any automatic transmissions installed?” Czerny said, trying to power through the lower depths of Brenner’s mood a little.

  Brenner, though, no comment. He even got a piece of gum out of the glove compartment, even though normally, never a gum-chewer. But today, demonstrably: I cannot talk because I need my mouth to chew.

  “Last week,” Czerny said, sticking it out a little longer, “I drove this real classy patient to Munich. Ten hours on the autobahn, let me tell you, if that’s not hell on the right shoe. An automatic sure would’ve been a dream.”

  Brenner was chewing his gum so mightily that you’d have thought the battery had fallen out of the ambulance and he had to use his chew-muscles to generate his own backup power supply. “When I look at my shoes, my right shoe is worn out and all lopsided from accelerating. With an automatic, that’d be gone in an instant. Take a look at your shoes sometime!”

  Over the course of his life, Brenner’s moods had, more often than not, struck a nerve with others. But flip side of the coin: the more mopey he got about a problem, the more he dug his heels in.

  That’s why I say generating his own backup power supply. You’ve got to think of it like at a hospital where the power goes out. Needless to say, they’ve got an emergency backup generator, so that the most important equipment will be provided for. Because, power goes out, middle of an operation, good night. And with his store of backup power, Brenner could carry on his work with Czerny just like usual today. He didn’t let the patients fall on the ground, he didn’t intubate them in the gullet, and he didn’t run anybody over, either.

  Just backup power, though, not main power supply. Big question now: Where does the main power go when the power goes out? It doesn’t just disappear, it’s got to go somewhere. What did Brenner’s brain do the whole time he was wheeling around on his backup-power slump for hours on end?

  Not what you’re thinking, though, he brought an unswerving focus to his work, what with the high-voltage power lines that were being freed up. You don’t know Brenner very well, then. Brenner was so prone to distraction that it was almost like you had to go searching for him. Sometimes it even seemed like a disability to him. The more important a problem was, the more distracted he got. That made his life on the police force rather difficult. And for this caliber of distractedness, you need a lot more energy, of course, than you do to concentrate just a little.

  Brenner was thinking about a hundred thousand different things right now, just not about how he might solve the Pro Med radio problem. Pay attention, though, so you’ll see why it’s always been Brenner’s distractedness, of all things, that’s got him the bad guys in the end.

  Because at half past four, he still hadn’t wasted a single thought over Pro Med and the radio. Instead, besides the hundred thousand other things, Brenner thought of the photo of the pope in Junior’s office. And how the pope had all that dust on his lips. And how Hansi Munz had once told him one of his never-ending jokes: how the pope once made a guest appearance on the TV show Wanna Bet? because he could tell all the airport runways apart by how they taste.

  In his distractedness, Brenner was reminded of how they’d once arrested a peeping tom back when he was on the force. Vienna was his prowling grounds, but they picked him up in Tirol—on the run for the Italian border. He took off when the Vienna police found his surveillance rig. And nobody could believe it—he lived in an apartment complex with over a hundred units, and every single apartment was tapped. And at the time, the cops were always saying Oswald could go on Wanna Bet? and recognize every single woman in his apartment complex just from their moans.

  Oswald. You see what I mean by this caliber of distractedness. How after twelve years Brenner flushed his name out right then and there.

  “I’ve just got to stop by the bank real quick,” Brenner said to his partner at four-thirty-three.

  “Gotta make a deposit?”

  Unbelievable, that Czerny. Nothing but money on his mind. But Brenner’s mopes had completely vanished now. He didn’t need it anymore—I mean what I explained to you before about the backup generator. And now: problem solved, mopes adieu, that was Brenner’s way.

  Czerny waited in the vehicle, and when Brenner came back out, he told his partner they’d be returning to the station.

  “Return to station? We’ve still got three runs to make before we can return. If we’re lucky.”

  “Seven-seventy return to station!” came over the radio at just that moment, though, and that made Czerny look pretty dumb. He couldn’t have known that Brenner had this special assignment from Junior. Nor could he have known that Brenner had only ducked into the bank in order to call fat Nuttinger back at the dispatch center.

  You’re going to say, Why didn’t he just radio in from the ambulance? But then everybody would’ve heard it, you didn’t think about that, did you? Including Pro Med. And you see, it’s the little things that make the detective. He finds himself a stinking phone booth, whereas the likes of us might prefer to make a show of it and radio in to fat Nuttinger.

  When Brenner got back to his apartment, he spent another solid hour on the phone, and by half past eight, he was already sitting in Café Augarten.

  And at quarter to nine, Herr Oswald came in. In his elegant suit, Brenner didn’t recognize him at first. Because in just twelve years, Herr Oswald had aged about thirty.

  Above all, it was his white hair that did it. Upon closer inspection you would’ve seen that he wasn’t all that old. And when Brenner offered him his hand, he saw that, from up close, it wasn’t that Oswald looked unnaturally old, but just unnaturally oversensitive.

  Because, these days, if voyeurism’s your bag, you’re going to tend to err on the sensitive side.

  So it didn’t surprise Brenner one bit when Herr Oswald read his thoughts. “I’m an old man,” was the first thing Oswald said.

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifty-one.”

  “That’s nothing today,” Brenner said, patronizingly, as though he, Brenner, were decades away from fifty.

  “I don’t have a problem with it,” Herr Oswald said with a sensitive smile. “It was my younger years that were a problem for me, anyhow. You know which ones I’m talking about.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be young again, either, today,” Brenner claimed.

  Herr Oswald ordered himself a mineral water. In this grotty café on the outskirts of town, the elegant Herr fit in about as well as a swallowed piece of evidence does in your intestinal flora. “For some time now, peace, praise god, has returned to my life. I’ve been married nine years. And the aberrations of my youth, owing to which you first made my acquaintance, belong even farther in the past.”

  The aberrations of youth, owing to which you first made my acquaintance. Brenner almost had to laugh at the old perv’s stilted manner. “Did you even do any time back then?”

  “Probation. And not due to my actual offenses.” Herr Oswald spoke High German with a vengeance. “But rather, due to my resistance against the—well, you’re aware. During the arrest.”

  Only now did Brenner remember how, there on the Italian border, he’d beaten out Herr Oswald’s two incisors with his firearm until he finally surrendered.

 
“I already told you over the phone what I want from you. You’re the foremost expert in bugging and tapping systems that I know, and—”

  “And I already told you over the phone that I haven’t had a trifle to do with any of that stuff in exactly twelve years.”

  The elegant, white-haired Herr got a little off balance there. I don’t mean to suggest that he was getting angry, but his face changed color ever so slightly, and when he interrupted Brenner, a certain fierceness entered his voice. You’d have thought the gritty surroundings of the café were almost starting to rub off on the elegant Herr a little—the intestinal flora slowly getting to work on the swallowed photographic evidence, as it were.

  A sip of mineral water, and immediately composed again. Brenner didn’t say anything for a little while—he simply let the Café Augarten have its way with him a little.

  Apart from the two of them and the waiter, there was only one other customer in the joint, a woman in a tracksuit going to town on the one-armed bandit. Even though the place was practically empty, it stank so bad of cigarette smoke that for a moment Brenner thought the schmaltzy Italian singer sounded even huskier than usual, and pronto, a coughing fit came over him.

  “I only consented to meet you here because I didn’t wish to speak about this over the phone with my wife there beside me.”

  “She doesn’t know about the aberrations of your youth, owing to which we first became acquainted?”

  Herr Oswald just gave Brenner’s mockery a pitiful shake of his head.

  “And your wife’s not going to find anything out about it, either.”

  “Of course she won’t. Namely, because there won’t be any more contact between you and me. Namely, because I couldn’t even help you if I wanted to. I wouldn’t know from where to procure the equipment. I’ve nothing more to say.”

  The Italian cancer candidate was already on to the next song and still valiantly battling against a coughing fit. And Herr Oswald was just being so sensitive that Brenner couldn’t help but step on his toes a little now: “That piece of evidence that you swallowed back at the Reschen-pass—”

  The tall, slender Herr suddenly got a head shorter. And then: “You know all about it.”

  Amore, amore. Interesting, though, why the Italians should all have such good voices.

  “I was on the horn earlier with Riedl.”

  “Then you know all about it.”

  And you see, that’s why I say: Proper telephoning skills make up about fifty percent of detective work. Because in the few hours he’d had between five and eight, Brenner didn’t just call Oswald, but also his former partner Riedl on the force, who’d detained Oswald in Tirol while Brenner tried to keep him from swallowing the photographic evidence. Riedl was still a cop and had looked into the case a little for Brenner, i.e. computer.

  Brenner didn’t have to list off the details for Herr Oswald now. How the medical examiner had produced the photographic evidence that Herr Oswald had swallowed—together with his two incisors—still half-digested. And that Herr Oswald would’ve been put behind bars at least two years for it. If he hadn’t started working for the police as an informant in the meantime.

  Because, for a perv, taking a couple of nice collector’s photos is one thing, but becoming a tacit witness to such a crime, that’s a whole ‘nother page in the book—and a swallowed one at that.

  From Riedl, Brenner had learned that Herr Oswald still has the gear at his disposal today—compared to which all the gear on the state police is a tin-can phone at best, i.e. handicrafts for boys.

  “Your wife won’t hear anything about it,” Brenner assured him.

  “So what do you want from me?”

  Brenner could see he was relieved.

  “Tap a radio?” Herr Oswald almost laughed. “That’s no problem,” he said, and nearly choked on his mineral water.

  Brenner was downright cheerful on his way home. He thought the worst was behind him for today. Hardly a case of exaggerated optimism, if you consider that it was only three minutes till midnight.

  Nevertheless, mistaken. Because at the entrance to the Rapid Response Center, he ran into Hansi Munz, and Brenner could see right away that he was completely beside himself.

  “Big’s dead!”

  Brenner could tell he wasn’t joking. Because of the fact that he’d said “Big” and not “Bimbo,” i.e. respect for the dead.

  Nevertheless, he had to laugh for a second, as if Hansi Munz had told him a good joke.

  CHAPTER 5

  “I’d like to know what’s so funny!” Hansi Munz yelled. “Death’s big,” Brenner answered. But Munz was still dumbfounded, of course: “Big’s dead!” he repeated stubbornly. “Bimbo! I’d like to know what’s so funny about that!”

  “I’m not laughing,” Brenner insisted. Because A of all, he really didn’t see anything else funny now. And B of all, he just didn’t have the patience to tell Munz the whole story. Definitely not in his condition. But I can fill you in real quick.

  When you’re an undertaker nowadays, well, that’s a highly skilled profession. It’s not like it used to be, where people would say: Sure, look a little sad, a couple hundred nails in the coffin, and voilà, an undertaker’s already a made man. Tremendous job specifications: You’ve got to do psychology, you’ve got to do gardening, you’ve got to jump the bureaucratic hurdles, you’ve got to do all the bookkeeping. And, and, and!

  And even that doesn’t earn you a spot among the top morticians. Because the top guy’s also got to know his literature: Japanese, Chinese, wisdom, the works.

  When Brenner’s aunt keeled over in line for the Easter confession some years ago, he was the one who had to pick out the words for the funeral program from the undertaker’s catalog. When the undertaker really had to hand it to Brenner that what he’d picked out was truly the most beautiful in all the catalog, listen to this:

  “Death’s big.

  We’re his chuckling mouths.

  When we find ourselves

  In the middle of our lives

  He dares to rhyme

  Within us.”

  No, wait a minute:

  “He dares to cry

  Within us.”

  That’s right. And to tell you the truth, if I were picking out a poem for a funeral program today, I’d take that one, too. Because, dares to cry, powerful. That’s one you’ve got to let fully dissolve on your tongue. You’ve got to watch out that you yourself don’t start crying, or even get a little, you know. The bit about the “mouths” I like less, but that’s probably the way it’s got to be.

  Now listen to this. The funeral for his aunt was over ten years ago. And the poem was buried about as deep in Brenner’s head as his aunt was in the Puntigam Cemetery, i.e. completely decomposed. Unreal, though, when Hansi Munz says to Brenner at midnight, “Big’s dead,” the complete poem rose up from the grave, not unlike Angelika’s hair the night before—witching hour, no mistake. And to tell you the truth, I can understand why Brenner wouldn’t have any desire to tell Munz the whole story. Because he wanted to finally learn how Big died.

  Unfortunately, though. One word begets the next. And as they entered the courtyard, Hansi Munz, still furious: “You definitely laughed!”

  And I don’t know, was it the unsettling mood in the courtyard, this unnatural middle-of-the-night atmosphere, the whole place abuzz with excitement—even though only the 8Ks worked nights, and not a single one of them lived there—or did Brenner just down one beer too many at the Café Augarten and that’s why he said to Hansi Munz now:

  “Death’s big, we’re his chuckling mouths.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Ack, nothing. What happened to Big?”

  “Did you say ‘Munz’?” Hansi Munz wouldn’t let up, though.

  “I didn’t say ‘Munz.’ I said ‘mouths.’ It’s like a poem.”

  And so he did have to explain the whole story about the poem to Munz after all. By the time Munz was finally sa
tisfied, though, they’d already made their way over to the dispatch center, where an 8K named Fürstauer was presiding.

  If it’s unusual for one of the full-timers to talk to an 8K, then, it goes without saying, completely unimaginable for the 8K to be the one giving the full-timers the lowdown. Needless to say, it was eerie now: midnight, a dead man in the garage, and an 8K in the know.

  “Shall I perhaps repeat everything one more time now?” Fürstauer asked Brenner, making no effort to hide his irritation. Because Fürstauer was a clever guy, he knew for a fact that he wouldn’t be the star forever. And so you’ve got to get a move on with the airs and graces if you’re going to get something out of this now.

  “Where’d you find him, then?”

  “At nine-twenty p.m. the emergency call came in,” volunteer Fürstauer said, starting back at Adam and Eve.

  “Code Twelve, motorcycle accident. Mraz was my partner. He’s being questioned up in the training room by the police as we speak. Even though I’ve already told them everything. And way better than Mraz could’ve. Before I switched to VISTAA, I was an elementary school teacher for eleven years. And the one thing the children did not and would not comprehend: the difference between a summary and a full account. But I still managed to drum it into every one of them. At the end of their schooling, every one of my kids knew: summary, five lines max—or, hey, maybe even one line—okay, six, if one of them had large handwriting. And the converse: full account—with details, too.”

  “Give it a try with the summary, Fürstauer.”

  Fürstauer reminded Brenner a little of the gym teacher that he’d had in high school back in Puntigam. A nearly identical bald head, and just like Fürstauer, the gym teacher let his hair grow long on the left and then slicked it over to his right ear. A cunning solution really, except that when the gym teacher ran even a single step, the sheer effort would cause his hair to loosen from his head and hang down all lopsided on his left shoulder.

  And as Brenner needled him about the summary just now, he had the distinct impression that volunteer Fürstauer’s slicked-over skull hairs had loosened a little, too. As if his spit had lost its sticking power at that exact moment. Definitely couldn’t have been the insult that made his hair bristle. Must’ve just been the night breeze, tousling Fürstauer’s hair all the sudden.