The Bone Man (6 page)

“Where does he live, then?”

“You’ll have to ask his father that.”

“So, he can be spoken with.”

“Not until I find him,” the waitress smirked and disappeared into the kitchen.

Krennek was a little surprised by the cheery mood of the place. On the other hand, there’s just a certain cheerfulness about people after a glimpse at death has sent them filling their pants.

Two minutes later the waitress returned. But not with old man Löschenkohl. With a man roughly Kaspar Krennek’s age. But a head shorter and a foot and a half wider. And with skin like sandpaper.

“Brenner.”

Krennek was a little annoyed at first that the headstrong waitress had been able to lure him out of his reserve so quickly. Now he was glad to have won back his modesty again. He put out his hand to Brenner, and out of sheer reservation, didn’t quite get to introducing himself before Brenner said, “You’re looking for Herr Löschenkohl.”

This time, though, Krennek didn’t correct him—even if his father was rolling over in his grave.

“Unfortunately, Herr Löschenkohl isn’t here today,” Brenner said.

“Which one, junior or senior?”

“Neither one’s here. Junior’s never here anyway. And the old man drove to Graz today for a doctor’s appointment. He’ll be back first thing tomorrow.”

Doctor’s appointment. Brenner couldn’t have known what a scare he gave Krennek with that one. Because ever since Krennek was a kid, he’d had the
idée fixe
, if you will, that on his fortieth birthday, he would die of cancer. And he was already
pushing thirty-nine now. Needless to say, he didn’t dare go to the doctor for a checkup.

The two of them took a seat at a table, and after two beers they didn’t even notice anymore that everyone in the dining room was staring at them. And about that I’ve really got to say: rarely have a police inspector and a private detective worked so well together.

Brenner told the inspector about the Löschenkohl manager who’d disappeared, and Krennek told Brenner why it was so urgent for him to speak with the old man. Because of the bribery scandal that shook up the province’s minor leagues six months earlier. In which Löschenkohl junior bribed a Feldbach striker. Namely, Ortovic, whose head someone had cut off and put in FC Klöch’s ball sack.

At ten, the inspector set about making his way home. “If you see old man Löschenkohl, tell him I’ll be paying him a visit in the morning.”

“Tomorrow you’ll meet him for sure,” Brenner said in farewell.

Brenner didn’t move from the table while the waitress locked up the restaurant behind Kaspar Krennek. She had a coarse face—not from age, because she wasn’t that old yet. Just not a delicate face, a coarse one. But a fine human being. A thickset body, though, just like professional soccer players at the end of their careers. They’re training less, but eating the same amount—naturally, they let themselves go a little. Needless to say, that red leather skirt of hers was a risky affair now.

But that only proves yet again that you can’t judge a person by appearances alone. The only thing that Brenner didn’t understand was: where did this woman find her lovers night after
night? Because what he overheard coming from her room—I don’t wish to describe it, but G-rated it was not.

“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 even 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.