Come, Sweet Death

by Wolf Haas

  “Sure,” Angelika answered softly and poured a little beer into her half-empty glass.

  “What do you mean, ‘sure’?” Bimbo asked. “Are you gonna give me a cigarette, too?”

  “Sure.” Angelika held out her pack of Kims to him. Bimbo took a good look around, smirking, as he took one of her chick-cigarettes. Then he placed his Zippo on the coffee table in front of Angelika: “Do you have a light?”

  “Sure.” Angelika took the lighter carefully in her hand, so as not to break off one of her five-centimeter-long nails, and gave Bimbo a light with his own lighter. “Suck, don’t blow, Bimbo,” Angelika said.

  “Don’t blow?” Bimbo asked.

  Now, of course. One word begets the other.

  And alcohol involved. Its disinhibiting effect’s well documented. Although you’re often sorry the next day and would like not to be reminded of it.

  But Brenner sure remembered every detail the next morning. How Angelika took Bimbo at his word, right then and there before his assembled crew. How she made Bimbo glow like the orange tip of a cigarette in front of her father’s raucous co-workers, who cheered her on like she was a striker in the Bundesliga.

  What I don’t know is if Angelika still remembered it all the next morning, or if she was sorry. After all, she lived in the same place as the very men who, for five whole minutes, transformed the Kellerstüberl into a hornet’s nest.

  All I know is this: Bimbo sure as hell wasn’t sorry, because he was the big hero the next day. He sat in the crew room, happy as a pig in muck, rehashing his escapades from the night before with a few co-workers.

  When old Lanz came in, at first they all fell silent. But then, Lanz lit a cigarette.

  And then, needless to say, Bimbo: “Suck! Don’t blow, old man!”

  And then, the others completely lost it. You’d have thought the entire incident had been suppressed for millennia only to bust forth here and now in the presence of this handful of EMTs. That’s how amusing Bimbo’s remark was.

  Old Lanz’s face was burning, almost as red as Bimbo’s the night before, when Angelika had taught him how to smoke.

  And as Hansi Munz and the others proceeded to make ever more explicit insinuations as to what kind of a masterpiece Daughter Lanz had performed on Bimbo while completely drunk the night before, Lanz simply walked out and finished his cigarette in the courtyard. Before old Lanz was safely out of earshot, though, Munz quickly crunched the numbers for Bimbo: “For that, you would’ve had to shell out at least three thousand schillings with a professional.”

  “At least,” Bimbo crowed. “And even then—nowhere near as good as with Lanzette.”

  Now, Brenner had been on the police force for nineteen years. And needless to say, you experience things along these same lines there, too. I don’t want to sugarcoat anything now. You know that old chestnut, “Call the cops! A woman’s been raped—oops, too late, they’re already here.” Well, it often checked out.

  Or maybe it wasn’t a chestnut so much as a jestnut that the police would sometimes say in and among their own ranks. And I don’t even know if they still say it today now that all the nice old adages have wound up forgotten. That’s just the natural course of things, though, you can’t be old-fashioned and accentuating the negative all the time.

  But every jestnut contains a kernel of seriousness. And there’ve been a few cases already that I’d rather not speak of. For your protection more than mine. And yet, you’ve got to admit: compared to the EMTs, Brenner’s colleagues on the force were real mensches.

  But Brenner didn’t have much time to give this any thought now. The bell went off, and he was up and hoofing it past Lanz, who was just putting his cigarette out on the windowsill. And from that alone you could tell that old Lanz really wasn’t doing too well. Because, for whatever reason, the windowsills in the courtyard were sacred to Junior. And if he had seen that, don’t even ask.

  As he ran, Brenner noticed that he was still feeling last night’s Kellerstüberl antics. But, old saying, nothing to do but bite on through! Join the fun, i.e. join the 770. And watch out that you don’t puke in your own vehicle. Start the engine, shift into drive, two-way radio:

  “Seven-seventy headed out.”

  “Seven-seventy copy. Proceed with lights and sirens to Per-Albin-Hansson-Siedlung. Fourteen! Small child to the eye clinic. Loctite superglue.”

  “Copy.”

  Brenner’s partner today was Hansi Munz. And needless to say, whoever’s not driving’s manning the radio.

  “Up and at ’em, gentlemen!” fat Nuttinger said, having a bit of fun at their expense over the radio now. Because he knew that Brenner and Munz had been there at the Kellerstüberl, too, last night.

  “Kiss my ass,” Munz replied. But needless to say, he wasn’t pressing the speak-button on the microphone anymore.

  Just as they were delivering the kid who’d glued his eyes shut to the clinic, the next run was already coming in over the radio, a dialysis patient, and then a diabetic shock, and then a motorcycle accident, and by the time they returned to the station, it was already three-thirty in the afternoon.

  Their colleagues in the crew room, though, weren’t looking as cheery as they had that morning. Because one after another, Junior was summoning all parties involved in the Kellerstüberl incident the night before to his office. And it just so happened to be Munz’s turn now.

  While Brenner waited out in the hallway because he was up next, Lil’ Berti sidled up to him, grinning: “You were there, too, last night, eh?”

  “What is this, kindergarten? Where you’ve got to answer for every little orgy?”

  “Might as well be. The others have all come out of Junior’s office acting awfully sheepish and quiet.”

  “Even Bimbo?”

  “When Bimbo was in there, Junior was shouting so loud that you could make out nearly every word from the crew room.”

  “All because of Angelika? Since when is Junior such a moralist?”

  “Less because of Angelika. More because of Bimbo. Little by little, he’s just been getting too cocky for Junior.”

  “Now, all the sudden?”

  “Ever since he was in the newspaper. Bimbo just can’t be stopped anymore. A couple of nurses in the geriatric ward have already filed a complaint about him.”

  “Is he snagging up seniors now?”

  “It’s the patients that are geriatric—not the nurses.”

  And seconds later, over the intercom came: “Herr Brenner, to the chief’s office, please.”

  Munz ran into him on the stairs: “Have fun,” he said, his vocal chords wobbling.

  But when Brenner walked into the boss’s office, big surprise.

  Junior didn’t bite his head off one bit. Quite the opposite. He even offered him a seat—and so politely that you’d have thought Brenner was one of the five bearers of the golden responder badge. Because the silver responder badges are for EMTs, but golden—for paramedics only, and if you knew that a paramedic’s ambulance is nothing more than an operating room on wheels, you’d start to grasp why you can count the number of living organ donors on one hand.

  A few framed photos were hanging on the walls behind Junior, in which his father could be seen with various prominent people. The old man had been dead three years already, but it probably would’ve seemed disrespectful for Junior to swap the photos out for some of his own.

  Even the pope was in one, from his trip to Vienna a few years ago when he blessed the ambulances. The pope had a little dust on his lips, but not because he’d kissed the runway at Schwechater airport, but because the glass in the frame hadn’t been dusted in some time. You could tell from the man standing next to the pope. He also had dust on his face. But dust or no dust: you’ve never seen such a proud, contented smile as that of the old Rapid Response boss at the papal blessing of his fleet.

  From some of the older drivers’ stories and from Frau Aigner in accounting, Brenner knew that the old man had been a real you-know-what. H
ow best to explain it? You’ve got to picture him a little like those Japanese. Who after fifty years in the jungle still refuse to believe that World War II is over. That’s how the old man upheld his militarism at the EMS. Roll call, commanding tone of voice, the works. And if you don’t have black socks on with your uniform: death penalty.

  That’s just an expression among the drivers for when, as a disciplinary measure, you get dispatched to a week of blood-donor duty out in the provinces—and it remains the most feared death penalty even today. But these days you only get it for severe violations, like when the shop boss overlooked a broken tailpipe on the 590 a couple weeks ago, and the exhaust found its way in to the patient in the back of the box. Or the DUI two years ago, where Hansi Munz didn’t properly close the sliding door, and then, on the on-ramp to the autobahn, he lost a wheelchair—together with its patient—but Munz, in his stupor, didn’t notice and kept on driving. The patient, thank god, dead on the spot, but Hansi Munz, needless to say, banished to the Waldviertel, one whole week, blood donations. But like I said: with the old man you’d have got that for a pair of white socks.

  On the face of things, Junior was the spitting image of his old man. Except that the old man didn’t have a mustache. And Junior’s mustache was one of those sharp wedges that you could’ve uncapped your beer bottle on at any given moment.

  You’d like to think a classic cop-stache like that wouldn’t seem all that unusual to an ex-cop like Brenner. But given the resemblance between father and son, suddenly Junior’s mustache wedge looked to Brenner like it’d been glued on. And once it seems like a person’s mustache has been glued on, it’s only a matter of time before their character comes to seem a little glued on, too, i.e. one big boss performance.

  And so Brenner starts in on the profile now: voice too confident, gaze too steely, gait too swaggering. And the way he’d just cleaned house, of course, too sweeping.

  But I guess Brenner just wanted to trot out his psychology know-how a little. Because the old man in the photos, well—he let it go. Although I have to admit, next to the pope, he almost looked more papal than the pope himself.

  And he even cut a good figure next to the mayor of Vienna. Well, not next to the current mayor, who anybody’d cut a good figure next to. Next to the old mayor, though, him with the wife. You know, back when that hussy from the Prater was going as the mayor’s wife for a while.

  Junior noticed that Brenner was looking at the photos, and promptly said: “As a charitable organization, we constantly find ourselves perched in the public eye. We simply can’t afford such escapades.”

  Brenner just nodded silently. He still thought Junior was talking about the whole incident at the Kellerstüberl.

  “We’ve got enough problems as it is,” Junior said now, as if by “we” he meant Junior and Brenner, and it was all them others that were the problem. After each sentence, Junior always looked back up at the ceiling, a strange habit, and Frau Aigner from accounting once told Brenner that Junior had adopted the gesture from his old man.

  But you see, with things like this, it’s all in the details. With the old man, maybe it’d looked statesmanlike. Brenner imagined his widespread hands touching only at the fingertips, while he read off some message like he was the Austrian chancellor.

  With Junior, though, the opposite effect. Because he just looked like a bomber pilot in peak physical condition with a wedge for a mustache—or at least for as long as his head was bowed and he was looking up at you from below. But when you’ve got a cop-stache like his and you lift your head up, the person sitting across from you sees your mustache from below. Instead of smart mustachioed angles, all the sudden you’re seeing thousands of hair follicles like on a broom. And a mustache from below, needless to say, always a sign of weakness.

  “Will you join me for a glass of cognac?”

  “I’ve still got to drive today.”

  Because A of all, Brenner had never drunk cognac before anyway, and B of all, trick question, of course.

  “You won’t be driving much more today,” Junior said, glancing at his aviator’s watch, and then he conjured two glasses and a bottle of cognac atop his desk. He poured and held his glass out to Brenner’s for a toast: “Zum Wohl.”

  Christ Almighty! There’s nothing worse than when your boss wants to fraternize with you. And you know for a fact that he’s trying to accomplish something by it, but he thinks you’re too stupid to notice.

  “I heard that Pro Med pinched an unconscious man right out from under you at the train station the other day.”

  “On account of the S-code, we didn’t drive lights-and-sirens. And by the time we got there, he was already gone.”

  “You’re not at fault,” Junior said, interrupting Brenner’s defense. “But this whole issue with Pro Med’s getting worse and worse.”

  “I’ve heard that something like this has happened a few times already.”

  “Yes, it’s happening more and more that they’re stealing our injured right out from under us. Those are the methods of a robber baron.”

  Brenner didn’t say anything to that.

  “Now, I ask you, how is this possible?”

  Junior looked up at the heavens and waited for a reply. But the heavens didn’t say anything. And Brenner didn’t say anything, either.

  “You don’t want to say it, but you know that there’s only one explanation for this. You were, after all, a detective.”

  Brenner didn’t say anything.

  “Pro Med’s tapping our radio,” Junior said, snatching the answer right out from under him with an artfully furrowed brow.

  Brenner had the feeling like he was expected to say something again now. But at the same time, his Latin teacher from Puntigam High appeared to him. “Si tacuisses, philosophus mantises!” the professor used to bark at every opportunity, roughly translated: Silence is golden. Because he used to have a good post at the Gestapo and now he was just a Latin teacher, making the window panes rattle all day long by demanding silence.

  But Brenner had already said it—it’d just slipped out. Three times he’d remained silent and withheld the detective’s stock phrase. But the fourth time he took Junior’s bait with the story about the radio, and he said:

  “Is there any proof?”

  And you see, you should never overestimate a sign of weakness. Because Junior looked up at the heavens and, with a sympathetic mustache-smile, he said: “That’s what I’d like for you to find out, Brenner.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The next day at work, Brenner came down with a bad case of the mopes. And I still get a kick out of it today that it was Czerny of all people who had to bear the brunt of it. Czerny was famous for his mustache, which looked more like a goulash-colored toothbrush, and twist of fate: despite the toothbrush on his face, he had terrible bad breath. And believe it or not: that was the most likable thing about him.

  Because there was only one topic that Czerny could talk about, and that was money. And if you talked to him for more than five minutes, guaranteed, he’d be hitting you up to buy some insurance, or a subscription to something. Except he never played poker, because Czerny’s motto: multiplying wealth intelligently, ja, game of chance, nein.

  But even five minutes would’ve been impossible with Brenner today. He was giving off the mopes so bad that Czerny didn’t dare utter a word that first whole hour on the clock. It’s often the money vultures who are the most sensitive people. Because you’ll best be able to yank the shoes out from under a person, of course, if you can walk in their shoes a little first, i.e. empathy.

  Czerny didn’t even live at the Rapid Response Center, either, because he had his own place in Döblinger, the fancy neighborhood where all the villas are. A dialysis patient rented it out to him for a token schilling. The dialysis patients have to go to the hospital so frequently that as an EMT you automatically get to know them pretty well. And when Czerny found out that old Frau Dr. Kaspar owned several houses, he spun a charm that I’ve got to say
, hats off. The patient hadn’t even rejected her donated kidney yet before she was already rid of a villa.

  “You’re so monosyllabic today,” Czerny eventually said.

  “Monosyllabic?” Brenner answered.

  A few minutes later, as they were waiting out front of the Brothers of Mercy, Czerny says:

  “At least you’re up to five now.”

  “Five what?”

  “Five syllables that you said.”

  “Where’d I say five syllables?”

  “Just now. When you said ‘monosyllabic.’ Monosyllabic. That’s five syllables,” the miser calculated. “So you can’t say that you’re monosyllabic.”

  “You’re a minor philosopher, you know that?” Brenner grumbled.

  “And you’re a real sad sack. Junior must’ve reamed you out good yesterday.”

  Czerny couldn’t have been more wrong, and yet he’d hit the nail right on the head: Junior was the cause of Brenner’s mopes. Because Brenner had been so glad to have finally found an ordinary job. A routine and a salary and an apartment and a pension and everything. But the minute you don’t watch out, already the past’s caught up to you.

  That would’ve been reason enough for Brenner’s mopes. That he should suddenly find himself playing detective for his boss. That he should suddenly find himself rummaging through other people’s underwear again. Underwear, though, that’s harmless enough. The worst for him was always the high-tech Klimbim. Even back on the force—radio? Never his thing. All those voices all the time. Brenner didn’t even really know how a person was supposed to tap a radio. Never mind how he was supposed to tell if the Pro Meddlers were tapping theirs.

  Tapping a tapper, that’s just a perverse thought. If you’re going to eavesdrop, then please, eavesdrop on what’s being said, not what’s being overheard. To eavesdrop on an eavesdropper, though, that is just so completely wrong. Like when you’re looking in a mirror that’s also looking in a mirror. Maybe you know this game. And a ten-thousand-faceted-mirror-image storm clobbers you until you don’t recognize yourself anymore.