Come, Sweet Death

by Wolf Haas

  “Rupprechter told me that Irmi was snooping around her house.”

  It automatically sounded a little intense, the way he said it, even though if he was talking any louder, it was only to drown out the shrieking.

  “Well, if that’s all she did,” Angelika said, walking back. “She also could’ve lifted a million off her passbook every time she was there without Rupprechter ever knowing it. Wouldn’t have been the first time that a nurse helped herself to some helpless old bag’s purse.”

  “Nevertheless. I asked around a little. And Irmi was snooping around on a couple of her other patients, too.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, why shouldn’t she? What do you want with her, anyway? She was just an innocent bystander.” Angelika was beginning to run out of patience. “That girl was cursed with bad luck all her life.”

  “How is it you know so much about her?”

  Angelika emptied the olives out of a glass bowl and into a plastic one and put the lid on it. You know, those plastic containers that people used to sell at their own parties and the housewives would come over and buy them all up, and then they couldn’t manage the household’s money, and so divorce and so on, but the containers—sure are practical.

  “I work here.”

  “And you live with us.”

  She put the container in the refrigerator, and I’ve just got to add: If the leftovers lasted longer than the marrige, well, also not exactly the inventors—marriage, I meant to say. Not exactly the inventors of Tupperware—you see, that’s what it’s called.

  “Irmi used to go out with one of my father’s co-workers.”

  “With who?”

  “You didn’t know him.”

  She wiped down the bar with a pink Clorox wipe, then tossed it into the newly emptied trashcan. Then she gave her fingers a sniff and made a face and said, “I don’t know anymore what his name was. Everybody called him Lungauer. Even though he wasn’t even from Lungau, but from Burgenland. No clue how he got that name.”

  “And he left Irmi sitting on the shelf?”

  “No, they even wanted to get married. Made a good pair, in fact. I have to say, he was one of the nicer ones.”

  “And?”

  She washed her hands, wiped them on her pants, and then gave her fingers another sniff. “That Clorox smell, crazy, you just can’t get it off your fingers. Lungauer always drove the seven-forty. Not the new one, though. Before they got the new one, the seven-forty was the oldest one. Practically every week it needed some kind of repair. But Lungauer was a skilled mechanic and did most of the repairs himself. In return, he always got stuck driving that old wreck because it saved Junior so much in repair costs.”

  “How long since he stopped working?”

  “For a good year maybe.”

  “Did he get into an accident?”

  “Didn’t get into one but one got into him.”

  “Didn’t get into one but one got into him? What, did a dictionary explode somewhere? Why is it I’m dealing with nothing but quibblers today?”

  One thing you can’t forget. The whole strawberry-song incident was still weighing heavily on him.

  “This one time, he was repairing a tailpipe with another guy. It wasn’t even on his vehicle. But he was the kind of guy to help out.” Angelika counted the packs of cigarettes and took the cash out of the cigarette drawer. “Anyway, there was this screw that was completely melted on. That’s why the other driver needed someone to help him. So the two of them are standing under the hydraulic lift. Lungauer’s holding the tailpipe in place, and the other guy’s chiseling away with the screwdriver with all he’s got. Then, he loses his grip, and the screwdriver goes straight into Lungauer’s right eye.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “And all the way in, right into his brain.”

  “Shit.” The mere idea of it hurt so much that he nearly yelped.

  “You can say that again.”

  “Shit,” Brenner said very quietly.

  Needless to say, not a pleasant thought. And even if you’ve often carelessly said that somebody’s got a screw loose, most of the time you’d never wish on them that it get tightened back up with a screwdriver.

  “Did he survive?”

  “Survived, sure. But severely disabled. Wheelchair. And mentally, too. Just vegetating. You know how people say they should’ve let somebody die. He can’t even talk right anymore, doesn’t understand anything at all.”

  Brenner was so engrossed in the story that he didn’t say anything for a little while.

  But then, he did want to know something. “Who was the other guy?”

  Lanz’s daughter arranged the liquor bottles in a row in front of her: strawberry, raspberry, kiwi, cacao.

  “Bimbo.”

  Shit, Brenner thought.

  Angelika measured the schnapps levels in the bottles with a wooden ruler and then recorded the results in a notebook with graph-paper pages.

  All the way in, right into his brain.

  The very thought of it was so painful that Brenner nearly yelped again. The very thought was drilling itself all the way in, right into his brain.

  The very thought that, from the outset, the bullet had been meant for Irmi. That the murderer only shot through Stenzl as a cover up for his real target.

  “What’re you whistling?” Angelika asked, while she wrote in the notebook.

  “No idea,” Brenner said.

  Even though it’d been some time since he’d had such a horrible idea as he did at that very moment.

  CHAPTER 11

  As Brenner shook Angelika’s hand goodbye at the Golden Heart, he made an interesting discovery: nowadays when you’re a detective and you think about death too much, it can easily come to pass that death thinks about you, too, for a change.

  Although I’ve been told that death has a cold hand. And the hand throttling Brenner’s neck now was a warm hand. And the hand twisting his arm behind his back felt perfectly normal, too. Human, I mean, though not humane, because when somebody half-dislocates your shoulder, you can’t well call him humane, regardless of his temperature. And as for that somebody’s kneecap, it wasn’t its coldness that especially stood out to Brenner, either, but its hardness, beneath which his rib instantly snapped like the flimsiest of toothpicks.

  Interesting, though! It wasn’t his ribs where he first felt it. Only when he breathed. Better put: attempted to breathe, i.e. choking fit.

  Which is why Brenner briefly confused the two cement workers for death now. Even though it’s not like the Watzek drivers beat him to death. They just stuffed him in the cramped dumbwaiter. Descent into hell, Brenner thought, when it let him off down in the basement below the Golden Heart.

  It was much nicer down below than it was up above, like a poker salon in Las Vegas, you’ve got to picture it. Plush and mirrors and everything. Me personally, I’ve never been to Las Vegas. Television, though. I went to a Vegas bar in Salzburg once, and believe it or not, at four in the morning, I met a blind woman there.

  Maybe that’d make a more interesting story, but unfortunately not suitable for all audiences. Anyway, where was I? The Vegas salon beneath the Golden Heart. It was roughly as large as the Rapid Responder’s Kellerstüberl, but considerably more elegant. With a humongous pool table like they have in England. Drive on the left, oversized pool tables, and princes with ears that jut out, there’s a people for you. But please. The pool table in the basement of the Golden Heart, nobody was playing on it anyway tonight.

  The men were sitting around a card table and were passing a cup of dice around: the Watzek boss, in the flesh. The Pro Med chief, in the flesh. And Berti, in the flesh.

  “Glad you could finally make it,” the Pro Meddler said and gave the cup a shake. “We’re a man short.”

  Because Berti wasn’t playing. It’s hard to do when your hands are shackled to a pool table. Interesting, though! When you put Lil’ Berti, with his six-plus feet, next to the English billiards table, the proportions looke
d all right.

  As Brenner squeezed himself out of the dumbwaiter, he was afraid his broken rib might be protruding from his chest, and the Watzek boss might mistake his rib for the barrel of a gun and shoot him, i.e. self-defense. But thank god, his rib wasn’t sticking out. It was just a subjective illusion, triggered by the pain.

  And then old Watzek personally verified whether Brenner was armed. Even though, needless to say, the workers already took his Glock off him upstairs in the Golden Heart. But “Security Is Security,” that was Watzek’s slogan, and Watzek stood by it in private, too. You’ve got to picture it roughly like open-heart surgery, but without the anesthesia. And with a roughneck instead of a surgeon, mucking around in your rack of broken ribs instead of your ticker.

  Stenzl, though, was all the more polite for it. He pulled up a chair for Brenner and started right in on the dice, as though Brenner were an old craps buddy.

  “Forty-three,” he said and nudged the cup to Brenner.

  In the police academy, thank god, they used to shoot dice all night long. Brenner knew exactly what he had to do now. Because even if maybe he’d forgot just about everything else from the academy, the rules of shooting dice you don’t forget.

  Just like how you don’t unlearn how to swim, or the Our Father, let’s say, or skiing. Shake the cup, pop it down on the table, and take a peek under it so only you can see what number you rolled. Then you say the number, and the others have to guess whether you’re lying or not—you don’t forget a thing like that.

  And I think it’s somewhat justified, them giving the dice such high priority at the police academy. Because when you’re passing the cup, the next guy’s got to roll an even higher number than the previous guy did with his two dice. When your predecessor rolls a four and a two, he says “forty-two,” and then you’ve got to roll at least forty-three. And if you roll at least forty-three, then everything’s okay, and you pass the cup to the next guy, and he’s got to roll something higher, and so on, around the circle.

  Now, the art of it is when you roll something lower than your predecessor, i.e. poker face. You’ve sneaked a look under the cup, and now you’ve simply got to declare a higher number.

  Now, your fellow players have a choice: they can either believe you or not. If one of them doesn’t, and he lifts your cup and catches you in your lie, then you pay. I know people who’ve lost house and home that way. But if your fellow player lifts up your cup and you weren’t lying, then he’s the one who loses it all, that’s the joke.

  And that’s why I say, they were right to place such importance on rolling dice at the police academy. Because needless to say, great parallels to life, how you’ve always got to amass more and more, bluffing and all that, and ultimately, somebody lifts up your cup and it’s Auf wiedersehen.

  You can study police psychology for ten years and learn only half as much about life as you can in ten nights spent rolling the dice.

  Brenner shook the cup, placed it on the table, looked underneath, and said: “twenty-two.”

  Because needless to say: double digits beat out any mixed digits, and they even have their own name: doubles.

  “I’ve always wanted to roll with Junior’s crew of thugs,” the Pro Med chief said, as Watzek took the cup from Brenner.

  “I can’t hear anything out of this ear since your stooges beat me up,” Brenner replied. Although it almost made him sick, how the tremor caused by speaking spurred his rib into his lung.

  “Then you’ll have to tell him,” the Pro Med chief signaled to Watzek. But without even batting an eye. He was still shaking the dice, like some kind of Brazilian rhythm machine. And truly, in his fat paws, the cup looked more like a toy tumbler in the hand of a giant baby.

  “If I’d known at the time that it wouldn’t keep you from snooping around like some dummkopf, you wouldn’t be able to hear out of the other ear, either,” the Pro Meddler said. “And you wouldn’t be able to see. Or smell, either. Or taste anymore.”

  “But, feel? I’d still be able to feel?” Brenner inquired.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to be laughing on the other side of your face before the day is out.”

  “What do you want to play for, Herr Stenzl?” Brenner thought it better to stick to formalities. Because these days, people rush headlong into first names, and then it’s not so convenient anymore when one of those first names ends up being your boss, say, or your murderer, because those are two categories of people that have a natural propensity for disrespect.

  “Who we’ll shoot first,” the Pro Meddler said, with a thin-lipped smile. “You or your companion.”

  Now, on the inside, Brenner was heaving a sigh of relief. Of course, sighing’s the worst thing you can do for a broken rib. But better a little rib Schmerz than death Schmerz. And if you’re going to be spoiled for choice, that one’s a no-brainer.

  Don’t go thinking he sighed out of some hope that they’d at least shoot Lil’ Berti first. He sighed because, old saying: As long as a dog’s barking, it’s not shooting.

  “Double fours,” Watzek announced, and then slid the cup past Berti and over to the Pro Meddler. I mean, no manners—just because Berti’s hands weren’t on the table.

  Double fours, needless to say, this is the critical moment. Where, whether you want to or not, you almost always have to lift the cup. Because the likelihood of beating out a forty-four without bluffing, practically nil.

  The Pro Meddler didn’t lift the cup, though, but went right ahead and shook it. And as he did, he said, “But first there’s something I want to know from you.”

  “About your brother’s murder?”

  “You all know for a fact that I’m not behind my brother’s murder.”

  “You kicked your brother out, and as a result, Junior saw to it that he got the top job at the blood bank. Now you’re afraid that the whole blood business is going to go to Vienna Rapid Response.”

  “And what exactly do you think the Sport Coats United have been doing these past four weeks? They’ve turned the whole operation on its head three times. Didn’t find a thing, though!” the Pro Meddler said, flicking at the dirt under his fingernail. “And Junior knows that just as well as I do.”

  “Who do you think killed your brother, then?”

  “I have no idea how many dirty dealings he was mixed up in. Somebody finally had enough.”

  “You were just doing the humane thing by kicking him out.”

  “That’s right. Or else I would’ve had to shoot him myself. He’s no use to me dead, though. Then again, he’d been holding out on me for some time now with Junior’s books.”

  “What sort of books?”

  “Don’t act so stupid. You think I don’t know what you’re looking for from me?”

  “There was never any talk of books—just radio. Junior wanted to know if you were tapping ours.”

  Sheer agony now. Old Watzek and the Pro Meddler got such a kick out of Brenner’s plea that Brenner almost had to laugh along with them. And anybody who’s ever laughed with a broken rib knows exactly what that means.

  But then, from one moment to the next, the Pro Meddler, dead serious: “I’m going to let you in on something now. For years we’ve been tapping Rapid Response’s radio. And for years you Rapid Responders have tapped ours. We’re in complete agreement! It’s best for both sides. Like with enemy states, where it’s actually the mutual espionage that secures the peace. So that both sides always know exactly where they stand. Not peace exactly, but a cease-fire.”

  It’s a very interesting thing, a broken rib like this. A fit of laughter or a fit of rage, doesn’t matter which, because the physicality of either will bring on the pain. But that it should sting every bit as much if you repress your temper and don’t move at all as it does if you express your temper and fly off the handle—now that’s interesting. Because even though Brenner was sitting there as calmly as a yoga teacher, his rib was blowing its top so bad that he was about ready to hit the ceiling from the pain.
>
  He couldn’t know whether the Pro Meddler was taking him for a ride or not. Whether this whole radio-tapping mission of Junior’s was justified or not. But you see, in that regard, a rib is often more discerning than its owner.

  “All right, out with the truth finally,” the Pro Meddler said, still not announcing the number he’d rolled. “Or would you call it a coincidence that around the same time as my brother’s murder, two Rapid Response snoops turn up here? Although I have to say: Your excuse with the radio tapping is so lame that it almost gives me something to think about.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know how much you know.”

  Brenner didn’t say anything. His chest was hurting him so bad now that it would’ve almost been easier for Berti, with his mouth taped shut, to say something.

  But there was something else the Pro Meddler had to say now, anyway. Because there are only three possible rolls that can beat double-fours. Either double-fives. Or double-sixes.

  “Max,” the Pro Meddler said.

  Some believe “Max” is short for Maximilian. But when you’re rolling dice, needless to say, it’s short for maximum. Because when you roll a twenty-one, there’s nothing higher, it is the absolute maximum, established by somebody at some point in time, and it still applies today. First the usual combinations, then the doubles, then twenty-one, and then nothing else.

  Now for some intricacies to the rules of the game. Because the game’s not over yet. And that’s why I say, good police training. Because maxed out and still a chance.

  Watch closely, this gets complicated. When a player says “max,” there are still several possibilities for the next guy up.

  In concrete terms: either Brenner lifts the cup and if it turns out that the Pro Meddler’s lied, then the Pro Meddler loses the game.

  Or, Brenner lifts the cup, and the Pro Meddler really does have twenty-one, in which case Brenner loses.

  Or, third possibility: Brenner doesn’t even look under the cup, but passes it unseen to Watzek. And then Watzek has to look under the cup, whether he wants to or not.