Come, Sweet Death

by Wolf Haas

  But when Oswald tried to take it out, it wouldn’t budge a millimeter.

  “Do you hear what he’s singing there?” Brenner says.

  “He’s been singing the same damn thing for the last three minutes.”

  “Yeah, always just ‘Come, sweet cross.’ ”

  “His teeth’ll rot before he gives up that old spoon.”

  It seemed to Brenner as if Herr Oswald was talking like an EMT all the sudden. Maybe it was the ambulance setting that was a little infectious, the adrenaline. Enough to make even a sensitive person like Herr Oswald grow some biceps—morally speaking, of course.

  Oswald, though, right back to his old, insulting ways again: “What are you talking about a song for? I’d like to know once and for all what I’m doing here!”

  “Bimbo treated diabetic patients with a glucose solution. Before administering it, though, he’d quickly hold up their wills for them to sign. He shot Irmi because she was on to him.”

  “You mean the EMS was killing people instead of saving them?”

  “Come, sweeheet crohoss,” the tenor sang seductively, as if it were the cross that men were always trying to get women to lie down on.

  “Can you prove it?”

  “That’s exactly what I need you for.”

  Oswald looked dubious.

  “You’re going to have to hack into the Rapid Response computer for me somehow.”

  “I was afraid of something like that,” Herr Oswald sighed.

  “Number eighteen, is it?” Brenner asked, as they turned onto Novaragasse.

  Oswald didn’t even nod. And he didn’t want to know how Brenner knew, either, that it was here where he kept his million-schilling setup.

  How he financed it, well, you can imagine. But one thing I’ll say in defense of his honor. His peeping fits were never on account of the money. And if he happened to extort a little on the side, never for his personal gain. All in service to the apparatus itself, every last Groschen honorably put toward the continual expansion of his personal surveillance system. And plenty of his own money he put into it, too!

  The apartment itself can’t have cost much. An outpost at best, without a bathroom or even a toilet. The computer, though, practically NASA.

  While Herr Oswald booted up his machine and went to work hacking the Rapid Response computer, Brenner told him the rest.

  “As their racket got more and more criminal, Lungauer wanted out. The day after he informed Junior of this, Bimbo and his screwdriver—”

  “Seven-twenty, Brothers of Mercy!” Brenner was interrupted by Czerny’s voice coming over the computer.

  Once he got over his initial shock that Herr Oswald barely needed two minutes to tap the radio, he said: “You can make out the voices better here than in our own vehicles.”

  “I freely admit that I have better reception,” Herr Oswald said, unimpressed. But then a good hour passed before he was able to verify all of the particulars from Lungauer’s account.

  “Affirmative,” Herr Oswald said, after looking up whether on October 17 of the previous year, eighty-two-year-old diabetic Rosa Eigenherr did indeed die while en route.

  “Affirmative,” that Bimbo and Junior were in fact the drivers on this run, i.e. Big and R.I., because the computer didn’t know their nicknames. Junior took the R.I. over from his father, but nobody ever got used to calling him that, only the computer bought it.

  “Affirmative,” Herr Oswald reported when three weeks later another diabetic died en route.

  “Affirmative” that once again Junior and Bimbo had been the death cab’s drivers.

  “Affirmative,” that on the twenty-sixth of November, a diabetic died on Bimbo’s and Junior’s watch.

  “Affirmative,” for Herr Haberl, too, the only man in the batch.

  “Now we just need Frau Edelsbacher,” Brenner read from his notes, “December tenth.”

  “How was that even supposed to have worked?” Herr Oswald asked, as he kept scrolling.

  “Pure sugar water in the drip instead of—”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s not what I mean. If Bimbo did in fact shoot Irmi, and only shot through Stenzl as a cover-up—”

  “Or to throw Pro Med off track. Offense is the best defense. That’s why Junior had me mucking things up over at Pro Med, too. Given their rivalry, no end to the dirt to be dug up there. And all just so nobody would get the idea of going after Junior.”

  “Granted. But how could Bimbo have possibly known that the two of them would be standing there making out at five sharp?”

  “Do you know the fifty-percent theory?” Brenner asked. And then he told him about Klara’s theory—and rather long-windedly, I might add—until he finally got to the explanation:

  “Irmi had been prowling around all over the place, trying to see if she could find any record of Junior’s illegal wheelings and dealings. That’s why she went looking at the blood bank, too, because Junior was the one who’d installed Stenzl there in the first place.”

  “She made a fool of him,” Herr Oswald said.

  “Not exactly. That’s where the fifty-percent theory comes into play. Because, in fact, it was the opposite. Irmi thought she was spying on Stenzl, but in reality, Stenzl was after her.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Bimbo’s orders. They’d known for a long time that Irmi was up to something.”

  “And for Stenzl to be standing there at five o’clock sharp with Irmi, Bimbo orchestrated that, too?”

  Before Brenner could answer, though, Oswald said something else: “Alt Erlaa.”

  Because the whole time that Herr Oswald had been nimbly raiding Rapid Response’s computer, the real-time dispatch system was up and running, too. And not just the radio, but all the frantic incoming calls, too.

  And the whole time that fat Nuttinger’s crack team of smug commandos were piping up over the radio, Brenner’s aggravation was up and running, too. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t have caught it if Herr Oswald hadn’t said under his breath just now: “Alt Erlaa,” practically, greetings from the home front. When all the sudden fat Nuttinger announced:

  “Twenty-three, epileptic episode, Alt Erlaa.”

  “That’s no good,” Brenner said, instantly tuned in now. Because the address that fat Nuttinger had just given was Lungauer’s.

  And although he hadn’t paid attention to the call at first—because the calls were running continuously—somehow he still had it in his ear. Somehow he still had the voice of Lungauer’s mother in his head. With his one ear still reverberating, he distinctly heard Lungauer’s mother calling for help.

  Brenner must’ve had it stored somewhere, because somehow he was able to retrospectively retrieve it now.

  But, you see, somehow just isn’t enough. I’d love to let you believe that Brenner, in a supreme bout of concentration, managed to retrieve every word of Lungauer’s mother, i.e. up with people, down with technology! But, in truth, it wasn’t actually the call that Brenner was hearing reverberating in his head now—no, it was Herr Oswald playing the call back from the computer’s memory:

  “Come quickly!” Lungauer’s mother cried into the phone. “My son’s having a seizure.”

  Herr Oswald was sitting sovereign at his console like a captain on the high seas, mastering the most dangerous sound waves.

  “It was one of your men, Nuttinger, who was here today, pumping him with questions! It got him so worked up that he went into seizure! Come quickly!”

  Brenner was surprised that Lungauer’s mother knew Nuttinger by name. But people out in the suburbs are often a little more casual, and anyway, her son did use to work with him.

  “Now!” old lady Lungauer cried. “Please, hurry!”

  “Come, sweet death,” Brenner said for her. Because if it weren’t for Herr Oswald and his rig, her call would’ve meant certain death for her son.

  And say what you will against technology, but without it, half an hour later, Lungauer would’ve been dead. And maybe people find it alar
ming sometimes that even the life-savers—the doctors and the hospitals and the ambulances—are equipped and armed to the gills, practically a private army. Practically, petit-fascism among the nurses, to use a high-caliber expression.

  But that’s just how it is wherever it’s a matter of life and death. There’s no place to be critical of society. So, once again, you find yourself reaching for the technology bomb, even if usually you’d say: Oh, the humanity.

  And thanks to Herr Oswald’s surveillance park, there was a gleam of hope for Lungauer now. Because they’d heard precisely how fat Nuttinger had informed Junior of Lungauer’s mother’s call. Of how Brenner had put the squeeze on Lungauer until he went into seizure. And only upon playback now did Brenner hear Junior over the radio: “Five-ninety headed out.”

  Brenner knew that the 590 still hadn’t been fixed, that the tailpipe still routed exhaust directly into the passenger compartment.

  “C’mon!” he yanked Oswald away from his computer. And within seconds they were swooping down the stairs like it was an acute 21.

  “Junior’s driving to Alt Erlaa right now to pick up Lungauer,” Brenner explained on the way down. “Lungauer is the one and only witness. Up until now, Junior thought Lungauer was too disabled to be able to testify. But now he knows that I was there. We’ve got to get to Lungauer before Junior does.”

  “We have to save him from the EMS,” Herr Oswald said, still dumbfounded.

  Brenner took the wheel. And I’ve got to hand it to him: If there really is a hell, then Bimbo was surely looking up at him proudly. Because from the second district out to Alt Erlaa, it’s ten kilometers easily, and definitely, hold on, thirty, forty, maybe even fifty lights. And from the second district to Alt Erlaa, Brenner shot through all but one of them—you certainly won’t catch me placing any bets over whether Bimbo ever managed that.

  When Brenner rang the bell at Lungauer’s mother’s apartment, though, Junior had already been there and had already taken off with her son.

  CHAPTER 16

  Four hours before the Danube Isle Fest had got underway and the streets were deserted. Brenner had never experienced anything like it, practically a ghost town. When it came to red lights now, needless to say, he was at a bit of an advantage.

  When the ambulance hit a rumble strip, the glove compartment sprang open and Herr Oswald reached for the Schweizerkracher again. And this time he actually took it out. But he wasn’t prepared for it to be so heavy, and it instantly fell out of his hands and crashed to the floor.

  “Watch it!” Brenner yelled at a lone pedestrian who’d just flipped him the bird for chasing him off the zebra stripes of the crosswalk.

  “That’s insanely heavy,” Herr Oswald said, when he picked the gun back up.

  “Yeah, it’s not made of plastic. You can shoot two people at once with it.”

  “Not at once, but with one bullet, consecutively,” Herr Oswald said, getting very precise all the sudden. “Where are we going exactly?”

  “Paramedic Munz to five-ninety,” Brenner whined into the microphone, imitating Hansi Munz’s voice.

  “Five-ninety. Location: Spinnerin am Kreuz,” Junior responded instantly.

  Then Brenner grinned as he heard the real Hansi Munz getting flustered on the radio: “Seven-seventy to all drivers! Who just said ‘Paramedic Munz to five-ninety’?” Poor Hansi Munz, because he’d already suffered one humbling blow today by having to drive the old 770 since Brenner stole off in his 740, and now somebody’s radioing in with his voice, too, and Junior’s not even batting an eye.

  “Seven-seventy, what do you want?” Junior snarled over the radio.

  “Disregard, over,” the real Hansi Munz said.

  You and me, we know he was in the right. But it came off a little too sassy for Junior’s taste. Of course, it was the unknown person imitating Munz’s voice who was actually being sassy. But the receiver, of course, Junior. And not treating radio protocol with the utmost respect was, to Junior’s mind, the absolute worst.

  It didn’t make a difference if you were driving a regular Scheisshäusltour or chauffeuring a person to their death, and it wasn’t just about the radio protocol, per se. No, at its core, it was a question of aesthetics: either you present yourself on the radio as being in command or you don’t.

  “Seven-seventy, report, my office, tonight, over.”

  “Seven-seventy copy,” Hansi Munz radioed, and Brenner imagined how the poor dog had just changed his pants and now he’d have to go trembling into the night with another pantload.

  “Eight-ten, location: Franz Josef Hospital,” a driver reported his location.

  “Eight-ten, return to station,” dispatch responded.

  Transmissions like these, you hear them a couple hundred times a day, of course, in one ear and out the other.

  Brenner, though, was becoming aware of the insistent way the driver kept calling in.

  “Eight-ten, location: Franz Josef Hospital! Eight-ten, location: Franz Josef Hospital!”

  “Eight-ten, return to station,” fat Nuttinger answered for a second time, a little exasperated now, because some days a lack of discipline just seemed to infiltrate the whole radio system.

  “Eight-ten, location: Franz Josef Hospital!”

  Needless to say now.

  “Eight-ten, copy,” Brenner said. Even though, radio-wise, it really wasn’t his business at all.

  Brenner didn’t mean it strictly radio-wise, though, because he had finally understood: 810 was Lil’ Berti! And Franz Josef Hospital was only a couple hundred meters away from where Junior had just reported his location at Spinnerin am Kreuz.

  Now, it’s important not to confuse it with Franz Josef Station, where Brenner went to pick up the sandler a few weeks ago. Because the train station is on the complete opposite side of the city. It’s just coincidence that they share a name. Then again, maybe not that much of a coincidence, because Franz Josef is a bit of a local Kaiser around Vienna, of course.

  “Eight-ten: Matzleinsdorfer Platz,” Berti reported.

  “Eight-ten, I’m going to tell you one last time: return to station! And quit reporting your every turn to me!” fat Nuttinger said, fed up.

  But now Brenner understood, of course, that Lil’ Berti was following Junior for him.

  Berti was on duty that day, and by this point, he must’ve heard the whole story about the Schweizerkracher and the 740, probably from Hansi Munz. And one thing you can’t forget. It used to really get on Lil’ Berti’s nerves the way Brenner would imitate their co-workers’ voices all day long. But now, of course, he’d been able to recognize right away that it wasn’t Hansi Munz on the radio at all, but Brenner imitating Hansi Munz. And then, of course, he only had to put two and two together to guess that Brenner, for whatever reason, wanted to know Junior’s exact location.

  “Eight-ten: Gudrunstrasse!” Lil’ Berti reported again.

  Suddenly fat Nuttinger eased up now. “If any Rapid Responder sees eight-ten, tell him to return to station. Defective radio reception.”

  “Copy,” Brenner, and ten other drivers, replied.

  “Eight-ten: Gudrunstrasse.”

  Brenner laid off the radio now. He was afraid Junior might get an inkling that something was up.

  And Lil’ Berti laid off, too, or at least for a couple of minutes. Brenner could only surmise that Junior was still on the kilometer-long Gudrunstrasse and hadn’t yet turned onto Laxenburger Strasse.

  “Eight-ten to dispatch,” Berti called in again.

  “Eight-ten, can you hear me?” fat Nuttinger barked, as if he was thinking: If his radio’s not working, then maybe he’ll hear me outright.

  “Reception crystal clear,” Berti answered innocently.

  “Location?” fat Nuttinger barked.

  “Simmeringer Hauptstrasse.”

  Brenner couldn’t believe how easily and completely Lil’ Berti had fooled fat Nuttinger. How he’d managed to reveal Junior’s new location as inconspicuously as possible.
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  “Return to station,” fat Nuttinger said. But a second later, a new call came in—an emergency for Lil’ Berti, as it turned out: “Eight-ten! Drive with light and sirens to Süd-Ost-Tangente. Severe fourteen! Critical Care Unit’s on its way!”

  Brenner swooped down Gudrunstrasse at breakneck speed. When Berti got diverted to Süd-Ost-Tangente, he was just two kilometers from Simmeringer Haupt, and as Brenner turned onto Simmeringer Haupt now, he could still see Berti in his rearview mirror.

  And because he was still looking in his rearview mirror, Brenner nearly crashed into Junior in the 590. Because, needless to say, Brenner assumed that Junior would be driving full speed with lights and sirens. But instead, Junior was just chugging along the deserted Simmeringer Haupt, taking his sweet time. Which, needless to say, was a double threat now, i.e. speed of a funeral procession.

  Brenner just said to Herr Oswald, “You stay put in the car.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  But Herr Oswald could see the answer play out right there in front of him. And without any interference in between, like your average voyeur’s accustomed to these days.

  Because the windshield had shattered in such a way that the glass flew straight over their heads. When Brenner rammed the 590, propelling it through the window display at the Magic Moment Solarium. And the glass of the window display was sent spraying through the air like an explosion of sparklers, and for one brief moment, a spell was cast over the desolate Simmeringer Hauptstrasse.

  Within seconds of the impact, Brenner was jumping out of his vehicle and tearing open the tailgate on the 590, where he was met by a thick curtain of exhaust.

  “Are you all right?” he yelled at Lungauer, who was sitting there, sunken in on himself like he always was.

  But Lungauer didn’t answer. Brenner leaned over him and shook him, but Lungauer was very far away.

  And the next moment saw Junior locking the tailgate from the outside. And then the vehicle started back up again. But not forward. And not backward. No, the vehicle slowly began to turn in a circle.