The Second Rider

by Alex Beer

  “Would you please hand over my pills?” he said not as calmly as before.

  “What pills? All I have are drops for my heart. Ask Ferdinand.”

  She was a good liar; there was no denying it.

  “Do you remember when I stayed the night here? You were worried that I might steal something. Ironic, then, that exactly the opposite has happened.”

  “If only I knew what you were talking about.” She sipped tea from her cup, which was fine porcelain. “Sure you don’t want any?”

  Her audacity left him both awed and outraged. The nerve.

  “What else should I expect from an aristocrat? You all take exquisite pleasure in bleeding the common man. And not even the fact that we live in a republic now can stop you.”

  “Kaiser Charles was exiled and never formally abdicated. He’ll be back one day.” She smiled sanctimoniously as she continued to stitch her coat of arms.

  “We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.” Emmerich played through all the scenarios in his head but in the end had to admit that his hands were tied. She was an old lady—and even more importantly, she was Winter’s grandmother. Violence was out of the question, threats would fall on deaf ears, and turning the house upside down would be pointless as there were just too many possible hiding places.

  He went back into the dressing room and hung his damp things up to dry. Then he lay down on the ottoman, hid his last tablet under the pillow, and closed his eyes. His last thought before dozing off was, What has become of the world when a genteel old lady has no compunction about stealing from her fellow man?

  When Winter knocked at the door two hours later, it was already dark out. “Shall we be on our way?” he asked through the door.

  Emmerich rubbed his eyes. “Be ready in a second,” he called, jumping up. His leg still didn’t hurt. But how long would that last? The pain would return soon, and all he had was one last pill. That would get him through the night, but he’d have to come up with something after that.

  “I’ve hung fresh clothes on the door for you. Yours were in pretty bad shape, and we don’t want to have any trouble with the doorman.”

  Emmerich thanked him and got dressed. He carefully wrapped the last pill in a handkerchief as if it were a treasure, and stuck it into his pants pocket. Finally he pulled on his cap and clamped the cigar case under his arm. “I’m ready.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I read the papers. No mention of the return of the Kaiser.” Winter handed Emmerich the newspapers.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking them, even though he had no intention of reading them—he knew what the story was now.

  “Maybe my grandmother really is mellowing with age.” Winter smiled so blissfully that Emmerich decided to let him believe it for now. He’d be in for a surprise the day the tablets ran out.

  A group of children busied themselves playing hopscotch by the entrance to a building near Schottentor. They’d drawn chalk squares on the damp asphalt and were jumping from one to the next while laughing and singing.

  “One, two, buckle my shoe . . . ” Almost all of them had on jackets from the American aid agencies.

  “Hey, shouldn’t you be in bed?” Emmerich asked the little gang, who all hooted when a little girl fell over attempting a difficult hop.

  “You’re not our father,” shot back an unkempt tot who barely came up to Emmerich’s hip. “You can’t tell us what to do.”

  “But I can arrest you.” He reached mechanically for his badge but realized again he didn’t have it.

  The children looked at him warily for a moment and then started to laugh when he couldn’t make good on his threat.

  “You want to play?” asked a girl with long blonde braids. “We’re playing Paradise. If you hop the right way you get to heaven.”

  “But if you fall over or land on the wrong square you go to hell,” added the scruffy boy.

  Emmerich looked at his leg and then back at the children, who were hopping from box to box with great agility. He’d never make it to heaven. He was destined for hell.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Winter, motioning toward the Schottenstift monastery. “And you lot go home. It’s too cold and too late for you to be playing out here.”

  Once a father, always a father . . . This realization hit him painfully, and he had to revise his previous conclusion: It wasn’t that he was destined for hell, he was already in it.

  At least they were successful at the Chatham Bar: thanks to Winter’s forethought they got past the bouncer with no trouble at all, and inside, too, they got lucky—a little table with a good view of the pass-through to the hidden booths had just freed up.

  “Two beers, please,” Emmerich ordered.

  Winter reached into his pocket to reassure himself. “Shit,” he said, shocked. “My money.”

  “What about it?”

  “My grandmother must have taken it. She sometimes has difficulty distinguishing between my things and hers.”

  “Really?” said Emmerich, hoping his tone wasn’t overly sarcastic. “I would never have suspected that of her.”

  The waiter served their drinks and Emmerich ordered two pairs of sausages with mustard and horseradish. “If we’re going to have to run out on the bill we might as well make it worthwhile,” he said calmly.

  Winter mumbled something incomprehensible that was meant to express displeasure and then stared at the pass-through to the booths. “We’re sure there’s no rear entrance?”

  Emmerich nodded. “This place doesn’t exactly conform to the fire safety codes, which in this case works in our favor. Anybody who goes in or out has to go past us.”

  “And the people? Does it not bother the . . . ” he searched for the right word, “ . . . the . . . well, you know . . . the johns . . . doesn’t it bother them that they can be seen?”

  “Have a look around.” Emmerich made a sweeping motion with his arm. “The guests are so busy dancing, drinking; and shutting out reality that nobody cares about the booths.”

  And it was true that the star pianist, Robert Rakowianu, playing the hits on the grand piano, was far more interesting than the men slinking toward the pass-through.

  Auf den Straßen heutzutage das Getös,

  macht nervös.

  Darum ruft empört der Antilärmverein:

  ’S darf nicht sein! Dies Geratter, dies Geknatter, dies Geknall überall.

  Namentlich die Aut’mobile

  machen einen Mordskrawall.

  Wie das tönt—tut, tut,

  wie das dröhnt . . .

  On the streets today the cacophony,

  makes us all so jittery.

  To which says the anti-noise brigade:

  ’Tis an outrage! The rattling, clattering, banging,

  from all else distracted.

  The automobile makes a murderous racket.

  How it sounds, toot, toot,

  how it resounds . . .

  “TOOT, TOOT,” the guests sang along. They raised their mugs and bellowed so enthusiastically that the piano was barely audible.

  Nicht so laut, nicht so laut,

  nicht so laut musst du sein.

  Dein Benzin macht dich bemerkbar,

  also brauchst du nicht zu schrei’n!

  Nicht so laut, nicht so laut,

  ein Trost bleibt dir immer noch:

  Wenn die Leut’ dich auch nicht hören,

  riechen tun sie dich ja doch.

  Not so loud, not so loud,

  you need not be, not so loud.

  No need for all the uproar

  when your gas makes such a cloud.

  Not so loud, not so loud,

  there’s still a consolation:

  even if the people hear you not,

  they’ll smell your exhalation.

  Winter swayed bac
k and forth to the rhythm while Emmerich grabbed the arriving plates of sausages.

  “I’ve had worse surveillance jobs,” he said, putting one of the plates down in front of Winter.

  “You can eat mine, too.” He looked at the door. “The fact that they’re stolen takes away my appetite.” He pushed his beer away as well.

  “We haven’t stolen anything yet. Maybe we’ll think of something.” Emmerich ate both plates of food and washed them down with a large gulp of beer. “Now a fine cigar and the night can begin.” He lit one just as a loud clattering rang out.

  A tipsy woman had swung her leg a little too wildly while dancing and had knocked into a table, causing the beers on it to fall to the floor. Emmerich’s gaze involuntarily shifted toward the source of the noise, and as it did he noticed a man with a scar across his right cheek. Was that the same guy he’d noticed earlier in front of the employment agency?

  When the man realized Emmerich was looking at him he quickly turned away.

  “Hey, you!” Emmerich jumped up, but the man was faster.

  He disappeared among the dancing and singing guests. Emmerich couldn’t do anything but watch as he fled out the door of the bar.

  “One of Kolja’s men?” asked Winter when his boss returned to the table.

  “Who else would be tailing us?”

  Winter grabbed the beer he had just pushed away and gulped down half of it. “It doesn’t feel right,” he said. “We’re the ones who are supposed to follow people and spy on them. Not the other way around. It’s like we’ve gone from hunters to the hunted. And, by the way . . . ” He stopped speaking.

  “And by the way what?”

  “ . . . I can’t stop thinking about the scary old lady in the hedges at the palace. I lied. I actually had a few hellers but I didn’t want to give them to her. What if something really does happen now?”

  “Beware the pale horse,” Emmerich imitated the woman and grinned when he was able to coax a tentative smile out of his assistant.

  “You recognize him?” He turned Winter’s attention to an older gentleman who was slinking toward the pass-through with his head down.

  “He’s no bigwig.”

  “How do you know?”

  “When I worked in the telegraph correspondence office I came to recognize almost all the important politicians and businessmen. And, also, my grandmother reads the tabloids.” He gestured to a blonde woman brimming with energy who was making her way around the room. “That’s Lona Schmidt, the actress. She plays the lead in the movie Der Narr seines Herzens. It’s in cinemas at the moment. And the fat man next to the piano who keeps looking down her dress is Viktor Melius, the director of Unter Bank.”

  He went on to identify a theater actor and a member of the city council, and Emmerich was amazed all over again about how different life could be. While some people froze and starved, others could drink the finest liquors and entertain themselves in whatever way they wished. Reality was a many-faceted thing.

  “None of them are going to the back,” whispered Winter.

  “Not everyone is here because of the booths, and besides, the night is young. The rush to the dens of iniquity will start soon enough.” Emmerich puffed aromatic smoke into the air while Rakowianu started into another hit song, earning frenetic applause.

  Wiener Blut, Wiener Blut!

  Eig’ner Saft, voller Kraft, voller Glut.

  Wiener Blut, selt’nes Gut,

  du erhebst, du belebst unsern Mut!

  Vienna blood, Vienna blood!

  Our own sap, full of power, full of fire.

  Vienna blood, unusually good,

  you lift us up, our courage you inspire!

  “Anything else?” yelled the waiter above the deafening din, and Emmerich ordered another round of beer.

  “And two shots of schnapps,” he called after the man.

  “From hunters to the hunted. From law enforcers to lawbreakers . . . ” Winter was not pleased about the increasing size of their bill.

  “Right and just are not always the same thing.”

  Emmerich narrowed his eyes and tried to wave away the cloud of smoke in front of him as a woman in a red dress who looked vaguely familiar to him entered the place. She sat down at the bar.

  “He’s a former judge. Maximilian . . . something with N.”

  “What?” Emmerich didn’t understand what his assistant was talking about.

  “The man you were just staring at. He’s a former judge and chairman of the war crimes commission that my grandmother was so upset about yesterday. His name is Maximilian . . . Neubert, I think.”

  Emmerich figured out that Winter was talking about a man he hadn’t even registered, who was accompanying the woman. Neubert was big, broad-shouldered, and had a full head of dark hair streaked with gray. Even though he was no longer young, he was handsome.

  A champagne cork popped, glasses were filled, and the woman in the red dress turned so that Emmerich was able to see her in profile. Minna.

  The cut of her dress made her look fuller, and the low light flattered her complexion. She looked like a beautiful young woman rather than a deathly ill prostitute.

  “See and be seen . . . ” Emmerich stood up and pushed his way toward the bar.

  When Minna saw him, her expression was a mix of surprise, happiness, and unease. “August . . . ”

  “What are you doing here?”

  She looked around frantically. “What do you think?” she whispered in his ear.

  “You work here?”

  “Twice a week. Please don’t mess it up for me. It’s warm, the johns are nicer than on the street, and they pay better.”

  He thought for a second. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Can’t it wait? I’m busy.”

  “Don’t let us sing anymore about war, just let us sing of love!” sang a drunk in Emmerich’s ear, putting his arm around him.

  “Don’t you know they’re one and the same?” Emmerich shoved the man away and then pointed to the door. “You can’t even hear yourself in here. It’s important, and it won’t take long.” He waved Winter over.

  Minna whispered a few sentences into the ear of her companion and followed the two detectives out into the cold.

  “Winter, Minna. Minna, Winter,” Emmerich introduced the two to each other and led them to the next corner.

  “Quickly. Please.” Minna wrapped her arms around her thin body.

  “Does the name Harald Zeiner mean anything to you?” asked Emmerich. He looked on dumbfounded as Winter took off his jacket and placed it on the young woman’s shoulders.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. What happened to him? Is he doing okay?”

  “He’s not doing badly.” Emmerich didn’t feel like giving a long explanation. “Listen, you have to tell me everything you know about him. It’s important. Was he acting somehow strange of late? Abnormal? Did he possibly have big plans?” He spoke so fast that his words practically tumbled over each other.

  He’d been negligent, had failed to recognize Minna as a potential informant, and had lost time as a result. Valuable time. Every minute counted in a murder investigation.

  “Abnormal? What is normal anyway . . . ” It wasn’t clear whether this was a question or a statement. “The past few years didn’t just kill fifty million people, they killed normality. And to answer your question: Harri was the same as always.” She coughed and put her hand to her chest. “Damn it,” she murmured. “It’s starting again. You wouldn’t happen to have another tablet for me, would you?”

  “Unfortunately not. Has he ever mentioned a Dietrich Jost? Or a plan to get money?” he asked quickly in order to move away from the subject of heroin.

  She pulled the jacket more tightly around herself. “He was pretty despondent last week. When I asked him what was going on he said he was worri
ed about a friend—a certain Didi. Maybe he meant this Jost guy.”

  Emmerich felt a twinge in his gut. They were finally making headway. “Go on,” he urged excitedly. “Why was he worried?”

  “This Didi had gotten involved with the wrong people.”

  “With him?” Emmerich pulled out the sketch of the unidentified dead man.

  She held it toward the light of a streetlamp and shook her head. “No, that’s Anatol. He’s a hustler, sure, but not somebody you’d need to be afraid of.”

  Emmerich wanted to slap himself. If only he’d been more deliberate and not gotten distracted by his leg and the whole thing with Luise . . .

  “Anatol? Last name?”

  “I think it’s Czernin. He’s a friend of Harri’s.” She coughed again and looked at the hand she’d held in front of her mouth.

  Emmerich didn’t need to look. Her expression told him everything. She had coughed up blood. “You know anything else about him? Where he lived maybe?”

  “He lived in the Beehive, I don’t know anything more. Really. About any of the three of them. And I don’t know who they had trouble with.” Lost in thought she wiped her hand on Winter’s jacket and gave it back to him. “I have to get back inside. My customer is waiting, and I’ll catch my death out here in this cold.”

  Emmerich let her know with a nod that she could go. “Thanks,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”

  After Minna disappeared back inside, he turned to his assistant. “Anatol Czernin. We finally have a name.”

  Winter looked at his jacket and shook it out with a fearful look. “Is she seriously ill, Minna?”

  “She’ll survive.” Emmerich hoped he was right. “What is it?” he asked when Winter suddenly turned chalk white. Before Winter could answer, someone grabbed him by the shoulder from behind.