by John Brady
What I’m getting at is this: Felix, this is your big chance. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Big chance for what?”
“Look: you score big when you are the wounded hero. Pop the question.”
“Marriage?”
“I could use a party.”
“You’re a matchmaker now, Gebi?”
“Do it. Look, it’s the summer. I’m on leave a few weeks for sure, maybe months. I feel good but I’m not going to let on. You did good stuff, and you’re barely out of your diapers in the job.”
“Good stuff?” said Felix, and looked from Gebhart to his wife and back. “You’ve got to be joking.”
“Do I ever joke? Look, they’re going through with the Big One, have you forgotten? One big happy family, our decent, dependable, modest Gendarmerie will now share the playground with the big shots from the BP. And where will we be when the dust settles? Whatever about me, but you’re detective fast track.
Believe me.”
Felix said nothing. Movement on the building opposite drew his eye to the window again. Pigeons, big fat Graz pigeons, were landing on a roof.
“What did I tell you Frieda,” said Gebhart. “He still thinks he screwed up.”
She got up from the chair, and pushed it back to the wall.
“I must show up at some point,” she said. “We’re short, with all the holidays.”
Felix snuck a look at how she reached around her husband’s neck. She murmured something to him and kissed the top of his head. Then she gave a professional look-around to the bed and the drip, settling the bedclothes, and checking how the upper part of the bed was tilted. She tugged at her nurse’s uniform under her raincoat. She glanced at Felix before turning to her husband again.
“Servus, Felix,” she said, crisply. “When we get this depp home, you must visit.”
Felix remembered babbling some reply. Gebhart tried to let on he hadn’t noticed the awkwardness.
“Now,” he said when Felix sat down again. “It just takes a bit of time, see?”
Then he winked.
“Stay away from those farmer’s daughters from Carinthia.
They’ll whip you if you cross them.”
“Really?”
“No,” Gebhart retorted. “I’m making it up so you’ll quit worrying.”
“I’m not sure I can.”
Gebhart waved some irritating thought aside.
“There you go, you see? Is it your age that makes you think nothing happens without your permission or something? Don’t you get it yet? It’s just a shitty thing happened. It’s the way stuff happens. That’s it, that’s all of it. Sure, you can predict some stuff, and get out of the way of a lot of shit, but…?”
Felix looked at the Gebhart’s hands working the air.
“You’re doing the philosophy thing, Gebi.”
“Ach I’ll try to keep it simple. Ready? You put greedy people, stupid people, people who are bored, or do drugs, or drink all day, you put them near anything tempting, well you’re going to get trouble. Is that too hard for you?”
Felix nodded, just to have it over for now.
“So get out of here and work on that proposal, okay?”
On the tram back down to the city centre, Felix realized that he had forgotten the Croatian guy’s name. It unnerved him. Was it the concussion, he wondered, a sign that his brain still wasn’t right?
Getting worse, even? He could remember Fuchs’ heavy weight over him, crushing him into the farmyard cement. There was something of that in his dreams, he sensed, and he had awakened several times with the dread feeling of being held, or tied, or at least being unable to move.
He rubbed hard at his eyes, as if that would help stop the replaying that was still coming to him, in sleep and at unexpected moments. Fuchs’ murmurings, and that small jolt that he had thought was Fuchs trying to rise, but was a bullet that tore into his upper chest by his throat. A smell from something, a passing farm lorry on patrol last week, had brought back the nausea, and the feeling that something was flowing over the back of his hands there in the car.
D. He opened his eyes. The name started with a D. Gebi had said his name: Dal… Dov…
An old man was watching him from the seat opposite. He made no bones about his scrutiny either, taking the aged’s right to pry openly. Felix glared back into the rheumy, light-blue eyes, but the gaze didn’t waver. He got off two stops early, thinking of his grandfather’s slack face in shock that day, aware that he had killed a man and saved others. And Fuchs, was Felix’s last thought stepping down from the tram, trying to fight off the sour feeling that was surrounding him: Fuchs interred in the graveyard at St. Kristoff himself, his family plot not a hundred metres from the Kimmels’ own.
Giuliana whispered something. He opened his eyes. He was still here, in bed, and he hadn’t slept. She whispered something else in Italian: a table? Set the table? She swallowed slowly, and rubbed her nose and resumed her steady, slow breathing. He closed his eyes again. It was probably worse, he had decided, to try to stop the relentless orbit and roll of thoughts that crowded into his mind yet.
They only came back stronger. Lisi might be right, he knew, and some day he’d admit it: go to the shrink before it gets worse. Post-trauma is real.
Soon he heard the first birds, a scooter one street over, and the beginnings of sparse traffic. Then it was bright. He stared at the ceiling: the big day, finally 9:30 at Strassgangerstrasse, for the investigation report. But had he slept?
FORTY-TWO
Felix found parking on Wetzelsdorferstrasse.He was 20 steps along when he spotted Edelbacher’s car parked in sight of the gate into the Gendarmerie kommando that stood across the junction ahead, where Strassgangerstrasse started its run along under Buchkogel and the low hills that formed the western edge of Graz.
And sure enough, it was Felix’s mother sitting in the passenger seat.
Edelbacher had seen him from a distance in his mirror. It was his job, after all, Felix thought. Felix mustered a quasi-cheerful nod, and even a smile, for his mother now getting out onto the footpath.
Edelbacher was in full uniform, as always, and crisp and smart as the Gendarmes on the pamphlets Felix had been distributing all that week in the schools. His tan from the holiday looked overdone.
He thought of asking Edelbacher how he had gotten time off for this. What reason had he given, if any? Moral support for his friend’s son when the tribunal of inquiry released its findings today? Loyal and fatherly concern, in place of…?
Felix tried harder to stifle the aversion. He kissed his mother on the cheek, and braced himself for Edelbacher’s handshake.
“Felix,” said Edelbacher. “A good day ahead of us, no?”
“I hope so.”
“Hey, you look good! Those idiots in the Ministry should see what a Gendarme uniform can do. A crime to change our uniform, it is. A crime.”
Felix’s mother reached up to tuck some hair behind his ear.
“Yes,” Edelbacher went on. “Today will be a great day, the day those damned cowboys will get their feet burned.”
“You’re sleeping better?” Felix’s mother asked.
“Soon,” was all Felix could offer by way of a reply.
“And how is Giuliana?”
“She sends her best. She says it’s better she goes to work.”
Edelbacher chuckled.
“Now there is the proper attitude,” he said. “I like that girl, yes I do. Oh… ”
Edelbacher had spotted Schroek’s Nissan slowing nearby. On it went, with a wave from Schroek, in search of a parking spot.
“Good C.O.?” asked Edelbacher. “Is he? Doing right by you?
Supportive?”
“Yes,” said Felix.
“Atta boy.”
Edelbacher turned to watch Schroek’s progress. The slow trolling for a spot continued, with traffic backing up behind the Nissan.
Felix fell into slow step beside his mother.
&n
bsp; “You’d like Rhodes,” she said.
“When I get the chance,” he said.
She squeezed his arm, and began to describe losing her purse in a restaurant in Rhodes, but it being handed back to her later, with nothing missing. The place had been full of tourists, she told Felix, but the drunken ones were few this time.
“You’ll try where next?” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered. “Maybe we’ll try Cyprus.”
“Absolutely,” said Edelbacher, who had caught up to them now. “Great place, I hear. Super.”
“I hear that Israel can be nice,” she went on. “I’m not sure I could relax there.”
Edelbacher turned as he strolled to watch the Nissan trolling for a spot further along the street.
“I hope he likes jogging, your Schroek.”
Felix stopped and turned to watch.
“We have time,” he said. “Let’s wait a bit for him. He’s not used to Graz parking, I imagine.”
“Is anybody?” said Edelbacher.
Felix took in the quick grin and the raised eyebrows. He halfexpected a whinny to erupt from the long face. His mother was studying the mass of leaves on the chestnut trees nearby. Edelbacher leaned in close to Felix, and put his hand up to the side of his mouth. Felix caught a whiff of the peppermint breath and the tangy aftershave.
“Take it from me,” he whispered. “The SOKO is only good for you. I know. Not to let the cat out of the bag here, but you need have no worries. Are you worried?”
Felix managed a momentary meeting of eyes.
“Not really,” he said.
“Look,” Edelbacher said. “I’m passing on what I heard the other day.”
Felix saw the wink, felt the pat on his upper arm.
“This is a big deal, an internal inquiry,” said Edelbacher, apparently for them both. “I mean I hear people saying, well what kind of a police service will this new marriage produce if we have stuff like these things going on? This thing goes deep, oh yes. You may not know it yet, but those Croatian guys, well that gang at least, are, well, I should not say it.”
Again he put his hand to his mouth.
“Virus,” Felix heard in the whisper. “They are like a virus in all of Europe.”
“How are Oma and Opa?” Felix asked his mother.
She smiled.
“You should phone them. They want your autograph. Opa has been buying two newspapers every day.”
“They complain there’s nothing on the TV news, or the radio, don’t they Gretl?”
She nodded.
“They couldn’t care less about the other stuff,” said Felix’s mother. “The goings on with Maier, and the others down at the factories. The police are checking all over.”
“All the assembly plants now,” said Edelbacher. “Not just the woodlots, but janitors, domestics, cooks even everything. They were organized, you’ve got to hand them that.”
“Lisi was shocked,” Felix’s mother went on. “I told her she must have had a soft spot for Maier, to be so shocked. She nearly took a fit on me.”
Edelbacher scratched the back of his head and made a short guffaw.
“You know him,” he said to Felix then. “That family? Maier?”
“Not really. I know he has a fancy Beemer, and stuff.”
“Oh, ‘and stuff’ indeed,” said Edelbacher, and guffawed again.
“But don’t bring it up with her yet,” Felix’s mother said after a few moments. “She’s having a time of it with her fellow lately.”
She made a face and mouthed something at him, twice. A depressive.
“Well all I can say,” said Edelbacher, and paused to stretched his back, “all I can say is that that fellow must have thought everyone was as stupid, or as greedy, as he was. Right, Felix?”
“Hard to say.”
Edelbacher came out of his stretch and into a slight stoop. He spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone.
“Honestly. He must have seen a movie, or something, Fuchs.
Hey, am I upsetting you saying that, saying his name?”
Felix shook his head. Edelbacher leaned in closer yet.
“Okay. But I mean, think about it. He drives these fellows around for Maier, and even works a bit in the woods himself when he is not feeling lazy. One of his many parts, let’s say. But trying to get up the food chain like that…? All the way up to the big boys, the nasty ones? What was he thinking, that he could take their stuff, their diamonds, for heaven’s sake, and just go down there on Herrengasse, and sell them to some fine model behind the counter? Hah!”
Edelbacher swayed back for effect, and gave Felix the expert’s wide-eyed disdain for such foolishness.
“This is drugs you’re dealing with, up and down to Amsterdam and God knows where else. Did he think he could just stand in front of that and get some of it? Like: ‘They take drugs up on the autobahn, and they take stolen diamonds back, so I will catch that on the way back. After all, I know these guys! I’ll come up with some story that’ll get their attention, they’ll drop by, and that’ll be that.
Simple as that: I am a genius!’”
Edelbacher gave him another tap on the arm, and he stood back for Felix to nod his agreement with such superior reasoning and insight.
“I heard the ‘I am a genius’ part,” said Felix’s mother. “At least they’re clean jokes you are telling there, so?”
“Oh there’s no doubt,” Edelbacher said, with a short, strangely polite laugh.
Felix spotted Schroek now, far off and walking fast, tugging at his uniform.
“It’s just about human nature, Gretl, really. How crazy people can be. Only a policeman knows — and I don’t care what they call a policeman after we merge. Gendarme, officer, ‘hey you’ even it doesn’t matter.”
Felix’s mother’s mobile went off, and she stepped away to answer it.
Edelbacher had spotted Schroek now, too. He let his eyes over to Felix’s mother. She was laughing about something in her phone conversation, and a small smile came over his face. Then he turned aside. The hand was up to the side of his mouth again, Felix saw.
“I know about the guys with the tattoos, you know,”
Edelbacher murmured.
When Felix said nothing, he leaned in again.
“The one up in the woods, the first one? Who came to meet the ‘mule’?”
Felix didn’t know what to say. He nodded.
“Your opa still says nothing, I hear,” Edelbacher said.
“That’s how he is.”
“But how else would Fuchs have, you know…?”
Edelbacher left Felix to fill in the rest of his question.
“Ask Opa yourself, why don’t you?”
Edelbacher gave him a skeptical look.
“I don’t,” said Felix. “Whatever names he heard, they had pull still, didn’t they? Sons, grandsons, cousins — I don’t know. But they gave Fuchs enough cred for one episode anyway, didn’t they.”
He hoped that was enough for Edelbacher.
“Episode,” Edelbacher repeated. His frown eased, and he looked up blankly to the treetops. He shook his head once. Then he looked back quickly at Felix.
“Tell you what, Felix. Whatever else, Fuchs did the world a favour, in a way. Right?”
Felix momentarily stared into Edelbacher’s squid-like eyes.
Two Edelbachers, he thought, neither of them bearable. One the cop with the slides into cop-talk and the casual contempt that Felix wondered if he could ever get used to. The other Edelbacher a kind of a continuing adolescent, cunning enough to try to play a boyish awkwardness as a strength to Greti Kimmel.
“What about the Himmelfarbs?” he asked Edelbacher, before he turned to greet Schroek now almost upon them.
“Of course, of course, Felix,” he heard Edelbacher saying hurriedly, in a low voice nearby. “This is the worst, the absolute worst, what happened to that family.”
When he glanced over, Edelbacher was shaking his big, long
, jaw-dominating horse head slowly and greviously.
“Lisi says good luck,” Felix’s mother said. “And if it doesn’t go well, she’ll help you get a job down at the assembly line at Magna.”
“Ha ha!”
Edelbacher gave another hearty laugh, and even slapped his knee.
“Oh sisters,” he said. “They do you in every time!”
Felix stood and introduced his mother formally to Schroek.
“We can use the side door to HQ, I believe” Edelbacher declared. “The room is right there, the hearing room.”
Felix looked toward the Gendarmerie kommando. The Gendarme posted by the barrier had been eyeing them since they’d arrived. Through the entrance Felix saw men jogging around the soccer fields.
A bus passed on Strassgangerstrasse, and in its wake Felix now saw three men were heading up the footpath toward the barrier. The sunglasses and the strange locomotion of one could only be Franzi.
A shorter, bearded man was talking animatedly to Speckbauer, swinging a lightly packed briefcase. A lawyer, he thought, or some kind of counsel, with a hand that went continuously up to adjust his rimless glasses.
Franzi began to slow. Felix thought of a battery-operated toy winding down. Speckbauer had noticed him now, too. A truck slowed between them then. When it had passed, the three men were stationary. Speckbauer waved off something that the man with the briefcase was saying, and he leaned in to Franzi.
“Is that them?” Edelbacher asked. “Heading for the SOKO too?”
“I believe it is.”
Schroek had been explaining something to Felix’s mother about how he’d heard the ranks would be rearranged when the amalgamation would finally start to happen.
Speckbauer was skipping across the street now.
“Well it looks like he’s headed over here,” said Edelbacher in a voice intended for the others to hear. Meaning he doesn’t know what to do, Felix realized.
The man with the briefcase was gesturing to Speckbauer now, and calling out.
“Oberst Schroek?” Edelbacher called out. “We have a situation here, I think.”
Schroek had seen what was going on. He finished his sentence about some of the ridiculous names he’d heard being floated for the new national, unified Austrian police.