Brenner and God

by Wolf Haas

  “But surely you saw something on TV or in the newspaper about—”

  “I don’t read the paper.”

  When a thing like that gets said by somebody who’s just bought a newspaper, naturally you have to say: suspicious. There she was, standing in front of him with a carton of milk, a pack of Marlbooros, and a newspaper, and explaining in her South Tyrolean accent: “The newspaper’s too depresshing for me.”

  “So you just bought it because—”

  My god, before he would have said, because of the love horoscope, because of the personal ads, anything, it doesn’t even matter, just some slight suggestion—not too much subtext, well, okay, just a little—because these days if you make a woman laugh, you’re already on the right path in the direction of, let’s say, philosophical conversations.

  “—because of the TV lishtings,” the South Tyrolean claimed in her South Tyrolean accent. “Because the TV lishtings are always in the Friday paper. The news I throw away the minute I get home.”

  “And you don’t watch TV, either,” Brenner said. “You just read the listings.”

  You can see how he was already getting back into the swing a bit. Nothing compared to the old days, of course. Long gone are the days when he would have lay in wait for her by the recycling bins in front of her house—full throttle, as it were. Although, to be honest, he’d often idealized his past a little. Because in truth Brenner had never been full throttle—actually in reverse most of the time, or hand brake, broken starter, distributor out, wet spark plugs, that kind of thing. An irony of fate: Brenner owed his broad shoulders—which, in the eyes of women, lent him an energetic aura—to the endless push-starting of the stalled jalopy that was his life.

  “Why wouldn’t I watch TV?” the South Tyrolean replied. Because she might have come up with something better, too, but I always say, milk drinkers for the most part aren’t that primed to return a stupid remark from a man with an even stupider remark. No, to be perfectly objective, like a South Tyrolean mountain peak asking itself, why wouldn’t I peer down into the valley below?, she asked why she wouldn’t watch TV.

  “Then you must have seen something on TV about the kidnapping that happened right in front of your house.”

  “Ma Dai, you’re not too shwift, are you,” she sighed. “That was a joke! The newspapers have been calling nonshtop since yeshterday, the police have been here twice, I can’t take one shtep without someone asking whether I saw anything! Jusht because yeshterday I accidentally happened to walk to the right of the gas pump instead of the left like I normally do after I shop.”

  “Obviously suspicious.”

  “Exactly. You know, it’s because that big clunker was shtanding in my way when I went to throw my empty bottles away. And because of that I show up on the damn shurveillance video.”

  “So?”

  “I’m going to tell you a secret. Even if you end up needing a pshychiatrisht because of it. Do you want to hear it?”

  “I think I’ll manage.”

  “I don’t like cars. I didn’t even see your fancy sleigh ride, even though you parked it so wide it was blocking my way. It wasn’t till the video that I saw that heap of yours. Even though I practically had to walk a kilometer around it. Otherwise, I never would have gone up there.”

  “Up? Up where?” Brenner asked. “Everything’s flat at a gas station.”

  “Up on the video.”

  Brenner was awfully glad that she didn’t get the joke either. “It’s not my car. I’m just the chauffeur.”

  The South Tyrolean looked at him as if that was no excuse, but then she said, “Oh yeah, that’s what they said on TV. You should have kept a closer eye on the kid.”

  “And you didn’t see anything? No one leaving with a child?”

  “You know, you’re actually the firsht to ask me that queshtion.”

  “Alright already,” Brenner said under his breath.

  But that must have been exactly what she was looking for, because now that Brenner had given up, she said: “You’re the only one of the whole idiotic slew who I’d like to help. There’s shomething about you I like. With your shtrange eyes. And your shirt’s untucked.”

  Brenner tucked in his shirt, and the two drunks grinned stupidly. Their eyes were glazed from staring, and their heads were craned so far from eavesdropping that their ears were practically brushing against the ad for motor oil that was hanging from the ceiling.

  “But I’m more the kind of person who keeps to hershelf,” the woman said. “I even have to take pills for depresshion.”

  “And do they do anything?”

  “Of course. If they didn’t, do you think I’d be capable of crossing the shtreet? But you know what I think’s a sham? I wouldn’t expect regular shoppers to wind up on security cameras here. I’m not saying anything about them monitoring the drivers—in case one takes off without paying, you have his lischense plate. That I can undershtand. An ordinary shopper, though, who only buys milk, doesn’t need to be taped doing it.”

  “It happens automatically,” Brenner said. “If they’re taping the drivers and a shopper runs into the frame, then they’re automatically on it.”

  “So now it’s shupposed to be my fault,” the South Tyrolean protested. And then she smiled because Brenner looked so dejected. “Don’t worry so much, the little one will turn up again. I can feel it. You can trusht me completely on that, I have a feeling for this sort of thing. The girl’s fine. Besides, the contractor has plenty of dough. It can’t be true that the kidnappers haven’t made contact.”

  “On the one hand, you have a feeling; on the other hand, you make a logical argument.”

  “And you? Only drinking nonalcoholic beer?”

  Then she left.

  That was something! Just said it and left. As the automatic doors opened for her, something new occurred to Brenner.

  “South Tyrolean!” he yelled. This time with a note of urgency. To no avail, though. She didn’t turn around, and when he yelled his cell phone number out after her, she was already through the door and outside before he got to the last digit. He watched through the glass how she walked left around the gas pump, good figure and everything, Brenner thought to himself, if I had met her in my day, and he kept gazing after her as she crossed the street, with the newspaper and milk in her left hand and the pack of Marlbooros in her right, and disappeared into the house opposite the gas station.

  CHAPTER 10

  He didn’t get the cell phone unlocked at the gas station, and he didn’t find anything out from the South Tyrolean, either. But pay attention to what I’m telling you: nothing’s ever for nothing in life, most of the time you find something different than what you’re looking for. And Brenner now found someone returning a rental car to the gas station. A purple Ford Mondeo, and ten minutes later it was his Mondeo because he told them they didn’t need to wash it, and so you see, he drove the Mondeo to the Lilliput Café, and there they unlocked the cell phone for him right away.

  PATRON OF LILLIPUT CAFÉ. Naturally, that’s how it was later portrayed in the newspaper, as if Brenner had been a regular there, those people really busted his chops on that one, don’t even ask. But my feelings vis-à-vis the Lilliput Café are very clear. Listen up: if after everything that’s happened, someone’s still pointing a finger at the Lilliput Café, then I honestly have to say, it’s roughly like telling a starving person to put the menu down just because, according to Chinese thought, the micronutrients aren’t in the fifth house right now.

  Brenner knew the Lilliput Café because at least once a week he’d picked Kressdorf up from the construction site near there. Or better put, from the planned construction site, on account of the protests of course, and there being not much to see except construction fences and steam shovels and pits. Or he would bring Helena by so that Kressdorf could spend a few minutes with his daughter between appointments. They’d ride the Lilliput train through the wooded areas of the Prater Park and around the site slated for MegaLand,
and so Brenner would sometimes wait for the two of them at the Lilliput Café.

  Helena was a total fanatic for the Lilliput train rides, and Brenner was a little jealous of her father, because if just once he’d said to his daughter, you know what, today Herr Simon’s going to take you for a ride on the train, he would have done it on the spot, no discussion. But no, when the ride was over Helena would always bawl her head off, and do you think Kressdorf might have given in just once? He didn’t let his daughter wear him down, though. No, Herr Papa got even stricter and: “That’s enough now.”

  Just so you understand why Brenner was so familiar with the Lilliput Café. Because he never went for the other things that were there, smuggled cigarettes or a fake wristwatch, and the Lilliput Café’s main business was with the parents, of course. Driven to despair by the screams of their Lilliput-train-addicted children, they could get their mothers’ little helpers at the Lilliput Café, more convenient than the pharmacy and qualitatively better, more effective and all, where you find yourself saying, it may not be entirely legal but at least I can make it another three days smiling at my child instead of tossing him headfirst over the fence so that the neighbors can smile at him.

  They unlocked the cell phone for him in a matter of seconds. His nonalcoholic beer wasn’t even in front of him yet before he was holding the phone in his hand with a new PIN. You’re going to say, Brenner must have deliberated over the PIN for a long time, because what’s the best combination of numbers to choose? But quite the opposite, Brenner shot it out like a pistol: 1706, because that was Helena’s birthday. But then he reconsidered after all, because a gravestone suddenly floated in front of his eyes, where the date of birth always appears above the date of death, bad omen, as it were. To be on the safe side, he went with a date of death instead. You should know that on November 12, 2008, the last member of Jimi Hendrix’s band, Mitch Mitchell, died—because none of them was granted a long life. Jimi Hendrix was born in November, Mitch Mitchell died in November, and believe it or not, Noel Redding also had an 11 on his gravestone because he died on the eleventh of May. But Brenner was already using Noel Redding for his own cell phone’s PIN, so he dedicated the PIN on Knoll’s cell phone to Mitch Mitchell, i.e. 1211. So you weren’t totally wrong, he did mull the PIN over a bit.

  But he didn’t get around to listening to Knoll’s voicemail, because: “Hey, Herr Simon, over here!”

  Just what he needed. But that’s exactly how it goes when you seek out familiar places. You have to take into account that you might run into people you know. At least it wasn’t Kressdorf himself, but just the watchdog from his construction site. Brenner didn’t recognize him right away because beefcakes with crewcuts and tattoos up to their eardrums, you see them so often on the street today that you can’t know them all by heart. It was the white straw he was sucking on that gave him away, i.e., nicotine withdrawal. Also the be-freckled foreman who he came in with. You should know, the few times Brenner had seen the nicotine-addicted watchdog, he’d always been with the foreman from the MegaLand site, as if he always needed to be hanging on to one of them, cigarette or foreman, didn’t matter which.

  “Waiting on a new job offer?” the foreman asked, and a hundred thousand freckles loomed in front of Brenner’s face.

  “With your qualifications, it’s no wonder your phone’s ringing up a storm!” the watchdog continued and pointed at Knoll’s phone with his plastic straw. Because now that it was unlocked, the messages were chiming up a lightning storm like you wouldn’t believe.

  “A nice steady ball like you two are rolling is what I’m looking for,” Brenner answered. “Sitting in a café all day on Kressdorf’s dime, that’s for me.”

  “You wouldn’t be very happy working with us. There’s nothing left at KREBA for someone like you who goes around losing people’s kids.”

  Brenner was getting annoyed by the belt of freckles around the foreman’s stupid grin, because something as nice as a face full of freckles can make a cruel smile even crueler. I can understand where Brenner was coming from—strictly speaking, it’s a betrayal of freckles.

  “Because Kressdorf doesn’t have any more kids to lose,” the one with the straw explained.

  “Explaining somebody else’s joke,” Brenner said, “is that a side effect when you quit smoking?”

  The nicotine addict sucked on his straw like a wheezing asthmatic on an inhaler. And it might have done him some good, because once he got his fill again, all of a sudden he acted completely normal with Brenner. Even professional, presenting himself as a colleague, because construction-site security, i.e., armed security services: practically the police.

  Brenner asked him how he knew for a fact that he used to be on the police force, but please—it was a convenient topic for him. So he let the straw-man pass, and he acted like it was the highest caliber of police work, spending all day on the lookout so that nobody steals from the construction site or damages the fences or goes sniffing around the site or hangs up a banner against the Prater Park development. And I honestly have to say, with a project like MegaLand, where you’ve got half the city against you because your boss only has enough money to bribe the other half, it’s not completely outrageous for the security guard to puff up his feathers a little.

  Brenner let the two of them explain the world to him for a while, what Kressdorf does all wrong, what Congressman Stachl does all wrong, what all of them at the top do all wrong, and how someone just needs to do a better job of explaining to the masses that there’s something in it for them, too, if the Prater starts charging an entrance fee, because golf, tennis, wellness, movies, shopping, entertainment squared instead of just trees and pampas—for that even the little guy doesn’t mind paying a little. Brenner let them pump him about the kidnapping, i.e., where exactly, when exactly, how exactly. And he was even obliging enough to laugh at the crass jokes they cracked about Knoll. When you’re a detective, you can’t be fussy about things like this—you don’t get anything out of people if you don’t let them talk.

  So what did he learn? Listen up, Knoll’s alarm system company had installed cameras not only in the building’s lobby, and in the elevator, and in the stairwells, and filmed everyone who entered the building—the police also found two cameras that Knoll had mounted around the time of the first water main break.

  Brenner explained that there’s nothing more perverse than an abortion clinic with surveillance cameras, and the two of them agreed with him one hundred percent. But while the watchdog repeated for the third time that there was nothing more perverse, something more perverse occurred to him as he was talking. He presented his idea of what was more perverse as though it were proof that there was nothing more perverse. My god, he had other qualities besides an inflated ego. He and the foreman were so engrossed in conversation now that it was operating like talk among old friends. And that was the best thing that could have happened for Brenner. Because they didn’t notice that Brenner had been waiting the whole time for just the right moment.

  You should know, there’s a right moment for everything. For plants, when to plant them, when to water them, when to harvest them; for animals, when to feed them, when to milk them, when to slaughter them; for children, when to make them, when to nurse them, when to kick them out on their own; for fingernails, when to cut them, when to file them, when to polish them; and hair, too, very important. But only a very few know how important the right moment is for the detective counterquestion.

  “What do you two have to say about her?” Brenner placed the photo that Knoll had given him on the table.

  “Jailbait,” they said almost in unison—a well-rehearsed team. But they were of no help to Brenner because they didn’t recognize the girl. The security guard just got excited at the prospect of proving his professionalism to Brenner. Because he immediately pulled out his cell phone and took a photo of the photo. “In case I come across her, I’ll let you know.”

  “But only after you come on top of her,” the fore
man said with a smirk, and Brenner wondered whether it was his smirk that was crooked or if it only came off that way because his freckles were so unevenly distributed.

  “Of course,” the nicotine-nursling said, bringing up the rear of the joke again. “Only after I’ve come on top of her.”

  But then his freckled smirk got even more crooked, so crooked that it was like they’d passed the nicotine pipe around and the substance in the pipe was distorting Brenner’s vision. His vision wasn’t the problem, though, because Brenner: A-plus vision. If this weren’t the case, then when he finally turned around and followed the freckled asshole’s glance, he wouldn’t have seen as clearly as he did what was playing out in front of the Lilliput Café’s only window.

  “Thanks for the warning,” he called out to the two of them from the bathroom, while outside, Kressdorf and Congressman Stachl were climbing out of Kressdorf’s jeep, which was parked right next to his Mondeo. The joke was on him, that much is obvious, because the two of them knew the whole time that they were waiting there for their boss.

  No way out now except through the bathroom window. Then Brenner walked along the Hauptallee a bit and listened to Knoll’s voicemail, because he didn’t dare make his way back to the Mondeo until Kressdorf was gone.

  My dear swan, Brenner hadn’t been in a funk like this in a long time. And the fact that the idiot watchdog and his Pippi Longstocking had let him fall right into it could only bear half the blame for why his mood just soured with every step. Above all there was the crap that Knoll Jr. was whining about to Knoll’s voicemail. Because that was a burden that would have merited half a year’s psychological counseling right off the bat for any civil servant—and from the most attractive police psychologist no less.

  Brenner wasn’t an impatient man otherwise, but he was on the search for a kidnapped child, and with something like this you’ve got to hurry. You can’t just listen to voicemails until the kidnapped victim is old enough to say, I choose of my own free will to remain with my kidnapper because I’ve gotten used to him. No, you’ve got to be swift. Neverending voicemail messages are hard enough to endure in normal life, but in Brenner’s situation it could be filed, strictly speaking, under “accomplice to murder.” His ear practically fell asleep listening, and although on principle he was one to always hold the phone to his left ear, he actually switched briefly to his right. He wondered whether Knoll ever listened to these messages at all. Or maybe it was just a personal hotline where he let the church ladies talk. For those times when it’s necessary to request of an excessive talker: speak your interesting thoughts into a plastic bag, then place the bag before my door, I’ll listen to them later.