The Bone Man (11 page)

So Brenner knew the Praterstern from the traffic reports long before he ever set foot in Vienna for the first time. Interesting, though! Even though Brenner had only ever heard it mentioned when there was a traffic jam or construction or an accident in one of the traffic circle’s six lanes in the middle of downtown, he always imagined the Praterstern roundabout as something beautiful, almost a different planet. And it must’ve been that way for Helene Jurasic too, for her to name her Praterstern bar the Milky Way, of all things.

When the train let Brenner off directly on the Praterstern, first thing he did was walk over to the police trailer. Because he was feeling a little lost in the middle of the roundabout, which was supposed to be his starting point to look for the Milky Way bar. So, out of old habit perhaps, straight over to the police, this should’ve been a clue. Basically, they’d put this trailer there—you’ve definitely seen these at construction sites,
the trailer where the masons go to drink at nine in the morning. No masons here, though, just police.

And once he was standing at the police trailer, he could see for himself that across the street next to the Nissan dealer, the red lights of a bar were blinking. Now he just had to cross the four, five, six lanes of traffic, direction Nissan dealer.

When Brenner got to the Nissan dealer, he was still alive, that’s the good news. The bad news, though: the bar wasn’t Helene Jurasic’s Milky Way. So he continued walking around the Praterstern: from the Nissan dealer, he crossed the Heinestraße to the Hansy Restaurant, crossed the Praterstraße, then the underpass at the Franzensbrückenstraße, then the metro underpass, Hauptalle, nothing, Ausstellungsstraße, nothing. Lassallestraße, nothing.

He saw it all: the Admiral Tegetthoff Monument, the Jamaica Sun Solarium, the Ferris wheel, the Avanti gas station, a fast-food place, and if he’d walked down the side streets, too, he would’ve even found some other bars: Rosi, Susi, the Black Cat. After forty-five minutes he was standing right back in front of the Nissan dealer, but not a Milky Way in sight.

Now, you really don’t want to be caught walking around the Praterstern for long. Because maybe there’s a brutal murderer afoot in Klöch, but what’s one murderer when you’ve got the whole Praterstern. And you can’t forget what bad drivers the Viennese are. Paris, not good, either. Nairobi, also not good. But Vienna—terrible. And when you’ve got six lanes of the worst drivers in the world driving around your ears, you can lose your cool pretty easily.

But it wasn’t the honking and braking and screeching that tugged on his nerves as he was making his second lap around.
No, it was the white Mercedes that came out of nowhere, rumbling right up onto the sidewalk and narrowly grazing Brenner’s toes.

Now, who’s that sitting there gloating in his white Mercedes, you’re probably wondering.

“Hey, Brenner, what brings you to Vienna?” Vice Squad Head Winkler asked innocently.

He must have remembered that fifteen-year-old story with his wife after all.

“Very funny, Milky Way,” Brenner said.

“What, you’re looking for the Milk Way?” Winkler grinned. “You’re in the wrong place. This is just a roundabout. It doesn’t go anywhere near the Milk Way. It’s just a simple traffic circle down here on Earth.”

“You don’t say.”

Brenner was still as pale as a sheet. Because, first of all, a beer in the dining car on the train that morning, which he’s not used to. And then an hour and a half circling the Praterstern. And then going under the wheels of Frau Winkler’s husband’s Mercedes.

Brenner must’ve been feeling a little weak in the knees. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for why he took Winkler up on his offer. Because he held the car door open to him and Brenner, knowing no pride, got in.

“No hard feelings, Brenner. It was just a joke.”

“Very funny.”

“That was always your motto, Brenner.”

“Yeah, yeah. Long time no see.”

“Get this: didn’t miss you at all.”

Winkler had put on at least thirty kilos since they’d last
seen each other. But Brenner didn’t say anything. He was glad to be sitting in a comfortable Mercedes and glad to be chauffeured out of the Praterstern.

“Jurasic, Helene, lives in Red Heights,” Winkler said.

“Milky Way. Red Heights. You must be going through menopause, making up things like that.”

“Good to see you can still take a joke. Milky Way’s a good one.”

“And Red Heights?”

“Do you know anyone who lives in Red Heights?”

“Sure. Rudolph Schock. I used to always watch him on TV back in Puntigam.”

“I forgot you’re from Puntigam. Then you can’t know what it means to live in Red Heights here in Vienna.”

“Yeah, yeah. Puntigam: a miracle I even know my own name.”

“You didn’t used to be so sensitive, Brenner.”

“Where exactly are we driving?”

“To Red Heights.”

Alas, when two old dopes get going like this, it often ends up with both of them losing their bearings. Because Brenner knew for a fact, of course, that Red Heights was the hill where the overstuffed Viennese keep their houses. And he could tell that Winkler wanted to help him, after he’d laid into him about the Milky Way. But no, Brenner was being stubborn now and just didn’t want to hear anything else.

First, he had to digest his defeat by way of the Ruckzuck method. At some point in your life, you have to pull yourself together via the Ruckzuck method and chalk it up to a flub that Winkler managed to trick you. And he’d never been one of
the brightest. But, now Brenner was thinking:
best way to find out what Winkler wants to tell me is to keep mum
.

But watch closely. It wasn’t really a long enough drive for the silent treatment. Winkler was already driving deep into the enclave of villas atop the hill that was Red Heights—with every meter the convertibles got more and more expensive, with every garden the Rottweilers got more and more nervous, and with every house the automatic firing systems got more and more sensitive.

Brenner didn’t allow his fat chauffeur to get the upper hand, though, and showed only the slightest bit of surprise when Winkler let it slip that the Radkersburg Yugo-whore Helene Jurasic resided here, among the bank directors and ministers.

But when they arrived at her villa, his jaw dropped. Not because of the villa, even though it was a proper Jugendstil or what have you. And not because of the garden, even though it was an immense park. And not because of the two Rottweilers, even though they tried with all their might to squeeze themselves through the wrought iron gate.

But because parked in front of the house was a silver Porsche, gleaming peacefully in the sun.

Maybe it only looked peaceful compared to the two Rottweilers behind the garden fence, though. Brenner walked past the silver Porsche and, without asking any questions, opened the garden gate. Now why would he have no respect for the dogs, when one look at Brenner sent saliva running down their chops?

And that’s where Winkler comes in. Because he’s still sitting in his police Mercedes, grinning, and waiting to see
whether Brenner has the balls or not. And needless to say, Winkler was already looking forward to seeing the man who’d been such a hero in his wife’s eyes get—pardon my German—torn a new one by the Rottweilers.

As Brenner opened the gate, he felt Winkler’s gaze at his back, and the Jurasic Rottweilers’ gaze at his feet. Now, they say dogs can smell fear. And that’s when they get really aggressive. Because that must be, for a dog, like when a person, like you or me, walks by a bakery and becomes ravenous just from the smell.

Now, Brenner had opened the gate so quickly, on account of Winkler, that he hadn’t had any time to get scared. And maybe that’s why the Rottweilers didn’t tear him into a thousand pieces. Even though it was right about snack time.

At the last possible moment, though, fear must have entered into it after all. Brenner was giving off an irresistible bakery scent. Because when he was almost to the door of the house, one of the two Rottweilers went flying through the air all of a sudden, like a black snowball, or if you picture those iron wrecking balls that they tear down old houses with. Because the builder thinks, first I’ll drive the wrecking ball in, and then I’ll conjure up an apartment building, marble everything, gilded fixtures and all that, and then I’ll rake the money off to the side, and then I’ll go bankrupt. You see, that’s why there are so many new apartment buildings in between the villas of Red Heights.

Jurasic’s villa, though, hers was a real jewel box. And that’s just on the inside! Because now Brenner was standing inside, in Helene Jurasic’s villa. Because he hadn’t exactly found the time to knock.

“Do you not keep your doors locked?” he said, when the lady of the house came out of her bedroom.

“Pardon me?”

“You. Door. No lock?”

“Most people are respectable,” Jurasic, Helene, said in exactingly high German. And gave Brenner a cheeky look as if to say:
first of all, what are you looking for in my house? And second, spare me your pidgin German
. On both counts, Brenner felt he was innocent, because it was the Rottweilers that were guilty of the first, and Milovanovic of the second.

“You’ll have to excuse me for barging in like this, but the dogs.”

“You were barging in on the dogs as well.”

Brenner wasn’t going to be able to talk himself out of this one as easily as he might have with Winkler. So he was quiet, because Jurasic was too quick-witted for him anyway. And someone’s got to say it: he belonged ever so slightly to that category of men who get easily intimidated around a quick-witted woman.

She made an immediately intelligent impression on Brenner. But maybe he also belonged to that category of men who think that any woman with short hair and glasses makes an intelligent impression. I can only say this much: on TV game shows when they cheerfully guess your profession, they’d never guess Helene’s, because she didn’t look like a whore—typical hand gestures aside.

He wouldn’t have placed her at more than eighteen years old. Then again, he himself was already of an age where you underestimate the age of all young people. Because Helene was petite and lithe, but she’d celebrated her thirtieth birthday last
October. Which, in zodiac terms, made her a Libra, but I don’t believe in all that, although—Helene was trying to appease him just now, and so you could say, typical Libra, balancing the scale.

“What are you looking for, then?”

“A friend of yours lost his head.”

“The police already found it.”

“It’s the rest of him I’m interested in.”

“You’d be better off asking him,” Jurasic said, unmoved, and led Brenner into her living room, where Löschenkohl junior was sitting. He looking rather desperate, he cried out:

“That would suit the Yugo-mafia just fine, pinning Ortovic’s murder on my shoulders. But I know I’m going to find Milovanovic here. Even if I have to sit here all night.”

Two minutes later, Löschenkohl junior was standing right back out in front of Jurasic’s jewel box. With Brenner next to him. The two Rottweilers, very well behaved now—they obey that wisp of a woman, heel, incredible. And you see, that’s why I don’t like dogs, one minute they’re practically tearing your head off, and the next they’re pandering to you—if that’s what you’re looking for, you might as well just stick with people.

Now, Brenner didn’t get anything out of Jurasic, Helene. Because Brenner was her third visitor that day. And she hadn’t told Kaspar Krennek anything about her dead ex-boyfriend and Milovanovic, the missing goalkeeper, either. And he at least had known how to behave himself. But anyhow, Brenner was able to get a ride back with Löschenkohl. Just a pity that he’d bought a round-trip ticket for the train.

He got to Klöch three times faster, though. Because, these
days, if you drive 190, nonstop, then you only need an hour to go 190 kilometers. For forty-five minutes, Löschenkohl junior didn’t say a word. Was it a coincidence or not, though, that as they were zipping by a chicken plant, of all places, that had recently gone bankrupt, Junior began talking?

“Six months ago, Ortovic went to the newspapers and claimed that I had bribed him on the elimination game between Feldbach and Klöch. It was a bunch of lies. I couldn’t figure out what he’d get out of slandering me. I was trying to find something out about him back there. A few weeks ago, I got the idea that I could find something about him in the old Yugoslav sports pages. Because, common knowledge, he used to be a big deal in Yugoslavia.”

“Like Milovanovic,” Brenner said.

“I can’t read the Yugoslav papers, of course. But I found a student in Vienna who went to the library and skimmed through the papers for me. She copied and translated those places where Ortovic’s name appears. I picked up the translations from her this morning,” Löschenkohl junior said, pulling a couple of folded pages out of his sports coat and handing them to Brenner.

Then, Brenner read that it was Ortovic who had stomped on goalkeeper Milovanovic’s head.

“Now I understand why you’re looking for Milovanovic. But I still don’t understand what Ortovic gets out of slandering you.”

When you’re driving from Vienna to Klöch on the autobahn, you have to exit at Ilz. Then you can take either the western route via Feldbach or the eastern route via Fürstenfeld. Fürstenfeld’s nicer, and then you can take the Wine Road
down to Klöch. But via Feldbach and Riegersburg, it’s a little faster. And those fifteen kilometers between Ilz and Riegersburg, Löschenkohl junior vacuumed them right up in his Porsche—Brenner swallowed in Ilz, and by the time they hit Riegersburg, the spit wasn’t even all the way down yet.

And then, on the way from Riegersburg to Feldbach, Löschenkohl junior said: “I don’t know, either. I only know that my wife disappeared at practically the same time Milovanovic did. And that Ortovic’s head turned up that same week.”

The church in Feldbach had a modern steeple made out of concrete. It used to be gray, but then they got a young priest—he’d even been a hippie at one time—the gray concrete steeple didn’t appeal to him. So he’d had it painted, top to bottom, with bright splotches of color. And because the hills aren’t any higher, you can see the steeple from far away, long before you get to Feldbach. Of course, when you zip by as fast as Löschenkohl junior, though, you only see it for a few seconds.