The Bone Man (19 page)

“Wrong number.”

“The number you have dialed is not in service,” Jacky laughed.

Brenner was thinking Jacky’s success with the head doctor was starting to go to his head a little. Honestly, though, I can understand it. Nowadays, when you rise from being the son of a bathroom attendant to the future husband of the head doctor, it takes a little while to fully digest.

But Jacky wasn’t giving up now. And you see, it was good that Brenner had told him every little detail. Even the bit about the waitress at Löschenkohl’s taking down a phone number for him.

“Let me see that number,” Jacky said and reached for the piece of paper on the nightstand. “Is this your handwriting?”

“No, the waitress’s.”

“Horvath?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s not the Vienna area code.”

“But it says ‘Vienna.’ ”

“No, it says ‘Viennese.’ ”

“Exactly, it says ‘Viennese.’ ”

Brenner had everything packed, and he was about ready to be on his way now. And anyway, the number just didn’t interest him. But Jacky had to play the detective. He went looking for something in the drawer of his nightstand, and then he pulled out the folded-up obituary for Löschenkohl’s daughter-in-law that his mother had brought him.

“Take a look at this,” Jacky said.

And while Brenner was reading “… we announce with deep sadness that Angelika Löschenkohl, born in Vienna, died suddenly,” Jacky had already taken the telephone receiver and dialed the number on the note, without the Vienna area code.

“It’s ringing,” he said and passed the phone over.

When Brenner left the hospital half an hour later, the shoe seller was standing out in the parking lot in the sunshine. She had sunglasses on and half a kilo of lipstick on her face. Her smile had to have been for him because there was nobody standing behind him.

And what should I say: old man Löschenkohl had had this tragic disability ever since his sixteenth birthday. And Brenner, in the middle of the parking lot, well, the opposite problem now. Utterly embarrassing. And at his age, too. But nothing he could do about it. His knees may have been growing softer with every step. But otherwise—talk about a bone man.

Wanting out of stressful detective work, Simon Brenner takes a job as a chauffeur, shuttling a toddler back and forth on the Autobahn between her high-powered executive parents. But then the little girl is kidnapped, and he’s back in the game again. Told with sharp-edged wit, suspense that’s even sharper, and one of the most quirky, hilarious, and compelling narrative voices ever.

978-1-61219-113-3 $14.95 US/$14.95 CAN

   
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