Brenner and God

CHAPTER 5

“Now she’s given up,” one of the two gas station drunks said. The thin one, because the fat one was standing with his back to Herr Simon, but he had such a belly that his back brushed up against the neighboring table. And so you can see just how badly things were going for the chauffeur. That he hadn’t even noticed that his cell phone had been completely silent for ten minutes. You should know, when he still couldn’t get hold of Kressdorf after three tries, he gave up. And I suspect he only tried in the first place because he knew about the cell phone ban, and so it would have been a huge coincidence if Kressdorf had picked up. But Herr Simon didn’t turn off his cell phone after his pointless attempts, either. Instead he remained snug in that painful middle ground, without a solution and without any refuge, ergo triggering “Castles Made of Sand.” But when it suddenly stopped, it didn’t strike him as suspicious. It pains me when I think how slow his brain was compared to the gas station drunks, who noticed it before he did.

“Mine calls all day, too,” the thin one announced, loudly enough for the gas station attendant to hear it, too, from where he was putting away a stack of frozen Napoli pizzas in the refrigerated cases. “I don’t know what it is with women.”

Herr Simon took advantage of the gas station attendant’s brief glance over to point to his empty cup. And the gas station attendant gave a nod as if to say: I’ll just quickly put away the pizza boxes so that they don’t start thawing, and then I’ll bring you another espresso.

“That they have to have their beaks flapping all day long,” the thin one said.

“Tee tee tee tee tee tee tee!” the beer belly said in a high-pitched voice and made a motion like a bird’s beak with his chubby little left hand, a babbling goose, as it were.

“Not picking up’s the only thing that helps sometimes,” the thin one said. “Right, Milan?”

“Tee tee tee tee tee tee tee!” went the beer belly. I don’t know why the beer belly had such a high-pitched voice, presumably the female hormones in hops, and if you’re a man then you get breasts and a high-pitched voice, but what would be interesting is whether that’s true for nonalcoholic beer, too.

As he walked past, Milan said, “Your wife’s always on the phone with her boyfriend. Yugo-lover!”

The thin one laughed because he didn’t have a wife anyway, so the comment couldn’t really be taken as an insult, and in fact, was even very nice of Milan, who otherwise didn’t give the thin one an answer very often because when you’re a gas station attendant, your head grows weary of your gas station drunks over the course of the day.

“Tee tee tee tee tee tee tee!” went the belly-talker’s sausage fingers again. It had definitely been fifteen minutes already since Jimi Hendrix last sang, and Herr Simon still didn’t think anything of it. When Milan came with the espresso, the chauffeur asked him, “And your wife? What’s her name?”

“What’s your wife’s name?” Milan asked, smirking, and passed the question along to the thin one.

“Angelina Jolie.” The thin guy looked as serious as if he were providing the name of his wife to the emergency room at the hospital.

“Heidi Klump.” The fat one was quick to introduce his wife, too.

Herr Simon didn’t laugh, though. “The woman on the surveillance tape,” he pressed Milan. “The red-haired one who shops here every day.”

“No clue. She lives right over there. I always see her going into that house. But her name, no idea. She often comes in twice a day and buys-”

What she buys, Herr Simon didn’t catch. But that you can’t criticize him for, because it was drowned out by the forceful shouts and by the loud clattering of the CD rack and the box of lighters and the flashlight special and the lottery ticket dispenser and the keychains, all crashing to the floor.

He shouldn’t have overlooked the fact that his cell phone had been silent the whole time he’d been in the bathroom. The gas station’s bathroom, picobello, immaculate, that never happens-but pay attention, Herr Simon had left his cell phone lying out on the table, didn’t think anything of it and when he came back from the bathroom it wasn’t ringing anymore. So it’s almost his unconsciousness that you have to find fault with. Every human being has secret desires, don’t ask, and it’s possible he just wanted to be caught finally, possible he even wished for it somewhere in the very back of his head, yearned for the fat drunk to seize the opportunity and pick up the phone on a lark while he was in the bathroom.

Herr Simon wasn’t angry at the gas station drunk for it afterward. On the contrary, he even invited him out after the funeral. He was only mad at himself, and I should add that, for someone who used to be on the police force, there’s reason not to be purely happy in a situation where your cell phone stops pestering you. Because when relentless phone terrorizing has been going on for more than an hour and suddenly comes to a stop, you have to ask yourself why. It’s like how if your spouse stops nagging you, then you know he’s cheating on you. And if the parents of your kidnapped child stop calling, then you know they’ve got you.

It was only at that moment when the police officer was behind him, grabbing him between the legs in a brutal manner, that Herr Simon realized amid his shriek of pain that he hadn’t understood the officer’s question correctly, even though he had yelled it into his ear: “Where have you got the kid?”

I tell you, though, at that second Peinhaupt wasn’t exactly in prime condition to receive an immediate answer. No, he had a scandal to defuse that his two colleagues-who were securing the escape routes, Zand, Erich the gas station entrance and Sykora the back exit-had surprised him with on the sterilization table that fateful morning. After the creepy phone call with the gas station drunk, the clinic director’s panic became Peinhaupt’s chance at redemption, of course. And so maybe you grab on all the more doggedly, even though you don’t realize yet that you’re standing right behind the biggest case of your life.