“Nobody said you were. It was Franzi I was referring to as the idiot.”
“Why are we going in my car?”
“Because it’ll show you have left.”
“Show who? You think the house is being watched?”
“I don’t know. But anyone passing can see a car parked here.
That’s on purpose.”
“The police car here?”
“Is it a police car? It’s a car that Franzi may need. We may have to change our approach later in the day.”
“My grandparents have a clue what’s going on.”
“They have a guest. Isn’t that enough? A friend of their beloved grandson.”
“If they see the AUG he’s carrying”
“Franzi will not be displaying it. Now calm down. What’s with the bag anyway? Let’s go. Komm.”
Without any will on his part, Felix found himself following him across the yard. His anger swirled around the leaden, crushing feeling that had already settled on him. It was one of those middle-ofthe-night-wake-up-for-no-reason feelings he remembered all the way back to childhood, when for a while he didn’t know if he was really awake.
Speckbauer was already pulling the passenger door closed behind him. The Polo squeaked as Speckbauer wriggled about trying to get the safety belt organized.
Felix stood by the driver’s side and looked back at the house.
Franzi was strolling toward the kitchen door, walking in that careful stiff way, moving his right arm in small arcs. The morning sun had reached the geraniums in the window boxes now, and the stained wood looked sharp and darker in the light. Felix thought of what Giuliana would be doing now. She’d be awake, maybe brooding what to do finally with her stupid boyfriend. The last straw, this one lousy week’s holiday, the precious time they’d waited a whole long winter for: screwed.
Speckbauer was tapping on the window. Felix threw the bag in the back seat and sat in behind the wheel.
“Any maps in this shitbox of yours?” said Speckbauer, craning to see some that had slid onto the floor from the bag. “Do we need them?”
THIRTY-SEVEN
They were pulling into a decent parking spot in Weiz, close to the town hall at the top end of the old hauplatz, within 20 minutes. Speckbauer was out quickly. He bought a two-hour ticket from the machine.
“It’ll be a nice surprise,” he said, and slammed his door hard.
“For Mr. Smiley.”
Felix fell into step beside him. The streets were already busy.
Small groups of kids were making their way along by the shops toward school. A pasty-faced assistant was sluicing the leftovers of a bucket of disinfectant along the sidewalk by the door to the butcher’s. The smell from a bakery began to overcome the faint dieselly tang as they walked along. A man brushing in the doorway greeted them.
“He’s not a fool,” Speckbauer said. “But if I think he’s spinning me one… ”
Felix tried to remember what ‘Mr. Smiley’ looked like.
Designer stubble, yes, and white shirt, open two buttons. An earring too?
“Here we go,” said Speckbauer. “His pad.”
He turned down a lane with cars parked tight to the walls of the houses. After a dozen steps he slowed and looked up at a first floor window. The blinds were drawn.
“Come here,” he said to Felix and stepped into an alcove.
“Watch this.”
He took out his phone and began keying through a list.
Felix watched the traffic passing the mouth of the laneway while they waited for the call to go through. Then Speckbauer began speaking.
“Kurt? This is your friend from Graz. I need your expertise. I’m on the road now. Concerning that matter up in the hills recently?
I’ll be there in fifteen, okay?”
He closed the phone and leaned out to take a look up at the window again.
“Answering machine.”
“Kurt is actually the boss in that pub?”
“Kurt, yeah. Krutziturken Kurt, I call him. ‘Mr. Smiley.’ He thinks if he smiles a lot, people will trust him. He spent a lot of money on those teeth. He had to I guess after, well — he’s proud of them.”
“He’s an informer?”
“‘An informer?’ I am not the Gestapo, for Christ’s sake. He is a ‘helper.’”
“He does it voluntarily?”
“No. Kurt’s a low-life. But he’d swear otherwise. Was he nice to you yesterday?”
“As a matter of fact he was.”
“Huh. He made you the minute you walked in there. He’s good at that. But he’s like the rest of his kind. No conscience.”
Speckbauer looked at his watch.
“Three minutes, if my brain is working today. Bet me, okay?”
“What is that?”
“Kurt doesn’t want trouble. Like any businessman he wants to be left alone with his interests. His housewives, and his salesmen and his coke and his operations.”
“He’s actually a criminal?”
“Well yes, a criminal. Log on when you get back to work, and slap in his name into an EKIS search. You could light up your house by what shows up on the screen.”
“And he runs a pub?”
“Why can’t he run a pub? This is a democracy.”
“And carries on with criminal operations?”
“Criminal — well, textbook, yes: I suppose. You think it’s just for a beer you go into his place? People get bored, you know. They want excitement. They want thrills.”
“He’s not arrested?”
“Why should I do that? Now what use oh shit. What did I tell you?”
Speckbauer pressed his back against the wooden door. The footsteps were hurried, almost skipping. He waited until the footsteps came closer.
Felix couldn’t help but smile. Kurt actually jumped when Speckbauer stepped out into the laneway.
“You stupid donkey,” said Speckbauer. “I think you’re not even awake.”
Kurt stopped rolling his eyes and swearing.
“Who is this one?”
“My colleague.”
“I knew it. I’ve seen him. Jesus!”
His chest was still heaving from the fright. His eyes kept darting around, to the traffic passing the mouth of the laneway from Speckbauer to Felix.
“Schweineri Kurt, but you’re hyper. What has you out here?
Jogging?”
“I have to go on a message.”
“No doubt. Heading down to Piran again, maybe? Pluck a few early birds, some German hippies maybe?”
Felix tried to place Piran on a map in his head. An old town on the Adriatic, he remembered. Old buildings, nice walks, lots of stone, and not far. It was maybe four hours’ drive, he guessed, and it was still in Slovenia.
“Hell no.”
“Kurt likes to offer his time to ladies visiting Piran and the like.
Bored women from Germany are his focus. Women of a certain age, and income, of course.”
“What’s the big deal, for Christ’s sake,” said Kurt. “We all have our thing. Have dummies in Brussels passed a law saying it’s illegal to have fun now?”
“Brussels? Is that where you’re heading now?”
“Are you crazy?”
“We need your advice, Kurt.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? You treat your answering machine like a grenade with the pin pulled.”
“Christ man it’s early! I barely got to bed. Why are you hassling me?”
“I phone you. Next thing you’re out of your place like a shit off a shovel. And your eyes like saucers. Did you pee the bed too? Calm down.”
Kurt took in deep breaths. He seemed momentarily lost for words.
“I can’t help you,” he said then. “I don’t know anything.”
“What’s your mother’s birthday then? Do you know that?”
“Look. I don’t want to talk.”
“You want to run.”
“Look, I’ve got to go.”
“Kurt. Don’t be an arschloch. I don’t want to do all the paperwork.”
“Go ahead. I don’t care.”
Felix eyed Speckbauer for any sign of what he’d do next.
“Calm down, Kurt. How can we protect you if you get like this?”
“Protect me?” said Kurt. He turned wide-eyed to Felix.