Four hours before the Danube Isle Fest had got underway and the streets were deserted. Brenner had never experienced anything like it, practically a ghost town. When it came to red lights now, needless to say, he was at a bit of an advantage.
When the ambulance hit a rumble strip, the glove compartment sprang open and Herr Oswald reached for the Schweizerkracher again. And this time he actually took it out. But he wasn’t prepared for it to be so heavy, and it instantly fell out of his hands and crashed to the floor.
“Watch it!” Brenner yelled at a lone pedestrian who’d just flipped him the bird for chasing him off the zebra stripes of the crosswalk.
“That’s insanely heavy,” Herr Oswald said, when he picked the gun back up.
“Yeah, it’s not made of plastic. You can shoot two people at once with it.”
“Not at once, but with one bullet, consecutively,” Herr Oswald said, getting very precise all the sudden. “Where are we going exactly?”
“Paramedic Munz to five-ninety,” Brenner whined into the microphone, imitating Hansi Munz’s voice.
“Five-ninety. Location: Spinnerin am Kreuz,” Junior responded instantly.
Then Brenner grinned as he heard the real Hansi Munz getting flustered on the radio: “Seven-seventy to all drivers! Who just said ‘Paramedic Munz to five-ninety’?” Poor Hansi Munz, because he’d already suffered one humbling blow today by having to drive the old 770 since Brenner stole off in his 740, and now somebody’s radioing in with his voice, too, and Junior’s not even batting an eye.
“Seven-seventy, what do you want?” Junior snarled over the radio.
“Disregard, over,” the real Hansi Munz said.
You and me, we know he was in the right. But it came off a little too sassy for Junior’s taste. Of course, it was the unknown person imitating Munz’s voice who was actually being sassy. But the receiver, of course, Junior. And not treating radio protocol with the utmost respect was, to Junior’s mind, the absolute worst.
It didn’t make a difference if you were driving a regular Scheisshäusltour or chauffeuring a person to their death, and it wasn’t just about the radio protocol, per se. No, at its core, it was a question of aesthetics: either you present yourself on the radio as being in command or you don’t.
“Seven-seventy, report, my office, tonight, over.”
“Seven-seventy copy,” Hansi Munz radioed, and Brenner imagined how the poor dog had just changed his pants and now he’d have to go trembling into the night with another pantload.
“Eight-ten, location: Franz Josef Hospital,” a driver reported his location.
“Eight-ten, return to station,” dispatch responded.
Transmissions like these, you hear them a couple hundred times a day, of course, in one ear and out the other.
Brenner, though, was becoming aware of the insistent way the driver kept calling in.
“Eight-ten, location: Franz Josef Hospital! Eight-ten, location: Franz Josef Hospital!”
“Eight-ten, return to station,” fat Nuttinger answered for a second time, a little exasperated now, because some days a lack of discipline just seemed to infiltrate the whole radio system.
“Eight-ten, location: Franz Josef Hospital!”
Needless to say now.
“Eight-ten, copy,” Brenner said. Even though, radio-wise, it really wasn’t his business at all.
Brenner didn’t mean it strictly radio-wise, though, because he had finally understood: 810 was Lil’ Berti! And Franz Josef Hospital was only a couple hundred meters away from where Junior had just reported his location at Spinnerin am Kreuz.
Now, it’s important not to confuse it with Franz Josef Station, where Brenner went to pick up the sandler a few weeks ago. Because the train station is on the complete opposite side of the city. It’s just coincidence that they share a name. Then again, maybe not that much of a coincidence, because Franz Josef is a bit of a local Kaiser around Vienna, of course.
“Eight-ten: Matzleinsdorfer Platz,” Berti reported.
“Eight-ten, I’m going to tell you one last time: return to station! And quit reporting your every turn to me!” fat Nuttinger said, fed up.
But now Brenner understood, of course, that Lil’ Berti was following Junior for him.
Berti was on duty that day, and by this point, he must’ve heard the whole story about the Schweizerkracher and the 740, probably from Hansi Munz. And one thing you can’t forget. It used to really get on Lil’ Berti’s nerves the way Brenner would imitate their co-workers’ voices all day long. But now, of course, he’d been able to recognize right away that it wasn’t Hansi Munz on the radio at all, but Brenner imitating Hansi Munz. And then, of course, he only had to put two and two together to guess that Brenner, for whatever reason, wanted to know Junior’s exact location.
“Eight-ten: Gudrunstrasse!” Lil’ Berti reported again.
Suddenly fat Nuttinger eased up now. “If any Rapid Responder sees eight-ten, tell him to return to station. Defective radio reception.”
“Copy,” Brenner, and ten other drivers, replied.
“Eight-ten: Gudrunstrasse.”
Brenner laid off the radio now. He was afraid Junior might get an inkling that something was up.
And Lil’ Berti laid off, too, or at least for a couple of minutes. Brenner could only surmise that Junior was still on the kilometer-long Gudrunstrasse and hadn’t yet turned onto Laxenburger Strasse.
“Eight-ten to dispatch,” Berti called in again.
“Eight-ten, can you hear me?” fat Nuttinger barked, as if he was thinking: If his radio’s not working, then maybe he’ll hear me outright.
“Reception crystal clear,” Berti answered innocently.
“Location?” fat Nuttinger barked.
“Simmeringer Hauptstrasse.”
Brenner couldn’t believe how easily and completely Lil’ Berti had fooled fat Nuttinger. How he’d managed to reveal Junior’s new location as inconspicuously as possible.
“Return to station,” fat Nuttinger said. But a second later, a new call came in—an emergency for Lil’ Berti, as it turned out: “Eight-ten! Drive with light and sirens to Süd-Ost-Tangente. Severe fourteen! Critical Care Unit’s on its way!”
Brenner swooped down Gudrunstrasse at breakneck speed. When Berti got diverted to Süd-Ost-Tangente, he was just two kilometers from Simmeringer Haupt, and as Brenner turned onto Simmeringer Haupt now, he could still see Berti in his rearview mirror.
And because he was still looking in his rearview mirror, Brenner nearly crashed into Junior in the 590. Because, needless to say, Brenner assumed that Junior would be driving full speed with lights and sirens. But instead, Junior was just chugging along the deserted Simmeringer Haupt, taking his sweet time. Which, needless to say, was a double threat now, i.e. speed of a funeral procession.
Brenner just said to Herr Oswald, “You stay put in the car.”
“What are you going to do?”
But Herr Oswald could see the answer play out right there in front of him. And without any interference in between, like your average voyeur’s accustomed to these days.
Because the windshield had shattered in such a way that the glass flew straight over their heads. When Brenner rammed the 590, propelling it through the window display at the Magic Moment Solarium. And the glass of the window display was sent spraying through the air like an explosion of sparklers, and for one brief moment, a spell was cast over the desolate Simmeringer Hauptstrasse.
Within seconds of the impact, Brenner was jumping out of his vehicle and tearing open the tailgate on the 590, where he was met by a thick curtain of exhaust.
“Are you all right?” he yelled at Lungauer, who was sitting there, sunken in on himself like he always was.
But Lungauer didn’t answer. Brenner leaned over him and shook him, but Lungauer was very far away.
And the next moment saw Junior locking the tailgate from the outside. And then the vehicle started back up again. But not forward. And not backward. No, the vehicle slowly began to turn in a circle.
And the next moment saw Brenner throwing up. And the next moment Brenner knew that the next moment would find him unconscious.
Through the thick glass panel that separated the passenger compartment from the driver’s cab, he could still see Junior shifting into reverse and trying to back out of the Magic Moment.
The sudden movement threw Brenner off balance, but he caught himself on the IV pole. But in catching himself, he broke the IV pole off its base. Brenner tried to thrash the glass partition with IV pole now. But something like this had never happened to Brenner before. Because today the IV pole was made of rubber! And his arms were rubber arms, too, today!
But the window wouldn’t break no matter how hard he thrashed, Brenner consoled himself, because it, too, was made of rubber today. And all the while, Brenner watched as Junior tried to back out of the Magic Moment once again.
A second later there was a crack so loud that in his stupor Brenner thought: Best Wishes from the Transmission. Even though he’d never heard a transmission crack like this before. It was as if, instead of an eardrum, Brenner had the whole window display in his ear, but his ear was too small to accommodate it, and the pressure suddenly shattered the glass into hundreds of thousands of minuscule pieces.
Doesn’t matter how much you throttle the gears, a transmission just doesn’t crack like that, Brenner thought. And maybe it’s on account of the carbon monoxide poisoning that I heard the transmission crack as loud as I did. Maybe the carbon monoxide is just acutely sharpening my hearing right before it shatters my nerves into a hundred thousand pieces.
Or maybe Junior just drove straight into the 740. Maybe he didn’t waste any time trying to back out. Maybe he just rammed the 740 onto its side like a snowplow. After all, if one car crashes into another car, that produces a powerful crash. Impossible, though, that it would shatter your eardrum.
Maybe nothing crashed, Brenner consoled himself: Neither the transmission, nor the 740, and the only crashing I’m hearing is my poisoned organs as I die.
Maybe the hereafter’s located in a noisy part of town, and that’s why my skull is buzzing like I’ve been strapped to the great bell of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the famous bell from the new year’s eve show on TV.
You can’t be mad at Brenner for getting a little hysterical in a situation like this. True, he should’ve known that Junior would lock him in. Nevertheless, whether he should’ve or not, if you were in Brenner’s shoes, you wouldn’t have kept calm exactly, either.
On the other hand, it can’t be denied that the poison has its advantages, too, because he couldn’t feel his broken rib at all anymore.
And about that bell, you know, the Glocke that always rings in the new year over here on TV, I have my own theory why that occurred to him now, listen up. His gun was a Glock, and as he marched alongside Lungauer now, taking long strides together toward the end of their lives, maybe out of some sense of solidarity, he started mixing up his words, too.
What I’m trying to say is this: he just wished he had his Glock on him. With his gun, he definitely would’ve been able to shoot right through the glass partition to the driver’s cab. But alas. He’d taken his Glock out of the pocket of his uniform yesterday because it’d been pressing a blunt weight on his broken rib.
Driven to despair, and yet, a faint shimmer of hope for Brenner. Because the air seemed to be getting a little bit better now.
Maybe a little fresh air is getting in through the shattered windshield in the driver’s cab, Brenner thought in his monoxide-rush. Maybe it was the crack of the windshield shattering that I heard. Maybe I’m just mixing up my words.
Maybe the thing that I call “skull” is what’s raining through the burst partition now and crashing against the rear door of the ambulance, causing the entire vehicle to reverberate like that famous New Year’s Glocke. And bloodying the whole interior with dark splatter—like in those turboorange-presses where you feed in ten blood oranges and a second later you’ve got a liter of blood orange juice.
Because the little slice of Junior’s head that was still intact was truly like an orange peel that had been sucked dry and was now slowly sliding down the rear door. And his mustache, well, I’ll only say this much: it looked as if someone had tried to open a beer bottle with it.
And one thing to be said in all seriousness. For all the things that you could charge Junior with—embezzlement and murder, and strangling Bimbo in the end, too—he had more brains than those two kamikaze drivers from the Gaudenzdorfer Gürtel put together. One quick glance could’ve told you that.
Needless to say, though, Brenner couldn’t see very much. First the poison had pressed his eyes shut, and then, the New Year’s Glocke had flattened them into discs. And when he finally managed to squeeze them open slit-wide, an image appeared in that slit, which, compared to the brain on the rear door, almost seemed normal to him.
Because Herr Oswald was kneeling on the passenger seat on the other side of the now-partitionless partition. And holding Bimbo’s Schweizerkracher with both hands. He was trembling so severely that Brenner was afraid the Schweizerkracher might accidentally go off a second time. And no wonder Herr Oswald was in shock. Because lightning like this only strikes once! All his life spent gazing, and then the first time he takes a shot, instant bull’s eye—auf wiedersehen to Junior’s skull and the partition in one fell swoop. I’ve got to say: Hats off!
And all the sudden, streaming faintly from the 740, Brenner could hear the tape that Klara had made for him thirty years ago in Puntigam:
“O sacred head sore wounded defiled and put to scorn;
O kingly head surrounded with mocking crown of thorn.”
One thing you can’t forget. The entire 590 was still resounding from the gunshot like one of those Asian gongs before the movies start. For Brenner, it wasn’t like sitting in the movie theater, though—it was like he was sitting in the middle of the gong.
And street noise joined the Asian gong now, and the excited chatter of onlookers and honking from all directions, as though the Danube Isle Fest had the entire city of Vienna erupting all at once. It all blended together into an avalanche of sound, as if somebody had taken Brenner’s eardrum and pulled it right down over his ears. And all the while, Klara’s choir in the background:
“What sorrow mars thy grandeur?
Can death thy bloom deflower?
O countenance whose splendor
The hosts of heaven adore!”
Brenner looked Herr Oswald in the eye, and Herr Oswald looked Brenner in the eye, and the choir sang, and the drivers honked, and the curious onlookers encircled the vehicle, and a few nosy ones even stuck their heads in through the open passenger-side door and immediately reeled back around when they saw the Schweizerkracher swaying perilously in Herr Oswald’s hands, and Herr Oswald didn’t say anything, and Brenner didn’t say anything, and Lungauer didn’t say anything, and Junior wouldn’t say anything ever again, and the choir sang:
“Thy beauty, long-desirèd,
hath vanished from our sight;
thy power is all expirèd,
and quenched the light of light.
Ah me! for whom thou diest,
hide not so far thy grace:
show me, O Love most highest,
the brightness of thy face.”
Brenner heard only the distant choir. And just beyond the choir, he heard the police sirens which—I’d almost call it dotting the “i”—blended into this sublime experience of music now, too.
“I pray thee, Jesus, own me,
me, Shepherd good, for thine;
who to thy fold hast won me,
and fed with truth divine.
incline thy face to me.”
While the choir kept its distance, the police sirens got closer. And Brenner could almost feel the sirens overtaking the choir, closer and closer now. But not quite yet. The choir was still closer. The sirens had yet to overtake the choir.
And the chatter of the onlookers was closer than the choir. And Herr Oswald’s hyperventilating was closer than the chatter. And Lungauer’s snoring was closer than the hyperventilating. And the buzz of the Asian gong was closer than the snoring, and the deafening heartbeat—as if a drummer had set up his bass drum in Brenner’s ear—was closer than the Asian gong. Though Brenner had never before experienced such sublime music, he prepared himself for the eventuality that it might be his last, this sublimely deafening experience, and he might never hear another thing for as long as he lived. But for this one second he was alive and could still hear:
“In thy most bitter passion
my heart to share doth cry,
with thee for my salvation
upon the cross to die.”
And then Brenner didn’t hear any more music. Just a bang that was a hundred times closer than the heart-drum in his ear. The choir, though, absolutely silent. Because with a single bullet, Herr Oswald had shot the whole choir dead.
“The only vehicle with quadrophonic sound,” Brenner yelled, because these days when your hearing’s as poor as his now was, you automatically talk a little louder, “and you shot it to pieces!”
Herr Oswald didn’t say anything. He just let the Schweizerkracher drop.
“Watch out!” Brenner shouted.
Herr Oswald didn’t say anything.
“How are you?” Brenner cried over the din in his ears. Because he really would’ve been interested to know how a person feels when his whole life long he’s known only watching, and then in an instant, he gets brutally thrust into doing.
But Herr Oswald didn’t say anything and wouldn’t open up, either.
“Good,” a voice from behind Brenner answered instead. At first Brenner thought the brain on the tailgate was talking to him. Needless to say, though, it was just Lungauer, who—thanks to the shot that Herr Oswald silenced the quadrophonic sound system with—finally awoke.
“Good day,” Lungauer said in his polite manner to Brenner.
“I wouldn’t know,” Brenner answered.
But today, Lungauer was too tired to laugh.