The Bone Man by Wolf Haas Read Free Book Online Page B

thirty-nine now. Needless to say, he didn’t dare go to the doctor for a checkup.
    The two of them took a seat at a table, and after two beers they didn’t even notice anymore that everyone in the dining room was staring at them. And about that I’ve really got to say: rarely have a police inspector and a private detective worked so well together.
    Brenner told the inspector about the Löschenkohl manager who’d disappeared, and Krennek told Brenner why it was so urgent for him to speak with the old man. Because of the bribery scandal that shook up the province’s minor leagues six months earlier. In which Löschenkohl junior bribed a Feldbach striker. Namely, Ortovic, whose head someone had cut off and put in FC Klöch’s ball sack.
    At ten, the inspector set about making his way home. “If you see old man Löschenkohl, tell him I’ll be paying him a visit in the morning.”
    “Tomorrow you’ll meet him for sure,” Brenner said in farewell.
    Brenner didn’t move from the table while the waitress locked up the restaurant behind Kaspar Krennek. She had a coarse face—not from age, because she wasn’t that old yet. Just not a delicate face, a coarse one. But a fine human being. A thickset body, though, just like professional soccer players at the end of their careers. They’re training less, but eating the same amount—naturally, they let themselves go a little. Needless to say, that red leather skirt of hers was a risky affair now.
    But that only proves yet again that you can’t judge a person by appearances alone. The only thing that Brenner didn’t understand was: where did this woman find her lovers night afternight? Because what he overheard coming from her room—I don’t wish to describe it, but G-rated it was not.
    “Where’s the boss been this whole time?” Brenner asked her.
    “Not back yet from his checkup.”
    “I’m not talking about the old man. The manager’s husband.”
    “Not Porsche Pauli, though.”
    Porsche Pauli. That got Brenner thinking to himself,
I’m glad I don’t live out here in the country, because at least I don’t have a nickname like that
.
    “The way I see it, everybody’s my boss. So I’m not the type to call the shots here. When you’re a waitress, everybody’s your boss anyway. Porsche Pauli, though, is not my boss.”
    “You mean, the old man’s still the boss?”
    “The manager’s the boss. But now I need to hurry up and eat my frankfurters, before they get cold,” the waitress says and walks back over to the bar.
    “But the manager is, in fact, just the daughter-in-law,” Brenner said, while she prepared her frankfurters at the bar.
    “And the only one here who can run a business,” the waitress said. “Or did you think that Porsche Pauli could run a business like this?”
    “Why don’t you and your frankfurters have a seat over here with me?”
    “If it wouldn’t bother you,” the waitress said and walked back to the table with her steaming plate of sausages. And she nearly had to spit the first bite out—that’s how hot they were. But one, two hasty chewing motions with an open mouth and a few controlled breaths and down it went.
    “There’s nothing better than frankfurters. When they’re hot, that is.”
    “Those are hot, all right,” Brenner said and stared in amazement as she gobbled down the next bite and the next, each far too hot.
    “They have to be.”
    “Maybe that’s why I’ve never liked the taste of frankfurters. Because I always eat them too cold.”
    “In Frankfurt they call them ‘wieners,’ and in Vienna, they’re ‘frankfurters,’ ” the waitress said through a mouthful. “And do you know why?”
    “Nobody wants to be the sausage.”
    “That would explain it, too,” the waitress laughed. “But I’m going to tell it to you like this: a Viennese butcher invented the sausage. And his name was Frankfurter.”
    “You’d like to think they’ve just always existed.”
    “No, no. Invented. In Vienna. By