Felix shrugged.
“ Cappuccino,” Speckbauer said. “ Ciao, bambino. Carabinieri, maybe?”
“They are police, that I know.”
“Indeed they are. Franz, how do you rate our friends in the Carabinieri? Give us out of five only the last couple of years, with our team, our side.”
Franz held up three fingers.
“They are only good when we can see what the hell they’re doing. If you go to, I don’t know, Sicily or Calabria, well all bets are off. Where is Giuliana from?”
“Giuliana who?”
And Speckbauer exploded into laughter.
Felix was surprised to realize that his own anger soon disappeared. He looked over to Franz who was wiping the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin. His mouth was like a slash, thin-lipped.
There was something of the alien look to him.
“Keep going,” Franz murmured. “He likes it when you kick back.”
Speckbauer’s laughter subsided and he stopped shaking. He rubbed at the corners of his eyes with his knuckles.
“Good,” he said, and lifted his cup again. “It’s been a while since we had that. Did Gebhart warn you?”
“He said to smarten up and mind my manners.”
“Lovely. Solid advice indeed. Been to Zagreb, have you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because in Zagreb I heard there were problems, gangsters probably.”
“Okay,” said Speckbauer. “But that has changed for tourists anyway. I forgot, sorry. You’d have been a kid when the crap hit the fan there. Been to Sarajevo?”
“Same, no.”
“Slovenia? Laibach, Lyubanya they call it there?”
“Sure. Maybe a dozen times since I was a kid.”
“Family trips? Dad driving, like?”
“Most of them.”
“You went on a bash or two though, surely. Come on the student drinking weekends? Really, now.”
“I don’t get this,” said Felix. “Is this some kind of a test?”
“No, no. Why, do you have a problem chatting with colleagues?”
Felix said nothing.
“Sure we’re from the big Zentrale and all that. But we’re on the same team. You remember provincial headquarters?”
“Of course,” said Felix.
“Ah, those were the days, for me too. Soccer, training, the firing range. All that.”
Felix nodded.
“But what a day yesterday, no? I don’t remember getting any training for that. Do you?”
“No. It was bad, all right.”
Speckbauer nodded sympathetically.
“Bet you never saw things like that before. Upsetting, no?”
Felix nodded. He wondered if it was a hint about him puking.
Speckbauer got up.
“So tell me, Felix. Are you good on faces?”
“It’s hard to say. We did the points of comparison training and things of that nature. But it takes practice, I would think. Or experience.”
“Indeed. And how well you put it.”
Speckbauer stretched.
“Okay then,” he said. “Franzi? Exhibit A?”
Franz made a final few slow dabs at his lips with the napkin.
“Remember I said that Franzi here is the thinker, Felix? And I am the talker? Franz doesn’t like to talk much. He likes to save his energy. Weird, uh?”
Felix watched Franzi drink more mineral water. He heard noisy gulps.
“He is not really the guy in The Matrix, Felix, I must confess.
It’s a story, a little spielerei we have. The shades are quite necessary.
Franz and daylight are not compatible. But he is not a vampire. Are you Franzi?”
Franz shook his head. His baby finger worked at a piece of food lodged in his front teeth. His other hand came up and pushed his sunglasses up off his nose. Felix took in the shiny white skin, the wandering lines that sometimes had pink edges. The eyes were from science fiction, but Franz let the glasses down again.
“Franz doesn’t cry. I suppose part of his job is to make others cry. But he cannot produce tears, or to be more accurate ‘express’ them. Is ‘express’ a doctor word, Franzi?”
“I believe it is.”
“Ah, so indeed. There was damage done there. The grafts cannot fix that apparently. And Franz has troubles putting out enough fluids there. Am I saying it right, Franzi?”
“Most. Enough.”
“I should practice more maybe. But the winter is hard on him, and the wind too. There are little bottles he applies quite often. I tell you all this Felix, so…?”
“So you can tell me something else, or ask me, afterwards?”
Speckbauer made a gentle smile.
“Sehr gut. Anyway. When they set Franz on fire they were hoping that that was the last of him. But they did not know our Franz.
What’s the name of that fountain again, Franz?”
“Mandusevac.”
“And a filthy fountain it was. But right in a square, a main one too: they don’t care, you see. Jelacica, that’s the place, the square.
We had a meeting there, didn’t we?”
Franz nodded.
“Well, Franz was out of the car and into that cesspool as fast as, well, as fast as Hermann Maier down that slalom. A hell of an achievement, I tell you. Better than any gold medal Klammer or any of those ski genius boys can pull off in Kitzbuhel. The prize? Way better. Right, Franz?”
Again Franz nodded.
“He got to keep his eyesight. Well most of it.”
“Which I guess makes it maybe a little ironic here,” Speckbauer went on. “He gets to see the face of the guy who did it to him.”
“You mean yesterday?”
“Franzi, you still think, you know?”
“Hard to be sure,” said Franz. “Like the Chinaman said. You know?”
“I don’t get it,” said Felix.
“Right. It’s an old joke. A Chinese guy flies to Vienna. It’s his first time out of China, no? An ORF guy is there to interview him, you know: millions of tourists from China, billions of shillings what am I saying, Euro dancing in the brains of the Tourism Department. Are you with me?”
“Sort of.”
“Good enough. So the interviewer gets the camera on the Chinaman. He sticks a microphone under his nose oh, I didn’t tell you this Chinaman has been studying German since birth, did I? and asks the fateful question: ‘What are your first impressions of us Austrians?’ What do you think he said?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re thinking dirndl? Cowbells? Sacher torte, decent coffee?
Strauss, maybe. Skiing? None of that Hitler crap, obviously. What do you think the guy said?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well, this is what he said: ‘These Austrians, they all look the same to me.’”
Speckbauer didn’t laugh. Nor did he smile. He remained intensely interested, it seemed to Felix, in a passing tractor that did not slow as it wheeled by the konditorei.
After seconds passed with no response from Felix, Speckbauer leaned in.
“What this means is that these two characters up in the woods could be any of them. ‘Them’? Well, we don’t really know ‘them.’
‘Them’ seems to start just southeast of here. Remember, before the Slovenes got into the EU club, when they had the border post?
You rolled up to the border post and seeing all that Russianlooking alphabet starting just the far side of the barrier? The Cyrillic words…?”
He sat back and eyed Franz a moment.
“But this much I do know. I want Franzi here to be able to use those eyes of his to see the face, or the faces of the men who sprayed the gasoline in the car and threw a match in on him. Verstehst? Got that?”
“I think so.”
“Good. And I don’t much care how we find them.”
Speckbauer looked around the restaurant again, and stretched.
Felix caught a glimpse of the pistol in its holster under Speckbauer’s arm as he arched.
“More coffee?” he asked Felix.
TWELVE
Giuliana was marking something when he got in. Felix had driven back to the apartment by one of those freak journeys, a miracle where he couldn’t actually remember long stretches of the road. Nor could he remember what he had been thinking about. It unnerved him. It also made him aroused.