And Gilrein lay there, spooned behind Ceil’s body, his face against her head, smelling her hair. And it was as if his wife’s voice were coming from someone else, being used by some strange and ambivalent entity, some dark and hidden aspect of God that no one had bothered to explain to him. He tried to hold off a shiver, because it almost sounded like Ceil felt a kind of perverse respect for this monster she was describing, like a confused anthropologist who, miles from home and watching a cannibal feast on his own, couldn’t help but smile at the fact that the savage would go to bed with a full stomach.
Gilrein stares at this Maisel cannibal as Kinsky runs a finger around the pool of thick juice collected in a corner of his dinner tray, then lifts the finger to his mouth and inserts it between his lips, sucking off the molasses-like coating.
“Your wife was a fine judge of character,” Kinsky says. “She will be missed by all who knew her.”
“She left a real gap in the department,” Gilrein says. “Not every detective can finesse this part of town.”
Kinsky agrees vigorously. “No one knows this better than I, Mr. Gilrein. The idiots your people have sent to barter, I can’t tell you—”
“They’re not really my people, Mr. Kinsky. I haven’t been on the job for several years now.”
“Yes, I had heard this. You’re in the”—a pause, looking for the word—“transportation service.”
Gilrein nods over his mug. “I drive a hack.”
“For the red or the black?” referring to the two major fleets in town.
“Neither,” Gilrein says. “I’m an independent.”
Kinsky’s face lights up as if his friend Boz had just discovered some portion of rabbit’s jazyk in the fridge. Even Weltsch manages to nod his approval.
“A dying breed,” Kinsky says.
“There’s only a handful of us left in the city,” Gilrein says. “The fees are brutal. It’s like living in a vise.”
“Acht,” Kinsky agrees, and their mutual disgust with municipal bureaucracy seems to instantly erase their initial discord. “And they have the nerve to call me a thief. This city would take the coins from the eyes of a corpse.”
“And they’d send a clerk to do it,” Weltsch puts in from behind his paper, to the delight of his boss.
“So true, Gustav. More true each day, yes?” Then he takes a sip of his drink and says, “Is this why you’ve come, Mr. Gilrein? You need me to speak to the taxi commissioner?”
Gilrein starts to shake his head, but Kinsky is already saying, “Because I know the man. And though, it is true, this is not the best of times for the family Kinsky, we may be able to work something out. The last I heard this individual was aligned with the black minister—”
“Reverend James,” Weltsch puts in, though they’re all aware that Kinsky knows the name.
“I’m not here about my hack fees,” Gilrein says, letting them have their fun. “I need to talk about August Kroger.”
This gets their full attention. Weltsch puts down the paper and adjusts his glasses as he looks across the table at Kinsky.
“What about Kroger?” Hermann asks.
“He tried to take me down yesterday—”
“Without my permission?” with full mock outrage.
“You tell me,” Gilrein says and sits back in the booth. “He’s one of yours.”
Weltsch clears his throat. “Technically, Mr. Kroger has never been in our employ. He is from the old country, but—”
Kinsky thumps the table with one of his enormous fists and bellows, “No Bohemian takes this kind of action without my consent.”
“Take a look at my lips, Mr. Kinsky,” Gilrein says, matching his volume. “I wasn’t getting a goddamn tattoo. So either you want me whacked for reasons I don’t understand or your little pal is running loose out there.”
“I have no quarrel with you,” Kinsky’s voice coming back to discussion level. “And I can’t see any obvious reason for wanting to do away with a taxi-boy.”
Gilrein lets the insult go, tries to decide how much to spill and realizes he doesn’t have anything to barter with, that all he can do is tell his story and hope for some response.
“When they were working me over,” he says, “they kept asking about a book.”
“A book,” Kinsky repeats, as if confused, but Gilrein can feel Weltsch tense up next to him.
“The last person I drove before Kroger’s animals grabbed me was Leo Tani—”
“The fence from San Remo.” Kinsky nods. “Of course, I knew him as Calvino—”
“Leo used a variety of names. The point is he got whacked in a particularly horrible manner shortly after I chauffeured him to some kind of transaction inside Gompers Station.”
“We heard of your friend’s misfortune. But, as you know, these things happen. It’s sometimes a consequence of the business.”
Weltsch sniffs out a laugh. Something about Kinsky’s word choice amuses him, as if murder were analogous to working late or taking a pay cut.
“That’s true,” Gilrein says, folding his hands together in front of him and straightening his posture in the booth. “You’re absolutely right. These things happen in the business,” accenting the words into sarcasm. “The business is a dicey world. People disappear. Fortunes rise and fall. And a two-bit seamstress like Kroger can even topple the king of the Wing.”
Gilrein knows that what Kinsky would like to do, right here and now, is pull his ever-present piano wire from his pocket and turn this guest’s jugular into fish bait. But Kinsky has learned over the last few years that impulse is usually not the most valuable way of reacting in the long run.
He looks to his lawyer and they silently exchange counsel with the cast of their eyes.
“Understand something,” Kinsky says softly. “August Kroger is an eccentric little worm that I have tolerated only because it has been to my advantage to do so. And the moment it is not to my advantage, the worm will be sent back to hell.”
“Then I guess,” Gilrein says, “I was mistaken.”
“It appears so.”
Kinsky pulls his bib napkin free from his collar, swabs at his mouth, and then throws the linen onto his tray. He places his hands on the table and Gilrein feels it tilt as Kinsky pushes himself to standing.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he says, “I am in need of relief.”
He reaches across the table and takes the newspaper from Weltsch, then breaks into a heavy trot in the direction of the lavatory.
Weltsch waits until his boss is out of sight, then turns to Gilrein and says, “I might advise you, for future reference, Mr. Gilrein, that it is not entirely polite, or I might say, wise behavior to come to a man’s breakfast table and then make insinuations about his prowess and his status. In the case of Hermann Kinsky, it is less than unwise. It is a form of barbarous suicide.”