J. Jones - The Third Place

Now he stripped the white coat off, scouring down any blood marks on the floor. He hoped to buy as much time as possible before the discovery of the officer’s body.

Racing back down the stairs, he pulled the body as far into the corner of the landing as he could, draping the white coat over it. Then he exited the hidden door, making sure the canvas sign was in place and concealing its existence, and made his way down to the first floor again.

Now is where nerves come into play, he told himself. The obvious thing would be to try and get out of the building before anyone returned.

That was also the stupid, frightened animal thing to do. He would most likely set off an alarm doing so.

No, he would wait out the noontime closing once again in the first-floor washroom, he decided, and then when business was once again underway he would nonchalantly retrieve his checked coat and make his way out of the Josefinium, a respected doctor from Hamburg finished with his medical research.

Retreating once again to his toilet seat perch, Klavan counted the minutes until one-thirty. He could hear the hum of voices from outside and then someone entered the toilets to relieve himself after a heavy lunch. The man stood at a urinal and peed for at least two minutes while Klavan marveled at the elasticity of the fellow’s bladder. Shortly after this man left, Klavan got down from the toilet perch and left the washroom as well. He returned to his books in the reading room, sat at the table for another ten minutes then told the assistant he was finished with them.

‘You still have two hours until closing,’ the assistant told him.

‘Yes. Unfortunately, however, I just recalled another appointment I have this afternoon. Perhaps tomorrow.’

The library assistant actually looked put out at having to do his job sooner than expected. Klavan left the reading room, handed over the receipt coupon to the old woman ministering the cloakroom, nodded at the registrar and calmly made his way to the entrance.

Suddenly feet came running toward him. He twisted around in a defensive posture, his right hand curled in a fist, his teeth bared.

The library assistant stopped abruptly, his eyes growing wide in fright.

‘You, you forgot this, sir,’ he said, his voice breaking.

He held out the forgotten briefcase to Klavan, who quickly adjusted his body and unclenched his fist.

‘How good of you,’ he said pleasantly. ‘And I thought I was too young to become an absent-minded professor.’

The assistant issued a small, nervous laugh at this comment, and Klavan was off into the cold afternoon, patting the vial of death in his vest pocket. It was that easy.

Hermann Postling enjoyed the walk, plus it saved him transport money. They were paying for his travel. He could use that money however he damn well pleased, he thought. Nothing illegal in that.

He hoped they would have some food on hand. Usually they did: a bowl of fruit (not really his favorite food, but he’d eat a banana if it was free) or a plate of wurst and cheese (that was more like it – more like real food you could chew on). The frau was a funny one, though. You could never predict what there’d be with her. Some days there would be nothing for a snack. That’s why Hermann had taken his lunch at the hostel before setting out for the Prater.

He couldn’t walk very fast. A man at seventy-six like he was should be happy to be walking at all. Hermann had seen a lot in his nearly eight decades on Earth. When he was a baby, Francis I was still emperor; now his great-nephew, Franz Josef was running things, as he had been since the bad old year of 1848. Hermann remembered that time, too. It was the students who’d started it all. That’s what comes from too much education, Hermann thought ruefully as he made his way across the Danube Canal and on toward the Prater. He’d already been working for ten years by that time, learning the cooperage trade, and here were all these pampered boys in their university hats out on the streets demanding a constitution and the right to vote. He’d wished he’d been in uniform then; he would have shown them their rights at the end of a sword.

This blustery day of March 1902 was much the same as that day in March in 1848 when he’d heard the thud of boots on cobbles as the throngs of students made their way along the Graben toward St Stephen’s Cathedral.

‘Watch where you’re going, Grandpa,’ a middle-aged lady yelled at him as he bumped into her just over the bridge.

He ignored her and shuffled along, a stiff wind off the canal buffeting him.

Hermann Postling wasn’t the kind to demonstrate, to make demands, to blame others for his woes. And he’d had his share of woes. He’d built his own small cooperage firm by 1858 and married the daughter of his older partner. Had three children, though the boy thought he knew best and hightailed it out of Vienna when he was seventeen to immigrate to Canada, only to drown when his boat sank on the Atlantic crossing. One daughter had died in childbirth along with the baby; the other married an Italian and lived in Milan. She might as well be dead; he hadn’t seen or heard from her in years. His wife had died of a broken heart, as far as he could figure, losing all the children that way and then the business going too with the panic of 1873.

Ever since then Hermann Postling had lived rough, finding work where he could, begging when he couldn’t find work and finally not being good for much work altogether.

Still, he never complained.

But things were going to change now. Come Thursday he’d have something to boast about. On Thursday he’d be coming into a fair piece of change. And that slick little fellow wasn’t going to cheat him out of it – he’d make sure of that. Herr Wenno, he called himself, but Hermann wasn’t fooled. What kind of name was that, anyway? Couldn’t be his real name. Thought he was being so clever, getting him chosen among the dozen men for the ceremony. Acting like he was just looking out for an old man. He was watching Herr Wenno. He wouldn’t trick Hermann Postling; he wasn’t going to take his twenty pieces of silver.

Maybe, just maybe he’d give one of those coins to the young boy. A nice boy, nicer than his own son had ever been to him.

Lost in these thoughts, Hermann approached the Rotunda in the Prater, entered the front door and was greeted by the frau.

‘We were worried you weren’t coming,’ the painter, Tina Blau, said to him. ‘You have some eager artists awaiting your arrival.’

Taking his coat, she led him to the dais where he would sit for the next several hours, modeling for a gaggle of women. But his eyes focused on the boy – he couldn’t be much more than ten – who always sat close up and worked like a stevedore with his set of charcoals.

He winked at the boy, and the boy nodded back in greeting, a smile on his lips.

Franzl, the art teacher called him. He had that determined look about him that reminded Hermann of himself as a youngster.

They had spent most of this Monday attempting to track down leads to the two would-be assassins who had made such salami of the attempt on the emperor’s life at the gates of Schonbrunn. If the Serbian lead was not enough for Montenuovo to send a broadside against Belgrade, perhaps it could at least aid in tracking the perpetrators. After all, they could very well still be in Vienna seeking another opportunity to strike.

On the other hand, it was equally possible that they had been called back to Belgrade for their incompetence and another team dispatched for a second attempt.

But one thing at a time. Werthen and Gross had personally visited over a dozen flophouses, hostels and run-down boarding houses where such guests might hope for a bit of anonymity. It was late in the afternoon when Gross suddenly recalled the Pension Geldner. Werthen well remembered it when Gross spoke the name. They had talked with the pipe-smoking hostess of the inn when trying to track a suspect in their very first case working together. It might very well be the sort of place where assassins from Belgrade would seek lodging. And if not, maybe the good Frau Geldner would have other suggestions for them.