“They want to meet over coffee,” Felix said to Gebhart.
“But somewhere else.”
“You’re not making sense,” said Gebhart. “Did they knock you around in there or something? What’s going on?”
Speckbauer came out of the klo. He had combed his hair.
“Can we borrow the kid here, Sepp?”
“A duty call, you want him for?”
“Naturlich. It’s a few details concerning the business yesterday.
You’re senior here at the moment?”
Gebhart hesitated. Korschak pretended to be studying court documents. Even he wasn’t that dumb that he wouldn’t have picked up the tone in Speckbauer’s question.
“No reason why not,” he said. “But not for too long.”
He looked at Felix.
“Give me a minute with him; see what he needs to hand off.”
“Absolutely,” said Speckbauer, and stepped aside. “Half an hour?”
Gebhart motioned Felix over to his desk.
“What have you done, kid?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. They’re yapping and then pitching in a weird question every now and then.”
“That guy with the shades, you know about him yet?”
Felix nodded.
“He went through the wars, I tell you. I phoned a guy I joined with, in Strassgangerstrasse. He knew this guy right away. Nearly got toasted. Wife left him; about a hundred operations. They called him the Mummy, I hear. Speckbauer is a bigwig of some kind. They give him offices, a budget, a bunch of gadgets. He has lines to important people, so off he goes and does his own thing. Has he…?”
Felix shook his head.
“My friend thinks that Speckbauer is part of a group. They work with the guys in the BP or the James Bonds out of the C.I.S.
They sit down with suits from Interpol every month, in Munich mostly, or Brussels, and they talk about satellites and syndicates and poppies and prostitutes. Are you getting any of this?”
“Bits. But what does this have to do with yesterday?”
“Well, ask him,” said Gebhart. “I’d be interested to see how he handles that one. All I’m saying is, these two are not Peter and Paul cops. Watch what you say. Come straight to me or Schroek when you get back so we can figure out what the hell to do about them.”
Felix glanced over at Speckbauer and Franz. Speckbauer leaned against an opposite wall of the hallway, apparently examining his shoes and murmuring to the other. Speckbauer held a large envelope under his armpit.
“Okay, Felix,” said Gebhart, replacing papers with others and closing a folder. “But you have to be there for the two o’clock.
You’re the officer issuing, so it’s in person or the guy can ask for a walk from the judge.”
“Thank you, Bezirkinspektor Gebhart.”
“Don’t be an arschloch,” he heard Gebi whisper as he passed.