Poachers Road by John Brady Page B

Himmelfarb.
    Felix fixed Gebhart with a glare. Gebhart knew better than to look over. He had already begun to compliment Frau Himmelfarb on the strudel.
    Hansi grasped Felix’s hand and tugged on it. Felix opened the door out onto the cement step under the wooden balcony where the window boxes had already swollen with blooms. He heard a cowbell, then others. He heard the talk about the strudel stop, the quiet, before he closed the door.
    Hansi had the huge hands of his old man but they were soft.
    Felix tried to take his hand back, or at least switch to his left, so he’d be unable to get at his restraints or his pistol even, if this Hansi made a grab for it. Hansi grabbed tighter.
    What if he screamed, or threw a fit, Felix wondered. Or crapped his pants or something?
    “Wah wah.”
    “Oh, I’ll give you wah wah, all right, Hansi. Is that what Gebi does for you?”
    Hansi frowned and nodded, and pulled harder.
    “Easy, Hansi. I need my arm for later, okay?”
    Felix let himself be towed toward the patrol car. He looked over his shoulder, but saw no faces in the window. They could still be watching from somewhere. For a moment he wondered again if this was some joke of Gebhart’s. Had Gebhart or some others at the post come up with this initiation rite, a way to show the new recruit up?
    He tugged back a little. Hansi slowed, and looked at him with a blank expression.
    He had frightened this big lug? For the first time, he stared into
    Hansi’s face. He couldn’t read it at all. He became suddenly ashamed at the thoughts that had come tumbling into his mind along with the resentment and the low burning desire to get back at Gebhart for this crazy things like a cannibal family luring people here, like some dark Grimm tale. If he’d heard right at all, Gebhart had a kid with Down’s, and he and Himmelfarb seemed to know one another because of that. And that was why he’d come all the way up here. Just to help, a bit.
    “Wah wah, wah wah.”
    They stopped at the car.
    “Hansi? I need my hand back so I can get into the car okay?
    For the wah wah?”
    That worked. He sat on the edge of the seat.
    “It’s loud, you know? Are you ready? Loud, okay?”
    He held his hands over his ears. It took a few tries for Hansi to get the idea.
    Felix held his finger over the switch and checked to see if Hansi was ready. So this was part of Gendarme Josef Gebhart’s policing duties, he thought, after a fleeting image of Hansi freaking out with the racket that was coming up when he hit the switch: a Gendarme’s day included an escape from the post, getting up in the mountains, tucking into home cooking, chatting about cattle or weather . . .
    Hansi jumped when the siren went off. Felix changed it into highway mode, then to traffic-park. Hansi’s eyes were as big as saucers, but he was smiling. Christmas and birthday rolled into one for this boy, Felix thought. The annoyance had gone now.
    “This is to tell someone to stop.”
    Hansi let his hands down and began rubbing them together.
    Then be began to lift one leg, then the other. Marching?
    “This is for when you have to clear traffic, Hansi.”
    He didn’t want to say accident.
    “You stop and you keep people away. If there is, you know, a problem.”
    Hansi didn’t like the slow one. He blinked at the lights as they cycled through. Felix wondered if the geeks who programmed these ever considered they might set off an epileptic fit? He turned it back. Hansi began to jump now.
    “Okay Hansi. Genug enough.”
    A cruel thought came to Felix: maybe it was like being stoned all the time?
    “Wah wah.”
    “No more wah wah, Hansi. I’m getting a headache.”
    “Wah wah.”
    Felix looked toward the windows of the farmhouse. He saw no faces.
    “Look, Hansi, don’t be a scheisskopf. You’re not dealing with just a common idiot cop here.”
    “Wah wah.”
    “I’m going on holidays tomorrow. Did you know? Let’s go back to the house.”
    The confused look returned to