At the buffet breakfast the next morning in the Ambrosia Restaurant, Tiho was moving around a bit more gingerly and with a little less of the playful buoyancy and bounce that he had the night before, but he was still making an effort to play the role of everyone's favorite leprechaun. No doubt this was a studied role that won him extra tips at the end of the voyage; it certainly would make him a favorite of those seeking a young-looking, yet legally aged, partner to dominate on this cruise.
Bruno Meister wasn't in the restaurant, and Folsom had gone to great pains to determine that this was so. This wasn't really a surprise. The breakfast buffet was the one meal on the ship that was spread over several hours. And by the time Folsom had recovered from his own plowing the evening before and had come up for his meal, he could see that several of the other passengers had already eaten and had disembarked to explore the small wine village of Rudesheim. The MS River God had tied up very close to the town center.
The Italian count strutted in, master of the room, his blond porn star in tow, as Folsom was drinking his last cup of coffee. They were seated before the count saw Folsom, but he did see him as Folsom got up to leave and motioned the American detective to join the blond and him at their table. Folsom didn't have time for this, though; he was hell bent on finding Meister and dispatching him as soon as possible. He didn't want to offend the Italian, however, so he went over to their table, told them that he had something he had to do but maybe he'd see them later, and bent down and gave the count a nice kiss on the lipsโjust to register that his retreat wasn't an matter of disinterest.
Then he went looking for Meister. He found him, decked out in gym shorts and a T, sitting at the bar in the Alexander Lounge, deep in conversation with one of the masked bartenders. Folsom couldn't tell if it was the same one who had so roughly and effectively fucked him the previous evening, but he was the only one of the three in the lounge at the time. Folsom walked on by, not wanting to show that he had any interest in what Meister was doing or to connect himself in any way to Meister. He stood at the window for a bit, feigning interest in what was going on out on the riverside market street beyond the boat dock. But all the time he was fingering the blade in his pocket, pumping himself up for the justice he was about to dispense.
When Folsom turned, he saw that the bartender was gone. And then Meister got off the stool as well and headed toward the foyer. Folsom waited until the German gangster was out of the lounge door and then quickly moved there himself to see where the German was headed. He took the stairs down to the B deck below and then turned right to descend to the C deck that ran part of the way under the Alexander Lounge. Folsom followed Meister at a discrete distance.
Having reached the C deck corridor of cabins, Meister moved to the very end of the corridor. The door at the end entered one of the crew areas, but Meister didn't go there; he turned and entered the last door on the right at the end of the corridor. Folsom knew this to be the ship's small exercise room, an exercise room for brochure purposes only, as there was only room for a couple of tread mills, a rack of weights, and a bench that could have been used for bench pressing if there had been room to move the weights around inโwhich there wasn't. Folsom doubted that Meister could make any use of the room for exercise, but then he wasn't thinking clearly on the type of exercise Meister liked to do.
Folsom waited for a few minutes to enable Meister to get into an exercise routine and to be less likely to be prepared to react quickly. The detective reasoned he could be in and out in less than a minute, doing what he needed to do and being long gone before Meister's body was found.
As he drew nearer to the door into the exercise room, though, Folsom could hear low moaning. The door was slightly ajar and Folsom only needed to nudge it a bit to be able to see the weight bench. All Folsom could see initially, however, was the back of one of the bartenders, sans his Roman soldier-style skirt. Folsom's eyes went to the carpet next to the machine and he saw the rectangular wooden box and the surgical items inside. Sounding wands. The bartender then moved to the side enough that Folsom could see the naked body of Bruno Meister reclining on the bench, with his wrists tied off on the handle bars of the treadmill machines on either side of the bench. His eyes were closed, and his head was lolling back in his own world of ecstasy.