Siren of the Waters: A Jana Matinova Investigation, Vol. 2 (24 page)

The bedroom was different, neat, a small dresser, bed, chair, and a small bottle of pastis standing near several empty glasses. Boyar quickly wiped the glasses out with a dish towel and, without asking, poured himself a generous glass of the pastis, measured Mikhail’s bulk with his eyes, then poured him twice as much, handed it to Mikhail, and settled at the head of the bed.

“You have come to pose for me?” Boyar asked. “You saw my notice?”

For a moment Mikhail thought his cousin was crazy. Then he realized that Boyar had no idea who he was.

“I’m Mikhail. Your cousin. From Ukraine.”

Boyar checked Mikhail’s appearance. “The one I used to beat up when we were kids?”

“I used to beat you up.”

“That isn’t the way I remember it.”

“Look at you and look at me. Then figure out who beat who up.”

“You were slow, ugly, and stupid.”

“Now I’m big, ugly, and only a little stupid, so I need your help.”

The little man looked at Gruschov, the ill-fitting winter suit, the shoes that were scuffed. “I have no money to give you.”

“I’m not here from Ukraine for money.”

“All Ukrainians need money.”

“I’m a policeman.”

“They’re the worst. Cops always have their hands out.”

“Do you want money for your help? Is that what you are saying?”

“Painters don’t need money. What would I do with it?”

They both sipped at the pastis, saying nothing, savoring the anise taste.

“Not bad,” allowed Mikhail.

“Cheap but good,” acknowledged Boyar. “Cousin, what do you need to come all the way to Nice for? Not to see me.”

“I’m looking for a Slovak. A woman.”

“In Nice?”

Mikhail allowed himself to become a little angry. He had deliberately strained to keep his voice low, to be friendly. He raised it a few decibels. “In this city. The one and only! The woman is in Nice! And I am asking your help in finding her. Clear?”

Boyar again took a quick sip of the pastis, telling himself not to be frightened. Maybe he had remembered wrong. Maybe his cousin had beat him up when they were children? He thought quickly. “Does she speak Russian?”

“Yes.”

“There is a Russian center. They will hold a large party.” He rustled through a sheaf of papers. His voice took on a surprised tone. “It’s tonight. Maybe she will come. It’s also a good place to pick up information.”

Mikhail lowered his voice to a low growl. “That’s a good thought, Cousin.” He looked down at himself, patting his jacket, than looked inquiringly at Boyar. “I don’t have another suit.”

“You can’t fit into my suits.” He threw his hands wide apart. “You are too gross.” Boyar knew his cousin no longer had plans to beat him up, so he relaxed again. “Is she a police officer, too? If she is, maybe the French flics know where she is. You could ask them.”

“I can’t go to the police.”

“Corruption, eh? The two of you. Up to your necks. I thought so. That’s why no French police. Right?”

Mikhail’s voice went up in volume again. “I did the right thing when I was a child, beating you up. Maybe I should do it again? You want me to beat you up?”

Boyar smiled. The giant needed him. He was not going to be attacked. “Okay, so if it is corruption, it’s none of my business. Does she have any friends?”

“We can’t go to them.” Mikhail lowered his voice. “Okay, maybe we go to them as a last resort.”

Boyar poured himself more pastis. “Courage is a valuable asset to have. Too bad I don’t have any. You go; I stay.”

His giant cousin started to get up, his voice rising again. “Now I remember you beating me up when we were kids. I don’t speak French, dwarf. I need you with me. However, since you are not coming, I may as well get even.” He towered over Boyar. “Stand up. I will only hit you once!”

Boyar had stretched it as far as he could. He retrenched hurriedly. “Wait! I have a solution. You pose for me.”

“What?”

“At no charge. I don’t pay, so I take you to the meeting or whatever as your fee for posing.”

Gruschov looked at him suspiciously. “I don’t take my clothes off for a man.”

“I don’t need to see your ugly body.”

Mikhail refilled his own glass with a double shot. “I agree.” He gave Boyar a last, grim look. “But any funny business, and I remember how miserable you were to me as a child.”

He smacked his fist into the palm of his hand for emphasis.

T
he man walked across the street without hurrying, unlike the other pedestrians. He was disappointed. A light sprinkle, barely enough to call a rain, had arrived to spoil his plans to sit for an hour at the seaside. He had become used to water reflecting the light.

The house had spoiled him. Walking down the steps to his cove, dropping his clothes without a care, then taking his daily swim to visit his Madonna of the Waters. No, not a Madonna. Madonnas had small babies. His lady was too sexual to be placed in a religious light. No, his was a woman who gave him a daily kiss to remind him how lovely it was to provocatively touch, and be touched by, a Venus, his “Siren of the Waters.”

He’d had many women, too many to count, too many to remember. And all of them were a part of his Siren of the Waters. It was always the same. Like her, when he finished with touching them, he went away, never thinking of them again, never really caring until he needed another. At the beginning, even as it started with a new one, he knew he would walk away, sooner rather than later.

Objects, all of them. Actors on his stage. Ugly, beautiful, no matter. Some stayed longer; only one of them had stayed for years. They had not had a sexual relationship but they had enjoyed setting the stage together and now she, too, was gone from him.

The rain stopped. He looked up. Still overcast. Not a good day. He walked on, into the old quarter, entering the small restaurant that served
socca,
a local dish he liked. The man took a seat, as was his custom, away from the windows, next to one of the walls, allowing him front and rear views. Then he motioned the waiter over, ordering a glass of red wine and the plate of
socca
he had come here for. While he was waiting, he reviewed what would happen this evening.

The Manager and friends would arrive at the party between 2000 and 2100 hours. The title Manager had not been used; but how vain and stupid to announce their arrival time giving their real names to the press. Hubris. They would mingle at the party, showing the world their trappings of wealth and privilege; then they would leave for the night taking the short trip to their “nests.” They would confer among themselves; they would think they had arranged their futures. The man grimaced. Their plans were incomplete. He was here now.

The waiter brought the glass of wine, than came back a moment later with the
socca.
The man nodded his thanks, took a small piece of the
socca
with his fingers, glanced at it to make sure it was the right color, then fed himself.

Time enough to determine what he would do. It was never hard to find a way to kill. It was the drama of the situation that was difficult, the choreography that everyone would remember. Events like this should never be casual affronts. Death needed to be staged as an event, as in Shakespeare or Ibsen’s plays.

He ate another bit of
socca,
then sipped at the wine. The police officers, they were another matter. Together they would present a problem, again not in killing them, but in the end result of the killing. What would the audience think if he removed these objects from the stage all at once? What would the public’s reaction be to conjoining their killings with the killing of the Manager and the Manager’s associates?

He ran the taste of the
socca
around his mouth. For some reason, the
socca
did not taste as good as he remembered. Unevenly fried? Too much oil? Well, it was a fast-food dish.

He laughed at himself. All these years, all that money, all that luxurious living, and he still liked the occasional taste of food that was barely out of the gutter.

He drank the last of the wine, laid the money to pay for his meal on the table before the waiter had time to even prepare the bill, then walked out.

The overcast was lifting. Good. Maybe there would still be some sun today? It would be a shame to waste the opportunity to sit in the warm sun for even a few minutes.

J
ana had tried to find work that would pay enough to support herself and then still have a little left over to send to America for her daughter’s upkeep. They had not dismissed Jana from the police force. Instead, she had been suspended indefinitely pending a departmental hearing. Each time the hearing was scheduled, for one reason or another it was delayed again. Not that she minded. Any hearing would have a forgone conclusion: She would be terminated, her career ruined.

So she did not push for an adjudication. Rather, she hoped it would be delayed until a new regime came in. Perhaps then events would move in her favor. Jana did not have great hope, but she fastened on the only one she had. Jana did have one ally: Trokan. His hand had to have been at work in securing the continuances. Trokan was trying to buy time for her.

Jana worked in a bakery in the early morning hours and a tannery in the afternoon. She had entered the same informal hiring system that Dano had been in, lower wages for jobs already paying low wages, with no reports filed with the government. She earned enough to keep herself, and every month she sent money for Katka.

Katka had tried calling her mother from the United States until she finally understood, from her aunt and others, that Jana was under further threat every time one of those calls was made. They would be used against her. Eventually, they stopped coming.

On the other hand, Jana did not stop writing. When she sent money to Katka, she used a number of ways to have it delivered. Generally, people she trusted who were going to other countries carried it. They could mail it from outside the country. Once she had used an Austrian traveling through the country. She had even mailed money from Prague under the name of a person she’d picked out of a directory.

The letters she included with the money contained all kinds of information: a smattering of what Jana knew about what was happening with Katka’s school chums, bits and pieces of news of the rising tide against the communists, encouragement of Katka in her school studies. All the things a mother wants to say . . . except news about her father. That would have been catastrophic for Katka.

Dano was on the run. His activism had gone sour for him, as Jana had known it would, ultimately culminating in a botched attempt to rob a truck carrying the payroll for the large steelworks in the north of the country. One of the drivers had been killed.

Before the disaster, Dano had had a small following and had ridden the general wave of dissatisfaction with the government. Everyone loves a Robin Hood. Dano’s three prior successful robberies had all been followed by declarations that he and his group were taking the money not for themselves, but to foment revolution and to do away with an oppressive government. Moreover, he had made sure that some money was distributed to other groups, groups following more normal channels of democratic dissent. And Dano had not forgotten the impoverished, doling out sums to them with a soupçon of anti-government rhetoric. Then came the botched robbery.

The government apparatchiks went into high gear, exploiting the death of the driver. He’d had four children, and his wife and children were featured in the government media for weeks, all talking about how they had loved their father, how kind, generous, and caring he had been to them, how the dead man’s mother had suffered a mental breakdown at the death of her only son and had been confined to a hospital.

Dano was vilified at every opportunity. A supposed mistress surfaced who, she claimed, Dano had forcibly taken from her boyfriend. Later, the woman recanted. There was a purported drunken brawl in which Dano had beaten up a teenager who supported the government. The government procurator claimed that the teenager was underage and should not be subjected to public scrutiny, so he was never produced to verify the facts. Then the usual government informants appeared and were pirouetted before audiences, all of them attesting to various public and private sins. Dano was termed everything from a sexual deviate to a homicidal maniac, capable of killing anyone, who would, if given any further chance, kill again.

A large reward was offered for Dano and his confederates. The circle of repression became more constrictive. Travel restrictions became more severe, roadblocks became routine, suspected dissidents were placed under house arrest or imprisoned. One by one, the few men whom Dano had recruited were seized. The ones who had participated in the robberies with Dano confessed publicly, naming Dano as the ring-leader. All of them expressed remorse, all of them placed the blame for the killing on Dano. The fact that, according to the eyewitnesses, the actual killer of the driver did not fit Dano’s physical description, but clearly fit that of one of the confederates who was screaming the loudest that Dano was the murderer, did not matter. The government had decided.

A small country became smaller and smaller for Dano. Where could he run? Where could he hide any more?

It had turned into morning, and Jana was coming from her job at the bakery when she realized there was a man up ahead, looking back at her. Dirty, grimy from cleaning out ovens, fatigued from working two separate jobs which resulted in broken sleep and no time for the personal matters that everyone needs, she was surprised, even at this distance, that anyone would take an interest in her.

When he began walking, also in the general direction of her home, she decided, making rude noises to herself under her breath, that she had come too close and he had lost interest. Jana had decided to walk to her house, just to take the fresh air into her lungs after working in the bakery where the air was always filled with the fine grains of flour. She was strolling, in no hurry.