The Bridge of Sighs (15 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

*******************

O
n the edge of the Fourth District, just east of the old administrative center, Victory Square had been built in the midst of defeat. Luftwaffe bombs had decimated this northern bank of the Tisa, then Soviet bombs expelled the Germans and turned the rubble into dust. By Liberation, it was a vast square of negation, a noncity inside the Capital. But General Secretary Mihai, with the financial backing of Comrade Chairman Stalin, had other ideas. He repaved the roads and began building. He crisscrossed the area with wide boulevards, their names reflecting the names in every other city under the Empire s shepherd eye. Liberty, Gorky, October, Progress. And from the rubble that had symbolized the nations history of inevitable military defeats, a huge concrete intersection had been constructed around the statue of a strong man and woman with rolled sleeves sharing a torch held aloft. The intersection had been named Victory.

Gazing past the spastic windshield wipers, Emil realized with some dread that they hadn’t agreed on a corner. He left the car in Victory Park and used his cane unsteadily along the wet concrete. He had no umbrella, and his hat quickly flooded as the gusting rain came at a sharp angle into his face. Between two light poles, a wind-tossed banner proclaimed:
unity industry collectivization—onward the future!

He moved gradually around the endless edge of the roundabout, stopping when the traffic blared before him. His cane splashed in puddles as he crossed each of the eight roads. He passed the wide steps leading up to the one government building here, topped by the sculpture of a hawk at rest—the Central Committee chambers, its rear facing the river. The wet, cold air was hard on his weak lungs, and when he finally saw Lena stepping out of a taxi on the far corner of the square, he was out of breath.

She was in a crisp, rain-speckled overcoat that looked like it had never been worn before. A wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses hid her face. She tensed visibly beneath her black umbrella when she saw him making his way back across the streets, then crossed one in order to meet him sooner.

“I have a car,” he gasped. She followed him silently toward the park. Despite the glasses, he could feel her gaze locked on his cane, on his limping form. He opened the door and made sure her head didn’t hit the roof, then got in on his side, throwing the cane in first. She had taken off the hat and glasses. Tasseled hair and brilliant, bloodshot eyes.

He started the engine to obscure the sound of his labored breaths. The car became hot, stuffy. “You want to tell me?” he finally managed.

She leaned forward, quickly, and placed a small, warm kiss on his cheek. Then she pulled abruptly back. “Drive, please.” He was driving before he had decided to.

He took them westward along the Tisa. He checked the mirror a number of times, and forced himself to twist around to point. “See? We’re not being followed.”

Her eyes followed the line of his finger out the back window and down past the Georgian Bridge. During rainstorms the city’s dust settled and you could see the empty outbound boulevard for miles.

When she spoke, it was a whisper: “You’ve been hurt.”

It sounded good to Emil. Soft, concerned. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re using a cane.”

“Nothing,” he repeated. “What about you?”

She turned to look out the back again, then sank into her seat. The hot car was unbearable now, and she cracked her window. The wet air hissed. He almost didn’t hear her say, “They’re trying to kill me.”

Although he could not have admitted it to himself, he knew she was going to say this, or something like it. It was the inevitable end point of her behavior. It was no small part of his adoration. He could smell the alcohol on her breath, and her paranoia was apparent. He turned north into the maze of medieval Fifth District houses and parked at the curb. He shut off the engine, then painfully faced her. “
They?”

“Him, they—I don’t know.” She opened her silver cigarette case and waited for him to light the one she put in her mouth. She exhaled toward her open window, but the smoke rolled back inside. “They, he, broke into the house. Tore apart the second floor, looking for I-don’t-know-what.”

“When was this?”

“A week ago. Well, we
found
it a week ago. After I saw you last, Irma and I went to Stryy.”

“Stryy?”

“Up north,” she said. “I told you. I took my father’s ashes back home. Then, when we came back a week ago, the house was a wreck. I called you. Immediately. But a rude woman said you were on leave.
Where were you?”

He was uncontrollably pleased that the reason she hadn’t called him before was that she hadn’t been in town, and that as soon as she returned she had tried—but he only said, “Go on.”

“The woman patched us through to the district police, and they poked around. A bunch of
imbeciles,
of course.” She clutched her cigarette, filling the car with her smoky breath.

She shot him a nervous smile, and he felt a tremor of pain in his side. She was really very beautiful. “What did they take?”

“Nothing”
She stared at the dashboard. “Not that we could find. No jewelry, money, nothing. Irma spent the whole week cleaning up, such a job she did. Then the phone call came.” She took another drag, but forgot to even try for the window. A cloud hung between them until Emil opened his own window and the cross-draft sucked the air clean. Water dripped from the window frame to her overcoat, but she didn’t notice.

“A call?”

“Same as before. The same voice. The same one who called when Janos was dead. It wasn’t your people after all.”

Figures passed in the rain, women and men wrapped against it, jogging from doorway to doorway. The storm was beginning to let up. He noticed a clear drip forming on the tip of her pale nose, and fought the urge to wipe it.

“It, he said. He knew I had
it.
He said that
it
didn’t belong to me. Said I should hand
it
over before I ended up like Janos.
That’s
what he said.”

Emil started the car and took them around cracked walls and wet pedestrians. He didn’t know how much to trust. He wanted to trust it all, but she was drunk and frightened and maybe a little manipulative. Even so, he wanted to believe every word that came from her lips.

“And you don’t know what
it
is?”

“If I did, I’d hand it over, wouldn’t I?”

“That would depend on what it was.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the window.

“When did the call come?”

“Last night,” she said to the window, and when she brought the cigarette to her lips her hand shook. “I need a drink.”

They were beside the Tisa again, driving west. “You said Janos came back to you before he died.”

She nodded.

“And he didn’t give you anything? No gifts? Nothing?”

When she looked at him, a familiar, ironic smile had appeared. “Janos thought
he
was gift enough.”

They were passing half-built blocks that gave way to large, open plains.

“You’re taking me back!”

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He could ask someone to stay at her place. Leonek, maybe. He owed Emil at least that. Someone who could fight back if necessary—not an invalid. “This person wants something. Right?”

“That’s what he said.”

“If he kills you he won’t have it.”

She closed the window. “That didn’t help Janos, my dear inspector.”

The rain had let up, but the long driveway to the Crowder house was marked by black puddles and long tire tracks. The stone walkway was dark with wetness as his cane tapped along it. He could hear birds, but couldn’t see them in the low trees surrounding the house. She walked ahead of him, and all he could think of were the dreams he’d had of her while lying in the hospital.

“You’re going to have to tell me about that cane, you know.”

“I thought as much.”

The door opened by only the pressure of her hand. She stopped and stared. When her eyes focused, she caught her breath and bolted inside. He hobbled up to join her.

Irma was lying at the foot of the staircase, arms hanging out like logs beside her, trying to breathe through a smashed nose and swelling cheeks. She blinked behind blood-stained strands of hair, and they could barely hear her whisper as Lena lifted her head into her lap:
“He’s still here”

Then they heard it: the bark of an engine outside, a high whine, tires spinning in mud.

Emil moved as fast as possible, jumping into each step, ignoring the pain, and saw a short, blue car—a make he wasn’t familiar with—spraying mud as it rocked through the driveway, laboring over lumps and puddles toward the road. Emil dropped his cane and ran after it. The pain ground inside him, but he pushed it down. The car slid sideways, then caught again. He was sprinting now, and the engine whined in his ears. Dark blue, no license. He was close enough for the mud to spit across his face as the tires climbed forward. Then the pain jumped again, into his chest, suffocating him. He opened his mouth, but all that came was mud. He was almost at the fender. Then he wasn’t. There was something on his chest, squeezing the air out of it. The car dwindled in the distance, turning onto the main road, and his vision dimmed. He dropped into the mud, unable to move, gasping, his lungs two useless bags heaving inside his bullet-scarred chest.

Lena helped raise him, her narrow shoulder under his. She didn’t notice the mud smeared all over her coat, or that her shoes—her feet, now that her shoes had become stuck a few paces back— were deep in it. Nor did she mind the tracks they made across the marble, the sitting-room rug, and all over the sofa she dropped him in. She was remarkably strong for her size.

“You’re bleeding!” Lena kneeled beside him and unbuttoned his shirt.

He’d already known it; he could feel the bite where each suture in his belly had ripped loose. She pressed a soft white towel to him, and it came up red. He took the towel from her hands and used it on his face.

“You need a doctor.”

“Irma needs a doctor.”

Irma, on the chair, was wiping her own face with a towel.

“Tell us about it,” said Emil.

“Not yet, Irma.” Lena stood up. She looked lost, touching everything. “First, yes. First, a doctor.” She reminded Emil of shell-shocked soldiers—he’d heard about this from veterans. The bounciness just before their explosions.

But he looked at Irma instead. He had his window—it would soon close. “Now,” he insisted. “If you can.”

Lena’s brief hysteria passed, and she sank, cross-legged, to the floor. She was still in her dirty raincoat, her bare feet thick with mud.

Irma talked out of the side of her mouth, as though the right side were filled with pebbles. The man had come soon after Lena went to meet Emil. He wore sunglasses and knocked at the front door. He had been caught by the rain, he said, and had lost a tire on the main road. “But he didn’t look so wet,” said Irma. “I should have seen that.”

“And you let him in?” Lena asked.

She shook her head. “I remembered what you’d told me. I asked him to wait, but he didn’t wait.” The man shouldered his way inside and began rifling through Lena’s cabinets and drawers. Irma followed him, explaining that he would have to leave, that her mistress would return soon with a policeman. The intruder finished with the drawers and moved on to the bookshelves.

They looked around. Half the books from the shelves covering the wall lay scattered on the floor.

“I put a hand here.” Irma placed her fingers on her own shoulder. “He slapped me then. He had white gloves. Soft. And he asked me where it was.”

“It?” said Lena, “it?”

Irma nodded as vigorously as her blood-puffed face would allow. She didn’t know what
it
was. She told the man as much, but he began beating her, and as his fists struck he repeated the question:
Where is it?
Finally, he gave up and returned to the shelves. He took each book and flipped through it very quickly, as though speed-reading, catching any slip of paper that fell out and looking at it before going on to the next title. He shouted sometimes out of frustration:
It’s here, isn’t it?

Lena looked at Emil, then at her maid. “And he never said-”

“Never.” Irma s grainy voice had acquired an edge of impatience.

There was little more to the story. When Emil’s Mercedes rolled up the drive, she had tried to make it to the door, but the intruder was on her again. He beat her face and chest until she collapsed on the stairs. Then he ran to the rear of the house, where he had parked his car.

“Can you describe him?” asked Emil.

“Tall,” she said resolutely. “Light hair, old eyes.”

“Old eyes?”

“Wrinkled. Dark.” She closed her own eyes. “His face was thin. He had—I think—a German accent.”

“German?”

She looked at him again with wet, red eyes. “I’m sure. German.”

Emil took out one of the nine photographs still in his pocket. He showed it to her. He pointed at the man who was not Smerdyakov, the one who had said:
Comrade Emil Brod?

“Oh God.” Her bruised head nodded with conviction.

“Go,” Emil said. “Both of you pack some clothes.” He felt himself sinking.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

*******************

I
n the car, he finally admitted to his gunshot wounds. A few words, nothing more. Lena was beside him, and her face quickly exposed her feelings—it felt good to see the deep concern that she finally controlled by speaking: “Christ, Emil. You almost died.”

He shrugged, but even that movement hurt.

He was given three stitches to reclose his wound, and Irma was given, for a substantial bribe to the Unity Medical head nurse, a private bed. He drove Lena to the Brod apartment. They said nothing the whole way, but the silence was a warm, easy thing. Despite the cane, he was able to carry her small leather suitcase, and he set it down just inside the door.

“She’s staying here, maybe a few days,” he told Grandfather, who was grinning in his chair, wet-mouthing an unlit, frayed cigar.

Lena tried to hide her disappointment as she looked around the meager home. Grandmother was still out.

“A girlfriend?” Grandfather asked when Lena was in the bathroom washing up.

“A widow,” said Emil. “A case.”

“Some widow.” He stuck the cigar back in his mouth. “You look like hell.”

He was leaving stains on everything he touched. “I tried to run down a car.”

“A motor car?”

Emil nodded.

“Youre a goddamn dog, that’s what you are.”

By the time she emerged from the bathroom, Lena’s disappointment had become a buoyancy he could see in her step, in her smile, as if she had decided this was not to be a sacrifice, but an adventure.

“Do you have anything to drink?” she asked the room.

“Girl after my own heart,” said Grandfather as he grunted out of his chair and went for the liquor cabinet.

It took an hour to heat his bathwater, and by the time he emerged, bruised but clean, toweled dry and in fresh clothes, Grandmother had returned and made dinner. She gazed over her plate at Lena. When she spoke, her voice was thick with admiration: “Who else
lives
out there? Near you.”

Both Lena and Grandfather were tipsy by now. She smiled slyly at her drinking partner before answering. “No one, not
really.
A lot of
bores”
She choked down more cabbage soup, which, for an instant, made her easy demeanor stumble: She looked as though she had discovered new teeth. Then she swallowed. “Rich people are as dull as proles, I can promise you that.”

“You’re kidding me,” said Grandfather, and it took a moment before Emil realized he was being sarcastic. “But aren’t they all filled with charm? With
poise
⁷
.”
He sipped from his spoon daintily and stared at Lena. He was plainly charmed, head over heels.

Lena settled her gaze on him. “Comrade Avram Brod,” she said in a suitable Russian accent, “the wealthy are butter in our churn.
Delicious.”

Grandfather burst out laughing, suddenly red-faced, healthy again. Spittle shot across the table, and Lena laughed too, winking at Emil, the brandy and laughter flushing her cheeks. The old man pointed at Lena, and between gasps said, “This one.
This one.”

*********

He slept on the sofa—or, he tried to sleep. It was difficult, knowing she was only a couple yards away, in his bed. He was distracted, horny, and had to throw off his sheet; he was sweating. He ached everywhere. If he went to her, he could do nothing anyway. Not in his condition. He sat on the balcony, looking out to where a lone woman stood at the water spigots. A dog circled nearby, sniffing the ground around her.

Blackmail. It was the only thing that made sense. Janos Crowder had blackmailed Jerzy Michalec with something that could fit in a book: a document, or a photograph, like the ones he had found. Aleksander Tudor became mixed up in it at some point. There was a German working with Michalec. Maybe he was the deliveryman, bringing the boxes of cash to Janos s door. But at some point Michalec decided he would no longer pay, and instead liquidated Janos.

One pail was full, and she set it down with a thump on the cobblestones, then started filling another.

He tried to think through what he was going to do. There were rational options. Put Lena into protective custody, or keep her here. File a report on the German assailant; he had the man s photograph, after all. He could ask the other inspectors for help, or even advice. They had decades of experience between them.

The dog was circling closer, sniffing out dinner on the woman’s dirty skirt.

Lena was spread under his sheets in his room. The rational solutions left him. He still didn’t trust those homicide inspectors, no matter how many cakes and coffees they brought him. That would take a long time. Maybe he could get advice from them, nothing more.

A few streets away some dogs began barking in an uneven chorus, and the mutt down below stopped sniffing, raised his head, and barked back. Then more dogs joined in, from streets further out, and soon it was all he could hear. The woman down by the spigot was running as best she could with her heavy pails into an alley, and the dog in the square was walking in a circle, backward, barking frightfully at canine armies he heard but could not see. It was a city of dogs.

He knew, all of a sudden, that he couldn’t do it. This was too important. He couldn’t protect Lena on his own.

“Tell me about the shooting,” said Emil. “The one who shot me.”

Leonek sat down, and they faced each other over Emil’s typewriter. He shrugged. “What’s to tell? Tall guy in an overcoat. A hat. You saw him. Right?”

“Briefly.”

Leonek pulled an ankle up over his knee. “He shot you three times and drove away.”

“Did you get the plates?”

“No license. But it was dark blue. One of those Czech models. Streamlined. A Tatra, I think.”

Emil hesitated, remembering. “Was
he
driving the car? Or someone else?”

“Yes. Just him.” He glanced over at Brano Sev working away in his corner, then let his foot drop to the ground again. He leaned forward, voice lowered. “But listen, Brod: This is done. It’s finished. These aren’t the kind of men you want to chase after. You understand?”

Emil noticed a dead roach on his desk and flicked it away.

“You attacked him, and he attacked you “ said Leonek. “It’s over.”

“Listen.”

Leonek held up a warning hand and glanced back at Sev, who still faced the wall, then nodded at the door. “Come on, let’s get a drink.”

This bar was a few streets away, hidden beneath a flat-faced, between-the-wars post office, reached by a door recessed in the sidewalk. Despite the early morning hour, it was filled with the law-enforcement community, He saw judges and prosecutors and even overdressed members of state security, looking much more distinguished and put-together than their own department’s famous-but-sloppy security inspector. The bar was the longest Emil had ever seen, its clean brass fixtures shining. A stiff, white- shirted bartender asked very formally what they would have to drink.

“Two beers,” said Leonek as he tossed coins on the counter.

He helped Emil to a table in the corner, pushing through fat men in suits. They sank into a plush, velvet booth. “
You
come here?”

Leonek shrugged. “Not usually. Tell me what’s going on.”

So Emil did. He sipped his lukewarm beer and related all the details. The man who searched Lena Crowder’s house was the same man who had shot him, a German, and a German was seen around Janos Crowder’s apartment before he died. All roads led to the German. The German led to Smerdyakov.

“How’s that?”

Emil took out the small photos again—worn now, a little damp—and handed them over.

“Where did you get these?”

“Behind Aleks Tudor’s icebox. You recognize them?”

Leonek held one close to his face, then the next, one at a time until he had seen them all. “Smerdyakov,” he whispered, then nodded. “And your killer.” He laid a hand over the photographs, covering them. “Lena Crowder doesn’t know what
it
is? This thing?”

“No.”

“That’s her story.”

“She doesn’t know.” Four Central Committee members made a loud circle near the bar, singing some rowdy song from their youth.

Leonek dropped the photos by his beer and shook his head.“You know you can t touch him, right? He’s not a full member of the Politburo yet, but he’s almost there. He’ll be one of a select twenty. People like you and I can’t do anything.”

“Obviously some people can, or he wouldn’t be murdering them.”

A pause, as Leonek rethought his approach. When he spoke he whispered. “Listen. Jerzy Michalec started
off
as the top man in the Central Committee, back in ‘forty-five. His best friends are the minister of international affairs, the chairman of Party control, and the head of regional secretaries. He eats lunch with Mihai himself. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“He’s connected.”

“No, you goddamn idiot. Michalec
is
the connection. Once he’s a full member of the Politburo, it’s just a few years until he’s nestled beside Mihai, waiting to receive the General Secretaryship.” Leonek leaned back, his voice severe: “When that happens, when Michalec becomes General Secretary, you, my friend, are a dead man.”

They looked at each other across the table. Emil had listened to so little before—he’d understood everything like a child. His cold fingers tapped distractedly on his glass, then stopped. When Jerzy Michalec became General Secretary, there would be no place in the entire country to hide.

“You remember when we brought in Liv Popescu?”

Emil nodded.

“You asked what was wrong, and I lied. I said it was nothing.” Leonek looked down and gathered himself before continuing. “But the case—Cornelius Yoskovich in particular—made me think of my informer, Dora.” He stopped again, drank some beer.

“The bastard who lied about me?”

Leonek nodded morosely. “I first knew Dora years ago. He was a banker—it’s hard to imagine. He had a wife and a daughter. This was a little before the war—summer of ‘thirty-eight—and I was as new to the Militia as you are now. Back then we weren’t relegated to just homicides. It was a peaceful town; we didn’t need a homicide department.”

He paused again, and Emil wanted to ask him how old he was, because to Emil he looked so young, but he had the kind of face that would hide its age until he was a very old man.

Leonek said, “There were accusations at his daughter’s school. Apparently, Dora had been spending his lunch hours there, and he would talk to his daughter’s friends. They were ten and eleven, pretty young. After a while, he invited them out of the schoolyard and talked them into coming with him to a hotel room. He did this with many of the girls. Finally, the girls started telling their families.”

Emil started to speak, but realized he had no question to ask.

“It’s a short story,” said Leonek. “I brought him in on multiple charges of molestation. It was a simple, straightforward case. I hated this man, and I was happy to put him away. It was a good day for me.” He drank some more and squinted into the gloom. “But Dora convinced the royal prosecutor’s office that he had information on illegal financial transactions, some major scandals, lots of them, and they made a deal. He was free.”

“They let him go?” Emil finally asked. “Just like
thatV

“Sure,” said Leonek, shrugging. “Dora’s wife took their girl and left the country—she had family in Switzerland. And the bank, once they learned about the confidential information he’d given out, fired him. His life was fixed from that point. A permanent criminal, a pimp. He lures little girls just in from the countryside. Information is his protection. But he works by habit: I’m the only one he’ll talk to. He’s my curse.” His glass was empty, but he upended it regardless, then set it down. Laughter came from the front. “Sometimes Dora makes the difference between solving a case or giving up.”

“This man is shit.”

Leonek nodded his agreement. “But this is life, my friend. You make it the best way you can. You compromise, and you know when you are beat. But one day, Dora will run out of information, and I’ll be standing over him, with a gun to his head.”

Emil pressed his fingers against his closed eyes until he saw stars. Then he blinked, focusing. “Tell me, then.”

“Tell you what?”

“What you would do now. You’ve been in this for years. A veteran.”

Leonek had a pack of cigarettes that he rotated in his fingers, hammered lightly on the tabletop, then began to open. “Drop it,” he said finally. “It’s a dead case anyway. The chief won’t let you touch it; he takes orders too. He’s a good soldier, but he won’t break any rules for you.”

“I see.”

“Don’t look so down.” He offered Emil a cigarette. “This is too big for you. You’re a cripple, you’ll end up dead. Throw your dear Comrade Lady Crowder to the wolves, and come get drunk with me.”

They lit their cigarettes. The slurred sounds of wasted politicians washed over them.