Zagreb Cowboy (13 page)

“We can do business.”

“Great. So, you want shot of the
BMW
. Can I assume there is something, how shall I say this . . . tricky about the sale?”

“You can assume it’s tricky. The car’s stolen.”

“Ah. I like a man who doesn’t beat around the bush. Because if it was a legit sale, I was going to warn you that there are many places you could get a better price for it. Many, many places.”

“I’d like to trade it in for something that is legit, has all the right documentation. If you have something.”

The man thought hard. “I’ve got something, but unfortunately, it’s not the same calibre car.”

“Does it run?”

“Runs perfectly.”

“Is it falling apart?”

“Excellent nick.”

“So what’s wrong with it?”

“It’s a Renault 4.”

“A Renault 4?” Della Torre was incredulous. He was offering to trade a
BMW
for a farmer’s runabout, a car even less fashionable than a Yugo, though he had to admit the Renaults were much better built. And with a top speed somewhere around seventy kilometres an hour and what were effectively motorcycle tires, it wasn’t much of a getaway car.

“A Renault 4. But all the papers are pristine. They ought to be, it’s my car,” said Fresl.

“A late-model
BMW
coupe for an ancient Renault 4 is hardly what you’d call a deal.”

“Oh, I’d throw some money in too.”

“How much?”

Fresl thought for a little while and then said, “Two hundred thousand.”

“I take it you’re not talking Deutschmarks.”

Fresl almost choked with laughter. “That, my dear sir, is probably the funniest thing I’ve heard this month.”

“So what am I supposed to do with two hundred thousand sheets of toilet paper?”

“It’ll give your ass something to laugh at. I’m afraid, as a patriot, I can only deal in our country’s currency,” he said. “On the other hand, I can direct you to some
bureaux de change
that offer favourable exchange rates.”

“I’m sure you can,” della Torre said sourly. Once he had been fleeced by the money-changers, he figured he wouldn’t get much more than two thousand marks. He doubted the Renault would be worth as much again. Clearly Fresl was taking advantage of him. He shook his head and thought,
What’s the world coming to when people no longer respect even secret policemen?

“Do I take it the deal is not agreeable to you?” Fresl asked.

“No, it’s not that. Look, I’m not going to haggle. It’s not even my car, so hell, a Renault 4 and two hundred thousand dinars is more than I had this time yesterday.”

“Excellent.” Fresl held his hand out and della Torre shook it again. But he stayed in his seat.

“Just out of curiosity, what are you going to do with it?”

“Ah, trade secrets.”

“Come on. Who am I going to tell?”

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. We’ll put Greek plates on it —”

“Greek plates?”

“Sure. A guy drove up with a vanload of them and adequate blank paperwork to make the cars legit.”

“Wouldn’t the Greek licensing people be able to cross-reference against their records?” Della Torre reached over the desk to flick ash into the ashtray, but it just rolled off the heap onto the floor.

“Greek records? You are pulling my leg. The Greeks make us look like Germans. As far as I can tell, the Greek licensing archives are a dry well into which they drop any official paper the goats won’t eat. As long as the documents are filled in properly and have the right stamps — and our van driver brought the right stamps — then the papers are legit.”

“Won’t it seem suspicious when Zagreb is full of expensive cars with Greek plates?”

“It would be if we resold the cars in Zagreb. But we don’t. We have drivers who take the cars up to Austria or Germany, where we sell them. The Germans take the Greek documents, change them into German documents, and presto, they’ve got legit cars and we’ve got Deutschmarks . . . which, we, ahem, change into our national currency.”

“Naturally.”

“Naturally.”

“So, before I forget how this works, let me run it back by you to make sure I understand. You take German cars we’ve imported. Put fake Greek plates on them. And sell them back to Germans.” Della Torre admired Fresl the way he might have admired a well-executed painting. Worth millions.

“We’d do it with Zastavas and Yugos too, but for some reason the Germans prefer their own Mercs and Beemers. Volkswagens and Audis in a pinch. Opels aren’t worth the effort.”

Della Torre shook his head again. Socialism might have been a crap system, but at least you knew where you stood. If you were one of the chosen, you got to choose. If you weren’t, somebody made the choice for you. Capitalism, on the other hand . . . well, it meant selling stolen German cars with Greek plates back to Germans.

Fresl unlocked a drawer in his desk and pulled out a stack of dinars. Della Torre didn’t bother to count them. He handed Fresl the chain of Strumbić’s keys. Fresl separated the one for the
BMW
from the rest.

“This one I can use. But until I figure out how to ship apartments from Zagreb to Munich, these keys you can have back.”

Della Torre shrugged and put them in his pocket. He gave the
BMW
a fond stroke as he passed.

“Nothing of yours in the car?”

“Nothing.”

“In that case, let me introduce you to your new love,” Fresl said, waving della Torre towards three cars that at first sight looked like abandoned wrecks. On second sight it was two wrecks and a red Renault 4.

“You know how to drive these, with the gear lever on the dash?” Fresl asked as della Torre got in.

“My father has one.”

“So your father knows how to drive one. What about you?” He gave della Torre a big smile. Almost as if he felt bad about fleecing the secret policeman. “Key’s in the ignition. Every day I pray somebody will steal it. And what does God do? He replaces it with a Beemer.”

“I see this has only half a tank of petrol. Any chance of topping it up as a way of thanking God?”

“I’d love to, but I’m an atheist. Good Communist upbringing.”

Della Torre pulled the door shut and had turned the ignition key when a thought occurred to him. He slid the window forward.

“You don’t happen to know anything about some Bosnians in a big Mercedes saloon with Greek plates?”

“Might do. What colour is it?”

“Blue. Cream interior. Smells straight out of the showroom. Driver’s called Besim.”

“Sure,” Fresl said cagily. For once his smile had left his face. “Why, what do you want to know about it?”

“Your car?”

“Maybe I’ve got a share in it.”

“Going to Munich?”

“Vienna.”

“Not anymore it isn’t. It decided to become a bit of landscaping near Samobor. Maybe God’s an atheist too.”

Della Torre put the car in gear and pulled away from the garage, sounding as if he was in a sewing machine on wheels.

I
T HAD BEEN
a long morning, and his brain was starting to dull. He was snapped back into alertness by the two marked police cars on either side of the one-way Avenue of the Yugoslavian National Army, about a hundred metres from his apartment.

Someone was pulling out from the cobbled pavement between two plane trees by his front entrance. It appeared the driver had tried to pull into a parking spot but was now being made to reverse by an officious-looking pedestrian. Della Torre would have bet every last dinar in his pocket he was a plainclothes cop. The woman trying to park was having none of it. Even in those days of gloom and uncertainty, good parking spots in central Zagreb came at a premium. So there was an impasse and the usual chorus of car horns and waved fists as a jam built up on the street.

The woman got half out of her car to remonstrate with the man on the pavement, who was holding his hands in front of him, palms towards her, miming a pushing motion. A truck driver tried to pull around her but misjudged the passing space he needed, effectively boxing the woman in. She’d have to pull forward to let the truck pass, but the cop on the pavement wasn’t letting her. Della Torre couldn’t help but feel this stupid farce was a metaphor for Yugoslavia, but he couldn’t quite decide who each of the three actors was playing.

As he sat back, waiting for the situation to resolve itself, he started counting the blue Zastavas clustered in front of his building and on the pavement opposite. About six years back, the Zagreb police had bought a whole assembly line of blue Zastavas to use as unmarked cars. Now the first thing anyone thought on seeing a blue Zastava was “unmarked cop car.”

Once traffic started moving, della Torre let it carry him along. He wasn’t chancing going back to his flat.

He drove on at a leisurely speed, turned the corner, and passed a pair of marked cars, one on either side of the road. No one paid him any attention. He carried on, as calmly as he could.

Of course, it could have been just a coincidence. Maybe someone had forgotten to pay a speeding ticket. After all, could Strumbić really have got out of the cellar and set the Zagreb police on him in a grand total of what, fourteen, fifteen hours? Then again, Strumbić was full of surprises.

There was a time when della Torre would have been best off going straight to his office, where he’d have the protection of the secret police apparatus. In the old days, the
UDBA
would jealously guard its rights and those of its employees. Normal police couldn’t touch them. They wouldn’t have tried.

Della Torre remembered a middle-ranking
UDBA
officer who’d got a tiny bit drunk one afternoon at a countryside inn not far out of town. He’d been drowning his sorrows over some domestic disaster and became obstreperous, eventually chasing out the rest of the clientele and smashing a couple of chairs. When the proprietor finally had had enough, he called the local police.

It was bad luck for the cops that they were young and dumb farmers’ boys. They dealt with him as they always dealt with difficult drunks, and then, when he’d beaten his head against their knuckles long enough, they arrested him for assaulting an officer.

It would have been an understatement to say they panicked when, on reaching into his wallet for the money to cover a fine and an additional gratuity for the call-out, they found the
UDBA
man’s official ID. One fled to a wine hut in the woods. The other two drove him to the nearest hospital and then knelt by his bedside, weeping and praying, until the man’s
UDBA
colleagues arrived.

Those colleagues took the rural cops off for questioning, where the farm boys learned the answer to a question they’d never realized existed. Namely, the difference between amateur and professional assault.

They served eight months in an
UDBA
prison, after which it was hard for them to find anything other than menial work, on account of the political black mark against their names. And much of the menial work they did find, they couldn’t do, because not all their bones had healed straight. It took the
UDBA
a fortnight to track down the cop who’d scarpered into the woods, whereupon he suffered an unfortunate but unspecified fatal accident.

The irony was that the
UDBA
officer who’d started the whole fiasco was arrested even before he’d got out of his hospital bed. He’d long been under investigation for his part in an export fraud. He’d needed the money to keep his wife off his back. It was her nagging that had driven him to drink and to overstep even the
UDBA
’s relaxed approach to corruption.

But times had changed. These days della Torre wasn’t so sure how much obeisance the police would give to the
UDBA
. He suspected not much. The regular police had become the Croatian government’s militia, while the
UDBA
were agents of the enemy federal state.

And the men in front of his building clearly weren’t the
UDBA
. They were ordinary Zagreb cops.

Della Torre drove to Irena’s. There too he saw a blue Zastava, parked on the corner of the narrow road that wound its way up the hill past her building. As he passed, he spotted a marked car further up the hill. Bottling operations in front of his place and his wife’s. Nice.

Della Torre drove around for a while, gathering his thoughts. But it was like scooping sand with a rake. He stopped at a phone box and rang the hospital. It was a long shot, but sometimes Irena was at the desk writing up notes; if she wasn’t, there might be somebody to take a message.

The phone rang for a long while. He hung up and tried again. It was the fourth go when somebody finally picked it up.

“Yes,” said the exasperated female voice.

“Could I speak to Irena della Torre?”

“No.”

“Can you get a message to her?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I can’t because I don’t know where is she. She not back from lunch yet.”

“What do you mean she isn’t back from lunch yet? It’s halfway through the afternoon.”

“You’re telling me. Maybe she gedding her hair done,” the woman said sardonically.

Every morning, Irena did a fine caricature of an Albanian nurse in her department. “Doctor,” the nurse would say with an utterly deadpan expression, looking up from one of the fashion magazines she always had on hand, “you are young woman. Your hair looks awwwfoool. Ged it cut.”

Maybe this was her.

“Okay, well, thanks anyway,” della Torre said, hanging up.

Irena was not in the habit of being late for work.

He called her apartment. This time, the phone only rang twice.

“Yes?” Irena sounded strained. There was a warning in her voice.

“Mrs. della Torre?”

“Doctor,” she said, not letting on she recognized his voice.

“I’m afraid you are mistaken. I’m not a doctor,” he said, playing the game.

“But I am.”

“My apologies, Dr. della Torre, this is the pest exterminators. I understand you have problem with vermin,” he said, putting on a rural accent.

“You can say that again. This isn’t a good time to arrange an appointment, though.”

“When would be good time to call back?” There was a long pause during which he could hear a muffled conversation in the background.

“I’m a bit engaged for now. How about in forty-five minutes, but be prompt because I need to be at work by four o’clock. Otherwise you’ll have to call at lunch tomorrow.”

“We’ll try to call back by four o’clock then, We’re the firm that work for the cathedral, by the way.”

She hung up.

Della Torre cooled his heels for a while, picking up a pastry from a café to occupy himself. He left half of it; the synthetic flavour reminded him that cakes had tasted better under Communism.

Around twenty minutes before the agreed time, he ducked into a phone box not far from the cathedral, noted its number in his little notebook, and then went to another one on slightly higher ground, from which he could see the first phone box without much difficulty. They’d made this arrangement years before, in case of emergency. Working for the
UDBA
made della Torre always think in terms of contingencies.

When he spotted her, he popped a coin into the slot and rang the number.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. What’s going on?”

She gave him the rundown with the same precision as when she wrote patient notes. Pithy and relevant.

She’d come back from the hospital for lunch. It was late and a bit of a walk, but she liked to do it; it helped clear her head. And the food at the hospital canteen might be cheap, but it was also inedible.

She knew there was something odd when she saw the man leaning against the wall opposite her building. On that side, the road was narrow, and there was no pavement, so it wasn’t the sort of place where anyone loitered.

But she shrugged it off and went in. The door to the flat was shut but unlocked, which made her think della Torre was in. Instead she was confronted by three strange men, two looking so much like cops it was as if they were from central casting; the third looked like some German fantasy of an
Übermensch
.

The
Übermensch
spoke, without bothering to introduce himself. “Where’s della Torre?”

“You’re speaking to her,” she said.

“Your husband.”

“My ex-husband.”

“I didn’t know you were divorced. It’s not in the files.”

“We’re not.”

“So he’s your husband,” said the
Übermensch
, who seemed to be running things.

“Don’t tell me: you’re a marriage counsellor.”

He ignored the comment. “Where’s della Torre?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has he been here?”

“When? I’ve been at the hospital.”

“Last night.”

“He was here.”

“What was he doing here?”

“Sleeping, mostly.”

“Why? I thought you said he was your ex-husband. Doesn’t he live in the apartment on the Avenue of the Yugoslavian National Army?”

“Yes.”

“So what was he doing here?”

“Is there a law against a husband spending a night with his wife?”

He regarded her as he might have done an unusually big moth in a museum exhibit. “Your neighbours reported noises coming from the balcony late last night.” He pointed to the building next door.

“Oh, I see, so you’re here investigating whether there’s been a burglary. Well, if you let me have a look around, I can tell you if anything’s missing.”

“What time did he arrive?”

“I don’t know. I was late back from the hospital. He was here, smoking. On the balcony. Maybe the neighbours heard him exhaling.”

“What were you doing at della Torre’s flat this morning?”

“Who told you I was at my ex-husband’s flat this morning?”

“Never mind. Why were you there?”

“I went to pick up some of his things.”

“Did he ask you to?”

“No. He was asleep.”

“What did you collect?”

“Some clothes.”

“Why?”

“Because the ones he was wearing smelled and he didn’t have any spares here.”

“What happened then?”

“He got up, and then I assume he went to work.”

“Why do you assume? Aren’t you sure?”

“I assume because I also assume that if he were at work, you wouldn’t be asking me where he was.”

“What did you do when he left? Did you go to the hospital?”

“No, I went to my office at the university.”

“We’ll be able to verify that with the reception there, will we?”

“No, because I used the back entrance. I usually use the back entrance when I come from this direction. Saves me having to walk all the way around.”

“So there’s a key for the back door that you’ve got?”

“No. The back door’s broken. It’s been broken since I was a student. You go down the basement around the plant works, and there it is. Would you like me to show you?”

“And there’s nobody who can vouch for the fact that you went to your office?”

“No,” she said.

“What were you doing there?”

“That’s where I keep most of my medical books. Look, you’re taking a very close interest in my morning. A closer interest than I took in it. You wouldn’t mind telling me why or what you want with my ex-husband?”

The
Übermensch
signalled to one of the cops.

“Do you know what this is?”

“It looks like a leather coat. It’s a very nice leather coat. Would you like fashion advice about what goes well with it?”

“Is it your husband’s?”

“I doubt it’s my ex-husband’s.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, for one thing, he can’t afford it. And it’s pretty clearly the wrong size, he’d look about as elegant in that as you would in a bustier.”

“A what?”

“Something uncomfortable that ladies wear to look shapely for their men.”

“Oh.”

“That was a joke, by the way.”

“Why is the coat in the apartment?” he pressed.

“I don’t know. Did you ask it?”

“When do you expect to see della Torre next?”