the froth and blood off the lips, and we had to change his drawers because of the defecation. I also pushed the tongue back in to get a look inside the mouth. See here,” he said, and pulled open an eyelid. Around the cornea was a field of burst capillaries. “It was the gas, all right. Suicide.”
“And what about these bruises?” I waved a hand at the face.
Markus Feder grimaced. “Somebody hit him, sure, but that was hours before he died.”
“I wonder who,” said Stefan.
“That, Comrade Inspectors, is your job.” He covered the dead man with the sheet.
8
It had no name. Before the war, it had been named after the owner, but he had been shipped off somewhere when his bar was nationalized. Now, it was only CAFE-BAR and, below the sign, on a small white placard, #103. It was the kind of dingy place I would lurk in when I came back from the Front. In these places maimed veterans grumbled into their shot glasses and made menacing noises at anyone who looked whole. For the price of a drink you could learn their stories or see their scars. I had no scars to show but my gaunt body, though I grumbled too.
Stefan wrinkled his nose. There were a couple men in the back corner, hunched in the darkness over their tables, and we could smell them from the door. The bartender looked at us through round glasses, and said, “What, then?”
“Not much of place you’re running here,” said Stefan.
“If you’ve come to complain-”
“We’ve come to ask questions.” Stefan unfolded his green certificate to display the Militia hawk.
I stepped up to the bar. “One of your customers.”
The man flinched, just slightly. My size does that to people sometimes.
“Josef Maneck,” said Stefan. He climbed up on a stool and settled in for a long talk.
Cafe-bar #103’s portrait of Mihai, suspiciously sandwiched between vodka bottles, was blackened by years of smoke. The bartender squeezed a dirty rag, and a few drops fell on the counter. Then he set it down and soaked them up. He looked at me. “Don’t know any Josef Maneck.”
“Sure you do,” said Stefan. “About my height. But thin, very thin. A drunk.”
“Oh,” said the bartender, smiling, still looking only at me. “A drunk. That guy.”
“This drunk’s dead,” I told him.
His smile went away, and he stepped back, holding the rag in both hands. “What did you say his name was?”
“Josef Maneck,” said Stefan.
The bartender took off his glasses. He put them back on. “Maybe.” When I leaned against the bar, he finally looked at Stefan. “Maybe I know him. Did he have a way of blinking? You know.” He blinked a few times to demonstrate.
“When we saw him his eyes were shut,” said Stefan.
He looked at me again, as if I’d confirm it. Then he peered past us at the dark corner. “Hey, Martin! Martin!”
One of the two figures shifted a little, the head rose, then swung slowly toward us.
“Martin, is your friend dead? The one with the blink.”
I could just make out his features in the darkness-pink eyelids, wide mouth, high cheekbones. His face sat still a moment, then his lips parted. “Josef?” His voice was like gravel in a ditch.
“That’s the one, Martin,” said Stefan. He walked over. The second drunk, deeper in the blackness, didn’t budge. “Did you know he’s dead?”
“Josef?” Martin repeated.
I kept an eye on the bartender.
“Come on, Martin.” Stefan stood over him now, his wide gut level with the man’s face. “Why don’t you tell us about your friend.”
“He was crazy,” the bartender whispered.
I turned to him. “How’s that?”
“That man was trouble.” He picked up his rag again. “Started fights all the time. Isn’t that right, Martin?”
Martin, by Stefan’s belly, closed his pink eyes and considered it.
“Did he start fights, Martin?” asked Stefan. “Is that what your friend did?”
There were pumpkinseeds in a dish on the counter, and I collected some in my hand. “Was he a good fighter?” I asked the bartender. “Did he win his fights?”
“That nut?” He shook his head. “Never. He was crazy. He’d start a fight, then get brutalized. Every time.”
Stefan’s voice: “What do you say, Martin? Could you have beaten him up?”
“He was a nut, all right.” The bartender adjusted his glasses and looked at me. “So how’d he die?”
“Come on, Martin. It’s your friend we’re talking about! Give us some help.”
I chewed on a pumpkinseed, but it was soggy, so I spit it out in my hand and dumped it back into the dish. I had heard enough, and the familiarity of this place disturbed me. It was all so obvious; there was no reason to be here. Josef Maneck was a drunk who had reached the end of his tether. He got into a fight and lost, like every other time. He stumbled back to his apartment and, faced with the reality of where his life had brought him, decided to finally end it. He turned on the gas and sat on the kitchen floor. I had seen enough of his kind to know it was the inevitable end.
Stefan was squatting beside the drunk, a hand on his frayed jacket, shaking to keep him awake. “Come on, Martin. You can do it. Tell me about your friend.”
I scratched a mosquito bite on the back of my hand.
“Martin, tell me, did you kill your friend? Is that what happened? You can tell old Stefan.”
“I’ll be in the car,” I said, but didn’t know if he heard me. As I left, the bartender washed out the dish where I’d dumped my chewed seed.
9
He was in there a while longer, but on the drive back only said that there wasn’t anything to be learned from an alcoholic like that. We were in agreement.
Leonek had finally arrived at the station. He and Emil and Chief Moska were over by Brano’s desk. That in itself was strange; no one spent time with Brano Sev. But through them we saw a tall man with a thin mustache leaning back against the desk, his long legs crossed at the ankle. His top half was animated, arms moving around in his well-tailored jacket, smiling, speaking in heavy, grinding syllables. He had a horrendous Russian accent.
Chief Moska, though, looked as weary as ever. I’d watched him aging since I joined the police force during the German Occupation, back when his particular bureaucratic genius found a way to hide Stefan’s and my war records; he saved us. And then, when the Russians marched in and we were renamed the People’s Militia, his hair went gray overnight. He waved us over. “Meet Mikhail, guys.”
The Russian stood up to shake our hands. He did it somewhat stiffly, but winked at me as he gripped my fingers. He didn’t wink at Stefan, and I’m still not sure why.
“Mikhail Kaminski,” he told us both.
“From Moscow,” said Moska, and I think we all noticed then, if we hadn’t before, the similarity between our chief’s name and that capital. He seemed almost apologetic about it, his self-conscious smile revealing his two missing teeth on the left side. “Mikhail’s here for consultations.”
Brano Sev sat at his desk as passively as usual. Mikhail Kaminski was here to consult with Sev, no one else,
