disinfectant-and waited.
Emil unwrapped the wrench and placed it on the counter. Roberto had cleaned it off well. “Can you tell us who you sold this to?”
“Perhaps,” came the quiet answer. The beginnings of a smile creased his lips. Then he looked past Emils shoulder and his smile faded. Terzian was holding out his Militia certificate. “Comrade Inspectors,” he began again, louder. He squatted behind the counter and pulled out a thick book filled with writing: dates, names, numbers. When he spoke, his uneven teeth flashed. “Do we know when the tool was purchased?”
“Before the twenty-fourth,” said Emil.
“Of this month?” He sounded vaguely disbelieving. “Between sometime and the twenty-fourth of August? Any time?”
Emil shrugged.
The ghost sighed and bent over the book, lining up the wrench so he could read the raised ten-digit number on its handle. He used a long fingernail to scrape part of the number clear.
Terzian leaned close. “I see there’s still blood on that thing.”
He withdrew his finger as if burned, breathing shallowly through his mouth. But he wiped his hand on the side of his coat and went back to it. Another nail drew down the page, checking sales, one by one. Terzian lit a cigarette and wandered to the far wall beneath a framed picture of General Secretary Mihai, colored lightly by fading paint. It was an older portrait, pre-1945. Back when he was still thin and handsome, thick eyebrows and romantic stare-one of the early Moscow portraits.
“I do know some things,” the clerk whispered after a while. He turned a page.
Emil was leaning on the counter. “You know something?”
He raised his head and rested on his elbows, then took off his glasses. Even his tiny eyes had a translucence about them, the lids pink. “In a store, you hear talk. Not that you’re listening, but this is a small place. It’s unavoidable. Then it becomes a duty. You follow?”
“Spit it out,” said Emil.
“Counterrevolutionary talk.” His voice gained volume as he straightened, hands on either side of the book. “They come in here, buy pipes. Metal pipes. What for? They don’t tell me.” He put the glasses back on. “Then they make a joke about the Comrade General Secretary. A joke once about Smerdyakov.”
“The Butcher?” asked Emil.
“Not very funny jokes, if you understand me. Even a joke or two about the Comrade Chairman.” He shrugged sadly. “I have names.”
Emil didn’t know what to say. It had occurred to him that he might receive reports like this-half the neighbors in town, one suspected, had such information and were willing to give it out. But even his own family had had some fun at Mihai’s expense- Grandfather still had his humor about him. This was not his area. Emil had joined Homicide in order to deal with the clearest and least ambiguous issue of social conscience: murder.
Terzian put out his cigarette on the floor, and Emil noticed the smoke had overpowered the lemon in the air. He could feel the other inspector’s eyes on him. He felt the expectation, but didn’t know what he was expecting.
“Talk to state security,” Emil said finally. “There’s one in our station.” He turned back to Terzian. “What’s his name?”
The dark face stared through the smoky gloom, and Emil had no idea what would come out of his mouth. Leonek Terzian blinked. “Sev,” he said quietly, then raised his voice. “Brano Sev.” He gave the phone number.
“Inspector Brano Sev?” The clerk was fidgeting now; he glowed. Emil recognized the name too: from The Spark, the inspector commenting on the democracy of socialist justice.
The round peasant’s face, little black eyes, thinning hair. The vulture. That nagging familiarity finally had a name.
“You mean the German hunter?” asked the ghost.
Famous, even. Brano Sev, named a Hero of Socialist Endeavor a year ago for his part in the arrest of a band of ex-SS hiding out in the Canal District. Nine men had been rounded up at once, accused of horrible war crimes, given speedy trials, prisons and executions. This moderately famous man sat across from Emils desk, waiting to pluck the Crowder case from him.
Terzian was unimpressed by the clerk’s knowledge. He pointed at the book. “Get the name of our fucking suspect, or I’ll take you in for destruction of state property.”
Another smile: thin, yellow teeth separated by shadows. “But I’ve destroyed nothing.”
Terzian walked back to the wall, where the portrait of the General Secretary made Mihai’s eyes too blue to be true. He took it down, walked back, and smashed it against the counter, shouting, red-faced: “That’s fifteen years in the swamps, comrade! Do you need any help getting my information?”
The clerk dropped to his book and rattled through the numbers at an alarming speed. Terzian returned to his post by the door and lit another cigarette. Emil remembered the small, hard fist. The groin.
Then the clerk was nodding, his eager smile trembling. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Here it is, here’s your man. Janos Crowder. Yes, Crowder.” He took off his glasses again, his voice hysterical. “That’s your man, comrades. It’s your man!”
CHAPTER NINE
Goes against my best judgment, but here it is, an inch of advice.”
Terzian’s words came with the smoke that was whisked out the open window. He turned left, south toward the station, and raised a brown index finger from the wheel.
“You’re an inspector now, you don’t have to be a sweetheart. You break something. You put the fear of the state into them. It’s how you get results.” He squinted at the road ahead and took another drag. “You kiss them and treat them like equals, they’ll shit in your mouth.” He made another turn and craned his head at a beautiful young woman in a summer dress emerging from a pharmacy. “It may not be your socialism, but it’s the only thing that works.”
This was the most he had ever heard from Leonek Terzian’s lips. It was not what he had hoped for-some dictate on tough- guy tactics-but he accepted it as a small, fetal victory and smiled into his collar.
Brano Sev’s poverty-stricken face nodded passively as Emil explained that an equipment merchant might call with some information. It was probably nothing, he said, but you never know.
Brano Sev’s cheeks were marked by three brown moles. Emil now clearly remembered his grainy newsprint features beside a headline: labor with valor! sev brings in the cowards.
“What kind of information?”
Emils stomach tensed. “The man was vague. Counterrevolutionary, he said. Jokes? Yes, offensive jokes.”
Brano Sev leaned into the edge of his desk, looking nothing like a Hero of Socialist Anything. The apple cheeks made it wrong. Emil wondered if those boy’s cheeks had made it difficult for him to be taken seriously in this most serious of all professions.
Sev held up a finger for Emil to wait. Then he unlocked a deep side drawer. He hefted it open and revealed hanging files stuffed with papers and photographs. He motioned with an open hand. “Do you see these, Comrade Inspector?”
Emil hesitated, then nodded.
“Each of these files,” said Brano Sev, “represents an individual living in our city whose central aim is to undermine our way of life. Do you understand what I mean by that?” Tension built beneath his calm voice. “For example-a simple example-there is a man living in the Fourth District who receives regular payments from the Queen of England. These come wrapped in brown paper, hidden behind a loose brick on the rear wall of the Lenin Gymnasium. Once a month he receives these payments. What for?” His flat, round face turned up toward Emil, and he opened his hands. “He passes information about his munitions factory. Do you know how we came to discover this man?”
Emil didn’t, and his immobility signified this.
