Pass your money on?”

She leaned forward and put a cool hand on his hand, the one that held the notepad on his knee. “Dear, with money you can do anything.”

“And you,” he began, hesitation stalling him. “You kicked him out?”

“Like a White Guard,” she said, leaning back and flicking her fingers in a swatting motion. “Right out of my heart.”

Irma arrived with two more drinks. He finished his first quickly-it chilled his teeth and made a cavity ache-and handed the empty glass back. Irma was silent and efficient and soon gone. Emil reached into his inside pocket. First, his fingers touched the garter, then moved on to the photographs. She looked interested as he handed them over.

“Do you know these men?”

“Sit over here.” She touched the sofa with her thin hand. “We’ll see.”

He brought his drink with him and sat so he could look over her shoulder at the pictures, but it was awkward. His arm was in the way. So he stretched it over the back of the sofa, behind her head. She didn’t notice, or pretended not to. She went through the ten shots, the simple story of the meeting. He was surprised that she didn’t smell of liquor. She smelled fresh.

“I want to apologize,” he said under his breath.

“For what?” She was also whispering. Their proximity demanded it. Her eyes were very big, their brown speckled details clear.

“Your father, first of all. I didn’t know about him.”

“We don’t mourn the rich,” she said, and he couldn’t find the sarcasm that should have been in her voice. “Second of all?”

“The phone call. I told our people not to call you; I’d wanted to deliver the news in person. They’re a bunch of fools.”

“But you’re not, are you?”

She had said this softly, her eyes very serious, and he couldn’t answer.

“It’s all right,” she shrugged, and he finally caught a whiff of the morning’s scotch. “Though they were surprisingly rude about it.”

“Rude?”

“Abrupt. The man said, This is the Militia. Your husband’s been killed; we’ll be there soon. That was it. I thought it was a joke. This is the level of humor in the country now. But then I was sure someone was watching me. You know the feeling. Eyes in the windows. It was frightening. It made me think of my uncles-my father’s brothers. They were shot in Vienna in ‘forty-two. Executed in the street. They were rich too, all the brothers were. But that didn’t save them.” She frowned and shook her head. “At first I was scared, but by the time you arrived I was just angry.” A pause. “I’m sorry about that.”

He was filled with a sudden, hard hatred for the entirety of the police division, the People’s Militia, the state.

“You’re all right?”

“What about the pictures?”

She pointed at the taller of the two men. “I don’t know him, but this one, the shorter one,” she said, shifting her manicured finger. “He’s a friend of Janos. Was!’ She brought the finger to her lower lip, tapping. “Well, I don’t know about friend. Acquaintance. They met when we went to his house for a dinner party. Hateful stuff,” she said. “Those people are all bravado and asskissing. They both spoke Hungarian, I remember, Janos and him, so they got along. A politicos, that’s what he was. An untouchable in a society built on equality. Nice!’ She smiled, and her finger- he was watching it closely-came away from her lips damp. “What’s his name? Jerzy. Yes. Jerzy Michalec. Lives not too far away, a few miles farther west. Did you know he was Smerdyakov?”

He thought he hadn’t heard her right. “Smerdyakov? The war hero?”

“I’d never met a hero in my life,” she said. “Janos told me. Michalec doesn’t advertise it. A politicos likes to be quiet, not raise too many heads on his way to the top. He’ll only use his nom de guerre when he needs it.”

He opened his mouth, not knowing what to say. The man was almost a figment of his imagination by now. He hardly believed he existed. Now he was celluloid in a dead man’s apartment.

She was looking at him, and when she spoke all levity had disappeared. “I wasn’t just thinking about my father today, Inspector. I was thinking about you.”

He started to say Me? but didn’t.

“I’ve lost two men, and I’ve never been without one. And when I look around at all the men I know, there’s only one I can see clearly. It’s funny, I don’t understand it. There’s only one man I want to trust.” Their foreheads almost touched, and her face emanated warmth. “Are you sure,” she whispered, “you don’t want a bath?”

He did. He wanted that bath more than anything in his life. A bath and a thick, fresh towel on the upper floors of this magnificent house. He wanted her most of all. He didn’t know what to make of Lena Crowder, if he should be ashamed of his desire for this widow or this unexpected desire for him. No-he knew. He should feel shame and self-hatred-she was weakened now by all her losses, and he was just an animal-but he only felt the pleasure of her coarse, broken life beside his.

“I’d like to,” he began, then pursed his lips and shook his head, trying still to convince himself. “Another time.”

“Maybe there won’t be another time.” She smiled and touched his cheek with her cool fingertips.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

He was feeling unofficial, unkept. He didn’t want to fill out paperwork that would be tossed aside by that lumbering fool of a chief, and he didn’t want to put up with the station’s leers at his intoxication, or Terzian’s indifference. Instead, he drove across the Georgian Bridge and parked in the small gravel lot at the edge of the Canal District. He pulled the brake and rolled down the window. There were two other cars-eastern models coated with the dust of the provinces-and a farmer tying feedbags to five horses and talking loudly to them. He noticed Emil, tied the last bag, and wandered over an arched, stone bridge into the labyrinth.

Emil brought his hand to his face and rubbed, thinking of Lena Crowder’s lighter-than-air gowns and Jerzy Michalec: Smerdyakov: the Butcher. Grandfather’s vision of the perfect grandson.

It was hot. Gravel crunched beneath his shoes.

The buildings ahead were piled upon one another, centuries covering swamp gasses and filth. Not even fire trucks could attack the tiny, winding footpaths of this city in miniature, and when fires sprang up, sparks shot across the narrow canals and slowly ate the Canal District. It was only a matter of time before heat and decay wiped out all of it.

He crossed the arched bridge and glanced up at high, curtained windows and mossy stone walls. He emerged onto small squares where children shared cigarettes and threw yellow wooden balls against the buildings, the thump echoing down the footpaths. Some squares were wide, dominated by flat-faced, cracked churches where old women in black congregated and chatted among themselves. He smelled piss. This was the unso- cialized part of the Capital, where each corner hid some illicit entrepreneur or a moment of spiritual reverie. He saw a grandmother on her knees, praying to a hole in a stucco wall that held a rough, childlike portrait of the Virgin.

He could still hear the thump, streets back, of wooden balls, and the lapping of water on stone. The wet air was very cool in the shadows. The narrow walkways could not accommodate anything except a noontime sun, and it was still only morning. It was what he imagined Venice to be like, as the Croat had described it before he tumbled overboard, drunk, to his Arctic death. He had been a refugee from Split and, after crossing the Adriatic, had hidden in a friend of a friend’s wet Venetian palazzo. He called the city a stone angel and described in awed, exaggerated detail the porticoes and canals and piazzas and arched footbridges. He held his hands close together to show the narrowness of the passageways. Everyone in that small, cramped cabin nodded.

The Bulgarian had already stormed out; he didn’t believe a word. The Croat, he said, loved to be the center of attention and would make up anything. Who could walk through a passage like that? It was true, but no one else cared.

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