“Slow,” she repeated, patting his head like a dog’s.
“Water?” he whispered.
“Will they let you?”
“I’ve had nothing all day.”
She frowned. “That can t be good.” She set the cheese and bread on top of the newspaper. “Let me find out.” She was gone.
Grandfather emerged from one of his corners and informed Emil again that he’d been unconscious for a week. “We thought,” he began, but like the nurse he couldn’t finish.
“I’m all right now.”
The light made Grandfather’s flesh pink and more healthy- looking than it really was. “You’re a hero,” he said earnestly, but Emil didn’t answer. The silence between them was awkward, so after a while Grandfather cleared his throat. “This is a great pride. For you. Serving your country this way.”
“Serving the great collective,” said Emil, finally smiling. But Grandfather didn’t smile. Emil felt the old man’s loose fingers in his hand, squeezing, kneading his palm. The door opened. Grandmother stood, like an angel, holding a glass of cool water.
Clarity came with Leonek Terzian. Emil had slept off and on, and in the morning, after breakfast, he read the paper. There were trials beginning to unravel in the east, in Moscow, and airplanes still flying in the west. On the second page was brief coverage of Palestine; there was more fighting in the Holy Land. Only at home was everything ideal: record crops and the lowest crime rate in memory. Then Leonek arrived with the lunch. He slouched in the chair beside the bed to better reach Emil’s tray. He took a bite of bread and dragged an index finger across the wide block of margarine, white wrinkles collecting over his print, and sucked it with his small, dark mouth. Emil ate mashed potatoes and waited.
Leonek swallowed. “Chief talked to you. Didn’t he?”
Emil nodded.
Leonek seemed satisfied. He took another bite of bread. “He’s right, you know. About everything. It’s been a mistake, and I’m not the only one whos sorry. There are-do you mind?” He took a slice of red apple from Emil’s tray. “You have to understand.”
“Bureaucracy,” offered Emil.
Leonek shook his head. “Rumors. That’s the problem. We get them in the office every day.” He pursed his lips in reflection, and Emil found his easy manner annoying. Maybe he hadn’t noticed, but Emil had almost died. Leonek shrugged. “Sometimes the rumors catch, sometimes not. We heard a rumor once that Sergei, the man you replaced, was going to be killed. That rumor didn’t catch. Then he was dead.” Leonek finished the apple slice and shrugged, as though Sergei’s story was commonplace. “Then, a month ago, a rumor did catch. From this guy, an informer I keep down in the Canal District. The one I was talking to when you came by that day, the interview room. A weasel named Dora.”
“Dora?”
“A man with a woman’s name,” said Leonek, nodding. He took another wedge. “I met him years ago, some nasty business.” He stopped, as if he had lost his thread, then began again: “Anyway, that’s when he started informing. But three months ago, the district police picked him up for black-market pork. You know the stuff. Rotting right through, covered in flies. Real shit.” He waved a hand. “So when they brought him in, he said he had information for Homicide-for me, since I’m the one he always deals with.”
Emil shifted his arms painfully and brought water to his lips. He was still so parched.
“Dora told us that sometime soon-he didn’t know when-a spy would be brought into Homicide.” He paused. “Preparation for a shake-up.”
Leonek watched closely, but Emil was not reacting yet. He was waiting. Leonek finally gave some more:
“Come on, you know how things are. Berlin. And Vienna and Italy, I hear. We’ll be fighting the Americans soon-even the Big Comrade in Moscow is uneasy. He’s seeing enemies everywhere. It’s like the thirties all over again.”
“How would Dora know this?”
Leonek took Emil’s water to rinse out his mouth. “He knows everything and everyone. He gets jobs out of town, in the mansions, or the bars here in the First District. He listens. We never ask where it comes from because he wouldn’t tell us. Eighty percent of the time Dora tells us the truth.”
Hearing it explained made it made it no less incomprehensible. “You thought I was a spy.”
“Right out of the Academy. Why wouldn’t we?”
In the Academy he had been taught that informing on a fellow officer who chose to disregard the tenets of Marxist justice in favor of opportunism was a duty. But he knew no one who believed that outside the classroom.
“And your Opa. Yes, we know about him. Old-time lefty. Privilege home in the Fifth District. You know what happened last year? Three policemen were put away for life. A snitch working right beside them.”
“And Brano Sev? What’s he?”
Leonek frowned suddenly. “Take a look-no one talks to him. He’s nobody’s friend.”
He had finished the whole apple and was now picking at the potatoes. Emil doubted this oaf’s regret went nearly as deep as his stomach. He’d known men like this in the Arctic, men with consciences the size of sunflower seeds. Little more than dogs. “What about the case?”
He took a moment to swallow. “What case? It’s dead.”
“Not for me, it isn’t. Tell me what Dora told you.”
Leonek’s tongue cleared food from his palate. “Listen, Brod. Jerzy Michalec is a member of the Central Committee. He has friends everywhere. Why do you think you’re lying in here? We know about limits in the People’s Militia.” He gave a final swallow. “Don’t worry about your record. We’ll erase the whole case.”
The banality came over him: the erasure of two men’s murders, as though Janos Crowder and Aleksander Tudor had never existed. “You can’t do that.”
“It’s why they give us erasers.”
“Tell me,” said Emil. “Dora.”
Leonek leveled his gaze. “Twenty percent.”
“What?”
“What I told you,” Leonek explained patiently: “Eighty percent of the time Dora tells the truth. Twenty percent…” He shrugged. “The story about you was made up. After you were shot I tracked him down. He didn’t know anything about you, not even your name. All he knew was he needed to come up with a story to save his ass.”
“What did he say about the case?”
“Nothing. He told me he’d heard a gunshot near the water, in the Canal District. On his way he tripped, made some noise- probably because he was scared-and then heard something being rolled into the water, then someone running away.”
“That’s something,” said Emil.
“It’s nothing,” Leonek repeated. “Nothing, no identification, no clues beyond what we already know, and it’s all for a case that doesn’t exist. Got it?”
The nurse came for the tray and complimented Emil on his healthy appetite. Leonek followed her out with his eyes.
Emil knew he would go back-it was the only thing left to him-but right now he wanted nothing to do with the People’s Militia.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The nurse s name was Katka, and she hovered over Emil through the daylight hours, provoking brief erotic fantasies to accompany his naps. The doctor finally appeared again after a week to remove the stitches from his chest; the ones in his stomach would have to wait. They left behind a dull, throbbing ache that settled into his ribs and back, particularly when he struggled to the corner of the room in his soiled, gray robe, practicing the art of
