the girls. Finally, the girls started telling their families.”
Emil started to speak, but realized he had no question to ask.
“It’s a short story,” said Leonek. “I brought him in on multiple charges of molestation. It was a simple, straightforward case. I hated this man, and I was happy to put him away. It was a good day for me.” He drank some more and squinted into the gloom. “But Dora convinced the royal prosecutor’s office that he had information on illegal financial transactions, some major scandals, lots of them, and they made a deal. He was free.”
“They let him go?” Emil finally asked. “Just like thatV
“Sure,” said Leonek, shrugging. “Dora’s wife took their girl and left the country-she had family in Switzerland. And the bank, once they learned about the confidential information he’d given out, fired him. His life was fixed from that point. A permanent criminal, a pimp. He lures little girls just in from the countryside. Information is his protection. But he works by habit: I’m the only one he’ll talk to. He’s my curse.” His glass was empty, but he upended it regardless, then set it down. Laughter came from the front. “Sometimes Dora makes the difference between solving a case or giving up.”
“This man is shit.”
Leonek nodded his agreement. “But this is life, my friend. You make it the best way you can. You compromise, and you know when you are beat. But one day, Dora will run out of information, and I’ll be standing over him, with a gun to his head.”
Emil pressed his fingers against his closed eyes until he saw stars. Then he blinked, focusing. “Tell me, then.”
“Tell you what?”
“What you would do now. You’ve been in this for years. A veteran.”
Leonek had a pack of cigarettes that he rotated in his fingers, hammered lightly on the tabletop, then began to open. “Drop it,” he said finally. “It’s a dead case anyway. The chief won’t let you touch it; he takes orders too. He’s a good soldier, but he won’t break any rules for you.”
“I see.”
“Don’t look so down.” He offered Emil a cigarette. “This is too big for you. You’re a cripple, you’ll end up dead. Throw your dear Comrade Lady Crowder to the wolves, and come get drunk with me.”
They lit their cigarettes. The slurred sounds of wasted politicians washed over them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Grandfather opened the door before Emils hand could touch the knob. He looked confused. “A call,” he said feebly. “Yes.”
“There was a call?”
Emil heard banging sounds from inside. Grandfather s confusion melted into shame. “How was I to know?”
In the bedroom, Lena threw clothes into her bag. She stopped only to shout: “Your grandfather has been advertising me!”
He was shuffling around the living room, shrugging helplessly. “How was I to know?” He stopped and said to Emil, “The man asked, Is Lena Crowder staying with you? What was I to say?”
“You lie” barked Lena, slamming her valise shut.
Emil held up his hands as though his command for calm might be heeded. Lena ripped up the bedsheets angrily, searching for something. Grandmother appeared from her bedroom with a fistful of scarves in dusty, muted colors. She presented them to Lena. “Will these do?”
Lena’s voice dropped an octave. “You’ve been very kind, Mrs. Brod.”
“Comrade Brod to you,” warned Grandfather.
“You wouldn’t know a comrade if he shoved Das Kapital-”
“I was in Moscow!”
“Now,” said Emil as he put his arms around his grandparents’ shoulders and led them into their bedroom. Once inside, they looked at him questioningly. “Wait here,” he said, and closed the door.
He squatted to pick up the cane, then returned to his bedroom. Lena stood up from the bed, arms crossed. She was in a ladies’ suit, narrow at the waist, wide mustard lapels. He lowered himself into a rickety chair, grunting. The beer had ruined his stomach.
“I’m leaving, Inspector Brod. You won’t stop me.”
“I don’t want to stop you,” he said. “Do you have a cigarette?”
She took out her pack, but didn’t have matches. While she went to the kitchen to find some, he wondered whom he knew in the city that she could stay with; Leonek was a choice anyone would figure out. But he knew very few people-solitude had never before been a problem. Those few he could dredge up-Filia, perhaps, and her soldier husband-he didn’t know if he could trust.
Lena squatted beside his knees, lit a cigarette and passed it to him. He took a drag and looked at the box in her hand: American. “We’re both leaving town.”
She picked tobacco off her tongue and waited for more.
“Do you have money?”
She nodded.
“A lot?”
She shrugged, then nodded again.
“No one can know where we’re going, all right?”
“No one except me?”
“Not yet,” he said, and took another drag. “I won’t tell my family, and I won’t tell you. Not until we’re on our way.”
She seemed all right not knowing. She settled on the corner of his bed and finished her cigarette without speaking. She looked at the narrow window and the short shelf of books he’d brought with him when everything with Filia had ended. And then she looked at him, her delicate features betraying nothing, yet hiding nothing. He wondered how she could do that.
Grandfather didn’t like the sound of it. “But where?” Emil told him that what he didn’t know, he couldn’t tell. Grandmother raised a fat hand in farewell. When Emil looked back at them standing in the doorway, Grandfather, in his shame, looked feeble and old and alone.
By eleven-thirty, they arrived at the hospital. He asked her for some money. She reached into her handbag, then looked at him. “What for?”
“Irma.”
She handed over too much. He counted off enough and gave the rest back. Inside, he found the nurse in charge of Irma’s floor. She was a big woman, with a white coat that was stained with old soup. “How long is Irma…” He realized he didn’t know her last name. “A woman,” he tried again, and held a hand at shoulder height. “About this tall. Southerner. Dark hair. Bruised face?”
The nurse let the silence hang between them a moment. “Bobia. Irma Bobia.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Bobia. How much longer are you keeping her?”
She looked through files for a while, and Emil leaned against the counter, watching invalids maneuver slowly through the corridors. He thought of the Uzbek and his bodies a few floors below this one.
“Tomorrow,” she said flatly, and looked back at him.
It was Tuesday. “Can she stay until the end of the week?”
“This is not a hotel.”
The bills were on the counter now, visible under his hand. She noticed. “But it’s a difficult situation,” he said. “She can’t go home now. Not yet.”
The koronas were hypnotizing her. “Not yet,” she mumbled, then: “Friday?”
“Friday would be good.” He slid his hand forward until the money dropped over the edge of the counter and onto her desk.
