“Dora?” Leonek sounded doubtful. “Why do you want that son of a bitch?”
“We need him.”
Leonek gazed ahead at nothing in particular. “Did you hear about Liv Popescu?”
Emil shook his head.
“They took her to the holding cells north of town, and she used her prison clothes to hang herself from the pipes.” He turned at the next corner.
A bruise on Emil’s cheek was beginning to itch. He scratched it. His organs felt hard and cold. Outside, parade banners were on the ground, and crowds of drunk soldiers were mindlessly trampling political slogans.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
They crossed the Georgian Bridge and parked near the arched footbridges leading into the labyrinth. It was quiet here-no farmers shouted out their vegetables, and no engines rumbled- so their footsteps on stone, and the fifth step of Emil’s cane, echoed before them. They walked in perpetual shadow. Faces peered through slits in yellowed lace curtains, and some pensioners came out to their stoops to watch Emil and Leonek pass. In place of engines, there was the quiet murmur of water smacking stone. Cats in windowsills kept track of them.
After a few turns, they were in an area of the Canal District Emil had never been to before, not even when he was younger and curious. “We aren’t lost,” he whispered involuntarily; it was a question.
“You’ll get to know this place well,” said Leonek. He whispered too.
It was quickly apparent that everyone knew they were Militia. Hesitant glances and mistrusting frowns shot their way. The prostitutes smiled at them, because a single pair of policemen with law enforcement on their minds wouldn’t have a chance back here. Emil noticed the young one who had whispered to him before. Her freckles peeked out from beneath powder, and when she whispered to one of the veterans he caught sight of her milk teeth. She moved now with the smooth grace of the broken, as if she had nothing left to lose.
A redheaded, barefoot hooker cut the distance between them in half. “There’s four of us, Comrade Inspectors.” Her voice was smoky and rough. “That’s a mighty good time.”
Leonek smiled and touched her arm lightly. “Maybe we’ll come back for that, Beatrice. But this time it’s easier money.” He took a few bills out of his pocket.
She folded the koronas until they were a tight, tiny package she could slip into her mangled stocking. “How easy?”
“Your brother. Where is he?”
She pouted playfully. “ Inspector. What kind of sister-”
“Just business, Bea. It’s always just business.”
Dora’s address was in the center of the Canal District, in the grimy back passages where water trickled loudly-Emil heard the occasional high pitch of rats. It was a small courtyard still named after a dead king, and Dora’s front door was a soft, waterlogged plank that stank of the sea. There was a worn hole instead of a handle. They climbed the narrow, damp stairs where light came in through a shattered window, and knocked at one of three doors at the top.
There was scurrying inside.
“Dora! It’s Terzian. Want to open up?”
The movement stopped, but then they heard a faint shhh from someone’s lips.
“I just want to talk, Dora. It’ll be worth your time.”
A lock snapped, and the door opened a few inches. An eye appeared from the gloom, looking at them jerkily, one and then the other. Then the door opened the rest of the way, and a thin, graying man in his forties stood in boxer shorts and an undershirt. He had a thick white scar along the side of his neck. “What is it?” His voice was high like a child’s.
“Some help,” said Leonek. He showed more bills, but returned them to his pocket. “Can we come in?”
Dora’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of help?”
“We need you to set up a meeting. Simple stuff.”
Dora retreated into the room, where a fourteen-year-old sat in a corner, her bare, scratched knees pulled to her chin. Her makeup had been smeared by old tears, but she smiled at them.
“Hanna,” said Dora. “Get out of here.”
She looked at the visitors again, then at him, and went into the next room. When she stood up, Emil noticed the black needle marks on the pale inside of her left thigh, and maybe that was what did it.
Dora sat on the edge of a cracked coffee table, bare feet spread, and stuck a cigarette in his mouth. “Who’s your kid?”
“Inspector Brod,” said Emil, but he was no longer seeing clearly. What he saw was that first week, the humiliations, the fighting, the gunshots. He saw the unfounded, nearly fatal suspicion all over again, felt it grinding in his gut. The suspicion caused by this one wretch. He saw the abused girl who had just left, saw the freckled hooker who was once a girl and now completely broken, and he saw Liv Popescu and Alana Yoskovich rotting in their graves because of the same kind of sickness. He saw those faceless schoolgirls who now walked the Capital as women who had known more of this man than they ever wanted. Emil’s hands were ice cold. “Inspector Emil Brod,” he said, making his identity completely clear.
He waited for it. Dora lit a match, but the flame didn’t make it to the cigarette. He had no doubt learned what had followed his stab in the dark- There will be a spy…
His hand lowered again, and his face fell slack.
Emil swung before he could gather himself, fist connecting with bony cheek. Dora’s feet lifted from the floor a moment, then he fell back off the coffee table, sprawled across the floor.
Leonek’s shock paled him.
Dora propped himself up with a hand and wiped his nose with the other. It came up with blood. “What the fuck is this, Leon?”
The urge was all over him now: to jump on Dora and beat him unconscious, to take a blade to him. He couldn’t even remember why he hated this man, but the hatred was running him now. For a moment he was sure that if he killed Dora he could get them all back. Janos Crowder, Aleks Tudor, Irma. Lena. Maybe even Filia. Ester.
“Fuck!” shouted Dora.
Leonek found his voice, but all it said was “Emil y “ pleading. Emil’s breaths were shallow and loud as he walked out.
From the mossy square he could hear Dora saying that he wouldn’t be treated this way, not by anyone, for no amount of money, and he wasn’t going to help a single fucking cop again, it wasn’t worth it. Then he was quiet while Leonek counted out koronas and tried to convince him otherwise.
Water dripped from a ledge, and between the stone houses he thought he saw things moving. It was early afternoon, but cold and damp.
Scraping. Their voices again.
Hanna looked down at him from an open window. Her smile was still there-a vacant, bruised one. She had wiped her eyes, but instead of repairing them the makeup had streaked to her temples.
“Is Hanna your real name?” he asked in a high whisper.
The smile deepened into her pale cheeks. When she nodded, her dark, stringy hair bobbed around her ears.
“Where are you from?”
She glanced back into the apartment, then hissed, “Presov” “I knew a girl from there,” he lied.
She leaned farther out the window, and he saw how thin her shoulders were. She reminded him in some unnamable way of Ester. “Really?” “A beautiful girl.” “More beautiful than me?”
“Hardly,” he said, and a mist of color came into her cheeks. “How long have you been in the Capital?”
“Six weeks,” she said. “And three days.”
“Are your people here? Your family?”
She shook her head.
