“Your chief said to leave it as it was.” The young cop held his cap in his hands, shaking his head. “Never seen anything like that before.”
The body was arched backward over a sturdy, coarse coffee table that looked like it had been made in the provinces. It was cracked and bent in the middle where the body had hit, but was not separated.
That was peasant craftsmanship for you…must be torn apart.
The wrench had been used to beat the face until it collapsed into pulp, then had been used on the back of the head, leaving tiny pink skull shards sprinkled over the carpet. Emil tried not to breathe through his nose.
He had seen plenty of dead bodies before-on the Arctic ship, in the fields and trains between Finland and here-but nothing quite like this. Not a corpse inside a wealthy man’s living room. The location separated it somehow, made it more appalling. Boats were for dead people. Trains and open fields. Not living rooms.
“Get some air in here, will you?”
The policeman opened the French windows. A hot breeze took some of the stink with it. Emil joined him and they looked out over the city, where clay and tin rooftops led into the distance.
Reluctantly, he went back and kneeled by the wrench. The steel was caked with blood, but there were no fingerprints, only gnarled threads. Once white, they were now a crusted brown. Gloves.
He went through the photographs that had slid off the opened piano. Behind framed, cracked glass was the Magyar face- prominent brow, gaping nostrils-he now remembered from clippings in The Spark. The dead man smiled broadly at a soiree with none other than General Secretary Mihai. Some of his best songs had been for their dashing partisan leader-now an overfed politician: a “thick Muscovite,” as they were called in private. The chubby arm of the interior minister hung over Crow- der’s shoulders in another picture.
Emil went through the other luminaries on the carpet, who presented the dead songwriter with star-shaped trophies and plaques which, despite the black and white, were plainly gold, their stars a glossy red. He wondered idly where these trophies were stashed, and how much they were worth. Shaking hands surrounded him on the floor, clapping hands and hands presenting valuable awards. And everywhere: big toothy smiles.
Then it came to him. A flush of understanding.
He had walked into a trap.
At first he didn’t believe it-the realization was too easy, too sudden. But he thought it through. It made more sense than he would have liked. Moska had given him this case to get rid of him.
He looked at the photo of the General Secretary again.
Janos Crowder was connected; he had friends at the very top. This simple fact made the case, by default, political. In political investigations, nothing was allowed to go wrong. At the first sign of a mistake, Emil would be ripped off his first case, maybe even kicked out of the department. The security inspector with the metallic gaze and peasant’s features would be handed the Crow- der case. He was probably sitting at his desk now, browsing through files, waiting for it.
His hands went cold, and the General Secretary, smiling, fell with Janos Crowder to the carpet. Emil patted his thighs to get the blood moving again. He stood up.
“Tell me about him,” Emil commanded the empty room.
The young policeman came out of the kitchen, licking butter off a finger. His peaked cap was set back on his head. Emil didn’t know how anyone could eat with this smell.
“Crowder. Tell me about him.”
“Comrade Janos Crowder,” the policeman recited from memory. “Songwriter of note, from Budapest originally, moved here just before the Patriotic War. An infantryman on the Front, suffered a shrapnel leg, Royal Medal of Honor. After the Liberation he produced a remarkable variety of songs honoring the country.”
“Remarkable variety?” asked Emil.
The policeman shrugged. “One hundred thirty-seven songs in two years.”
Emil nodded. “Remarkable. Anything else?”
The policeman sighed the last detail: “Married to Lena Hanic in 1945.”
“Has she been notified?”
“No, Comrade Inspector.”
“Good. I’ll do it myself. You’ve taken photographs?”
The policeman returned to the kitchen and came back with a large, cream-colored folder. It was heavy with prints.
“Who found the body?”
“Building supervisor. Aleksander Tudor. Was bringing up the mail.” He nodded at the vanity beside the door, where some envelopes lay. “Decided to leave them inside. This is what greeted him.”
Emil surveyed the demolished room, trying to remember what else to ask. In the Academy there had been simple checklists that alleviated the need to think things through, but he had gone blank. “Have the supervisor come up on your way out.”
“Youre done with me?”
Within the policeman’s voice, Emil thought he heard something like surprise. Surprise that the interview was so short. So incomplete, inept. “You have the wife’s address?”
The policeman paused, eyes shifting across the floor, deftly bouncing around the corpse.
“Call it into the station,” said Emil. “They’ll leave it on my desk.” Even as he said it, he wasn’t sure he believed it.
Three envelopes, all bills. He opened and read each in the vain hope that something would float to the surface, but the first two were nothing but the mundane finances of life. An expensive tailor on Yalta Boulevard had made Janos Crowder a suit and was waiting for his payment. A greengrocer two blocks away was becoming impatient for his fee. The third, though, was from the Aeroflot office down by the Tisa, the itinerary for a flight to Berlin that was leaving this morning. Emil checked his father’s watch- 12:40. A flight that had just left.
“Comrade Inspector?” A fat man stood in the doorway, his pink arms spilling from a white sleeveless shirt stained by cooking grease and sweat. When he breathed, Emil could hear it across the room.
“Comrade Building Supervisor Aleksander Tudor?”
The supervisor nodded, lips pressed tight as he edged his way inside, peering at the body. His nose flared involuntarily.
“Close the door, will you?”
He did.
Emil held up the envelopes. “Since when do building supervisors deliver mail?”
“Two days. The mail was just sitting there.” His voice had a pleading note to it. “They might have been stolen. I worried.” His eyes fell again on the body, as though gravity pulled him there. Emil stared at the supervisor s white face until the eyes flickered back.
“Tell me what happened when you discovered the body. Every detail.”
Aleksander Tudor tried to breathe steadily. “Yesterday. Night, yes. After dinner.”
“So you were in your apartment.”
“The dogs.”
“Dogs?”
Aleksander Tudor nodded eagerly. “They were barking outside my window. Like always, but this time.” He closed his eyes then opened them. “This time I went to shoo them away. That’s when I noticed. His box. Comrade Crowder’s. Full of letters.” His loud exhale sounded choked. “Two days. Very irregular. But there was no answer,” he said. “To my knock.”
“And you had heard nothing before this?”
“Only the dogs.”
“No noise? No sounds of struggle?”
Aleksander Tudor shook his head stiffly.
“And you just came right in?”
“I have the key, Comrade Inspector.”
“You couldn’t slide them under the door?”
The supervisor turned toward the gaping, drafty space beneath the door. He turned back to Emil, mouth working but forming no words.
“Comrade Supervisor,” said Emil, slipping into the authoritarian tone the professors had made him practice
