“Nothing,” said Emil from the doorway. He noticed the dripping shoe in my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
Back at the station, I called Markus Feder and told him to send his men to pick up the body. “You think I’ve got men here? I’ve got no one. Your corpse will just have to wait.”
16
By Friday we were fully staffed, except for Kaminski, who had mercifully disappeared. But even in his absence I had the feeling he was in some other room in the Capital, trigger finger flicking, calculating my demise. Kaminski’s eyes-Brano Sev-worked at his desk, silent, his back toward us, but he was aware of everything we did. He knew that each of us wanted to smash his head against his steel file cabinets for what he’d made us do at that demonstration. But none of us touched him.
Emil had developed the pictures in his darkroom at home, and Leonek joined us to look them over in a cafe, far from Brano Sev.
Our first choice was still closed, its metal blinds pulled down, so we went a couple streets farther to a crowded, smoke-congested bar on October Square. We leaned on the counter as Emil passed around the photos. “Bad light, a little blurry. But you get the idea.”
We did get the idea. Leonek squinted the blackened human mass, and the smell came back to me, cutting through the living bodies all around us.
There were photos of empty corners, the dry well, and fragments of decadent Roman life underwater, “It’s an empty crime scene,” I said.
Emil drank his coffee, “Except for a shoe.”
“It was outside the scene. And I’m not walking all over the Capital with just a shoe, not when half the stores are still closed.”
“Then we wait for the coroner.”
A table became free, so we took it. Emil asked Leonek how his investigation was coming.
“Not well.” Leonek leaned close, arms on the table. “But I’ve learned a lot. Sergei kept good records of his interviews, and I’ve got a list of names. He had tried to talk to the families of Chasya Grubin and Reina Westreicher, the two dead girls, but they wouldn’t tell him anything.” He frowned at this. “Why would they? He was Russian. So I looked them up. The Westreicher family got out soon afterward, to Austria. The Grubin family-only the brother and the grandfather are still here. The grandfather’s a little crazy, I can’t get much out of him. And Chasya’s brother- Zindel-is in Ozaliko Prison. He’s in for political crimes-a societal menace, they told me.”
“Can you talk to him?” asked Emil.
“I filled out the paperwork two weeks ago, but now-now, I don’t know.” He coughed into his hand and waved to the woman behind the counter for another coffee. “Corina!” he called, but she didn’t notice him. “Sergei interviewed a lot of Russian soldiers, but that was a decade ago. They’re all back home. So, like you, I wait.”
“What about Stefan?” My voice cracked. “Is he helping you?”
He tilted his head from side to side. “Now and then, yes. He’s still working on that suicide.”
“Looks like a suicide to you too?”
“Stefan hasn’t convinced me otherwise. He’s talked to a lot of people, but none of it seems to lead anywhere.”
“But why is he so convinced?”
Leonek blinked at me, as if he’d said too much already. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” He went to the counter and ordered another coffee.
17
Homicide investigations work in starts and stops. Clues move them forward; the absence of clues takes the drive out of them. When this happens, you move on to the next case, or complete paperwork.
Markus Feder called to say he’d received the body but wouldn’t have anything for us until Monday. The waterlogged shoe in my drawer was useless until then. Emil and I had neither another case nor backed-up paperwork, so, to avoid Moska thinking up more paperwork (something he had a great talent for) and to keep myself from dwelling on the train that had by then reached Moscow, I helped Emil pick up his wash from the laundry. We carried the tied bundles to his apartment.
He lived a little farther back from the Tisa than Woznica, but still clearly in the upscale Fourth District. Lena’s money had paid for the entire top floor, for renovations, and no doubt the functioning elevator as well. The view, as Emil had promised, was breathtaking. Red clay-tiled roofs crisscrossed in a jumbled mix that reflected how the Capital had grown over the centuries: piece by piece. I could spot the ragged shards of a couple buildings not yet rebuilt from the war. Beyond were the two spires of the Georgian Bridge and the roofs of the Canal District, speckled by holes. To the left, low plains rose eastward to the Carpathians.
They had lived here for seven years, and after Emil’s grandfather died, his grandmother came to live with them. She had passed away three years back, and since then this space big enough for five families had housed only two people.
We settled into the plush, modern sofas-thick white cushions shaped like boxes-and began to drink. This was a serious thing with Emil. When he first joined the Militia, he had been a child who couldn’t hold his liquor, and a bullet in the stomach had slowed him even more. But eight years with Lena had seasoned him, and now he treated drinking as a respected ritual. There were the thin, openmouthed glasses that felt ready to shatter, the polished tumbler into which he delivered crushed ice with an elegant silver spoon. “You develop a taste for it,” he told me. “The ice has got to be crushed, at least that’s what they say. Then the gin. Wait a minute-it’s got to get to know the ice. Then the vermouth. This,” he said as he shook the mixture with both hands, “is something special. They drink it in New York City.”
He called it a martini, and it tasted like flowers.
“The place I go to ran out of olives a few days ago, but you get the idea.”
I smiled.
The first one put me over, and the second kept me moving. Lounging in that huge living room, gazing at the painting above the radio set-a stern, white-bearded old man-I thought I could get used to this. Leonek had told me once that Emil’s home had always made him uncomfortable, but I couldn’t see why.
Were I not a little drunk, I might have kept quiet about it. But by the third drink, as we were touring the apartment and he opened the door to the darkroom, he asked. I told him everything. He switched on a red overhead light as I talked and touched the prints hung up to dry like clothes. Images of the burned body, snapshots of Lena that made her look younger than she really was, views of the countryside. His face darkened as he listened, the red lights deepening his cheeks. “So I called Moscow. It’s been arranged.”
“What are you going to do when Woznica finds out?”
The gin was making me unconcerned. “Don’t tell. He won’t know.”
Emil waved that away. “A couple well-placed questions, and he knows it all. Have you thought about this?”
“You think I should have handed her back?”
“Of course not. But there are other ways.”
“What ways?”
“Go after him. It’s possible.”
“It’s not possible. He might as well be a politicos.”
“What about papers? You could have gotten papers from Roberto in Supplies. He’s got connections, and he’s helped me out before.”
“It would have taken too long.”
Emil closed his eyes as he considered possibilities. Then he opened them. “Maybe you’re right.”
In the living room, Emil described the effect of the Hungarian uprising on his marriage: “Lena’s starting to go
