The confession tyb-2 Read online

  67

  Vera was in a mood when she arrived. She didn’t tell me what it was, but the mood was evident by her silence, and the way, in bed, she held my big hand up to her face and turned it to see it from every angle. She brought the palm up close to her eyes, as if to read my future, and kissed the hair on the back of it. She smiled, then quickly sank her teeth into my middle finger. The pain shot through me, and I instinctively slapped her, harder than I would have wanted. When she got up on her elbow there was a bright red spot on her cheek. But she was still smiling.

  At the station, Leonek was busy struggling through Kliment’s interview of Boris Olonov, in Russian. “Why didn’t he translate it?” Leonek muttered to himself. “He could have translated it.”

  “Get Kaminski to do it,” I muttered.

  Leonek looked up at me, unsure if I was joking. In case I wasn’t, he said, “Kaminski’s got the flu. That’s what Brano says.”

  Brano didn’t seem to notice his name being said.

  Leonek tried a smile. “Maybe we can get Kaminski for sabotage.”

  Through his open door, I saw Moska eating a sandwich at his desk. “Come in, Ferenc. Haven’t seen you much lately. A bite?”

  I shook my head.

  He set the sandwich down and cocked his head. “I heard about the Woznica woman.”

  “What about her?”

  “That she was found dead in her home village.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Brano,” he said as he lifted the sandwich again. “She was officially one of ours, so Moscow sent a report. Brano didn’t think you’d tell me. Was he right about that?”

  “I don’t know. I would’ve gotten around to it.”

  “Are you going to follow up on it?”

  “Any reason I shouldn’t?”

  “Of course not, Ferenc. It’s your job. I’ll see if I can get some clearance for you to work on international cases. It’ll take a week or two, so wait before arresting him. He won’t go anywhere.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I’m closing down the other investigation. I told Brano this morning. I know you didn’t touch Stefan. He knows it, too.”

  “Thanks,” I said, then looked at him. “Really.”

  He took a bite, pulling his lips back to expose the two holes where teeth had once been, then dropped the sandwich again. “Is there anything you need to talk about? You seem a little weird these days.”

  “You know about Magda and me.”

  “That’s been going on a long time.”

  “It’s worse.”

  His sympathetic smile made me wonder if he, also, knew about Leonek. But he said, “Ferenc, everyone’s marriage is rough. Don’t think you’re alone in this.”

  “I didn’t say I was.”

  “I never told you about Angela and me, did I?”

  “I knew you had some problems.”

  “I don’t gab about it, but it wasn’t pretty. It got bad enough that I started sleeping with some young girl from the administrative typing pool. Exceptional girl. She’s married now, with two kids. Very happy.”

  “Good for her.”

  “The point is, Angela and I finally sat down and talked. There were a lot of things she had never said to me, and a lot of things I hadn’t said to her. Nothing easy about it, marriage. You’ve got to make some sacrifices. How long have you been married?”

  “Seventeen years.”

  “Not long at all. We’ll talk again when you get to twenty-five years, and I’ll have some more advice for you.”

  I grinned. “I can’t wait.”

  68

  Emil asked where I had been the previous day, but didn’t wait for the answer I didn’t want to give. “You should’ve come out with me. I had a grand time talking to old women who didn’t want to say a thing.”

  “In Stefan’s building?”

  “Yeah. And Antonin’s. Nothing of use. But then,” he said, sitting on the corner of my desk, “I started thinking about this Frenchman. This Louis Rostek.”

  “Did you?”

  He looked at me.

  “Go on.”

  “There’s a French school over on Yalta Boulevard.”

  “The one I’m going to send Agnes to.”

  “Exactly. The head didn’t know anything about Louis, but he suggested I check with their consulate. They host parties for French nationals.”

  I sat up. He’d actually been working while I moped in the Canal District. “And?”

  “And I haven’t been there yet. Want to come?”

  It was west of Victory Square, along the tree-lined streets of the diplomatic area. Three identical Mercedes were parked behind the gate, and the guard, a local boy, picked up the telephone in his little guardhouse for permission to let us enter. Then he opened the gate and watched us walk up the stone path to the front door, where another guard stood waiting. This one was French. He took us into a large marble entryway with a board covered by posters for upcoming events and a front desk where we signed in. Another man arrived: thin, white hair, an eye that twitched. His name was Jean-Paul Garamond. He shook our hands. “Good to meet you, Inspectors. Please, please.”

  He waved us down a marble corridor to his office, then waited until we were inside before entering and closing the door. The chairs opposite his desk were old and comfortable, and he held out an open box of cigars. I shook my head, but Emil, intrigued, took one. “Thank you.”

  Garamond lit it for him, then settled behind his desk, looking very pleased to have us both there. “Now what is it I can do for you gentlemen?”

  Emil was puffing frantically on the cigar to keep it lit, and the smoke began to bother me. I said, “We’re here in connection with a homicide investigation. Evidence has turned up a connection to a French national who frequents our country. A Louis Rostek.”

  Garamond didn’t seem to know the name. “Rostek?”

  “His family was from here originally, years back.”

  “I see,” he said, eye twitching. “And you think he killed someone?”

  “No. But he’s connected to our suspect, and he certainly has information that could help us.”

  Emil was finally satisfied with the ember at the end of his cigar, and began waving smoke away. “Do you have,” he said, then blew some smoke from his face. “Do you keep records of your citizens when they’re here?”

  Garamond smiled, but this was a smile I didn’t trust. “Well, we don’t run things your way.”

  “Our way?”

  He shrugged expansively. “We don’t follow our citizens down the street taking notes.”

  “And if you did,” I said, “you wouldn’t give such notes to the local authorities.”

  “That would be our prerogative.”

  Emil had gotten rid of most of the smoke. He took a normal draw of the cigar, crossed his leg over his knee, and exhaled. “Can you tell us, then, why a French national was seen at a labor camp last spring trying to get inside?”

  “Maybe he was a journalist.”

  “He’s a poet,” I said.

  Garamond took one of the cigars for himself, but didn’t light it. He rolled it between his fingers. “I think you should be going through other channels for this kind of information. Here at the consulate we’re more interested in protecting the privacy of our citizens than divulging their secrets. Your people can talk to the embassy.”

  “We’d rather not do it that way,” I said. “For Louis Rostek’s good as well as our own.”

  His eye twitched when he lit his cigar. Three short puffs, and the ember glowed. “I’m afraid I can’t help you men. I can point you to our cultural and language programs if you’re interested.”

  I did consider it briefly, for Agnes, but said, “No thank you,” and stood up.

  69

  She had told Karel she would spend the weekend with her sister, so I watched her make dinner in my apartment, standing where Magda would stand when I got home from work, turning to lay plates on the kitchen t
able. I went through some papers while she cooked, old notes for a second novel that had never come together. A lot of ideas, but no words, sentences, or paragraphs. I only had the pages I’d written about Magda and me. I picked up my old novel and gazed at it.

  The French consulate had been just one more dead end-one more that convinced me that I had no control over the case, or my life. So I sat there with my book-shoddy, as Stefan had called it-wanting the strength to take control of something, anything. But more than that, I wanted the complete silence of solitude and the ease of a life without responsibility.

  She was bent over the oven when I came in, but I didn’t touch her. This was something I’d noticed. As our relationship progressed, we touched less outside the bedroom. The distance maintained a tension between us-we both understood this. Our time outside the bedroom was spent preparing for the bedroom.

  As she plated the food she told me that she had come upon a fresh understanding of herself. “It’s through failures. After enough of them you can look around and see what’s left to you. Not Karel, that’s for sure. And my career is dwindling before my eyes. My friends are all distant, and even you,” she said, setting the plates on the table. “I don’t really know about you, do I?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So when I look around, what’s left standing? Only one thing. Recklessness. It’s the only thing that makes me feel like I’m becoming.”

  “Becoming what?”

  “Just becoming.”

  “Recklessness, huh?”

  “Yes. Recklessness.”

  While we ate I mentioned the visit to Vatrina. She didn’t seem interested until I told her it was a camp town. “Were there prisoners?”

  “There will be once they get it going again. The guards sit around drinking and waiting for them.”

  She touched her fork to her lower lip, then went back to eating.

  “I slept with a woman there.”

  She laid the fork beside her plate. At first the expression was confused, then it settled. “Did you?”

  “She worked at the hotel desk.”

  “How was she?”

  “All right. Interesting.”

  I wanted her to ask more, because I was feeling reckless, too-I could stretch the truth or simply lie-but she didn’t ask anything else. She finished her plate and put it in the sink, then went to the bathroom.

  I threw away the food I hadn’t eaten and turned on the radio. She came out before I could sit and asked me to turn it off.

  “You don’t want music?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I checked her eyes for any sign of tears, but there was none. She walked up to me and nodded at the radio.

  “You going to turn it off?”

  “No.”

  She slapped me. The burn slid down my cheek and over my neck. When she stepped back I snatched her arm, jerked her to me, and bit her cheek.

  She punched my stomach-a light thump-and I grabbed her waist and half carried her into the bedroom. She slapped me again in the darkness until I held her down, ripping at her buttons. She got a hand free and tore at my shirt.

  It was more violent than before, more anguished. Her teeth drew blood from my shoulder and I bruised her wrists holding her down. It was angrier than it had ever been before, it hurt. I could tell by her whimpers in the dark.

  I rolled over on my back. We were both covered in sweat.

  She lay a while, facedown in the pillow, making low, grunting noises. I didn’t know if she was crying or not, and I didn’t ask. Then she flung herself on me. When she kissed me, her teeth chipped against mine and her tears rubbed into my cheeks. After a while, she calmed and settled her head on my chest.

  As she dozed a fresh wave of dissatisfaction overcame me. The recklessness I had tried with her satisfied nothing. But I didn’t know what else to do.

  In the middle of the night, she woke me with her mouth. She rose on her knees, and from the lights of other apartments I saw that she had Agnes’s knotted rope in her hands. She presented it to me and lay down. I didn’t understand at first, but she smiled and said, “I want to sleep like this.”

  So I tied her wrists behind her back, then her ankles. In the dim light the shadows on her thin body made her seem emaciated, starved. I gave her a kiss on the mouth, then another one between her legs.

  I slept deeply until seven, when a nightmare woke me. I couldn’t remember it all, but one detail floated through and settled in my mind: Malik Woznica on top of Magda, trembling. It was strong enough to give me the feeling I was still dreaming, and when I sat up and went to put on my clothes it was with a gliding, dream-walk across the rug. I washed my face and returned to Vera staring up at me, her wrists bound behind her. Her eyes were very big. “Are you going somewhere?” Her voice was dry. Yes, I said. I’m going somewhere. “How long?” Not so long. I’m not going to untie you. She seemed to be looking inside me. “Okay.”

  70

  I drove to the Fourth District and parked a street in from the river. The Saturday morning sun was just beginning to come out, casting everything in a gray shroud, and a cold wind swept up the Tisa. I quickly found the door to his building. I hadn’t really looked at it before, but now I had time. It was large, polished oak, with a bronze handle in the center. His wide, riverview window was on the top floor. The light was on.

  I could have gone right up and taken care of it, but that would have been unnecessarily risky. The deaf woman below him could be up early, and might see me going up or down the stairs. So I buttoned the top of my coat, sniffed, and leaned against the railing by the Tisa, fooling with my rings.

  I did not think as I waited. I did not reflect on the past or the future; I did not plan. So many of the things I’d planned and committed to had fallen apart, and now I was finished with that. I simply waited, and would act according to the moment. When some early risers passed-merchants on their way to work-I did not think about them. All I noticed was the light changing from gray to yellow, then gray again as clouds filled the sky.

  He opened the door a little before nine, and I turned toward the water to hide my face. Once he was halfway down the street, I followed.

  He moved slowly, his white hair and sunburned head bobbing over his heavy body, and tugged now and then at the lapels of his trench coat. His shortness was apparent when he passed others on the slowly filling street. He stopped at a newspaper kiosk and bought the day’s Spark, then scanned headlines, his pace slowing more until he turned into a cafe two streets east of his building.

  I waited outside, holding down my thirst. I didn’t need the coffee-adrenaline kept me awake-but my mouth was parched, and I needed a bath.

  He was in there for three-quarters of an hour, then returned to his apartment. When it was clear where he was heading, I stopped at a kiosk and bought cigarettes and a bottle of water. I moved my post to his side of the street, so that if he decided to look outside, he wouldn’t notice the big man who did not take his eyes off the front door.

  It occurred to me as I waited that I did not have to hold my emotions at an arm’s length anymore. They were too far away to matter.

  I was lucky. In less than two hours he was on the street again. He turned the west corner and began looking through his keys while standing beside a green Sachsenring P240, a new model I admired. Once he found his keys I had passed behind him and was getting into my skoda.

  We drove westward, following the Tisa out of town, then north. There weren’t many others on the road, and I had to keep a good distance. We passed Uzhorod and moved into a long stretch that slid slowly up into the mountains. Pine trees popped up around us, and with one hand I took my map out of the glove compartment. The only major town along that road was Perechyn, but it wouldn’t appear for another hour and a half. We were the only ones on the road.

  I imagined he was heading to the dacha where he had taken his wife to find out what all he could do to her. But I didn’t want him to arrive-I didn’t want to leave cl
ues in an obvious place.

  He was a slow, careful driver, so it was easy to change gear and close the distance between us. The road curved as we gained altitude, and trees kept us from seeing what lay around each turn. I pulled the sun visor low and tailgated him. In his mirror I could vaguely make out his nervous face checking for the reckless driver behind him, but I stayed close. Finally, he did what I wanted: He slowed, drew to the edge of the road, and stuck his hand out to wave me around. I took his offer, and as I passed turned my head in the other direction.

  Shadows of trees hung over the road as I took the turns abruptly, wanting to give myself enough space. The road was narrower than in the plains, and now and then a warning sign told me that it could not accommodate two-way traffic. At one of these points I stopped and placed the car at an angle. I got out, opened the hood, and leaned underneath it.

  I heard him come up behind me, apply brakes, then honk. I kept my head beneath the hood. A second honk. Then, the sound of his door opening and his heels crunching pebbles.

  “Is there some trouble? Maybe if you’d slow down, you could-”

  I straightened and faced him.

  Sometimes when people are stunned, there is a hesitation before the actual recognition. For Malik Woznica there was no pause. I saw the shock, then the back of his head as he ran to his car.

  But his legs were short. I caught his coat as he was pulling the door open and jerked him back, then kicked the door shut.

  He was saying No, no, but there seemed no reason to reply. I pulled him, kicking, away from his car, turned him toward me, and punched him hard on the brow. His head buckled back, flesh trembling. I ignored the pain in my knuckles and gave him another one that knocked him out and sent blood dribbling down his face. I dragged him to my car, opened the trunk, and stuffed him inside. It was difficult getting his legs in, but after a couple tries I could fold them properly. I slammed the door shut. I jogged to his car and drove it off the edge of the road, into the trees, wiped off the wheel, gearshift and handles with my shirt, then returned to my own car and closed the hood. I turned it around and began driving south again.