The Fourth Courier

by Timothy Jay Smith

  “Who’s collecting his mail?”

  “His mother, only not at her local post office. Apparently the family is a big name in Chicago’s Polish community. His father is the King of Sausage or something like that.”

  “So Tommy boy is hiding out in Poland until his lawyers can straighten out his legal problems,” Jay mused.

  Ann unsuccessfully tried to suppress a yawn.

  “Did you and Ned have a fight, is that why you’re still up?”

  “If you need to know, I get morning sickness somewhere between dessert and dawn.”

  “I bet you blame the Noise Machine for not being sympathetic enough, even though he’s a direct contributor to why you have morning sickness.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Are you at your kitchen table?”

  “Yes.”

  “I bet the Noise Machine is in the doorway behind you, waiting for you to come back to bed.”

  “I bet he’s not.”

  “Okay, look.”

  “Okay.”

  “I also bet he’s topless because that’s how you like your men to sleep.”

  “I hate you for knowing so much.”

  “Hi Ned!” Jay said, loudly.

  “Hey, Jay,” he heard distantly.

  “Say goodnight, boys,” Ann said and hung up.

  Jay approached the bathroom, thickening with anticipation, Lilka’s scent still on him from their lovemaking the night before. A cloud rolled out of the doorway when he opened it. Lilka’s pale body moved like a memory behind the shower’s steamy glass door. He pressed himself against it, stretching out his arms. Lilka stretched out hers arms to cover his body with hers. Her breasts became white saucers for her ruby nipples. Their lips met in transparent kisses. Then he slipped into the shower. The water poured over them. He kissed his way down until he knelt in front of her. Cascading over her breasts, the water formed tributaries that joined in a river between her legs. He opened his mouth and drank greedily.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  A MENU POSTED AT THE restaurant’s entrance announced the cost of the breakfast buffet. Lilka fretted that Jay should spend so much, though once convinced to stay, she made it something glamorous. And it was sumptuous: down long tables, exotic fruits spilled from decorative cornucopias; chafing dishes offered meats, simmering porridges, and French toast, flanked by cheese rounds and mounds of biscuits and breads. Huge floral arrangements towered over the breakfasters. Lilka thought the room so elegant, she half expected paparazzi to descend upon it, snapping photos of the hungry pretenders to wealth and fame.

  They ate ravenously. Outside the picture windows below them, electric trams rattled down the center of Aleje Jerozolimskie, spitting blue sparks and dispatching passengers. The sun, cresting the main train station opposite, shone as pale yellow as the marquee letters that identified it as Warszawa Centralna. People hurried up its ramp and disappeared inside its walls of black glass.

  “I like to see a town wake up,” Lilka said, “There is something new about each day. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Always my father walks in the morning. It is a habit for all his life. Every day he takes bread from the same shop, but always he changes how to go there to make each day a little different.”

  “I knew I liked your father.”

  “He likes you, too.” She reached over and took his hand. “I am very happy to meet you.”

  “Me too.”

  Perhaps it was their glimpse of the sun that freed Lilka to talk, or the glittery breakfast room, but she did talk, about her dreams to travel, her hopes for a family, the usual things young people dream about. So she surprised Jay when she added, “The most I ever wanted was safety.”

  “Safety?”

  “Is that the wrong word?”

  “I don’t know. What do you mean?”

  “Before the change, nobody was safe. One day, everybody thought, it would be their turn to go to jail. My mother was always afraid, my father too, and Alina and me too. There were so many rules to break. Rules that you needed to break to survive, and always there was somebody watching. And people disappearing.” Eventually she mentioned that Jacek’s temper, always terrible and growing worse, made her afraid to live in her own home. “It’s the opposite of what I have most wanted.”

  “There’s really no place for you to move?” Jay asked.

  There wasn’t. No one had a spare room in their tiny prefabs, and to buy an apartment on the open market, well, that kind of money was a fantasy. “We make rules for living together, and Jacek always breaks them.”

  “Did you ever love him?” Jay ventured to ask.

  “I thought yes, but we made a mistake.”

  “What mistake?”

  “Aleks.”

  “Oh.”

  “We were too young. Too much was a struggle for us. I had to work and didn’t have enough time for Aleks. He was always very shy and had no confidence in himself. That’s why Jacek has been able to influence him. I blame me, too. I was too often absent for Aleks.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “He is always at the river and I am afraid to go there.”

  “Can Tolek go with you?”

  “Tolek! Oh, I forgot! What time is it?” She checked her watch and frowned. “You make me very late.”

  “Who wanted to make love twice?” he asked.

  “You.”

  “Okay. Guilty.”

  “Now I have not enough time.”

  “What is it?”

  “I must give Tolek a key so he can repair my toilet. It is not a nice problem to have.”

  “I can give it to him. He’s coming about his visa this afternoon.”

  “I need to make a copy first,” she lamented.

  “I can do that, too. Where do you make copies?”

  “At the train station.”

  “Problem solved. Give me the key and I’ll make a copy.”

  She handed it to him.

  “Now go or you’re going to be late.”

  They kissed on their cheeks and Lilka rushed off. Jay signaled for the check and was signing it when a liveried bellhop entered the restaurant carrying an upright chalkboard on a short handle with small bells dangling from it. Passing between the tables, he twisted the handle to make the bells ring. When he drew closer, Jay saw Porter printed on the chalkboard.

  “I’m Porter,” he said.

  “You have an urgent telephone call at the front desk.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE DOORMAN HAILED JAY A cab and he slipped into the backseat, giving directions in bad Polish to the doughnut shop where he had arranged to meet Kulski. He puzzled over how to help Lilka, growing angry at a system that, though now dead, continued to hold her hostage. Back home he knew women who felt boxed in by lives they wouldn’t have chosen, yet none had been as entrapped as Lilka, forced to remain caged with her tormentor even after she had summoned the courage to leave him.

  The driver maneuvered a shortcut to avoid a one-way street and stopped in front of the bakery. Kulski stood on the sidewalk finishing a doughnut. He offered Jay the last one in his bag.

  Jay took it. “What’s the situation?”

  The detective licked icing from his fingers. “A man went into the houseboat before dawn. He has not used the lights, but he is there still.”

  “His name is Tomasz Tomski,” Jay reported.

  “That makes sense because the boat belongs to Viktor Tomski,” the detective replied. “A Polish American from Chicago.”

  “Must be Tommy’s father. What do you know about him?”

  “He’s a gambler and comes to Poland many times.”

  “Gambling must be in the family’s genes,” Jay said. “Tommy’s been taking lots of chances, too.” He told Kulski the story of Tommy and his three wives.

  “I would not have the energy for three women,” the detective said.

  Kulski’s lookout on the bridge dropped a fishing line in the
water. The morning sun had retreated behind approaching storm clouds, and he looked cold and miserable.

  “How do you want to handle this?” Kulski asked.

  “It’s your case.”

  “He’ll be more frightened if he hears ‘FBI’ first.”

  “I’ll be glad to be the warm-up act.”

  The gangplank, still treacherous with ice, caused Kulski to fall hard on his game leg. Rounding the deckhouse was equally challenging, and by the time they reached the door, Tommy had opened it. “Who the fuck are you clowns?” he said in English with no discernible accent. He was thirty-three going on middle aged and wore a leisure suit you’d expect to see on date night at a Chinese restaurant in Orlando.

  “Are you Tomasz Tomski?” Jay asked.

  “Who are you?”

  “Jay Porter, FBI.” He flashed his badge.

  Tommy paled. “What the fuck?”

  “I’m Detective Leszek Kulski, Warsaw Police.”

  “May we come in?” Jay didn’t give him the option to say no and stepped past him into the room.

  “I’ve done nothin’ federal,” he protested.

  “Who said you did anything, Tommy? We just have some questions.”

  “I’m not answering without my attorney.”

  “Tommy, you’re pleading guilty before being accused, that’s not smart. Detective Kulski, would you like to ask your questions?”

  “A man was killed three nights ago not two hundred meters from here.” Kulski pointed down the river. “Just past the kiosks.”

  “I didn’t see anything.”

  “So you were here?” Jay said.

  “I wasn’t lookin’ in that direction.”

  “Lookin’, as in peeping through that spotting scope?”

  Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “You have a search warrant? I wanna see it.”

  “I suggest you cooperate with the local police, or they might send you home, where I hear there are three women waiting to nail your ass, and not in their usual friendly ways.”

  “I’ve done nothin’ extraditable.”

  “I can have you deported for sexual perversion,” Detective Kulski said.

  Jay shrugged. “Peeping Tom, isn’t that what I said?”

  “What did you see, Mr. Tomski?”

  Tommy sat and rubbed his face hard with a manicured hand. “It was late, and I noticed headlights coming off the main road. I’d just put out the light to go to sleep, but I started thinking about what they were probably doing out there so I got up to look.”

  Jay asked, “Is that a regular curiosity of yours?”

  “Only because that scope is here. I’m not into peeping, not usually. It’s kinda cool, though, like watching an old European film where everything’s watery but you know what’s happening.”

  “What did happen, Mr. Tomski?”

  “There was two of them. They had got out of the car already. She was leading him down to the water.”

  “She?” Jay and the detective said at the same time.

  “Yeah, she, and he followed her. He was limping.”

  “What time was it?”

  “About one, maybe a little later.”

  “How could you see them in the dark from here?”

  “The way the cars go by on the road, there’s enough light. Maybe the moon was out that night too, I don’t remember.”

  Kulski nodded. “Go on.”

  “I focused on her, ’cause she had stopped moving, and he was still catching up. He was limping, like I said, and wobbly.”

  “Drunk?” Jay asked.

  “Could’ve been. I was still thinkin’ they were, you know, going to fuck or something, only the next thing I knew, I heard a shot. For a couple of seconds I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a car backfiring. Then I saw the guy fall.”

  “She was still downhill from him?”

  “Yeah, and he was tall, too, at least six feet. He kinda towered over her.”

  “That explains the bullet’s trajectory,” Jay commented.

  “What happened next, Mr. Tomski?”

  “Then this other guy showed up. Where the hell he came from, I don’t know, but he and the woman talked to each other, then he messed with the body some.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He stooped down and did something. I couldn’t see what, but that’s when I saw her. She was trying to light a cigarette and it was windy, so she held her lighter a long time.”

  “Describe her.”

  “She looked good in a sexy way. A brunette, I could see that.”

  “Age? Build?”

  “Hard to say, she was wearing a long coat.”

  “Could you identify her, Tommy?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Would setting aside the bench warrant for your arrest help you recognize her?”

  “It might.”

  “I thought so,” Jay said, “and that deal’s not being offered. I just wanted to know how easy it was to buy you. What was she wearing?”

  “A pants suit from Saks Fifth Avenue, how the fuck do I know? I can’t read labels with that thing.”

  “Dress, pants, coat, hat?”

  “A long coat. When the dead guy was coming at her, she opened it up like he was supposed to crawl inside and get all cozy.”

  “What happened after the woman lit a cigarette, Mr. Tomski?”

  “Another car came up. It’s kind of a lovers’ lane along the water. The man and woman, they started kissing then. They didn’t want the other car coming any closer.”

  “What did he look like, Tommy? Fast, don’t think about it.”

  “I never saw his face but I could tell he had a beard. He was a big guy, not tall like the dead guy but big. Stocky.”

  “What else, Mr. Tomski?”

  “The other car left and they walked to her car.”

  “What was the make?”

  “I couldn’t tell. I don’t know cars.”

  “Big? Small?”

  “Smallish. Red or brown, it wasn’t in the light.”

  “What did the man do?”

  “That’s just the thing. He took a suitcase out of her car.”

  “A suitcase?”

  “It sure looked like one. And he walked away with it. From the way he was carrying it, I could tell it was heavy, but I never saw where he came from or went.”

  “What else did you see or hear?” Detective Kulski asked.

  Tommy shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “You’ll have to come with me to the station, Mr. Tomski, to make a statement.”

  “What more of a statement do you want?”

  “For the record. Typed and signed.”

  “The hell I will without my attorney!”

  Detective Kulski held out his hand. “I need to see your passport.”

  Tommy took it from the desk.

  Kulski pocketed it.

  “Hey, that’s mine, you’ve no right to take it.”

  “It’s insurance that you don’t run away.”

  An hour later, Detective Kulski was typing the last words of Tommy Tomski’s statement. So effectively had he layered his aliases, borrowing characteristics from one to construct another, that Jay doubted he could still recognize himself. His father had cornered the market for kielbasa in Chicago’s Polish Triangle and invested in casinos. He hired Tommy to drop in on them, play their tables, and check operations. Routinely the croupiers rigged the odds in his favor. In a short time, he raked in enough money to consider opening his own casino in the family’s rundown houseboat in Warsaw.

  Detective Kulski handed Tommy’s statement to him. “Sign, date, and put the time here.”

  He did, and handed it back, “Can I have my passport back now?”

  Kulski looked at Jay, who shook his head. “He’s too eager to have it. He’ll run.”

  “Fuck! I’m cooperating!”

  “If you need to travel, come see me. Eva!”

  She appeared at the detective’s door. Kulski asked her to make
copies of Tommy’s statement and fax one to Director Husarska. She left, taking Tommy with her to a waiting car for a ride back to the houseboat.

  After they were gone, Jay said, “Looks like you’ve got yourself a real live witness.”

  “And a strange story,” the detective said.

  “At least now you know it’s a man and a woman. A stocky man with a beard.”

  “Do you know how many Polish men fit that description?”

  “I know one was repairing his van outside Billy’s shack a few days ago.”

  “That’s not sufficient to obtain a search warrant.”

  “And a tall woman,” Jay said. “Possibly a tall policewoman because of the P-83. How many women in the police force?”

  “Many, and a lot of them are tall.”

  “Then again, it might not be a policewoman at all,” Jay continued. “The black market for P-83s might be small, but it still exists. I’d like to see everything collected from the murder site again. We have new information. Maybe something will click.”

  “It’s stored at the lab,” Kulski replied. “It’s possible to have it here tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll come by early.”

  “Not before nine, I have rehabilitation for my knee on Friday mornings.”

  “Is it helping?”

  “I’m walking but not much more than that.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  JAY TOOK A TAXI TO Centralna and entered the cavernous station. The whole place echoed with the voices of travelers bouncing off the glass ceiling held aloft by black iron girders. Escalators transported people into an underground mall. Jay took one and entered the maze of crowded corridors that veered off at strange angles. Flowers, lingerie, religious icons, groceries: all could be purchased in the myriad shops that displayed their wares in sooty windows. Bored shopkeepers stood in open doorways and blew smoke into the stale air. In that burrowed world, everyone’s exhalations were recycled.

  Jay wandered until he came to a shop identified by a sign in the shape of a brass key. A bell on the door tinkled when he entered. The locksmith greeted him from behind the counter. His arm, in a sling, rested on the shelf of his enormous belly. He also offered shoe repairs and shines and gave Jay’s shoes a questionable glance before taking Lilka’s key with his smudged hand.

  “Two copies,” Jay said, thinking to make an extra for her.