Budapest Noir

by Vilmos Kondor

  Budapest Noir

  Vilmos Kondor

  Translated from the Hungarian by Paul Olchváry

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  Ever since the Balaton Coffeehouse reopened after a lengthy renovation, they’d started adding sugar to the coffee as a matter of course—unless you asked them not to. Zsigmond Gordon invariably forgot to ask. One such evening, he gulped down his cup of surprisingly sweet black coffee and waved a hand in resignation. Folding his copy of the Budapest Journal, he stood to pay the waiter and turned up his collar before stepping out onto Rákóczi Street. He glanced toward Blaha Lujza Square and noticed the neon lights of the newspaper building in the distance. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.

  A few yards away, a newsboy was frantically hawking his wares. Passersby in the evening crowd tore papers from his hand, and his apron sank farther and farther down his waist, weighted from their change.

  Gordon started off toward the Erzsébet Bridge. Along the way he cast only superficial glances at the store displays and paid little attention to the automobiles jostling out on the road. Dubious characters took their turns sidling up to him, trying to palm off a pair of silk stockings or some broad’s no doubt unforgettable services. Without stopping, Gordon chucked aside his cigarette butt and checked his watch. If he hurried, he might reach Franz Joseph Square on time. He could always catch a bus, but he enjoyed the hustle and bustle too much to consider public transportation.

  At the head of Károly Boulevard yet another newsboy was shouting at the top of his lungs.

  “Gömbös has died! The prime minister is dead! His body is being brought back from Germany by train! Gömbös has died! The government has called an emergency meeting!” The boy’s cap had slipped to the side, exposing a beet-red face. “Read all about it in the Evening! Gömbös has died!” the boy kept shrieking as he waved a paper at Gordon. “The latest news, in the Evening! The prime minister is dead! Buy a paper, kind sir!”

  Gordon only shook his head. “I don’t need a paper, son. I know the prime minister is dead.” I write the news, he thought, if, that is, the news lets itself be written.

  After getting to Apponyi Square, Gordon took a sudden right onto City Hall Street, and the relative peace and quiet afforded by this narrower thoroughfare felt good. But he couldn’t shake the thought of the Róna case. For days now his mind had been on nothing else; he found it impossible to believe that Erno Róna, a detective who had helped Gordon on his crime beat, was guilty. It was all he could talk about—or tried to talk about—with anyone connected with Róna, but he kept coming up against brick walls.

  Gordon cut through deserted, rain-drenched Erzsébet Square, and as he turned out onto Tisza István Street, the icy wind coming off the Danube nearly tore his hat off. He shuddered in the unusually cold October air.

  The officer standing in front of police headquarters tipped his hat to Gordon, who’d already gotten used to entering the building through this new entrance—4 Zrínyi Street—normally reserved for detectives. All the on-duty officers knew him, practically letting him come and go as he pleased. This particular evening the on-duty officer was a young guy who, for reasons beyond Gordon’s comprehension, always greeted him with overflowing respect: “Good evening, Mr. Editor!”

  Gordon nodded and was already heading for the stairs when the officer called after him, “If you’re looking for Inspector Gellért, he asked me to tell you he’s not in just now. He’s been called to an urgent meeting.”

  “No problem, son,” said Gordon, placing his hand on the railing, “I’ll wait for him in his office.”

  But the boy wouldn’t let him go just yet: “Prime Minister Gömbös died today, and the . . . ” Here he caught himself. “But of course you know this, sir.”

  “I know,” replied Gordon, hurrying up the stairs to the second floor. In the hallway he turned right, heading toward the last door on the left. He knocked, but there was no response from Vladimir Gellért, chief inspector and section head. He let himself into the empty office, lit by a single lamp atop the desk. Gordon pulled the door shut behind him and stepped to the window. Gellért was particularly blessed: his office was among the few to command a view of the Danube. Gordon lit a cigarette and stared out at the river and beyond—at the Chain Bridge, which was aglow; at Castle Hill; and at the ships, some passing by, some anchored, as well as the tugboats trudging along. He crushed the cigarette into a marble ashtray and sat down in one of the chairs opposite the inspector’s desk.

  Gordon took out his notebook to review precisely what he planned to find out from Gellért. He’d spoken to the detective by telephone on Monday to arrange this meeting about Róna. There wasn’t much Gordon could do, since the first hearing in Róna’s case had been that morning. And yet he felt it his duty to keep digging for the truth.

  The city had lately seen an explosion of currency smugglers, who, exploiting the monetary crisis, were vying to get their hands on serious profits—often with serious success. István Szörtsey’s gang had an easy method indeed: his men, posing as detectives, simply confiscated money from other currency smugglers. One fine day a stock exchange agent named Arnold Bondi paid Róna a visit at his office to complain that he’d been cheated out of five thousand pengős. The detective, who specialized in common swindlers and cardsharpers, took out a photograph of Gyula Grósz, a man he and his colleagues had been watching for a while, precisely on account of the fake-detective scam. But Bondi didn’t recognize the face. Róna advised him to file a formal complaint. Bondi did so, then regularly pestered the detective for the status of his case. When, on one such occasion, Róna informed Bondi that they were still working on it, Bondi left fuming. A couple of days later, Bondi filed a complaint through his lawyer alleging that the detective had accepted one hundred fifty pengős from him in exchange for pressing the fake detectives to return Bondi’s five thousand. An investigation was ordered, and the first hearing was that morning.

  Was Róna such an idiot? Would he have put his career—his pension—at risk for a measly one hundred fifty pengős? The case was murky. Although Vladimir Gellért was one of the section heads at Unit V, which oversaw homicide, while Róna worked at Unit IV, tasked with confidence crimes such as theft and fraud, they knew each other well and could always count on each other even if they weren’t necessarily friends. And so Gordon felt sure Gellért would help him out. If nothing else, he would point him in the right direction. And if he didn’t, why, that, too, would mean something, and perhaps even more so.

  Gordon rose from the armchair. The wall clock read 9 P.M. The desk was in pristine order, as always. Gordon knew file folders containing active cases were in a pile on the left; the detective’s thoroughly marked-up calendar was in the middle; and on the right was his typewriter, pushed to the side. In front of the calendar was an Art Nouveau bronze inkwell, and in front of that was the barrel of a pen and a little box full of nibs. Gellért often remarked that he finally just about got the hang of the typewriter, but he simply couldn’t befriend the fountain pen.

  For his part, Gordon had no problem with it, even if he did regard the quill as a backward and antiquated tool. He pulled his notebook from his pocket and placed it on the corner of the desk, bending
to jot down a couple of questions, but paused. He figured he’d might as well sit down at the desk to write, as he’d done more than once while waiting for Gellért. He stepped around the desk and tried to pull out Gellért’s chair, but it wouldn’t budge. Gordon looked to the right and saw that the chair was stuck against an open drawer. This was a first. Over the past five years, Gordon had cultivated a truly exceptional relationship with Gellért, but not once had the immaculate detective left his desk drawer open. Indeed, he always took care to lock it shut, hiding the key in his vest pocket. Having freed the chair, Gordon took a seat and examined the open drawer. A file folder lay at the bottom—a standard official file folder, with an empty space where the title would have been written on the front. The corner of a photograph stuck out from the bottom.

  Gordon sat there for a while in silence, motionless. He stared at the folder and at the corner of that photograph. He lit another cigarette. He threw the match into the marble ashtray, exhaled, and locked his eyes again on the photo. He balanced his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and reached for the drawer, pulling it open a bit more, just enough to lift the cover of the file.

  He took up the cigarette. Inhaling deeply, he lifted the file from the drawer and placed it open on the desk. It contained nothing but two photographs. The first depicted a young woman standing beside a covered table, a thick drapery curtain in the background. Her expression was at once forlorn and flirtatious. You like me, right? the girl’s look suggested. I know you like me; everyone likes me.

  Except for her smile and a pair of slender shoes, the girl was naked. She stood there lasciviously, her bright eyes awash with salaciousness and sadness. Long thighs; unusually full, round breasts; and dark, slightly curly hair that flowed over her shoulders. Gordon scrutinized her eyes. He realized it wasn’t dalliance but defiance that he saw in them. Her body was faultless, lithesome, young. Or maybe not so faultless, after all. He held the photograph under the lamp and looked more closely at her left arm. An inch or so under her elbow was a brownish birthmark about the size of a two-pengő coin, hardly any bigger.

  Gordon put the picture aside and picked up the other one. It, too, had been taken in a studio, but under entirely different circumstances. It was the same girl staring into the lens, her hair pinned up, her expression stern. Not even a trace of the defiance or, perhaps, the sadness could be seen. Regular features, vigorous eyebrows, bright eyes.

  Gordon placed the two photographs back in the folder, then returned it to the drawer. He stood, adjusted the chair, and stepped to the window. He looked out at the city and then at his watch.

  He was about to leave when the door opened. Gellért stepped in vigorously, but with an expression even glummer than usual. His blazer was wrinkled, and his glasses just barely concealed the rings under his eyes. Every motion of his lanky frame now bespoke exhaustion. Gordon turned to greet him, but the detective raised his hand.

  “Don’t say a thing,” said Gellért, faltering out his excuse, “I know we agreed to meet this evening, but the chief of police called us to a meeting.”

  “The train carrying the prime minister’s body is arriving tomorrow morning in the East Station,” said Gordon.

  “I can’t say we expected him to die, especially since Darányi took over day-to-day affairs. I would have bet he’d resign. But when it comes down to it, it doesn’t really matter.”

  “It doesn’t,” Gordon concurred.

  “Sure, we had a plan in place for the prime minister’s burial,” explained Gellért, “but even so, we’ve got a million things to do. The chief has called all detectives, police officers, and gendarmes to duty so as to adequately secure the funeral procession from the East Station to the Parliament building.”

  “Will the interior minister lift the ban on public gatherings?” asked Gordon.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Aren’t the funeral procession and the burial public gatherings?”

  “You’re not serious, are you?” asked Gellért, peering out from above his glasses.

  “No,” replied Gordon. “Then I won’t bother you anymore. Did you hear that Turcsányi-Schreiber testified for Róna?”

  “Sure I heard. Dániel is an intelligent and logical fellow. If you don’t mind . . .”

  “Naturally,” said Gordon, stepping away from the window. “No point looking you up until the funeral, I suppose.”

  “No,” said Gellért, sitting down in his chair and pushing the drawer back in its place.

  “I’ll give you a call. Good night.”

  “Under order of Valiant Knight Miklós Kozma, the interior minister, and his secret order of the Council of Ministers, not a single officer of the law will sleep tonight,” replied Gellért. He pulled his typewriter over on top of his calendar and rolled a sheet of paper into it. Blinking behind his lenses, he began to type. Gordon couldn’t decide whether he’d heard a bit of sarcasm in the detective’s voice.

  There were noticeably fewer people about on Rákóczi Street. Some bars and nightclubs had already closed, and the coffeehouses, too, were slowly emptying out. But Gordon saw an unusually large number of policemen and gendarmes, standing rigidly along the street in preparation for the long night to come. Passing by the Balaton Coffeehouse, he glimpsed a sign hung on the door: WE WILL BE CLOSED ON OCTOBER 10 DUE TO THE PRIME MINISTER’S DEATH. Though he wasn’t particularly interested in coffee, he realized the notice hung on the door of every shop, restaurant, office, and coffeehouse.

  The city had fallen almost completely silent by the time Gordon reached the editorial offices of the Evening. The night-duty concierge gave him a cheerful wave from behind the window of his booth. If it wasn’t the demijohn of wine in his little cabinet that explained his good mood, then perhaps it was the prime minister’s death. “Good evening, Mr. Editor!” he exclaimed with a tip of his hat. Leaning out his tiny window, he watched as Gordon vanished at the top of the stairs.

  The newsroom was empty but for the on-duty typist. Ever since Gordon had started working for the Evening, this role was filled by Valéria. Even now she sat there at her desk, a sheet of paper rolled into her machine, the lamplight shining on her snow-white hair, dark glasses—her most prized possession—covering her eyes. She proudly showed this rare treasure to everyone in the office: mountain climbers’ glasses equipped with leather side-shields brought home from Bern, Switzerland, by one of her girlfriends. By lamplight she could read only while wearing them, and—she insisted—she hadn’t seen the sun in ten years. “The fate of albinos,” she had once explained to Gordon. “But I don’t mind. Here, everything is calm and quiet, and in the wee hours I can always get in a few hours of reading.” Tonight she raised the volume in her hand: the latest in a series of mystery novels published by Athenaeum Press.

  “What’s wrong, Zsigmond?” Valéria asked, having lowered her book. “Can’t you sleep? Has Krisztina sent you packing?”

  “I won’t have time tomorrow morning to write the article about that barber from out in Szentlőrinckáta.”

  “The dismemberment?”

  “Yes.” With that, Gordon went to his desk while Valéria raised the thin little book before her black glasses and went on reading. Turning on the lamp, he pulled his notebook from his pocket. He rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter and began to type:

  Budapest received news today of a shocking crime, a terrible murder in the village of Szentlőrinckáta: Frigyes Novotny, a 46-year-old barber, strangled Erzsébet Barta, the 30-year-old divorcee he’d been living with. After the murder, he dismembered the body, which he then burned. Though the victim was killed in March, her remains were only discovered when new tenants had moved into the barber’s home: János Zombori, a tradesman, and his wife. Mrs. Zombori lit the oven to bake bread. When the fire didn’t take, she attempted to clean out the oven, making the alarming discovery: human bones in the ashes. She immediately ran to the gendarme post
, where . . .

  The phone rang. Gordon raised his head, but continued typing when he saw Valéria pick up the receiver:

  . . . she reported her discovery to the head of the local gendarmes.

  “Zsigmond!”

  Gordon turned around.

  “It’s for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “He says his name is Kalmár.”

  Gordon ran over to the phone.

  “How did you know I was here?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

  “So, what is it?”

  “The usual. Your beat. We found a girl.”

  “What sort of girl?”

  “What do you think? A dead one.”

  “Who have you told?”

  “I always begin with you,” replied the cop.

  “That I believe. Were you on the scene, too?”

  “No, I’m calling from headquarters. You’ve always paid my five pengős, so why wouldn’t you pay me now?”

  “Give me the address.”

  “You can be especially grateful for this, Gordon. It’s right in your neighborhood.”

  “Don’t go telling me the tram ran down some maid out on the main boulevard.”

  “I won’t. You’ll see the cops out front at the start of Nagy Diófa Street. There they are, standing around a very lovely and very dead young woman’s corpse.”

  “Did she swallow a bunch of match heads? Jump out the window?”

  “How should I know? But I think you should get moving if you want to see her. The coroner left for the scene ten minutes ago.”

  Gordon pulled on his trench coat, slammed his hat on his head, and grumbled something to Valéria on his way out.

  Within a couple of minutes he’d arrived at Nagy Diófa Street. As soon as he turned the corner from Rákóczi Street, he saw the black hearse and, beside it, a few uniformed officers and two plainclothes ones. Gordon looked at his watch: it was past ten. Usually he avoided murder scenes; he’d seen quite enough of them, and after five years with the Evening there wasn’t much that could surprise him. And yet he hurried now, for Kalmár had called him first; the next day—regardless of the prime minister’s death—this is what every paper would write about. But he was the only one on the scene so far, and that was worth more than five pengős.