Dancing for the General

by Sue Star

  “Something that she found at the crime scene, perhaps. Something that would help the police solve the crime. Something she might not recognize as evidence.”

  “She didn’t take anything,” Anna said, tensing. “Besides, the police have everything under control.”

  “Yes, of course. I ask because you must report to the authorities exactly what either of you saw or heard, you understand?”

  “Naturally. I always do my duty, Mr. Aydenli. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Ahmet, don’t forget.”

  “I shan’t.”

  “Please. I am only concerned for your safety. Gypsies are known to cause trouble.”

  Children’s voices bubbled out from the interior of the house just then. The gleam of Ahmet’s face switched from concern to relief. His gaze shifted to the collar of her shirt. “I can take that along with me,” he said, holding out his hand. “If it is true what she said. This is something that belonged to the dead man?”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Nonetheless, you must turn over evidence from a crime scene. You may think Turkey is a backwards country, but even here, we must follow correct procedure.”

  “I don’t think that!” Anna’s pulse accelerated. “You said yourself that your role is only administrative. Besides, I told you, the necklace is mine.”

  Silence chilled the air between them. They waited while Gulsen slipped on her shoes. “As you wish,” he finally said.

  Anna breathed again, then said goodbye and ushered them out the door. Through the closed door she could hear Ahmet’s rapid voice, speaking Turkish with Gulsen. Anna didn’t have to understand the language to hear Ahmet’s anxiety.

  She swallowed a lump in her throat and wondered if she’d made a big mistake. Ahmet Aydenli wasn’t just an anxious, prospective bridegroom. He was the authority behind Yaziz’s superior. The man Paul Wingate had hinted about. Although, Ahmet had offered her no proof other than his word. She wondered if she could trust that word of his.

  And how many other police might be involved with one gypsy’s death.

  * * * * *

  After much wailing and breast-beating, after running feet and stray cats wandering in and out, after many baby squalls and soiled pants fouling the air, Meryem pieced together the news the police had brought her family.

  Her mother finally exhausted herself and drained down her wellspring of tears low enough that she was able to speak without having a sob catch at her voice. “You will have to accept the butcher’s offer now.”

  “No, an-ne, never,” Meryem said, using the Turkish word for mother, as she always did, much to her sister-in-law’s annoyance. Meryem had rejected the Romani way of life the minute she and her immediate family became sedentary here in Ankara, and now Meryem rejected the clan’s language as well.

  “How are we to live without Umit’s income?” her mother wailed.

  “There are other ways.” It was true that Umit had brought home the kuruş from shining pots, but what her mother didn’t know, nor did the rest of the family, was that Meryem was the one responsible for bringing home the lira, each one worth a hundred kuruş. She would go on without Umit, as she was doing later tonight for the general. But after that... Without Umit’s cover of shining pots, it would be harder for her to gain access to the gadje who hired her to entertain at their parties. She would have to take over his business. If that’s what it would require to stay out of the butcher’s clutches, then she would do it gladly.

  After more wails, her mother finally cried herself to sleep. Meryem slipped away as her sister-in-law prepared the children for bed. The storks clacked overhead, also settling down for the night, a time when she could think. A time when the nightmares would come back if she didn’t keep her mind otherwise busy.

  Out in the street, she scurried amongst the gathering shadows, reliving the day in her mind. She figured out more or less the sequence of events from that day. The man under the peasant’s cap at Anit Kabir had flashed his gun at her after he’d shot Umit. Only, he was no peasant if he didn’t know enough not to stand within kicking reach of the eşek. She wondered if he was the one with whom Umit had arranged his “quick deal.”

  Now she understood why Umit had made her wait for him out of sight. She had thought at first that it was because whatever he was up to, he hadn’t wanted her to share the profits with him. Then, when he failed to show up at the drinking hole in Kavaklidere, she suspected there was more to it than that. Danger. He hadn’t trusted the pretend peasant any more than she had.

  At the bottom of the hill, she awaited the dolmuş and thought some more. Spending a few more kuruş would be well worth the speed of riding the bus across town.

  Her first instincts were always right. Umit had sold their amulet without her approval, and he’d intended to keep the money all for himself. But the police had found nothing on him, no amulet, no money. So they claimed. Either the police were the thieves, or Umit’s buyer had double-crossed him.

  If she’d been with him, he wouldn’t be dead now, shot in the back of the head by the clean-shaven man pretending to be a peasant.

  Or would she be dead, too?

  The police did not know what business Umit had at Anit Kabir, or if they did, they were not telling the likes of gypsies. Umit had nothing on him, yet something had brought the police to the family’s home on their no-name street, to their tilting, unnumbered apartment. The police did not know who had shot him or why, but they knew it was with a German gun, something they called a Luger, and they vowed to find the dangerous man. That’s what they had called the pretend peasant. Not a gunman nor killer, as killing a gypsy did not count for much.

  The “dangerous man” had already done it, had already left Umit to die, when the eşek kicked him in the balls. The sirens Meryem had heard on her way to Kavaklidere had been the police hunting for the “dangerous man,” dangerous because of the weapon and his potential for harming a real person.

  Bah! She spit on the blue-lettered men. Their blue letters, handed out like sugar treats from the government, were all that made them legitimate.

  She did not believe them. Umit had guarded the silver piece of jewelry with his life, from the time they were children, from the desperate days when their other sisters and little brother died and the family wandered from hiding place to hiding place in dusty, wild mountains. Umit wouldn’t barter away the amulet now, not after all the lengths they’d gone to in order to protect it. No matter how much rent they owed.

  So, the pretend peasant had taken the amulet. Yes, that was it. And he’d killed Umit for his trouble.

  The gadje foreigner in the pink flowered dress had been there, too. Racing up the steps to the pasha’s tomb. Racing because she’d seen what happened?

  Then Meryem remembered... The sparkling thing she’d seen the foreigner holding today. In the backyard of the very house where Umit had worked on pots only the week before.

  She was the reason Umit had gone to Anit Kabir in the first place, only to die.

  Meryem fought against the memories, but they kept returning, flashing through her like a sour belch. Before she could suppress them, she saw again the Nazi bastard grinning with blood against a Carpathian backdrop of mountains as vicious as he. He lost a tooth in their battle, but in the end, he captured her, Umit, their two sisters, and their younger brother. An evil incarnate that she’d loathed but not feared. Such worthless creatures would never deserve her fear, not even when he tried to have his way with each of them. Meryem was the youngest, only a child then, but the scrappiest of all.

  She shoved the memory-nightmares to the back of her mind as she climbed onto the dolmuş headed for Kavaklidere.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After supper, Anna tried to settle down for an evening of reading Senator Kennedy’s Pulitzer-prize-winning book, but her thoughts still distracted her. Then the doorbell rang, sounding like an electric current jolting through the tranquility of the house.

  “I’ll get it,”
Priscilla said. She jumped up from the dining room table, where she’d laid out a hand of solitaire after dinner was done and the dishes put away.

  “Wait.” Anna sprang up from the sofa in the adjoining living room and rushed to stop her niece. Not wanting to alarm Priscilla further, on top of the murder today, she explained her skittishness. “We must see who it is first, before opening the door to just anyone. Especially at night.”

  “But it’s not dark yet.”

  “Still, we have to be careful.” Through the glass block beside the front door, she recognized the Turkish detective, Yaziz, and his assistant standing on the stoop. Her heart fluttered.

  She opened the door a crack. “Why, Detective. Is everything all right?”

  “Please forgive us. It is a matter that cannot wait. May we come in?”

  She grasped the knob to keep her hand from shaking and pulled the door open wider. “Of course. May I offer you a beverage? We have...let me think...mineral water.”

  “Mama gives guests raki,” Priscilla said, “and I know where she keeps it.”

  Anna frowned. “I believe that is all gone.” Then she turned to Yaziz. “Shall I make some coffee?”

  “Thank you, no. You remember my assistant, Suleyman Bey?” He nodded to the man beside him, the one who’d tried to keep Hayati Orhon from barging into Yaziz’s office. At least Suleyman didn’t wear dark glasses indoors as Yaziz did.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bey,” Anna said, extending her hand.

  Yaziz grinned. “No. ‘Bey’ is a term of respect, not his name. Never mind. He doesn’t speak English, anyway.”

  “Oh. Well. Come and sit down, won’t you?” She led the way, but the men lingered in the foyer, fumbling with their shoes. She paused beside the phone and turned to Priscilla. “Honey, it’s time for you to get ready for bed.”

  “But it’s still light out.”

  “Let her stay,” Yaziz called from the foyer. “My questions are for her, too.”

  Anna’s breath tightened in her throat. She didn’t want to involve her niece in more police questioning. She wondered if she should phone up Paul Wingate, who’d told her to call anytime during the day or night. Anytime that she needed anything at all, he’d come right over. But she didn’t agree with his assessment of Yaziz as a threat.

  “All right,” Anna said once they were seated, “what is so important that it cannot wait until morning?”

  The men perched stiffly side by side on the government-issue sofa, sleek and plain as a vanilla wafer, while their stockinged feet twisted into the colorful pile of Mitzi’s Turkish rugs. Yaziz nodded at Suleyman, who then pulled a paper-wrapped bundle from his jacket pocket. It was smaller than the package she’d seen in the closet, before Fededa had snatched it away, and this one was wrapped in tissue paper, not newspaper. Suleyman passed the wadded lump to Anna, and the paper crinkled as it unfolded, revealing a coil of blue beads strung together on a frayed piece of twine. Some of the beads were crushed.

  “Do you recognize that?” Yaziz asked.

  “No. Should I?”

  “They don’t belong to you or to little Miss Burkhardt?”

  Priscilla leaned shyly over Anna’s shoulder to look at the beads. They both shook their heads.

  “They’re not mine,” Anna said. “I’ve never seen them before. Well, wait a minute... They’re similar to what the taxi driver had dangling from his rear-view mirror. What are they? Worry beads?”

  “No, no,” Yaziz said, ticking his tongue. “Blue beads such as these ward off the evil eye. They are often worn by children and by animals. It is tradition. Children and animals are especially vulnerable to evil and must be protected.”

  “Since we have no pets, you must think these beads are Priscilla’s?”

  “They’re not mine,” Priscilla said, “but I have seen eşeks wear them. Donkeys,” she explained to Anna.

  Yaziz leaned forward. “These very beads?”

  “Maybe not these ones. They all look alike.”

  “And the donkey, where was it?”

  “Well, I dunno, they’re all over the place.”

  “Think of the donkeys you’ve seen and who they were with.”

  Priscilla crooked her finger and tapped her upper lip while she thought. “Well, there’s the milkman’s eşek. And—”

  “Just a minute,” Anna said, cutting her off. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  Yaziz and Suleyman exchanged more words in Turkish. Finally, Yaziz aimed his gold-tinted lenses at her and smiled. She wished she could see his eyes, to see a hint of his thoughts.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “My assistant thinks it’s not necessary to bother you with this matter, but I cannot help myself. When I was a student in your great country, I learned to be—how you say?—thorough. Very thorough. I had to be sure. If the beads aren’t yours, then they belong to someone else who visited the tomb. Now we begin a new search first thing tomorrow morning. Perhaps they belong to the shooter, or even the victim himself.”

  “So that’s where you found them? At Atatürk’s Tomb today?” She wondered what other information they were withholding from her. She handed back the bundle and then patted Priscilla’s arm. “Okay, honey, I think they’re done with you. You can scoot off to bed now.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue. Do as I say.”

  Priscilla stomped her feet, stuck out her lower lip, then marched out of the room and up the steps, testing each one for durability along the way. “You’re just like the rest. I won’t tell you now.”

  “I’ll be up in a little while to tuck you in.” Tell me what? Anna thought. When she heard Priscilla’s bedroom door slam shut, she turned back to Yaziz and lowered her voice. “I believe I may have some information for you. The name of the victim may have been something that sounds like ‘Umit’.”

  “His name was Umit Alekci.”

  “Oh. So you already know?” How long had he known that, she wondered. “Our maid says that he was a hawker who came through this neighborhood fixing copper pots. Perhaps the donkey with the broken beads was his.”

  Yaziz turned to Suleyman and spoke sharply to him. Suleyman pocketed the beads and withdrew a worn notepad and chewed-off pencil. He flipped open the pad and scribbled a note.

  Anna continued. “You’ve talked to his family? He had a sister, I’m told.”

  “Meryem,” Yaziz said.

  “A lovely name. Please extend my deepest condolences to the family the next time you see them. Or, perhaps I could do that myself, if you’ll tell me where I might find them?”

  Yaziz smiled, not taking her bait, and flicked his head backwards in the no gesture. “It is not your concern.”

  “Oh, but it is, Detective. That man had my letter, and I want to know why.”

  “Me too, Miss Riddle. The Burkhardts will tell me, once I find them.”

  “Mitzi? What makes you think my sister and brother-in-law would know anything? They’re gone. Umit Alekci had nothing to do with them.”

  “He was wearing Henry Burkhardt’s suit. You knew that already, did you not?”

  “Only because Mr. Orhon told me. Why did you tell him but not me? Did you really think I could recognize Henry’s suit? Look, are you playing games with me?” She sighed, remembering Paul Wingate’s admonishment. They don’t think the same way we do, he’d said. Okay, she’d try another tactic. “Have you come here tonight to return my letter? That’s it, isn’t it? You said you would once you learned the victim’s name. And now you know it.”

  “I regret that I no longer have it. Someone removed it from my office.”

  “Someone...? You mean, it was stolen?” Panic rose within her. It was only a letter, for goodness sake. “Someone broke into your office? Do you think it was the murderer? Then you can narrow down your suspects to those who have access to your office.”

  “Very good, Miss Riddle. We will recover it. Have no fears.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “Aren’t
you? Tell me, what’s in the letter that makes someone kill for it?”

  “You tell me. It’s only a letter.”

  “Is it? Is that all it is?”

  “What else could it be? You think it’s some sort of code? Even if it were, the war’s over.”

  He shrugged, cocking his head to one side to meet his rising shoulder. “Perhaps for you it is.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Yaziz glanced over at his assistant and silently evaluated him. Suleyman didn’t know English. Was Yaziz sure of that?

  “War leaves behind troubling times,” Yaziz finally said.

  “Peace is not troubling, Mr. Yaziz.”

  “At least in war you know who your enemy is.”

  “You would find in my letter that I’m not your enemy. What are you doing to locate it?”

  “I’ve had to check out a few things first with my sources.”

  The buddy at JUSMMAT, she thought. “Such as?”

  “There is no record of Lieutenant Rainer Akers in your military.”

  “Well, of course not. He signed on with the British.”

  “And used an APO address, which is American?”

  “He had contacts. It was called ‘Allies,’ Mr. Yaziz. Is there anything else? It’s getting late.”

  “I regret to keep you up, but yes, there is one more thing I wish to know. The Burkhardts’ travel plans.”

  “I’ve already told you they’re in Nairobi, headed for a safari. They can’t be reached.”

  “That is exactly the problem. We can’t locate them. One thing is certain—they are not in Nairobi. They left on a plane for Frankfurt, yes, but there was no connecting flight. You will tell me where I can find them.”

  “That’s not true! They wrote out an itinerary for me. Just a minute, and I’ll show you.” Anna ran to the phone stand in the dining room and rummaged through papers until she found the slip that Henry had penned with the names of the places where they planned to stay for the next several weeks. In case of emergency. She ran back to Yaziz, waving the paper. “See? Here it is.” She dropped it in his lap and stood over him, breathing heavily with her outrage.