“A near disaster. She was caught, but released. There are threats to the queen and to this worker bee. So the brand of insecticide you recommend is still the Shved variety?”
“Yes,” said Lazlo. “From one to another to another. Someone uses deadly poison, so there must be a reason. As I recall, this variety had an acquaintance who served food. An establishment between Zhulyany and Central Bus Station with dumplings as large as NBA star fingers. Do you understand?”
“I do,” said Janos. “It is also in the name.”
“Correct.” Lazlo switched to English. “The key to a man’s heart—”
“I accept the challenge,” said Janos, still speaking in Hungarian. “I had forgotten about this queen. Therefore, I thank you. By the way, how is the weather there?”
“It has been a hot summer. I wish all of my cousins, nieces, and nephews were here.”
“They could help you eat pastry,” said Janos.
“Yes, and one more thing, Janos. Be careful of multiple sources. You may want to look into”—Lazlo created an English acronym—”Nostalgic Geometric Oxymorons.”
“I will,” said Janos. “Enjoy your we-are-proud-to-serve-Starbucks, and give greetings to all aunts, uncles, and cousins.”
After Lazlo closed his phone, he recalled his visit to Chicago FBI headquarters, where he had been questioned thoroughly, taken to an inner office, and given a secure phone on which he’d been able to speak with an official of the Human Smuggling Trafficking Center of Homeland Security. A man named Anthony Jacobson, who would not give his title, said his office was working with the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative and was interested in any names of persons involved in trafficking. Lazlo told Jacobson he was in contact with an investigator in Ukraine who might soon have information. He said he was not far from the FBI office in the Chicago Loop and would travel there. Rather than accepting this and hanging up, Jacobson kept him on the line several minutes, insisting there must be something he could provide. During long silences, Lazlo wondered if he had acted correctly. What if Jacobson, if this was his real name, was in contact with someone on the take from the trafficking network and intentionally or unintentionally spoke out of turn? For this reason, Lazlo had refused to reveal Janos’ name.
As Lazlo thought about his FBI visit and being put on a so-called secure phone line, Ria returned to his table to once again fill his coffee cup.
“You are troubled?” asked Ria, leaning forward, her face so close to his he could smell her perfume mixed with the smell of coffee and pastry.
“I was. But you have chased troubles away.”
Ria smiled coyly as she slowly filled his cup. When she turned to walk to another table, Lazlo thought he noticed her hips shift side to side more than usual. A younger woman at the FBI office had shifted her hips so, but she wore high heels. Ria wore flats and this made her hips into significant signals to the passion buried in Lazlo’s past.
For the first time since Juli’s death, Lazlo felt a sense of being in this world. A beautiful woman walks across the room for him, while in his mind long silences during the phone call to Homeland Security pump suspicious energy into his heart. It was an odd moment, during which the sun seemed to shine more brightly into the Bakery Café. Ria glanced back to him and smiled as she poured coffee for an elderly couple at another table. Was it possible Ria knew her friend Lazlo Horvath was now among the living and once again had become a man with purpose?
A decision was made. Lazlo would visit an old friend, the man who had vouched for his and Juli’s honesty when it was time to apply for US citizenship. The man who had come to both Juli’s and Tamara’s funerals and, each time, given him a bear hug of love and trust. Russell McCullum, retired from the State Department office responsible for Eastern European affairs. McCullum, the Irishman who, back in 1987, welcomed a pair of expatriates and little Tamara, the newly born child of Lazlo’s brother, to America, where she would follow her mother’s fate, both victims of what everyone in Humboldt Park referred to as Chernobyl disease.
Janos was a Gypsy explorer, searching for dumplings as large as the fingers of NBA stars, which Janos knew meant very large dumplings. According to Lazlo, the name of the restaurant was a variation on NBA, so of course the word basketball came into play, and he knew Lazlo meant the Basket of Plenty, a familiar Hungarian/Ukrainian restaurant located between Zhulyany Airport and the Central Bus Station in Kiev’s southwest district. The Basket of Plenty, a location to which Lazlo had not only cleverly directed him, but which also reminded him of a particular waitress who had been a friend of Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved.
It was late afternoon. Janos’ day had started with a bang at dawn, his stomach turned upside down by the load of child pornography spilling onto his feet at Shved’s office. After this, the day continued downhill: from the warning given him by Chief Investigator Boris Chudin at militia headquarters; to hearing of the young woman wearing jeans and sweatshirt bicycling away from the tan Zhiguli wagon at the car rental agency in heavy traffic at Borispol airport; to the people on the phone who refused to speak with him even when he mentioned Shved’s name; to the luncheon chat with Investigator Arkady Listov from Darnytsya, during which Listov became drunker and drunker; to the sign at his office and the broken window; to the black Zil attempting to run him down; and finally, to the foolish conversation with Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza, ending when bodyguards with wide shoulders and arms of steel threw him into the street. It was a demented day, even for a Gypsy who expects days like this now and then.
The Basket of Plenty was pleasant and civilized. The only sounds were the clinking of glasses and background music he recognized as the Lakatos Gypsy Orchestra. Janos sat alone in a padded corner booth in the cocktail lounge. He sipped ginger ale and watched three elderly ladies at a table across the lounge as they sipped drinks topped with parasols while he waited to see Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved’s girlfriend.
Her name was Elena Dobrin; she asked if he would wait until the end of her shift. Seeing Elena made Janos think of Gypsies. Not because of her short cocktail hostess skirt and long legs in dark stockings, but because of her dark hair and eyes and large hoop earrings. Elena reminded him of a Gypsy woman from his boyhood back in Soviet times.
His mother and father had taken him and his sister to a carnival at the Hydropark. Gypsies sold costume jewelry and trinkets from the backs of trailers. Next to one trailer, a circle of lawn had been fenced off with rope. Within the roped-off circle, the Gypsy woman danced.
She came out of a trailer dressed in layers of skirts and a low-cut blouse, dancing as two men played their fiddles. Her hair was jet black, and huge hoop earrings hung from her ears. Her eyes were dark and hypnotic. She danced slowly at first, then faster and faster, her skirts rising higher and higher until, whether because of boyhood imagination or not, Janos thought he saw the mysterious place between her legs. A place so startling when an adolescent boy first sees it in a photograph on a playing card on the school playground. A place submerged in hair as dark and thick as the hair on her head.
When the Gypsy woman finished her dance, she walked the perimeter of the roped-off area, holding out a basket. When Janos put in the coins his father had given him, the woman leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
He had been twelve years old, and never forgot the ongoing razzing he received from his family about the afternoon the Gypsy woman hypnotized him into giving away his carnival spending money.
Janos recalled telling his Gypsy story to Lazlo a quarter century earlier, before Chernobyl, when they were partners driving around Kiev in a militia Zhiguli not much older than his old Skoda. Janos recalled Lazlo revealing his Gypsy, a woman named Tamara who had been killed during the KGB hunt for Chernobyl scapegoats that had driven Lazlo from Ukraine.
Elena had changed out of her short cocktail waitress outfit when she joined him. She now wore spiked heels, red slacks cinched tight at her hourglass waist, a white blouse short of three buttons so any man
was inclined to lean forward. Other than this, her hair, earrings, and eyes were as before. A Gypsy.
Elena brought a glass of orange juice with her. She slid into the corner booth with Janos and sipped the juice while they spoke.
“I am very sorry about Shved,” said Janos. “He was a good friend.”
They drank to Shved, Elena finishing half the orange juice and her eyes becoming watery. Janos wondered if there was vodka in the juice.
“I should have known it would happen someday,” said Elena.
“Why?” asked Janos.
“Because private investigators in this part of the world are like wild horses. Everyone tries to catch them. At least when you were in the militia, you had backup. I told Shved when we began dating he should go back to the militia. He spoke of marriage. Try to imagine us walking down the aisle. Shved did not step on toes. He stood on them.”
Elena took a handkerchief out of her purse as if to wipe her eyes, but instead put the handkerchief away and stared at Janos. “You see? My tears are gone. They evaporated years ago before Shved and I met. You must have spoken with him in the past. You must know my story. An already wilted flower picked off the street, shipped to Istanbul to be further deflowered, the escape into Bulgaria, the help of strangers—who also sometimes required payment—and, finally, my arrival in Odessa, where an associate of Shved put me on a train back to Kiev. Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved is a hero. A statue should be erected in Independence Square. His presence at the video store was arranged in order to turn his memories into ashes.”
“How can you be certain Shved had not gone there to purchase a film?”
Elena stared at him. “Not Shved. I know about trafficking. This was bigger than ordinary trafficking. This investigation excited Shved. You, Janos, are trying to play the clever investigator. I know both you and Shved have contacts at the La Strada organization and other NGOs, which unfortunately did not exist when I found myself in Istanbul.”
“Very well,” said Janos. “To hell with being clever. What do you think Shved was doing at the video store? And, if the fire was meant to kill Shved, who would have done it and why? Was there a connection between Shved and Viktor Patolichev?”
Elena shrugged her shoulders. “The militia investigators asked the same questions. I don’t know what Shved had to do with Viktor Patolichev. But if he was there and on his feet, he would not have stayed when the fire started. If necessary, he would have run through a wall. This is why I do not believe he was a customer. He died because someone wanted him to die.”
“Did Shved say anything about a case involving child pornography?”
“The militia did not ask this.”
“I am not militia,” said Janos. “I ask different questions. Please, it may help us discover how Shved was murdered. If you simply answer the question while it is fresh in your mind …”
Elena looked down. “Child pornography.”
“Yes,” said Janos.
Elena looked to the side as if someone else were at the table. “I recall several weeks ago, Shved was talking about children. He said if we married and had a child he would never allow the child away from his side. He said he had met parents who lost their children, mostly teenagers, but some younger. He did not want to go through what they went through.”
“He was working on a case involving missing children?” asked Janos.
“Missing teenagers and children,” said Elena, still looking off to the side. “He rarely spoke of his work. But things he said recently made me think of the missing. He spoke of photographs printed in newspapers and posted on walls in the metro. He was careful when he spoke of the missing because of my experience. I believe he was working with parents. To protect me, he left out details. It was in his voice when he spoke of marriage.”
Janos was silent for a moment while Elena blinked away tears in her beautiful, dark eyes.
“Elena, this is very important. Do you recall Shved mentioning any new names during the last several weeks? Anyone, no matter how unimportant the name may seem.”
“I remember one name. I heard him on the phone. Normally I would not say anything about his business, but you were his friend. He said Donner. It seemed an odd name. I recall it because I could not place it ethnically … Wait, there was another … Babii. I heard him spell it. The name was Ivan Babii. It is Romanian and makes me think of Mafia, correct?”
“Yes, I heard of Babii some time ago. He disappeared from Moldova. A rumor was spread of his murder, but someone in the militia said it was his way of completing his disappearance. The name Donner, on the other hand, I will have to check.”
After Elena finished her drink and said she could think of nothing more, Janos walked with her to her car. Elena got into her car but left the door open, waiting for a jet on takeoff to pass over. The car was an American Chevrolet with a wide door that gave him a full view of her. She looked up at him and smiled.
“Shved found the car at the auction lot,” she said. “Although it uses much gasoline, my apartment is nearby.”
She closed the huge meat locker door and rolled down the window. “Shved was fond of you. I am also fond of you. They call you Gypsy. Are you a Gypsy?”
“Hungarian. But I am told some Romany blood pumps through my veins.”
Elena kept staring at him, saying nothing. Although it was nearly dusk, there was enough light to see her ample breasts at the open neck of her blouse. Farther down, her legs, red skinned in the tight slacks, moved up and down slightly as if her legs were thinking. As he stared down into the Chevrolet, Janos could see the center seam of her slacks. It had ventured into the secret place. That, combined with her eyes, made his mouth dry.
“Would you like to come home with me, Janos?”
He was a boy again, his coins clenched in his fist, ready to let go. Women, so compelling in their power over men. A few words spoken, a momentary eye contact … But when Janos thought of Mariya waiting for him the way he had waited for her last night, when he thought of her in his arms as she was about to push her bicycle into the apartment vestibule, he was able to resist, trading one compelling argument for another.
He reached inside the car and touched Elena’s shoulder. “I am also fond of you, Elena. But tonight the investigation of Shved’s death beckons me.”
Janos watched the large Chevrolet drive off toward a sunset rippling in heat from a jet taking off from Zhulyany Airport. After the Chevrolet was gone he walked across the lot to his faded orange Skoda with its sad crooked grill.
Agent Yuri Smirnov was about to close up his SBU office and walk to the metro station when the phone rang. He knew it would be his boss, Anatoly Lyashko. Two or three times a week Lyashko would call just before Smirnov walked out. And if he walked out too soon, Smirnov would hear about it the next day.
“Smirnov here.”
“Yuri, I am glad I caught you.”
“You usually do,” said Smirnov. “What can I do for you?”
“It concerns female clinics. Another one to the south in Berezovka north of Odessa was bombed this afternoon. You should keep close watch on the investigator Janos Nagy.”
“We are tracking him,” said Smirnov. “He was out of town for two weeks, and we were limited to following his general location using phone reports. He is currently in Kiev.”
“Is he bullying Father Rogoza again?” asked Lyashko. “The Moscow Patriarchate is not to be taken lightly.”
“I have not received complaints,” said Smirnov.
“In any case, please give Rogoza a call. I do not want him to become excited the way he sometimes does when I contact him.”
“What should I say?” asked Smirnov, picturing Rogoza twisting his beard as if his thoughts were superior to those of anyone else.
“Find out if Janos Nagy has been troubling him.” “Or if Rogoza has been troubling Janos Nagy.”
“We have discussed this before,” said Lyashko. “I believe the bombing of Nagy’s office was a not-very-subtle warning fr
om local Mafia. They dislike publicity. Janos Nagy’s attempts to make a connection between the Moscow Patriarchate and bombings is a ridiculous assertion, especially with Rogoza being in the public eye. If anything, I would be more inclined to suspect underground organizations. Catholics are very sensitive to this. I received a report yesterday about members of Opus Dei visiting foreign embassies in Kiev.”
“Janos Nagy spent time in a Roman Catholic school as a boy,” said Smirnov.
“I know,” said Lyashko. “Catholics seem to be emerging in the case.”
“What do you mean?” asked Smirnov.
“Both the private investigator killed in the video store fire, and the store owner, have Catholic upbringing in their past. Plus, Janos Nagy, also with Catholic upbringing, was a friend of the investigator. My information shows his name was Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved.
“I am familiar with his name,” said Smirnov, trying his best not to sound irritated.
Lyashko continued. “Yes, you would know this. But there is more. Recent information from militia undercover operatives indicates there might have been child pornography available at the location. If so, Janos Nagy could be part of a child pornography network.”
“This seems speculative,” said Smirnov. “Yes,” said Lyashko, “I can understand why you might see it as speculation. However, our office in Kharkiv is working on a child pornography-missing children tie-in.”
“Someone is kidnapping children to make pornography?”
“Of course, we are not certain,” said Lyashko. “But we cannot be left out in the cold. Mafia operatives in Kiev may have something to do with the video store burning. Our SBU undercover operations have turned up the code name Pied Piper in pornography and trafficking circles. Our undercover men have reason to believe this Pied Piper is a Kiev contact for a vast underground child-trafficking network. Of course, as you say, this is all speculation. But still, we must find out if Janos Nagy has turned his so-called private investigation toward Father Rogoza. Therefore, the need for you to call Rogoza … even if the sole purpose is to establish good relations between the SBU and the Moscow Patriarchate.”
Traffyck: The Thrilling Sequel to Chernobyl Murders Page 15