Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  “But what if the owner of the house has nothing to do with it? That is unjust. That is unfair.”

  “That is irrelevant. The notion of liability can be stretched to fit any insured party. Wait till you guys discover medical malpractice.”

  “I am going to help you,” he said. “Yes. I will be your Czech guide and you will tell me about the financial opportunities for a capitalist lawyer.”

  “What were they under the Communists?”

  “Not good. I believe too much. You understand. In things like Justice. So I was always in trouble. Here they appoint the judges to do what they want them to do. So the judge, the prosecutor, the police, the party—they are all one person. The defendant is nobody. The defense lawyer is nobody. Do you have contempt of court in America?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have it here,” he said. “It was no good under the Communists.”

  “Is that why you drink?”

  “No,” he said, “I drink because I like beer.”

  She was gone.

  The house below the castle was shuttered and locked. No smoke rose from the chimney. The gate was locked. Jaroslav found out Kapek’s private phone number from a friend at court. A machine answered. The recording was in Czech, so I didn’t understand it, but I recognized the distinctive beep of an Answerfone. I called again and asked Jaroslav to listen and tell me what the recorded voice had to say. “I’m sorry,” it said, “I cannot come to the phone right now. Please leave a message at the sound of the tone.” I sat on the place for a day and a night. Jaroslav kept me company, on and off. We talked about how change had come to Eastern Europe. And how fast. He told me how bad it had been in the fifties. Those were the days of the knock on the door in the middle of the night. Informers and disappearances. It had been followed by a milder time and the government even began to open things up within the system. Until ’68, of course, when the government made the mistake of overestimating the length of the Russian leash. They had been brought up short.

  When the tanks came they were greeted with compliance.

  “How did the Communists take over in the first place?” I asked him.

  “They had a good name, honor, and idealism as antifascists. Who else on this side of Europe stood up to Hitler? The French and the English sold us out. Even the Americans, in a way. They could have liberated all of Czechoslovakia. Your armies were in western Bohemia. But you stopped and left that honor to Stalin,” he said. “The shame of it is, we elected them. It was like when you were young and very much wanted to have sex. There was a girl. A good girl, from a good family, and much to your surprise she said yes and lets you between her legs. You do it. She gets pregnant. Then you have to marry her. Then and only then do you find out she is really the wicked Witch of the East, that there is no divorce, and that her four brothers—all of military age and armed—have moved in with you to make sure you stay together. Also, you have to feed them.”

  “That’s your interpretation of how Czechoslovakia went Communist?”

  “How the hell do I know? I was a baby. I had nothing to do with it. Nobody talks straight about it. Our parents who hate the Communists don’t want to admit that they welcomed them. Just like the Austrians, no one says they welcomed Hitler. But they did. The Hungarians. Did you ever hear a Hungarian brag that they had the first fascist country in Europe? Of course, the people who are Communists, or who were up till last month, call it a triumph of the people. So, that is my interpretation.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I am a man of great passion,” he said passionately, lighting another cigarette. Smoking is even more universal in Czechoslovakia than it used to be in America. And more dramatic. Jaroslav’s personal cigarette style was midway between Boyer and Bogart. “I am developing a new passion. To make money. What do you think?”

  “Money’s a good thing to have.”

  “Yes, but am I being too trendy?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “But isn’t it what everyone is doing?”

  “Perhaps it is an idea whose time has come.”

  “I am the sort of person who wants to be ahead of his time or far behind it. It is a form of vanity.” He gestured with his cigarette, a motion similar to a complex Arabic greeting. Ashes spilled across his lap and onto my sling. “Tell me about your baby.”

  “She can laugh and she can smile,” I said. “She can roll over all by herself. At least, that’s what Marie Laure said she just did.”

  “My wife is expecting. I am so excited. We have been trying for years. This will be a baby born free.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said.

  “Okay, you want to go to the pub?”

  “No. I’m going to sit here until I’m sure there’s no one coming or going.”

  “And then what?”

  “Good question,” I said.

  “I could get us a beer,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said, “and some aspirin—my shoulder hurts like hell.”

  “You should be resting,” he said. “The doctor said for you to stay in bed for a couple of days.”

  “No. I want to get this done. I want to get back to Anna Geneviève and Marie Laure.”

  “She is not your wife?”

  “No, she’s not my wife.”

  “You like her?”

  “Yeah. A lot. I love her.”

  “You have passion for her? Strong virile feelings?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Is she a nice girl?”

  “Yeah, and a good bargain. Usually.”

  “You should marry her,” he said.

  He went to get the beer. While he was gone I shuffled through the photos of Nadia, Wendy, and Hiroshi. It was a surprisingly laborious process one-handed. Doing anything one-handed is difficult when you’re used to two. Jaroslav returned without the aspirin but with a bartender who carried a full pitcher, two glasses, some bread, and a nameless Czech cheese. The barman even filled the glasses before he put the pitcher on the floor of the car alongside Jaroslav’s cast. It was the least inconspicuous stakeout I had ever been on. I clutched the photos in the hand that rested in the sling and the beer in my good hand. Jaroslav tried to hand me some bread, but I had no place to put it.

  “Look at these,” I said.

  He had a beer and a cigarette in one hand, a piece of bread and cheese in the other. He couldn’t find a flat surface to balance anything, so he put the bread and cheese in his mouth, like a dog holding a newspaper. Then he took the pictures and put his glass of beer into my hand. He was impressed, as we all had been, by the topless twosome. He asked who the other girl was. I said, “Dead.” I asked him if they had all been taken in Prague. Ten of them looked to me like someplace very different. But I didn’t know Prague well enough to say they weren’t just from a different neighborhood.

  “Not Prague,” he said, but with the bread and cheese in his mouth he could just as well have been saying new frog or knot grog.

  “Don’t speak with your mouth full,” I said.

  “Not Prague.” He balanced the bread on his knee. “Curious, though. In winter? When were these pictures taken?”

  “December, judging by the passport—December eighty-nine. Where is it?”

  “Mariánské Lázn?,” he said. “The buildings, the yellow color that is very typically Czech, you know, and the period. But this building I recognize. It is waters for health.”

  “Where?”

  “Marienbad, you call it. Near the border. I will show you.” He took his beer back. Since my hand was free, he stuck the pictures back there.

  “What about your job, your wife?”

  “I have the disability. My wife will be glad that I am not underfoot. If we find this Carel Kapek, who is not the playwright, I will sue him for my foot. How much is a foot worth in America?” He finished his glass of beer. When he went to pour another the bread fell off his knee. He caught it before it hit the floor.

  “Well, you have your lost i
ncome.”

  “In Czechoslovakia that is not a great loss.”

  “Then you have your pain and suffering,” I said.

  “In my country it would be hubris to call this pain and suffering.”

  “Then you maybe have your punitive damages.”

  “Ah. Ah-ha!” he said dramatically. He began to orate. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. This one-time agent of state security imagines that in today’s democratic Czechoslovakia he is still above the law! Imagine the arrogance. This one-time agent of state security thinks he can have his minions throw people out of his window with no regard whatsoever for innocent bystanders passing below. Once he could hide behind the mask of a totalitarian regime. But no longer. It is up to you, free citizens of a free country, to send a message. You have to look before you defenestrate. How can you send that message? I’ll tell you how—six million dollars in punitive damages.

  “Like that?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “That’s how we do it in the Free World.”

  In Europe they believe now, as they have for centuries, in the healing powers of a variety of mineral baths. There are hot springs, sulphur baths, radioactive waters, waters to drink, waters to take home in bottles. Marienbad is one of the most famous and has baths for a wide variety of ailments. Which was a good thing, because we were a fine collection of cripples, me, Jaroslav, and Mr. Lime.

  We had checked into one of the five hotels in Mariánské Lázn? that catered to Westerners. Jaroslav handled the transaction at the desk.

  “We have view of the park,” he said.

  We walked upstairs—there were neither elevators nor bellmen—and entered our room. Where Lime, who was now John Sebastian just as I was Andy Applebaum, was already waiting in an oversized armchair, a drink in his hand, a boom box on the table.

  “What are you doing here?” I said. Though that was obvious. He was waiting for me.

  He put the sound track from The Big Chill in the portable tape recorder and turned it up loud.

  “Why can’t you be straight with me?” he said.

  “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” came on. The room was a large airy atrocity. Once upon a time it had probably been, as the exterior still was, full of Mitteleuropa charm. At some point, in a fit of neo-Stalinist delusion, to prove that Soviets were as modern as Americans, a loyal-to-the-party interior decorator had gone abroad and come back with the Best of the West from Miami Beach, circa 1958.

  “I barely even know you,” I said.

  “How bad is the shoulder?” he asked.

  “Now that it’s in, it’s tolerable,” I said.

  “Physical therapy—that’s the thing,” he said. “Also, you don’t want to let anything happen to it until it’s strong again. You don’t want to be one of those guys goes to parties and pops his arm out of his shoulder to amuse the kids. That’s what happens, you let it get dislocated too many times. That’s the down side. The not-so-down side is that it hurts less each time.”

  “It better,” I said. “First time was a monster.”

  “I bet,” he said. “How the hell did you get out of Budapest?”

  “How the hell did you find me?” I asked. I looked at Jaroslav.

  “Can we order up some beer?” Jaroslav said.

  “I thought we had an understanding,” Lime said.

  “Gerald Yaskowitz,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Gerald is my attorney.”

  “Where?” Lime asked.

  “New York.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “You should know that,” I said. “From my file.”

  “I didn’t think it was that important,” he said.

  “It’s not because I don’t trust you,” I said, “but I sure would like it if you had your people talk to my people. Specifically the New York office of the IRS—or the D.C. office, that’s your business—should present a letter to my people—that’s Yaskowitz—that says because I found you this disc and turned it over I must be such a good citizen that all that other obstruction-of-justice crap is indeed crap and that there are no criminal charges pending, and et cetera and so forth—you know the drill.”

  “But you don’t have the disc.”

  “But when I get it,” I said.

  “Are you going to get it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I loved Budapest,” Lime said. “Didn’t you love Budapest?”

  “Budapest was fine,” I said.

  He put his hand on my shoulder—the good one. “Hungarian women,” he said, with more intimacy than I cared to enjoy, “and a strong dollar. That is one hell of a powerful combination. This is a hell of an exciting time, I tell you. You know, a year from now nobody is going to believe you could have a truly prime Magyar girl for twenty dollars. I’m not talking about a quickie blow job in the front seat. I’m talking about doing things right. Scrub your back in the tub. Spend the night. Pour your coffee in the morning. Then give you a quickie blow job.”

  I looked at Jaroslav. He had to have been working for Lime all along. He let Lime know where we were going so Lime could get there first and get settled in the room that Jaroslav had led me right to. Jaroslav backed up until he bumped into the wall. Then he shuffled sideways, leaning on his crutch. There was a giant armchair in that style called Swedish modern—something we must never forgive the Swedes for. He stumbled against it. Then he sat.

  “Is he working for you?” I asked.

  “You ever been to Budapest?” Lime said to Jaroslav, switching to German.

  “Yes, once for a weekend.”

  “What’d you think of Hungarian women? Huh, boy?” Lime asked him.

  “I’m sure they’re fine,” Jaroslav said.

  “He’s self-conscious because he’s got a small prick,” Lime said, back to English. “But it doesn’t matter a good goddamn, does it, Jaro? Women are women the world over and it’s the size of your currency that they care about. It’s the same in New York, isn’t it, Tony?”

  “Do we have business to do?” I said.

  He put a hand on my bad shoulder and pushed at it gently. I retreated and there was sweat in my armpits, a prickling of moisture on my brow. I looked at his bad knee, measuring the distance. My blood pulsed from the adrenaline hits. My shoulder was so damaged that the increased blood pressure was painful.

  “You think I’m just jerking your chain, don’t you?” he said.

  “Hey, Jaroslav,” I said, “you weren’t outside by accident when I fell on you, were you? You were following me.”

  “I was in Nam,” Lime said. “Oh, man. Vietnamese women. Incroyable. Le combination de la français et l’orient—l’eurasienne.” His French was a made-up franglais. It made him sound more American than ever. “If you like your women big, long legged, big breasted, all right, you got your Hungarians, but for pure femininity, for knowing how to serve a man, the Vietnamese girls were the best. And the dollar was strong. You know what a strong currency is? It’s the biggest dick, the handsomest face, the best tailored suit, and the slickest line on the block. Guys so dumb and ugly that they couldn’t get a pig at a 4-H convention in Iowa were getting shack jobs so gorgeous that you could cry just to look at them. They were getting treated better than their mothers treated them. And if their shack job nagged about money, like an honest-to-God American wife, you gave her ten bucks and it was joyville. You get a lot of these movies—Platoon, The Deerhunter, Apocalypse Now—all that crap. All of them are crap. Vietnam was fine. For a lot of folks. Hey, for some grunts up in the jungle who didn’t like guns and shit like that, it was a bummer—no question. Rear echelon, intelligence, supply, medical, maintenance—that is, most of your army—stationed in Saigon, Hue—we’re talking about Paradise on Earth.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “Check National Geographic. Find a suitable Third World country, start a new war. Whatever it takes for you to get laid and leave me alone, I’m for it.”

  “Cassella, you don’t get the p
oint.”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  “I’m talking about America. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m a little crude. A little offensive. But how would you like to hear a Japanese or a German talking that way about American girls? ’Cause that’s what’s going to happen. World War Three is on and it’s called Monopoly. The Cold War might be done but the Fiscal War needs to be won. They’re buying Rockefeller Center, Columbia Records, Columbia Pictures. Now why the hell do the Japs want Hollywood? To influence our hearts and minds? Maybe. To make money? Surely. Or because they know that the word producer is a synonym for blow job? You bet.

  “These are people who organize sex tours, usually of what they consider second-rate countries. Right now that’s the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Korea. Like that. But when the yen gets to a hundred to one with the dollar, Fujiyama Tours is going to set up perversion excursions to Los Angeles. You understand, they want to own California. You think I’m crazy. You think I’m exaggerating. But this is what they say. And we better goddamn listen to what they say. Like we didn’t listen to Hirohito the last time. Like we didn’t listen to Hitler.”

  “Let’s say I buy this weirdness,” I said. “Let’s say I even want to sign up and protect the virtue of American womanhood from yen lust.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s say I buy it. What the fuck are we doing in Czechoslovakia?”

  “Tell me something, Jaro,” Lime said in German. “Who’s poised to buy Czechoslovakia?”

  “The Germans,” Jaroslav said.

  Marvin Gaye started singing, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

  “Have you heard the joke that’s making the rounds in Tokyo?” Lime switched back to English. “How will the Japs win World War Three? They’ll join up with the Germans again, but this time they’ll leave the Italians out of it.”

  “What’s a source code?” I asked him.

  “What’s a jet plane?” he said.

  “I gone for beer,” Jaroslav said.

  He hauled himself up out of his seat and went to the door. Lime watched him. When he opened the door, Chip Sheen shoved him back inside. Jaroslav stumbled on his crutch and started to protest. Chip pulled his jacket back and showed him his gun.