The Iron Angel

by Edward D. Hoch

  “It sounds exciting.”

  “It’s very dull. Once, though, we took a racehorse to Moscow to their big track at the Hippodrome. That was exciting. Captain Segar came with us.”

  “Moscow!” She shook her head. “I have such a dull life back home.”

  “But over here it is exciting, no?”

  She turned quickly, detecting some change in his voice. “What do you mean?”

  “Stealing your boyfriend’s motorcycle is exciting?”

  “How did you –? What are you talking about?”

  He smiled slightly at her surprise. “It is not difficult to surmise. The saddlebags have the initials P.F. Hardly the initials of Jennifer Beatty. I assume that’s your real name because Captain Segar certainly would have checked your passport if he stopped you along the road, and you wouldn’t give one name to him and another to me. You had difficult starting the cold engine just now, showing some unfamiliarity with the machine, hardly as if you’ve been driving it across the Balkans for two months. Would you be traveling all over with a woman friend who happened to own a motorcycle? Very doubtful. A male, a boyfriend, is most likely. It’s his motorcycle, but you have it. Did he sell or give it to you, or did you steal it? I’d say the latter as the most likely possibility, especially since the key you used to start it seems to be still attached to a very masculine key ring.”

  She glanced down at the keys still in her hand and blushed when she saw Peter’s tiny nude in pink plastic dangling from it. “You sound like Sherlock Holmes.”

  He laughed. “Better than being compared to Dracula, I suppose. In these mountains, the Count is more popular than Holmes – they’ve even made a tourist attraction out of him.”

  “What else do you know about me?”

  “Well, you speak the language well enough so I know you didn’t cross the border yesterday. You and your boyfriend must have been living here at least for a few months.”

  “Three weeks,” she told him. “I’m a fast learner.”

  “You are indeed, Jennifer. Do you want to tell me why you left him?”

  “It didn’t work out. He got so he was shooting dope every night and that’s not my scene. I left him in Vasile on the Black Sea.”

  “A charming place. And the motorcycle?”

  “I had no transportation and virtually no money. It was my only way out. I left him a note yesterday morning and took off.”

  “Will he come looking for you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They walked across the fields to the only house in sight that was larger than Michael’s. On the porch they found King Carranza seated in his wheelchair. Jennifer stared at his powerful arms and shoulders and the iron grey hair that twined around his head like a crown. It was a full minute before her eyes strayed to his crippled legs, hidden by a faded horse blanket.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, but he only smiled and nodded in response.

  “King Carranza speaks Romany,” Michael explained. “He has never found it necessary to learn the local language.”

  “Does he live here alone?”

  “Yes. His sister comes in and cooks for him. He still works in the black-smith shop around the back of the house. He had a wife, but she is gone now.”

  “Dead?”

  “Gone,” Michael repeated. He said a few words to the king, conveying Jennifer’s greeting from America. Then he translated the response for her. She liked the king and the kindly way he studied her and felt regret that he was confined to a wheelchair.

  A few minutes later, as they watched him at work in his blacksmith shop, she tempered her initial feeling a bit. With his powerful arms, he could do more than most able-bodied men she knew, including Peter, who was virtually helpless in the real world.

  Michael took her around to meet others in the village. A couple named Steven and Maria Fetesti, married only a year and working together on their tiny farm especially impressed her. They spoke Romanian ad did many of the younger Gypsies and she was pleased to be able to converse with them directly.

  “One more stop,” Michael said as they left the Fetesti’s. “I want you to see a shop in the village. It’s where my wife’s carved animals are sold.”

  The shop was run by a thin, bearded man named Ivan Raski. Somehow he seemed different from the others, and the Romanian he spoke was not as clear or as intelligible. But his shop was a delight. Jennifer wandered around, studying the mostly handmade crafts, wishing she had the money to buy something.

  “Are they all made in the village?” she asked Michael as they were leaving.

  “Almost all. Some come from a neighboring village.”

  “But do enough tourists come through here to buy them?”

  “A few travel this road, but we buy many of these things ourselves. Blankets to keep us warm in winter, Gypsy skirts and blouses, wooden toys for the children. We are almost self-sufficient here.”

  “This is free enterprise – doesn’t the Communist government object?”

  “Not on this small a scale. The Gypsies in the cities have some degree of regulation. Up here they rarely bother us. Captain Segar looks after our interests.”

  They strolled back toward Michael’s farm, Jennifer all too aware that she’d soon be leaving this idyllic place with no firm destination in mind.

  “Ivan Raski didn’t seem like the others,” she observed. “Is he a Gypsy?”

  “No, he’s Russian. He came here some years ago and we took him in. This is not a closed community.”

  “Could I stay here for some time?”

  “I don’t know. Would you be happy here? You would have to do some work on my farm or elsewhere.”

  “I might like that.”

  Michael stopped and studied her. “Suppose you stay for another night and we’ll both think it over.”

  She was pleased as his reply and was about to accept the offer when they heard a woman scream. Michael froze then turned toward the sound. A middle-aged Gypsy woman was running toward them across the field from the direction of King Carranza’s house.

  “It’s Carranza’s sister Theresa,” Michael said. “Something’s wrong!”

  They ran to meet her and she fell to the ground at Michael’s feet, gasping for breath. “He’s dead!” she screamed. “My brother has been murdered !”

  It was true. King Carranza was dead. He lay in a pool of blood on the living room floor next to his overturned wheelchair. The apparent murder weapon a heavy blacksmith’s hammer was on the floor nearby. Jennifer took one look and buried her face in her hands.

  “Stay outside,” Michael told her. “Don’t look.”

  He turned to Theresa Carranza, who was stiff with terror. “Try to tell me what happened.”

  “I came over to see him as I do every morning. I was later than usual today because my son has a little fever. I found him – like this!”

  “No one else was here?”

  “No one!”

  For the first time, he seemed to notice drawers that had been pulled open, papers strewn about. “It looks like a robbery.” He turned to Jennifer. “Run back to my house and tell Rosanna what has happened. Tell her we need people here – Festesti, Raski, she’ll know who else.”

  “All right.”

  She ran across the fields, glad to be away from the dead king and his grieving sister. When she broke the news to Michael’s wife, the blood seemed to drain from Rosanna’s face. Then she steadied herself and said, “It’s like losing a father. What did Michael tell me to do?”

  “He needs people to help. He mentioned Fetesti and Raski. He said you’d know others.”

  Rosanna nodded, wrapping a shawl around her through the morning was warming nicely. “Tell him I’ll get help and come quickly. Everyone will be there.”

  The word spread quickly and soon after Jennifer returned to the Carranza house the crowd began to gather. She hadn’t imagined so many people lived in the village. Every man, woman and child seemed to be there. Michael we
nt out on the porch and spoke to them. Though she couldn’t understand the words she knew by the crowd’s reaction that he was telling them what they already knew – that their king had been killed by someone unknown. Their reaction was a mixture of grief and anger.

  “What are they saying?” she asked Steven Fetesti.

  “They must find the killer. No one can believe it was one of us. Only an outsider could have done something so terrible.”

  Rosanna was comforting the dead man’s sister while others went about the work of removing King Carranza’s body. After a brief conversation with some of the others, Michael placed a telephone call to Captain Segar. He promised to comet at once, though it was a two-hour drive from his office in town.

  As the body was removed Michael examined the house. “Can you tell if anything has been stolen?” he asked Theresa.

  She went through the downstairs rooms, including the bedroom and bath-room. “He had some money he kept here – gold jewelry and coins, as well as paper money he earned from smithing. It seems to be gone.”

  “Could it be upstairs.?”

  “He hasn’t used the upstairs since his accident years ago. He had some things stored up there, that’s all.” But she went up to inspect it anyway, with Rosanna, and they reported back that the upstairs storage area appeared untouched. The thief and murderer had apparently confined his activities to the ground floor.

  In the crowd outside, with tensions running high, a fight had broken out. A big Gypsy Jennifer didn’t know had started tussling with Ivan Raski, the little Russian shopkeeper. Michael sprang out the door and leaped off the porch, landing on the combatants and carrying them both to the ground. Then he yanked them apart by sheer force. “What’s this about?” he shouted at them in Romanian.

  The Gypsy said something Jennifer could not catch, but his meaning was all too clear when Michael responded angrily, “Why? Is Ivan to be suspected merely because he is not one of us? This girl and I were in his shop very near the time the killing must have taken place – he is not the one we seek!”

  It was less than five minutes later when Rosanna spotted the drops of blood near the back door and called Michael. “Perhaps King Carranza managed to wound his attacker,” she suggested.

  “It is a possibility,” he admitted. “It couldn’t be Carranza’s blood this far from where Theresa found him.”

  “Why not?” Jennifer asked. “His blood might have splattered on his killer.”

  “These drops are perfectly shaped and not yet dry. They dripped from an open wound. See – here’s another on the back steps.” When Fetesti came to observe, Michael told him, “Go get your dogs. They are good trackers. They will lead us in the right direction.”

  The young Gypsy returned in minutes with two shaggy beagles. At first they seemed uninterested in the bloodstains, caught up instead by the odors in the kitchen, but Steven yanked on their leashes and finally managed to direct their attention. The dogs went out the back door and headed across the field toward the woods, pulling their master behind them.

  “Come along,” Michael said to Jennifer.

  “Don’t you need a gun?”

  “If he’s still there, it means he’s too badly wounded to put up a fight. He used Carranza’s hammer for the killing, remember – that implies he has no other weapons.”

  They followed the dogs into the woods and then out the other side. There was another dirt road. The dogs hesitated a bit here, but finally picked up the scent again. Michael and Steven followed them to a narrow culvert along the side of the road.

  “There his is,” Michael said pointing. “Stand back, Jennifer.”

  A sandy-haired man in jeans and a striped T-shirt lay in the culvert. Michael bent over him and went rapidly through his pockets. “German passport in the name of Hans Funken. Probably died from loss of blood. The body’s still warm.

  Jennifer could see the bloody wound in the young stranger’s side as she edged closer to the culvert. “Was he shot?” she asked.

  “It looks more like a knife wound,” Michael said, continuing to search the body. In one pocket he found two gold coins. “These were Carranza’s. No one else would have had coins this old.”

  “But why would he kill him?” she asked.

  “It was probably a simple burglary that went bad. Carranza was an expert at knife-throwing. He hit this fellow with a blade and the man stopped to beat his head in before he fled. I suppose he had been wandering across the country-side and picked Carranza’s house because it was the largest in the village.” Michael stared off at the horizon.

  “You were very close to him, weren’t you?”

  “He was like a father to me.” Michael turned back to Steven. “Stay with the body. I’ll send a truck around to carry him back.”

  As they returned to the Carranza house the way they had come, Jennifer asked, “Will you be the new king?”

  “Usually the old king passes on his medallion and ring – the symbols of his office – to a chosen successor. King Carranza had no children, and though I acted in his place on the Council of Elders many times he never chose me to succeed him. It will be up to the Council to name a new king. But that won’t come until after his funeral ceremony. When a king of a Gypsy clan dies, there is often a gathering of other clans in the area. It is a mournful occasion but a festive one too.”

  At the Carranza house Michael dispatched two of the men to help Steven Fetesti with the body. Ivan Raski listened to Michael’s account of the discovery. “A stab wound, you say?”

  “It appeared so. We must search for a second weapon. You remember how skilled Carranza was with a thrown knife.”

  “As are many Roms,” Raski agreed.

  Jennifer watched them search beneath the chairs and tables in the sitting room, then wandered out to the kitchen and began searching there, as much to remove her from the death room as for any other reason. The body was gone now, but the terrible bloodstains still soiled the carpet. Out here at least there were no bloodstains except those by the stove and the back door.

  She spotted the knife almost at once by the woodpile next to the stove. “Michael!” she called. “Here it is!”

  He hurried into the kitchen, with Raski close behind. “Yes, I recognize it,” he told her, picking it up carefully. “It was his favorite throwing knife. He wore it beneath the sash around his waist.”

  Raski turned to look in at the overturned wheelchair. It was in the direct line with the stove. “He hurled the knife and caught the killer as he was going out the door.”

  “Perhaps,” Michael said.

  Jennifer watched him as he studied the carpet in the short hallway between the living room and the kitchen. He opened a door and glanced in at the bathroom. “Anything?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said shutting the door.

  He was interrupted by the arrival of a car outside. Jennifer could see by his face that he recognized the sound of the motor, and he hurried to greet the new arrival. “It’s Captain Segar,” Ivan Raski explained.

  She saw the uniformed man climb out from behind the wheel. There was someone with him in the car and Jennifer assumed it was one of his deputies. Segar shook hands with Michael as they met in front of the house. “My dear friend,” he said, “I know how much Carranza meant to you.”

  “He was our king,” Michael said simply. “There will never be another like him.”

  Then Segar’s gaze swept the crowd in front of Carranza’s house and settled on Jennifer. “I’ve brought someone who is looking for you,” he announced. The other man had emerged from the car and was walking towards her. She saw with a shock of fear that it was Peter Fry.

  “So this is where I find you,” he growled. “In a Gypsy camp!”

  “Peter, you –”

  He towered above her, his fists clenched as if he might strike her at any moment. “You deserted me and stole my motorcycle! Where is it?”

  “It’s safe, in Michael’s shed.”

  “Michael, is it? Y
ou didn’t waste any time, did you?”

  “Peter, stop acting childish.” She was aware that several of the villagers were close enough to overhear them.

  “Why did you leave me?”

  “I thought the note I left made everything clear. How did you find me?”

  “I borrowed a car from a friend and kept asking people along the way. A girl like you alone on a motorcycle attracts attention. Finally I saw this government car down the hill and asked Captain Segar if he’d seen anyone answering your description. He told me he’d met you on the road yesterday and directed you here. He was on his way here to investigate a killing, so I left the car and rode along with him.”

  “I’ll return your motorcycle and you can go,” she told him turning to walk away. He grabbed her arm and spun her around.

  Suddenly Michael was at her side and pulling Peter’s hand away. “Is there some problem here?”

  “She’s going back with me,” Peter said.

  “Not unless she wants to.” Michael turned to Jennifer. “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. I want to stay here with you, I think. At least for a while.”

  Michael sighted. “Let’s go inside and talk it over.”

  They’d brought back the dead man, and Steven Fetesti helped to unload him from the truck and lay him on the ground. When one of the Gypsies tried to kick the body, Segar quickly intervened. “Keep back everyone. Was there any identification on him?”

  Michael handed over the German passport he’d found. “His name is Hans Funken. He must have been passing through the area and picked the Carranza house to rob because it was the largest in the village. We found these two coins in this pocket but nothing else.”

  “Does anyone remember seeing him around?” Segar asked the Gypsies. Several shook their heads. No one seemed to have known or seen him before.

  Jennifer and Peter followed the others into the house, where Theresa sat in grieving silence in a corner of the room. “There must be preparation for the funeral,” Maria Fetesti said softly.