“My God!” Segar whispered.
“The muddy footprints stopped because Felipe, small of bone, was yanked straight up in the air by his muscular brother, and left hanging from the second floor window of the farmhouse. Then Andre ran downstairs and quickly wished his brother away with the bear’s paw.”
“No, no,” the old woman protested from her bed. “We could still hear the knocking after Andre came down from his room!”
“We heard it more faintly. It was the sound of Felipe’s boots hitting the side of the house as he struggled in his dying agony.”
“Why didn’t we see the body when we opened the door?”
“It was above us. More importantly, it was above the spotlight over the door. If anyone looked up, the strong light blinded them and they never saw the body. I went upstairs to get boots to compare with the muddy tracks but Andre kept me away from his room where the rope went out the window. Later, perhaps as we were leaving, he pulled the body into his room. During the night he would have lowered it out again and carried it to the car his brother had parked nearby. On Sunday he drove the body to Bucharest and dumped it in the river hoping it was close to the right spot. He wrapped a wire garrote around the throat to conceal the marks of the rope and hide the real cause of death.”
“How did you know this?” Segar asked. “Can it be proven?”
“The autopsy on Felipe’s body will show that he died Saturday rather than Thursday. And a careful examination might even find evidence of the rope marks. Once you have that, Andre is the only possibility. Only he was upstairs when the knocking started. And only he, as the killer, knew that his final wish on the bear’s paw would be successful. He had the motive – to inherit the farm someday for himself – and the opportunity. I think you can prove that he was away long enough on Sunday to drive to Bucharest and back.”
“When did you suspect him?” Segar asked.
When I went over Saturday’s events in my mind. Andre was the first to scoff at the bear’s paw and its wishes, yet he ran downstairs to use it himself when the knocking came.”
As it turned out, Segar needn’t have worried about evidence. Shortly before his mother and father were to visit him at the Agula jail, Andre managed to cut his wrists with a razor blade he’d hidden in his mouth. He’d put it back under his tongue as he bled to death in his cell.
Later, when Michael Vlado finished telling Rosanna everything that had happened, she, with her literary mind, turned to him and said, as Andre had earlier, “It was ‘The Monkey’s Paw’!”
Michael, his voice soft and sad, corrected her. “No, it was ‘The Prodigal Son.’ ”
THE CLOCKWORK RAT
Old Caspian came to visit Michael Vlado one day in the spring, when the horses were running in the field. He stood for a time watching them, as he often did on visits to the Gypsy village in the foothills of Romania’s Transylvanian Alps. Finally, after nearly an hour, he came to the point of his visit.
“One of my people is in trouble, Michael – a Rom like ourselves, though he lives in Moscow.”
“Moscow is a long way from here,” Michael said quietly, knowing what was going to be asked of him.
“You went there once before to race a horse, when the Communists were still in power. It is a different place now.”
“But trouble is always the same. I try to avoid it.”
Old Caspian sighed. “Ten years younger and I would go myself, Michael.”
“Tell me about this trouble. I promise nothing.”
Caspian brought out his pipe and stuffed the bowl with tobacco. He took his time lighting it, and Michael feared he was in for a long story. “He’s a dwarf,” the old man said. “I suppose that’s how he got the job in the first place.”
“What job is it?”
“With the coming of capitalism to Russia, several private clubs have sprung up around Moscow. My little friend Maksim is employed at one of them dressed up like a page boy from a couple of centuries ago. They have gambling there and drugs. Maksim wants desperately to leave Moscow and return home, but he is a virtual prisoner, treated as little more than a slave. He owes a large sum of money to gangsters – the Russian Mafia as the press likes to call them – and they keep him working against his will. He fears they would kill him if he tried to escape.”
“What can I do?” Michael Vlado asked. “I do not have the money to ransom him.”
“You are a Gypsy king, my friend,” Caspian reminded him. “You could get Maksim out safely. They would not dare to harm you.”
“I’m sure your Russian Mafia or whatever you call them, would have little respect for a Gypsy of whatever rank.”
“Look Michael, you are my only hope! We have no one to represent us, no one to protect our interests. There is no Rom ambassador in Moscow or any-where else.”
Michael considered the appeal, knowing he should turn it down but reluctant to do so. “They might not even let me enter the country.”
“You still have your Romanian passport don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then they will let you in. Everything is much looser in Russia today.”
“Including the crime.”
Caspian persisted. “I just want Maksim out alive. I know you can do it for me.”
Michael Vlado shook his head, trying one last time to say no. “It’s two day’s drive to Moscow and another two back. I can’t be gone that long.”
“I will buy you a plane ticket, and give you money for two return tickets.”
“Why does this dwarf Maksim mean so much to you?”
The old man simply stared at him. Finally he turned away, perhaps to hide a tear. “He is my grandson.”
On the flight to Moscow the following day, Michael considered the story old Caspian had told him. The man’s daughter, Sasha, whom Michael remembered holding in his arms when she was a baby, had joined a traveling circus some twenty-five years earlier, working as a bareback rider and touring throughout the Socialist countries of Eastern Europe. Later, with the new freedom engendered by the fall of Communism, she had returned home briefly to Caspian’s village. During her circus days she had borne a son named Maksim who was in his early twenties now. It was only recently that Caspian had learned that part of the story, after Sasha departed once more and left him a long letter.
Maksim’s father, short of stature but not, like his son, a dwarf, was an animal trainer with the circus. Sasha had fallen in love with him and they’d had a child. When it became clear that young Maksim would never achieve full height, his father began teaching him the business of training animals. The boy was especially adept at handling and breeding performing rats, and the rats were always in large supply when the circus set up its tents in the fields of the old cities.
After 1991, when the changes in Russia accelerated, Maksim and his father left the circus and moved to Moscow. Sasha had returned to her home village in Romania, feeling that her son was now an adult and able to fend for himself. Once in Moscow, Maksim and his father quickly found work in the shadowy world of private gambling, arranging races using their trained rats. But last fall something happened. Maksim’s father dropped out of sight and Maksim ended up owing the mob a great deal of money. He’d been kept in servitude ever since, working off his debt at one of the many private clubs in the Moscow area. Sasha had again left her village to earn money to send him, but meanwhile, Caspian’s grandson remained in a sort of forced servitude.
It was obvious to Michael Vlado that he would not get far in Moscow as a Gypsy, not even as a Gypsy king. Once he cleared customs at Domodedovo Airport, he assumed the role of a Romanian businessman. He used most of the money for the two return plane tickets to purchase a suit of clothes and accessories at the huge GUM department store in Red Square. Walking among the fountains in the lofty glass-roofed galleries of the store, he could almost feel like a capitalist. The feeling remained with him back in his tiny hotel room as he changed into the unfamiliar clothes.
The address Casp
ian had given him was for the Club Nikolas, an elaborate old mansion located next to the city’s soccer stadium near the airport. Michael had rented a car and he parked near the club, walking up the drive just as the hazy spring evening was at last yielding to darkness. A uniformed guard standing by the massive oak door of the building was hardly welcoming and when Michael pressed the bell he had no idea what to expect. The door was opened by a somber young man in evening clothes who said in Russian, “Your membership card, please.”
“I have none. I understood I could be admitted on a temporary basis while my membership is being processed,” Michael replied also in Russian.
“No, no! A membership card is required!”
“My name is Michael Vlado. I have come from Bucharest on business. May I see your manager?”
The doorman picked up a house telephone and spoke a few words into it. He glowered at Michael, apparently in response to a question he had been asked, and finally answered in the affirmative. He hung up the phone and said with visible distaste. “Follow me.”
They walked perhaps twenty feet down an oak paneled hall to a closed door. From farther down the hall came the sound of voices and music. The doorman turned the knob. “In here.”
A stout Russian in a tuxedo was seated behind a carved mahogany desk in an office that seemed a relic of fifty years ago. Only the beige computer and printer on a side table seemed out of place.
Michael immediately introduced himself and shook hands. The Russian, obviously uncertain about this unknown Romanian, said simply, “I am Oleg Kizim, manager of the Club Nikolas.”
“I was told I could apply for membership here. My business brings me to Moscow frequently these days.”
Kizim smiled. “What business would that be?”
“I own a large automobile dealership in Bucharest.”
“Did someone recommend Club Nikolas?”
“One of my employees is related to a member of your staff – Maksim Wanovich.”
The club manager was startled into laughter. “The man’s a dwarf!”
“I understood him to be a highly skilled animal trainer.”
“Among our features at the Club Nikolas are the nightly rodent races. Maksim is in charge of those. It is a popular gambling game.”
“I would like to see that,” Michael assured him.
Oleg Kizim considered the request. “Our rules are not overly strict here. If you plan on taking out a membership –”
“What is the cost?”
“We prefer payment in Western currency if possible. The annual dues are three thousand American dollars or its equivalent in British, French or German currency.”
“That would be no problem. Or if you’d accept a check drawn on a Romanian bank, I could give it to you now.”
The manager held up his hand. “I prefer Western currency if it is available to you. Tomorrow would be fine.”
“But I am free to spend the evening here?”
“Yes, of course, Mr. Vlado. I’ll give you a temporary membership card. We have a health spa downtown too which you may use.”
“And those rodent races?”
“A large room in back. Anyone can direct you.”
During the next few minutes, Michael gained a quick impression of the Club Nikolas. There was a room for casino gambling and another for cabaret style shows. The dining room was crowded, though the usual hour for dinner had passed. An oak-paneled library with reading nooks could have been part of some staid old London club, except for a small amber-lit bar at one end where a short blonde barmaid, still attractive in her late thirties, was mixing drinks. Her nametag read Alexandra in both English and Russian. It seemed a fitting name for Club Nikolas.
“Which way to the races?” he asked her.
“Through the door to your left.” Her smile widened. “Buy your chips from the cashier and good luck.”
“It’s my first time,” Michael admitted. “Are there any tips on how to play?”
“Watch a few races before you bet,” she advised. “On busy nights they run the same rats several times. The early winners sometimes tire. Bet on a loser when you believe his turn has come.”
He gave her a smile. “Thank you for the tip. If I win you’ll get part of it.”
The gambling room was large enough to hold perhaps a hundred people. Most were men and Michael decided it was not a sport to hold any special appeal for women. There were four tracks, really neon-lit glass tubes, which were attached to the walls one above the other and circled the room. Each was numbered, with track one at the top. The large white rats were placed in glass holding boxes and released simultaneously by a little man with curly black hair, dressed as an eighteenth-century page. Surely this was Maksim Wanovich, though whether he was short enough to qualify as a true dwarf was open to question. He did have to reach up to release the rats, about five feet above the floor, and then he urged them on by ringing a small hand bell. The spectators held scorecards, and as at any race they cheered their favorites as the four rats burst from the starting gate. The bank of tubes gradually rose, sending the tracks above the entrance door and then down again toward the finish line.
This time the winner was rat number three, reaching his reward of food by a good margin. There was a wait of about ten minutes between races while chips on the winning numbers were paid off and new bets placed. Chips were sold and redeemed at a cashier’s window just outside the door. Michael used the time between races to approach the costumed dwarf. When he was close enough he could read Maksim on his nameplate.
“Hello, Maksim” he said quietly. “I am a friend of your grandfather back in Romania.”
The dwarf’s head jerked up as if he’d been struck. “I have no grandfather. He is dead.”
“No, Caspian is old but very much alive. He sent me to get you out of here.”
Maksim glanced around nervously. “I cannot talk. I have races to run.”
The blonde barmaid, Alexandra, appeared with a tray of drinks for the gamblers. A slender young Englishman who could have been her son ran his hand over the rear of her tight satin pants. Her smile froze, but she kept passing out the drinks as if nothing had happened. Michael took two quick steps and locked his fingers around the man’s wrist. “You could lose a hand that way,” he said in English.
“What –? Who the bloody hell are you?”
“Please,” Alexandra said to Michael. “You’ll only get me in trouble.”
He let go of the man’s wrist. “Sorry. I thought you were molesting her.”
“Do you work here?” the Englishman asked.
“I’m a member,” Michael replied, stretching the truth.
Maksim rang his bell and the next race began. There were the usual shouts from the spectators as the four white rats sped along their glass tubes. It was, Michael decided, not too different from the day some years back when he’d been at the Moscow racetrack. The animals were smaller, but the spectators were just as vocal.
Rat number one came in first, to the delight of the Englishman. He was so pleased as he collected his winnings that he fell into a conversation with Michael. “Sorry about that earlier. I’ve probably had a bit too much to drink. Name’s Sean Croydon.”
“Michael Vlado.”
“I’m designing a golf course here, introducing the Russians to Western ways. I think we can make golf as big in Russia as it is in Japan. What about you?”
“I have an auto dealership in Romania. I’m here to see about purchasing Russian cars.”
The Englishman chuckled. “They’re not much good. Stick with the Germans or Italians.” He pocketed his winnings and strolled out toward the bar.
Michael decided it was time to take a chance. He bet on rat number three in the next race and watched him come in second. The winning bet paid odds of three to one, and since about the same amount was wagered on each rat, that meant the club kept about a quarter of all bets. Michael had two more losses before he started winning, picking three winning rats in a row. But Mak
sim was still reluctant to speak with him. It was obvious that even in the new Russian society people were constantly on their guard when dealing with foreigners.
“I am a Rom like yourself.” Michael managed to tell him between races, as he was removing the rats from their tubes and substituting new ones. “Tell me what happened to your father. I have come to here to help you both.”
“You cannot help him. He is dead.”
“Was he killed?”
But Maksim ignored him, raising his voice to announce, “The next race will be run with the clockwork rat in the number two position.” He pressed the button on the wall.
Michael realized that only three white rats were present in the tubes and the number two tube was empty. He saw the Englishman, Croydon, reenter the room and went over to ask him about it. “What is a clockwork rat?”
“A windup, like a child’s toy. Sometimes if they have three rats and the rest are tired or lame they add the toy rat so that the betting odds will remain the same. It goes quite fast, but experienced bettors know it hardly ever wins. Here comes Kizim now to wind it. If it’s not wound tightly enough it runs too slow, and he doesn’t trust the dwarf to do it right.”
The stout Russian manager removed the clockwork rat from a drawer beneath the glass racing tubes and inserted a key in its side. He began turning the key with a measured vigor.
The sudden explosion sounded no louder than a firecracker. Then Michael saw the blood and fire on the front of Kizim’s tuxedo and realized it had been a bomb.
The Russian was dead before the first ambulance arrived. The detectives and police who came with it were an odd mixture of civilian and military – the latter, Michael supposed, because of the bomb. These were in uniform and they seemed more efficient than the stocky men in baggy dark suits who checked identification and asked pointless questions. Michael had been seated with the other customers, waiting his turn with the police when one of the uniformed men announced, “We have arrested a suspect. It will not be necessary to question you individually unless you have specific knowledge of this crime. Please leave your name and address and we will contact you later if necessary.”
The Iron Angel Page 23