Ballad of the Whiskey Robber

by Julian Rubinstein

  Then, that summer, the perpetrator did exactly what any good investigator hopes. He got greedy.

  While living on Attila’s floor, eighteen-year-old László (“Laczika”) Veres figured out that his cousin Attila had a lot of things figured out. Two weeks earlier, László had left the tiny Transylvanian village of Fitód, where he’d grown up down the path from Attila, with the hope of simply one day becoming your average László. But now he wondered if he’d been shooting too low. Attila was no great hope as a tyke, but here he was in Budapest, eating at restaurants, dating a girl who spoke English—and today was proposing a plan to net a million forints ($10,800) in one afternoon. “It’s nothing,” Attila said. “It’s just standing at a door.” If László hadn’t been so homeless and unemployed, he might have declined on the grounds of terror and self-doubt.

  Little Laczika was not a formidable presence. An out-of-work carpenter, he was five feet ten but thin as an American-style hot dog. Hardly the optimal choice for an accomplice, but he was trustworthy—and someone had to watch the door if Attila was going to step up and do a real bank job. The “gentleman robber” had a reputation to live up to. “Laczika, listen to me,” Attila said. “All you do is stand and hold this.” He handed his cousin a toy gun. Simple.

  On the afternoon of Friday, June 18, the Fitód cousins busted into the Nagykáta and Vidéke savings bank on Pesti Street in the far eastern part of the city near the airport. László wore a new red hairpiece from 4 Tigers; Attila, who entered first, went with a blond number he’d cut and sculpted to look like an ad he’d seen in a women’s fashion magazine.

  “Robbery!” Attila yelled, running up and down the waiting area, waving his miniature pistol. There were only two customers in the bank, both of whom started laughing. Attila looked back at László. His cousin was standing motionless in the entranceway like an emu in headlights. Hoppá, Laczika! Uh-oh. Attila raced over to one of the sniggering patrons and pointed his cap gun at his head. “Old chap, this is a robbery,” he said. “Do as I say.” The look in Attila’s eyes alone was enough to get both customers to hit the floor without another peep.

  Attila and László made it home safely by a mosaic of public transportation routes about which Attila had spent the previous night quizzing László. After berating his cousin for his pitiful wax-museum robbery performance, Attila shook out the contents of his Joe Camel duffel, and the cousins dropped down to their knees on the red-and-black-checkered carpet. Beneath the black-bearskin-covered wall, they divvied the bills into piles like Monopoly money. It was nearly 3 million forints ($32,000), half of which Attila gave to László, who suddenly didn’t care if Attila and Karcsi ever actually acquired any of that furniture he’d been promised a job repairing. Neither did cousin Attila, who made Laczika pledge, for real, not to spend any of his loot for at least three weeks so as not to raise suspicions of a connection to the city’s latest heist. László promised.

  The following afternoon, however, László returned to Attila’s apartment in a sparkling new crimson-colored Jeep Wrangler. Hoppá! Then Attila wasn’t going to wait, either. He went out and bought a souped-up new red Mitsubishi Eclipse from a guy who ran a nearby “car repair” shop that occasionally offered bargain merchandise. Judit, who was in England for most of the summer with friends, would love it. The news clipping from Kurír, headlined graduating bank robbers—during the cousins’ robbery a group of eighth-graders were marching for their commencement ceremony across the street—went under the sink.

  Six weeks later the bewigged cousins entered another financial institution, the Pilisvörösvár bank on Ágoston Street, on the bottom floor of a ten-story concrete communist-era apartment block. For the first time, Attila was carrying a real gun, an old Russian Tokarev 9mm pistol, which he’d procured through a contact at 4 Tigers. He had no intention of firing it at anyone or even anything, which he knew would only mean more jail time if he was ever caught. But given the effect his gumball-machine pistol and petrified assistant had had the last time, he needed the insurance. His line of work was just like any other. He couldn’t expect to be successful if he couldn’t be taken seriously.

  Attila’s resolve was put to the test right away. Inside the Ágoston Street bank was a fast-growing genus of Budapest life, an armed guard. Attila had never had to deal with a lethal obstruction before, but he had prepared himself, and László, for such an eventuality. The bank was, after all, a private commercial institution unrestricted by Hungarian government-size budgets. In the case of a guard, László had been commanded to create a distraction, perhaps by asking the man a question, so that Attila could pounce upon and disarm him. Instead, however, László fainted at the guard’s feet.

  It was, at least, unexpected. The guard bent down to help László, which provided more than enough of a distraction for Attila to bum-rush him and snatch the gun from his belt holster. But, like László, the robbery never really got off the ground. One of the tellers hit an alarm that buzzed like a deafening busy signal inside and outside the bank. Over that racket, Attila was getting an earful from one of the tellers about his career choice. “This is the problem with this country today,” she scolded him. “Everyone thinks they can take something for nothing.”

  “I don’t have time to argue about ethics,” Attila finally shouted back. “Where’s the safe?” But it was already too late. The police sirens were audible in the brief pauses between the bank alarm’s wails. Attila pulled László up off the ground, and they broke for the door and then raced down an alleyway toward the train station. They made it home, but Attila’s Camel bag held just 398,000 forints ($4,300), by far the smallest of Attila’s five scores. Attila laid into László all night, and when Attila awoke the next day, there was a note from his cousin at the foot of the bed, reading, “Please don’t be mad, but I had to go home.” Without working a day, Attila and Karcsi’s erstwhile labor force drove back to Fitód in an automobile worth roughly as much as his hometown.

  The pitiful robbery hadn’t merited even a mention in the papers, which was no way to end the summer. There were still a few weeks before Judit returned from England and the two-a-day hockey practices began in preparation for the upcoming season. Attila drove out to the police dormitory, where the only other person in the city he really trusted was living. He roused Bubu from his cot and told him they were going to the Hoof. “It’s on me,” Attila said. The two Székelys sat at their regular table in the back, and Attila started in about their days in Ceauescu’s Communist Youth Association, the Pioneers. “What do you want?” Bubu said.

  “All you have to do is stand and hold something,” Attila responded with a tragedy-ahead grin. The big guy was afraid. The government was beginning to blame the crime wave on immigrants. Fifteen thousand people, many of them Ukranians and some of them Hungarian Romanians without papers, would soon be deported as part of a police crack-down. Whatever Attila was up to, it was clearly prosecutable. Bubu had picked up his share of work from Planet of the Zorg, but he wasn’t ready to entrust Panther with his geographical future. Like Attila, Bubu didn’t have his citizenship papers yet, not to mention that he was still living with a few hundred cops. Without hearing any more, Bubu had to decline.

  Attila’s only other option was Karcsi, who owed Attila a few hundred thousand forints (about $3,500) for loans Attila had given him to get a videotape sales business off the ground. Attila didn’t even have to buy Karcsi lunch; he had him at “doorman wanted/excellent pay.” But Attila had selectively forgotten that the reason Karcsi was always broke was that he was too lethargic to do anything that required work. Of course Karcsi liked the idea of bank robbery, but after hearing more, he told Attila that (a) he wasn’t taking public transportation to get to the bank and (b) he wasn’t memorizing a labyrinthine maze to get back home. Karcsi told Attila that unless they drove to the site in Attila’s roadster, he was out. It didn’t leave Attila much choice. Now that Karcsi knew what he was up to, Attila had to do at least one gig with him to minimize the risk
of Karcsi’s ever turning around and ratting him out. Attila agreed to the requests on two conditions: that Karcsi wear a wig of Attila’s choosing and that he walk and not run back to the car when they were finished.

  Given his concerns about Karcsi, Attila chose another post office, this time one in the eastern part of the city near the flea market where he bought his wigs. He wanted to minimize the margin of error, and as long as the target was owned by the government, he figured he could at least be sure no one had approved paying for a guard. And he was right.

  However, someone had purchased a silent alarm system, which rang back to police headquarters soon after he and Karcsi entered. Attila was oblivious, busy showboating for his teammate by doing a running headfirst circus tumble through one of the open-window teller’s booths, then faking a Ukranian accent with the four-person staff. (“Could I please have the keys to the safe?” he politely inquired of one employee.) Then he stuffed his bag with the money and, apologizing, locked the employees in the bathroom. The whole thing took about three minutes, after which he went back to the front to find Karcsi frantically waving his arms at nothing. There were no guards or police in sight. “You’re free to leave now,” Attila told him. Karcsi bolted for the door and, despite his earlier promise to walk back to the car, broke into a dead sprint, yelling, “Hurry up! Come on!” all the way down the street. Attila didn’t see what the fuss was about. Small thanks to another petrified accomplice, the haul was a new personal high, 3.4 million forints, or more than $18,000 per man.

  Ten

  Budapest

  Fall 1993

  Attila was now responsible for six of the city’s thirteen major robberies since the year began (or five, according to the special report Dance Instructor put on Lajos’s desk on September 13; they were a little behind). It was an average of almost one a month. By Thomas Crown standards, his swag was hardly worthy of a red flag, but in Hungarian hockey circles it was enough to make the handsome Transylvania-born Chicky Panther out to be a man of wealth and mystery. On paper, he was at least a sizable conundrum within a notable contradiction, the best-paid unpaid hockey goalie in a filthy-rich slum town.

  Attila Ambrus (“the Chicky Panther”)

  Birthplace: Miercurea-Ciuc (aka Csíkszereda), Romania

  Date of Birth: October 6, 1967 Age: 25

  Years in Hungary: 5 Years with UTE: 5*

  Position: Goalie, Superintendent**

  Net earnings from hockey: 0†

  Total earnings: 9,000,000 Forints ($95,000)‡

  Earnings not counting the following days in 1993: January 22, March 12, May 3, June 18, August 3 and 27: 0.

  Attila was also a mystery man at police HQ, which was becoming a worsening headache for Lajos, given the very public verdict on the new alarm systems Lajos’s bosses had encouraged the post offices to install. As the Kurír wrote two days after the Lone Wolf’s most recent post office robbery, the systems were “worthless…. Today’s criminals couldn’t care less, because in the majority of cases, the police will arrive long after the robbers have escaped.”

  Lajos was feeling the pressure. Aside from ascertaining that he needed a police car, he’d made little progress on the Lone Wolf case since the Lone Wolf had stopped working alone. He asked Dance Instructor and the Fat to prepare a special report analyzing the information the police did have. A few weeks later the pair rematerialized from a paper foothill with the thirteen-page dossier that would guide the robbery department’s renewed investigative efforts:

  His actions and behavior indicate that he is afraid of his own gun, potentially because the likelihood of his capture would increase exponentially if he were to fire a shot….

  His clothes suggest a secure financial background and a desire to dress well. He may work at a place where presentability is required, and taking into account the gun, he may be a security guard on a van or in some financial institution. This would explain familiarity with the location as well as client service and valuables-protection practices….

  The person’s energetic and flexible movements seem to indicate that he is an active sportsman, attends a bodybuilding club, or practices regularly on his own, which may be a requirement of his job.

  Lajos’s team would start with security companies and weight-lifting facilities and go from there.

  Attila’s physical conditioning was indeed once again an essential part of his day job. Now that Milnikov had returned to Moscow, Attila was placed back on UTE’s active roster. And for the first time, it was likely that this season he would get to play. His friend George Pék had taken over as coach—which was both a good and bad portent. Pék had gotten the coaching job only when the previous year’s coach walked out after refusing General Bereczky’s final offer of a 100 percent pay cut. The Interior Ministry budget cuts were so deep that the team doctor stopped receiving the “antifatigue” pills. When Bóta found out that UTE’s rival FTC had bailed itself out of near financial ruin by landing a sponsorship deal with Whirlpool hot tubs, he began devoting much of his time to what he said was an expanded search for sponsors at the city’s bars and brothels.

  But while Attila’s colleagues fretted about their future, for the first time in Attila’s life, he had the luxury of knowing that his foreseeable future (say, half a year) was funded. It didn’t matter to him if pay cuts were again coming to UTE; he’d never been paid in the first place. Instead, he worried about making himself indispensable to the team. He wasn’t yet a great player and he certainly held no sway with the older guys who had known him when he lived in the closet. But there was a whole crop of new players to whom Attila was a wealthy and, thus, respected veteran. If Attila spotted any of the youngsters showing up to practice late or slacking off during drills, he made them run laps and/or carry the equipment bags to the next game. The Panther would never again be a laughingstock. He was dead serious, fast as hell, halfway decent, and completely mad. Pék and Bóta marveled at their Panther, and with their tacit support, Attila anointed himself UTE’s unofficial assistant coach for discipline and flagellation.

  At the Thirsty Camel pub after the games, some of Attila’s team-mates liked to get him drunk and find a nuanced way to ask how he had so much free time to berate delinquent Hungarian hockey slobs and still drive a Mitsubishi. Attila, the perennial sponsor of such outings, furnished a variety of responses, including that he was “a bodyguard for some very important people.” In a pinch, usually by then so plowed that his tone-deaf delivery halted further discussion, he leaned in and said, “Okay, listen, I’m fucking rich old ladies.”

  In fact, he was two years into his relationship with the young and sophisticated Judit, whose apartment he’d just paid to have repainted. And despite his compartmentalized existence, he seemed to be considering tearing down the walls behind which he’d always hidden and better integrating Judit into his life. His bad memories of Katalin had all but faded, and Judit had never given him reason to doubt her loyalty. There were times he could even picture having a family with her. In October Attila decided to invite Judit to one of his games, which he’d never done when he was merely a practice-session target and she another potential heartbreaker. Recognizing the significance of Attila’s gesture, Judit brought along her parents, and they sat together in the front row of the UTE rink’s cold metal bleachers. UTE was playing MAC, the worst of the city’s teams, meaning Attila would be subbed in for the starting goalie as soon as Coach Pék deemed it safe. When the score reached 14–0, Pék felt comfortable making the switch, and Attila skated onto the ice to a round of applause from the front row. He maintained UTE’s lead but, thanks to his penchant for skating halfway across the ice to poke away pucks, gave up three goals, for a final score of 14–3. Afterward Judit and her parents waited for him outside the locker room, but Attila never emerged from the building. He was so upset by his performance that he sat alone at his stall for hours, head in hands, breathing the stench of failure.

  Attila had never had the luxury of self-reflection. He operated, h
e’d always thought, purely by instinct—instincts that had kept him alive through times he wasn’t sure he’d survive and delivered him from a country that seemed intent upon his destruction. He knew there were a lot of things he couldn’t explain about himself, and his reaction that night was one of them. He wasn’t sure if he was capable of changing his ways, but he was at least willing to apologize for them. One day the following week, Attila got out of practice earlier than usual, bought a bottle of Cinzano like the one he and Judit had drunk together on their first date, and headed to his girlfriend’s freshly painted apartment to surprise her.

  He dropped his wheels off at the car wash around the corner from the hulking 134-year-old synagogue in Budapest’s former Jewish ghetto and walked to Judit’s building on Dob Street. When he got to her fifthfloor apartment, there was no answer. He was about to leave when he heard a noise from inside. He bent down and opened the door’s mail slot. In the far left corner of his view, he could see a light in the bedroom. Then he saw Judit, running right to left, waving her hands the way Karcsi had during the last robbery. She was also naked.

  “Judit!” Attila yelled, beating on the door. “I can see you in there.” Pound, pound, pound. “Open this door.” No answer. “Judit!” Nothing. Finally, Attila backed up against the hallway’s opposite wall and began ramming his shoulder into the door until he was inside. The apartment was search-warrant quiet. He checked the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom: all empty…. The closets! Attila raced back to the bedroom and flung open the wardrobe. There it was, his future, huddled behind a rack of hanging clothes with another man.

  Attila obeyed his instincts. He lunged at the fornicator’s throat with a ferocity that made the man spring froglike from the closet, hurdle the mangled front door, and bound naked from the apartment, clutching only a bedsheet. Judit stopped screaming and started crying. Attila took a seat, started drinking the Cinzano, and by nightfall decided that he was ready to marry Judit. So sloshed that he could barely walk, he proposed to Judit, who, terrified by her questioner’s stare, instantly accepted. The next morning, however, Judit’s new fiancé awoke with a clearer head and told her he hoped never to see her face again.