The Gergelys were booked but would be home in time for dinner, as the focus of the investigation quickly shifted to another set of brothers, Gyula and Péter Szcs. Péter, thirty-one, claimed that his Audi 100 was parked at the shopping center because he was taking his daughter to the kindergarten, where she was enrolled. Though that was apparently true, the Szcs brothers were also out on bond, awaiting sentencing for the robbery of a department-store van. In addition, a police dog confirmed that the Szcs brothers’ unique scent matched the odor police collected by pressing an Ágnes-brand baby diaper against the safe inside the bank. The Szcses were arrested and taken to the Gyorskocsi Street jail, pending witness identification.
The next morning the Szcs brothers were brought to a room with a long, dark one-way glass along one wall and placed in a lineup with three other inmates. They were handed lumpy farmer’s hats, fake plastic glasses, and dime-store wigs by a jail guard who unironically choreographed the vaudevillian production. On the other side of the dark glass stood several witnesses of the robbery, including the bank’s security guard, some of the vegetable men, and an anxious Lajos Varjú. It was pure, unscripted democracy. All of the witnesses fingered the taller Szcs brother, Péter, as the primary perpetrator, and Gyula as his accomplice. Lajos was dubious. He knew the Whiskey Robber and his partner were an athletic duo, and frankly the stick-thin Szcses didn’t look as if they would pass a physical, much less be able to outrun a team of steamed produce men. But later one of the undercover policemen who had chased after the robber, Ferenc Laczik, affirmed that he was “certain” the police had the right men. Never mind that unlike every other witness, Ferenc identified the guy he’d run after as the smaller brother, Gyula.
For the Szcs brothers, the case against them was not easy to contest, largely because it wasn’t clear what it was. And like most arrestees in Budapest, they had no legal representation or financial wherewithal to suggest a timely court hearing would commence. So they resorted to reason. Lajos Varjú listened to the Szcses’ pleas and agreed to conduct one final test of their guilt at a special facility by the incorruptible three-dog canine unit. But there the brothers crapped out again. The city’s top two police sniffer dogs, Galopp and Pátz, positively identified the Szcses in all five tests. Only Nanzi contradicted her canine colleagues—not enough to spring the brothers.
Lajos was under no illusion that he’d caught the Whiskey Robber and his accomplice, but the Szcses did appear plausibly guilty of some of the crimes that had perhaps erroneously been on the more famous robbers’ account. The Szcses were charged with not only the most recent Heltai Square robbery but also the similar robbery of the same OTP Bank a year earlier. In addition, they were charged with the post office robbery that had occurred later that same day. Then more than a month after the Szcses’ arrest, a ballistics report proved that the shot fired through the now serving board at the OTP robbery in February was from the same gun used at the latest Heltai Square robbery. Suddenly the Szcs brothers were facing charges for four robberies, all of which had previously been thought to be the work of the Whiskey Robber. Unless further evidence surfaced definitively clearing the brothers, Lajos wasn’t in any position to risk setting them free.
Twenty-four
Two months after the Szcs brothers were optimistically pinned to a slate of unsolved robberies, Hungary elected a telegenic new prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who had cast himself as the man to finally unite the country and bring it the long-awaited international stature that had already been accorded Lech Walesa’s Poland and Václav Havel’s Czech Republic. At thirty-five, Orbán would be the youngest leader in all of Europe, a soccer-playing, Oxford-educated man who exuded a Clintonian optimism and whose Alliance of Young Democrats Party vice chairman wore an earring. It was a far cry from Antall, the medical museum curator, and Horn, the graying former communist minister. A few weeks before the May 1998 election, Hungary was provisionally approved by the U.S. Senate to become a member of NATO. And after Orbán’s victory at the polls, he received a letter of congratulations from President Clinton and an invitation to the White House.
But many of those who believed in Orbán had their hopes shattered before he was even inaugurated. After promising to clean up crime and corruption, Orbán appointed as his new interior minister the disgraced former national police chief, Sándor Pintér, who in turn hired as his top deputy another name familiar to those at the police department, László “The 12 Percent” Valenta. Then, a few days before Orbán’s July inauguration, the most deadly bombing in Budapest since 1956 ripped through the walls and windows of Váci Street’s landmark McDonald’s, killing four people and injuring more than a dozen others. Among the dead was the apparently intended target, “Big Tom” Boros, a former mafia chieftain who had been working as a government informant on an investigation into the mafia-controlled oil business—which was by that time believed to be the largest and most lucrative criminal operation in Eastern Europe, siphoning billions of dollars a year from several countries in the region.
If nothing else, the mob hit got America’s attention. The U.S. government formed its first-ever joint international police force with the new Hungarian government to probe the Boros murder, and, inexplicably, U.S. vice president Al Gore sponsored Sándor Pintér as a keynote speaker at a Washington law enforcement conference—on ethics in crime fighting.
Meanwhile back in Hungary, Pintér’s controversial Interior Ministry appointment generated an outcry that lasted until late summer, when the prime minister’s office made an announcement that would reclaim headlines for the foreseeable future and ultimately put Kriminális host László Juszt out of a job. According to Prime Minister Orbán’s office, the former prime minister’s Socialist Party had spied on Orbán’s conservative Alliance of Young Democrats during the campaign. It was “Hungarian Watergate,” according to the scandal-addled media, and for the time being, the punch it packed was more than enough to send the country back to licking its wounds and mumbling to itself in the corner. As Hungary’s biggest newsweekly, HVG, remarked of the latest disgrace, “It is small, it is sour, but at least it is ours.”
As Orbán had promised, wholesale changes in Hungarian law enforcement soon began. The KBI was disbanded, and KBI director Ern Kiss, who was captured by a Death Star security camera peeing on the building, was fired.
The police also saw the exit of another embattled police chief: robbery head Lajos Varjú, who turned in his resignation soon after Orbán’s election.
POLICE CHIEF RESIGNS, read the headline in Mai Nap.
Asked by the paper whether he quit over the Whiskey Robber case, Lajos said no but added, “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he [the Whiskey Robber] is already in a jail somewhere.” The real reason he left, Lajos said, was his dissatisfaction with the direction of the police force. “The police department is under shameful management,” Lajos told Mai Nap in the kind of assessment for which the tabloids lived. “I always believed police should take their job seriously, but I’m not sure that applies today. The corruption is unbelievable.”
As the Whiskey Robber read the Mai Nap story, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d done it. Attila had not only outlasted his archnemesis, but now the guy was confirming his beliefs about the rotten system.
As the worlds around them imploded, both Lajos and Attila tried to salvage what was left of their personal lives. But picking up the pieces wasn’t easy. Lajos separated from both his formerly beloved job and his formerly beloved wife, moved into another apartment, and went about trying to start his own private detective agency, the Blue Moon.
Attila, in the aftermath of his Hollywood-style car chase, was struggling to keep his sanity. The bullet that had gone through the back window of the getaway koda he’d stolen had nicked the windshield right in front of his head. He couldn’t stop thinking that he’d escaped a grisly death by inches. Reading that the Szcs brothers had been arrested and charged with several of his crimes brought no relief. He felt for them, but he didn’t ha
ve the stomach to try to communicate to the police that they had the wrong robbers. He had to lie low for a long while if he was going to get through this. He knew the police knew he was still out there.
To distract himself, Attila spent two evenings at the Vidám Theater, where László Juszt’s Kriminális Cabaret was playing. On his second visit, Attila secured a second-row seat from which he howled at Gangsta Zoli’s father’s portrayal of the Whiskey Robber. But there wasn’t much else Attila could think of to keep himself occupied except carrying a silver flask of Johnnie Walker everywhere he went, sipping from it even at traffic lights. With Betty gone and his longtime relationship with both UTE and Lajos Varjú over, Attila was as adrift as he’d been since he climbed out from under a train ten years earlier. He spent a few weeks forlornly chopping trees on Éva’s new property to help finish clearing the forested plot on which she was building a house. At night he went to the clubs alone, buying whole bottles of liquor from the bar and inviting everyone in the joint to drink with him. When the bottles were empty, he smashed them on the floor to cheers, then set about finding a woman to take home for the night.
In May, with the hockey season still months away (if he even decided to go back to FTC at all) and a few million forints (about $15,000) he was going to have to make last, he took a trip home to Transylvania. He had planned to stay with his aunt and uncle, but when he’d phoned to tell them he was bringing Don, they said they didn’t want the dog in the apartment. Attila took Don to Transylvania anyway and, in protest of his relatives’ shunning his only friend, stayed in a hotel and didn’t bother visiting his family. He spent several days hiking with Don, picking wild mushrooms, and cooking his own meals on a camping stove. He stayed for a week, until he started feeling as lonely as he had been in his empty house in Budapest. He didn’t know what to do with himself.
Gabi was also alone, having broken up with Marian and having had a falling-out with his parents after an argument with his father about Gabi’s rudderless, spendthrift lifestyle. He also parted ways with his oldest friend, UTE forward Krisztián Nádor, during a vacation to the Greek island of Corfu. Krisztián accused Gabi of having become an egotist, dictating and altering their plans as if he expected to be addressed as Your Majesty.
As summer began, Attila’s old friend Gustáv Bóta returned to UTE as the general manager and offered Attila his goalie position back, which Attila immediately accepted. (As usual, no pay.) Gabi too was offered, and accepted, an invitation to come out of retirement and start playing for UTE again. The boys were back together again, though not happily. They kept careful distance from each other, afraid of the spark that might ignite if they got too close. Robbery, it went without saying, was on neither one’s agenda.
The team had chosen as the site of its preseason training camp the Transylvanian mountain town of Gyergyószentmiklós, where Betty was from and which Attila knew like the inside of a Budapest bank. The club was going to be there over October 6, Attila’s thirty-first birthday. Attila got Bóta to approve a team outing to a special spot Attila knew, suitable for a celebration. He wanted to be the Chicky Panther again.
Attila called his uncle Dénes in Fitód and arranged for a freshly killed whole pig to be sent to the dormitory where they would be staying. Once the team arrived in Gyergyószentmiklós, Attila went to a restaurant and hired a trio of Gypsy musicians with accordions and the eatery’s two cooks. And he rented an old school bus. On the day that Hungarian prime minister Orbán sat in the Oval Office in Washington discussing the fight on international crime with an embattled President Clinton reeling from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Whiskey Robber, his partner, and their UTE teammates were devouring pork and swilling pálinka on a freezing Transylvanian hillside. Attila regaled his teammates with tales of the fabled Székelys and taught them to sing the Csíkszereda hockey fight song:
MOM, SWEET MOM,
WHAT EVERY SZÉKELY BOY WANTS
IS A HOCKEY STICK.
A HOCKEY STICK
A HOCKEY STICK
THAT IS THE DREAM OF EVERY SZÉKELY BOY.
One by one Attila’s teammates lined up to give him a birthday toast. It felt like the best night of his life. He’d nearly forgotten his troubles, believing he could be happy and safe again, have friends, a laugh, a life. Those hopes were gone when the sun rose the next morning.
Back in Budapest, the newspapers provided a constant reminder that crime didn’t pay. The highlight of Attila’s days was going to McDonald’s with Don, where he would order each of them a strawberry ice cream cone. But most of the time he was angry—at his teammates for being so lazy, at his country for being such a wreck, at himself for shutting so many doors. Sometimes when he was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, he got so frustrated that he flashed the pistol he’d begun keeping under his seat to clear other drivers out of his way. Some of his friends’ girlfriends who used to say how sweet the Chicky Panther was became afraid to invite him to their apartments for fear he would drink too much and do something they wouldn’t be able to repair or forgive.
As for UTE, the club was at least better than the 0–24–2 disaster that Attila had last played for two seasons ago. With Attila as the second-string goalie, the team was pulling out a victory in almost half its games. But the team’s new coach wasn’t impressed by Gustáv Bóta’s Panther. He could smell the liquor on Attila’s breath every day. He stopped playing him in games and by December stopped putting him on the ice even in practice. A week before the holiday break, Attila confronted Coach Alexander Vlasov. “I’m the only one that shows up every day,” Attila barked at him in the hallway of the UTE facility. “I should at least get to play in practice.” Vlasov told him to stop showing up at all.
It had been more than six months since Attila had spoken to his aunt or uncle, and without anywhere else to go for the holidays, he rented a place at his regular hideaway, the Ózon Hotel in the Hargita Mountains outside Csíkszereda. He invited some teammates to go up and ski with him, advertising the area’s natural beauty and the free lodging. The only one who stopped by for more than a day was Zsolt Baróti, a young Transylvanian forward who had joined UTE the previous year. On New Year’s Eve they stayed in, drinking and talking, and in the first few hours of 1999, the party-hardy Chicky Panther surprised Baróti. He pitched over, head in hands, and began bawling. Baróti knew Panther was something of a streak player in the game of life, but he never imagined he got this low. “I’m so lonely,” Attila said, sobbing into his drink. He had been running with every gauge on empty for far too long. Something had to give.
Twenty-five
Budapest
January 15, 1999
The alarm clock jolted Gabi awake at 4:30 a.m. He dragged himself out of bed and stumbled over to the storage room beneath the basement stairs, where he had stowed a curly black wig, mascara, glasses, a disposable Gillette razor, and a can of black spray paint. He collected it in a blue sports bag and traipsed out into the cold garage. It was still dark as he steered his Suzuki Samurai through the hills, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in the CD player, trying not to think too much about the hours that lay ahead.
They both needed the money. It had been ten months since the shoot-out at Heltai Square. Gabi had tried to save every forint he could, but there was still more to be done on the house. Most recently, the outdoor wooden staircase leading from the back to the deck had cracked from the weather.
For his part, Attila owed 2 million forints ($8,600) to the Atlantis casino, which he tried to get from Éva, who owed him that amount for a loan he gave her for her house. But Éva didn’t have it. He’d have to do this one job and then figure out the rest. He didn’t really care. Truth be told, if it weren’t for the visceral memories of those adrenaline-charged robberies, he might have believed he didn’t even exist anymore.
Ten days earlier, on January 5, after a light snow had left the streets icebound, Attila and Gabi pulled off another OTP robbery. But the guard put up a serious fight with Attila, and a few minutes wen
t by before Attila could pin him to the floor. Gabi had held the rest of the customers and employees at bay during the scuffle, but too much time had elapsed. Attila could only do a quick sweep of the teller cash drawers before they had to split. The 297,000 forints ($1,250) they collected was Attila’s lowest take ever.
Normally, Attila and Gabi prepared at Villányi Street, but for the last two robberies they hadn’t had the energy to bother. Plus there was no one else living at Attila’s place on Rezeda Street now but Don. At 6:00 a.m. Attila answered the door in Bermuda shorts and fuzzy red Fila slippers, stinking of alcohol. “I have to go back to sleep, Gringo,” he said, heading back into the bedroom. “Wake me at seven.”
Gabi lay down on the couch and watched soccer highlights on cable. As the sun began to rise, he could see that it looked like yet another nice day, which wasn’t very nice if robbery was on the docket. At 7:00 Gabi pulled on Attila’s big toe and his partner rose from the bed in one motion, saying, “What’s with this weather?”
“I don’t like it,” Gabi said. “Are we still going to do it?”
They’d been trying for bad weather for a week. “We can’t keep waiting,” Attila said. “Our freedom is everything, but it’s not worth anything without money.”
They began their preparations in silence.
At 8:30 a.m. Gabi left the house, followed a few minutes later by Attila. They were to meet on a corner near Frankel Leó Street, a cobblestoned pedestrian road just off the Danube River on the Buda side of town. Gabi had argued against doing this OTP because the street was too choked with people. But there weren’t any easy targets left, and Attila felt it was too dangerous to do another site they’d robbed before. The upside of this bank, which rated a 4 in Attila’s book, was that it was likely to carry big money because the branch was a major OTP hub for foreign currency and transfers.
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber Page 24