Requiem for a Gypsy

by Michael Genelin

  When they had finished with the last of the stores on her list, Em said she could now tell Jana where to find the Turk. But Jana and Em had not talked about Em telling Jana where the Turk was: the bargain had been for Em to identify the fifth man at the meeting. Jana felt her annoyance rising, and she was on the verge of insisting that Em follow through on her promise, when her instincts kicked in and told her not to argue with the girl again. A major investigative rule is to follow up on the information at hand, and Jana would go with that for the moment. She would confront Em with the issue of the fifth man later.

  Em had them drive to a small courtyard store advertising electrical repairs. The door was locked, the place apparently closed—except that the lights were on inside the establishment.

  Jana eyed Em. “You’re sure he works out of here?”

  “Positive.”

  Jana peered through the window, past the counter to the rear of the store, but couldn’t see anyone. She considered leaving, but she kept coming back to the fact that the lights were on. She could see the items on the shelves. There were a number of old appliances with tags indicating that they were in there for repair.

  A few “new” appliances still in their boxes could be seen, closer to the windows, but the boxes were smudged and dusty, their edges blunted or torn, indicating that they had been on the shelves for some time. It suggested to Jana that nobody was really interested in keeping the sales items pristine enough to sell to a potential customer. The establishment could not possibly be making enough money to cover its rent, much less to turn a profit selling those beat-up old goods. The shop was for another purpose, the pieces of junk spread around it used as a cover.

  Jana looked the door and window over. There was nothing on either of them to indicate that the store was closed. Jana checked her watch. According to the sign on the door listing the business hours, the store should have been open. She signaled to Grzner, and within seconds he had forced the door.

  The Turk was in the back of the store, crumpled up behind the counter.

  There was an ice pick in his eye.

  Perhaps Em was frightened out of her bargain with Jana by seeing the dead man, or perhaps she had simply changed her mind, but she rebuffed all of Jana’s attempts to make her talk about the fifth man at the meeting.

  Chapter 15

  Colonel Trokan slouched at his desk, his face showing no expression as he went over the file copy they had on Makine/Koba. Jana sat across from him, waiting for him to finish. He’d already read the material Jana had put together on the Turk. She unconsciously tapped her forefinger on the chair’s armrest, impatient, wanting to get to his observations. In due course, he let out a grunt, then slapped the large file box closed, staring at its cover while he absorbed what he’d read. Then he looked up at her with a mordant smile.

  “You might at least have the courtesy not to tap, tap, tap when I’m reading.”

  “The finger has a mind of its own.”

  “You have a mind of your own,” he emended.

  “You’re upset because we found another body?”

  “It’s our job to find the bodies that other people leave haphazardly around the country.”

  “You’re upset because I’ve concluded that Makine is at work in Slovakia.”

  The colonel scowled, looking unhappy. “I always maintain my composure.”

  “Not true.”

  “Stop correcting your superior officer.”

  “I never correct him when he’s right.”

  “I thought I was always right.” He smiled again. “My mother used to say I was always right. She babied me. Of course, she was my mother.” He decided to stop joking. “Unfortunately, this time I think you’re the one who is correct. I emphasize the word unfortunately. The man is in Slovakia.” He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Why is our friend Makine, Koba the murderer, the shit who makes every law enforcement agency in Europe wish they were practicing another profession, in Slovakia?” He took a deep breath, then sighed, his voice taking on a slightly wistful tone. “We still don’t know for sure that he’s here.”

  “Wishful thinking.”

  “Anyone might have put an ice pick in the Turk’s eye.”

  “Not anyone.”

  “If it was him, maybe we should thank the man. The Turk was a very ugly human being. A bad man who should have been killed years ago. He was the one we thought was behind the killing of that diplomat involved in selling passports out of the Bulgarian embassy.”

  “We thought he was behind that.”

  “Now we don’t even have to think about the Bulgarian affair, or about the Turk.” Trokan pulled a tissue from a box on his desk, blew into it noisily, then crumpled it and dropped it into his wastebasket with a flourish. “He’s gone, just like that, from my mind.” He snapped his fingers. “No more Turk.”

  “Wrong,” Jana corrected.

  “I choose to look on the bright side of this problem.”

  “What part of it is the bright side?”

  “The side that I’m not required to look at.” He shifted in his seat, adjusting his injured shoulder to make himself more comfortable. He grimaced from a twinge of pain. “The world is going to shit.”

  “Only parts of it.”

  “I only worry about our parts of it.”

  “How’s your shoulder?”

  “Becoming even more proficient at predicting the weather.”

  “You now have a secondary profession to fall back on.”

  Trokan grunted, not amused. “If I can’t do my job, I deserve to be reduced to predicting the weather. So … save my job, Jana. Your suggestions are in order.”

  “We have to find out what the Turk was currently into that got him killed. It’s the best way I can think of to get Makine.”

  “I don’t want to think it’s Makine,” the colonel snapped, trying to retreat from confronting the man’s presence in Bratislava. “We’ve gotten no response to the bulletin we sent out to our people; there are no other reports about Makine being in this country. The only reason we believe it’s Makine is because of the weapon he used on the Turk.”

  “And where he placed the weapon. That’s been a signature for him.”

  “And where he placed the ice pick in the man,” Trokan reluctantly agreed.

  “And his presence at Bogan’s party,” Jana reminded him.

  “It might not have been him.”

  “You said that on the night of the party.”

  “I don’t want to think of the night of the party.”

  “Too late. You’re already thinking about it.”

  The colonel let out another grunt. “I keep coming back to it in my mind. What else am I thinking?”

  “If Makine was at the party and you’re thinking that he was involved in the Turk’s murder, then you’re putting together the Turk’s murder with the Bogan killing and deciding that they’re both related.”

  “I am not,” he insisted.

  “It’s what we’re both thinking.”

  “Okay,” he grudgingly allowed. “We’re both thinking it.”

  “The other immediate question is, why did Makine let us know he did it? He has to be aware that ice pick killing is a signature of his that we’d pick up on.”

  “He always lets everyone know. The man wants his competition to grasp that he’s a monster. He tells them what he is, and it frightens them all. Nobody fools with him. Hell, the man frightens me.”

  “I think it’s something else.”

  The colonel moaned. “Why am I so worried about what you’re going to reveal?”

  “I think he may have led us from the Bogan killing to the Turk intentionally. Why would he want us to connect the two?” She reflected on her supposition. “Maybe to let us know that there’s a war on and to expect more deaths. More of the fear game he plays.”

  Trokan winced at the suggestion of more deaths. “Why would he want us to come into his game at all?”

  “Maybe he doe
sn’t want us to come in. Perhaps it’s a warning to stay out?”

  “I’d love to stay out. Unfortunately, considering what we do for a living, we can’t.” Trokan began massaging his temples. “I’m tired of the man. You’d think he would have gone away by now.”

  “Kobas don’t go away. We have to make them disappear.”

  “A good thought. Make him disappear, Jana.”

  “I’m not a magician.”

  “Yes, you are. I’ve come to depend on the magic.”

  He sat up and pulled a new file in front of him, making a show of organizing the papers inside to demonstrate that he had other work to do; then he looked up, his face telling her that he was relying on her. “Help me on this, Jana.”

  “I’ll try, Colonel.”

  “And the little girl?

  “In my office with Seges.”

  “The girl took you to the man who told you about the Turk. Then to the Turk. Too much to believe it was chance when she first came to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ask her.”

  “I will.”

  “Commander, my head will be on the butcher’s table over this thing. Do your best.”

  “Of course, Colonel.”

  “Commander, just because she’s a young girl doesn’t make her your grandchild. If it interferes too much, you have to take yourself off the case. You’re a police officer. Get the information, no matter what you have to do.”

  “Thank you for reminding me of my duty, Colonel.” There was an edge to her voice. “I’m always forgetting it. Right, Colonel?”

  “Never, Jana.” He smiled at her. “Don’t take offense. I’m just doing what colonels always do: pass the worry down the line.”

  He blew his nose again as Jana left the room.

  Jana’s ration of worry quickly got even worse.

  As soon as she passed some of her men in the hall, she knew things were not right. They were uneasy, watching her out of the corners of their eyes, waiting for an expected reaction. She walked into her office, where Seges was supposedly keeping an eye on Em. Em was not in the room.

  Seges’s face was easy to read, the worry lines around his eyes and mouth apparent, his shoulders hunched.

  “She escaped, Commander.”

  “Escaped, Seges?”

  “Gone, Commander.”

  “How?”

  “She went to the bathroom. Then, just like that, she was gone.”

  “Just like that?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Seges, I will refrain from pistol-whipping you only because of my enormous willpower. However, unless you are out of sight within the next twenty seconds, I will lose my self-control. So I advise you to leave.”

  Seges scurried out of the office.

  Jana took stock, wondering how she was going to sugarcoat the news that the girl had successfully run away from police custody. The colonel was definitely not going to like hearing this. It was not the kind of “help” he’d had in mind when he’d spoken to her just a minute ago.

  Chapter 16

  Jana sent Jonas, Grzner, and Seges out to the studio to speak to the manager and staff of the soundstage. There were a number of questions that were still unanswered after her earlier visit. Despite the generally rundown nature of the studio, and despite its inactivity, it was a fenced and locked location and there had to be people overseeing and safeguarding the area. They would have some of the answers Jana needed. Seges didn’t want to go, as usual. Jana, for her own peace of mind, needed him anywhere but around her, so she insisted that he go. She gave instructions on what was to be done.

  There was a message for Jana from Smid. He and his son had the information on the tattooed Slovak who’d been run down in Paris, and he wanted to see her when she had the chance. More to get herself away from the office and the nagging question of where Em had gone than because she was eager to get the information, Jana drove over to Heydukova near the small area post office where Smid’s son, Jiri, had his stamp shop. The tiny store was sandwiched between a locksmith shop and an even tinier day-old, marked-down baked goods place. It was obviously a minimal rental area for businesses.

  The son’s shop was empty of customers but filled with shelves of stamps, most of them multi-stamp packages meant for low-level collectors who wanted to fill out their collections, the more valuable single-issue stamps in locked glass cabinets. Despite the cleanliness of the place, there was, as in all establishments of that character, an air of mustiness that no amount of air freshener could erase. Jana found Jiri and his father sitting at a pair of small back-to-back half-desks in the rear of the shop. They both stood when she came in. Smid, a big smile on his face, trotted over to Jana.

  “I told you we’d come through, Commander.”

  Jiri, slower than his father, his shoulders sloped from perpetually looking down at his stamps, pulled a loupe from his eye, picked up a small file, and followed his father. He laid the file on the counter in front of Jana.

  “Good day, Commander.”

  “How have you been, Jiri?”

  “Good, thank you.” He opened the file, pulling out copies of a number of documents. He went through them with Jana, pointing out the salient facts for her.

  “Here is the reproduction of the tattoo that you gave us. Then the make sheet on the person with the tattoo. Even several old police reports. They’re all difficult to see. These are from old fiche, reproductions of reproductions. The man’s photo is very blurred, but you can make enough of it out to use it for identification. You can see the arm.” He looked around the counter for a magnifying glass, then handed it to Jana, indicating the spot for her to focus on. “Blurred, but the tattoo is in the right place, with the same stretching. There’s also a fingerprint set in the documents, but the lout who generated the fiche didn’t do the best job. There’s one partial I can make out. I matched it with the print on the same finger of the subject the French are tweaking you about. There are five points of comparison I can make out, none different, but not enough points for a match according to the rules of the print game.”

  Jana examined the photograph, then checked the report that came with it. The man’s physical characteristics matched the dead man’s when you took into account the changes that age had made: same eye color, height, and approximate age as the French police subject. And the one fingerprint that they could compare appeared to be close enough to suggest a match.

  There was another set of reports detailing the man’s background in Slovakia. Jana scanned them. He had been the son of one of the leaders of the Hlinka Guard and had become a member of a fascist adjunct youth group that they had formed shortly before the war ended. The Communists had suppressed the group, as they had done with all dissenting groups. No loss on this, Jana thought.

  Shortly after that, while still very young, the subject had begun a criminal career: home burglaries, arson, armed assault. He had done time in a youth facility, in local jails, then one stint in prison. Eventually, in what was by then a full-blown criminal career, he had faced multiple charges for forgery, counterfeiting, and fraud. There was even an arrest on suspicion of murder. The boy had become a man; the man had become a more sophisticated and dangerous thief.

  Then it had all ended. The man had dropped off the face of the earth thirty-five years ago, and there were no other entries in his criminal history after that point. Jana made a mental note to run a recent criminal history request to Interpol before sending the file to the French police. That would make it a more complete, professional job.

  “Satisfied?” Smid asked.

  “Very satisfied,” Jana answered.

  Smid held up a finger, indicating he would be just a second, then ran to his desk, picked up a sheet of paper and a pen, then trotted back to Jana.

  “Our payment authorization.” He laid it in front of her. “Notice I only charged for one day rather than the day and a half authorized.” Smid handed her the pen.

  Jana quickly scanned the page,
then inked in a correction. “I’m giving you payment for the extra half day. You’ve earned it.” She signed her name, handing the paper and pen back to Smid. “Thank you both.”

  “Thank you, Commander,” they chorused.

  Jana took the file, nodded to the two men, and then left the store. As she emerged, Jana realized something that she hadn’t registered before: the name of the man in the documents. It was Jindrich Bogan.

  Bogan.

  Jana immediately became very interested in the French police case.

  Chapter 17

  Some winters are cold; others are colder. But there is always one that stays in memory as the worst. The winter of 1946 was very, very cold in southeastern Czechoslovakia, with extremely heavy snowfall, even in the low-lying areas. It had been a bad time for the Bogan family, with Jindrich’s father being hunted by the Soviets. They had moved from location to location, trying to stay away from the old family cabin outside of Levoca until they no longer had any alternatives. Their last move from Orava had been a forced march, with Jindrich’s father warned just in time that the hunters were coming for him. The family had thrown their things into an old horse-drawn wagon, Jindrich and his mother hitching up the horses and picking his father up on the outskirts of the town. They’d headed east along the rough roads leading through the western Tatra Mountains, finally reaching the area near Spis Castle where the cabin was located.

  The Soviets had consolidated their hold on the area, rooting out everything they perceived as potentially anti-Communist. They were still setting up their own homegrown Communists in power; to make sure that the young trees took hold, anything that smacked of the old Tiso regime was being extirpated. And Jindrich’s father had very much been a part of that old fascist regime. Everyone had known of him. His picture, in full uniform, had been published a number of times in the newspapers. His men, when he was in power, had done their jobs with, perhaps, too much enthusiasm.