Prague Noir

by Pavel Mandys

  “Shit,” the woman swore. “You see what you did?”

  Janet sat up and looked in disbelief at the two naked, wet men. “What’s up?” she asked in English. “What’s this? Who are these people?”

  Mrs. Travel Agency now had a full syringe in her hand and was affixing a needle on it. “It’s normal situation here, don’t vorry, be happy, and it’s okay like vos agreeded,” she said in such broken English that even Vacek recognized it.

  “Not this way,” Janet protested. “It was not supposed to be like this. I don’t want to have anybody here. I don’t want to be awake, for chrissake! Why am I awake? Why are they naked? This is all wrong, you moron!”

  Soukup had stopped pretending and now shivered on the bed. He was gaping at Janet and the woman who was approaching her with the syringe.

  “How am I supposed to inject her now?” She was upset. “Tell me that, you idiots. She saw Hradčany from the bridge and was ready to die. She wanted it. Everybody wants it. Every suicidal dope who cannot do it himself. What am I supposed to do now?” The arrogance and aggressiveness had left her; only despair remained.

  “Get away from me!”

  “And another travel company welcomes bankruptcy,” Vacek said to deflect attention toward himself.

  “No! No!” Janet jumped down from the bed, ran through the room to the door, and pumped the doorknob in vain. “Let me go! Please? I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to die anymore. Certainly not like this.”

  “If she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t want to,” Vacek said. “Product returned, cancel the order.”

  “I’ll cancel you, motherfucker.”

  “You have to let her go, otherwise you’ll definitely be what you have been from the beginning in the eyes of the law: a mass murderer. I really doubt that Janet will let you inject her.”

  The woman towered above him. He saw her from below, disappointed and devastated, but also unrelenting.

  And so he continued: “Where are those guys who brought us here? They could deal with the three of us easily. Except they have no idea that this is the end for Janet here, right? Or only some know about that? Did you brainwash them with your adventure-tourism bullshit? That’s why they’re not here and you are. If you’re not able to inject Janet, she’ll attack you—perhaps even kill you, what do I know—because as I am listening to her, she kind of likes living. And if you do kill her and then us, which means a murdered policeman plus a barely adult young man, you better know that our guys will finish the job and you’ll end up in jail with a life sentence in a cell six times smaller than this. Do you want that? Probably not. So let all three of us go and you’ll have mitigating circumstances. I’ll speak up for you too.”

  His words didn’t have the impact he was hoping for. But if he had succeeded in saving Janet and gaining some time, the main result was that the attention of the confused woman with the syringe full of heroin or some other shit turned toward the one who had caused the least problems.

  She approached the young man and looked at the syringe as if she were gauging if it were necessary to inject him with all of it. To kill this mouse, only one-tenth of the dose might be enough?

  Soukup was weeping now. It was impossible to comprehend his babbling. Vacek understood him deeply and was thankful that the boy was not paralyzed with fear and was making at least some sounds, even if they were unworthy of someone who was the master of modern technology.

  Precisely—was. Vacek quietly and painfully unglued himself from the table; his back was the worst. But he managed to remain quiet. He got up and dropped his legs down. He congratulated himself on the successful removal of the glue. Dissolved using internal resources.

  Janet, wide-eyed, was watching him. He put his finger to his lips—almost gluing it to them. The woman was not aware of him yet. She was hunched over Soukup like a vampire binding the victim with an embrace. The boy was jerking on the bed—both legs freed but not his arms.

  Hitting the woman from behind might not work out. So a blow to the side of her head sent her to the floor. Instead of being content that he had defused her, he became worried that he’d broken her cranial bones. He really didn’t want that.

  “And another business plan down the toilet.” He started laughing, but immediately stopped when the door opened again. Vacek was not like most policemen—he was well read. That’s why this reminded him of a scene from Poe’s story “The Pit and the Pendulum”—the ending, where an officer extends his hand to the poor wretch and saves him. Deus echt machina, or whatever it’s called. Who else but the good old Matlach would extend his hand to him? But the man in the door was not Matlach. It was one of the miscreants from the bridge. And he was not extending his hand—he had a pistol.

  It popped and then Vacek was lying on the floor, but he was not wounded. Soukup and Janet cried out at the same time. He hid between the beds, beside the woman. He checked her for a gun. Perhaps a pocket gun. But where would she put it? Nearby, there was the syringe, with the needle still fixed to the plastic top. The guy quietly walked around the beds; Vacek was sliding as far as possible away from him while Janet was experiencing her worst nightmare. Leaning on the wall, she started to heave and throw up. Perhaps remains of the degustation menu?

  Soukup became quiet and listened for a moment. Then he saw the man with the pistol and started to sing the old song saying that he was not a policeman and was there by mistake.

  The man found his boss. “Did you kill her? That can’t be!”

  “Not me!” Soukup shrieked.

  “Ten thousand per person, she promised. And I brought in three. So thirty thousand. Who will pay me now?” he sputtered into the young man’s face.

  Your fault, Vacek thought, fixating on money all the time. It doesn’t pay. Stealthily, he scooted near the man barefoot, and when he was about a meter from him, he jumped on his back and jammed the needle into his right ear. The needle sank in deep, and he pushed down on the piston with his palm.

  He had never heard such a ruckus. He was focused on holding the man’s hand with the pistol aimed toward the floor, away from anybody else. For good reason—the guy shot again, two shots, both bullets ricocheting off the floor; one hit Janet in her knee, the other one just missed her. Janet fell down and her shouts almost drowned out the shooter’s. With his left hand, Vacek yanked the syringe out of the guy’s ear but the needle remained inside. Vacek still had him locked by his neck, while also holding the man’s wrist with his right hand. As he had no more hands to use, he relied on his teeth and bit the finger the guy was using to poke at his ear. It surprised him how easy it was. His aim was precise—the knob on the finger; two joints were gone, or more precisely, they were in his mouth. Salty and sour, torn human flesh, tendons and blood. He spit it all out on the guy’s neck and felt how his body started to give up. He held the man until he was lying on the floor. Vacek grabbed his pistol, aimed it at his head, and realized they were both smeared with blood and that the guy’s face was completely white and he was probably dead already. Heroin meant for the client had been administered to this thug.

  There was pounding on the door, a rumble and roar. The door flew open under the power of a metal ram. Vacek dropped the pistol and put his hands up. URNA had arrived. He closed his eyes and hoped that his colleagues would not shoot him.

  When the mayhem calmed down, Matlach stood in front of him and looked as if he had never before seen a naked cannibal.

  “A bit late in the day,” Vacek couldn’t help himself.

  He watched the police doctor check the guy’s pulse. The doctor shook his head, then headed over to the owner of the travel agency, said, “She’s good,” and moved on to assist the wounded Janet.

  “Sorry.” Matlach smiled and wrapped him in a blanket and patted him on his shoulder.

  “Where are we?”

  “In Malá Strana, in some old warehouse. We’re a few minutes from the bridge.”

  “I’m still pretty much stuck, can someone unglue me?” Soukup asked,
and they turned to him in surprise.

  It occurred to Vacek that he could recommend to his friends from URNA an immediate and very effective dissolvent.

  The Dead Girl from a Haunted House

  by Jiří W. Procházka

  Exhibition Grounds

  The ceiling fan in the pub creaked to the irregular rhythm of my heartbeat. And it was noisier than my alarm clock—the alarm clock under my skin. I lit another cigarette to even out the beat of my heart.

  “Listen—are you Štolba?”

  “Yeah, the boss said it was him.”

  Two tables of the pub were taken up by the carnival people. There were nine of them. Beyond the windows, a snowstorm and Matěj’s carnival raged. Matěj’s Pilgrimage in Prague presents a conflation of four hundred years of traditions and religious celebrations with modern-day consumerism, cheap thrills, and robbery of all kinds. Pickpockets, petty thieves, fortune-tellers, and everything in between; children with cotton candy and parents with cameras and paper hats. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit this juggernaut of entertainment. And the same number complain how the merry festival becomes more expensive and screechy every year. Dozens of merry-go-rounds, hundreds of shooting galleries in caravans, stands with sausages and mustard. Eurobeer and the lethal combination of Fanta-Cola-Sprite everywhere.

  I was ignoring the crap from the bar. I was waiting for somebody.

  “Hey, old fart—I need something from you. The boss called!”

  I was sitting at a table with a stale beer in front of me. Behind me, a coat hanger; above me, a fan.

  “Hey! What’s up? Don’t you hear me?” bellowed a tattooed man from the carnival group.

  “Arnold, you dummy, go talk to the detective yourself! Or are you afraid of him?”

  In a glass ashtray, I built the Pyramid of Cheops out of cigarette butts. The approaching Arnold looked to be about forty. Tall, muscular, and sullen, with dirty-blond hair. Almost like me. He came up to me and leaned on the table. His arms were as large as my thighs. On his chest hung a gold chain thicker than the one on the Tower Bridge. I raised my head.

  He was staring at my eyes. Sharply, as all the worldly guys do when somebody ignores them.

  “Didn’t you hear, shithead, that I need to talk to you?”

  “I didn’t hear enough to answer you,” I replied.

  The door behind the bar creaked.

  Everything around the door was illuminated like those colorful pictures of saints. An individual exuding the dignity of the Dalai Lama and the toughness of Vito Corleone entered the grimy pub. Merry greetings sounded from the table with the carnival people. The shepherd came and with a magnanimous look examined the room in a nicotine haze. Arnold was still staring at my face.

  I was silent. What was I supposed to say to that walking steroid anyway?

  Baffled, the hulk turned. “Dad, he’s still ignoring me.”

  “Try to greet him, Arnold,” the elder advised. He was about seventy, gaunt as a fakir. This was a man who, with all of his 130 pounds and a pipe, managed a huge circus-carnival family. He wore a leather jacket, gold around his neck, gold in his left ear, and, surely, gold in his heart. And he was sad. “And only then offer him our proposition,” he added.

  “Did you hear the big boss?” Arnold slammed his fist on the table. The top butt fell off the pyramid. I was sorry about that. That one was the toughest to position.

  “Here’s your new beer, Štolba.” The server, Julča, circled the hulk.

  “Thank you, sweet Julča.”

  “We need something from you, snooper.” The giant pushed the frothy drink to the side. The two tables near the bar fell silent. Arnold again slammed his fist on the table, causing beer to splash on the cheap flower-patterned tablecloth. Goodness, why does he do that, the oaf?

  “Did you lose your tongue?” he hollered into my face.

  “God, what an idiot,” came from the group of travelers. That was the big boss.

  I watched Arnold’s scarred hand, bigger than that of the brown coal digger in the Mostecká Basin. It was scratched and scuffed like the hands of all carnival and circus men. These guys build their autodromes and centrifuges and circus tents and merry-go-rounds in rain and sleet. Their hands are as scarred as their souls.

  I slammed his palm on the table and flashed my other hand. The opaque blade of the Konol knife hacked between his pointer and middle fingers. He held them close to each other and now a jackknife was sticking there. From the pointer and the middle fingers, a drop of blood leaked out. I pulled the knife out from the table and put the sharp edge to his neck. I saw the travelers scurry our way, together with the bouncers. I was expecting them. I had experienced those types of SOBs in the hundreds, but that was back in my previous life . . .

  Back then, I was still alive.

  Behind the jittery guys with jittery jackknives, Don Corleone came up. “Arnold, you’re not doing it right.” He put his hand on the guy’s shoulder. “This is our Mr. Štolba, right?”

  “I don’t remember you adopting me,” I said.

  “Good day.” He smiled at me. But he was still sad. He reminded me of a gravestone wet with rain and lit up with circus neon. With the tip of his thumb, he touched the sharp edge of my knife. Gently, he pushed it away from Arnold’s throat.

  I liked him. It takes a confident person to play with a knife’s sharp edge at somebody’s neck with his bare palm. On his wrinkled face one could assume a smile, only thanks to a slight curvature of contour lines around his eyes, mouth, and nose. His gray eyes were hidden between wrinkles as bottomless as the state’s debt.

  “Please excuse my awkward entrance. Arnold really tries, but he is a tad dumb. Right, boy?”

  Arnold clutched his bleeding hand. He wasn’t answering. It was his son; that was as clear as a sunny day.

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “You shouldn’t let him go out without supervision.”

  The man slipped Arnold behind himself, to safety. He sat down across from me. The chair creaked. I’m not sure why I felt like everything there was creaking . . . the fan, the chair, personal relationships, communication, the tap on the right side. All that creaking, a badly oiled world.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ferdinand Goodwill Traveler and I govern a successful traveling company.”

  “That sounds like a phrase from Wikipedia.”

  “From what? I employ more than seventy people.” Perhaps he expected me to fall off my chair. I only burped and wiped my mouth.

  “So?” I slid the knife into the sheath on my belt. I may have retired, but I still wear my equipment, including a Glock in an underarm holster.

  “I have plenty of money,” he said. “And it’s urgent. Very urgent.”

  The guys were still standing behind their big boss. The rhinoceros on the right had a scar across his cheek; the thin man and the fatso on the left beautified themselves with about twenty earrings each. Mr. Fatso was also proudly exhibiting a nose ring in his splayed boxer-like nose.

  “And these are your bodyguards?” I took a sip of my beer. The froth had already thinned.

  Ferdinand shook his head. “No—family. You have met Arnold already, a weight lifter, acrobat, and animal keeper. These two—who look like Laurel and Hardy—are Laurel and Hardy. One works in the shooting gallery, the other with carousels. They are also both clowns in the circus. And Hardy is a tamer too. This is House. That scar on his face is from our lioness Elsa. He’s a keeper, and in charge of feeding. And all the rest—cages, supplies, and such.”

  They nodded their heads as Ferdinand introduced them. “Lads, wait for me at the table. Thanks.” And the space emptied.

  I leaned forward with my elbows on the table. I put my chin in my palms and gazed at him.

  “What so very urgent thing do you want me to do for you? What horrible thing has happened to you?”

  “My daughter was killed.”

  “Hmm. That’s not good news.”

  “You have this entire
evening.”

  I was looking into his gray eyes. Waiting.

  “Twenty-five thou?” he ventured.

  “Do we have something to drink to it?” I raised my pint.

  Don Ferdinand waved at his people. “Bring me my favorite!” In his hands appeared shots of liquor.

  “I say . . . the matter with your daughter . . . that really deserves a shot,” I offered my sympathies.

  “This may be the best condolence I’ve received in the last few hours.”

  We toasted. In this, I will certainly support this circus tradition.

  “How about the police?” I put the shot glass on the table.

  “Shit no!”

  I did not ask more. It was clear. This crime was not covered by the regular law. Nomadic men have had their own laws for hundreds of years. Certainly, every small robbery is gratifying, but they are a far cry from the extortions of the banks and financial institutions of today. In fact, we’re talking about only one law: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

  No nifty lawyers. No corrupt judges—of whom there’s a surplus in this country. Each one of them with their deep pockets wide open to payments. These are, however, travelers—with their bizarre but nevertheless pure justice. Nothing more, nothing less. Something that those belonging to so-called proper society will never understand.

  I refused Ferdinand’s offer to cover everything I had ordered and I paid my bill. I can still pay for goulash and a couple of beers. And that twenty-five thou will take me through an entire month.

  * * *

  We went outside. It was half past eight, and it was sad.

  The March storm had calmed down. Here and there, the playful wind spit a few lumps of snow into our faces. On the pedestrian island by the trams in front of the Industrial Palace, pairs of boys and girls huddled together like in a Himalayan storm. The flashing neon lights in front of the Industrial Palace lit up the caravans and groups of attendants. The wealthier families enjoyed huge centrifuges, twisters, boosters, and bungee jumps; the poorer citizenry had to be thankful for merry-go-rounds, shooting galleries, flying ducks, and bouncy castles.