Prague Noir

by Pavel Mandys

  * * *

  The cashier was waiting for me.

  “So what do you want from me? Should I confess to the murder of our sweet girl?”

  “Yeah, that would save me a lot of work.” I was looking at my notebook in the flickering light.

  She spit on my notebook and face. I wanted to spit on her too, but instead I just wiped off my face with a jacket sleeve.

  “Mrs. Cashier, what if you told me who you saw here that evening and what was going on around the house when they murdered the girl inside?”

  Emanuela stared at me. Her rouge-red lips shook. And right away, she burst into wails: “Sir, please—find the son of a bitch! I will strangle him myself!”

  “I believe it.”

  “Who could have done that to her? Our sweet girl had a tough life anyway. The poor girl went through everything that a circus girl can go through.” She continued sobbing and the sea of tears reached our ankles and kept rising. “I saw all of our men here! Today, they were all crazy. And despite it all, she was so happy.” She smiled now through her tears. Her green eye shadow mixed with her black mascara.

  “Anything interesting? Did you hear anything—an argument, any other sounds?”

  “No, but—” She stopped. “You can see it for yourself. How could I . . .” She trailed off.

  From the cracked speakers near the carousels, autodromes, shooting galleries, and swans, disco music from the eighties howled in concert with the bawling of ushers and the roar of the masses. She couldn’t have heard all that much. But she stopped. Twice.

  “You’re right. It’s terrible.” I stroked her arm. “But you did hear something else too, didn’t you?”

  She rubbed her face with chubby fingers and ended up with a Joker mask. She nodded, and started crying even more—I thought that would have been impossible.

  “I’m not sure. I heard something breaking. Nothing more. I went quickly to the house, but nobody was there. It could have been drunks. We have heaps of broken bottles here.”

  This could work.

  “Listen, Emanuela—can I call you that? Was Rosalina always dressed so skimpily?”

  “You know, she’s our girl. A cool, snazzy carnival girl. In the circus she was a flying acrobat, and girls do not overdress for that. For children, it’s the acrobatics; for dads . . . a peepshow.”

  “But she was not due to perform. Don’t tell me she went to the Haunted House like that, in a skimpy nightie.”

  The cashier’s eyes bulged, which added another level to her already picturesque face. She understood now. “That was not a skimpy nightie. Rosalina didn’t wear it for her performances. Mr. Detective,” she sobbed, “somebody had to bring her here already dressed like that, right?”

  I gripped her shoulder. The clever Mrs. Cashier.

  “One of ours, right?” She buried her face in her palms. And remained so. The tears had risen to the high-alert level.

  * * *

  “Štolba.” Ferdinand was submerged in a leather chair in the caravan’s living room. “I’m sending people out. They don’t need to watch the Haunted House.” He spoke heavily and kept his eyes fixed on the thick carpet. “You really think that . . . ?” He looked up at me again.

  “I don’t think. I need that proof. I have something, but I can’t get it before midnight.”

  “Look, do you seriously want to tell me that in three hours you found the killer of my little girl?”

  I bowed my head. I knew that he had tears in his eyes. Not only because of the sorrow. Ferdinand banged his fist on the table.

  “Should I call those four right now? Or not until the staff finds what you’re looking for?”

  “I would wait. Shall we have coffee?”

  “And if they don’t find it?”

  “They will. You sent thirty of them. They’ll examine everything within the radius of two, three kilometers. It can’t be on the other side of Prague, after all. The murderer had to return to the circus show. And everybody was there. But if it is not found, would a confession be enough for you?”

  Don Ferdinand lifted himself from the chair. He sauntered to the coffee machine. “Štolba, you must be one son of a gun,” he said, then turned holding a cup of coffee.

  I lifted my hand. I aimed my finger at him, and with my arm made a movement as if I were shooting. “That’s why people like you, maestro, hire me.”

  “Sugar?”

  “No, but I do have the killer.”

  “Really—no sugar?”

  * * *

  Emanuela lit up the Haunted House. She had fresh makeup on and was as colorful as a rainbow. Again, the snazzy madam from the cash register. Hardy had a pit bull look and was gazing at the large lever. Laurel had stopped crying. He watched the carriage tracks. Arnold’s eyes were fixed on the sack he threw at the lever. House ping-ponged his eyes from the lever to me, Ferdinand, and the others. The big boss was on the phone behind the coffin with Dracula.

  “We can start,” he uttered when he finally finished the call. “It’s your turn now, Štolba.”

  “I know that one of you has committed murder,” I began my circus performance. “I do not need to listen to any speeches. The only speech will be mine, you carnival trash.”

  “Dad! Why did you invite this idiot?”

  “This motherfucker needs a beating.”

  I had them. I took out my Konol knife from its sheath. Policemen like this knife very much because it’s practical. The spooky lighting of the house flashed on the blade. I walked around them. Laurel conjured up from somewhere a butterfly knife. Hardy readied a switchblade. Arnold waved brass knuckles around my head. In House’s hand, a jackknife flashed.

  “Good stuff. Mikov?” I tapped my knife on his. The blade disappeared.

  “I am a killer because I have a Mikov?”

  “Honestly—you lead the list, doctor. Show everyone present the fatal wound of your beloved and only love, Rosalina. And can you affirm in front of everybody how much you loved your young, mature niece?”

  House pursed his lips, teared up, and looked at Ferdinand.

  “Štolba,” Ferdinand addressed me so quietly that I barely understood him, “in the family, we have clan and relational connections which you, even though you know us, could never understand.”

  “Very well. Let’s go back to the wound.” I raised my hand. “To the structure of the fatal wound. Your tablet please, House.”

  Doc walked around all the men with his tablet. I scanned them, and embedded in my memory every facial twitch. The Lord’s last supper: one of them had betrayed his own clan.

  “Laurel, how about meth? Can you fly?” I pointed the knife at him.

  The skinny kid looked around, startled: “What are you talking about, sir? I have no idea, sir, what’s on y-your mind? For god’s sake, don’t look at me like that! He’s a devil! And he’s trying to divide us! Let’s kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” He was waving his butterfly knife around.

  “Fine job with the knife.” With a careful move, I extracted the butterfly knife from his hand. “Do you know that Rosalina, in addition to the hole made by the lever, has a knife wound?” He blanched.

  “Perhaps it was this knife.” I waved his weapon in front of his eyes, then set it down on a nearby table. “And maybe it was because of the meth she didn’t want to sell you. Or because she asked for a higher price for the goods.”

  “No!” Laurel collapsed.

  Ferdinand rubbed his forehead with his palm. “Is this really necessary, Štolba?” He looked at me with his weary gray eyes.

  I slid the blade of the Konol over my throat. I nodded. And closed my eyes.

  “Do you want a good kick?” Hardy walked right up to me. He glanced at Laurel and then back at me.

  “Hardy, you’re so dumb that you could kill anybody, just like that. Right?”

  “You—anytime, snooper.”

  “Rosalina as well? For example, when you discovered that she was supplying Laurel with meth?”

  A
deep silence descended on the Haunted House.

  “Shit, Štolba,” Ferdinand spoke up. “You’re taking it too far.”

  “No, he isn’t,” said somebody from the left. It was House. “Laurel has been using meth for about three months, Dad. We wanted to help him. Rosalina too. But it was impossible. And we knew what you would do if you found out. Don’t be angry, please.”

  “He killed Rosalina?” Ferdinand walked up to the vibrating body. “This oaf?”

  “No, he didn’t. Because he was here when I talked to the girl,” the cashier interjected with exhaustion. “He left and sweet Rosalina was still alive.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “And if we know that it was not Laurel, we thus know it was not Hardy either.”

  “And how’s that?” Hardy was nervous, but mainly he was worried about his brother.

  “Because your hands are not cut.”

  Hardy put the knife back into his pocket and lifted his calloused, scratched hands. He couldn’t understand why, but he did it.

  “Arnold, House, Laurel, show your hands! The other side too,” he said, instead of me.

  Arnold reacted first. “I have them cut by this son of a bitch. By him—the same one I asked to solve the death of my sister,” he sobbed.

  “It was me who sent you to him,” Ferdinand added. “Before I went to the pub.”

  “House, examine Arnie and tell me whether he has any other scratches besides the ones from my knife?”

  Arnold stood. He didn’t move.

  “You have no proof of anything,” Laurel squeaked from the floor. I looked over the faces of all present. It’s good when you have thirty years of experience investigating murders. Then it is quite clear to you.

  “You, who call yourselves—in your own jargon—travelers,” I began, “guys without fear and drugs—you cook meth here. I came a couple of hours ago and smelled a sour chemical stench. That’s generated when meth is made. I sniffed around Rosalina and I could smell it. For the stench to be that intense, it could not have been the result of just production but of an accident. For now, we can call it that.”

  “What did I tell you, Štolba? We do not make it and we do not sell it.”

  “Not everybody, maestro. Not everybody. Emanuela, what did you hear after the performance?”

  “Glass breaking. I thought that it was drunks being wild.”

  “Should I kick through the wall behind which there is supposed to be a parking track for carriages? Somewhere near the lever? Near the lever with Rosalina where I smelled that junk?”

  Hardy didn’t say anything. He picked up an iron rod from the ground by the track and started to whack the walls of the Haunted House. There was fury in his action; there was hate in it.

  “So where do you have it?” Nobody tried to calm him. “Where?”

  Behind the three panels on the left—nothing. But behind the second panel to the right of the lever with the sack—something.

  “What is it?” The big boss Ferdinand looked like a boy whose friends had stomped on his glasses.

  Behind the wall, there sat a closet with an upturned table. Along with everything else needed to cook meth. Some of it was broken and scattered on the floor. But there was no burner, no flasks. Only shards. And a motive.

  “A smashed cooking room,” House answered his father.

  “How do you know?” Ferdinand turned to him. “It’s your work, or what?”

  “I watch TV, Dad. On the news they give more tips about cooking drugs than any drug dealers do.”

  Ferdinand looked at the shaking Laurel. That boy had been experiencing disgusting withdrawal symptoms the entire time.

  “Who was supplying you? With whom did you deal?” Ferdinand knew how to articulate a concise query.

  Laurel was covering his head with his hands and was cowering in the fetal position: “I was selling it to the kids at the fountain. That’s why they go there! I wanted to help the family! He said we’d help everybody with it!”

  “Rosalina surprised your cook,” I said. “We probably cannot reconstruct the entire discussion, but I can imagine how it went. Accusations and threats that she would tell Ferdinand. An argument in the cooking room, a fight, broken glass. And she certainly told him that he had betrayed his family’s rules—your community’s rules—and hers as well. And then she ran away from him.”

  Emanuela sobbed: “Sweet Rosalina ran out of the house. She was in her performance costume. She was distraught. But nobody followed her.”

  Ferdinand peered into the cooking room behind the wall of corrugated metal and plaster.

  “Arnold, show me the scars from Štolba.”

  The muscleman didn’t move at all for quite a while. Perhaps he thought we couldn’t see him.

  “Arnold, could you show me the knife?” I asked as kindly as I could. “As long as I have known you travelers, for more than thirty years, you have always carried fine knives or razors on you—or now, more modern carpet knives. But you, Arnie, did not pull a knife on me. Not even in the pub when everybody drew their knives. Not when I asked you to cut off the sack with the hanged man. Not even now, when I pulled a knife on you. You only threatened me with your fists.”

  Arnold’s breathing quickened.

  “You have no knife,” I went on. “Do you think we’ll find it in Rosalina’s caravan, where you followed her from the Haunted House after she threatened to expose you? To tell how you made Laurel distribute the shit? What did you do when she hid from you? Were you afraid she’d call Ferdinand? Another argument followed—that’s when you stabbed her, so that she would finally be silenced?”

  Ferdinand watched Arnold and me. He was as gloomy as the sky just before a storm.

  “And then you brought her here, in that nightie and impaled her on the lever?” My last question floated in the air.

  The reddening Arnold resembled a melting furnace.

  “One moment!” Doctor House was perhaps even smarter than I had thought. “Arnold’s clothes would have to be bloody if he brought her here. In the caravan, there would have to be evidence of the fight and . . .” Hurray. He got it. “Shit, did anybody examine her caravan?”

  In the meantime, Ferdinand’s phone rang.

  “Sure, bring it here. All of it. But we may not need it anymore.”

  It was clear. It was clear to all in the Haunted House. The missing knife. But I was not done yet.

  “Arnie, do you know what bothers me about you?” I decided to take him down completely. He hunched, the shithead—one could almost feel sorry for him. “That you did not throw Rosalina on the lever like that sack.”

  Even though there was silence, I could hear the boiling of adrenaline from all sides. A waterfall of adrenaline. They were awaiting my every word.

  “You put her on the lever and let her slide down while the girl was still alive.”

  “Štolba, for god’s sake,” Ferdinand moaned.

  Emanuela shrieked. Laurel pulled himself together and stood up.

  “Why else was the wound so wide open?” I turned to face all present. “House and I wondered too. As if somebody was buffeting Rosalina on the lever, turning her around. Unfortunately, it’s much worse. The girl herself caused that terrible hole in her belly. And that’s why her palms were scuffed. She was fighting for her life as long as she could. Until the last moment.”

  “No! I didn’t do it!”

  That was fast. Everybody was surprised but they were still watching me.

  “You positioned her carefully,” I pointed at the lever with the sack, “so that the rod was inserted right into her knife wound. Which you did not quite manage. And then you left her. Alive, she slowly slid down and suffered like an animal. She was resisting using her hands, pushing them against the ground, and that’s how she remained poised thirty centimeters above the floor. That’s how it was. You’re a son of a bitch, Arnie. You are a murderer.”

  Arnold, confused, looked around. “You can’t believe that story! People, you won’t put this on m
e!”

  Dark silence in a dark haunted house. Outside, the carnival thundered, and here, silence thundered. The hulk looked around. He was searching for an exit route. He wanted very much to run away into the roiling masses outside. And run farther and farther away.

  And that’s what he did. He started like a steamroller. Unstoppable. Fleeing from the damned Haunted House. He stomped and thrashed his fists around . . .

  There was a swish.

  Laurel had thrown his butterfly knife and hit with precision.

  Arnold touched his neck. Confused, he looked over everybody and staggered out of the house.

  Behind him, a bloody trail followed.

  * * *

  “Štolba,” Ferdinand said to me later in the pub, “here’s thirty thou.”

  “You said it would be twenty-five.”

  “That’s okay. Let it go.”

  I did let it go. I took the money. “Thanks, Ferdinand.”

  The big boss smiled and disappeared in the cigarette smoke.

  He also disappeared completely from my life. I have to admit—sometimes I miss him. He was one of those men who are rapidly waning from our world. And you know yourself that there are no more men like that being born.

  Two days later, I was sitting at my spot at the pub, again arranging cigarette butts in the ashtray. In the Prague Daily, I learned that at Matěj’s carnival, an animal had fatally wounded a drunk keeper in the cages.

  Interesting.

  “Will you have one more beer, Mr. Štolba?”

  “Thanks, dear Julča.”

  “Not at all.”

  PART II

  Magical Prague

  The Magical Amulet

  by Chaim Cigan

  Pankrác

  Since he’d started studying in Prague, he had wanted to treat himself to Hamlet at the National Theatre. He could afford only a standing-room ticket, so all he could see was the front portion of the stage; what was happening farther back on the set he had to imagine. Therefore, he did not see how the director solved the problem of Hamlet’s ghost when he appeared to his son at the beginning—asking him to avenge his murder committed by his brother and the queen, his own wife and Hamlet’s mother.