by Mario Bolduc
The SS guard moved Leibrecht out of his way and grabbed Emil by the arm, pulling him brusquely outside the operating room. As he was leaving, Emil heard Dr. Leibrecht say to the young woman, “You’ll owe me one, Christina Müller.”
She ignored him.
In the yard, the guard pushed Emil in front of him, shoving him without a care. In silence the young woman trailed them. They made their way toward the camp’s entrance. Emil wondered what this stranger wanted from him, this Christina Müller, her hair fiery red. He would have liked to ask her, but speaking to her, even looking at her, would have been a grave error. He couldn’t feel his right ear anymore; it was numb, frozen, really. He put his hand against it repeatedly; yes, it was still there. For now at least, and that was all that mattered.
Soon, Emil understood he was being brought to the Kommandantur, right beside the main guard post. The SS man pushed him through the door.
A corridor followed by a staircase and suddenly an office, with a desk and a German officer behind it reading through a pile of papers, a cigarette at his lips. Slicked-back hair, an aquiline nose — and the most beautiful ears in the world. In front of him, on a sheet of blotting paper, his officer’s cap was laid upside down, his gloves inside it. Emil wondered why he’d been brought here, then noticed the accordion, his Paolo Soprani, abandoned on a chair in the corner. In an instant, he understood everything. He’d stolen the instrument during disinfection. Someone had sold him out. Otto Schwarzhuber, the SS-Obersturmführer’s young son? Emil had broken a rule, the most important one. He’d taken something that belonged to the Reich. Every Rom was a damn thief, and here he’d given them more proof. He would be punished. Made an example of in front of the whole camp.
When the officer raised his eyes, Christina Müller said, “It’s him, Oskar.”
The officer furrowed his brow, sat back in his chair. “What happened to his ear?”
“Dr. Mengele. His research on racial characteristics. He mentioned it to us, once, do you remember?”
His face tightened. “I thought he was working on eye colour.”
“Ears as well. Folds, curves, extrusions …”
The officer pointed at Emil. “Is he deaf?”
“I arrived right before the removal.”
The man nodded. Emil understood that this high officer was Oskar Müller, husband to the young woman.
Müller got up, stepped around his desk, and stood in front of Emil, observing him for a long time. Finally, he pointed to the Paolo Soprani on the chair. “Play.”
Emil couldn’t understand what he was being asked. He understood the words, yes, but couldn’t get his head around the meaning. Play? Müller became impatient. The guard shoved him toward the accordion. Without daring to turn around, Emil grabbed the instrument. His legs were weak, all of a sudden. He sat on the chair, got back up immediately, but Müller gestured for him to sit back down. Emil’s fingers were fixed, rigid, as if he no longer had mastery over his hands. He raised his eyes. Everyone was looking at him, Müller, of course, the SS, and Müller’s wife.
“Play!” the officer barked.
So Emil played. Timidly, at first, clumsily. His hands searching for the keys, his fingers slipping on the keyboard, his movements halting. But, soon enough, music filled him, occupying him entirely, the bellows working the fear out of him. He let himself be carried by the rhythm his fingers — now obeying him — imposed on the Paolo Soprani. Nothing existed anymore. These Germans, the Kommandantur, Birkenau, the entire Third Reich, the war, the endless war. Emil played what he felt in his heart; he played for his life, somehow knowing that the accordion was his only means of survival. He played and played, as if time no longer existed. And then, suddenly, weariness overcame him. When Emil finally stopped, on the verge of collapsing, he raised his eyes. No one had moved. They looked at him strangely; he was scared all over again. What did all of this mean?
Oskar Müller cleared his throat and told his wife, “The Jew, the other one, we won’t need him anymore. This Gypsy is much better.”
6
Bucharest, November 27, 2006
The official cause had been determined: the use of portable stoves and space heaters in a confined and insalubrious environment. During an early winter cold snap, all of this ad hoc heating equipment had been cranked to maximum power. A Romanian winter under a heavy grey sky. Bucharest’s citizens stooped their shoulders as they quickly went about their affairs. Those on Zăbrăuţi Street in Ferentari, well, they wouldn’t be going anywhere anymore. Twenty-three bodies last time they counted, including eight children who didn’t even have the strength to leave their parents’ squat. The fire caught them as they were sleeping; they didn’t stand a chance. Bodies found in the trash-lined staircases, right in front of back exits on the ground floor. They’d been boarded up for years. Desperate men and women clawing at the doors, trying in vain to escape. Within five minutes it was all over, the smoke had taken them before any of the firemen had time to reach the building through the neighbourhood’s mazelike streets. Six storeys in flames as gawkers and neighbours, most of them Roma living in similarly squalid conditions, stood by and watched until late in the night. Fellow Roma crying in the streets, guessing the fate of their brethren in the burning building.
“The preliminary investigation yielded traces of accelerants, which leads us to believe the fire was deliberately lit,” Adrian Pavlenco declared from behind his desk at the Bucharest General Inspectorate.
Clearly, American TV detectives had guided Inspector Pavlenco’s sartorial choices. The national Romanian television station broadcast police procedurals in the afternoon, with subtitles, of course. He was going for Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, or maybe Law & Order. His clothes were a size too small, showing off his lean build. According to Toma Boerescu, Pavlenco had transformed his own basement into a gym. More gossip learned at the coffee machine.
“So what’s the link to Kevin Dandurand?”
Pavlenco raised his eyes to Josée, who’d just asked the question. He then glanced at Max O’Brien and Marilyn Burgess, standing a little off to the side. Max thought this Burgess woman was small, delicate, and surprisingly wispy for an RCMP agent. He hoped she wasn’t part of the Fraud Division. When they’d all introduced themselves to one another before the meeting started, she’d scanned Max’s face for a beat too long, as if he reminded her of a person or a picture she’d seen before. However, he’d taken a few precautions. He’d played so many characters over the years for his scams that he’d become used to changing his appearance and wearing the clothes of other men. To Josée and the others, Burgess included, Max looked like a calm, collected New York banker used to conducting business on the golf course. The favourite pastime of his alter ego, Robert Cheskin.
Be that as it may, Max had a twinge of worry over Marilyn Burgess’s insistent gaze. She might be an expert with a photographic memory, mentally riffling thought her department’s open cases.
“The fire seems to have started in a fourth-floor apartment,” Pavlenco explained. “An apartment left abandoned, in principle. A body — presumably the tenant — was found in a room that served as a kitchen.”
“A Rom?”
“We haven’t identified him yet. Always difficult with those people.”
“Once again, I don’t see the link to Kevin,” Josée declared.
“Some of his personal belongings were discovered in the squat. Clothes and a suitcase, among other things.”
That was Marilyn Burgess speaking. Her voice was confident, professional. She seemed to know her stuff, Max thought. Burgess appeared deeply connected to this whole mess, in a way Max couldn’t quite understand. Was it ambition? Perhaps she couldn’t stand the thought of letting an obscure Romanian police officer get all the credit for handling the investigation.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Josée insisted. “He could have been robbed.”
“Ms. Dandurand, please —”
“Neighbours witnessed a fight in front of the building, followed by both men going up to the apartment,” Pavlenco said, cutting off Burgess.
“The tenant was stabbed to death,” Burgess added. “Perhaps the suspect tried to hide his crime.”
“Kevin is no killer,” Max said.
The three others turned toward him.
“I wish I could be as confident as you,” Pavlenco said. “The only way to know for sure is to find him. My men have gone through the whole city with a fine-toothed comb and we’ve gotten nowhere. Kevin Dandurand has vanished.”
A silence fell.
“For now, all that we want to do is ask him a few questions. We need to know what he was doing in a building full of Roma. Know why he was in Bucharest, and in a neighbourhood like Ferentari.” Pavlenco turned toward Marilyn Burgess.
She nodded. “Kevin Dandurand has had run-ins with the law. Thanks to Interpol I’ve obtained a copy of a police report out of New York.”
Max closed his eyes. Here it came. The old stories he’ d tried to hide coming to light. The East River warehouses.
“New York? What are you talking about?” Josée didn’t have a clue. Max and Kevin had never revealed their secret to anyone.
“It is, in fact, Mr. Cheskin here who paid for his friend’s bail,” Burgess said, turning to Max.
Josée faced Max, too, waiting for an explanation.
“Ancient history,” he said. “Kevin had nothing to do with the fire. You’re wasting your time. Going down the wrong path.”
Adrian Pavlenco ignored the remark.
“That’s not all,” Burgess said. “Victims of fraud in New York, Chicago, and Atlantic City have identified him as a con man by his picture. In the 1990s, Kevin Dandurand was part of a gang of thieves led by a so-called Max O’Brien, well known by the police. Dandurand was in Bucharest for a reason, likely related to the murder of this Gypsy. Fraud perhaps.”
Max could see it now: Pavlenco and Burgess couldn’t care less about the death of the twenty-three Roma. They were solely interested in catching this high-profile criminal who’d been avoiding Interpol for years.
Josée was speechless, stunned by what she’d just heard.
“Your brother may not be guilty of this tragedy,” Burgess continued, “but he’s got something to hide. That much is clear. If we don’t get him for the murder and the fire, we’ll get him on other charges, no doubt about it.” She let silence fill the room, probably as an intimidation tactic. Then she added, “And if he gives us O’Brien, that’ll be a start.”
In the corridor, as Max headed toward the exit, Josée grabbed him by the arm. “What’s all this about? Why did you never mention the robbery? Does Caroline know?”
“A youthful mistake.”
“And what about this fraud business? You knew about that, too?”
“No, I swear I’ve never heard a word about it.”
Josée peered at Max for a long moment, as if to make sure he wasn’t lying. For Max, lying was second nature. He held her stare.
She added, “Anything else you’ve been hiding from me? Anything else I should know before I put my reputation as a lawyer at stake?”
Back at the hotel, Max finally got a hold of Caroline in Montreal. There had been dark days after Sacha’s death, but she had gradually recovered and come back to herself. In the midst of her deepest pain, she’d often ended up at Refuge Sainte-Catherine to help others. There, the director had asked her to write a newsletter, which they distributed to donors and volunteers three times a year. Caroline had thrown herself into the project, hoping it would distract her from her grief. But no, this simple act of writing reminded her too much of her career as a journalist and her old life, when she’d been happy and carefree, when her son was alive. Volunteering, yes. She was ready and able to serve warm soup to runaways and give clean syringes to drug addicts, but there was no way she’d go back to journalism, even for a newsletter.
Max had been through Montreal a year ago and had taken the time to visit her. He hadn’t seen her since the Saqawigan tragedy. Without attracting attention, he’d watched her sort through old clothes that other volunteers would give to the homeless once night fell, their hands frozen, standing shivering behind paper cups of black coffee. The beautiful, irresistible young woman he’d met in that gym in Tribeca was little more than a memory now. Caroline’s hair, which had been so magnificent before, was cut short, a dense tuft of hair framing — highlighting, really — the bones prominent under almost translucent skin. Only her eyes were the same. Those penetrating eyes.
To the runaway teenagers and the homeless, she was simply Caro, the woman who handed them a bowl of soup or a used blanket in exchange for nothing at all. The young people had watched Max suspiciously, as if he were a cop. Or a journalist looking for a story on the urban jungle. They’d scanned the space behind him for a photographer, the obligatory appendix, but Max travelled light.
A volunteer had replaced Caroline, who left her post to join Max. The cafeteria was closed; it wouldn’t open until the afternoon. Another volunteer mopped the floor, his thoughts elsewhere. The whole room smelled like industrial detergent, though it wasn’t enough to convince anyone for a second that the place was clean.
“Why don’t we go out for coffee?” Max had suggested, ill at ease.
As they trudged toward the Second Cup together, kids standing at street corners with squeegees and water bottles waved or spoke a few words to her. Even some cops, both in and out of uniform, stopped her in the street to ask her about a runaway whose parents were worried, or a john who’d turned violent on a prostitute.
Caroline, transformed into Mother Teresa. The former journalist with a promising, bright future, the elegant Caroline with the devastating smile, had become queen of Montreal’s gutters.
Once outside the slums she’d come to know so well, her confidence disappeared. It was all a show.
“You’re married, Robert? Finally hitched?”
In New York, Max had spoken of Pascale and their relationship, which had ended so abruptly. Caroline had scolded him: what was the point of staying tied to the past, to a memory, no matter how beautiful it was? You had to move forward, start fresh. Of course, that was before Sacha’s death. Today Caroline lectured no one at all.
At a nearby table a man and woman sat facing each other in silence, chain-smoking in front of a full ashtray. They weren’t exactly homeless, but they were close enough. Caroline watched them from the corner of her eye.
“I was like them,” she said. “I spent two years wandering the streets, trying to convince myself I was the only one who’d ever suffered. That my pain was unique, one of a kind.” She smiled. “Vanity. Even in my wretched state.”
Over the phone from Bucharest, Caroline’s voice seemed thin, used, as if she hadn’t slept since the news broke about the accusations against Kevin.
“Everything they’re saying about him, Caroline, it’s all a lie.”
At the other end of the world, radio silence.
Max asked, “Do you know what Kevin was doing in Romania? Did he talk to you before he left?”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “He was acting strange, like restless, you know? We talked about all sorts of things, but I felt like he was hiding something from me.”
Kevin might have been working an angle, as the cops were saying. Max could remember the mood he’d get in before an operation: like an actor about to walk onstage. A mix of nervousness and excitement.
Stage fright.
“Do you remember anything out of the ordinary?”
Caroline hesitated again, then said, “He just hugged me hard, that’s all. Like he hadn’t done in a long time. I felt all … strange.” She muffled a sob. “I felt like he was saying goodbye.”
7
New York, June 18, 1995
&nb
sp; Jack Straub, Bill Collington, Jiri Schiller, Larry Walberg, and the Kiwi Tom Farraday. Kevin became the newest member of the talented team Max had gathered around himself over the years. The group had since dissolved; gone were the heady days of operation after operation. Each was on his own path now, each following his own way. Back then, when Max called, they answered, even if they were running their own jobs on the side. They were the best: all specialists, all discreet, all terrifyingly efficient.
Max got Ted Duvall to train Kevin. Ted was a Franco-Ontarian with a loud voice and rolling gait. He usually worked on his own but always collaborated with Max when the latter required his services. Duvall knew every cop from Toronto to New York and could impersonate any one of them. He was the one to play the police officer when a job needed an authority figure or a representative of the law. Duvall clearly enjoyed this role, which he’d gotten down to a fine art over the years. He shared with Kevin all the tricks of the trade without hesitation, believing Kevin to be a promising young man — those were his own words. If you could be a convincing lumberjack in Midtown Manhattan, surely you were born to play any role.
Kevin fit in with the group easily. He was cautious, careful, and most important, he followed orders. He never put the safety of the rest of his team at risk. Fraud was a crime committed in the light of day and amid formidable banality. Kevin understood that right away.
Max and Ted built Kevin a new identity, one that would deceive Caroline. Kevin had just signed with a new sponsor, which meant he could now train without any financial worries, allowing him to quit his job with New York City’s Parks and Recreation. A masquerade, a perpetual lie that Caroline believed hook, line, and sinker, despite being an investigative journalist. Thanks to the lawyer Max had hired for Kevin, he’d be able to stay in the country following the seizure of his work permit. Life could go on.