I woke sweating to the smell of smoke. Monika sat at the table by the window, staring vacantly into space as she sucked on a cigarette. I staggered out of bed, unlatched the window, and stuck my head outside, gasping for breath. When my lungs filled, I took the ashtray from the table, emptied it in the trash, and opened every window in the apartment. Setting the ashtray back on the table, I said, “Nicorettes.”
Monika gave me a blank look.
“Oh, never mind,” I muttered, and set about the morning chores of making coffee and straightening the apartment. The satchel lay in the hallway where I had dropped it the night before. If Monika had succumbed to curiosity and glanced inside while I slept, she had been careful not to disturb its position. Cup of coffee in hand, I carried the satchel to the chair opposite hers and emptied it onto the center of the table. She nudged the ashtray to the corner, stubbed out one cigarette, and lit another, her stare fixed at the point where the corner walls met the ceiling.
“Well. Quite a haul,” I said.
I imagined that Monika, driven to a mad passion, swept the money onto the floor and we made love at turns violent and tender on a bed of lire, pesetas, dollars, and D-marks. Different movie. She rested her head on the palm of her hand and blew smoke toward the ceiling. I might as well have dumped a satchel of confetti on the table. I sat and separated the notes first by nationality and then by denomination. Even before counting I realized the sum would be significant. The strongest currencies were also the most numerous. Consulting a Herald Tribune for current exchange rates and making notes with pencil and paper, I counted just over four thousand dollars, almost half in deutsche marks.
I cleared my throat and said, too loudly, “Half of this is yours. Do you want it now?”
Monika glanced at me as though surprised to find someone else in the room. I pushed a pile of D-marks forward. She showed no recognition of its value, just stared as though the money represented something making unwanted demands on her concentration.
“Go ahead, take it,” I urged.
Monika returned her gaze to the point where walls and ceiling met.
“I don’t get it. We went to all this trouble. Here it is, thousands. And you don’t seem at all interested.”
“It’s not the money,” she whispered, then ripped a blanket from the bed and took it into the bathroom, where I found her an hour later, sleeping in the tub. I nearly fractured a vertebra carrying her to bed. She slept through the evening, waking just long enough to take my hand from her thigh and turn her back to me when, past midnight, I crawled into bed. It was only much later, after sunrise, that she allowed me to cuddle within a foot of her.
The jangling of a telephone later awakened me to the realization that the lump I had snuggled against was not Monika at all but a pillow. I snapped up the phone to an official voice which requested me by name. My reply was instinctive. “He’s not in. Can I take a message?” I jotted down the particulars and hung up. A quick scout of the bathroom proved the tub equally empty. Had I slept so soundly? Naturally, I checked to see if the money and her suitcase remained, not that I seriously believed she would attempt escape after the scenes of two nights before, but nevertheless I was immensely relieved to find both in place.
Over coffee, I wondered what the Vice Consul of the U.S. Embassy could want with me. A stab of paranoia—Zima had checked on my credentials, and the embassy was irate that I had cloaked my criminal activities behind the skirts of the ambassador. More likely, they had heard rumors of an important Hollywood figure in town. The function of any embassy is to brownnose business and entertainment figures as well as the politicians of the host country. Who could blame a backwater diplomat for wanting to rub against a little Hollywood glitter? It surprised me the call hadn’t come from Ambassador Shirley Temple Black herself, but then perhaps she did not wish to remind the diplomatic community of her showbiz roots. I dressed carefully before I made the call, donning slacks, sport coat, and tie, all pressed and of appropriate label. The secretary took note of my name and within moments the Vice Consul was on line, introducing himself by name and description of duties, but instead of following with a hearty and personal welcome he asked if I knew a young American man named Richard Greenleaf.
“Well, yes,” I answered, after a reflective pause. “He’s my cousin.”
In highly diplomatic language, which neither assumed innocence nor presumed guilt but outlined the function of the U.S. Embassy in situations such as these, the Vice Consul explained that on the previous day an individual identified as Richard Greenleaf, an American citizen, had been arrested by the police.
I said, “Oh, dear. Oh, my. Oh, my goodness.”
The charge was a serious one, the Vice Consul admitted; he was not yet fully informed of the details of the accusation, but the inspector supervising the case had specifically stated that it involved assault. Mr. Greenleaf’s parents would be contacted by the embassy, but as I was a relative and lived locally, I could assist my cousin by arranging for the services of a Czech lawyer.
I took down several names of lawyers suggested by the Vice Consul and hung up the phone, wondering how such an innocuous fellow as my cousin could have gotten involved in such a thing. Served the sanctimonious bastard right! I imagined the family code words whispered in hushed telephone conversations from car dealership to dealership; Dickie was now the one with the problem, the one who could use a little straightening out, who needed professional help. I relished the impending call from Father, allowing that perhaps I should stay in Prague for a while, at least until Dickie was cleared of all charges. Though careful to avoid seeming an opportunist, I’d suggest that Father reinstate my monthly trust fund now that I was continuing in Prague on family business.
Setting aside the U.S. and Czech currencies, I stuffed the remaining bills into a locking Haliburton briefcase, penned a brief note to Monika—a courtesy she had not shown me—and left my apartment. At the base of the stairs, I paused to scrutinize the parts of street visible through the door glass. Though I saw nothing suspicious and quickly blended into a street crowded with tourists, I nonetheless felt as though someone followed at a cautious distance. I tried all the tricks I remembered from movies: stopped at a window display to observe the reflections, unexpectedly whirled to note who veered aside or hid behind a newspaper, and sprinted at the last possible moment to a departing tram. I ran Hlavní Nádraží, the main train station, like a labyrinth, threading through crowds and charging up and down train platforms. Certain that no one could have possibly followed, I stole down a corridor to a shabby room commanded by a frumpy clerk in a floral housedress who, in exchange for a few crowns, took my case and handed me a numbered token. The script had called for a storage locker but none then existed at that station, and after brief deliberation I decided the storage room was less risky than my apartment. A quick read of the schedules in the main hall yielded a train that departed each morning at 7:30 A.M. to cleave the dark heart of Central Europe, terminus Bucharest.
What would be the name of my Romanian sweetheart? I didn’t know any Romanians. I puzzled over vowels and consonants while walking back to my apartment. Hanna? Katrina? Natasha? Csiucsiu? As I keyed the front lock to the apartment building, a diminutive figure from my childhood turned somersaults in defiance of the Russian bear. What had been her name? Just when I was on the verge of remembering, a hand nearly clapped me through the plate glass above the lock. I shouted, terrified a half-dozen assailants crowded my back.
“Mr. Miller, no reason to be frighten.”
I peeled myself away from the door and stared with disbelief at Inspector Zima’s face. What was he doing at the door to my building? Was my apartment being watched? Had he been following me? Had he seen me deposit the case in baggage claim at the train station? Did he know I had robbed Zdeněk? Had he come to take me quietly to a ten-year stint in the uranium mines? He seemed mocking when he joked, “You think I’m jealous husband, I come to beat you for sleeping with wife?”
I laug
hed weakly, tried to loosen the gag of my fluttering heart. “Not husband,” I gasped. “Boyfriend. A Romanian girl. Nadia. That’s her name. Ditched him for me. But she left. Train to Bucharest. Still. You never know.”
“You are lucky. Is only me.”
“Yes, well, nice talking to you,” I said, and opened the front door, intent on escape. Zima deftly slipped through the door behind me. I hadn’t thought clearly. Was I intending to take him to my apartment and introduce him to Monika and everything he did not already know? I looked at Zima, the door, and at Zima again, as though the two formed an unsolvable equation.
“Mr. Miller, you are nervous. Is true?”
A cagey question. He could have been truly observant, or attempting to unnerve me by suggesting I was already unnerved. I said, “Not nervous. Preoccupied. Us creative types, you know. Head in the clouds.”
We regarded each other from behind the curtains of our respective stages, each waiting for the other to begin. I refused to be the first to step out. If he knew something, let him say it. He watched, black-eyed and wary, as though he already knew everything. Still I said nothing, forcing him to the first move, an attempt to pull me out by asking, “Why, you think, am I here?”
“A question everyone asks. The meaning of life. Hell if I know.”
“Good joke! No, I am not here for philosophy but to talk of your cousin, Richard Greenleaf.”
I replied with a pointed index finger, “You’re investigating?” Events moved too fast. I had no time to think. For an unsettling moment, I sensed that my vision was so skewed that I saw little except self-aggrandizing fantasy.
“I could have told my men to pick you up, but is such nice day, and sometimes is better not to be formal. So I think, why not visit Mr. Miller, say, Let’s do lunch?”
“Do lunch?” I repeated.
“Is not everyday I meet big Hollywood screenwriter.”
I wondered if he mocked me. During decades of censorship and repression, ambiguous statements such as his had developed as the national means of communication in Czechoslovakia. The Czechs were as proud of their irony as the Russians were of their tanks. In retrospect, Czech irony had been no match for Russian steel. It wouldn’t fare any better against Hollywood glitz.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I met Arnold Schwarzenegger?” I asked.
21
Arnold Schwarzenegger, it turned out, was one of Zima’s favorite movie stars. As I recounted a tale all the more riveting for its fictionalizations, he led me to a neighborhood hospoda redolent of smoke, grease, and spilled beer. Zima was known there by face if not profession, the waitress greeting him with a surly nod and the barman giving a friendly shout. I never would have ventured into such a place alone. We sat at the corner table, away from the windows. I stared at the menu for several uncomprehending minutes, searching for familiar groupings of vowels and consonants, and found only the English loan word cola. When the waitress stopped by, I ordered one. She looked as though she waited for me to complete my sentence.
“I forget, you don’t speak Czech, do you, Mr. Miller?” he exclaimed, mock-surprised.
“You know damn well I don’t.”
“Then you must allow me to order,” he said, and dismissed the waitress with a brief command.
I watched Zima light a cigarette and smoke, waited for him to address the topic that had brought us together, but the idle task of smoking seemed to satisfy him. I said, “Then there was the time I traded shots of tequila with Clint Eastwood in Baja.”
Zima blew the impending anecdote aside with a stream of smoke. “Forgive me. I will be direct. You and I are old friends now. Evidence against your cousin is serious. I know you steal from young girls. Don’t protest. No matter. I tell you stop, because it is my job, but I have more important problems, and too much time it will take to catch you. But this other crime, it was not so small.”
The waitress slung to the table two beers and accompanying shots of vodka, making four small marks on a slip of paper glued down by a spot of spilled beer.
I said, “But I ordered a cola.”
He either ignored me or didn’t hear, lifting the shot glass and toasting, “To your health, or, as we say in Czech language, na zdraví.”
I reluctantly touched the rim first to his glass and then to my lips. Zima downed his in one go and looked at me horrified.
“Please, that is not how to take drink of Slavic peoples,” he said, and gestured that I must bolt the thing whole. When I did, he mimed that I should follow with a long draught of beer. “Good!” he exclaimed. “And what you think of Czech beer?”
There is only one answer to this question, which every Czech man will ask a foreigner if given opportunity. I said, “The best in Europe.”
Contentment beamed from his face, as though I had complimented a direct descendant. The waitress clattered two more beers and shot glasses to the table, and doubled the slash marks on the tab. It occurred to me that he might be trying to get me incautiously drunk. Just as likely, multiple beers and vodka were Zima’s standard lunch fare, as they were for half the male Czech workforce. Nevertheless, I reminded myself to think carefully before volunteering information. Zima lifted his shot glass, bid me to do likewise, and, saying na zdraví, emptied it. Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe Zima liked me, or wanted to like me, and staged this lunch to signal a turn in our personal relationship. The idea of having a Czech cop as a friend oddly pleased me. I chuckled into my beer and repeated enthusiastically, “Yep, the best damn beer in Europe.”
“And your favorite Czech beer?”
I stole a glance at the label on the glass in my hand. “Městan,” I said.
“Excellent choice.” Zima beamed. “And your cousin? What kind of young man is he?”
“Cousin Dickie is a happy-go-lucky, well-intentioned, friendly idiot.”
“Typical young American, then. Not at all like you.” Despite the glimmer of irony in his black eyes, I decided to smile at the compliment. He lit a second cigarette after carefully extinguishing the remains of the first. “This I don’t understand. I look at violence of crime and ask, could typical young American boy do such thing? Everyone is capable of violence, this I know. But tourist comes to Prague and commits this crime? No sense it has.”
“So you’ll let him go?” I asked, trying to sound hopeful. Better if Dickie stayed in jail a few more days, but I wanted to be charitable.
“There is the evidence,” he said, as though it damned and nothing could be done about it.
“What evidence?”
“You know what happened, yes?”
Did I? I thought carefully over what the Vice Consul said. Nothing too specific. “Only in general. Something serious. Violence of some sort was involved.”
The waitress delivered two plates with another round of beer and vodka. Both plates contained a lump of boiled potato, a shred of green cabbage, and a breaded something which, when cut open and sampled, had the consistency and taste of molten rubber.
“Interesting,” I said. “What is it?”
“Smažený sýr,” Zima replied, attacking the items on his plate with relish. “In English, fried cheese.”
I took a bite and immediately felt my arteries begin to clog.
“Can you tell me what you were doing when it happened?” This, Zima asked around a mouthful of smažený sýr, as though he requested the time on my watch. How many times had I seen the same tired narrative device of a suspect admitting something he could not possibly know unless he was the perpetrator of the crime? I would not allow myself to fall for that cliché. But in which crime was he attempting to implicate me? I had to remember that for all my crimes I was an innocent man who knew nothing.
“It would help,” I said, clearly and firmly, “if I knew exactly what happened and when it happened.”
Zima stared incredulously, a half-chewed lump bulging his cheek. “But I thought you knew,” he burbled.
“How could I possibly know?”
Behind o
ur masks, an understanding flickered, however brief and unstated, of the roles we played. He pretended that I was innocent while thinking me guilty, if not of the crime itself then of complicity. I professed ignorance, while knowing far more than was wise to admit. I could read it in his eyes, and as much as I wished to believe my performance was flawless, I sensed he could read my eyes just as fluently. Like actors we could have fooled an audience but not each other. I could admit to knowing nothing more than he told me: an unnamed man had been accosted at 8 A.M. two mornings ago by a thief who had somehow gained entry into his money-changing business and lay in wait for him to arrive. I listened carefully, comparing his version with mine to screen the inconsistencies and variations. The thief had forced the merchant to open the safe at knifepoint and then beat him unconscious. As I listened I tossed down the shot of vodka and attacked the fried cheese. Perhaps the Czechs drink so much because half drunk is the only way they can force down such awful food.
I said, “Dickie would be no more capable of an act like that than he would of flying to the moon on a surfboard.”
“And who would be capable?” The implication of the question was clear. He meant me. No. Paranoia misled me. But why had he singled out Dickie if not to get at me? I did not know what to think. He sighed. “Twenty years I have this job, and still, it surprise me what people can do. I want to think your cousin is innocent, if only because we are such old friends, but facts of case are what they are.”
“No,” I said, growing purposely belligerent. The innocent are always annoyingly self-righteous. “The facts are that for some unknown reason you’ve decided to harass not just me but my entire family. The only reason I can think of for your behavior is personal vindictiveness. Did that Hungarian cop put you up to this?”
“Please, Mr. Miller! I like you,” Zima protested. “But there is nothing I can do. Evidence—”
“What evidence?” I demanded. “I have not heard you utter one shred of proof.”
“His passport. Richard Greenleaf’s passport.” Zima chose that moment to shake another Sparta out of its box, caress the gummed seal with the tip of his tongue, wedge the filter end just off the center mark of his lips, lift his silver Zippo lighter from the table, and bring it to flame; all gestures performed with seeming indolence, as though the outcome of events didn’t much matter in the grander scale. After centuries of occupation by Hapsburgs, National Socialists, and Marxists, the Czech has acquired a longer view of time than the average myopic American, and I felt ill-equipped to wait him out.
Gypsy Hearts Page 19