Complication

by Isaac Adamson

  Was-Kelley slumps heavy against the wall, his back sliding down until he is sitting with wooden leg and broken one both outstretched. He labors in undoing a series of buckles and straps at his knee and disengages the false limb. Taking the appendage in his hands, he runs his fingers over its length until they register a slight ridge invisible to the naked eye. Was-Kelley digs at the seam with his fingernails until he has pried loose a hollowed compartment measuring the width of two fingers. The winding key, solid gold and inscribed with esoteric symbols, the same three-inch length of precious metal Rudolf had two years previously dispatched the entirety of his royal police in an effort to claim, tumbles out of its hiding place and clinks dully upon the floor. Was-Kelley inserts it into the watch’s winding slot. The mechanism does not yield. The second rule governing the Rudolf Complication dictates that more is required.

  Was-Kelly removes the dagger from the old man’s neck and doggedly hacks at the right wrist of the Black Rabbi until the joint is a flayed and spongy mass. The dagger having proven sufficient for murder but too blunt for surgery, Was-Kelley employs the heavy iron shears the Jew had used to cut cloth for dressing the dead. The old man’s bones snap between the blades and his detached hand drops to the ground where it lands palm up, fingers slightly extended as if in supplication.

  Manipulating the Rabbi’s disembodied hand Was-Kelley finds to be an awkward undertaking. Thick with viscous blood, the uncooperative and calloused fingers slide between his own, become at once limp and inflexible, refusing take hold of the winding key. But after much grappling, Was-Kelley is able to purpose the dead man’s hand for turning the key, which at last turns with ease, and Was-Kelley turns it until it can turn no further, and then he tosses the lifeless appendage aside and listens. The watch begins ticking. Was-Kelley’s heart beats back to life.

  And in that moment is shown him one final revelation, a jumbled vision of his fate now written, the long thread of his future balled into a knot. Manifestations of Was-Kelley flash by, rich and poor, powerful and impotent, fat and thin, handsome and ugly, all engaged in lurid scenes of murder and degradation spanning centuries untold. Madimi shows him murders ruthlessly efficient, murders whimsical and intricate, each ending with his fingers interwoven with those of dead men and dead women and dead children by the hundreds, some of Madimi’s choosing, some of his own. Over the years he will fall into patterns unknown even to himself, and therein will be writ his destruction. He will lose the Complication in a single moment of carelessness but will go on killing past the point of its utility because old habits are the hardest to break. And then Madimi will turn her full strength upon him, abandoning his cause to aid those fated to destroy him. It may happen in five years, it may happen in ten. Time itself she would use as an instrument of torture.

  Was-Kelley is lastly given a glimpse of his own end, an image so vague and fleeting he will guess upon its substance until the very moment of its arrival. He closes his eyes and releases his new-drawn breath, and the room is filled with a double ticking as the twin mechanisms of tiny gears and levers spring to life. After so many false starts his end is now beginning, his beginning is now over.

  CHAPTER 14

  We scoured Stromovka for half an hour, frantically calling Tomášek’s name as we charged through clusters of forest, over open spaces of patchwork grass, through a picnic area, and around the pond near the center of the park. Vera would stop pedestrians on the footpath to ask if they’d seen him while I stood mute and useless beside her, watching their startled reactions, scanning the distance for any sign of Tomášek or the little girl. The same girl who’d forced upon me Prague Unbound the night I arrived in the city.

  The girl had disappeared as soon as she’d delivered her message, run off somewhere as I tried to go after Vera, to calm her down. There was no calming her down. Her pace increased with each stride and sweat darkened her purple scarf.

  “Please tell me right now what the fuck is going on,” she said, suddenly grabbing my arm as we neared her car. “What have you gotten me into? Stop playing games and just tell me who you are and what is happening!”

  “What have I gotten you into?”

  “You are an insane person. Either you are insane or I’m going crazy.” She unlocked her car with the remote on her keychain. “Maybe both. Get in.”

  Last time someone was determined on taking me for a ride I ended up being catapulted through the windshield, but pointing that out now would probably just make me sound insane. I got in the passenger side and she slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. We wound our way out of the little side streets and were soon ripping through the expressway, Vera weaving through traffic like a racecar driver who’d spent the last forty-eight hours smoking crystal meth. Racecar, another palindrome. It wasn’t until we were back in the neighborhood near her apartment that she spoke.

  “Where did you get that book?” she asked.

  “The guidebook?”

  “Guidebook!” She cursed under her breath, slapped her palms against the steering wheel. “That book, when I opened it, the book was . . . forget it.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not catching your insanity,” she declared between clenched teeth.

  “Where is the book?”

  “In the pond,” she said. “The book, your crazy Right Hand of God folder—I won’t have these things in my life. They’re a sickness. Just tell me right now what is happening and where I can find my son.”

  Probably wasn’t the best time to point out if she hadn’t thrown the book in the pond, maybe it could’ve provided some guidance, some clue about what to do next. Because I certainly had no idea, and her only strategy seemed to be repeatedly questioning my sanity. Right then I’d have taken crazy thoughts, but in truth I had no thoughts at all. The mental silence was enough to make me want to rip my own brain out of my skull and scream at it.

  “Where is my son?” she asked. “Tell me.”

  Kick it, punch it. Try to beat some life into it.

  “Do you know where he is, yes or no? Are you even listening to me?”

  I nodded. Stomp on it. Drop-kick it.

  “Don’t nod! Speak! Tell me something goddamnit.”

  “Don’t nod is a palindrome,” I muttered.

  “What? What does this mean?”

  “You said to speak, so I’m speaking. I have no idea where he is, Vera. I’m sorry.”

  “The police,” she sighed. “I’m calling the police.”

  And now I had to be the one to argue against getting them involved. The man who’d followed her, the one she’d seen at the Black Rabbit, he wasn’t a policeman like she’d thought. He was an ex-cop turned black sheriff who was now working for Klingáč. He had friends inside the force. Someone might tip him off; he’d give word to Klingáč. We couldn’t risk it. These were the people who’d killed Paul, after all, and I’d witnessed other examples of their violence firsthand.

  “Enough!” she cried. “Just stop!”

  Moments later, she slammed the car to a halt on the sidewalk in front of her Smíchov apartment building, vaulted out, and disappeared around the corner. Why were we stopping? I sat in a car parked halfway on the sidewalk and blocking the entrance into Erotic World and waited. I tried gauging how much time had passed by the beating of my own heart but lost track of the pulses. Then I took out the map, the one the journalist had given me.

  Tik-tak. Same words the creepy little girl had spoken.

  Why would Klingáč make some sort of game of it? He was either going to kill Tomáš or he wasn’t, but it was useless pretending he was operating on any kind of rational level, that he’d left a puzzle to be solved.

  Tick-tock.

  Still no sign of Vera. I started getting claustrophobic in the car, so I got out and strolled up the embankment, toward the river. I was only twenty, thirty yards away from the car and would be able to see when Vera came back out. I took a deep breath, rubbed my face with my palms. In the distance beyond, I could just m
ake out the Charles Bridge and its blackened saints. I recalled the newspaper story, the one about the bridge’s birthday. How the bridge had been founded some date chosen where the odd primary numbers ran palindromically.

  1/3/5/7/9/7/5/3/1.

  I ran down the hill just as Vera emerged from her apartment building with a shoebox under her arm, and suddenly it all clicked into place. What was it Martinko Klingáč wanted in exchange for Tomáš’ life? Of course. The same thing he’d wanted five years ago. A watch. A large watch worn around the neck, an old watch roughly the size of a tea saucer, small enough to fit inside a shoebox. A watch that went both clockwise and counterclockwise, that ran backwards and forwards. Like a palindrome.

  Like no pets step on.

  Like racecar.

  Like don’t nod.

  Like Soros.

  With that I understood the detective was no black sheriff for Martinko Klingáč. He was Martinko Klingáč. My presence at the Black Rabbit had led him straight to Vera. He might have gotten to her anyway, but I’d hastened it along, solidified her connection to Paul. The Right Hand of God serial killer stuff had all been just a smoke screen. I don’t know why Soros had fed the ex-pat journalist the same line of crap, unless maybe he thought my brother had some connection to him. Maybe he was just fucking with the Stone Folio writer because that’s what sociopaths like to do. But when he found out that Hannah was onto him—thanks again to me, to the phone call I’d answered in Soros’s car—Soros had killed him. While I was busy passing out and coming to and passing out again in Charles Square, he’d left the scene of the accident just like I had, made his way across town, and ripped Hannah’s head off. He’d left the Right Hand of God folder behind because it was meaningless now. There was no suspicious detective determined not to let the case die. No odd cop looking to get even for a derailed career.

  Only Martinko Klingáč himself.

  Vera pulled open the door, got in the car, and handed me the box. It was heavier than I would have thought, but not nearly heavy enough to counterbalance everything weighted against it. Vera had trouble looking me in the eye. She had trouble putting the key in the ignition and had trouble speaking.

  “Well, don’t you want to see it?” she asked.

  I didn’t even have to shake my head. She could feel the disgust crawling over me, emanating out in waves. Anything you could fit in a box was not worth my brother’s life. I’m sure the journalist’s family would’ve felt the same way. Same for the people close to the old hippie curator in Malá Strana now struggling to emerge from a coma.

  And now Vera had decided it wasn’t worth her kid’s life, either. A morally upstanding conclusion, but one reached too late to do my brother much good. And would she have come to this conclusion if she wasn’t already dying?

  I thought about her story, her fairytale seven days of rain. How she’d run sloshing up the hill in the downpour and tried to call my brother from a payphone. How someone had answered, how she’d known it was the unknown third man. Maybe my brother had still been alive at that point. Maybe there had still been a chance to save his life if she would have stayed on the line, told Mr. Rumpelstiltskin she had the Rudolf Complication, offered it up in exchange for letting Paul Holloway live.

  She nodded toward the map. “What’s that?”

  “It’s from our friend Klingáč.”

  “Does it show where he’s keeping Tomáš?”

  I didn’t want to care. Let her reap what she’d sown. But then there was the damn kid. He looked like Paul. Kinda even looked like me. We shared a name. As much as I wanted to let the sins of the father and mother be visited upon the son, the rest of my life would be even more fucked up then it was already bound to be if I had to live knowing I’d let a four-year-old child die when I could’ve done something to stop it.

  If I could do something to stop it.

  Tik-tak.

  I needed a plan.

  A man, a plan, a canal. Panama.

  At that last idiotic palindrome my brain slammed to a full and sudden stop. The mental whiplash must have loosed a syllable or two from my lips because when I looked at Vera, she was staring at me with her eyes wide and quizzical.

  “An odd cop looking to get even,” I muttered.

  “What cop?”

  I didn’t answer. But I’d figured it out.

  I knew where to find Tomášek.

  I knew where to find Martinko Klingáč.

  CHAPTER 15

  Vera ran her tongue over her lips as her eyes darted from mine to the map and back again. She asked me if I was sure that was the place.

  I told Vera I was certain.

  I was not within shouting distance of certain.

  She put the car in gear and gunned the engine. I put the shoebox housing the Rudolf Complication on the floor. Didn’t like the weight of it in my hands, didn’t want anything to do with it. Vera kept her eyes glued to the road and her mouth clamped shut. She didn’t ask how I suddenly knew where Klingáč would be waiting, which was just as well because explaining how palindromes, the Rudolf Complication, the Right Hand of God, tik-tak, and the odd cop getting even all came together in some half-baked geographical guesswork would have taken hours we didn’t have, and by the time I was finished, any belief she had in me would have vanished and she’d be back to questioning my mental health.

  As we headed southwest I looked at the map again to assure myself the pattern I was seeing was real, not some arrangement I had wished upon it, the way people see Jesus’s face in a potato chip. I’d erased all of the crisscrossing connective lines Soros had drawn, leaving only the dates in place.

  At first glance there seemed to be no clear progression from one site to the next. My brother was found in 2002 in Karlín, but in 2003 the alleged Right Hand of God dump site jumped all the way to Vinohrady. In 2004, it was the edge of Stromovka park. The next year, some place called Santoška.

  But if I skipped every other year, broke it into odds and evens, a pattern emerged. Following only the even numbered years, the sites traced a predictable, roughly circular route counterclockwise around the city.

  The odd numbers did the same, moving clockwise.

  Forward and backward at the same time. Like no pets step on. Like Soros. Like the Rudolf Complication. Were the initials and dates then just an abstraction, puzzle pieces with no underlying reality? My brother hadn’t been an abstraction, and creating this map solely to give me something to decipher didn’t make any sense. Did it mean there really was a Right Hand of God killer on the loose? That Soros/Klingáč had in effect been trying to tell first Bob Hannah and then me how to find him?

  In crappy thrillers there’s often a scene where a psychologist type gives a speech about how every serial killer subconsciously yearns to be caught and punished, which conveniently explains why the killer spent the whole movie leaving not-quite-ingenious-enough clues for some attractive but troubled detective to string together. I didn’t believe Martinko Klingáč secretly wanted to get caught, but I discovered that continuing the pattern of odd years would point to a certain spot at the edge of the map, one I’d guided Vera to with more certainty than I felt.

  That was as accurate as I could get, and the area would still encompass several blocks. After that we’d just have to trust our luck. Neither of us having had much luck in the luck department lately, maybe we were due.

  Vera glided to a halt by the side of the road.

  “There,” she said. The space across the street was overgrown with trees, a park or forest preserve though there was no signage to indicate as much. Vera told me to give her the box. I felt the watch shift inside as I handed it to her, heard the smooth whisper of fabric on cardboard from whatever protective cloth the watch was wrapped in.

  Vera bolted from the car without bothering to close the door and raced down a weedy path into the trees. I followed. The sky had grown heavy with clouds. Rain on the way, rain always coming or going. Leaves rustled in the wind, the sound like a rumor spreading.
Vera paid no attention to the chattering treetops, slogging upward, head angled in grim determination. She didn’t look like someone in a dangerous, unfamiliar place. She didn’t even look particularly worried. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being set up. That I was little more than a meat puppet playing out some drama scripted long ago.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Cibulka,” she said. “Cibulka Manor.” The path sloped upward, and she was breathing so hard she had trouble talking. Sweat blotched her headscarf, the flesh of her face was colorless and waxy and suddenly she looked as ill as she must’ve felt. “It’s an old estate house,” she said between breaths. “From, I don’t know, fourteenth century, fifteenth century. Abandoned a long time ago. Problems of who was the rightful owner . . . ” She sputtered out in a coughing fit and pointed ahead.

  Some fifteen feet away a thicket of vines, grass, and knee-high weeds crawled over an archway of discolored stone. Twin wrought iron gates were held together by a heavy rusted chain and padlock the size of small dog’s head. Vera shook the gate, the chain rattled. When the sound died out it was so quiet I could all but hear the movement of her eyeballs as she scanned the wall, gauging its height, looking for a way in. She moved off the path, and the smell of wet leaves and damp soil clogged my nostrils as I trudged behind her along the wall’s perimeter, ten yards, twenty yards, through the sucking mud and slithering overgrowth. Thirty yards in the wall went from chipped-brick edifice to unshaped layered stones, saplings growing from the gaps and struggling toward the light.