Lenka took a while to think about it. “She never told me his name, but she said he bought her house for her.”
“A nice brother,” said Jana. She thought about the expensive purse, which she had left back in her office. “He must have been very well off to be able to afford to buy his sister a house.”
“I guess so,” Lenka agreed.
“Do you remember his name?”
“No,” Lenka admitted, a little sad that she could not provide the information.
“Does anyone here know what Mrs. Guzakova’s maiden name was?”
The women shook their heads. Then the woman who had sent her daughter to fetch the water finally volunteered. “I think it was like the politician, Dalingo, or Durinka, something like that.”
“Good,” Jana encouraged. “Does anyone remember when Mrs. Guzakova and her sons moved in?”
The same woman answered. “I was here when she came. Ten, no . . . twelve years back.”
“Did her sons move her in?” Jana pushed her. “Or perhaps she used a furniture-moving business? Can you remember?”
“Who remembers that far back?”
“Was she a churchgoer?”
There was a chorus of “no’s” and “never’s.”
“Did any of you see them leave last night?”
There was another chorus of negatives.
“Thank you, ladies, for your assistance.” Jana wound up the conversation, then picked up the dog. “Oh,” she added, “are you sure that none of you can keep the dog?” For a second, Jana thought that Lenka would take the little thing. Jana could see her hesitate, then decide against it. “I may be back to talk to you all again. Good-bye.”
Jana began walking toward her car. Seges was slowly ambling toward the vehicle as if he had not a care in the world. Jana was willing to bet he had found out nothing. She stopped, looking back, then beckoned Lenka to come over. Jana took her arm, leaning close to her, and the two of them went to the car.
“Lenka, could I ask you something?”
“Yes,” said Lenka, timidly.
“It is important that no one enter the house. I’m going to have a forensic team come out here, but they are busy and won’t arrive until late today. It’s important that nobody go inside the house, and, knowing the natural curiosity people have about this type of case, someone might be tempted to peek in, perhaps go inside and take a souvenir or two. That would contaminate the scene, making it very difficult for our people to perform the necessary tests. So, could I ask you to make sure that people don’t go inside the house? You know, shoo them away. I would give you whatever authority you feel you need to do that.”
“I won’t be able to stop them if they try to force their way in,” Lenka mumbled.
“I’d never expect you to do that. But the other neighbors will listen if they know that I’ll ask you to report and that I’d deal with them.”
Lenka finally agreed.
“And one more thing, the little dog. Do you think you could keep him until the forensic men come? If you don’t want to keep him then, they’ll take him from you.”
Without waiting for an answer, Jana handed the dog’s leash to Lenka, patted her on the arm, and got into the car. Seges was already in the driver’s seat.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Bits and pieces.”
“You want to tell me?” He put the car in gear. “I might be able to help.”
Seges’s description of himself as a potential helper was contrary to anything she knew about him.
“Did you discover anything?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then let’s leave it that way. Drive!”
Seges shrugged, then started back to Bratislava. Jana relaxed and tried to clear her mind. Unbidden, the thought of Andras, the Hungarian police officer she had talked to in Vienna, popped into her head. She hadn’t bothered to ask him a very important question when he’d told her about the smuggling operation he’d broken in Hungary. She mentally kicked herself for being too stupid or lazy to ask for so simple and basic a piece of information.
She prodded Seges to go faster, promising to let him off the hook for going through her desk, at least for the moment, if he cut thirty minutes off their time from the village. He almost made it.
Once in her office, Jana immediately dialed Andras’s number, waiting impatiently until he answered.
When he did, she made sure to be friendly. “Andras, how have you been since our meeting in Vienna?”
“Budapest is always better for me,” he replied, then went right to business. “Why has the smartest lady in the whole Slovak police department called a simple detective from Hungary?”
“I need to test your memory, Andras.”
“That’s all? I was hoping for more.”
“Just a quick item, my friend. The case you described when we were last in Vienna. The smuggling case. You mentioned that one of the defendants was a Slovak. He was killed in his jail cell. Did you confirm his name? Were you satisfied it was not a false name, an alias?”
“I’m not a dolt, Jana. Of course I confirmed it. He had arrests going back for years. His fingerprints and photo matched.”
“Please tell me his last name.”
Jana could almost hear the cells in Andras’s brain click as he dredged up the name of the man she wanted.
“His name was Durajka.”
“Thank you, Andras. Can you send me his file?”
“What else are police friends good for? I’ll get it out to you immediately.”
“Wonderful.”
She hung up.
It would have to be confirmed when the file arrived, but Jana had no real doubts that Durajka had been Guzakova’s maiden name. Guzakova’s brother had paid for her house. And there was the pocketbook. There are no coincidences. The woman’s brother had been the Slovak man involved in the smuggling operation, the one who had been murdered in his cell. Brother killed, sister killed, one nephew killed; they had to be connected. And if Jana didn’t get lucky, Guzakova’s older son was either going to have his throat slit or a bullet in his head before she could talk to him. Whoever was after the brothers was quite efficient.
Jana got on the phone again, asking Trokan for permission to authorize overtime for her men, then assigned them to the now-extended search for the remaining Guzak brother. They would do a door-to-door inquiry, showing the older brother’s mug shots to anyone and everyone on the streets, in businesses or dwellings. They’d also display the photo taken from the younger brother’s Ukrainian driver’s license and see if that registered with anyone. Trolling of the side-street apartments near the murder scene for witnesses to the two murders would also be extended. As an afterthought, Jana told her men to hand out fliers with the photos to people on the Ulicas riding the trams, and have the cab drivers alerted to see if the elder Guzak had taken one of their cabs. Bulletins were already out to all the police stations in Slovakia, and Jana made sure that one went to the neighboring countries just in case the brother had fled across the border.
Perhaps it would pay off; perhaps not.
Jana called the Ukraine militsia in Kiev and tried to contact Mikhail Grushov, an old friend of hers from that police force. Jana felt a stab of irritation when she learned that Grushov had retired and left Ukraine. The answering officer referring her to a police captain she didn’t know. The captain was none too pleased to get a call from Slovakia, which would mean extra work for him; but when Jana promised him a bottle of Borovicka, the white-lightning alcohol that Slovakia specialized in, he quickly changed his tone, asked her to call him Alexi, began calling her by her first name, and invited her to a quiet dinner for two.
Jana chatted for a minute, then came to the point of the call, asking him to check on the Kremenchuk address found in the wallet of the younger Guzak brother, as well as the Kiev address on the fake Ukraine driver’s license the dead man was carrying. She got his fax number so she could send a copy of the license to him, then agreed t
o come visit him when she had the time, both of them knowing that was just phone flirtation protocol.
They both hung up, Jana delighted by his agreement to help. The Ukraine police were not esteemed for their sense of duty, and even less for their cooperation with other police departments. She hoped this would be an exception.
Jana pondered her next step. The only items she had left were the card for the strip club that the dead man had in his possession, and the telephone number in Vienna. She sighed: Austria would have to wait. As for the club, she had been there before on police business. Like all these clubs, it had a history of prostitution that no one ever did anything about. Prostitution was not a crime in Slovakia, as long as the man did the propositioning. She checked the club’s card. It didn’t open until late evening, so she had to wait before she paid it a visit.
She needed a backup officer. Seges would love this type of club, but he would probably spend his time ogling the girls rather than paying attention to the reason for the visit. But she reluctantly decided that it had to be him: all of her other men were out combing the city. Besides, she thought, she needed to put Seges’s invasion of her desk’s privacy behind her. It would do no good to condemn him. Even if he was not an investigator in any sense of the word, she needed a body to watch her back while she did the investigating. She couldn’t go to a place like this club without another officer to provide extra eyes and hands. As little as Seges might help, he would at least make the visit official, and safe.
Jana turned next to the dead woman.
She ran a national identity request on Guzakova. The result came back almost immediately. It had the usual place of birth, date of birth, and current address, as well as other useless bits of information. The date of birth was hard to believe when she compared it to the face and appearance of the woman she had seen last night. The woman must have had a hard life. Belonging to a family of thieves couldn’t have helped. Jana mulled over what she knew of the woman and her family. Since the rest of them were thieves, maybe the little old lady, as Jana thought of her now, was a thief as well?
And the husband? He was supposed to be dead. Maybe yes; maybe no. Jana had to find out about him as well. And she would have to do it herself.
Chapter 21
It was time to visit the club advertised on the card taken from the dead Guzak brother. They drove to Gorkého, parking near the Gremium, the café where Sofia and Jana had met to discuss the sex scandal that Sofia had found herself in. Since the Gremium was a favorite hangout of Sofia’s, as well as of a number of other politicians, Jana stepped inside to see if she might be there.
A Klezmer band was playing Yiddish tunes, a small audience clapping in time to the music. Jana scanned the customers. They were having fun. She wanted to stay there, to hear the music, to laugh, to simply feel good. But it was impossible tonight. Jana went outside. Seges, in a first for himself as far as ambition went, was already four doors down the block, in front of the sex club.
The club was dark. A new steel gate barred the entrance. The wind had pushed bits and pieces of paper and other debris through the grating in front of the entrance. It had not been swept in some time. The place was definitely closed down. Even the posters on the walls advertising “Theatre Erotique,” “Sex Between Women,” and “Lap Dancing” were starting to peel.
Seges was pleased. Perhaps he could go home early.
“Locked tight!” He pulled on the bars to show how closed the club was.
Jana stepped close to the gate and discovered a small slip of paper tacked to the door inside the bars. She read it with the aid of her flashlight, turning back to Seges when she was through.
“Back to the Gremium. They left a referral to Medzil, the manager of the café.”
Seges followed Jana, reluctantly bringing up the rear as they trudged back to the Gremium. The band was even louder now, the clarinet leading the group. Jana and Seges went to the counter where the cashier-manager was counting the money in the till. The customers quickly surveyed the two police officers; then, satisfied that nothing traumatic was about to happen, turned back to the band. The manager reluctantly looked up from stuffing money into the register.
“I hope you’re having a profitable evening,” Jana ventured.
“They”—he indicated the band—“have a following, so they bring in a decent crowd for a weekday.”
“Good. You’re Medzil?” Jana inquired.
“Yes.” He pushed a menu toward her. “An evening coffee?” he suggested. “We have good strudel. There’s a new baker who was trained in the old school. Very fine.”
“No food, thank you. Just a few questions. The strip club down the street has closed. It has a card on the door referring people here to you for mail delivery.”
The manager nodded; then he reached under a counter to pull out a bag, which he emptied on the countertop. “I never gave them permission to use this place as a mail drop. Nobody has come to pick up their crap. You can have it all if you want.”
Jana picked up the mail without bothering to answer, thumbing through the envelopes. “Lots of bills.” She opened a number of the envelopes to make sure that they were, in fact, bills. They club owners had not paid their debts for months back. There were no envelopes with contents of a personal nature. Not unexpected. Who sends personal letters to a strip club?
“I think the owner is a Gypsy,” offered the manager. Anyone who didn’t pay his bills in Slovakia was immediately labeled a Gypsy. “What do you expect from people who go into the business of selling sex?”
“Did they sell sex?”
“Clubs like that always sell sex. A couple of the young ones were all right, but the others had already gone saggy.”
“You were inside the club?”
“Once. They ran out of food and asked for a delivery of pastry. I charged extra. All they had to do was walk the few steps to pick up what they wanted, and they asked for a delivery. Stupid.”
A young couple came up to the counter to pay their bill. Jana turned her back, watching the audience while Medzil dealt with the couple. Two waitresses were working, one older, the other a very pretty young woman of perhaps seventeen or eighteen. Both of them were very industrious, bustling between the tables, the young one only pausing to clap with the audience when the Klezmer band finished a number. On a hunch, when the young woman came over to the pastry case and picked out a slice of Linzer torte for a customer, Jana approached her.
“I’m Commander Jana Matinova. Please put the cake back. I’d like to talk to you for a moment.”
The waitress’s body went rigid; her eyes took on the look of a frightened deer. Jana took the pastry out of her hand and put it back into the case, sliding its door shut.
“There is nothing to be afraid of. I am not enforcing immigration laws. We’re investigating a larger crime.” Jana looked to the back of the café, then over at the manager. His demeanor had changed, Medzil seeming almost as nervous as the waitress.
“I need a place to talk to this young lady. Is there an office in the back?”
He nodded.
Jana told Seges to wait by the front door, took the young waitress’s arm, then walked her to the back, through a curtain and past the kitchen into a small, cramped office. There was a tiny desk, a tiny filing cabinet, and one chair in the middle of the room.
“Please sit down,” Jana told the waitress. “You’ll be more comfortable.”
Instead, the waitress put her back against the wall and slowly slid to a squatting position.
“I’m not going to arrest you, if that’s what you are afraid of,” Jana reassured her. There was no response. Sixteen, Jana thought, seventeen at most. Jana sat down on the floor close to the girl, keeping her voice soft and non-threatening.
“Please don’t be afraid. I’m sure you have a reason to be fearful, particularly of a police officer. To my own amazement, I found out early in my career that people were afraid of police, even when the people needed their help. That’s not good
for us, and not good for you. So, please don’t be apprehensive. I have a few questions for you. I hope you’ll feel comfortable enough to answer them. Please tell me your name.”
“Karina,” the young woman eventually murmured.
“Karina. A nice name.”
“Thank you.” The young girl looked up at Jana, studying her face. “You’re not here to enforce the immigration laws?”
“No.”
Karina let out a sigh and started to relax. “It’s a hard floor.” Karina gave Jana the barest semblance of a smile.
Jana shifted to make herself more comfortable. “You are right. It’s hard.”
Karina’s smile became wider.
“I watched you outside,” Jana told her. “You were having people point to the menu to tell you what they wanted. I can also hear a foreign accent when you speak Slovak. If you have a hard time understanding what I say, please tell me and I’ll try to find another way to communicate. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Judging by your accent, you’re from Ukraine. Right?”
Karina hesitated.
“There’s no harm in telling me.”
“Yes.”
“Kiev?” Jana suggested.
Karina shook her head.
“Where, then?”
“Kremenchuk.”
A connection.
“When did you come here?”
“Four months ago.”
“Of course you’re here illegally?”
After a long hesitation, Karina nodded.
“Am I right in believing that this isn’t the first place that you’ve worked in Bratislava?”
Karina nodded again.
“Please tell me where else you’ve worked.”
Karina shook her head very determinedly.
“Then I’ll tell you where I think you worked. You were a ‘hostess’ in the strip club down the street.”
Karina shuddered, clutching her knees to her chest, putting her face on her knees.
“It was very hard for you.” Jana stroked the girl’s hair. “Selling your body is a hard way to make a living.”
Karina began to cry, tears rolling down her face.
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