Zagreb Cowboy

by Alen Mattich

  “Like a row of cabbages,” della Torre said wearily. “Mind if I pour myself a drink and help myself to another of your cigarettes?”

  “Don’t insult me. We’re informal here. You know you don’t have to ask,” Strumbić said extravagantly.

  Della Torre poured a tin mug of wine straight from the tap in the barrel, thinning it with a finger of bottled mineral water that tasted of soap, and lit one of Strumbić’s Lucky Strikes. A moth batted itself against the light bulb.

  “They should have pumped an anti-tank rocket into my apartment,” della Torre said.

  “Maybe next time. Or maybe they’ll find some people who can drive.”

  “So what do you do now that these people from Belgrade think you shafted them?” della Torre asked.

  “I’ll have to go somewhere else for a while. Just like you,” Strumbić said, chewing on the inside of his lip.

  “The place on Šipan?”

  “Problem with the island is all the locals know when you’re there. If somebody who doesn’t like you knows one of the islanders, you’re stuffed. Opatija is out of season. You end up looking like a priest in a whorehouse.”

  “So, not unusual, in other words.”

  “Hah. You know, you’re almost funny sometimes. But the people in Belgrade know about all those places anyway.”

  “What about your little bolthole in London?” della Torre asked.

  Strumbić grimaced. London was his ultimate sanctuary, the place he had lined up for when he finally disappeared with his money. Ditch the wife. Ditch the jobs, official and otherwise. Ditch the aggro. Live it large in a proper city where he wouldn’t be afraid somebody would snitch on him about the car he drove or how fat his wallet was when he pulled it out to pay the restaurant bill. The action was better. And if he wanted sun, he could get to anywhere from London. Not just to Croatia, but to places that had proper hotels and did food other than just meat on a stick.

  Nobody else knew about the London apartment. Only della Torre.

  He’d been at Strumbić’s weekend place on a sunny afternoon the previous summer, eating cherries right off the tree and drinking wine, shirtless and sweating. Strumbić hadn’t owned the apartment long and was dead pleased about it. Bravado and the long-bottled-up urge to tell somebody made him talk. Ironically, della Torre was probably the safest person to say anything to. He was selling files to Strumbić and had no desire to get on the cop’s bad side. Besides, secret policemen knew how to keep their mouths shut. Better than priests. Better than lawyers, even. So a secret policeman lawyer was the best of all.

  “I’ve done the smartest thing you’ve ever heard,” he’d said, savouring the wine.

  “What’s that? Turned honest?”

  “What sort of cretin do you take me for? I’ve lined up my retirement plan.”

  “I thought you were going to work till you keeled over. Which must be sometime next week, the way you’re going.”

  “Naw. Bought myself a place.”

  “Another one? How many have you got? Two flats in Zagreb I know about, that villa on Šipan, this place, and haven’t you got some farm outside of Varaždin? How much do you need?”

  “They’re all in this country. I’ve bought something abroad, for when the shit really hits the fan.”

  “Oh yeah? Where? Albania?”

  “That’s not even humour. London.”

  “London?”

  “Yeah, a place called Hampstead. Big apartment right in the middle of the park.”

  “The Heath?”

  “That’s right, you were a student there for a while, weren’t you?”

  “I try to forget,” della Torre said. He’d spent the gloomiest eight months of his life in London, doing a course on international law paid for by his then employer, the Zagreb prosecutor’s office. It was where he’d had his first dealings with the UDBA. Dealings that had compromised him, eroded his principles. Back when he still had them.

  But he shifted his thoughts back to Hampstead. He’d had some nice walks in the big park there, wandered around John Keats’s house back when he’d still read poetry. A decent place to escape London’s relentless urbanity if you couldn’t afford the plane fare out.

  “The building’s right in the middle of the Heath. I mean, not in the middle middle. It’s on the edge. But the park surrounds it on three sides. Up near the top of the hill. Big brick building with these white, what are they called? Dormers. White dormers. I’ve got this fourth-floor apartment, just below the penthouse, windows on two sides. Look out my living room and London’s spread out like a whore on her back. A good-looking, expensive one, covered in jewels. I tell you, it’s fantastic. Too bad you’ll never see the place. Two hundred square metres, even bigger than my Zagreb apartment, in one of the classiest parts of town.”

  “Sounds nice. I guess London’s a good enough place if you can afford it.”

  “Great town. Clubs, restaurants, girls. What girls! Every colour you can think of. Green, probably, if you looked hard enough. They got a real spark. Not like the ones in Zagreb, who look like they’ve come out of a morgue, except if you wanted to you could always get a corpse to smile.”

  “So what does Mrs. Strumbić think about retiring to London?”

  “Mrs. Strumbić doesn’t know Mr. Strumbić is going to spend his golden years where he won’t have to worry about bumping into Mrs. Strumbić again.”

  “So that’s how it is. Well, lucky you. Though I’d have preferred somewhere like Rome or Barcelona.” Della Torre popped another fat black cherry into his mouth.

  “I’d just sweat like a pig and develop another ulcer over how corrupt it is.”

  Della Torre choked. For a moment he felt the cherry stone rising through his nose.

  “London works properly, like a proper city,” Strumbić said.

  “If you say so,” della Torre said, spitting out the stone.

  Della Torre had sensed that after the initial smugness and braggadocio, Strumbić rather wished he hadn’t mentioned London. So that summer afternoon della Torre had dropped the subject.

  But not now. Now he wanted to remind Strumbić he had something on him.

  “So you’ll be heading to London, then, will you?”

  “Listen, you make your plans and I’ll make mine.”

  “You owe me some money, Strumbić. Remember?”

  “Do I?”

  “Our phone call earlier this evening.”

  “Oh yeah. There’s an envelope in a soup pot under the kitchen sink. Take out four thousand Deutschmarks. No, take out five thousand and buy yourself a new suit. Least I can do after your inconvenience.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Just don’t rip me off.”

  “Rip you off?” Strumbić’s brass neck forever amazed him. “Listen, Julius, I’m inclined to believe what you told me. But I don’t trust you not to stitch me up again. So I’m afraid I am going to lock you in the cellar. I’ll leave you a key for the cuffs, though.”

  “Always a considerate friend.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “When you go upstairs, come back down and bring some cigarettes. Alright? And when you’ve disappeared, to Italy or America or wherever you’re going, don’t bother to send me a postcard. I won’t be around to read it.”

  Della Torre stood up. He ached and was tired and was only just starting to think about how he’d get home. He rubbed his fingers on the silk tie. Distractedly, he started to pull it out of his pocket. That was a mistake.

  The gunshot was deafening in the cellar’s hard-walled space. The noise rang like the inside of a church bell. Della Torre must have flipped the safety off somehow without noticing it. And obviously the Bosnian had kept it primed with a round in the barrel. The tie had snagged the trigger.


  Any other time that bullet would have planted itself harmlessly into the dirt floor, or maybe flattened itself against a wall. But that night chance played funny games with della Torre. The bullet hit something it shouldn’t have. Like Strumbić.

  DELLA TORRE WAS momentarily deafened. All he could hear was the blood pounding in his head. The surprise, the noise of the explosion, and the shock of the car wreck earlier in the evening caused his vision to narrow into two small tunnels of light. He thought he was passing out.

  A shriek snapped him back into alertness. At first he couldn’t make any of it out, but then Strumbić’s bellowing formed itself back into language of sorts.

  “You fucking fuck, you fucking shot me, you fuck, I’m fucking going to fucking kill you! Gringo, you are dead. Dead. I can’t believe you fucking shot me. Fuck it hurts. Fuck, fuck, fuck . . .”

  Strumbić’s chair tilted back at an alarming angle, balancing on a single leg so that della Torre thought it was going to drop him on his back. With his arms cuffed behind him, the fall would probably dislocate Strumbić’s shoulders. Maybe break a wrist as well.

  But Strumbić’s right leg had gone rigid straight in front of him, and that little bit of offsetting weight ensured that the chair righted itself rather than making the shot cop’s night that little bit worse. It settled heavily, threatening for a moment to overbalance.

  “Calm down. Where’d it hit you? You’ll be fine. Just calm down.”

  “In my leg, in my goddam leg. My shin.”

  “Oh, is that all? The way you’re going on about it I thought I’d shot your balls off.”

  Della Torre looked at the rigid leg; it was shaking uncontrollably. There was a hole in the new jeans about a hand’s span below the knee, directly in the front.

  “Here, I’m going to have to cut your jeans off around the bullet hole to have a look.”

  “Like buggery you are. Do you know how much these things cost? God, my leg hurts. Get these cuffs off me so I can blow your brains out, you moron.”

  “They’ve already got a hole in them. Making it slightly bigger isn’t going to make much difference.”

  Della Torre found a hooked knife, used for trimming vines, hanging off a nail in the wall and sliced a patch off the front of Strumbić’s trouser leg. The first thing he noticed was that there was hardly any blood, just a red, roundish hole with a black rim right on the shin. In fact, he thought he could see the bullet mashed up against the bone just under the skin.

  “Christ, this is a crappy gun with crappy ammo. The bullet barely broke the skin. Might have cracked the bone, though.”

  Gingerly, della Torre pulled the automatic out of his jacket pocket, which had a hole matching the one he’d just cut out of Strumbić’s jeans. He flipped the safety on and had a closer look at the gun.

  “Well, that figures. It’s some Bulgarian knock-off. Either it goes off on its own or doesn’t do anything at all. Whatever’s most inconvenient. The ammo’s probably Bulgarian too. Bet they were filling only half the casing with powder and then making up the rest with sawdust or something. No wonder your assassins took two goes and fifty rounds to kill that crook down in Karlovac. That mistress of his must have had some bad luck to have died as well.”

  “Heart attack. Superficial bullet wound but died of a heart attack,” Strumbić said through shallow panted breaths.

  “What were they going to do, club me with this thing until I passed out and then run me over? Somebody should have given them on-the-job advice.”

  “Just shut up and get me a doctor.”

  “Listen, Strumbić. If I take you to a doctor now, your cops will be all over Zagreb looking for me ten minutes later. Because you’ll tell them who shot you, forgetting to mention both that it was an accident and that it was the least you deserved. And when they find me, they’ll park me in a holding cell where half of Zagreb’s squaddies will stand in line patiently waiting to knock out whatever teeth I have left. And the other half won’t be so patient and’ll just kick me into the next world. You are not going to die. In fact I hurt myself more shaving this morning. So quit squealing or I’ll tell everyone you wear your girlfriend’s suspenders and bra. Whether it’s true or not.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Where’s the slivovitz?”

  “There’s a jerry can beside the barrel.”

  Della Torre poured the rest of his wine onto the dirt floor and filled the tin cup with the potent alcohol. And then he took a long swig.

  “Hey, I thought you were getting it for me. What about me?” whined Strumbić.

  “Oh, sorry, you’re right,” della Torre said, and splashed the rest of the cup on Strumbić’s open wound. He was pretty sure they’d have been able to hear Strumbić on the other side of the valley. Some farmer on a trip to the privy was probably wondering why anybody would be slaughtering a pig at this time of night and this time of year.

  “What the fuck did you do that for? That hurt even more than getting shot!”

  “Don’t want you to get an infection, seeing as you’re not going to be able to make it to the doctor tonight.”

  “Jesus. You do know I’m going to kill you when I see you next, Gringo. For free. I’m going to get one of those Bulgarian guns and I’m going to put fifty holes in you and then make you eat the goddamn thing with the safety off. And then kick you in the stomach. Give me some of that stuff to drink rather than just baptising me.”

  “Sorry, can’t. You’re in shock. Never give someone in shock alcohol. Shouldn’t really smoke either.”

  “Bastard.”

  Della Torre stepped out of the cellar, pulled down the iron shutter on the cellar’s only window, padlocked it from the outside, and then came back into the room.

  “Now, I’m going to put the key to the cuffs on the table here, just here on the edge. It might take you a little while to get here, what with the state your leg’s in, but you’ve got all night. I’m afraid I’m going to have to lock up the cellar and you’re just going to have to lump it until somebody rescues you. But the longest you’ll have to wait is until Tuesday, because even if your wife or your girlfriend doesn’t come looking for you, or your guy doesn’t come to do the vines, I’ll make sure somebody else does. On the other hand, look on the bright side. It’ll be a great time to stop smoking,” della Torre said, pocketing the packet of Lucky Strikes. He almost left without picking up Strumbić’s gun, but then he spotted it and heaved it into the darkness of the vineyard below the cottage.

  He locked the heavy wooden door behind him with an oversized key that he found hanging off the knob and then hung the key on a nail half-driven into the front of the door frame. He didn’t want to make it too difficult for Strumbić’s eventual rescuers. He then put the big iron bar across the door and padlocked that too.

  “Della Torre, you’re dead. You hear that, Gringo? Next time you see me will be the last time you see anything at all. Dead, Gringo.”

  Della Torre went up into the main house.

  The door was open and the lights were on. In daylight the kitchen had a beautiful view of the deep, wooded valley, which curved away from Strumbić’s hillside towards a peak that loomed like a forested incisor. But he wasn’t there for the sights. He opened up the cupboard under the sink and found the envelope in the soup pot. It was full of Strumbić’s little storm troopers. Della Torre ran his thumb along them. The whole fifteen thousand, it seemed. He took a deep breath. At first, his intention had been to take the four thousand promised him. Plus the extra thousand. But, thinking about it, Strumbić had never intended to pay him anything at all. Why should he play square with a man who’d helped in a conspiracy to kill him? So he pocketed the lot.

  On the way out, he passed a nice leather coat. His own suit jacket was distinctly the worse for wear, not least from the bullet hole in the pocket. Strumbić’s coat was sh
orter in the arms and looser around the body than della Torre expected, and it wasn’t really the sort of thing he’d ever wear. It looked too — well, too secret police. Or it would have done had it fit properly. As it was he looked like a country bumpkin. But the leather was top quality. Italian probably. So he decided to take it anyway, especially because he knew it’d piss Strumbić off.

  Della Torre transferred the gun, the tie, and the little notebook from the one coat to the other. He found the key to the BMW on a ring with half a dozen others hanging off a hook. A couple of small ones might have been for simple padlocks or maybe letter boxes. But the rest were unfamiliar. He shrugged and pocketed them all.

  He was about to leave when he spotted the three cartons of Lucky Strikes on the sitting room coffee table. Della Torre couldn’t really see any reason not to take them, now that Strumbić was quitting.

  As della Torre stumbled up the stony path in darkness, the moon having already passed behind the hillside, all he could hear was the sound of barking dogs in the village far below and the crunch of loose rocks underfoot. He unlocked the car by feel.

  It took him a while to figure out all the buttons and levers on the BMW, but when he did the engine purred to life and he pulled away. His left knee hurt as he pressed the clutch, making for rough gear changes. But otherwise it was a pleasure to drive the car. He’d always wanted to.

  He came off Strumbić’s track onto the Samobor road and was starting to accelerate around the bend when a shape loomed out of the dark at him. Della Torre pounded the brake and clutch at the same time, cursing at the pain that shot up through his leg. The seatbelt tugged in on him with the sudden deceleration, causing him to feel the agony in his ribs as well.

  He sat there for a long moment, taking deep breaths, reminding himself not to drink so much when stealing an unfamiliar car, before he finally registered what he was seeing in the stark light of the car’s lamps. It was a man, standing hunched, half swaying, more or less in the middle of the road. Della Torre got out of the car. As he got closer he could see it was the tall Bosnian. At least it wasn’t the drowned one.