Zagreb Cowboy

by Alen Mattich

  Gingerly, della Torre put the man’s arm round his shoulder to give him support and straighten him out. But the Bosnian, the one who’d done all the talking, was bent sideways like a banana. He groaned.

  “Bad accident, eh?” della Torre asked in the soothing voice he put on for difficult interrogations.

  “Ummm,” the Bosnian replied. Della Torre wasn’t sure if the injured man recognized him.

  “Here, I’ll lend you a hand. Can you walk a bit?”

  The Bosnian moved his legs like a marionette, but mostly in the same direction, and slowly the two men edged out of the glare of the headlights to the side of the car, where they stopped. Della Torre slipped his hand into the pocket of his new leather coat and took out the Beretta. He replaced the gun in the Bosnian’s shoulder holster and clipped the holster down so the gun wouldn’t fall out. And then, turning him slightly, della Torre ducked out from under the Bosnian’s arm and leaned back against the car. For a long moment the tall Bosnian swayed there unsupported, almost upright, in the dusting of the car’s headlights, wavering like an erratic pendulum. Blackness spread behind him. His eyes blinked hard, as if he were having difficulty focusing, his high, hard cheekbones and sunken cheeks making the effect all the more ghoulish. He growled unintelligible sounds, saliva bubbling in the corner of his mouth until it became a thin line of drool.

  Della Torre stepped forward and gently pressed his fingers against the man’s chest, as if to steady him. And then he gave a sharp push. Flesh hit stone as the Bosnian fell back into the ravine, and then there was the sound of sliding scree. Apart from an initial surprised grunt, he remained quiet.

  “Must have hurt,” della Torre said, standing at the edge of the road. It was like looking into a bottomless well. “But it’s better than getting run over.”

  Della Torre sidled back into the car, trying not to bend his sore knee too much. He didn’t feel the smallest grain of remorse. If the Bosnian had survived the car wreck, clearly he wasn’t made of icing sugar and baked custard. Chances were he’d survive the fall too. If he didn’t, too bad. The man was a cold-hearted killer, and not a very good one at that. Worse still, he’d had his sights on della Torre.

  If by some freak of nature Strumbić died from his wound, or more likely from a heart attack as he tried to dig his way out of the cellar, the cops would find the Bosnian in the ravine, match the gun with Strumbić’s bullet wound, and solve a five-star cop-killer crime. Strumbić was a senior detective. The gun was probably one that had made such a mess in Karlovac. So unless the investigating officer was even dimmer than a September firefly, he’d have a brace of solved premier-league crimes under his belt. Who cared that the Mercedes married to the tree was facing the wrong direction from Strumbić’s? The Zagreb cops had never been good on details. And if Strumbić lived? Maybe they’d pin the attempted murder on the Bosnian anyway.

  Della Torre was tired. It was nice driving this car, but it didn’t make up for the evening he’d had. His knee and his ribs kept reminding him they weren’t happy. He was tempted to go straight home and into bed. But he knew that whoever had hired the Bosnians would probably be keeping an eye on his place too. Just in case.

  He really couldn’t think offhand what he knew that would make somebody want to get rid of him. No, that wasn’t right. He knew lots about a lot of people in high-up places. Ugly things. But most of those people had other, more pressing problems. Having been deeply involved in the grubby parts of the Communist machine, they were exposed to all sorts of flying shrapnel now that the machine was flying apart. What della Torre knew may not have been the least of their worries. But it wasn’t top of the list either.

  It wasn’t time to think about these things. Luckily traffic going into Zagreb was light, and he mostly let the car drive itself. If he couldn’t go home, he’d just have to go to Irena’s. Yes, that’d do the trick. He’d just have to hope his ex-wife didn’t have company.

  AT FIRST HE knocked lightly on the glass door to the kitchen. Then he tossed pebbles at her bedroom window. No sign of anyone. He started to worry she might not be in. Where else could she be at this time on a Sunday night? He knew she wasn’t at work. She wasn’t on call. A thought occurred to him, but he pushed it out of his mind. Surely she wasn’t seeing anyone else. After all, he wasn’t. It’d be too unfair if she started first.

  He hammered on the door that little bit louder, until the lights in a neighbouring apartment came on.

  He was on the balcony of a building that was up a small hill overlooking the city. It had four flats, one on each storey. Hers was on the third.

  He looked across at Zagreb’s illuminated streets, sparkling like necklaces. They reminded him of the first evening he’d spent with her. It had been a particularly warm evening late in the spring. Or maybe that was only how he remembered it. What he was sure of was that he’d spent much of the time trying not to look down the front of her dress. And failing. He’d recited odd lines from a not particularly appropriate poem, though he forgot what it was. Even now he cringed, hoping it hadn’t been the one comparing pretty girls to hitting tractor production figures.

  “You seem to be enjoying yourself,” she’d said. They were standing at the top of the cannon tower in the old town, the medieval part of Zagreb built on its central hill.

  “Aren’t you? It’s a beautiful view.”

  “Hmm,” she said, looking into the distance. “The French have a word for it; it’s called décolletage.”

  “Ah, yes, décolletage.” He repeated it a couple of times, burning it into his memory, pretending to know what it meant. If it didn’t work out with this girl, it’d be useful to have a bit of French to use on the next one who came along.

  But he hadn’t wanted the next girl. He wanted this one. As soon as he looked the word up the following day, he realized he loved the strikingly pretty medical student friend of a friend.

  Funny to think of it. The view of Zagreb that night had been a full frontal, with all the ugly industrial chimneys and distant tower blocks included. But the view from her balcony was a discreet look at the city’s prettiest, most seductive aspect. Zagreb’s décolletage.

  At the base of the apartment building, a big communal garden made a steady descent to where the hill flattened. It ended at a high, blank brick wall — the back of a row of nineteenth-century stables and storage sheds. The sort of fences that surrounded tennis courts separated their building’s garden from the neighbouring ones, making it one of the most secure around.

  But there was a secret path from the main road, along the side of the shop, through a stable yard, and into a shed that led into the neighbour’s garden, where there was a broken bit of fencing behind some big shrubs. Della Torre was pretty sure he was still the only person who knew about it.

  He’d discovered it as a kid, when he’d lived in the apartment with his father and needed a way to get in and out at night without the old man noticing. No one had ever bothered to fix the fence or the bit of broken wall at the back of the shed. His father still owned the apartment, though he’d moved out to his old farmhouse in Istria, near the coast, after della Torre and Irena married. When della Torre left the marriage, Irena had stayed on in the flat. So now he thought of it as hers.

  Della Torre had climbed up the back of the building as he had done in his youth, not realizing quite how difficult it would be with a busted knee and a cracked rib. Just as well there was little risk in stopping at each balcony. One of the apartments he passed on the way up was almost always empty; it was the home of a banker who mostly lived in New York. The other was occupied by a deaf old lady, the widow of a member of the Yugoslav politburo.

  “The least Irena could have done was to leave the balcony door unlocked,” he grumbled.

  Finally, a light came on in the kitchen.

  “Oh, it’s you. Should have known,” she said, having first peered through t
he glass. She suppressed any enthusiasm she might have felt on seeing him.

  “Who’d you think it was? Burglars?”

  “I was hoping for a Romeo.”

  “What? An Alfa Romeo? You want another car already?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “Why didn’t you just let yourself in through the front door? You’ve got keys.”

  “I do. But they’re at home,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  “And you’re locked out and you need my spare set, but — don’t tell me — it was too much trouble to press the buzzer.”

  “I didn’t want anyone to see me. And to tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind staying for the night.” He eased himself onto a wooden chair with a padded cushion, one of two in the small kitchen.

  “You didn’t want anyone to know because it’s illegal to visit your wife?”

  “Ex-wife.”

  “Oh, so you signed the papers and sent them to the lawyers, then, did you?” She crossed her arms and frowned.

  “Um, no. I don’t remember you giving me any papers. Have they got lost in the post?”

  “No. I haven’t bothered doing anything about it,” she said.

  “So it’s still wife, then.”

  “It’s still wife.” It was a conversation they’d had more than once.

  “Well, anyway, aren’t you going to offer to make me a cup of herbal tea or something?” He helpfully waved his hand towards the cupboard.

  “Would you like a cup of herbal tea?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “The kettle’s there and you know where the tea’s kept.”

  “Look, I’m sorry I’m so late. Um . . . you haven’t got company, by the way, have you?”

  “Who’d be keeping me company this time of night? I just got back from work. I was in the shower.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I mean it’s been, what? Nearly two years?”

  “More like three.” Irena remained standing.

  “Three years? I thought doctors from the hospital would have been all over you now that you’re free.”

  “Hmm. With a husband in the secret police I’d be a real catch for a middle-aged adrenaline junkie. Anyway, it’s really none of your business. You know very well I’m never going to lock you out of this place. And if I start seeing somebody, it won’t be here. So what’s the big deal that it means you have to climb in and out of your own apartment like a thief? Some scorned woman? Or her husband?”

  “Maybe. Though I haven’t the foggiest which. All I know is whoever it is that doesn’t like me had a bunch of Bosnians sent around to have me killed. Wasn’t you, was it?”

  “Were they doctors?”

  “No. But when I left them, they looked like they could have used one.”

  “Then it couldn’t have been me. I spend my whole life with other medics. And patients too sick to be wandering around killing people,” she said.

  “Well, that’s a relief, then.” Della Torre winced. He’d made the mistake of trying to bend his knee.

  “Is that why you’re dressed like a Gestapo scarecrow?”

  “Friend gave me the jacket. Would have been rude to turn him down. Mind?” he asked as he pulled a Lucky Strike out of Strumbić’s packet.

  “Let me shut the kitchen door and open the one onto the balcony.” Irena had never liked the smell of cigarette smoke, which for someone living in Yugoslavia was a permanent cross to bear.

  He smiled at her. Her hair was tousled; grey was beginning to streak the black, though she was three years younger than him. It made her look even more elegant. She’d never been one for fashionable clothes. Even so, her striking features, her carriage always turned heads, men’s and women’s. Her skin absorbed sun so that she looked tanned year-round. Most people assumed she had Gypsy blood. But that was only because there were so few Jews left in Zagreb.

  One lot of Irena’s grandparents hadn’t survived the wartime transportation. But her mother and her mother’s parents had been kept hidden deep in a forest village for the duration, the locals glad to have an eminent physician at their disposal, mostly because they thought he was a vet. The villagers didn’t know they were Jews, only that they needed to be hidden. So they were treated well, though they lived in the same primitive conditions as their hosts. Her mother couldn’t remember much about it; she’d been too young.

  Irena’s father never spoke about how he’d survived the war, though whenever someone offered him food he didn’t like, he’d say he’d already eaten enough roast rat to last a lifetime. Not everyone took it as a joke. He never meant it as one.

  Della Torre still loved her. He was pretty sure she returned the feelings. They got on well and had dinner together once every week or two. But the arguments had become too frequent for the relationship to survive. For five years they’d managed, but it got ever worse. Always about the same thing. When eventually she’d got pregnant, by accident, she was euphoric. He’d never felt such panic in his life. Or such elation as when she miscarried.

  He shouldn’t have made it so obvious. For a time her loathing of him was unbearable. She suspected he’d poisoned her. It was an unfair accusation, but his job made it an easy one. The dam finally burst at a summer party a fellow doctor from her hospital had thrown at his country place.

  Neither della Torre nor Irena had ever spoken honestly to anyone else about his job. Besides being secret, it tended to put people off. When they had to, they said he was a criminal lawyer at the prosecutor’s office, working on cases where it was suspected that personal vendettas on the part of officials had caused miscarriages of justice. Which was more or less what he did. An honourable job. And the answer always sufficed.

  Except that at this party, after he’d finished giving the stock answer to a doctor who’d just come up for training from Macedonia, Irena interjected with deep sarcasm, “Yes, he’s a real humanitarian. For the UDBA.”

  The man had only just made an indiscreet witticism about how if della Torre were sorting out all the country’s politically motivated cases, he’d have enough work for two lifetimes. He’d need two because he’d be spending one of them in prison. So at first the medic treated Irena’s comment as an uncomfortable joke and laughed nervously. Della Torre gave him the biggest, most sincere smile he could manage, trying to defuse the situation. But Irena’s stony look gave the game away. She was telling the truth.

  The man’s face took on the sort of rigid terror della Torre had once seen in a teenage criminal he and Strumbić were interviewing. Strumbić, fed up with the boy’s posturing and refusal to be polite, had hung him by the ankles from a tower-block window until the boy fainted. Later they could see his sick streaked down the side of the building.

  All conversation across the whole of the party more or less stopped right then. People who’d lost their inhibitions to strong wine and a lovely summer’s evening grew instantly sober. Irena and della Torre were the first to leave, staying only just long enough to thank the shell-shocked host. No one would have wanted to go before them, for fear of being noticed. It didn’t do to make a member of the UDBA think you were offended by his company. But by the same token, Irena knew the party was dead, crushed by the cold, hard hand of fear, everyone trying desperately to think of everything they’d ever said to Irena’s husband that had been political or might be construed as such. Or, indeed, to Irena.

  It was probably the most unkind thing Irena had ever done in her life, and she regretted it instantly — but only on account of the people at the party, especially that poor little man. She didn’t care what della Torre thought.

  “I suppose I’m in the small bedroom,” della Torre said, while sipping on his tea in the sitting room.

  “Unless you prefer the sofa,” she said.

  “Nope, small bedroom will do. What time are you g
etting up?”

  “The usual.”

  “Can you wake me just after, around six-thirty? I’ve got a few things that need doing.”

  “Okay,” she said. Then, giving him a long look, she added, “Take off your trousers.”

  “Thought you’d never ask. I see my charm still works.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Take them off.”

  He did as he was told. She brought a lamp towards him and squatted down to look at his knee. It was livid, a blackish purple, and looked like it’d had a run-in with a bicycle pump.

  “How far can you bend it?”

  “Enough to push in a clutch and climb three storeys up an apartment building on the outside.”

  “Show me.”

  He winced as he flexed his leg. She prodded it, though not nearly as gently as she might have done a patient’s. But remembering how undignified Strumbić had been, he kept the whining to a minimum.

  “I’d need an X-ray to be sure, but I’m guessing a bit of ligament damage. Nothing catastrophic, but it’s not going to feel very nice. Do you want some codeine for tonight?”

  “It might be nice.”

  She noticed that he was favouring his left arm.

  “Off with the coat and shirt.”

  “Regular floor show you’re wanting. I charge by the dance.”

  “I charge by the wound. And if you’re not careful you’ll be developing a few more tonight.”

  She had to help him take his undershirt off, and then gave a knowing nod when she saw the Rorschach of bruises across his chest.

  “If I didn’t know any better I’d say you’d been in a car accident but that, very sensibly, you were wearing a seatbelt.”

  “Right in one.”

  She palpitated his tender belly and under his right ribs and seemed content with the results, but when she reached around to his left side, he yelped.

  “Cracked rib maybe? Is that what it feels like?”

  “I don’t know, never cracked a rib before. Though breathing’s a bit uncomfortable.”