Lie in the Dark vp-1

by Dan Fesperman

  “Have the gypsy waiting at my desk when I get back,” he called over his shoulder to Damir. “I want her calmed down and ready to talk. And try not to ask her out before I’m back, although she sounds like your type.”

  “Yes, good with hand tools,” Damir answered, offering his first smile of the day.

  “And thanks again.”

  “My pleasure,” Damir shouted, already easing back in his chair.

  CHAPTER 2

  Vlado headed into the melting slush, bound for the couple’s home in what passed for a gypsy quarter, a narrow rack of two-story cinder-block buildings near the top of a steep, exposed hill just north of the city center. The Bosnian army often kept one of its few big guns up there, mostly for nuisance-firing at the Serbs, which prompted plenty of answering nuisance-fire, usually from even bigger guns. But it was only gypsies, the authorities reasoned. In a city where people still liked to talk about the unimportance of ethnic designation, gypsies had always been singled out as the lowest of the low. Their warren of apartments was a nasty place to live, even by wartime standards.

  Ten minutes into his walk, a flushed and breathless Damir appeared at his side.

  “Change your mind?” Vlado said.

  “Needed the walk. Cooped up all day yesterday with nothing but paperwork, then all of this morning with nothing but a hangover. And in between was last night, which I’d just as soon forget altogether. So I’ll at least make it up the hill with you. If that doesn’t do the trick, I’ll even help you write the report. But don’t worry. I’ll head back in time to have the gypsy woman checked in and ready for interrogation.”

  “So, trouble with a woman?” Vlado asked. It was the only sort of trouble he could imagine Damir having.

  “I wish. It’s my mother and father.”

  Damir had moved back in with his parents when the war began to make sure they’d be provided for. Also to avail himself of his mother’s cooking. With fresh meat and produce having virtually disappeared, she was one of those resourceful cooks who still managed some variety-pies made of rice, “French fries” shaped from a corn meal paste, and garden snails, soaked overnight then pan-fired with wild herbs. But the price for a fuller stomach was his mother’s temper, vast and explosive, and Vlado figured there must have been another blow up.

  “Your mother went off again?”

  “Yes. The worst ever. And this time she went for maximum damage, and got it. From my father, at least, and maybe from me, too.”

  “Well, give it a few days and it will blow over.”

  “Not this time,” Damir said, shaking his head with grim assurance. “All she did this time was tell me that everything I’d ever believed about my father was a lie.”

  Vlado wasn’t sure how to respond to that and, based on past experience, Damir wasn’t likely to offer anything more until he was ready and willing. So they walked on a few minutes more without a word, until Damir abruptly resumed.

  “All these years he’s told me what a hero he’d been during the last war. Fighting the Nazis with Tito’s Partisans. Hiding in caves and corn fields with the great man himself. Parachuting onto some mountain in the dark. Stories that I’ve heard a thousand times, and memorized every detail.”

  “Then your mother says that he’s been making some of it up, right? Which only makes him like every other man in this town over the age of 70. My uncle was the same way. Had us believing he was God’s gift to guerilla warfare. And who says your mother’s right anyway. She was just angry and saying whatever she could to make it hurt.”

  “My father says she’s right, that’s who. And it wasn’t just details she was talking about, or exaggerations. It was everything. The whole damn war. He hid out all right, with the neighbors next door, in their cellar. Looking after their two children. Once he came out to help move some cows-steal them is probably more like it-from the next village. The only gun his family had, he buried, hid it from his own father, and he never dug it up again. When my mother told me all this, he didn’t even try to pretend anymore. He confessed just like any other common criminal who knows the evidence is against him. Then he pulled his chair into a corner and did nothing but cry. His face was gray, like he was turning to ashes before our eyes. My father, the great Partisan, nothing but a scared peasant wiping babies’ noses in a root cellar.”

  Vlado worried that almost any response would seem weak, banal, but he tried anyway.

  “Even Tito lied about these things,” he said. “Now everyone says he was sick in a cave during what was supposed to have been his greatest battle.”

  “Yes, but Tito lied about everything. That was his job. This is my father, Vlado, and I’d always been a big enough fool to believe him. One of the reasons I wanted to be a big shot police investigator was so I might have half the adventures he did. When the war started, it’s why I almost quit to join the army, figuring it was my biggest chance yet for heroics. And if it hadn’t been for my mother crying and throwing a fit about it-and thank God she did-then I would have. Now, who knows.” He shrugged, kept walking. “So, here I am. Just taking a walk and doing my job. I’ll get over it, though.”

  But it was clear that for a while, at least, he wouldn’t. Even Damir’s customary medicine for a black mood-women and alcohol, taken liberally for one full evening-might be too weak to bring about a quick recovery. Vlado wondered what to say next, if anything. He tried out a few phrases in his head until his thoughts were interrupted by a gunshot, loud and close, echoing from across the river.

  Whenever a sniper opened fire in daylight, it flipped a switch on every nervous system within range, especially for anyone standing in an exposed line of fire. Slack jaws tightened, eyes widened, bodies bent and curled, as if trying to melt into the pavement.

  One never grew accustomed to it no matter how long the war dragged on, because inevitably someone got caught in the wrong place, fell, blood pooling, and became the twitching center of an empty circle as everyone else scattered. The circle remained empty until the danger passed and an ambulance came. Then the crowds leeched back toward the middle, and the body vanished. The blood remained, for the rain to wash away.

  The body in question this time was a man in military uniform, about 30 feet ahead, in an intersection sheltered neither by buildings nor the walls of old cars stacked in protective barriers.

  A woman who had just trotted through the area gasped upon reaching the safety of the corner where Vlado and Damir stood.

  “I was practically next to him when it happened,” she said, eyes wide, a hand across her mouth, eyes wide. Her makeup was beginning to give way to a burst of perspiration. The right shoulder of her coat was spattered with the man’s blood.

  “He was just walking,” she said, verging on hysteria. “Just walking. Like he thought he was any old place, while everyone else was running. He should have known better. How couldn’t he have known?”

  For a moment it appeared that no one would step in to see if the man was still alive. He wasn’t moving, and a semi-circle of blood oozed from beneath him like a scarlet cape thrown gracefully upon the ground. Then a large, well dressed man, smelling strongly of aftershave, shouldered through the crowd and trotted toward the body. He knelt quickly, a gold chain dangling from his neck.

  “Stay back! I’ll take care of this,” he shouted. People on both sides edged closer to the open area, as if shamed into helping. He gripped the man beneath both arms, grunted, and dragged the body through a smearing path of blood to the sheltered area where Vlado and Damir stood.

  “Maybe we need to do something,” Vlado said.

  “Better leave this one alone,” Damir muttered. “The big guy runs one of the gasoline rackets. Must be one of his foot soldiers that got it.”

  Reading Vlado’s thoughts, Damir said, “I guess he thought that being a man for all sides meant he was no longer at risk.”

  Instead, the gangster’s bold stroll through the intersection had violated the siege’s unwritten code of conduct. If you showed a sn
iper respect, running like everyone else, chances are he would give you nothing but a bored glance through his sighting scope. But this fellow had made himself a walking insult, and a shooter, who may have intended to take the afternoon off, had been stirred to action.

  For a moment the crowd’s attention was diverted by the nearby shouts of a small man who had begun angrily lecturing a U.N. soldier at a sentry post a half-block away.

  “You will stand here doing nothing the entire war until they kill us all!” the little man shouted, over and over, his face livid with rage. The plastic sacks in his hands, one filled with rice and the other with bread, swung back and forth like pendulums, as the man spluttered and roared. The soldier, a Jordanian, didn’t seem to comprehend the local language, although he couldn’t have missed the message. He stared blankly ahead while the man moved closer, dropping one his bags to point and jab at the soldier’s blue helmet.

  The sight was arresting enough that at first Vlado paid little attention when Damir began to speak.

  “The gypsy case is all yours, Vlado. In fact, the whole rest of the war is yours.”

  Damir strolled away. As Vlado turned, he saw to his alarm that Damir was heading straight into the open intersection where the man had just been shot, walking no faster than a shuffling old man, shoulders slumped and head bent, hands in his pockets.

  “What are you doing?” Vlado shouted.

  Damir stopped only for a moment, looking back with a cold blank anger in his eyes.

  “Don’t worry Vlado, I will still do my job. I will have the gypsy ready for you, as requested.”

  “Screw the work. Take the day off, the whole week. Just get yourself out of the open. Run!”

  But Damir resumed his plodding gait, this time answering Vlado over his shoulder. “In my own good time, Vlado. Not yours or anyone else’s.”

  The small crowd which had formed to watch the removal of the body now watched Damir with weary fascination. No one other than Vlado shouted or urged him on, conserving those energies for loved ones. Vlado decided to make a run for it, hoping to either tackle Damir or shove him to safety. Before he could move, there was a quick whizzing sound, followed by a loud metallic ping as a bullet struck a yellow traffic sign a few feet behind Damir. Then came the sharp report of the rifle itself, as the sound caught up to the consequences. The traffic sign quivered as if plucked by a hand from the clouds. A fresh hole rimmed in gray joined two others already orange with rust.

  Surely the sniper would not miss twice, and Vlado again braced for a run, only to be interrupted by a second shot. It, too, struck the sign, though Damir had continued moving forward. Then came a third shot, and a fourth, with the sign pinging and quivering each time.

  The sniper was taking target practice, and with each impact he was tapping out a message, a terse, cynical telegram of his disdain for them all.

  Damir, of course, received the signal loud and clear, and as he finally reached the shelter of the opposite corner he turned and shouted to Vlado in a monotone, “You see, this is our war. Games of chance before a live audience. And when the killing spills into the grandstand, you and me get to sort it out. Maybe someday we can make up our own stories of how heroic it all was.”

  Damir kept walking, neither faster nor slower than before. His footsteps were drowned out by the shouts from the U.N. sentry post. The small angry man had still not relented in his harangue of the soldier, who, for all the impassiveness of his face, might as well have been made of lead.

  The gypsy’s home was predictable enough, like just about any other overcrowded apartment in the city these days: two rooms, with paint peeling on dingy walls, a garden hose creeping across the walls like a long green snake, carrying gas from an illegal hookup to a makeshift stove and to a second nozzle mounted precariously at eye level, spurting a small jet of flame that provided the only light in the gloom of late afternoon. On the stove was a large pot encrusted with day-old beans. The window glass was gone, taped over with milky, billowing plastic. The bed was pushed into a corner away from the window. A small bassinette sat nearby on the floor. The air was rank from sweat, whiskey, old food, and soiled diapers. And, yes, the smell of blood.

  On the bed was the body of a large man sprawled face-down, his head a pulp of gore and matted hair. A hammer lay in the floor nearby, plastered with more of the same mess. Vlado took out his notebook and sat in a small chair to wait for Tomislav Grebo, who in the pared down police department was now both the evidence technician and the medical examiner, although his police work was decidedly secondary to his part-time career as a scrounger and small-time retailer. Grebo was in partnership with his cousin Mycky, who had a knack for coming up with the odds and ends necessary to keep life running in a broken city. Most mornings you’d find them seated behind a card table in the dimness of the drafty old market hall in the city center, peddling plumbing equipment that came in handy for everything from gas hookups to makeshift stoves. They’d recently expanded their operation to a second table, carrying stray cartons of Marlboros or whatever other items they managed to procure.

  This meant it always took a few minutes to round up Grebo. Usually someone had to reach him on foot. But within a half hour he breezed into the apartment, rubbing his hands against the cold. He was tall and thin, with an unruly thatch of wavy dark brown hair and a thick mustache drooping above a long, narrow chin.

  Grebo looked toward the bed, grimaced, then pulled an Instamatic camera from a bulging coat pocket.

  “What’s today’s special?” Vlado asked, trying to cheer himself out of the funk he’d been in since watching Damir walk away.

  “Cigarette lighters. BICs, too. Mycky came up with a whole case, don’t ask me how.” He paused, placing his cigarette on a small table, a column of ash hanging over the edge. “We sold a few and swapped some others for beer-Amstel, not the local shit-and a bag of salt.”

  He snapped a photo, the flash popping, then waited for the print to slide from the front of the camera.

  “Not a bad morning. He thinks if we’re patient we can trade the rest for gasoline.”

  “Why would anyone trade gasoline for cigarette lighters?” Vlado asked.

  Grebo lowered his camera, frowning. “Why would anyone trade a blow job for Marlboros?”

  “Good point.”

  “It all depends on need. Supply and demand. This is gut level capitalism, Vlado. After the war everything will be banks, accountants, and middlemen, so learn the easy stuff while you can.”

  Vlado was used to these lectures. It amused him to think of the likes of Grebo as the future of the city’s economy. Yet he admitted that the ways of barter and the black market baffled him. He considered his new jar of Nescafe. Perhaps he could trade a little for something to break the monotony of his diet, even if only for some cabbage.

  “How much cabbage do you think I could get for a quarter pound of Nescafe?” he asked.

  Grebo again lowered his camera, scowling now. “Jesus, Mary, and God, Vlado,” Grebo said. Like Vlado, Grebo’s father was a Muslim, his mother a Catholic, and he had been baptized a Catholic. But like some in Sarajevo, he expressed his religious affiliation mostly through his choice of curse words. “Only an idiot would trade coffee for cabbage.”

  “But you just said …”

  “That’s different. Marlboros for blow jobs, yes. Coffee for cabbage, not even on the same map. It’s a matter of comparable worth. I keep telling you, it’s supply and demand. You’re still thinking like a Communist, a fucking Yugoslav. Coffee’s as good as hard currency, save it for something special. Cabbage you can get with army cigarettes, and army cigarettes you can get anywhere.” He glanced furtively around the room, adding in a lowered voice. “You might even find some here, unless the gypsy’s cleared them out.”

  Vlado continued to brood about his Nescafe. If not cabbage, then maybe some oranges? It made him tired to think about it. Better just to keep the coffee or he’d only end up feeling cheated.

  They stepped ar
ound the body as they talked, not once mentioning it. Grebo snapped photos while Vlado jotted a note now and then, plotting out the room’s dimensions in case anyone ever asked, which no one ever did. They began talking of food. People in Sarajevo sometimes seemed to talk of nothing else.

  “Did you hear about Garovic,” Grebo said. “Eating again on the U.N.’s tab, and they took him to Club Yez. Again.”

  Garovic was Lutva Garovic, their boss. Club Yez was Sarajevo’s best restaurant, safe and snug in a deep, brick cellar with a fireplace and a piano player. Every bottle at its bar had the right label, no matter what was really inside, and the kitchen had spices and fresh meat. Deutschemarks only. U.N. people, foreign journalists, and successful smugglers were the only ones who could afford the place, and on any given night they could be found dining together, asking no questions of each other except perhaps whether the special was worth a try.

  “His third time this month,” Grebo said, disgusted. “And of course he had to tell me all about it. He was going on and on about this piece of veal. A filet, ‘Pink as a puckered cunt,’ he said, the asshole. And twice as juicy’ All you can do is sit there and listen. Tell him what you really think and you’ll be up on Zuc shooting at Chetniks by the end of the week.”

  “Fat chance. If he fires you he’ll have to fill out forms, recruit a replacement, answer questions to higher ups. Aggravation’s not his style.”

  “You’re supposed to say he’d never let me go because I’m indispensable, Vlado. Because the department would fall apart without me.”

  “As if that would be a tragedy. Besides, why bother sending you to the front when he can make your life miserable down here.”

  “That’s for sure, the bastard.”

  Two more policemen soon arrived to move the body back to Grebo’s lab. As Vlado and Grebo stepped from the apartment a low, deep thud echoed down from the hills to the north.

  Grebo waved his right hand toward the sound. “Speaking of Zuc,” he said. “Busy as always, the poor bastards.”