They sat at the back of a terminal lounge among morning vodka sippers. Although his name was Janos Nagy, she kept thinking Gypsy as they spoke. They ordered coffees. In the darkened lounge, his eyes reflected the light shining in from the busy terminal behind her.
“Why me?” asked Janos.
“A friend of my husband recommended you, militia Inspector Listov from Darnytsya. When I told him the militia had not been aggressive, Listov wondered why Viktor would park his BMW inside the storage room at the back of the store if he planned to escape. Viktor loved his BMW and would not have turned it into a pile of rubble.”
Janos stared at her a moment, then said, “May I call you, Mariya?”
“Yes.”
“Everyone calls me Janos when they’re not calling me Gypsy, or other names.” He smiled but quickly became serious. “I should tell you I visited Kiev militia headquarters before coming here. It will not be necessary to go through the entire episode. I know about the insurance investigation. I know your husband’s body was found beside a gasoline can. I know another man in the store also died. I know about the BMW parked inside and the overhead door shut and locked. So, tell me, Mariya, what are these suspicions the militia is ignoring?”
“It’s more than intuition if that’s what you mean. The presence of gasoline and Viktor’s substantial insurance has pulled a curtain. No one is willing to listen. Viktor and I lived together before we married. When two people live together, they learn things.”
“Things one says in one’s sleep?” asked Janos.
When she did not answer, he continued. “I read the reports and spoke with investigating officers. I must focus on dreams and words your husband said in his sleep, if you don’t mind.”
Janos stared at her, his eyes reminding her of her father’s eyes long ago when she announced she was leaving home. Sad eyes watching a child go into the hard, cold world.
“I don’t mind,” she said.
“Good. Please leave nothing out, no matter how personal.”
And it was personal. When she spoke of Viktor talking in his sleep, she imagined being in bed, Viktor’s chest rising and falling against her shoulder as his breathing quickened and the dream surfaced, causing him to shout in the silence of their bedroom.
“He said many things,” said Mariya. “Mostly about God’s judgment. God’s hand lowering in judgment … Armageddon, I assume. He spoke of himself in a self-deprecating tone. Once, as I listened, it occurred to me I’d heard this in a film. The devil and the angel speaking in the person’s own voice, but each with a slightly different tone.”
“Do you recall some exact words?” asked Janos.
“The night before the fire he said, ‘Before God’s fellowship lowers in final judgment of the children, I pledge.’“
“Do you know what this fellowship is?”
“No.”
“A religious experience from childhood?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was he pledging?”
“Viktor asked the same thing when I told him about his final dream. It was the last time I spoke with him. He called from the store.”
Janos watched as she took a tissue from her purse. She held the tissue in her hand but did not weep. Perhaps all her tears were gone.
“Tell me,” said Janos. “Did your husband call you from the store specifically to ask what he had said in his sleep the night before?”
“I brought it up. I said he seemed worried about something.”
“In what way did he seem worried?”
“He spoke of buying a house before we married. Did you know we were married only a month?”
“It was in the militia report. But you lived together.”
“A few months before the wedding Viktor moved into my apartment.”
“So,” said Janos, “he spoke of buying a house. How is this worrisome?”
“Because after we married, he never mentioned it again. He bought me a car, but never again mentioned a house.”
“Perhaps the rotten economy changed his mind. The militia report said he planned to sell the video store. What else worried him?”
“I don’t know, Investigator Nagy. I simply said he seemed worried.”
“You said you would call me Janos.” He stared at her.
Mariya stared back at Janos. “Nagy is Hungarian? It means an important person. My name is also Hungarian. It means a German person, which I am not.”
“We are both frauds,” Janos said, smiling at her with his large, brown eyes. “Everyone says I am melancholy.” He cocked his chin to the left and ran his right hand back and forth as if playing an invisible violin.
“Do you play sad songs on a violin?”
“Yes.”
“Would you play for me sometime?” As soon as she said this, she felt foolish and wondered if she should withdraw the question. But Janos smiled.
“Of course I would play for you.”
“I’m half Hungarian,” said Mariya. “My mother’s side. She kept her name because my Russian father left her. I was born in Chernigov, but my mother took me with her back to Uzhgorod, where there are other Hungarians. When I was old enough, I came to Kiev. Hungarian mother and Russian father makes me a typical Ukrainian.”
Janos took out a small notebook and began writing in it. “So your husband did not mention a house purchase again. Anything else?”
“When we were going together, I felt Viktor was open with me. He revealed personal things, and I did the same. After we married, he became distracted.”
“By something having to do with the video store?” asked Janos.
“Yes, the video store. He hated going there. At night, when he returned home, it seemed the store had taken something from him. I feel someone was putting pressure on him.”
“Nothing more specific? No business papers at home? No phone calls from suppliers?”
“Correct.”
A jet taking off groaned through the walls of the terminal building as Janos sat back in his chair and took a long gulp of coffee. Mariya did the same, and the coffee was cold.
“You told the militia you believe there is a connection between recent bombings of female clinics and the fire at your husband’s store.”
“Yes, that’s why I asked Listov to put me in touch with you. I know you must consider the strong possibility Viktor might have started the fire. He had a large policy. I didn’t know how much until the insurance investigator came to see me. I realize it is suspicious …” Mariya felt her eyes begin to water. “I’ve read the newspaper reports. Viktor’s body next to a gas can … what else would one think? But they didn’t know him. They didn’t see the change in him after our marriage.”
Suddenly, Mariya was aware of the sounds of footfalls on the tiled floor of the terminal corridor outside the lounge. Everyone with a destination in mind, everyone knowing where they are going. Except her. When the waitress came to their table with the coffeepot, both Mariya and Janos declined. It’s over, thought Mariya. Now he will say he is sorry, and he will walk off with the others, and she will be left here. She opened her purse to pay for the coffee. After he was gone, she would order a vodka. She could always burn it off later on her bicycle.
When she took out her wallet, Janos put his hand on hers.
“That is not necessary,” he said.
“I should pay because you are not interested in helping me find out who killed Viktor.”
Janos kept his hand on hers. “But I am interested. I am interested because of your honesty about details. And I am interested because of the other man in the store.”
“The customer who died in the fire?”
“Not a customer,” said Janos. “They have identified the body. His name was Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved. He was a competitor of mine.”
“Another investigator?” asked Mariya.
Janos let go of her hand. “Shved and I were militiamen together. Shved left first and lured me into this so-called private business. Now he is d
ead and I would like to know who set the fire. But first I need to find out what he was doing there because, as far as I know, Shved was no voyeur. And from what you say, neither was your husband.”
“It was the money,” said Mariya. “A temporary way to make money.”
“How temporary?”
“I don’t know. How temporary is your interest in this case? Why didn’t you tell me the other man in the store was your friend?”
Janos stared at her for a moment. “Number one: when I take a case, it is permanent. Number two: I needed you to convince me there was a case. I ask questions in a certain order to help you recall things that might seem unimportant now but become important later. How I ask questions is automatic. It is what I learned in the militia over the years.”
They sat staring at one another until Janos smiled and said, “Shall we begin with your recollection of Viktor’s past?”
“He grew up in a Catholic orphanage outside Kiev, a boy’s school named Saint Francis.”
“Did he mention the orphanage in his sleep?”
“Not in his sleep. When we met, he said he didn’t like to talk about the place. He said the brothers who ran it were demons.”
“How did he come to live in an orphanage?”
“His mother was young, got pregnant, and didn’t want him. Melancholy, yes?”
“Yes,” said Janos. “Please go on. What about after the orphanage?”
“Viktor said he lived in foster homes when he was a teenager. But I’m not sure because he was always vague about those years. He said he ran away from the last foster home and came to Kiev in 1986, after Chernobyl. He said he stayed in the Podil District until he went into the bookstore business with a friend. He attended school during the day and ran the bookstore at night. After this he sold his interest and went into the adult video store business. I don’t know much else except he was able to buy the building across from Zhulyany Airport.”
Janos finished writing in his notebook and looked up. “Do you know the name of Viktor’s earlier partner?”
“No.”
“Anyone else he was associated with in business or out of business?”
“Only Inspector Listov. They were good friends, but I don’t know how they met.”
“Finally, there is one more thing I must ask,” said Janos, staring at her seriously. “Are you doing this for the insurance money?”
Mariya watched his eyes. “No. I admit I’ve thought about it. Proving Viktor had nothing to do with setting the fire would satisfy the insurance company. But the only reason for me is because I believe someone killed Viktor. And like many in this corrupt world, I have developed a hunger for justice.”
Before leaving the lounge, Mariya told Janos about the tan station wagon she thought might have followed her to the airport. Janos asked for a description of her car, where she had parked, and said to give him a fifteen-minute lead so he could watch her leave the parking lot.
Mariya watched Janos exit the lounge and walk into the brightly lit promenade. He walked with his shoulders slightly forward as if anticipating an attack from behind. He walked quickly, the swagger and momentary hesitation of his militia walk speeding up as he disappeared in the crowd. When he was gone, she tried to remember what he had worn in case she saw him in his car in the parking garage. Blue suit, and that tie—that horrible, wide, green and red tie that looked like a Christmas neck scarf, or a Gypsy scarf.
As she walked through the terminal toward the garage, Mariya realized Janos had not asked about her past before meeting Viktor. She was glad she had not had to tell about it today to this man who stared at her so hard for so long. She was glad she had not been forced to reveal her run away from home, dancing in Kiev’s syndicate-run strip clubs when she was eighteen, the depressing years working at massage parlors until she got out, barely making it as a secretary for years until she met Viktor. And now what was left of her life? A dead husband, some bank accounts, and no one in the world to trust except an investigator who is paid to be trusted.
When she entered the crowded tunnel leading to the parking garage, she felt as though her world was slipping away. At the end of the tunnel, a middle-aged man wearing a pinstriped suit walked alongside and asked if she had plans for the evening. Without stopping, she turned to look at the man. The look on her face must have been depressing, because when she said, “No,” and continued walking, the man looked like a child trying to hide his guilt. The man walked away without questioning her further.
She was the only woman in the parking garage elevator. Five leering men and her. Is this how it started with Viktor? A glance followed by an introduction? So easy to become attached to someone, and now this? She recalled, on the day Viktor was killed, thinking their relationship had gone too fast. Perhaps there was too much she did not know about him. As she stepped off the elevator into the exhaust-filled air of the parking garage, her eyes began to water and she wondered if she could ever fall in love again.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
With the rented camper van left behind at a campground outside Kiev, Janos lurked in a dark side aisle of the parking garage in his faded orange Skoda. When the black Audi turned up the exit aisle, a tan Zhiguli station wagon with two occupants followed. The driver was a young man in a baseball cap. In the dim light of the garage, the passenger looked like a girl, or a short woman. Janos started his Skoda and followed the station wagon down the ramp, keeping his distance. When they neared the pay booths, he memorized the station wagon’s license number and wrote it down while waiting in line three booths away from Mariya Nemeth’s Audi and the station wagon.
The sun was out, and when the station wagon emerged from the booth slightly ahead of him, he could see the passenger was a short woman with red hair. The station wagon sped after Mariya’s Audi and followed her west toward the river. If the station wagon followed Mariya to her apartment, he would park, watch the man and woman in the station wagon, and call militia Inspector Svetlana Kovaleva. He would ask Svetlana to run a check on the plate for him. As usual, he and Svetlana would speak carefully should someone be monitoring the call, especially these days with the possibility of the Mafia or the SBU listening in on their wideband receivers.
When he thought of receivers, Janos wondered why he had not asked for Mariya Nemeth’s cell number. Everyone in Kiev had cell phones. He had even called Lazlo’s niece, Ilonka, earlier in the day on his cell phone. Perhaps if Lazlo had been with him at the interview in the airport lounge, he would have remembered to get a cell number. Perhaps the fact Mariya Nemeth was his age and very attractive had affected whatever investigative skills he possessed.
Janos shifted in his seat, finding a more comfortable position, recalling the explosion and the glass. It could have been his head, or his face. The Gypsy turned into a ghoul who goes out only at night. He remembered the Gypsy woman in the American film The Wolf Man. The Gypsy woman with her cart and her lantern swinging in the fog as she warns of the creature. He might have gotten it just as bad if he’d been awake and turned when the double-base, single-base, nitrocellulose magnesium colloid hit his window. At the hospital, no one would have wanted to look at him when they took off the bandages, especially blonds stacked, as they say in America, “like brick shithouses.” A blond like Mariya Nemeth.
When traffic slowed to a crawl, the station wagon turned south while Mariya Nemeth’s Audi continued west. Janos followed the station wagon as it sped away from Kiev. Perhaps he was going too fast in more ways than one. Mariya Nemeth shows up, and after the first interview he’s already chasing suspects. Or was he chasing shadows?
At the first opportunity, he passed the station wagon to get a better look. The young man at the wheel turned and smiled at him, but what could a smile mean? Red baseball cap, black hair coming out from beneath it, wide forehead, thin neck, tall but 70 kilos at the most. The young woman leaned forward to peek around the young man. Red hair, heavy eye makeup. Yes, the young woman had also looked at him. Both of them
in their late teens or early twenties.
Janos got behind a slow truck and dropped back so he could resume following the Zhiguli. It was sunny out, a fresh westerly from the Carpathians blowing into the open window. Perhaps some molecules had traveled this way to meet up with him again. Molecules drifting like Anatoly the Cossack, in his American cowboy hat, drifting south to the shipyards. Or like him drifting from one case to another, from one hiding place to another, from one woman to another.
He pictured Mariya Nemeth sitting in the airport waiting area in her business suit. Shapely thighs and hips, smooth knees, one leg crossed over the other, the muscular calves of a dancer, one of the Hungarian peasant dancers he’d seen at a concert. Her face exhibited an innocent softness, a girl’s face on the body of a woman. If she had worn a layered skirt, apron, and boots, she could have been a peasant girl on the steppes at harvest. And he, the Gypsy, could have courted her and carried her away in his horse-drawn caravan.
But he had better leave the fantasy world behind and remain in the real world in which the peasant girl marries a peddler of adult videos while the Gypsy lies on his stomach in the hospital getting glass removed from his ass. “A melancholy romantic.” This is what Shved had called him. Shved, who left the Kiev militia first, paving the way for the melancholy romantic—how to get clients, how to keep clients, how to know when a job was a dead-end or a time bomb.
Shved had called him in the hospital while a nurse inspected his wounds.
“I told you not to get your ass so close to the flames,” said Shved. “Your cheeks are rosy,” said the nurse. “All four of them.”
Before his release from the hospital, Janos discovered, by way of a firm rejection, that the nurse was married but never wore her rings on duty.
Traffyck: The Thrilling Sequel to Chernobyl Murders Page 7
