The Bridge of Sighs

by Olen Steinhauer

  “He was broke?”

  “Broke? I don’t know. To me he lived pretty well.”

  The two grandmothers crossed themselves, and Tomislaw’s wife shifted in her chair.

  “What about visitors?”

  “He lived alone,” said the wife.

  “I saw no one,” affirmed Tomislaw.

  “No girlfriends?”

  Tomislaw shrugged. “Maybe a hooker—one time, twice.”

  “You saw them?”

  He shook his head, almost sadly. “But no steady girlfriend, not this one. That I’m sure of.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You know,” said Tomislaw, smiling again, cheekbones high in his masculine knowledge, and the others nodded their agreement. “There was that one, though-”

  “Girl?”

  He shook his head.

  “That was nothing,” his wife said. She cleared her throat significantly.

  Tomislaw shrugged.

  “What?” asked Emil.

  “A plumber, I think.”

  “Yes?”

  “Is nothing,” said the wife.

  “Is nothing,” he agreed, frowning and shaking his head.

  Emil looked between them a moment, knowing that nothing more would come of the subject, then looked back at his notepad. “Did he say anything about Berlin? That he was flying there?”

  “Berlin?” Tomislaw thought a moment, squinting. “Where they’re…” He raised a flat hand over his head and whistled an imitation of a plane flying over. “No,” he said finally. “Nothing.”

  “How about enemies? Anyone who might waiit to hurt him?”

  Tomislaw squinted in memory, and Emil noticed his wife’s gray eyes measuring her husband’s face, as if by these measurements she could predict, and stop, a mistake. Tomislaw turned his palms toward the ceiling. “But everyone loved him! He was like a prince. A very elegant prince.”

  Emil turned to the wife—he wanted to include her. “Where are you from? In Poland.”

  “Not Poland,” she muttered. She looked back at him coolly. “We’re from Brest.”

  “That’s Polish,” said Emil.

  She shook her head. “For a long time, yes. Then one day it wasn’t. When the war was over someone told us we were living in Belarus.” Then she blinked, as though waking up. She raised herself in her chair, back straight, and gave him a tight smile. “We live here now, and that’s all that matters.”

  Tomislaw walked him to the door, and Emil touched his elbow to lure him outside. The thin man glanced back fearfully as he closed the door.

  “Tell me,” said Emil. He held his pencil like a pointer.

  Tomislaw furrowed his brow.

  “This plumber. What’s the story?”

  He shrugged. “Really, she’s right. It’s nothing. Just some fellow. She’s crazy—she worries because the plumber had an accent, German. Germans scare her.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Like a German, what else? Blond, sure. Tall.”

  “And he was a plumber?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tomislaw, raising his hands as though he had finally learned his wife was right—you give an inch and they’ll take a mile. “Plumber, carpenter, how should I know? All I know is he came a couple times and they argued. Money, I think.” He placed a hand on his doorknob.

  “Do you remember anything they said? In particular?”

  Tomislaw shrugged, leaning into the door, twisting the handle. “Really, I don’t know anything else.” When the door opened, his wife was standing there, pulling him inside, giving Emil a hard, suspicious glance before shutting the door and slamming the bolt into place.

  He took a meticulous walk through the mess of the apartment, looking beneath overturned cabinets and sifting through smashed dishes for anything. There was a Russian camera in the corner, a Zorki, empty of film. He pocketed it. In a bureau full of clothes, he found a gold medal—a circle etched with a hammer and sickle and rays of sunlight, the words lenin and music in Cyrillic beneath. He lifted it—heavy, pure gold—and considered it.

  This was the beginning of everything. He had a real sense of this. This was a new start, and it had to begin correctly, or not at all. But hadn’t it already been sabotaged by the chief, by everyone?

  He dropped the medal into his pocket.

  He found a folded sheet of paper behind the piano with lyric notes and, under a shredded sofa cushion, a woman’s black garter. The kitchen produced jars of fruit preserves—peach and strawberry—that the police had not yet taken themselves. This could only mean that there had been a lot more, so much that they had run out of pockets. Behind the icebox, tied to a thin pipe, was a short length of twine that had been cut with a knife. He didn’t know why. In the bathroom he found French soap. He pocketed everything, then wrapped the bloody wrench in a copy of The Spark. That’s when he realized he was humming. There are White Guards in your heart…

  He squeezed the murder weapon under his arm, then returned Janos Crowder’s gold medal to his drawer, buried it among crumpled underwear.

  He would start yet again.

  He used Janos Crowder’s private telephone—white, bulbous— to call the medical examiner’s office.

  The photographs were overexposed, but clear enough. Janos Crowder bent back over his peasant table, arms spread wide. His legs lay limply, knees together, so that his feet rested on their arches in the plush carpet. His fingers were long and thin and tapered. These were not factory hands. His speckled neck was bloated where it began to curve into the soft mush of jawbone and human pulp that had once been a mouth, nose, eyes.

  A German. A German who looked like a German and argued about money. Tidbits filled his pockets: a garter, camera, twine.

  The brutality made no sense. Janos Crowder would have been dead long before the abuse was over. A manic rage, perhaps. Or an attempt to hide something. But what? A face wasn’t needed to identify a body. A simple thief would have taken the camera. A German with a meticulous eye toward money would have found the medal made of gold.

  There was a close-up of the head, where an ear had dislodged.

  Emil was on the tram, leaning against a pole, and he heard a gasp. The woman looking over his shoulder had finally realized what she was seeing.

  He was surprised and somewhat pleased to find on his desk a slip of paper with Lena Crowder’s address. The same childish letters he’d seen his first day. No one claimed responsibility for the note, and no one looked up when he dropped the paper-wrapped wrench loudly beside the typewriter. Some were preparing to leave for the day, shrugging into jackets or loosening ties and unbuttoning collars. The security inspector was eating an apple, and when Emil sat down he came over and, very quietly, wished Emil luck on his case. “This is your first one, I’m correct?” His voice squeaked unnervingly.

  “My first, yes.”

  “Well, good luck,” he repeated, and as he wandered back to his desk, Emil felt a cool, focused hatred for this vulture.

  The typewriter worked like a song. Emils preliminary report noted the details he had learned of the victim’s life, his occupation and marital status, his rumored economic situation and Party affiliation. He said nothing of the portraits with General Secretary Mihai. He listed the names of those he had interviewed, and pointed to where he expected to proceed next. Lena Crowder, and the vendor of the murder weapon, for which he had the ten- digit manufacturer’s number. He would also talk to the coroner, but didn’t expect anything to come of it. No speculations, at this point in the investigation, were warranted.

  Emil unwrapped the bloody wrench on the counter beside Roberto’s crossed ankles. The Argentinean’s lazy eye righted itself as he dropped his feet.

  “How do I trace this?” asked Emil.

  Roberto settled back into his chair, regaining his composure bit by bit until he was deep within his easy worldliness again. He sighed audibly. “It’s a poor nation, no? Bureaucracies are limited, they crawl.” He gazed at his th
umbs. “Could take, say, weeks to trace this machinery.”

  “There’s a book somewhere? With this information? A file cabinet? I’ll do it myself.”

  “The clearance,” said Roberto sadly. He picked at his dry lower lip. “Months, I’ve no doubt.”

  Emil was slow sometimes, he knew this. He had been like this with Filia at the beginning, in that bombed café in the Third District. All her advances had gone in one ear and out the other. He was only receptive to those who, like the mute Ester in Ruscova, had no time for indirection.

  Emil leaned forward and covered the wrench with the paper again, as if to hide their transaction from it. “To know by tomorrow,” he said slowly. “How much?”

  Roberto smiled toothily. “Only two!”

  “Enter.”

  The chief was caught in mid-reach, one sweat-stained arm sliding into his jacket sleeve, when Emil dropped the typewritten pages on his desk.

  “What s this?”

  Emils hands meeting behind his back was instinct, and once they touched he wished he could control his instinctual subservience. “Daily report, Com-” he began, then: “Chief.”

  Chief Moska had both his arms in his wrinkled, gray coat, and with one hand he lifted the report and separated the three sheets like cards. “You haven t done anything, Brod. Until you do, there’s nothing to report. I don t want this.” He held out the pages.

  Emil folded his arms. “Regulations. Article fifteen, sections twelve through sixteen—communication between levels of service.”

  “Don’t quote to me, Brod. It’s disrespectful and ugly.” The chief’s face was hard when he said this, but he seemed genuinely surprised by the quotation. Emil accepted the report back. He folded it and creased the edge, but did not leave.

  “I need some things.”

  “Things?”

  Emil ignored his look. “An automobile, first of all.”

  “Why?”

  “Interviews.”

  Chief Moska took a slow step back, as though considering sitting down again. “There are trams, Brod. They’re very cheap. You’re too good for them?”

  “My interview is outside of town. Janos Crowder’s wife.”

  “Talk to the garage.” He stepped forward again.

  Emil held up a weak hand. “A gun. I haven’t been issued one yet.”

  The chief’s brows came together, and the sweat on his forehead, disturbed, rolled down his cheek. He was such a large man, bigger the closer one came to him, and his breath seemed to heat the office. “You need a gun to interview a grieving widow?”

  “I’m investigating murder, Chief.”

  “It’s the last thing,” Chief Moska began, then paused. “A gun is the last thing you want to touch. It’s a dangerous thing to have too soon.”

  Emil said, “But-” then stopped. The chief was already out the door.

  CHAPTER SIX

  *******************

  He was on the road, gliding past crowds of proles migrating home from work, their faces suddenly alert to the shiny, immaculate black Mercedes—no doubt a remnant of the German occupation—passing them. A couple of half-built apartment blocks rose on the outskirts, just the beginning of what was called in the papers equal housing for all The professors, it was said, would live alongside the peasants and factory workers in the concrete homes of the future. He shifted gears and felt the anxiety of that miserable station unravel.

  He’d only driven one other car in his life, the Academy practice vehicle, a KIM-10 with Rostov plates that spent most of its time on concrete blocks in the shop. When it was let out, it sputtered and jerked like a lame horse. This Mercedes took the corners like a cat. The Tisa flowed to his left, and the sun caught in his rearview.

  The construction disappeared into farmland. Small houses and a tiny one-room bar lay on the corners of wheat fields, and when the hills began he saw the first of the huge homes. Some were built-up farmhouses, the land around them either tended by renters or gone fallow. Others were the mansions of the old world. He’d heard in the Academy that General Secretary Mihai kept two houses out here, one for himself and his family, the other for a mistress, but that was the kind of rumor schools produce.

  He was anticipating the Crowder interview, his first. As he had learned in the Academy, there was a window of opportunity in the interrogation of widows—just after she has learned of her husband’s death, and just before the shock has worn off. In this window any question can be asked and answered with authority and clarity. Its length varies with each widow—for some it is only a minute or two—but it can always be taken advantage of. This was a theory of interviewing that originated in Moscow and had been field-tested repeatedly. He outlined his precise use of this window, his questions and alternate lines of inquiry.

  But when he turned up Lena Crowder s poplar-lined drive, the questions slid away as the jealousy caught in his throat. Compared to this big, two-story house covered in brown vines and surrounded by tall, manicured hedges, the puny apartment that Grandfather insisted his family cherish was a pitiful joke.

  Another huge Mercedes was parked in front of the house—a white and gleaming 540K—and when he stepped out, his foot sank into the soft grass. The afternoon sun was unforgiving, but the air was easy and clean. He filled himself with it. Pink and violet flowers wilted in the heat. Flat stones formed a walkway to the front door, where he paused and touched its etched glass. It was a spiral, ornate design he had seen a lot of in Helsinki. The door opened before he could find the bell, and a short, stunned woman in a maid s uniform stared up at him, surprised. She held a pail of dirty water.

  “Comrade Crowder?” said Emil. “She’s in?”

  The maid glanced back quickly into the house. “Maybe-”

  He opened his Militia certificate. “Now, please.”

  She retreated a step as he came in, and water sloshed up the sides when she set the pail down. She walked quickly, almost running, past thick-framed portraits, lamps and a broad, curving staircase. At the end of a brief corridor, she disappeared through a side door.

  Emil followed. He tried to ignore the chandelier above him, the long marble stand balanced by two porcelain vases, and the enormous bearded faces on the walls. But he couldn’t. Finally, he made it to the door—heavy oak polished to a reflective shine— and found the maid in a deep room bent over a long, white- gowned woman stretched on a white sofa.

  “Show him in!” called the woman, and the way her words slurred and slid, he knew she was drunk. She waved him forward and fell back, then used an arm to raise herself again. It was cool here. The only light was the orange dusk through the windows, but as he approached, her details became visible. Black hair bobbed around a thin neck, and her wide, pale face was marked by small, dark features. Lena Crowder squinted, trying to make him out. “More police?”

  “Militia,” he corrected quietly.

  “The difference,” she said, “is no difference to the rest of us.” She sighed loudly. “At least I can see your face this time.”

  He stood in front of her coffee table—no longer local peasant crafts, but something that belonged to a Paris of the East—and held his hat in his hands. He couldn’t manage any other pose. “Comrade Crowder,” he began, trying to remember the right words, “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  Her expression fell, and he noticed how thick her lips were, how damp. Then the smile came back as a red, angry thing. Her voice was thick too: “Who died now—my mother? No—she’s already dead.”

  The hat slipped from Emil’s fingers. “You know? About your husband?”

  Her anger was replaced by a stumbling, buoyant prettiness as she tried unsuccessfully to light her cigarette. She held the lighter out to him—a man’s silver piece—and as he lit it her face went bright in the sudden flame, her pale cheeks smooth as china beneath coal eyes. She looked up at him and spoke smokily around the cigarette. “You really must get your communication straight.” She leaned back. “Is this how you run the security o
f our socialist utopia?”

  He sank into an overstuffed chair. He felt awkward and overgrown, his knees leaning together. She shifted her legs on the sofa beneath her gown, and white, manicured toes appeared briefly, the nails a wet-looking burgundy. “Irma!” she called. “A drink for the inspector!”

  “No, thank you.”

  Lena Crowder’s tone dropped: “Don’t refuse me in my own house.” Then the smile returned. “You were saying?”

  He rubbed a temple with the tip of his finger. “I want to apologize for the confusion.” He noticed his hat on the rug, a little distance away. The rug was thick and white, like her dead husband’s blood-stained one. He looked at her. “Do you mean we already informed you of your husband’s death?”

  Lena Crowder picked tobacco from her lip. “At least you come in person, yes?” She waved the cigarette. “A telephone call. What’s that? When you breed in equality, you breed out manners. That’s a scientific fact.”

  Irma set down a glass of something clear with crushed ice, then left again.

  “Drink,” said Lena Crowder.

  It was cool and lemony and potent. The outside of the glass was slick with condensation, and he had a sudden, irrational fear he was going to drop it. “If you want,” he said, “we can talk later. I just have a few questions.”

  “Just ask, Inspector. The quicker we can end this.” She threw a hand into the air, and it fell limply to the side of her thigh. “Irma!”

  The far door opened immediately.

  “For me?” She held her hand as if there were a drink in it.

  Emil found himself staring at the side of her thigh. When he realized she was looking at him looking at her, he took out his notepad and looked at the scribbles instead. He cleared his throat. “Your husband. Did he have any enemies? Of which you are aware?”

  “Only those who knew him.”

  Emil raised his head.

  “That’s a joke, don’t you see?” She laughed, not very convincingly, then took another drag and shot smoke into the room. “He was nasty to be around when he’d been drinking, no doubt about it. But enemies7. Janos? An infectious little man. He was always that. You do know we were separated?”