The Iron Angel

by Edward D. Hoch

  The summer rainstorm seemed only to grow worse through the night. Michael accompanied Andre up to Felipe’s old bedroom at the rear of the house. The room seemed dusty and closed against the outside world but in the closet they found a pair of the elder son’s work boots. Michael took them downstairs and risked the rain to fit both boots into the muddy footprints by the front door. They were an exact fit.

  “So he was here,” Olak Glasnach said.

  “Or someone wanted us to think he was here,” Michael Vlado replied. “I will drive down to the capital in the morning. For now I suggest you believe nothing that you have seen or heard. If I find evidence of your son’s death, I will phone you at once.”

  The events of the evening, hard as they were on the family, seemed finally to have affected old Esmeralda as well. “I want to go home,” she told Michael shortly before midnight. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  He helped her out to the car and promised to return with news. Frieda had given him a picture of her son to aid in identification. He was a thin, smiling young man, handsomer than his younger brother. Michael could see why the attractions of city life might have lured him away from the farm life.

  “Will you be all right?” Michael asked as he drove the Gypsy woman to her cabin.

  “Yes. I am just tired. So much has happened tonight.”

  “You really thought he would come, didn’t you?”

  “I thought so,” she agreed.

  “But you can’t believe in something as preposterous as the wishes granted by a bear’s paw!”

  She turned her old eyes toward him. “You have grown away from your roots, Michael Vlado. Always remember you are a Gypsy first!”

  He helped her to the door of the cabin and went on his way. The rain was beginning to let up so he was able to negotiate the muddy roads back up to his village. He said very little to Rosanna about what had transpired. She was already in bed and only grunted as he slipped beneath the covers.

  In the morning he told her he must go to Bucharest. “On a Sunday?” she asked as she prepared breakfast. “What for?”

  “That Gypsy woman, Esmeralda, is in trouble. She’s involved in something quite serious and needs help.”

  “She is not one of us.”

  “Not of our tribe, no, but she is a Rom.”

  “Go then,” his wife said, looking away.

  “I will tell you everything when I get back,” he promised.

  The rain of the night before had given way to morning sun, and as soon as he hit the main road at the base of the foothills he was able to make good time. There was virtually no traffic on a Sunday morning until he reached the outskirts of Bucharest itself. Then he phoned Louise Stricker and obtained her address. It was night when he arrived at her apartment near the public gardens.

  Louise Stricker was a slender woman with straight black hair that framed her face. She was plain yet attractive, something like Frieda Glasnach must have looked in her younger days. Perhaps that was what had first attracted Felipe. Now she wore no makeup and her dark blue dress might have been a symbol of mourning.

  “You are a friend of Felipe?” she asked as she held the door open for him. The apartment was plain with only a few colorful touches like a witty stuffed bat and a rainbow poster from a rock concert.

  “Not really,” he admitted, having given her that impression on the phone. “I know his parents.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have phoned them. It’s just that we’ve never spoken. I know how they feel about me.”

  “Tell me how he died.”

  “He had to work for a while Thursday morning. He had a job at the university bookstore. I expected him to be home in the afternoon but he didn’t come. Finally I called the bookstore and they said he hadn’t been in, not at all!” Her voice broke and she was close to tears. “I went to retrace the route he must have taken that morning. When I was crossing the bridge over the Dimbovita I saw some policemen and a small crowd down by the water. I realized they were dragging for a body.”

  “Felipe?”

  She nodded. “I recognized a shirt I’d given him. He’d been wearing it that morning. It had been found by the water, and his other clothes as well.”

  “You believed he killed himself?”

  “I don’t know what I believe. We’d been arguing lately. He was thirty– one years old but still tied to his family. He walked out on them a year ago but there wasn’t a weekend when he didn’t want to call them. Sometimes we’d have terrible fights about it.”

  “Did they find his body?”

  “Not yet. They’re still searching.”

  “Is it possible that he didn’t die, that he returned to the farm?”

  “I can’t imagine that. He still loved them at a distance but after a year away he never could have gone back to living that life. He told me how they watched over every aspect of the boys’ lives. They had no girls and very few male friends. All their time was spent on the farm, working year round.”

  “Farming takes a great deal of time.”

  “But to rob them of their lives like that! The parents were almost paranoid about dangers of any sort. His father slept with a shotgun under the bed. They had a bucket of sand and an escape rope in the bedroom in case of fire. On rare occasions when the boys went to a dance in their village, the father or mother went along to make sure they didn’t drink too much.”

  “How did he meet you?”

  “Somehow they agreed to let him take classes at the university here – a course in farm management, because the farm would someday be his. I was in my final year, completing my teaching preparations. When I graduated at the beginning of last summer he decided to remain here with me. The family was furious. His younger brother met with him and tried to get him back, but that only convinced him he’d done the right thing.”

  “And you had a good life together?”

  “The best,” she said as her eyes teared over once more. “I can’t understand what happened.”

  “You said you’d argued lately.”

  She shrugged. “That was about his family. It was the only thing we ever disagreed about.”

  “Was there anything unusual in the days before he di – disappeared?”

  “Nothing, except for the old woman.”

  “What old woman?”

  “I saw him talking to a woman across the street there. It must have been Monday or Tuesday. He told me it was just a Gypsy woman begging for money, but they seemed to talk for a long time.”

  “Do Gypsies still beg for money on the city streets?”

  “Rarely. They fear arrest from the new government. That was why it seemed so strange.”

  It seemed strange to Michael too. “How old a woman was this?”

  “Old. In her seventies at least, maybe older than that. She seemed to get around without any trouble, though she was stooped.”

  He realized she was describing Esmeralda, and he wondered what she had been doing with Felipe Glasnach. “Thank you, Miss Stricker. You’ve been a big help.”

  “Where are you going now?”

  “I have a friend with the police. Perhaps I can learn something from him.”

  When Michael first met him he had been Captain Segar of the government militia, a sort of police force under the old socialist government. Though he had received a promotion in the new republic, many of his duties were similar to what they had been. He still supervised certain elements of law enforcement, though he no longer wore the uniform of the militia.

  On this Sunday afternoon, Michael found him at home, entertaining a young woman who immediately vanished into the next room. “I didn’t mean to frighten off your visitor,” Michael told his old friend with a grin.

  Segar shifted uneasily. He was in his early forties, about Michael’s age, and though they’d been friends for nine years Michael knew virtually nothing about his private life. “Forget it, Michael. It is so rare to see you in Bucharest these days. What brings you here?”

&n
bsp; “An old Gypsy woman named Esmeralda, who can summon the dead with the paw of a bear.”

  “You are beyond believing in such things, my friend. Let me pour you a bit of wine and you can tell me about it from the beginning.”

  And so Michael told him all of it and when he had finished Segar nodded and said, “It is some sort of fraud, a clever deception.” “Of course it is! But to what purpose? Who are the deceivers and who is the deceived?”

  Segar merely shook his head. “Let me make a call and see if a body has been recovered from the river.”

  Michael listened while he spoke to the officer in charge of the river detail. “Anything?” he asked when Segar hung up.

  “Nothing yet, but I have expressed my interest. They will search with renewed vigor.”

  Michael took the photograph from his pocket. “This is Felipe Glasnach. You may need it for identification.” He paused and added, “That is, if you find anything at all.”

  “I’ll keep you advised.” Segar told him.

  “Express my apologies to your lady friend.”

  Segar walked him to the door. “Someday, Michael, we must have a long talk about life and love.”

  “I look forward to it. Gypsies are said to be experts in at least one of those subjects.”

  He drove out of Bucharest along the river, following it for some distance before turning north toward home.

  On Monday morning Michael visited old Esmeralda once more. The Gypsy woman seemed less pleased to see him than on his first visit two day earlier. “What – you’ve come to cause more trouble, Michael Vlado?”

  “I wasn’t aware that I caused trouble,” he said as she moved away from the door to let him enter. “I do know that you traveled to Bucharest last week to see Felipe Glasnach.”

  “And if I did? Is it so wrong to bring peace and happiness to a family in exchange for a little money?”

  “Where is Felipe now?” he asked. “Is he dead or alive?”

  “Only the paw knows.”

  “Then get out the paw and ask it! I want an answer, Esmeralda!” She sat down heavily, as if the weight of her years was at last beginning to leave its mark. “I do not know the answer.” Her voice was sad and tired.

  “Why did you go to Bucharest? And how did you find him?”

  “The family had his phone number. I called and arranged a meeting. He didn’t want his woman to know. I begged him to return home for the sake of the family. He said he would like to, but was reluctant to leave this woman.”

  “Louise Stricker.”

  “Yes, that was her name. I asked him to come Saturday night, just before dark. I arranged to conduct a session with the family using the bear’s paw as a charm. Felipe would arrive home at the proper moment and be reunited with his family. They would be overjoyed and I would receive the money I’d been promised.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered sadly. “Something went wrong.”

  “The Stricker woman thinks Felipe drowned himself in the Dimbovita River.”

  “Perhaps he did. He was a deeply troubled young man.”

  “Then who came to the door Saturday night? Who made those foot-prints in the mud? And what happened to him?”

  “I do not know,” she admitted. “This world is filled with stranger things. Somehow even a false charm can work real wonders.”

  “Like bringing someone back from the dead?”

  “Perhaps he is not dead.”

  “Perhaps.”

  There was nothing more to say, and Michael departed soon after that. He went back home and exercised the horse for a time, all the while trying to puzzle out what had happened. He was still there when Rosanna summoned him to the telephone. “It’s Segar,” she said, “calling from Bucharest.”

  He hurried to the phone and heard the familiar voice on the other end. “Michael, I thought you’d want to know we have recovered the body.”

  “What?” Virtually no news could have surprised him more.

  “That’s right. It was found early this morning a few hundred meters downstream from where he left his clothes.”

  “Does it look like suicide?”

  “No, there was a wire around his neck with handles attached at the end. He’d been garroted, apparently in the course of a robbery.”

  “You’re sure of the identification?”

  “The picture you gave me was a great help. There’s no doubt it’s him.”

  “Thank you for calling, Segar.”

  “One more thing –”

  “What’s that?”

  “The body was fully clothed.”

  For an instant Michael didn’t grasp the significance of his words. “What about it?”

  “He’d left his clothes upstream near the bridge, but he was still fully clothed. There’s something strange about the whole thing.”

  Once more Michael Vlado drove down the hill to Agula, passing Esmeralda’s cabin and driving directly to the Glasnach’s farmhouse. The front path was dry today, with no trace of footprints, and he knocked on the door. The son Andre opened it. “Come in,” he said. “We’ve had a call from Bucharest. They’ve found my brother’s body.”

  Michael nodded. “That’s why I came.”

  Frieda Glasnach was sobbing quietly in the front room while her husband tried to comfort her. Michael said what he could, but they seemed to take no notice of his words. Finally, Andre brought him a glass of wine and forced some on his parents as well.

  “You’ll have to forgive us,” Olak said when he’d recovered some of his composure. “We knew the news would be bad but it was still a shock.”

  “I have more news for you, and you won’t find it pleasant. As a Rom, the king of my tribe, I feel I owe you an apology for the actions of old Esmeralda. The woman is a fraud, her bear’s paw is worthless. She journeyed to Bucharest last week and met with your son. She persuaded him to leave Louise Stricker and return here. Apparently the relationship had cooled a bit, but not enough that he could openly walk away from it. I believe he arranged to fake his own suicide rather than face a scene with the Stricker woman. Esmeralda hoped to get money from you by having him appear after you all wished on the bear’s paw.”

  “But he wasn’t killed here,” Frieda pointed out. “He was killed in Bucharest.”

  “I know. The key to it all seems to be Esmeralda’s conversation with him last week. I think if she can remember it all she can tell us who killed him.”

  “What about the footprints at our door?” Olak asked. “How do you explain those?”

  “Esmeralda may have arranged to fake them somehow, though she hasn’t admitted it yet.”

  “How do you fake footprints in the mud? They were made by a person wearing shoes of Felipe’s size. There is no tree limb or anything else close enough for him to have climbed into. And if they were made much earlier we’d have seen them, or the heavy rain would have washed them away.”

  “I plan to question Esmeralda again in the morning,” Michael told the father. “She knows more than she’s telling.”

  He left them, promising to return, and headed back home while Olak and Andre returned to their work in the field. Even the tragedy of a lost son could not interrupt the chores of a farm day for long. He thought of Frieda alone in the house with her thoughts, but decided she might be able to handle it better than the men. With luck, tomorrow would see an end to it – an end to the questions if not the grief.

  That night, just after dark, he went once more to the cabin of old Esmeralda. This time he did not enter by the front door but parked some distance away and slipped around through the woods to the rear. By the time she heard him he was already inside. Her frightened eyes peered at him from the bedclothes. “What have you come for, Michael Vlado? Are you an avenger?”

  “Not an avenger, but a savior. Hush now and wait.”

  He might have been wrong. He had been wrong many times before in judging the workings of an irrational mind. But he waited beneath E
smeralda’s bed, forced to caution her every few minutes when she tried to whisper a question. An hour passed, and then another.

  It was a bit after midnight when he heard one of the cabin windows being slid open. Quietly, someone climbed in and moved around, perhaps searching for the bedroom. Then he saw the figure above her bed, saw a glint of moonlight on the dagger. It would be a knife this time, because that was a Gypsy weapon.

  Michael grabbed the ankles and the figure went down with a crash. Esmeralda screamed from her bed. Then he was on the figure, grasping for the knife hand. The glare of the spotlight targeted the struggle and suddenly Captain Segar was coming through the door with one of his men.

  “Take him Segar,” Michael gasped, panting from the struggle. “There’s your murderer – Andre Glasnach. He killed his own brother.”

  It was Segar who asked, “How did you know he’d come here, Michael? I must admit when you phoned me earlier to ask for help I thought it was a waste of time.”

  “When I visited the Glasnach house earlier I played up Esmeralda’s meeting with their dead son and the probability that she had some special knowledge. Andre couldn’t take a chance that it was true. Felipe might have told her of his plans, even told her he feared returning because of Andre. As the eldest son, the farm was Felipe’s if he came back. But it would be Andre’s if he stayed away. For a man who killed his brother, killing an old Gypsy woman would have been easy.”

  “The faked suicide –?”

  “As I explained to the family earlier, Felipe was ready to return home but couldn’t face the scene of breaking up with Louise Stricker. He left his clothes by the river and went into hiding until Saturday night, when he’d told Esmeralda he would reappear at the family farmhouse.”

  The Gypsy woman stirred in her bed, following his explanation when she could keep her eyes open. “I had it all planned,” she muttered. “We wished on the paw and he was supposed to knock at the door.”

  “But the rain came and the bad roads delayed him. You kept waiting and he didn’t come. Andre finally went up to his bedroom and there from his window, bathed in the light from above the front door, he saw his brother approaching through the rain. Perhaps he was prepared for such a possibility, or perhaps he ran into his parents’ room for the rope they kept in case of fires. A quick slipknot, as Felipe hesitated by the front door and then he dropped the noose through the open window right around his brother’s neck.”