Requiem for a Gypsy

by Michael Genelin

  As she came down, she noticed that there was a small square of paper just inside the front door, the dark color of the paper blending into the shadows so that it was almost invisible. Jana picked it up. It was a business card for the company that had done the moving.

  “They were too proud of what they do to leave the place without their signature,” she commented. Jana handed the card to Konrad.

  He read it aloud: “Johan Krug and Sons. Quality in Moving. We are responsible for your belongings. Trust us to care for them. Foreign Moves Our Specialty.” He rattled off their address and telephone number. “The name on the card is Kathe Krug. What happened to the ‘and Sons’? I’d like to see the size of this lady Valkyrie who’s moving furniture.”

  “How far away is the address?”

  “It’s on the Ku’damm, ten minutes away.”

  “That last line of the card caught my attention. ‘Foreign Moves Our Specialty.’”

  “Foreign.”

  “I think a quick visit to Kathe the Valkyrie is in order.” The Ku’damm is the primary shopping street in Berlin, a beehive of activity with the heaviest street traffic in the city. It took them slightly longer than the predicted ten minutes to get there, their car held up by the traffic clogging the road, and then they had trouble finding parking anywhere near the address on the card. They walked to the building, checked the listing in the lobby to assure themselves that the offices of Johan Krug and Sons were there, then went up to the third floor.

  The Valkyrie was a surprise. Kathe Krug was petite to the point of being elfin, and very feminine, with an open smile for the two of them until Albrecht showed her his police credentials. Unlike most Germans, who instantly accede to any request by authorities, Krug became brusque and businesslike, refusing to give them any information on who had requested the move, when it had occurred, or where the contents of the house had gone.

  “Our clients deserve privacy,” Krug insisted.

  “This is the first time I’ve run across a moving company concerned about people’s rights to privacy,” Konrad said as pleasantly as possible, flattered by her early smile, still trying to remain attractive to this very pretty woman. “Perhaps I can offer you a coffee, a snack, or dinner at the KaDeWe?” The KaDeWe was an upscale department store with the most extensive, and expensive, food and beverage section in the world.

  Her lips stayed sealed, refusing to answer.

  “If you don’t want that, perhaps I can buy you a small hat? Or a cap, if you prefer? You could tilt it over one eye, and it would look charming on you. Or we can just go window-shopping down the street.”

  “Thank you. Not interested,” she snapped.

  “I’m sure your brothers will like me. A police officer knows how to look after a lady.”

  “I don’t have any brothers.”

  “It says ‘Krug and Sons’ on the business card.”

  “We wouldn’t get any business if the card said ‘Krug and Daughter.’”

  “I think if they knew how pretty the daughter was, every–one would use the firm no matter what was on the card.”

  Jana was getting tired of the flirting. It was evident that she had to play the “bad” cop. She put a hand on Konrad’s arm to stop his blather, then focused on the woman. “Ms. Krug, you seem like a very reasonable person. I will be glad to recommend your company to anyone in this area. Unfortunately, I have a job to do in the interim.

  “You have all these files.” Jana indicated the file cabinets along the walls. “If my colleague and I are forced to get a warrant to search the premises, we’ll have no alternative other than to take all of those files to our building to search them for the information we want. Regrettably, we’re short-handed. And, being short-handed, we’ll take a very long time to examine every cabinet and drawer, every piece of paper, down to the little memo notes you have posted on the walls. It might take months.”

  She paused for effect.

  “And, when we put those files back, horrors! Police officers are sloppy and inefficient in placing items, particularly papers, where they should be filed.” The woman was beginning to get the idea. “Everything will be mixed up. My apologies.” There was no tone of apology in her voice. She leaned closer to the woman. “Do you understand what kind of problems your company will have if we go through that procedure?” Jana looked at her watch, adding a touch of impatience to push the woman to make up her mind. “Now, your answer, please.”

  Kathe Krug’s mouth had dropped open; now it closed with an audible click of her teeth. Within seconds, she was running around the office collecting pieces of paper. In less than five minutes, she placed a very full file in front of Jana. “All here?” Jana asked, just to make sure. “The method of payment? And the duplicate on the payment check for the move?”

  Ms. Krug nodded.

  “Very good.” Jana’s voice conveyed a sense of admiration. “So much faster and more efficient than we would have been.” She picked up the file. “We’ll return it when we’re finished.” Jana began to turn away, then stopped. “My friend Mr. Konrad seems attracted to you. If I walk out to the hall and leave him here, he’ll unquestionably ask you out again. Don’t be afraid to say no. He won’t do anything if you refuse. However, if you’re thinking of saying yes, I would definitely find out if he’s married.”

  Jana walked out of the office, looking at her watch. It was exactly thirty seconds before Albrecht Konrad came out, looking quite chagrined.

  “She asked you if you were married,” Jana hazarded, trying to keep a straight face.

  “That wasn’t very nice of you,” he complained.

  “Are we talking about how we obtained the files, or the suggestion that she ask if you were already committed to another lady?”

  “Piss on you,” he growled.

  When they exited the building, Konrad was still sulking. Instead of the KaDeWe, which Albrecht now claimed was too expensive, they went to a nearby beer garden and ordered drinks, then began going through the files. The first thing they noticed was that there were two sets of invoices, indicating that there’d been two home moves: one for the house that they’d just come from, the other relating to the house the BKA were currently obtaining a warrant for. The first furniture move had been three days ago. The second house, with a telephone number correlating to the number Jana had obtained from the banker in Vienna, had been emptied and shipped a day and a half ago.

  “The BKA is going to get a shock when they go inside both the homes and find out that they’re empty,” Konrad said, a pleased note in his voice.

  “Call them. Tell them what we’ve found. They’re a brother police agency. They have enough to do without going out on a dead lead.”

  “The bastards won’t appreciate it if we tell them we went in the first house without a by-the-book search warrant.”

  “We never went in,” Jana suggested to Konrad. She expanded on her suggestion, making up a cover story as she went along. “I understand an informant of yours told you that the Krug firm had become involved in transporting stolen merchandise. When you went to check it out, you asked for their customer list, and the Bogan name popped out at you. You then obtained the complete file, which told you that these houses had already been stripped.”

  “It won’t hold up.”

  “Yes, it will. There won’t be any reason for them to check with the Krug firm since we’ll give them the file, and they’ll be too grateful to think we’ve back-doored them.”

  He thought about the false story she’d suggested.

  “Very devious.” He nodded. “I like it.”

  “It comes from many years of dealing with bureaucracy.”

  He raised his beer in a toast to her. They clinked their glasses. “I like the way you do business, Matinova.”

  “One hand washes the other, Albrecht.”

  They sipped their beers, continuing to read through the file.

  “The checks are both made out on Bogan’s Vienna bank,” Konrad said. “The man who
signed them is named Radomir Kralik. You know the guy?”

  “He’s a vice president at the bank. He was close to Klara and Oto Bogan. Kralik’s the man who gave me the telephone number of Bogan’s son.”

  “A nice kaffeeklatsch. Except, where the hell have Bogan father and son gone to ground?”

  “Add Radomir Kralik to that list. The Austrians are looking for him in connection with a shooting.”

  “Someone else killed?”

  “A female Slovak police commander was shot.”

  Konrad stared at her. “He put a bullet in you?”

  “Two, both flesh wounds. And we’re not sure who did the shooting.”

  “The bandage under your chin?”

  “Yes. Very noticeable?”

  “It’s there. You only notice it when you hold your head up.”

  “I have good posture. So I always hold my head up.”

  “I guess that means it’s noticeable.”

  “Thank you, my good friend,” she said, her tone anything but friendly, distressed about how badly she might look to anyone giving her a passing glance.

  Albrecht ordered another beer for each of them. Jana checked the file to see where the furniture taken from both houses had been delivered. The location was a surprise.

  “They sent the goods to France.”

  “France?”

  “I get the idea that they’re getting as far away from something or someone as they can. Two posh houses in Berlin, which they abandoned, forwarding their goods all the way to France and disappearing as quickly as possible themselves. It all says flight.”

  “Maybe they’re frightened of you.”

  “I admit, I’m pretty frightening at times.”

  “My wife says that about me on occasion.”

  “Your wife? You mean the woman whom you had to tell pretty Kathe Krug about?”

  Konrad winced at the jibe. “Enough, Matinova.”

  “You’ve been so helpful, I promise to take pity and stop for now.” She went to the invoices again. “My, my. The owner listed on one house, the one in Charlottenburg, is Zdenko Bogan. The one listed on the other one is Radomir Kralik. Odd.”

  “Why so odd? He’s tight with the family. He helped run the bank.”

  “Kralik told me he had little to do with the Bogans’ son.” She ruminated over the facts. “What are the odds that men who are both Slovaks, have close family ties, have homes in the same city, and then both ship their furniture to the Paris area, would have little to do with each other? Mr. Kralik lied to me.”

  “You think they were behind the attempt to kill you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And where does Makine, our friend Koba, the stuff of every cop’s nightmare, fit in?”

  Jana finished her second beer, thinking about the question. “Still too soon to come up with an answer to that question. Tomorrow we’ll start working on the dead Turk and the others who were with him just before he had an ice pick put in his eye.”

  “Tomorrow,” Konrad agreed, tossing the last of his beer down, then dropped a few euros on the table to pay the bill.

  Just as they were about to get up, a man came in the front door, appeared to casually glance around the room, then walked to the bar and ordered a drink. Jana looked at him briefly. Hard to say why she fixed on the man. Police officers just develop cop’s eyes, eyes that lock onto things that most people would never take a second look at. She looked away, then back to the man as he took a seat at the bar. He turned his head so half his face was revealed in the small bar mirror. There was a large chestnut birthmark on his cheek.

  Jana felt a disquieting chill, remembering the account of the witness to the Bogan shooting whose husband had been knocked down by two men fleeing from the alley just after the killing of Klara Bogan. One of those men had a large chestnut birthmark on his cheek. Birthmarks are fairly common; birthmarks of that nature are not. Too much of a coincidence to have a man with the mark of Cain, as Jana thought of the birthmark, coming in to have a drink in the same bar they were in.

  Jana touched Konrad on the arm. “The man at the bar.”

  Konrad turned to look at him just as he downed his drink.

  The man glanced their way, left money on the counter to pay for his drink, then stood and quickly walked to the door, pausing to light a cigarette just before he walked out.

  “One of the Bogan killers. I’m sure of it,” was Jana’s terse warning to Konrad.

  Konrad stared as the door closed behind the man, rising in his seat.

  “He came in here so I would see him. The man is trolling,” Jana cautioned.

  “Fishing?”

  “Fishing,” she affirmed. “For both of us. He wants us to come after him. If we do, bang-bang, we’re dead.”

  “Police officers don’t cower in bars.” He pulled away from her, starting for the door.

  She grabbed his arm and spoke louder and more forcefully. “The shootings in Bratislava were done with rifles with telescopic sights. You won’t even see him if you go through the door. It’s a snare. You’re dead without getting a shot off.”

  Konrad stopped and gave her a penitent look, slowly sitting down again. “I guess this one policeman is going to cower in a bar.”

  Konrad called for police assistance, and the street was swarming with cops within minutes. The police went through the whole area, at Jana’s direction particularly focusing on the buildings across the street.

  They didn’t find the man with the chestnut birthmark.

  Or the other man who Jana was sure was with him.

  The killers, whoever they were, wouldn’t have stayed around the neighborhood. Successful murders are not committed in an area where police are flooding the streets. When it became clear that the search wouldn’t find anyone, both Jana and Konrad decided it was safe for them to leave the bar and for Jana to find a hotel so she’d have a place to stay for the night.

  Konrad was not in a good mood.

  “My associates are going to think I’m a jackass for calling out the troops,” he complained.

  “A live jackass.”

  “Sometimes better to be a dead hero. I’ll get nothing but grief from them over the next few days.”

  “I’m used to dealing with it. Refer them to me.”

  “If my wife divorces me when she hears I was hiding in a bar with a policewoman, do you think Ms. Krug of Krug and Sons will go out with me?”

  They both laughed, a little too heartily for the joke, the tension of the last hour beginning to seep away.

  Konrad suggested a small, reasonably priced hotel a few blocks away for Jana to stay in. She said she would walk, but Konrad insisted that he drive her there. “They might try and come after you if you pop out from under the umbrella of protection we’re providing you with.”

  “Whoever they are, they’re too professional to take that kind of a stupid chance.”

  “It always depends on the stakes.”

  “If only we knew what the stakes were,” Jana complained. “Okay, chauffeur me over to the hotel.”

  Konrad dropped her off, telling her he’d come by to pick her up in the morning as soon as he could get in touch with his informant.

  Jana decided to take a hot shower. She stripped, looking at herself in the mirror. Not so good. She removed the small bandage under her chin. The area around the scab was slightly inflamed, and it looked ugly. She sent a silent prayer to the gods of the universe to please not let it look too bad when the healing was complete. The bandage under her arm was too complex to remove. A little blood had seeped through, but that was normal with all the movement she’d gone through since it had been put on. The throbbing soreness from the wound was constant, aggravated as well by her moving around without concern for the healing process. Fortunately, the pain was at a low level, so she could continue to ignore the discomfort.

  Jana was about to step into the shower when she remembered that the doctors had told her to keep the wound dry for the next few days. She stop
ped herself just before turning the water on. Unlike in many of the lowend hotels in Europe, there was a bathtub. Jana turned on the water and the tub filled quickly. She eased into the tub, grateful for the heat seeping through her body. She didn’t stay in the tub very long, afraid she might fall asleep in the warmth. After a few minutes, she climbed out and toweled herself off.

  She was about to crawl under the covers, but on an impulse tried to call her granddaughter in the United States. Once more, she got an answering machine. Jana hung up, feeling a large pang of loneliness as she slipped into bed. She was alone in a foreign city in a strange hotel bed with no one to reach out to for comfort or love. As a last ritual, she called her department in Slovakia, giving them her location.

  Jana had a final thought before she fell asleep. There were murderers out there who had absolutely no compunction about killing. They had tried to kill her once before. They hadn’t given up.

  It was not a pleasant thought to sleep on.

  Chapter 27

  Jana’s father had died some time ago; her brother had become estranged from the family; and when her mother died, there was a quiet funeral at the graveyard with virtually no one who was close to either Jana or her mother attending, so it was bleak. Virtually all of Jana’s mother’s friends had suggested that, instead of friends coming to a cemetery service, a memorial be held for her. It was the party way. The event was held in the same small hall where her mother had participated in so many party meetings, in the government building near the Grassalkovich Palace.

  Most of the people who attended had been her mother’s comrades during her years of political involvement. There were also neighbors and a few low-level members of ministries who hadn’t known Jana’s mother but who had been sent to say a few words about her contributions to the state. One of them was the person who had organized the speakers at the event, not bothering to consult Jana about them. Trokan had come more as a friend to Jana than as a representative from the police, although he wore his full uniform as he always did when he felt it necessary to give weight to his presence. There was also a tired-looking reporter, overweight and sloppy in her ill-fitting dress, who had come determined to pester the mourners to get the human-interest element that would make her copy acceptable to her editor.