“I’m sorry I made you think about it.”
“That’s all right,” Karina got out, wiping her tears away. “No, it’s not all right. I hated it.”
“Yes. But you’re here illegally. And they threatened you?”
“They hit me; they hit me over and over again. I had no place to go. They said they’d kill me and bury my body, and no one would ever know about it because there was no record of my being here.”
“Yes, that’s how they do it most of the time. They keep their girls scared.” Jana took the waitress’s hand in hers, squeezing it to give her reassurance. “Tell me about Kremenchuk. You were taken from there, across the border, by certain people. I’d like to know if you’ve ever heard the name Guzak.”
Karina stiffened.
“The two brothers, right?” Jana said.
“ . . . Yes.”
“The younger one is dead. Did you know that?”
Karina nodded. “It was on television.”
“Do you have any idea where in Bratislava the older one has come to roost?”
“No.” Karina’s voice was barely audible. “He was the worse of the two.” She thought for a moment. “They were both bad.”
“So, it’s not a terrible thing that the young one is dead. You understand, that doesn’t mean that he should have been murdered. What matters now is that I have to find out who killed him. That’s my job. Do you have any idea who killed him?”
“Everyone at the club hated both brothers.”
“But it wasn’t ‘everyone’ who killed them.” She paused, patting the girl on the hand. “I’ll tell you how it was with you in Ukraine: You wanted to get out of a bad life in Kremenchuk. Some people offered to help. Maybe you even paid them. The brothers were the ones who ran you across the border?”
She nodded.
“When you were traveling to the border, things got even worse.”
She nodded again. “The first night, the older one climbed on me. Then the other brother.”
“Yes, very bad,” murmured Jana. “No one should go through that.”
“No one,” murmured the girl.
“Then you were brought to the club and put to work?”
“Yes.”
“The manager of the club, do you know where he is?”
Karina hesitated.
“I won’t tell anyone that you told me. I swear it.”
Again, hesitation. “I don’t know where he lives. He did have a woman. The girls had a small party at her apartment once.”
Jana pulled out her notebook, wrote down the address that Karina gave her, then got to her feet, helping Karina to hers.
“The manager here, Medzil, is he good to you?”
“Please don’t make trouble for him,” Karina pleaded. “He gave me shelter; he gave me a job. He’s nice to me.”
“He lets you keep the money you earn?”
“Always. And I don’t have to share my tips, like the other waitress.”
“Does he force you to have sex with him?”
“No.”
“But you’re having sex with him?”
Karina nodded. “He’s kind of like my boyfriend.”
Jana doubted that. For the manager, it was probably sex in exchange for a place to stay and for work. Should she turn the manager in? If she did, she would have to reveal what she had learned from the girl in her report, and she’d promised not to. If Jana revealed the young woman’s identity, she would be in worse shape than she was now. They’d force her to go back to Ukraine, and lord knows what problems lurked for her there.
People made accommodations in their lives, and who was Jana to say what was right or wrong? Medzil, at least, was not pimping her. Jana decided to do nothing about the situation. She wrote her own home telephone number on her business card and gave it to Karina with instructions to call if she needed any kind of assistance, escorted the girl out of the room, and walked her back to her station.
“You can go back to work.”
The girl mouthed a “Thank you” at Jana. Jana walked over to the manager, who was still nervous about what she might have found out, and even more nervous about what she might do about what she had discovered.
Jana leaned close to him. “If you are mean to that girl in any way, I’ll find out, and then I’ll come back here and make you pay and then pay some more. Do you understand me?”
“I haven’t done anything,” he insisted.
She grasped his shirt, pulling him forward.
“I asked if you ‘understood.’”
“ . . . Yes,” he gulped.
“Good.” She let him go and walked out of the cafe, Seges trailing after her.
“I don’t like the customers at that café,” said Seges.
“That’s because you lack perception, Seges,” said Jana.
Chapter 21
Jana and Seges left the café and drove directly to the address that Karina had supplied. The word would get back quickly to the girlfriend of the erotic club’s manager that they were looking for her. Of course, Seges felt that their haste was unnecessary.
He did not complain about the need to talk to the woman, because he knew Jana would be all over him. Instead, he complained about the danger of the icy streets, the lack of sufficient streetlights, the fear of getting into accidents, his aches and pains, his wife’s moans about his late nights, all grievances geared to get Jana to change her mind about where they were going, until she finally told him to shut up. Her tone of voice brooked no argument. Seges kept quiet until they got to the address, an old apartment building on Cintorinska in the northeast section of Bratislava, an area of small gray stores and even grayer buildings.
They parked directly in front, Jana leading the way into the foyer. After they entered, Seges’s first words were to curse bitterly because the elevator was not working, not an uncommon event in buildings this old. They climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. Jana tuned his complaints out, thinking instead of what she needed to accomplish when they arrived at the apartment. It would not be easy to get the girlfriend to talk about her lover. Jana would probably need some type of lever to pry the information out of her.
The fifth floor of the building was like the neighborhood, stained and colorless. An uneasy Seges drew his gun as the two of them walked down the torn and dirty hall carpet. Jana quietly told him to put it away. Seges began objecting. Jana was forced to raise a finger for silence as she paused to listen at the door of the woman’s apartment. Music played inside.
“There are illegals inside. There is an off chance that there may be problems when one of them comes to the door. If the music is turned off before she gets here, then take your gun out and stand to the side.” She pointed at the doorjamb. “If she leaves it on, there’ll be no immediate trouble. She thinks she’s safe.”
The music stayed on. A woman’s voice came through the door, querulous, asking who they were.
“Jana Matinova. Karina at the Gremium told me to look you up. She said we might be able to work together.”
The slide-lock on the door rattled, the door opening, the woman’s eyes getting big as she saw their uniforms. She tried to close the door but was not fast enough. Jana’s foot was already in the way, her shoulder forcing the door aside.
“Hello,” said Jana amiably, walking past the woman and into the apartment. Seges took the woman’s arm, escorting her into the apartment with them. Three other woman were inside, in varying degrees of undress, frightened at seeing police officers. They wanted to run, but there was no place to go.
“I am not from immigration, ladies. No arrests for that tonight. So, please, all of you sit down.” None of them complied. Jana raised her voice. “I said sit down!” They sat, and Jana’s voice returned to normal. “Thank you, ladies.”
She prowled through the other rooms, making sure no one was hiding. There were two very messy bedrooms, each with clothes strewn around. A small kitchen with a minuscule stove was cornered next to a bathroom, which had
clotheslines strung across it with wet underthings laid over the lines to dry.
When Jana walked back into the living room, Seges was eyeing the women, particularly one of them who had no top on. Jana told him to wait outside in the hallway. Reluctantly, grumbling under his breath, Seges left. Jana nodded to each of the women as Seges closed the door behind him.
“Let’s relax, ladies.” There were no other chairs, so Jana pulled over an end table, removed the cigarette-butt-filled ashtray set on top of it, and placed the ashtray on the arm of a tattered couch. She then sat on the table.
“We’re now just friends together.” She looked over to the woman who had opened the door. “You’re Andreea?”
There was a reluctant nod.
The music was still on; glasses and several half-full liquor bottles were scattered around.
“A pleasure meeting you, Andreea.” She widened the focus of her attention to include the other women. “I hope your little party was fun.” She looked at the woman who was still topless. “If you want, you can get a blouse for yourself. Just come back here after you’ve put it on.” The woman darted into one of the bedrooms. Jana waited for her. The woman quickly came out, having grabbed a sweater. Before the woman could sit, Jana pointed to the radio. “It’s hard to talk when there’s music playing. Please, turn it off.” The woman turned the radio off, then stood there, unsure where to go. Jana motioned her back to her chair.
“If I were off duty,” Jana talked, trying to relax the women, “I might even share a drink with you. However, I’m on duty. That means just business today. Did you all work at the Theatre Erotique before it closed down?” Jana eyed each one in turn. “I don’t want to be impatient, but I’ve had a long couple of days and I’m tired, so if I have to pull the answers out of each of you I will probably lose my temper. Do we all understand that? I want to see some nods if you do.”
There were slow nods of agreement from all of the women.
“Very good! You see, I told you we’d be friends.” She looked back at Andreea. “You all share this apartment, but only one of you rented it. That person would assuredly be a Slovak. That means it was you, Andreea. Correct?”
“ . . . Yes.”
“How long have you had it?”
“Four months.”
“Where were you born?”
“Poprad.”
“And the other girls, where’d they come from?”
There was silence.
Jana heaved a sigh of exasperation. She focused even more pointedly on Andreea.
“If I speak to the others in this room and I find that they have accents that are not Slovak, I’ll have to assume that, in fact, they’re not Slovak, and that they’re here illegally. In that case, I’ll probably be forced to arrest them as aliens who are in this country without permission. All of them will unquestionably be deported if I take them into custody. So, it’s up to you, Andreea, to speak for the group. Their lives depend upon your speaking truthfully. Do we all understand that?” She looked to each of the women. They understood the stakes, and eyed Andreea to make sure she knew, too.
“Andreea, I asked you a question. Please answer it. All of the girls are illegals, part of the group brought in for the club to use, true?”
Andreea finally nodded.
“And it was your job to ‘take care’ of them? To make sure, in their time off, that they didn’t play the game for themselves, work the streets, cut into the club’s percentage; or perhaps to help them avoid ‘difficulties’ that might bring unwanted attention to the club. Right?”
“ . . . Yes.”
“The manager of the club was your boyfriend?”
Andreea remained silent. Jana’s eyes swept around to the other women in warning.
“I don’t think your friends are going to like you any more if you force them to speak.”
Andreea quickly shot a glance at the other women. “Tell her!” one hissed, looking daggers at Andreea.
Andreea looked down at her bare feet; Jana waited her out. Andreea finally mumbled, “Yes, my boyfriend.”
“What’s his name?”
“ . . . Veza.”
“And where is Veza?”
She looked up, a small look of triumph on her face.
“He went to Kiev. Yesterday. So he’s gone.” Andreea saw the skeptical look on Jana’s face. “Ask them.” She motioned at the others. “They know he left.”
“It’s true!” the woman in the sweater said. “He is a son-of-a-bitch. I hope he dies there.”
Jana looked back at Andreea.
“Your friend hopes your boyfriend dies. Do you?”
Andreea shrugged. “Whatever happens, happens.”
“It sounds like he needed to leave Slovakia very quickly. Why?”
“He left. I didn’t ask why.”
“Did it have anything to do with the Guzak killings? Perhaps with the brother that’s still alive? The older one?”
The breathing of all the women seemed to momentarily stop. Jana looked at them one by one, knowing, even before she looked, that the Guzak name had frightened them. Jana went back to questioning Andreea.
“Did your boyfriend kill the younger brother and his mother?”
“ . . . I don’t think so.” She looked directly at Jana. “He’s a coward. He’s the kind of a man who only beats a woman if he’s sure she won’t hit him back.”
There was a murmur of agreement from the other women.
“So he fled because was afraid.”
“ . . . Yes.”
“Of who?”
“Others.”
“What others?” Jana pressed her. “Give me their names.”
“I don’t know.”
The woman in the sweater spoke up again.
“All of us talked about it. She doesn’t know. None of us know.”
Jana got up, then walked to a coffee table where there were a few scattered papers. She picked up a piece without any writing on it, then handed it, along with her pen, to Adreea.
“Write the address and telephone number in Kiev where your boyfriend is heading.”
Andreea scribbled an address and phone number down on the paper, then handed the pen and paper back to Jana.
Jana looked at it, then passed it over to the woman in the sweater.
“Tell me if it’s the correct address. Be very careful. If it’s the wrong telephone number, if even one letter or number on the address is incorrect, I’m sorry to say our immigration people will come back here and you all will be in deep trouble. It’ll mean jail, then you go back to your countries quicker than quick.”
The rest of the women quickly gathered around the sweatered woman, chattering in several languages, none of them Slovak. The woman in the sweater took Jana’s pen and made several corrections on the paper, then handed the items back to Jana.
“Now it’s okay.”
“Thank you.” She looked at Andreea, who was again busy studying her bare feet. She had tried to mislead Jana. “Bad, bad girl,” Jana chided. “He isn’t worth it.” Jana looked at the other women. “I’m glad that I’m not suspicious and that I didn’t need to ask for your identity papers.” Jana looked at the woman in the sweater. “As for you, you are obviously a Slovak.”
As Jana walked into the hall, Seges immediately began his litany of complaints. Most of all, he whined about being deliberately sent away from the interview.
“They wouldn’t have talked to me while you checked out their breasts.”
“I would’ve made them talk quicker.”
“You would have made them sullen and angry, not talkative.”
He continued to complain, wearing Jana down. She decided to end the discussion.
“In the morning,” Jana told him. “I’m very tired, and if you irritate me too much I’ll unquestionably use my sidearm to shoot your tongue off.”
The rest of the evening was blissfully quiet.
Chapter 22
In the morning, Jana telephoned Budapest and co
ntacted Andras to update him on her investigation. After she finished, she asked if he had any information on other Hungarian criminals involved with the Slovaks, and whether they were still alive and out of prison. Unfortunately, Andras did not give her an answer she wanted to hear.
A body had been found in a small city in northwest Hungary. The victim had been dismembered, body parts neatly stacked up on the floor, the head in the kitchen stove. Whoever had dismembered the body had baked the head. The man’s genitals had been stuck in his mouth like an apple propped between a roasted pig’s lips.
“One of the Hungarians?”
“No question. We’re trying to find the others. I don’t think we’ll find them alive.”
“Any idea who might have done it?”
“Who knows? Except that whoever did him in apparently didn’t like the man. Who cuts a man’s balls off and sticks them in his mouth?”
“A person you don’t want to meet on a dark night.”
“The two cases, yours and mine, are probably connected.”
“My conclusion also, Andras.”
Andras had a man on his staff who spoke Slovak, so Jana promised to send him her files on the double murders in Bratislava.
“These seem to be killers operating on an international level,” suggested Andras.
“There’s some action in Ukraine as well,” Jana told him. “A regional alert is in order.”
“I’ll put both our names on it as contacts when I get your file.”
“Agreed. Was the victim shot? Stabbed?”
“Preliminary results indicate he was probably dead before they cut him up. No struggle. There was some bleed-out, but not much blood spatter, so the heart had already stopped. No slugs or cartridges found; no apparent bullet wounds. No blunt force. Strangulation ruled out. The coroner is examining the organs. He thinks the man may have been given some type of drug which was the cause of death. Although why they’d choose to give him a drug beforehand, when they were so willing to cut him up, is beyond me.”
“Easier for them.”
“I suppose.”
“The question is, why did they cut him up in the first place?” She thought of their use of the plural for the murderers. Both she and Andras had come to the same conclusion.
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