Lie in the Dark

by Dan Fesperman

  “No. It’s the Vitas thing. Do you have a minute?” Glancing around again.

  “I’d have all day if I didn’t have to see Kasic in an hour. What about Vitas?”

  Grebo pulled up a chair and sat down, leaning toward Vlado and lowering his voice. “I goofed. But I think I can fix things. Maybe. If we still have time.”

  “What do you mean you goofed. Cause of death?”

  “Please. Give me some credit. On that I never goof. A small error of omission, that’s all. And if I can’t correct it, probably nothing important anyway. It’s like this: Whenever I do a body, I go through all the clothes pretty closely I know you do, too. But, still, things turn up sometimes, and not always in likely places. When we were still doing smugglers it was amazing what you’d find sewn into their coat linings.”

  Vlado wondered vaguely where the fruits of the past discoveries had ended up. Probably on Mycky and Grebo’s card tables at the market.

  “Anyway, I realized this morning I’d forgotten to do Vitas’ clothes. They were such a bloody mess last night and, well ... that wasn’t really the problem, because the clothes of almost everybody I get are a bloody mess. The problem was that I’d rounded up some companionship for drinking after all. And let me tell you, Vlado, she was a lot more interesting to look at than you. So, I suppose I was in a hurry to get away, and I skipped out before checking the clothes.”

  “Understandable. And entirely forgivable. What’s your point then?”

  “My point is that this morning I figured I’d better get down here and take care of it even if I was still hung over. There were a tew tests to finish up anyway. And lucky I did, too. The minute I finished, Garovic came down with a requisition form to ship the evidence bag and the whole file over to the Interior Ministry. Anyway, I’d had just enough time to find this.”

  He handed Vlado a small scrap of paper. A last name was scribbled on it in shaky pencil, next to a street address in Dobrinja, a precarious edge of the city near the old Olympic Village.

  “It was in his right pants pocket,” Grebo said.

  “It couldn’t have been. I searched his pockets right after making the I.D. I always do.”

  “It was the watch pocket. You know, sometimes there’s a smaller pocket just inside the big one. Easy to overlook.”

  Vlado frowned. In the dimness of the cigarette lighter he’d missed it. In the old days Imamovic would have wrung his neck for this kind of sloppiness, and he’d have deserved it.

  “Well, why didn’t you just give it to Garovic, send it over with the bag?”

  “That might not have looked so good, would it. Me coming up at the last minute with something we both should have had last night. I know he thinks we’ve gotten sloppy. And, what the hell, we have. But on a case this big, well, like I said, not too good. So I figured if you still had the file you could slip it in, say that you’d found it. Or log it after the fact. If not ...” He shrugged.

  “I do have the file, in fact. Garovic took it an hour ago but he just brought it back. So don’t worry, I’ll add it to the record and no one will be the wiser. Though I guess we’d both better be a little more careful from now on.”

  Grebo sagged in relief.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I was already imagining myself marching up to Zuc. Anyhow, it’s been dusted. The paper, I mean. All the prints belong to Vitas. So it’s probably not much anyway.”

  Grebo turned to go as Vlado asked, “How was she, anyway?”

  Grebo tilted his head for a moment in puzzlement, then said, “Oh. Her. Yes, well, not worth the hangover, that’s for sure. Probably another reason this case seemed so urgent this morning. Duty suddenly looked a lot more attractive, if you know what I mean.”

  Between Grebo and Damir, Vlado had begun to feel like the office eunuch.

  Vlado looked at the scrawled address. Dobrinja, a peninsula of Muslim-held territory in a sea of Serb artillery, was anything but a pleasant place to visit. Too many lines of fire. But the phones there almost never worked, so it would have to be checked out in person. He would treat it as a field trip, try to learn something from it.

  He started to put the number into the file folder, then wondered whether Kasic might want another glance. He folded the paper and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. No sense in attracting attention to their slackness. Besides, if they really wanted an independent investigation, what did it matter anyway?

  “Another number for your black book?” said a voice, startling Vlado into momentary guilt. But it was only Damir, looking worn out, but grinning, once again the warrior triumphant, back from another successful raid on the young, willing females of Sarajevo.

  “Yes, my very fat black book,” Vlado answered with a note of relief. “You’re welcome to it anytime for new contacts.”

  “That’s all right,” Damir said. “I’ve already got the number for the office. And I’ve no wish to harass your wife in Berlin, and I’m probably the last person in Sarajevo she’d want to hear from anyway. And those are probably your only two numbers, am I right?”

  “Close.”

  He studied Damir’s face carefully, for any hint of a false note, a forced smile. But he truly seemed purged, even renewed. Perhaps the old cure had worked, after all.

  “Well, a truly busy day around here for a change, I hear. Sounds like some real excitement last night after I left. Sounds good, unless Garovic decides it’s too hot for us and kicks it over to Interior.”

  “He already has, but they kicked it back. They’ve got the U.N. looking over their shoulder and didn’t want to seem incestuous. So it’s ours after all.”

  “Or so you think.”

  “You think they’ll meddle, you mean.”

  “Not obviously. But I’d expect them to put you on a very short leash, offering plenty of ‘help’ whether you like it or not. Tell me, your first appointment wouldn’t be with Assistant Chief Juso Kasic, would it?”

  Vlado laughed. “No, it’s with the new Acting Chief Juso Kasic.”

  Damir arched his eyebrows. “Impressive,” he said. “I suspect you’ll be seeing a lot of him until this is over. And he’ll probably be very generous with offers of ‘technical assistance’ from his various thugs and leg-breakers, if I know those boys. At an official level they’ll keep their noses out of it to impress Washington and London and Paris. But if I were you I wouldn’t look over my shoulder too much. Might be a shock to see what’s lurking in your shadow.”

  Vlado then broached a possibility he’d been mulling since Garovic had handed the case file back to him. “Of course, you could always help watch my back,” he said, gauging Damir’s reaction. “And I know I’ll need some help tracking down leads, such as they are. I’ll mention it to Kasic, if you’d like. I’d imagine the ministry will want this wrapped up pretty quick.”

  “Are you serious?” Damir asked, a trace of puppyish eagerness in his tone. “Or more to the point, do you think Kasic will go along with it?”

  “Can’t hurt to ask. Who knows, he may even have to say yes. Feels nice to have some leverage on those guys for change, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is nice,” a smiling Damir agreed. “But remember. It’s probably exactly the way Kasic wants you to feel.”

  CHAPTER 4

  For all its power, the Interior Ministry had no heat in its downstairs lobby. Vlado joined seven others who were waiting, bundled in heavy coats and seated on battered vinyl chairs and couches. The brown linoleum floor was a wasteland of cigarette butts and small tumble-weeds of dust. Clouds of cigarette smoke barely masked the stench of urine from a backed up toilet down the hall. The stroking thrum of a generator could be heard from inside a small booth built of plywood and clear sheets of plastic, where a uniformed officer sat, acting as receptionist, taking names and phoning upstairs for authorizations that never seemed to come.

  As Vlado waited he considered what he knew of Kasic. He was a man with a reputation for restraint, both in his anger and his goodwill, and this was said to be a pro
duct of his history. He had been a young man of impulse and scattered energies, whose sharp remarks and recklessness had stranded him for years in the great bulge of middle bureaucracy. Once he’d passed the age at which up-and-comers generally began to make their mark, plenty of people had written him off.

  Then in the early eighties, as the rigid state machinery loosened and adjusted in the wake of Tito’s death, Kasic belatedly began to rise, catching up to more fortunate peers and then surpassing them. He moved quickly through the Party ranks under vague titles that seemed to place him as an important man in state security. Those on the outside could never be sure if his ascension was guided by his own power or someone else’s, and that seemed to be the way Kasic preferred it.

  By the time the Interior Ministry began putting together its new police force he was a natural choice for the heirarchy, and he fell into line behind Vitas as a loyal lieutenant, soon known for his ruthless efficiency.

  Like Vitas he had made his name in the October raids, supervising the heavy work in the maneuver that flushed, then trapped Zarko on the second and decisive day. When an errant mortar shell from his unit landed a block north of the mark, killing three old residents of a crumbling flat, he’d flinched, but not for long. “ ‘A small price in the long run,’ that’s what they’ll say around here,” he’d concluded on the spot to his subordinates, who’d naturally agreed.

  Vlado looked around the lobby at the others, all men. They seemed bored, as if they’d been waiting for hours. Two had dozed off in spite of the cold.

  But after only a few minutes the man in the booth rapped on the plywood and waved Vlado upstairs, shouting in a muffled voice, “Mr. Kasic is waiting. Second floor.”

  Vlado trotted up the steps to warm himself, passing security warnings and propaganda posters taped to the walls. BOSNIAN ARMY ON THE BOSNIAN BORDER proclaimed one poster, done up in a nouveau social-realist style. The black silhouette of a grim, angular soldier rose out of jagged black-and-white hills against a purple backdrop, as if he had become part of the very mountains he was defending.

  Kasic stood at the top of the steps at an open door in the pose of a tolerant schoolmaster waiting to usher the last pupil into the classroom. His silvery black hair was close cropped at the sides, and as Vlado stepped closer he saw that Kasic’s face was a landscape of sharp angles and deep shadows, as lean as an athlete’s, reminiscent of the soldier on the poster. Yet it was also still pumped full of vigor and color here in mid-January in this city where everything had grown ashy and pale, as if he’d been working out on a clean gym floor of varnished oak, all bright lights and fuggy heat.

  He shook hands, grasping hard with a huge hand. Vlado had noticed him before at joint security meetings and official gatherings, a man whose intensity leaned out at you across desks, dinner tables, and interrogation rooms, giving the impression both of earnestness and of appetite.

  The tendency among others was either to pass him off as a toadying yes-man showing off his enthusiasm for superiors or as a man truly wrapped up in his mission. Vlado had never known him well enough to decide.

  Kasic led Vlado across an open area of cluttered desks, where men in the dark blue uniforms of the ministry police busily went about whatever it was they did up here. Vlado counted five space heaters, each working at full power. The room was comfortable, even cozy

  They reached a large office with CHIEF OF SPECIAL POLICE on the door. So, he had already moved in, Vlado thought, scanning the walls and desk for signs of Vitas as he settled into a chair. He was mildly angry to find none. He’d hoped to be the first to search Vitas’s office, but it was obvious he’d been beaten to the punch.

  Kasic slid behind Vitas’s old desk, glancing about him for a moment as if still getting his bearings, then leaned forward, clasping his hands before him on a stack of notes. His voice emerged in the deep fullness of a command, although his words were welcoming.

  “Now then, Vlado. It is good to see you’re on the case. I have done some checking and found you a thorough man and a solid investigator, although I must admit your lack of experience gives me pause. Less than two years as a detective before the war began, and four years total, correct?”

  Vlado nodded.

  “And I gather you haven’t been too busy since the beginning of the war. At least not with this sort of case.”

  “Correct.”

  “I also gather that your boss, Mr. Garovic, while helpful, was not very eager to turn you loose you on this. He is, I take it, a somewhat careful man.”

  Vlado allowed himself a brief smile. “That’s putting it mildly,” he said.

  “Well, I can understand his hesitance. A sensitive matter, this one. And by all rights this should be our case. If it weren’t for some special considerations, we’d be handling it, and handling it professionally and well, I have no doubt.”

  “Special considerations?”

  “The U.N. On some days we can’t even take a piss around here anymore without three of them asking if they can come along. We feel we have to prove ourselves every day, then file a report on it in triplicate. If I had my way I’d just as soon tell them to mind their own business— it’s not as if they’re running the tightest ship themselves. I can’t tell you how many times we could have cracked down on the French or the Egyptians, brokering whores and cigarettes, or peddling U.N. passes to smuggle people out of the country at three thousand marks a pop. And we all know they’ve been licking the boots of the other side throughout the war.

  “But for all that, we, or, that is, people far above me, feel that we can turn the corner with them with the right kind of results in this department. And if we turn the corner with them, then maybe we can turn the corner on getting the right kind of help for fighting this war. Bigger guns, antitank weapons—you’ve heard the laundry list before, and it’s not going to be filled anytime soon as long as the arms embargo’s still in effect. But in some quarters, at least, there is momentum.”

  Kasic paused to light a cigarette, pulling a Marlboro from a pack on his desk. Was this going to be a lecture on the war or would they ever discuss Vitas?

  “Which is where this little investigation comes in,” Kasic said, as if reading Vlado’s mind. “Every time they catch the slightest whiff of something dirty blowing from our way, anything to do with corruption, racketeering, profiteering on our side of the fence, it becomes another piece of ammunition for keeping the embargo in place. It’s an easy enough sell: ‘If the Bosnians can’t even clean up after themselves, why should we help them make an even bigger mess.’ We thought we’d proved our point with the raids in October, but the U.N. isn’t buying it. Too many loose ends left behind, they say. And they didn’t like the way Vitas brought in a few ‘undesirables’ toward the end to help us along. Made all our positive results tainted, they said. We only set up a few has-beens to be the new lords. Still, too much funny money floating around and too many funny ways of earning it, they said. And there’s some truth to it. You look at the markets for gasoline, cigarettes, meat, coffee, whatever you want to pick, and it’s still in the hands of people just beyond our reach. And I suppose it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway None of this conversation is to go beyond these walls. Clear enough?”

  “Clear enough.”

  Kasic flicked his cigarette at an ashtray.

  “But anyone with eyes can see that the problems are still with us. Even if it’s not as obvious as before. Too many people are still profiting from the status quo.”

  Kasic then leaned forward across the desk, lowering his head, his eyes narrowing in concentration, like a big, sleek dog poking into the burrow of a far smaller animal.

  “And frankly, Vlado, although it pains me greatly to say it, Vitas may have been among those who was profiting. At least that’s how it looks from what little we’ve already learned. When we first heard Vitas had been murdered we thought what everyone must have. He made a lot of very powerful enemies in October, and one of them must have retaliated. But now it lo
oks like it may be more complicated, and a lot messier. And as soon as we saw where this was going we called you in. No sense in having the U.N. believe the foxes are trying to guard the henhouse on this one.”

  Vlado started to interrupt with a question, because now he had plenty. But Kasic was rolling.

  “Besides, I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said, pointing the cigarette at Vlado’s chest. “Enough to know that you’re a good man for this sort of thing. Blunt. Not afraid to step on toes even when it might not be good for you. Probably the very things that scare the daylights out of Garovic, but it’s what we need on this one, although I don’t suppose you’ve had a case quite like this one yet, have you?”

  “No sir. Not exactly.”

  “And it’s not as if you’ve been getting much of a chance for them since we’ve gone into business. Yes, I know, we’ve also stolen most of the resources, too. And if Imamovic were still alive he’d have never have allowed this to happen without one hell of a fight. But, frankly, Vlado, and this is not to denigrate your talents or any of your people, our people here are used to dealing with this particular underworld. They’ve come to know all its little streets and alleys, especially since October, even if we don’t have them all quite under control yet. And we do undeniably have the best resources for doing this kind of work.

  “Which brings me to my next point. Please, Vlado, use our expertise when you can. Staying independent doesn’t mean staying in the dark. Keep me in the dark, yes, fine, as much as you like. But our technical staff is yours for the asking. And I know we have a better lab than your man Grebo’s. The same is true of our files. Open to you. Within reason of course, because if your thinking is that you don’t really know or trust us yet, the feeling is necessarily mutual at this point.”

  Vlado nodded, then decided it was an opportune moment to interrupt. “As long as we’re discussing possible assistance, I’d like to be able to bring Damir Begovic in on the case with me. He’s with my department, I trust him, and we work well together.”