Complication (14 page)

Read Complication Online

Authors: Isaac Adamson

The paper he handed me had been unfolded and refolded many times, its creases worn smooth from multiple backpocket-ings. It was a map of Prague. The Vltava River ran like a question mark down its center, crosshatched with a series of hand-drawn lines that connected yellow squared numbers at various points throughout the city.
“The squares show where bodies were found,” Hannah explained. “The number is the year the alleged murders took place. According to the detective, this map shows every Right Hand of God killing that has occurred over the last twenty years. On the back is a list of victim names with street addresses corresponding to the year numbers.”
I flipped it over, eyes running down the list. Midway down the second column, there it was, sandwiched between a M. Husova in 2001 and a J. Macha in 2003—P. Holloway 2002, Křižíkova 60, 186-00 Praha 8-Karlín. I flipped back over to the map.
“What does this mean,” I asked, pointing to the corner of the map. “Tik-tak.”
“The sound a watch makes,” Hannah replied. “
Tick-tock
. To remind himself, I suppose, that the clock was ticking. That it would only be so long before the killer struck again.”
“And these lines?”
“Detective Soros said he was looking for a pattern. If he found one, I can't make sense of it. I was able to confirm that a handful, er, fair number of these names and locations do correspond to unsolved murders. As for the rest, I assume the detective is privy
to information I can't access. I understand he still has friends on the force.”
Through some trick of the light, the darker it grew, the more Hannah's body seemed to expand. His face looked inflated, features photoshopped ten pixels too large. Only his eyes looked normal, two small holes punched in afterthought at the center of his face. I think I was starting to hallucinate from adrenaline withdrawal and lack of food. The low light of the church and all the sad-faced statues weren't helping. Nor was the smell, a pungent, faintly sour odor that may have come from Hannah, may have just been air trapped for eons in the old building. May even have been the cake.
“A Czech reporter friend of mine who works for the
Mladá fronta
newspaper told me the hand thing isn't as uncommon as you might think,” continued Hannah. “It became kind of a trend in the nineties among organized criminals. A gang from Albania or Serbia or somewhere used it as their signature. Then other gangs started doing it, whether because they thought it was cool or to throw off police, I don't know.”
“But Soros says it isn't gangs behind these deaths?”
“The gangland calling-card explanation was created by the police department itself, according to him. A fabrication to cover up what was really happening. But then he says the same of any evidence that contradicts his Right Hand of God hypothesis.”
“So you don't buy the serial killer theory?”
“I'm in no position to buy or sell,” Hannah sighed. “I write about local documentary film festivals. New clubs, restaurants. Indie rock bands coming to town. Czech hip-hop, if you can imagine such a thing. And of course, the annual festival celebrating the wheezy organs of Prague and the miserable bastards who play them. Maybe the detective thought
The Stone Folio
would do a five-part investigative piece, make a big stink about him getting
booted off the force, put pressure on the local authorities. But we're not that kind of paper.”
“Kicked off the force? Soros told me he retired.”
Hannah said it depended on how you looked at it. They'd moved the detective from working homicide to manning the non-emergency call center. He stuck around for a year hoping some big break in my brother's case would come along to prove his theory right, get him back in with the big boys. Eventually he decided he was better off working the Right Hand of God case on a freelance basis than fielding calls about fender benders and missing dogs. Plus, as an added bonus, working alone gave him more time to drink. Technically he may have retired, but he was forced out.
“Not that I ever confronted him on this point,” said Hannah, looking again at the cake box. “I suppose I've been guilty of indulging him. Each year around this time he rings me up, convinced another murder is coming. Each August he's a little more desperate, a little less coherent. During our last conversation, he let slip that his wife had left him. At a point he became somewhat threatening. He said by not helping him bring this story to the world, I was as good as an accomplice. That I had blood on my hands. I was surprised he'd given you my card. That he might consider me his confidante is somewhat alarming.”
“Do you think he's dangerous?”
Hannah considered. “I think he's alcoholic and sad.”
“But you think he's right that my brother was murdered.”
“I can't speak to that,” Hannah said. “But given the circumstances, I thought you should know a little about the former detective so that any conclusions you draw might be better informed. As we say in our dying newspaper biz, if your mother says she loves you, check Wikipedia.”
Just then Hannah's phone began buzzing. He picked it up and stared in puzzlement for several moments, his swollen head
illuminated by the LCD glow. From the confusion on his face, I guessed it was the police. They'd found the card in the curator's pocket. I knew it would happen but figured I'd have more time. Hannah put the phone to the side of his head and muttered a few words and then clapped the phone shut with a sigh.
“Good thing we didn't eat the cake,” he said, voicing a relief I suddenly felt for entirely different reasons. “The organist has put off his suicide for another day. He'll be here in five minutes. We should bring this to a close. I hope I haven't been too hard on Detective Soros. I don't wish to seem unsympathetic. When I came to Prague fifteen years ago, I was going to be a poet. Like pretty much every other American here then, I guess. As you can see, the universe had other ideas. Meaning only that few of us intend what we become.”
After that, he recommended a couple good places to eat and gave me the name of bakery where I could get a cake just like the one he had. Sturdy boxes, too, he added. I thanked him for his time and made my way down the center aisle, back toward the entrance at the rear of the church.
I was nearly to the door when I saw what looked like a withered length of tree branch dangling from a chain attached to a metal rod that jutted from the wall fifteen feet above. I figured it was some splinter from the cross or other bogus relic. Then I recalled the entry in
Prague Unbound
, the part about the mummified human hand hanging inside the church for the last four hundred years as a warning to thieves. I couldn't tell whether it was the left or the right one.
The Cruel Geometry of Zugzwang
March 12, 1938
 
My Dearest Klara,
 
As I write to you, the sun creeps over the horizon to render the city outside my window as a study in charcoals, embellished by a dirt-streaked window in dire need of cleaning. You know I was never much for tidiness, and I'm afraid even rudimentary upkeep on this modest apartment is beyond me now. But at long last, I do finally have news to report. Such a remarkable day has finished that I scarce know where to begin.
The Black Rabbit is as good a place as any. I spend a fair deal of my leisure there these days, despite stern doctoral warnings against the foul airs of the tavern. The establishment is ill suited for a serious chess match, but it's the only venue our nephew Max Froehlich and I can agree upon. A neutral battlefield suspended in its own unmistakable gloom, faces subsumed in the old shadows, conversations muted as if by the blanket of hovering smoke.
Let's begin with me at my usual table, me fumbling for my tobacco pouch, relighting the meerschaum pipe you gave me on our anniversary, my face rigid with mock concentration as I consider the chessboard. The elaborate pantomime is lost on our nephew Max, who is busy ordering another coffee to be put, as always, on Uncle Jan's tab. After a charade of painstaking, brow-knit deliberation, I pick up my rook and send it the length of the board, capturing an unprotected white bishop and imperiling a knight. A bold move, improvisational audacity I dare say reminiscent of Alekhine himself. Max takes no notice. He is distracted
of late, preoccupied. He seems to subsist solely on coffee and paranoia, and all afternoon he's been wiping his spectacles and dusting off his coat like Emil Jannings in that film about the hotel porter.
“Have you made a decision?” asks Max.
“I've decided to take your bishop.”
“You know what I'm talking about.”
I maintain silence, studying the board.
“Don't you read the papers, listen to the radio?”
“Let me guess. A recent spate of bad news?”
March winds rattle the upstairs windows as Max leans across the table, his face close enough I can see the wrinkles blooming at the corners of his eyes. It shocks me to realize he's thirty-nine years old, the same age as our Franz. No sooner do you reluctantly accept yourself growing old than the younger generation demands you acknowledge their aging as well.
“While you worry over these useless wooden pieces,” Max says, “the whole world is poised for war. Slovakia is soon to declare independence. The Germans will invade the moment they do. Be sure of it. Then it will be too late for you. Too late for Franz, too late for Europe.”
“So I was right,” I grumble. “Bad news.”
Max crosses his arms and pouts, but I know it won't last. His silences are brief and strategic. He never retreats, this one, only shifts his angle of attack. But for once, I must admit, our nephew's paranoia may be justified. The Little Mustache is on the march.
You'll recall my account from last September, when I wrote of fighting my way through the throngs in Wenceslas Square on the night news of the Munich betrayal broke, looking for Franz that night the country learned we were alone, orphaned at Europe's center (though “learned” seems disingenuous; how could we ever have imagined otherwise?). Since returning from the war our son can't resist a crowd, gets swept up in any peopled mass that winds its way near the little apartment we share on Bilkova Street. Workers' demonstrations,
drunken Majáles spring revels, a parade for the World Cup runners-up, Masaryk's funeral—it's all the same to Franz, just another ocean of heaving humanity in which to throw himself.
You'll recall that September night he'd lost himself among those hurling invective against President Beneš for his surrender of the Sudetenlands, a crowd made mostly of angry students denouncing the French and British for appeasing The Little Mustache. You'll recall I eventually found Franz huddled in a narrow lane not far from the protest, propped against the wall like an unstrung puppet, imbecile grin slanted across his unshaven face as he clutched his tattered army coat around his shoulders and shivered against the cold. Twice in the last twenty-two years I've tried to throw out the jacket. Franz shrieked and wept hysterically on both occasions until I was forced to retrieve the ragged, soiled garment from the dust heap. Let none doubt his commitment to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, relic though it has become.
Our nephew Max breaks his petulant silence. In Austria, he says, they're dragging Jews into the streets. I remind him that just because we're in a coffeehouse doesn't make us Viennese. There was Czechoslovakia before Austria, there will be Czechoslovakia after. There will be Czechoslovakia after our chess match and Czechoslovakia after The Little Mustache, too.
Why does he allow himself to get so caught up in the narrative of world affairs? The world has but one unchanging drama. The setting may shift, the players occasionally exchange roles, but the story is always that of the powerful taking advantage of the powerless, with the Czech people typically cast in the latter role, and we Jews never cast as anything else.
Oh yes, Klara, I nearly forgot to tell you.
I am a Jew!
No joke. Not the sort to provoke a laugh, at any rate. Though I've never set foot inside a synagogue, don't celebrate Chanukah, and have long since ceased believing in any God whatsoever, I am now among His
chosen people. You protest that I speak fluent German, barely passable Czech, know nary a word of Yiddish, and can scarce distinguish between Hebrew and Swahili? You argue that I converted to Catholicism years ago to appease your family, you note that our son Franz was baptized in the St. Nicholas Cathedral in front of God and everyone?
Still a Jew!
Max tells me when the Nazis take Czechoslovakia they'll impose some decree under which anyone with Jewish grandparents is racially impure. Because my mother's maiden name was Weil, if the Nazis come—abracadabra!—Franz and I metamorphose into Jews.

Other books

The Island by Minkman, Jen
My Dear Sophy by Truesdale, Kimberly
A Tiny Bit Mortal by Lindsay Bassett
Haunted by Alma Alexander
Icarus Rising by Bernadette Gardner
Prince of Love by Donna Grant