Authors: Michael Genelin
T
rokan was right: her house was a mess. She worked on it all morning and into the early part of the afternoon, and had almost finished when there was a knock on her door. Giles, his jeweled glasses prominently perched on his nose, stood outside, smiling up at her. It made Jana very uneasy. Giles knew the rules: he couldn’t come to her house under any circumstances. And the rules of the police department were every bit as explicit: police officers couldn’t privately associate or socialize with informants or known criminals. Even worse, Jana was expecting them to set up a police observation of her, and her home, because of the ongoing investigation. An officer on surveillance would have unquestionably seen Giles come up to the house. Jana opened the door, but rather than letting Giles come in, she prodded him further out.
“Walk back to the sidewalk, Giles.” She took his elbow, edging him down the walk, Giles protesting her lack of hospitality at every step.
“You know the game, Giles,” she continued. “You never come to my house. You stay away from my life.” She looked around for Spis, his bodyguard. He was sitting in a car, his face and head bandaged. The flesh outside the swathe of the bandages was bruised red, black, and purple. He appeared to be in pain. Nonetheless, Jana kept her eye on him while she talked to Giles.
“Spis looks like he was beaten. Generally, he’s the one who does the beating.”
“That’s why I came: to tell you.” He shook himself free of her hand. “To advise you of what happened. We just got back from the hospital.” He brushed himself off, adjusting his glasses. “I sent Spis on an errand. The older Guzak brother, Kristoe, was waiting for him with a club and before Spis knew it, he had been beaten into this condition.” Giles gestured at the car. “You should have seen him. Bloody all over, cuts, huge gashes in his head, teeth knocked out, four broken ribs, and bruises everywhere. He was a mess. The only reason he’s not dead is because of his impossibly thick skull.” Giles smirked at his joke. “People tried to stop it, so Guzak ran before he finished the job. He would’ve killed Spis if it had gone on any longer.”
“To get back at you,” Jana offered.
“Naturally. It was the first step to get to me. With Spis out of the way, there is an open road to killing Giles.” Giles grimaced at the thought. “That’s not joyous for me to contemplate. It hurts my stomach. I couldn’t eat breakfast this morning.” His voice took on a whine. “You owe me favors. Time to pay me.”
“I’ve given you all the favors you’re due.”
“I provided you with information just a few days ago,” Giles protested. “Are you going to let him kill me? Look what he did to poor Spis. Think of what he will do to me. I’m the one he’s really after.”
“I asked you if you wanted your favor then or in the future. You chose to take it then.”
“This is part of that favor. You told me about Guzak. Take the next step. Do something about him. Will you let him kill me? What kind of a policeman are you?” Giles’s voice was rising into a wail. “I am lost. Giles is a lost soul.” He covered his face in his hands, first making sure that his glasses were pushed up to his forehead and out of harm’s way. “Giles has just been thrown away, garbage to be disposed of without hesitation because he’s of no further use.”
Jana ignored Giles’s histrionics for a moment, looking for the officer who had been assigned to watch the house. She was across the street and down the block. It was the same detective who’d intervened between Jana and Sabina. Jana raised her hand in the woman’s direction to show her that she knew she was there; the woman raised her hand in return. She would report Giles’s presence and that Jana had refused to admit him.
“Who are you waving at?” Giles was wary, apprehensive about the woman. “She’s not a neighbor.”
“Not a neighbor,” Jana agreed. “A police officer.”
“Why is she there?” His attitude abruptly changed. “I know why. Last night, you were taken to police headquarters and questioned. She’s part of that.”
Jana put her arm on the little man’s shoulder. It was not to comfort him. “Giles had better tell me how Giles knows this fact, or Giles will find himself behind bars again.” Jana’s voice was cold and threatening. “I asked a question of Giles. How does he know?”
“You don’t have to accuse me, Commander,” Giles pouted. Then his pout turned into a sly, knowing look. “All right,” he acknowledged. “By a strange coincidence I learned about this. People who ordinarily would never talk to me ‘revealed’ you’d been brought to the main police station. They told me about the other people as well. It’s all over Bratislava. Pick up the newspaper. Your name’s not mentioned, but others are. It doesn’t take much to extrapolate from the facts set forth.”
He removed her hand from his shoulder, letting it down gently. “I’m not spying on you like your own people are. Don’t even think that, dear Commander.” He brushed off his shoulder where her hand had just rested. “Lint gathers on the oil left by a human touch.”
Sometimes Giles drove her crazy with his idiosyncrasies. She had to fight the urge to throttle him. It was worse today, when she had very little patience to wait the little man out.
“Giles, you’re smug. Self-satisfied. And irritating. Those aren’t great traits for a man in your business. Then again, you’re always like this when you have information to sell. You need to realize that I’ve no credit or money to buy with unless you have the goods that I want. I told you before: one hand washes the other. What kind of merchandise do you have for me today?”
He put on a woebegone expression. “Ah, you want more, always more, in return for helping poor Giles.”
“You need protection. Is that behind your visit to me?”
“I don’t want protection. People like me can’t walk around with police officers as bodyguards. It’s bad for business. I just want Guzak out of the way. Deal with him. Arrest him for what he did to Spis.”
“We can put more men on it.”
“Good. More men. That’s a start. What else can you do to get him?” He snapped his fingers. “I know, post a reward. Put out a full-scale alert for the pig. Can you do that?”
“I can,” Jana acknowledged.
“Decided, then.”
Giles stuck his hand out, hoping to seal the contract with a handclasp. Jana ignored it.
“What is it?” Giles asked, appearing bewildered.
“Your information, Giles.”
“Yes, that.” A look of disdain appeared on his face. “Always tit for tat with you. Why isn’t friendship more meaningful for police officers?”
“Giles, I told you before, we’re not friends.”
“I refuse to believe that, not after all we’ve been through together.”
“We haven’t been through anything together. If you remember, I was the one who put you in prison.”
Giles ignored her statement, played at pondering what he should tell her, seemed to decide that he couldn’t get any more favors from her, and came out with what he had.
“A person working in parliament is involved. This person is helping to ship goods in and out of Slovakia. Exchanges are being made, which that individual is facilitating.”
“Drugs?”
“I tried to find out, but this is a very closed circle. I can’t get to anyone inside.”
Jana lost patience, her voice becoming abrupt.
“Giles, there must be hints. Anything would be helpful.”
“Commander, if I knew what they were bringing in or what they were taking out, or who was doing it, I might have asked to participate.” He was whining again. “Not that I would involve myself in anything illegal. Just, perhaps, to facilitate things. You know?”
“I know.”
“I’ve been trying to identify this person of influence. No one knows who it is, or they don’t want to tell me. The street says that this person has influential friends as well. Be wary, Commander.”
“It’s very comforting to know that you care about my welfare, Giles.” Her tone was acerbic. “And you, you watch out for Guzak.”
“Don’t forget our agreement.” He backed off a few steps, then went to his car. He had a brief conversation with Spis, then they drove off. Jana waited until they were out of sight, then walked over to the detective assigned to the surveillance on her.
“Hello, again.”
“Hello to you as well.”
Jana noted with approval that she was not at all abashed at Jana’s coming over to speak to her.
“I didn’t get your name last night.”
“Marta Hrdlicka.”
“Marta, I came over to make sure that you would not do me any favor by failing to report that I received a visitor.”
“I intend to report it, Commander.”
“Good. I’ll be filing a report on my own.”
“I thought you might, Commander.”
“Marta, tell your boss, the captain, that he could be right. At least one of the people he interrogated last night may be criminally involved. It may be a member of parliament; it may be an
apparatchik
who works there.”
“I’ll tell him, Commander.”
“I’ll be looking into it. If I obtain any information of use, he’ll be informed. I don’t trust a lot of the people who are working with him. If he has any messages for me, tell him I want you to deliver them. Understood?”
“Yes, Commander.” Marta smiled. She had just been brought further into the game by Jana. It would enhance her career. It might even lead to promotion.
Jana walked back to her house, prepared to go back to work at headquarters, wondering, when she got back to her office, how the men under her command would respond to a boss currently under suspicion of being a criminal.
E
veryone assiduously avoided mentioning Jana’s involvement as a possible suspect. They went about their business and, when they had contact with Jana, avoided any topic other than the one at hand. Things were stiff and overly polite, but it could have been much worse. Seges tried to avoid Jana, confining himself to his office, making rare forays for coffee. Jana welcomed his absence, and used the time to go over her notes. The call from Nepal was first on her list. She dialed the Nepal number that had been logged by the phone tap in Ukraine. The operator of the Yak N’ Yeti Hotel in Kathmandu answered in English. Jana asked for the desk manager. After they spoke for a minute or two, he transferred her to the business office.
Jana gave them Solti’s name. There was a long silence. Then the person in the office said Jana should talk to the hotel director. When the director finally came on the line, he was suspicious;
too
suspicious for a simple call of this nature. Jana had to assure him over and over again that she was a police officer and that she was calling on official business. One oddity that Jana picked up immediately was that the director of the hotel knew Solti’s name as soon as she mentioned it, not even requiring her to spell it.
“Mr. Solti was a guest,” he finally acknowledged, adding that the guest’s first name was Josef.
“Do you have a home address for Josef Solti?”
After a pause, the director gave her an address in Hungary. Jana asked if Solti’s bill had listed any outgoing phone charges, and, if so, the phone numbers. There were noises and a pause as the man searched through his records. He told her the charges, then rattled off several telephone numbers that had been called. One was in Hungary, which Jana recognized immediately as the phone number for the house where the man had been reported dismembered. Another was in Vienna. There were two other calls to a number that had been the subject of the tap in Ukraine. The last was to a number in Bratislava. She would have to look that one up.
Jana thanked him and was about to hang up when she realized that he had not responded to her expression of gratitude. All hotel employees, particularly at the top levels, were unfailingly polite. There was something more, an unusual event. Perhaps Solti had not paid his bill; perhaps he had had an altercation with the staff, which the director was reluctant to volunteer. Jana probed for it.
“Was the bill paid?”
“We had an imprint from his credit card. It was taken at the time of registration. The bill was run through it.”
Jana almost kicked herself for not asking about the card first. They could run its number, get an account of his travels, and profile Solti on his spending habits. The director recited the credit card number.
It still did not feel right to Jana. They generally took an imprint of the card again at checkout, ripping up the first imprint since it was required merely as a security measure.
“Solti wasn’t there to pay the bill himself. Why?”
“Are you sure you’re with the police?”
Jana intuited what had happened to Solti.
“Was he killed in the hotel?”
There was silence on the other end. The director finally coughed.
“He was killed while on a hike. We did not sponsor the hike, so we have no legal responsibility for his death. That has to be understood. An assistant manager merely suggested to Mr. Solti that he might enjoy participating in a hike that took place every Saturday. We have discussed the matter with the assistant manager and are convinced that Mr. Solti went on the hike solely because it was called to his attention.”
When the director had finished his disclaimer, Jana reassured him that she believed the hotel was not responsible. There was an audible sigh of relief over the phone.
“I think the way they killed him was horrible. I was asked to identify his body, and it was almost impossible. They shot him in the head. Awful.” He was now twittering, ridding himself of anxiety surrounding the death of his guest. “Why they would do that to anyone is beyond me.”
“Who did it?”
“The government people think it may have been Maoists. They acted like typical Maoists; a gang of them confronted the hikers.”
“Was anyone else killed or injured? Anyone threatened or robbed?”
“The bandits let everyone go after they killed Mr. Solti. He was trying to get away, and the Maoists wouldn’t permit it. I personally think they were shocked themselves at what they had done, and so left without doing anything to the other hikers.”
Jana knew better. The killers weren’t shocked. They’d accomplished what they’d set out to do, then vanished into the hills. Jana asked the director what had become of Solti’s personal belongings. The director twittered again. The hotel had shipped them, at the hotel’s cost, the director stressed, to the home address Solti had given when he’d checked in.
Jana thanked the man, hung up, then went to the next number on the phone tap list, the Bratislava number that seemed so familiar. As soon as she began dialing, she recognized the telephone number of the Slovak parliament, the same Bratislava number that the dead Guzak brother had had.
The voice that answered was unmistakable. The loud, gravelly tones of Sila Covic grated through the phone. Jana stifled her surprise. At Jana’s insistence, Covic agreed to a meeting if Jana could make it within the next hour. Jana hung up, then realized that in the present circumstances, she had better have a witness present. She needed backup.
Jana didn’t want Seges along. Who else could she use? She needed a police officer who would not be worried about the damage to his career that association with her might generate. She called Jarov, the cop who she had forced Seges to relieve from sentry duty. He owed Jana a favor, and would make a good observer. They arranged to meet at parliament.
The encounter with Covic got off to a strange start. There was no secretary in the anteroom to Covic’s office, so Jana knocked lightly on the inner office door. When there was no response, she and Jarov walked in. Covic was sitting on her built-up chair behind her desk, her eyes closed, her hands in a praying position, meditating.
Jana waited a full minute; then she and Jarov pulled chairs up to the desk and sat. After a brief interval, Covic lowered her hands, opened her eyes, and regarded both police officers with wide eyes as if she could not understand who they were or what they were doing in her office. Jana felt compelled to reintroduce herself.
“Police Commander Jana Matinova. This is Officer Jarov.”
Covic began the conversation without any pretense of courtesy. “Why are you here?”
“I called for the appointment,” Jana reminded her. “I have to ask you a few questions about a murder investigation we’re conducting.”
Covic stared at Jana as if she was insane. “I thought you were here for the other thing.” She meant the corruption investigation. “What could I have to do with murder? Who was murdered?”
“Two killings took place in Bratislava this past week.”
Covic shifted her body to a more comfortable position, looking incongruously childlike in the full-sized chair.
“I read about it. Who were they, and why do you imagine that I had anything to do with them?”
“Do you know a man named Josef Solti? Or a man named Veza?”
Covic looked blank.
“No.” She stopped herself. “Maybe. I don’t recognize the names. I’ve a great memory for names, but I meet a hundred new people a day on this job, so it’s possible I may have met them, yet not remembered them.”
Jana read Covic the telephone number that had both been called by Solti and found in Guzak the Younger’s pocket.
“My office telephone number,” acknowledged Covic.
“If you don’t know them, why would they call here, Madame Covic?”
Covic laughed, not a pleasant sound.
“Because of my public image, I get calls in this office for many of the members of parliament. If my secretary is here, she takes them and forwards them. If I’m here alone, I tell the caller at the other end to dial directly, and give them the number. But, if I think the caller is crazy or has an ax to grind, I hang up. Most of the time, during the day my phone is so busy they won’t get through. Which is why I meditate. Otherwise I’d smash the phone to pieces.”
Jana’s hopes fell. There would be no way to connect Covic directly with any of the calls to the office. There was no use leveling an accusation.
On the off chance that she might know him, Jana mentioned the name Vlad Markus, the man who had been murdered and cut up in Hungary. For a split second, Jana thought she saw a sign of recognition. But if Covic knew the name, she recovered so quickly that Jana could not be sure.
There was a knock at the office door. Ivan Boryda stepped inside. He was surprised at seeing Jana and Jarov. Jana felt some of the same surprise at seeing him. Boryda was no longer a simple member of parliament: he was a deputy prime minister in the new government.
“Good afternoon, Ivan,” said Covic, her voice softening. Covic knew who she had to be nice to. Now that he was a deputy prime minister, Boryda was one of them.
Boryda didn’t bother to return Covic’s greeting, focusing instead on Jana.
“How are you, Commander? I saw you at that debacle last night. Ugly, wasn’t it? Nothing will come of it. That captain’s looking to make headlines, like so many of them.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Covic. “Any calls for me?”
“Nothing for you.”
“Thank you.” He nodded at Jana, then walked out.
“You see,” Covic made a point. “They all come in here for their messages.”
“He’s a deputy minister, not a member of parliament. Why do you take his calls?”
“He
was
a member, so calls still come for him here.”
Jarov finally jumped in. “He must have a cell phone. Every politician has a cell phone, at public expense.”
Covic shrugged. “They don’t give out their cell phone numbers except to people they’re close to.” She looked at Jana. “We are through, I hope. I’ve things to do.”
Jana and Jarov left Covic still sitting at her desk, calling people on her desk phone.
Jarov snickered. “Now I know why gnomes are the bad people in fairy tales.”
Jana didn’t like the comment.
On the other hand, she acknowledged to herself, there was some truth in applying it in Covic’s case. The woman would have fit into one of the Grimms’ fairy tales very easily.