Requiem for a Gypsy Read online

  Requiem for a Gypsy

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  Siren of the Waters

  Dark Dreams

  The Magician’s Accomplice

  Copyright © 2011 by Michael Genelin

  All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Genelin, Michael.

  Requiem for a gypsy / Michael Genelin.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-56947-957-5

  eISBN 978-1-56947-958-2

  1. Matinova, Jana (Fictitious character)—Fiction.

  2. Police—Slovakia—Fiction. 3. Women police chiefs—Fiction.

  4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 5. Assassination—Fiction.

  6. Slovakia—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3607.E53R47 2011

  813’.6—dc22

  2011005709

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Susy, who gave me courage

  Requiem for a Gypsy

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 1

  The old man in the Dodgers cap walked down one of the center aisles of the Saturday outdoor market on Boulevard Richard Lenoir. It was early enough in the morning to avoid the crowd that would be there in the next hour. As always when in Paris, he visited the huge market to reexperience the sights, sounds, and smells of the city he’d first enjoyed so many years ago. It took him, for the moments he was there, out of the modern Paris that was losing so much of its character. Too much clogging motor traffic, too many fast-food chains, supermarkets, and girls in gym shoes and baggy, stained khakis—and, of course, there was the array of beggars. Outside the market, he saw the very essence of what he thought of as French coming under attack.

  Here, the old Paris was still present: the merchants in their separate stalls under the canvas, the vegetable-stand staffers shouting their specials, the fishmongers extolling fresh cod and bream, the pastry and bread stands wafting their scent over the neighboring rows, competing with the bouquets of the olive stands, which boasted dozens of differently colored, sized, and seasoned olives. These, in turn, complemented and contrasted with the smell of the chickens turning on spits and sausages being stewed, fried, or roasted in the stands farther down the aisle.

  The booths went on for blocks, and Pascal, as he was known in Paris, made sure to traverse the whole market, picking up tidbits from here and there to keep him in edibles for the next several days. The scene was like an old movie that had been colorized, so vividly chromatic that it made him feel as if he were inhabiting a rainbow dream made of food.

  When the main body of the Saturday shoppers arrived to crowd the aisles, Pascal sighed, disappointed that his comfort time was over but ready to leave, his purchases stored in the two-wheeled shopping cart he’d bought a few days earlier. Once you get on in years, the prospect of carrying bundles in your arms, even just for the few blocks he had to walk to his apartment, becomes onerous; so he’d brought the cart, even though it was not regarded as the masculine thing to do.

  Pascal crossed over to the other side of the boulevard, glancing up at the golden winged figure at the top of the monument on the former site of the Bastille, then walked the short distance around the traffic circle to Saint-Antoine, making his way from the monument toward the tourist-friendly Saint-Paul area where he had his apartment. He walked a few blocks, and then, like so many Parisians do, perceiving that it was safe to ignore the traffic light, he cut across Saint-Antoine. The old man never saw the truck that hit him. Almost the exact center of the front bumper struck Pascal, the blow scattering his cart and groceries and sending Pascal himself flying through the air, slamming through the plate glass of a bus stop, its shards raining all over the street.

  Pascal was killed on impact, so many of his bones broken that he looked like a jelly-filled scarecrow when he was put into a body bag and lifted onto the coroner’s gurney. The truck driver had driven on as if he hadn’t just killed a pedestrian, abandoning the truck several blocks from the collision. The truck proved to be stolen, so the police could not find anyone to hold responsible, which always angers police officers. And Pascal had three separate sets of ID on his person, which made things even more troubling for them. After all, how can you notify the decedent’s next of kin, or even inform his landlord, if you don’t know who he was or where he lived? The problem was passed on to the detective bureau.

  The detective assigned to the case sent queries out to both Europol and Interpol, transmitting photographs of the dead man, shots of several tattoos found on his body, prints taken from him in the morgue, and all the names on his IDs. Let them do their job for a change, the detective reasoned. While he waited for identification on the victim, he moved forward to his next pending case. They were all piling up, and he only had so much time to spare on any one of them.

  Pascal, or what was left of him in writing, stayed on the detective’s caseload for the next six months without anything being done about him. If he had still been alive, he would have approved and encouraged the lack of action. Pascal had been a man who prized anonymity; and besides, as he’d always reasoned, being dead was a plus. Nobody ever bothered you when you were gone. “Gone” was a wonderful euphemism. You were just somewhere else. So, he was not there.

  Chapter 2

  The discussion, if that was the word for it, had now lasted for close to two hours. The relatives of the decedent—his mother and father, an aunt, a grandmother, and two sisters, all of them gypsies—were demanding action against the killers and were not listening to Commander Jana Matinova. Their dusky skin, dark hair, deep-set eyes, and volatile hand gestures were a whirl of frustration. They had come to criticize the police for their lack of action in the teenager’s death, and they were pouring out a continuous flow of angry despair. The boy had been hunting and had stumbled when climbing through a fence, shooting himself in the neck, which had abruptly ended his hunting and his life. The family members had convinced themselves that the teenager had not shot himself, but that his two companions had engaged in a conspiracy to kill him.

  Jana had gone over the facts very carefully, had read the statements, the coroner’s reports, and the investigator’s findings. Everyone who had touched the investigation had come to the same conclusion: accidental death. The youths had had one shotgun between them, using it for alternate shots at rabbits, squirrels, and any o
ther rodent, bird, or large insect that came their way. They had been larking around and become careless, which is always a mistake when dealing with firearms. It was not a conspiracy but certainly a tragedy, which was why Jana continued to listen attentively to everything the family said. She interrupted only to correct misstatements of fact or gross exaggerations, hoping that the family would slow their anguished outbursts to the point where they would listen to her, even for a few seconds.

  Jana eventually sensed them winding down, their sighs coming less frequently, their voices becoming lackluster and falling into a lower register, their eyes growing duller. She took advantage of the moment, conveying to the family that she would consider everything they had told her, reexamine all the facts objectively, and make a judgment. She singled out the father, the head of the clan, and told him that she would call within the next few days to let him know her conclusion. The family thanked her for listening, and Jana gave the mother, the grandmother, the aunt, and the two girls individual hugs. The father vigorously shook Jana’s hand, tarrying for a moment to whisper to “Madam Commander” that his son had been a good boy. Then they all filed out, trailing a small wake of tears behind them.

  Jana sighed as she closed the door. It was always like that when people abruptly lost a loved one, particularly when it involved a violent ending. There was never enough satisfaction for victims in any investigation or prosecution. There was no way that any police officer could bring the dead back to life or give the relatives of the deceased anything approaching what they really wanted: to see, to hold, to kiss their loved one one more time. In that way, every case was unwinnable; the relatives always continued to mourn, and too many police officers became depressed at what they perceived as their ultimate failure: that they could not make anyone whole again.

  Jana did what every cop tried to do for themselves in these situations: put the family, and the emotions that they had generated, behind her. She had just sat down at her desk, ready to leaf through the reports one last time, when Seges, her warrant officer, knocked at the door and came inside. He was carrying a small parcel in his hands.

  “For you, Commander.”

  Jana took the parcel, noting that it had been opened. “Did you enjoy reading the material, Seges?”

  “We’ve been told to always check for bombs in parcels, Commander Matinova.”

  “You thought this might be a bomb?”

  “Just doing my duty, Commander.”

  “Was it interesting, Seges? Anything salacious inside?”

  “A request from another agency, Commander. More work.”

  Jana slipped the materials out of the mailer box. “More work? My goodness, we may have to earn our pay.” Seges was notorious for trying to avoid anything that suggested labor. “It’s required on occasion, even for warrant officers, Seges.”

  There was a series of reports inside the package, all written in French, a number of photographs, and a cover letter in Slovak. Jana read the letter, a query from their liaison in Europol trying to determine whether a man who was the subject of a French police investigation as a victim in a crime might be identified by the Slovak police. Europol had concluded that he was a Slovak on the basis of one of the tattoos on his body. Jana examined the photographs as she talked to Seges.

  “You checked the materials. Is he a Slovak?”

  “The tattoo is in Slovak.”

  “Not the thing he would do if he were not a Slovak,” Jana agreed. She looked closely at the photographs of the tattoo. It was an image with two lines of text. The inked drawing was a black ensign with a large white circle in the middle, the circle containing a single vertical stripe crossed by two parallel stripes. The stripes were vaguely similar to the double cross on the Slovak flag. The two lines of text, one above and one below the ensign, read Nas Boj and Na Straz.

  These mottos, “Our Struggle” and “On Guard,” had no resonance for Jana. The tattoo was different from the tattoos on the other parts of the man’s body: it was quite faded and stretched out of shape. An older tattoo, Jana thought, one that had been put on his left bicep when he was very young, perhaps even when he was a small child. She rotated the photo of the tattoo on the desk so that it faced Seges. “Recognize the symbol?”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  She rotated the photo back. Something tugged at the back of her mind as she studied it. “‘On Guard.’ I’ve heard that before.”

  “A fencing match?” Seges sniggered.

  Jana looked up at him, sighing internally. The man would never change. “Thank you for delivering the package. I’ll take care of it now.”

  Seges stayed where he was, his face expectant.

  “Yes?” Jana began putting the papers back in their box. “You want more?” She paused, remembering what he was anticipating. “Ah, yes. Did I ask Colonel Trokan if he had approved your request for a transfer? I not only asked him, I practically begged him to approve it. He sneered at me, and then berated me for my cover letter suggesting that the request be granted. The colonel seemed to feel that I was trying to slough you off onto another supervisor. I assured him that I was.” She shrugged. “I had to tell the truth. A commander does not lie to a colonel. Colonel Trokan laughed and laughed and laughed, then told me no. ‘No!’ with an exclamation point. He said maybe at the end of the year. Then he laughed again. The colonel is a very cruel man.”

  “Yes …”

  Jana favored Seges with a dour look. “Are you taking it upon yourself to claim that the colonel is a very cruel man? I’m entitled to say that, because I’ve known him so long. You, however, are not.”

  Seges looked like a rat caught in a trap of its own making.

  “I … agree, Commander.”

  “Good.” She put the package from Europol on top of the reports about the dead boy. “Have a good day, Seges.”

  “Thank you, Commander.”

  He did an about-face and left the room, leaving the door open.

  “You’re supposed to close the door behind you, Seges,” Jana muttered to herself.

  She checked her watch. She had to go home, freshen up, and get dressed to go to a party being given by one of the new breed of businessmen that the country was hellbent on developing: high-profile figures who wanted to be international players and were determined that everybody should love and admire them for their ruthless corporate plundering. So far, at least, tonight’s businessman, the larger-than-life Oto Bogan, had miraculously avoided criminal prosecution and so was still on the “we can associate with him” list for police officers.

  Colonel Trokan had been pressed into going to the party by the president of police. Bogan had been a generous supporter of the minister of the interior since the time when the minister had first become a member of parliament; and because the minister was currently out of the country, the president of police had pushed Trokan to go to Bogan’s party as the minister’s representative.

  Trokan, having long experienced men like Bogan, wanted someone to go with him so there would be a witness to everything Bogan said or did in his interactions with the colonel. It was not beyond a man like Bogan to later make ridiculous claims about having been given police promises by Trokan at the party. It would be Jana’s job to refute any and all claims of special favors, or whatever problematic inventions the serpentine mind of a Bogan could come up with.

  On the positive side, Colonel Trokan might be able to get in a few words with the financier about the need for police budget increments for the new community policing program, and it was possible that he could get Bogan to put in a good word with the minister about it. The man might even be persuaded, as unlikely as it seemed, to sponsor a part of the program himself. After all, he was a budding politician, and wouldn’t it look good to the electorate if he contributed to a law-enforcement program?

  Jana got up and stepped to the coatrack, putting on her winter jacket, and then stopped herself. She went back to her desk and pulled the photographs sent by Europol out of their box, lo
oked at one of the multiple-angle photographs of the tattoo with the Slovak writing, then tucked the photo into a pocket. Jana thought she knew where she could get an answer to the meaning of the tattoo. While she was at it, she also decided to take the file on the youth who had shot himself. She’d promised the family to assess it. Maybe she could get out of the party early, go back home, and finish her reappraisal. The family needed closure, and it would be torture for them if she delayed her conclusions.

  First, she went down to the holding cell area to look for Smid. Smid was a retired police officer who was allowed to work for part-time wages as a cellblock guard. The man’s pension was miserable, so he was glad to have the job. He was old, perhaps too old for this kind of work, but even the prisoners liked him. The man was thickset and given to rolling his eyes whenever he ran into a problem, but he was also easygoing and—surprisingly for a jailer—cheerful and polite to the inmates. He was also the unofficial institutional historian for the police department. He remembered, in minute detail, everything that had happened—good, bad, and indifferent—within and to the agency over the last fifty years.

  Jana found Smid in the anteroom to the cells, where he’d just sat down to eat a late meal with a prisoner.

  The two men looked up, and Smid stood as Jana came in. He nudged the prisoner. “Get up. Show respect to a senior officer.”

  The prisoner jumped to his feet.

  “Sit, both of you.” Jana pushed down slightly on Smid’s shoulder as both a gesture of affection and an added impetus for the man to sit. Both men sat.

  “This is Yuri, Commander. He’s one of the prisoners.” Smid gestured at the man. “Very good with a mop. So I got him an extra meal today,” he said, by way of explanation for his eating with the prisoner. “Besides, we’ve known each other for years.”

  Jana eyed the prisoner. “Too much to drink too often?” she asked.

  Yuri nodded, spooning in a mouthful of food.

  Smid smiled at the man’s obvious enjoyment of his meal. “He doesn’t say much, but he’s a long-time acquaintance, and I’m so old that I’m running out of them.”