Zagreb Cowboy (17 page)

“You, let me look at that ID before you go rushing through,” he heard the border guard shout behind him.
Thank god for Slovene petty-mindedness
, della Torre thought.

He was on the boat before he dared turn around. The young man was remonstrating with the passport control officer. Another man had only just arrived at the barrier. He stared up at della Torre, a shrug implicit in the way he stood. They might have missed him now, his eyes seemed to be saying, but they knew where he was going. And when he’d be getting there.

“
T
HIS IS ADDING
insult to injury. Pulling me away from my hospital bed when I’ve been grievously wounded and then leaving me to fester in your office without so much as a cup of coffee while you disappear for hours.”

Anzulović had meant to get right back to Strumbić once he’d got off the phone with della Torre, but by the time he’d got back from the cathedral to the
UDBA
offices, he’d been stopped by Lieutenant Colonel Kakav, who wanted to know why they hadn’t arrested the offending officer yet and whether Messar was really up to the job.

Anzulović had spent a long half-hour persuading the man to be patient. Kakav was little better than a politician. No. Worse, Anzulović reflected. At least politicians were occasionally funny.

But Anzulović knew what was bothering Kakav. Messar was incorruptible. He was efficient and successful, and when Kakav would want to control him he’d be out of reach. Messar never even let a barman stand him a drink.

By the end of the meeting with Kakav, Anzulović felt like washing his hands and changing his shirt.

“Julius, don’t give me grief. Three hours is how long you cops keep people waiting just to ask where to take a piss in that station, so don’t be complaining to me.”

“It’s a matter of professional courtesy.”

“If you were a professional, I might be courteous,” Anzulović said with more venom than he’d intended. “I’m sorry about that, Julius. It’s been a hell of a couple of days. Have you written up that statement for me?”

Strumbić handed a couple of badly typed sheets of paper to Anzulović.

Even before reading it, Anzulović said, “It’s not signed.”

“It’s not a fair copy,” Strumbić said.

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

“I’m not here to be insulted, Anzulović. You know very well what I meant is that it needs to be typed by somebody who can actually type. I’ll sign it then.”

Anzulović knew Strumbić was stalling. He read the pages.

Strumbić had done what he’d been told to do. According to him, della Torre had been with the Bosnians but hadn’t shot Strumbić. On reflection, della Torre had been standing in the wrong place to have shot him in the shin. It must have been one of the Bosnians. The tall one.

Strumbić gave descriptions of all three, but they were generic enough to be useless. He gave a better account of the car. Which was exactly the one stuck to the tree in the gorge near his weekend cottage.

Best of all, he indicated clearly that he thought della Torre was there by force. It seemed the Bosnians wanted something out of them both. What it was, Strumbić didn’t elaborate.

After the shooting, the Bosnians disappeared with della Torre. The implication being that they’d kidnapped him.

“It’s good as far as it goes. Not Shakespeare. More like Three Stooges. But the audience ought to buy it,” Anzulović said. “There’s just the little matter of your thumbprint.”

“I’ll sign a fair copy in duplicate. I sign this and give it to you, who knows how you’ll change it to suit yourselves.”

Anzulović shook his head. Why was it that nobody in this country ever trusted anyone else?

“So what’s to keep those Bosnians from looking you up again?”

“I have a feeling they’ve been taken care of.”

“What about the people who sent them?”

“My colleagues on the Zagreb force are taking a close interest in my welfare.”

“I’ll tell you what. How ’bout I photocopy this and you sign both copies.”

Strumbić shook his head, but before Anzulović could start grinding away at the detective, there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Anzulović said.

It was Messar. He looked down at Strumbić and then back at Anzulović.

“We tracked della Torre to Piran.”

Anzulović nodded.

“But he got away.”

“Oh?” Anzulović tried not to look pleased.

“He got on a ferry to Venice. The Slovene police and port services wouldn’t help, and by the time my men got through to me, the ferry was in Italian waters.”

“What happens now?”

“We’ll have men waiting for him in Venice.” Messar was one of the few Department VI people to refer to the
UDBA
as “we.” “The ferry will be there in about an hour. We’ll pick him up and arrange for transport back.”

“They can do it quietly, can they?”

“They’ll be quiet.”

Anzulović nodded. It was out of his hands.

When Messar left the room, Strumbić looked at Anzulović. The old cop seemed to care about della Torre. The saddlebags under his eyes hung lower than ever, his pallor looking even more like badly cooked veal.

“So it looks like Gringo will be back with us soon,” Strumbić said. He was pretty sure he was unhappy with this state of affairs. Anzulović was right. Della Torre could make life hard for him.

“Mind if I make a phone call?” Strumbić asked.

“Go ahead. They’re monitored, in case you’re thinking of calling your lawyer.”

“Even yours?”

“Especially mine.”

Strumbić nodded.

“The secretary’s fax machine is beyond our surveillance people’s capabilities.”

“Not monitored?”

“No.”

“I’ll use that then, if you don’t mind. You don’t have Gringo’s photo by any chance, do you?”

“Why? Missing him?” Anzulović asked.

“No. But I’m hoping Messar will be.”

V
ENICE ROSE OUT
of the distance, the tall finger of the Campanile marking its spot on the broad horizon. Della Torre had always been indifferent to the city. Massed tourists irritated him. But mostly he disliked the deep vein of cynicism that spread through anyone who’d lived in Venice long enough. The city was beautiful. Accessible. But somehow unreachable, like those Hollywood actresses on billboards.

Everything was expensive. The food was a disappointment. There was tat everywhere. Ultimately it offered as little choice as a socialist supermarket. But the setting was, he admitted, easier on the eye than anything Lenin or Engels had ever inspired.

A little more than an hour and a half after the catamaran left Piran, Venice’s great landmarks passed along its starboard side. It docked at San Basilio. Della Torre wondered what sort of welcoming party Messar might have arranged for him on such short notice. He’d hoped the catamaran’s speed and Piran’s proximity to Italian waters would be enough to escape interception by the Yugoslav navy. But he also knew the
UDBA
had people in all the major Italian ports along the Adriatic. He took his time getting off the boat. No one in particular seemed to be looking for him in the dockside crowds, but that didn’t mean anything. Passport control was a formality. Della Torre slipped into the Venetian alleys, and only when there was no sign of anyone tracking him did he think about lunch.

The plate of spaghetti puttanesca was par for the Venetian course. Only just edible. The Italian beer was revolting. A few other tables were occupied, but the restaurant was mostly empty. Della Torre watched a man come in. He wore a suit in the way a travelling salesman wore a suit. As if he slept in it, bathed in it, wore it to the beach.

“Mind if I join you?” he said in an accented Italian, pulling up a chair after glancing at a shiny, folded piece of paper that he then pocketed. He lit a cigarette, ignoring that della Torre was still eating. Della Torre pushed his plate away.

“I take it you’ve got a message for me from friends,” della Torre answered in Croat.

“You got friends? Not the way I hear it.” The man flagged down the waiter and ordered a beer.

“Messar’s quick.”

The man shrugged. He looked world-weary. On close inspection, he had “retired cop” written on his features. It must have been an early retirement — he couldn’t have been past his early fifties. But his papery skin, watery eyes, nicotine-stained fingers, and large belly suggested to della Torre that his retirement wouldn’t last much longer. Overdue for a stroke. He looked like somebody in a holding pattern, waiting for the tag to be put on his big toe. Maybe a freelance was the best Messar could do on such short notice.

“So you’ve come to tell me that you want me to go with you quietly to whatever transport you’ve got arranged for me or I’ll be going back in a box, right?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, apologies. I’ve got you mistaken for somebody else. You’ll be hoping to sell me a set of encyclopedias, then.”

“An old buddy of mine suggested if I got a bit lonely I’d find somebody who looked a lot like you stepping off the Piran ferry.”

“Your old buddy’s a perceptive fellow. And who might he be?”

“My old buddy also suggested, some other people might be looking for somebody who looked like you stepping off the Piran ferry.”

“Were they?”

“They might have been. But they had a little problem with the local cops. Something about having been seen picking pockets. They’re just having a conversation now. It’s a shame that the conversation won’t last very long, unless they’re very naughty boys and by some happy accident are found packing guns. But I doubt it. They looked like they knew what they were doing. And they won’t be too far away.”

“Maybe I should pick up the bill.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Mind if I stand you that beer? The least I can do.”

“Beer? Is that what it was? I thought it was piss,” the man said.

Della Torre paid up and the two men slipped into the Venetian alleys.

“So who can I thank for this timely intervention?”

“A friend. Of mine. A friend who suggests you make yourself scarce somewhere that’s not Zagreb. Or Venice. He said it’d be really unfortunate if you found yourself floating face down in a canal tonight.”

“Is that what would happen if I didn’t make myself scarce?”

“Could be.”

“So what do you suggest I do?” asked della Torre wearily.

“Train station’s that way. And so’s the airport.”

“My regards to your friend.”

Della Torre didn’t think too hard about who had sent this peculiar guardian angel. Anzulović, maybe. But he knew quality advice when he heard it. He walked to the station. He briefly contemplated a train but decided a flight would probably be the thing, so he hopped a bus to the airport, passing on one of the expensive water taxis.

Riding over the long bridge Napoleon had built, a sort of drip line feeding the city the endless stream of tourists that kept it from dying of old age, he felt the thrust of fate pushing him farther. Della Torre knew he had to go to America.

He decided he’d take the first flight to wherever he could catch a plane across the Atlantic. For a short sojourn. The departures board offered slim pickings, though there was an evening flight to London on British Airways. The thought of London made him cringe, but at least it was easy to get to other places from there. First, he had to buy some clothes and a small suitcase. He’d break down the Beretta and put it into the case to be checked in for the flight. He was pretty sure security wouldn’t like his carrying a gun on board in hand luggage.

Getting a suitcase was no problem, but apart from ties and handkerchiefs, he had no joy finding someone to sell him a new wardrobe. He’d slept in his clothes, sweated in them, smoked about fifty cigarettes in them, and he guessed he’d be about as welcome as a ripe cheese to whoever would be sitting next to him on the flight. But it didn’t matter. If London was short on charm, at least it wasn’t short of shops.

As it happened, there were only a handful of people on the flight, which may have explained the delay. They were meant to take off at eight p.m. but left the ground not much short of midnight. It was well after two in the morning English time before he’d got through customs and immigration at Gatwick Airport. And then he had to wait until half past four for the first train into Victoria Station. He could have taken a taxi, but he’d decided not to bother to change much money. He’d convert his Deutschmarks into dollars at Heathrow, where he’d get a flight to Chicago.

So he stuffed the envelope full of German cash into his back pocket, took a seat on the first train into town, one of the old-style slam-door trains dating back to the war, and slid his small suitcase — which contained nothing more than pieces of a handgun, a box of bullets, a carton of Luckys, and some scrunched-up newspaper to fill in the space — into the overhead locker. He kept the shoulder bag with the remaining cigarettes and travel documents next to him and shut his eyes, preparing for the hour’s journey it would take to get into London.

The carriage was almost empty except for a group of teenagers who filled a couple of rows at the opposite end. The door slammed next to him. He opened his eyes. A woman, or at least he was pretty sure it was a woman, sat down opposite him just as the guard blew his whistle and the train pulled out with a lurch.

She had close-cropped hair, three earrings in one ear, and none in the other, and was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. In one hand she held an open tin of beer. Her build was almost entirely block-like, matching her rather cubic head. He couldn’t even guess at her age. She could have been a couple of years older than him or a decade younger.

She leaned forward in her seat, rocking more than the train’s motion warranted. She struggled to bring him into focus.

“Travellin’, eh?”

Della Torre tried not to nod.

“Yeah, I like travellin’. Used to do lots. Up to Newcastle. Been to Cardiff too,” she said.

Della Torre thought,
Maybe if I shut my eyes, she’ll take the hint.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Cardiff,” he said at last.

“Thought so; you sound Welsh. Or West Country, anyway.” She took a swig from her tin. “Want some?”

Della Torre wondered if there was anything in the world he wanted less.

“No, thanks,” he said, resigned to his fate for the next hour.

“Can’t say I blame you,” she belched. “Tastes like piss.”

Maybe all beer in the world except for Karlovačka tastes like piss
, he thought.

She was quiet for a moment, her eyelids struggling against gravity. Della Torre found it hard to keep his own eyes open. At least she’d distracted him from the chest-tightening feeling the return to London gave him. His exhaustion was fed by the soothing rhythm of the train’s clacking wheels. He didn’t notice falling asleep until someone punched him in the head.

He started out of his seat, but a second blow knocked him back down. Three youths were standing over him, two holding knives. He could hear others elsewhere in the carriage.

“Yo money, be fass. Everything out yo pockets.”

Della Torre thought longingly of the Beretta in the suitcase overhead. Out of reach and in bits. Would he ever have his gun when he needed it? A blade pushed against his neck hurried him. He took three sets of keys out of his pocket. His wallet came next. They took all the notes out of it, all the sterling he’d only just acquired, some lira, and the nearly worthless dinars. And they took the envelope full of Strumbić’s cash. Other than what he’d spent on ferry and plane tickets, the rest of the money was still there. The best part of fifteen thousand Deutschmarks.

“Hey, what’s this, bro?” one of the teenagers asked another.

“Don’t you know nothing? That’s German money.”

“Yeah? You buy anything with it?”

“Yeah, you buy a
BMW
with that shit.”

“
BMW
, that proper nang.”

They turned back to della Torre, “What else you got?”

They ignored the suitcase but dumped the contents of his shoulder bag on the floor.

“Smokes in this one and some diary thing,” one said, throwing the notebook aside and helping himself to as many packs of Luckys as he could hold in one hand.

“Time to peg it, this our stop,” one of them said, his head hanging out of the window. A kid pulled the emergency stop cord and before the train had quite screeched to a halt, they were gone, across the tracks and into the night, carriage doors left flapping open. Gone with Strumbić’s money. No, gone with della Torre’s money.

He lit a cigarette and stared out into the cold darkness, too tired even to think of chasing the kids. Pointless, really. They were at some junction, without a station in sight. At least they’d left him some cigarettes. He put the keys and his empty wallet back in his pockets and replaced the items in the overnight bag.

The police, when they finally came, were sympathetic. Another single male passenger and a middle-aged couple on the carriage with him had also been robbed. Della Torre’s companion had been left alone. In fact, she hadn’t woken up until the police got there, and then complained bitterly about how they were persecuting her.

They wrote down her details and left her to take the next train into London.

Della Torre went to the police station to give a short witness statement. The policeman said he’d be contacted for a longer one later on. For some reason, maybe because it popped into his head, della Torre gave his childhood address in Ohio.

Even now he couldn’t really remember what the kids looked like. Big teenagers. Two black, one white. For a while the investigating officers got excited when they saw him limping and the way he favoured his left arm. They were disappointed when he said his injuries had nothing to do with the robbery. The punch to his head had left no visible bruising, so there was no chance of a grievous bodily harm conviction.

“There’s been a lot of ‘steaming’ on trains in this part of London,” PC Nicholas said. “That’s what they call it. Gangs of teenagers rampage through carriages late at night, robbing passengers and then pulling the emergency cord between stations. It’s mostly a south London thing.”

He had short ginger hair, protruding ears, and an innocent, open expression. He couldn’t have been much more than a teenager himself.

“Usually it’s late at night. This is the first time I’ve heard of them doing it this early in the morning. It’s not very nice for a visitor from abroad. It’s not very nice for anybody. Have you been to London before?”

“I’ve passed through once or twice,” della Torre said, nursing a bland cup of black coffee.

“Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do? I mean, the Italian consulate might be able to help out, at least to get you back to Italy. I’m not sure what they can do about getting you to the U.S. You haven’t got travel insurance, have you?”

“No,” della Torre said.

“They don’t always pay out anyway. Not if you’ve been robbed of cash.”