Zagreb Cowboy (27 page)

“
C
AN YOU PUSH
your belly up to touch my hand? That’s good. When I touch you here, does it hurt? Good. I’m putting this needle in your arm. You’ll feel a little prick. We’ll leave the needle in because we can give you some painkillers through it. Some morphine. It’ll work quickly. And then we’ll put you on a drip; that way you won’t get dehydrated. We’d rather you didn’t drink now, in case we need to operate. I don’t think we will. It doesn’t seem to be appendicitis. We’ll take some X-rays just to be sure.”

Della Torre’s contribution to the conversation with the unfeasibly young emergency room doctor was an occasional moan. Harry had flagged a passing taxi down to the hospital, though it was only a few hundred metres away from the flat.

The hospital was a bunker of a building at the bottom of the hill. The emergency room was full of drunks and Friday night revellers with bashed faces. Normally he’d have waited most of the night to be seen. But fainting out of his seat onto the floor seemed to speed things up.

The doctor turned to Harry. “Has he been drinking heavily or taking any drugs this evening?”

“No. We had a few glasses of wine, but that was it. We’d been out for dinner and then came home, and everything seemed fine until suddenly he just collapsed. He could barely talk with the pain,” she said.

“It doesn’t seem to be appendicitis. It doesn’t usually come on that quickly, and the pains he has and the feel of his abdomen suggest it’s not likely. I won’t be able to tell until he’s given us a urine sample and we’ve done an X-ray, but I think from the general location and type of pain, it’s a kidney stone.”

“A kidney stone?”

“Yes. The pain can come on dramatically. It’s said to be on par with going into labour, but it’s not usually dangerous. Normally it passes by itself in a day or two, but if it’s a big one it might need an operation. Are you his next of kin?”

“We live together.”

“Oh,” he said, no clearer on the relationship. “I’m sure there really isn’t any need to worry about him. Do you mind taking his wallet and any other valuables he has? Things have a habit of disappearing from this part of the hospital. You’re welcome to come back in a bit, but I’d like to do more of an examination once I’ve given him some painkillers.”

The conversation going on around him was as meaningful to della Torre as elevator music. Harry was still in her black dress. Through his pain he could still see how beautiful she was. It was comforting to be in her presence as he died so excruciatingly. Maybe martyred saints had similar visions.

The morphine didn’t work, so they gave him another dose. And then another one. Only then was he in a reasonable enough state to go through with the rest of the physical exam and to urinate in the pot they gave him.

He lay there in the examination room, curled up on his side, controlling his breathing as best he could, an occasional spasm working its way through him, though now it was just bearable. He was alone for at most a few minutes at a time, a nurse routinely popping her head in to tell him the doctor would be back shortly. He didn’t mind, as long as the pain stayed away.

“There’s trace protein in your urine. You can’t see it, but there’s blood. That suggests a kidney stone is probably what you’ve got, but we’re going to take some pictures of you just to make sure. Is it still hurting?”

“Better, Doctor.”

“Is there anybody in your family who’s had kidney stones?”

“My father . . . and my grandfather. I think my father’s grandfather had them too,” della Torre said, remembering how a few years before his father had called him from a hospital in Poreč to say don’t worry, it’s only kidney stones.

Only kidney stones? He wasn’t ever going to tell anyone that he’d “only” had kidney stones. He was going to say it was like being shot in the gut with a cactus, like he’d been eating fishhooks and molten lead, like some creature had crawled inside him and was eating its way out. It wasn’t “only” kidney stones.

They wheeled him on a gurney through the hospital’s labyrinthine corridors to a bit of hallway where he was left waiting behind another patient, an old woman on another bed on wheels. She was taken in and he was pushed to the front of a short queue of three.

Della Torre still felt the pulsing pain and then the low throb through the morphine and the bottle or so of wine he’d drunk during the evening. But it wasn’t crippling anymore. They pushed him into a room where a nurse sat him up in front of a big machine. She left him and went into a glass cubicle, coming back to readjust his position: front, back, side. As he sat there having his last X-ray taken, he looked into the booth.

He stared hard for a long moment. The pain, the morphine, and the alcohol were playing tricks with his mind. It was disconcerting not to be in possession of his faculties. The woman in the booth was such a spitting image of Irena that he almost called out her name. She looked up and caught his eye. The likeness was maddening. The only difference was the woman in the glass cubicle looked as if she’d had an electric shock.

“Marko?” she seemed to be shouting. “Marko?”

• • •

“So what now? You’re in charge of the investigation. You call the shots,” Anzulović said to the younger man. Messar, he thought, would rise high with his self-assurance, his unwillingness to be defeated. With his . . . momentum.

Messar gave him a glum look. They’d gone back to Branko’s flat, but the concierge said Mr. Smirnoff had already picked up his mail. Mr. Smirnoff? He’d been driving a pink sports car, she said. Pink like a strumpet’s underwear.

They couldn’t imagine who the hell it was until she described him. As improbable as it was, it sounded like Strumbić. The hard-drinking, womanizing cop, always good for a dirty joke or a double entendre, in a flaming pink car? Then again, there was a lot that was strange about the whole case.

They dropped Strumbić for the moment and thought about where della Torre might have gone from Venice. They went to have a look at the ferry terminal where the two
UDBA
men had been held up by the Venice
caribinieri
when they lost della Torre. Messar had insisted on asking some questions, but neither of them spoke particularly good Italian and no one remembered one passing tourist among thousands after more than two months. After unsuccessfully showing della Torre’s picture around a few bars and restaurants, they gave up and went back to the apartment building to see whether they could get anything more out of the old lady. Nobody answered either her buzzer or Branko’s.

They drove past the hospital but decided not to stop in. It was late, after visiting hours, and besides, the nurses would have probably knocked Branko out.

“That’s funny,” said Anzulović.

“What’s that?”

“There’s a green Zastava parked at the corner just around from the hospital.”

“So?” asked Messar.

“You don’t see a lot of Zastavas outside of Yugoslavia,” Anzulović pointed out.

“We’re pretty close to the Slovene border. There’s plenty of us Yugoslavs this side of it. Half of Trieste is Yugoslav. And everybody’s going to be trying to get out of the country now.”

“Yeah,” said Anzulović. “Except there’s something strange about that car.”

Messar ignored Anzulović for a while, lost in his own thoughts. “If you were Strumbić, what would you do?” he finally asked.

“Find a brothel in Las Vegas. I always figured Strumbić was a Vegas kind of guy. Or Marseilles — there’s something
French Connection
about him,” Anzulović said.

“French? This is Italy.”

“Yes, it’s Italy.
The French Connection
is a movie.”

“Oh.” Messar nodded. Anzulović and his movies.

“Shame we couldn’t get hold of the Bosnians,” Anzulović said with a mild rap on Messar’s knuckles.

“We will. Eventually. When we do, it’ll be no thanks to the local
UDBA
in Bosnia,” Messar spat. What was the world coming to? Nobody was co-operating with anyone else in Yugoslavia. It was all Serbs for Serbs, Croats for Croats, Slovenes for themselves. For someone who’d spent his life knowing that nationalism was the root of fascism, the way the country had turned was disgusting.

“Strumbić, the Bosnians, and della Torre — they’ve probably cooked up some sort of racket. Smuggling cars,” Messar prodded back at Anzulović, “or drugs. Maybe they fell out. But you know they’re tied into this together.”

“I’d be surprised,” Anzulović stressed.

Messar didn’t know anything about the files or the Dispatcher but he sensed he wasn’t being told everything. That Anzulović was keeping something from him. He considered Anzulović. Had the old man come along just to keep an eye on him? “Desperate men do desperate things,” Messar said.

“Like rent a pink Merc.”

“What was he thinking?”

“Maybe he thought nobody would think somebody running from the cops would do it in a pink Merc.”

“Maybe we should look for a pink Merc.”

“He’ll be long gone by now.”

They drove through the public car park at the Mestre railway station and the one at the end of the bridge in Venice. They drove past every hotel they could find in the phone book and every public space, spreading ever more widely from the centre of the industrial town. Eventually, it took them to the airport parking lot. Messar slowly cruised up and down the aisles, racking up short-stay charges.

“There.” Anzulović bounced in his seat so that his head hit the car’s padded roof.

“What?”

“There. A pink car.”

“You sure? This evening light makes white cars look pretty garish.”

“Not that colour pink.”

They drove closer. A pink Mercedes convertible was parked in the section reserved for hire cars. There couldn’t have been another like it in the whole of Italy.

“
M
ARKO, WHAT ARE
you doing here?”

“Well, you see, I arranged this kidney stone as a clever ruse to find you because I couldn’t be bothered trying the phone book.”

They were in a private room. Irena had saved her questions for when they were alone.

“I always wondered what it would take to knock the flippancy out of you. Not a kidney stone, anyway. Though it seems to have knocked your moustache off. You look better without it.”

“Thanks. I wasn’t feeling very flip before the morphine.”

“Yes, I’m told it’s painful.”

“Like labour.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Sorry.”

“Listen, Marko, we’ve got to talk. I’m glad you found me. Have you been in touch with your father?”

“No.”

“I’ve spoken to him a few times. He’s worried about you. He knows you’re often out of contact when you’re on a job, but the
UDBA
sent some people to talk to him a couple of times. He couldn’t understand why they didn’t know where you were.”

“They’ve probably kept an eye on you too.”

She shuddered. “I’ll give you my details. I don’t live far from here; it’s just the next underground stop after Hampstead, a place called Golders Green. So you don’t disappear again,” she said.

“Oh, yes. I vaguely remember you talking about it now. I’d completely forgotten the name of the hospital. I kept thinking Partizan Pediatric Centre in Pazin or something. The irony is, I’m staying less than half a kilometre away.”

“Where?”

“Strumbić’s place, if you can believe it.”

“Strumbić has a place in London?”

“In Hampstead, virtually in the middle of the Heath, about two hundred square meters of luxury like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Sounds like you fell on your feet.”

“Sounds like it. Until he comes looking for us. Then there’s a risk we end up on our backs, in a hole, two metres down.”

“Us? What has this got to do with me?”

“Not you. Me and a . . . a friend.”

“You have a friend?” Irena’s eyebrows rose. “I guess that explains the moustache.”

“It’s not what you think. It really isn’t,” della Torre said, lying badly.

“Look, Marko, that’s okay. I don’t have a problem with it. You see, I think I’ve found somebody else.”

“You’ve found somebody else?” Della Torre suddenly felt hurt, wounded in a way that got right under the painkillers. “How could you find somebody else? I haven’t found somebody else.” Harry wasn’t somebody else. Was she?

“I didn’t know I had to wait for you to go through the door first.”

“You didn’t. It’s just, you know, kind of quick.”

“It’s three years, Marko.”

“But we’ve had good times since then. Even better than when we were properly married.”

“Yes, Marko. But that’s because they were always a last waltz. Nostalgia. I don’t know if this will lead anywhere. But it’s got more of a chance of going where I want to be than I’ve had with you for a long time.”

“Sure. Sure . . .”

“Listen, Marko, you need some sleep. The pain exhausted you and the morphine is knocking you out. It’s not really the time to talk. But can you remember something?”

“What?”

“I haven’t told this guy about you. I mean, I told him I’d been married but now I’m divorced.”

“They say that fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce.” Della Torre’s mind ambled around the subject.

“Yes, and the other fifty percent end in death. Anyway, he’s a doctor, he does emergency trauma here. There’s no real reason he should visit you, but if he does, can you be my ex-husband’s cousin who happened to be coming through town and just got unlucky?”

“Sure. Ex-cousin’s husband.”

“Ex-husband’s cousin.”

“Like I said.”

“I’ll be back in the morning. I’ll go over the X-rays with you and we’ll talk some more.”

“Night night, love.”

“Sleep well, Marko.”

• • •

“Where do you think he flew to?” Anzulović asked, having confirmed that somebody who looked a lot like Strumbić had dropped the car off, paying the additional fee for not returning it to its original hire location.

“London.”

“Yes. It’s likely.”

“Have you got the address of the place he was calling in the files?” Messar asked.

“It’s somewhere in the centre, near Piccadilly — you know, where all the lights are and there’s that statue of the angel trying to skewer people.” Anzulović had been to London a few times, including once on a holiday with his wife. His English was rudimentary, but good enough to order in restaurants and to find his way around town. Messar didn’t speak any at all.

“London’s where della Torre’s wife called his father from too, wasn’t it? Looks like the criminal conspiracy might be meeting up for round two,” Messar said

“So what now? Do we follow? I don’t trust any of the
UDBA
people in London. I doubt the Yugoslav embassy would have anything to do with us anyway. So it’s either us or nobody,” Anzulović said.

“We go. We drive. Tonight. We can get through to France by the morning and then to London by tomorrow night. One sleeps, the other one drives.”

Anzulović nodded, expecting nothing less of the younger man. “We have three days. That’s it. That’s as much as we can justify. Then we go back. Somebody’s going to be needing us after that. Maybe Zagreb,” Anzulović said, watching Messar. “Or maybe Belgrade.”

Messar’s lip curled with distaste. The politicians in Belgrade were no better than the ones in Zagreb these days. When religion dies, everybody’s an apostate.

“How’s your English?” Anzulović asked.

“It’s not. Yours?”

“I can order food.”

Messar shrugged.

“We’ll learn on the way,” Anzulović said encouragingly.

“We’ll hunt them down and bring them back even if we have to use sign language to do it,” Messar said. “And even if they’re in bits and in the boot.”