A Blind Eye: Book 1 in the Adam Kaminski Mystery Series (9 page)

“I need your help. You are a policeman, no?”

“I have no authority here in Poland. Here I’m just a civilian, like you.”

“Of course, I understand this. But the police are not able — or not willing — to help me. Someone not connected with the police is exactly what I need. Someone with the ability to help me figure this out. To find out who killed my Basia.”

Adam breathed in deeply, trying to figure out what his response should be. He was in Poland for a reason and he had responsibilities. He couldn’t just abandon the Philadelphia International Council. Or forget Captain Farrow’s demand that he make the PPD look good. On the other hand, Łukasz was family. And Adam had been raised always to put family first. Wouldn’t his grandparents and their neighbors want him to stick with Łukasz, to help him find the truth?

Finally he nodded. “Maybe I can help. I’m not sure how much I can do, though,” he cautioned. “I don’t speak the language, I don’t know the people.”

“Ah, but you do know people, Adam, don’t you? You are used to telling who is lying and who is telling the truth. And you search for the truth, just as I do.”

Łukasz looked up and down the street. His eye fell on a small bar tucked down a narrow alley that ran between two large stores.

“We will meet here later, after you have had a chance to catch up with your group, attend whatever dinner event is planned for you.”

“Okay,” Adam agreed, “I can meet you later. Over there?” He gestured toward the bar that had caught Łukasz’s attention.

“Yes, at
Pod Jaszczury
. Under the Dragon. Yes, we will meet here, in the dragon’s lair, to discuss the beast itself.”

A
dam spun
around
at the sound before he realized it was just a couple of university students calling to each other down the alley. He squared his shoulders and shook his head at his own nervousness.

After the lights and gaiety of the group’s dinner that evening, the alley seemed particularly gloomy. Even more so given what he now knew about Łukasz. And Basia.

Orange light from lamps along
Ulica Nowy Świat
barely reached down this narrow path and the cobblestones flowed ahead of him like a dark and slippery river. But rowdy sounds from the bar just ahead on his right seeped out into the night as the door opened to admit a lone figure, presumably seeking warmth and comfort from the cold outside.

Adam followed the stranger into the small space, coming almost immediately into contact with the blackened oak bar that wrapped around one end of the place in a horseshoe curve. A few gray figures huddled around its counter in clumps but most of the noise came from the cluster of tables near the back of the room.

Students had gathered there, loudly sharing beer and conversation with the occasional spilled drink and accompanying laughter. The smell of beer that lingered in the air hinted at many nights of spilled drinks, not all of them completely cleaned away.

Adam turned back to what he assumed were the locals at the bar and soon spotted Łukasz at the far end.

“Interesting crowd here,” Adam commented as a greeting. “Come here often?”

Łukasz looked around him and grunted. “It has changed over the years. There was a time when students were here to study, they had no money for entertainment. Or drink. But now” — Łukasz waved his hand in the direction of the tables where another peal of laughter had just broken out, combined with some angry shouting — “Now the students come to enjoy themselves. The university is very close, you know, just a few blocks away.”

“Yeah, right next to our hotel. It’s certainly convenient for me, meeting here.” His eyes met those of the bartender and he said to Łukasz, “What do you recommend?”

Łukasz raised his glass toward the bartender and tapped the edge with two fingers. The bartender moved to his taps to pull two more of the same.

Settling onto his stool, Adam took a slow drink from his glass while looking more closely at the people around him. Including Łukasz.

The man’s face was grim, even while he drank. He leaned heavily against the bar on his left arm, and after placing his glass down, he ran his right hand along his face, as if trying to wipe away the exhaustion and fear visible there.

The bitter tang of Adam’s beer brought to mind the winterized wheat fields he’d seen from the train to and from Toruń and left him with a feeling of wanting something more, though he wasn’t sure what. He never found beer satisfying, not the taste, not the way it left him feeling. He checked out the bottles behind the bar as he drank, hoping to see a good whiskey or two, but there was none.

Adam had considered his options carefully before coming out this evening. He knew the first tool a policeman had to use was information, so he’d gathered what he could, from the person he trusted most. He’d called Pete.

“
H
ey
, Kaminski.
I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. How are things in Poland?” Pete’s words came quickly, as they always did, not slowed at all by the thousands of miles between them. Adam could hear the sounds of the precinct in the background, Pete still at his desk.

“Polish,” Adam responded. “Kind of what you’d expect, but a little different.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks for the description, it’s like I’m there,” his partner responded with sarcasm. Again, as he usually did.

Adam smiled, glad to hear Pete’s familiar voice. His smile faded when Pete continued, “Hey, Julia called me yesterday.”

“Why’s my little sister calling you? Is there something going on between you I should know about?”

“Calm down, Kaminski, don’t get your panties in a twist. She needed a little help, that’s all. I guess with you out of the country she turned to the next best thing.”

“Hmph.” Adam tried to stifle his laugh. “She turned to you because she knew she’d get another lecture from our dad if she asked my parents for more money. She’s got a show coming up, she told me before I left. And with the wedding shoots she picks up sometimes, I thought she’d be okay.” He tried to ignore the guilt he felt for not leaving some money with Julia before he left. “Is she okay, though?”

“She is now, buddy —”

“Shit, Pete, you shouldn’t have.” Adam cut him off mid-sentence.

“Don’t worry about it, partner. I just loaned her a few bucks, that’s all. She says she’s got a job coming up this weekend, she just needed some help to get through the next few days. It’s nothing.”

“I’ll pay you back as soon as I’m home. I promise.” Adam tried to put the thought of his sister hitting his colleagues up for money out of his mind. “How’s everything else? Is Luis cooling his heels waiting for me?”

“He is. The judge granted the continuance.” Adam could hear the grin in Pete’s voice as he filled Adam in on the status of a recent arrest, one of the many responsibilities waiting for him back at home. “You’re doing a good thing there, Adam, don’t worry. You’ll get your chance to testify when you get home. But you’re paying for a long-distance call to check up on that slime? Things must be more boring over there than you expected. I thought you said Polish women were known for their beauty. Why aren’t you out there sweeping one off her feet?”

“Maybe later. I called because I have a question for you. I need you to look someone up for me. Łukasz Kaminski.”

“Woocash?” Pete sounded out the name. “What is that, some kind of lottery?”

“It’s a name.” Adam spelled it out for Pete. “Take a quick look and tell me what comes up when you run it.”

“Okay.” Adam could hear Pete typing in the background, entering Łukasz’s name and nationality into the system, seeing what popped out. “What else can you give me besides his name?”

“He lives in Warsaw, he’s a journalist.” Adam paused, “And he may be the grandson of Jan Kaminski.”

A few minutes going through the newspapers provided by the hotel had verified to Adam’s satisfaction that Łukasz Kaminski was a successful journalist. But was he who he claimed to be?

“Are you using police resources, using me, to draw your family tree, Kaminski?”

Pete asked the question lightly, but Adam knew him well enough to know he was serious. Pete was a good man, a great partner. And part of his greatness came from the fact he took his job seriously. He wouldn’t steal a pen that had been paid for by the people’s tax money. Let alone use the police database to track down a long-lost cousin.

“It’s not personal, Pete. Well, it is, in a way, I guess. He asked me for help. Looking into a death. A suspicious death.”

“That would be Basia, his daughter?” Pete’s fingers had stopped typing, and Adam figured he was reading now.

“Is that right? Is Basia his daughter? And Jan his grandfather?”

“Jan Kaminski, cousin to Witold, who is grandfather to our beloved Adam. Kaminski, he is your cousin. What’s going on over there?”

“He told me about Basia, Pete,” Adam explained. “He’s crushed and he wants me to help find out what really happened to her.”

“Not to be crass, but it looks from this like what really happened to her was she jumped into a freezing river in the middle of Warsaw and drowned. Gruesome, but not criminal. What else do you hope to find?”

“I’m not sure.” Adam considered the question, winding the phone cord absentmindedly in his hand. “Łukasz is convinced she was murdered. I guess I could just talk to him, maybe find out a bit more about Basia.”

“He started his career with crime reporting…” Pete’s voice faded out as he read silently to himself for a few seconds. “He may be seeing crime where there isn’t any, falling back on things he knows. Trying to find a reason. Trying to find someone to blame.”

“Even if I can just help him accept her death, that would be better, wouldn’t it? I can’t let him go on pursuing this obsession. At least not alone.”

“He’s tilting at windmills, Kaminski. Don’t get caught up with him.” Pete’s warning was gentle but firm. “I know you, and you always want to help people. The captain keeps going on about how he expects you to do something great over there. You know, impress our city leaders enough they’re willing to up our budget next year. Don’t let him down.” Pete paused, then added in a quiet voice, “And don’t get involved in something without getting help. You’re not the police right now, remember that. If you need something investigated, call the cops. We all need help sometimes.”

“I will, Pete. Thanks. I’ll just ask a few questions first, see what crops up. There are still a few more things I need to find out before I even know where to start.”

Adam used the next few minutes to fill Pete in on the other members of the team from Philly, as well as some of the Polish personalities they had already encountered.

“I want to start by finding out as much as I can about the people who worked with Basia,” he concluded. “It’s as good a place to start as any. So any details you can find will be a great help.”

“I’ll see what I can come up with on this end. Though if I were you, I’d be asking more questions about those lovely Polish ladies.”

Adam laughed and thanked his partner before hanging up the phone. So Łukasz’s story checked out. At least that was a start. But there was a lot more he didn’t know and Łukasz was the only person who could fill him in.

A
dam put
his empty glass back on the bar
,
gestured to the bartender for another round, and turned to Łukasz. “So what else is there? What didn’t you tell me earlier today? And how do you think I can help?”

Two hours later, Adam had a lot more information about politics in Poland, the tragedy of the recent past and its many victims, and the differences that divided Polish society between those eager to move quickly into capitalism and those reluctant to change. Between those who wanted to go back and expose the past and those who simply wanted to put it behind them and move on.

The Solidarity labor movement had brought the end of the communist regime. Solidarity took great pride in its role not only in creating the new government in Poland — some members of the labor union were still active in the Law and Justice or PiS political party — but also in aiding the dissolution of communist regimes throughout the former communist bloc.

Since the fall of the communist regime, Poles had looked in a variety of directions for answers to the question of how best to build their government. Some had followed the charismatic and well-schooled leadership of the Freedom Union and later the Civic Platform. Advocating for full and immediate capitalism, their leadership was enhanced by the support of a strong youth movement, the Young Democrats.

Against these forward-looking parties, Łukasz described the
Soyusz Lewicy Demokratycznej
, SLD. The post-communist party. Leaders within this party were good people, Łukasz explained; they simply believed that too abrupt a change would hurt Poland.

Basia had been a Young Democrat and an ardent supporter of the Civic Platform. She accepted her position with Novosad because he had had a change of heart, switching his allegiance from SLD. She saw hope in his personal transformation, she had explained to her father, hope for the future of all Poland.

“How could someone so hopeful ever commit suicide?” Łukasz asked, downing the rest of his beer. “Nonsense. Just nonsense.”

“This is all helpful, Łukasz. I know none of this speaks directly to who might have killed Basia. But sometimes the truth is hidden in the smallest of details. The more I know about Basia’s background, and the people she spent time with, the better I’ll be able to help,” Adam explained. “If there’s anything else you can remember, no matter how small a detail it may seem to you, please tell me.”

“I wish I could remember more, I really do,” Łukasz said for the third time that night. “It was all in my notes, I know, but they are gone. Who knows where. And whatever was in my head” — Łukasz beat gently on his head with a balled fist — “whatever was there is hidden from me now. I simply cannot remember.”

“All right, then let’s work it out. If you can’t remember who you suspected, maybe you can remember where you found your information. We can follow your footsteps, put it together all over again.”

“Yes.” Łukasz looked over at Adam hopefully. “Yes, we can do that. I know where I went. At least, I think I do. I started as always with the newspaper archives. When the subject is corruption, you’d be amazed how much the same people crop up again and again, whether now or in the previous regime.”

“Great. Anything else?”

“Another place I often do my research is in the national archives. They still have most of the official documentation from the previous regime. Well, at least those files that haven’t yet been transferred to the Institute of National Remembrance. But I need a letter from my editor to access them. And I can’t go back to him now to ask for that. Why would he support me if he is the one trying to stop me?”

“If you can’t get access, can I? As a Polish-American, can I apply to review the documents to see what I can find out about my own family?”

Łukasz moved his head slowly from side to side, his hands open to the ceiling above. “Well… I doubt it would be that easy. You would have to apply through the embassy. After weeks, maybe months, you might be given permission only to view those documents connected to your direct relatives. I do not think that will meet our needs.”

“No, I guess not.” Adam looked into his empty glass and ordered just one more for the road. “There must be a way. I can reach out to my contacts in the force back home, too. Or at the Philadelphia International Council. We are here to help forge a stronger relationship between the US and Poland, after all. That might be worth some special privileges. Who knows?”

“It’s certainly worth trying. And I will start with the newspaper archives. I have easy access to those. I will retrace my own footsteps, as you say.” Łukasz put a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Thank you, cousin. Thank you for your faith in me, for believing me and for helping me.”