Budapest Noir (27 page)

“In a certain sense, yes.”

“What sense?”

“I’d rather tell you in person. And we should talk about two women as well.”

“Who?”

“One is named Fanny,” replied Gordon, “and the other, Irma.”

“I can’t talk now.”

“When, then?”

“What would you say to an early lunch—at noon?”

“Fine by me. Where?”

“The Guinea Fowl, on Bástya Street. Know the place?”

“I know it,” said Gordon, putting down the receiver.

Krisztina glanced at Gordon only for a moment before going back to her drawing. Gordon went to the desk and took out a little notebook packed full of addresses from a drawer. He paged through it and dialed again.

“Hullo,” said a man with a strong British accent at the other end of the line.

“This is Gordon. Do you have an hour to spare this morning?”

“An hour?”

“An hour and a half.”

“An hour and a half?”

“That’s all.”

“I’m sure I do,” replied the man.

“Ten o’clock in the Abbázia?”

“I’ll be there. Cheerio!”

“Bye,” said Gordon, putting down the receiver.

He put on his trench coat and stopped in the doorway on his way out.

“Are you off already?” asked Krisztina.

“I’ve got to go,” replied Gordon. “I’ll call you tonight from the newsroom.”

“Whatever you want,” replied Krisztina, leaning over her paper once again.

G
ordon glanced at his watch. It was just past 11:30
A.M.
He waved a hand to the waiter to bring the bill. The man seated across from Gordon closed his notebook. “Lord Beaverbrook will decide if we’ll start writing about Hungarian politicians and their love lives,” said the correspondent from the
Daily Express.
“I can’t promise a thing.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else,” Gordon replied.

“I can’t just base this on gossip, either,” said the journalist from under a shock of thick red hair.

“I know.”

“You think this Margo will help me?”

“I’ll have a chat with her.”

“You do that.” He paused momentarily. “I admit I’ve heard some of this already. This sort of thing isn’t customary back in our country.”

“That’s precisely why it could be interesting.”

“I’ll ask around, too,” said the Englishman with a nod.

Gordon paid the bill, shook hands with the correspondent, and boarded a tram in front of the coffeehouse. On Berlin Square he transferred to another to Calvin Square. He walked along Kecskeméti Street, turning onto Bástya, and was already in the Guinea Fowl a couple of minutes before noon. Gordon took a quick look around the restaurant’s dimly lit interior but did not see Gellért. The tables were occupied mostly by men: a mix of students and instructors from the nearby Pázmány Péter Catholic University. Even though it was midday, the place was still not full. Not just anyone could afford to dine at the Guinea Fowl.

The waiter led Gordon to a table in the back and asked Gordon what he’d like.

“Just a coffee for now.”

He had just opened a newspaper when the chief inspector appeared beside the table. A drenched jacket hung from his lanky frame, water trickling off his umbrella, his hat sopping wet.

“Lovely,” he said by way of greeting, “I see that you stayed dry.”

“I arrived before the rain.”

“Have you ordered already?”

“Not yet.”

Gellért waved for the waiter, who took away his jacket, hat, and umbrella, then brought them two menus. Gordon ordered a large bowl of consommé including not one but two eggs, and Gellért ordered beef paprikash sautéed with red wine, potatoes, and lard-fried onions.

“So what do you want to know,” said Gellért, leaning back in his chair.

“You still owe me the story of what happened to Róna,” Gordon replied.

The detective cast Gordon a look of surprise. “Róna? You want to talk to me about Róna?”

“Of course. I need to hand in the article.”

“Well,” said Gellért, lighting up a thin cigar, “I’m unable to tell you much, really. The court proceedings aren’t over yet, so officially I can’t even talk about the case.”

“Then unofficially.”

The detective raised his eyebrows. “Naturally enough,” he began, “Róna was
not
bribed. It’s just that in the course of another investigation, he’d gotten himself neck-deep in something he shouldn’t have.”

“Just what that was, you can’t say.”

Gellért nodded. “He’ll be acquitted, but since he got the detective corps into a sticky situation, he’ll be transferred. He won’t lose his job, but for a while he’ll have to investigate railway thefts.”

“This doesn’t have the makings of an article,” Gordon observed.

“I told you from the start not to bother with it. Not that it did any good.”

Gordon did not reply. The waiter arrived with the soup and the beef paprikash. Over lunch they stuck to neutral topics—the Spanish Civil War, Mussolini, and the Belgian king’s decision to build up his army because of the growing threat from Germany.

On finishing their meal, they both lit cigarettes. Gordon waved for the waiter and then paid the bill, try as Gellért did to protest. “I owe you for the lift you gave me the other day,” said Gordon.

“You’re not going to ask me about the dead girl?” Gellért blurted out.

“No,” Gordon replied. “I already know everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” he said with a nod. “Well, there’s one little thing I don’t know.”

“What would that be?”

“Did you not want to tell Szőllősy’s wife that her daughter was dead, or did you not dare to?”

Gellért scrutinized Gordon’s face from behind the smoke of his cigar. “Does it matter?” he finally asked.

“Not so much anymore.”

“I didn’t dare to and I didn’t want to, either,” Gellért admitted. “I’m getting old. I have two years to go before retirement. I was looking for an opportunity to tell her, but . . .”

“I can also tell you’re getting older,” said Gordon.

“How’s that?”

“The other day you left your desk drawer open. Remember? I’d dropped by to see you at headquarters, and while waiting in your office, I noticed that you’d left one of the drawers open. You’ve never done that before.”

“I’ll ask my doctor to write me a prescription for forgetfulness,” replied Gellért.

“That wouldn’t hurt. The only reason I even mention it now is because what happens if an unauthorized individual goes into your office and sees an open drawer?”

“You’re right,” said the detective, tapping his cigar against the ashtray. “These unauthorized individuals can’t be trusted.” After a pause, he said, “Say, what’s up in the world of boxing?”

“Harangi is still in America as a member of the European team,” Gordon replied. They stood up and went toward the door. The waiter helped them get their jackets on. They stepped outside; the rain had stopped.

“I hope he wins,” said Gellért.

“Me, too. From what I’ve heard, he’s been boxing like a real champ.”

“And when’s the next match you’re going to?”

“Tonight,” said Gordon.

“Who’s fighting?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Gordon with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Two brutes are going to knock each other’s brains out.”

“Well, then . . .” said Gellért, turning to Gordon.

“Thanks,” said Gordon, extending his hand.

The detective nodded, then turned to head back to the headquarters. Gordon walked back to Calvin Square and boarded a tram.

H
e pounded on the door in vain. He looked in the window, too, but on peering between the narrow slit in the curtains Gordon saw no movement inside. He heard steps in the stairwell. He turned and saw the super.

“Not so loud, sir, I beg you,” said the man, out of breath. “You’ll rouse the whole building.”

“At two in the afternoon? Who am I going to wake up at this hour?”

“Please, sir, this is a decent building.” Gesturing toward the door, he added, “Even despite this. Folks here don’t like an uproar. Besides, there’s no point pounding at this door.”

“Don’t you know where the young lady is?”

The man knit his brows at the word
lady
. “She left this morning.”

“Where to?”

“I really don’t know—but not to the market, that’s for sure. She had suitcases with her.”

“You mean she moved?”

“The young lady isn’t in the habit of notifying me what she does, when, and with whom,” he said sarcastically.

“But you saw her when she left, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said the super with a nod. “She said ‘Good day,’ and I replied ‘Good day.’ She put her bags into a taxi that was waiting out front, and they drove away. That’s why I’m telling you not to pound on the door. There’s no one in the flat. And now if you’ll excuse me, sir, I must be going.”

B
efore boarding a tram at Apponyi Square, Gordon stopped at Liberty Square to withdraw two hundred pengős from a branch of Downtown Savings Bank. He didn’t keep his savings for this kind of thing, but he didn’t have a heavy heart taking out a sizable sum now. Then he got on the tram. Slowly it left behind the elegant buildings of downtown, and on Üllői Street—that busy road that crossed the Grand Boulevard and continued southeast into the dusty reaches of outer Pest—the tram clattered by ever more run-down, grayer buildings. And then came Orczy Park, from where Gordon could already make out, off in the distance, the moldering wooden barracks that comprised the Mária Valéria Colony—in a word, the slum. At Ecseri Road he got off the tram, took a deep breath, and headed along the muddy dirt road between the barracks, which would no longer have been suitable for either the soldiers or the POWs who had once been housed there. The farther in Gordon went, the more this sea of mud took on a different look. Some people had built adobe additions onto the barracks, whereas others had constructed brick outbuildings, resulting in an eerie labyrinth of sorts. After a while Gordon didn’t even know if he was sliding along an actual road or, rather, an utterly unofficial passageway between two structures. His nostrils were filled with a suffocating smoke. Few people here could afford wood, so more than a few heated their homes by burning old clothes and shoes. While the smell of the smoke did quell the stink of poverty, it could not hide the sorry spectacle that was this slum. Grimy-looking children were frolicking about in the mud, talking and shouting in a language Gordon barely understood. They chased each other about, most of them in bare feet, howling and hooting away. Behind some windows, oil lamps flickered; behind most, darkness reigned. In a yard, two old peasants, a man and a woman, were busy dragging into their shanty a heap of brush they’d presumably lugged back from nearby People’s Park. These two people, it seemed, had done everything they could to make their home look somewhat presentable. The end result was at once pathetic and touching. Water was dripping through their patchy roof; a lace embroidery served as a makeshift curtain in their window; and a cracked vase in the window held a wilted flower. Gordon stepped over to the couple and spoke.

“Good day.”

The old man slowly stood up straight. “G’day.”

“Can you tell me where I can find Pojva?”

“Who’s that?”

“Pojva.”

“Hey, Erzsike,” said the old man, giving his wife a shove. “This gentleman here is looking for some character called Pojva.”

“I dunno no one called that,” replied the old woman from a wrinkled, kerchief-wrapped face.

As Gordon described Pojva’s features, the woman made the sign of the cross and looked to the sky.

“You’re looking for that . . . that broken-nosed scoundrel?”

“That’s the one.”

The old woman toddled out to the front of their shanty and showed Gordon which way to go. Here, street names and numbers didn’t mean a thing. Gordon thanked her for the directions and headed on, trying not to sink ankle-deep into the mud as he walked. Dogs howled as they tore at their chains, and cats meowed from the roofs they’d fled to from the mud.

Soon he found the shanty he was looking for. Decaying wooden shutters hung from the windows facing the road, their tulip carvings looking rather wilted. Beside the shanty was an adobe pigpen. Two kids around ten years old were playing in the muddy yard with a bicycle wheel. They were having a wonderful time, even though the wheel wouldn’t turn.

“Is Pojva home?” he asked one of them.

The child did not reply, but ran squealing into the shanty. A few moments later, out stepped Pojva, evidently in the throes of a serious hangover. His trousers had slipped somewhat under his waist, and he was naked above them. He must once have been a big and rock-hard man, but his muscles were now flabby and his skin had slackened, too. What with the combination of his crooked nose and a more or less stout frame, however, he still presented a spectacle that commanded respect and inspired fear.

“I know you from somewhere,” he said to Gordon.

“I have a proposal,” Gordon replied.

“You got money to back it up?”

Gordon nodded. Pojva just stood there for a while, staring at him. Gordon must indeed have looked familiar, but Pojva couldn’t quite place him. “Wait here,” he finally said, and went back inside. Soon there came the sound of shrieks and sobbing, and out came a fortyish woman.

“Please don’t go talking to him, sir,” she pleaded, “it always means trouble.” At this, Pojva seized her from behind, turned her toward him, and gave her a slap. She fell to her knees. He then kicked her in the back, which sent her flying into the mud.

“What business is it of yours who I talk to,” he sputtered, then waved a hand to Gordon. “Come right in.”

The shanty stank to high heaven. Something was bubbling away in a pot on the stove, and curled up in the corner was a sopping-wet dog. Water dripped from the ceiling into a cracked metal vat on the kitchen table, and an oil lamp flickered beside it. Pojva plopped down on one of the chairs, stuck a cigarette into his mouth, and kicked the other chair out from under the table toward Gordon. “How much?” he asked.

“You don’t even know what this is about,” replied Gordon.