“Nobody in this town’s having any fucking fun,” his contact said.
He caught a taxi to the apartment, which was on the ground floor of a tired street so close to the sea that he could smell salty air. He let himself in. He didn’t plan to kill the shit-fuck guy right away, he wanted to have a little fun first. He was thinking about trashing the place, sending a message, like they did in the movies. Not usually his style, but he felt like being a little expressive for once. This was a special case, after all.
The apartment was a single room. There was no furniture to speak of, just a folded-out futon with a gray sheet screwed up on top of it. A small, old-fashioned television sat unsteadily on a wooden crate. A single poster was tacked to the wall. The gangster recognized it as the original election poster for the Hungarian Democratic Forum. It featured the back of a large, thick-necked Russian military officer. The copy read, in Russian, “Comrades, it’s over!” The gangster smiled as he remembered simpler days. How happy they had been to get rid of the fucking Russians.
He stepped on tiptoe through the crap on the floor — fast food cartons, empty beer bottles, dirty laundry, newspapers, odd shoes, even a tube of toothpaste. Stacks of crusty dishes filled the sink. The refrigerator door stood ajar and rusty brown liquid leaked onto the linoleum. The smell in the room was stale and thick — a hopeless, exhausted musk of despair. The gangster shuddered in disgust and wiped his hands on his neatly-pressed jeans. It was a waste of time to trash the place, the shit-fuck guy wouldn’t even notice.
“You are foreign correspondent?” Lana asked skeptically.
I tried to look mysteriously modest. “Yeah, just got back into town a few days ago, from Bosnia.”
“I don’t trust journalists.”
“Well, you shouldn’t trust me, that’s for sure.” I grinned wolfishly. Her eyes narrowed. Perhaps the lovable-roué routine had worked better when I had a decent haircut and wore a suit. I went to straighten my tie and remembered I wasn’t wearing one. “Another drink?” We were sitting in a restaurant a block or two from the beach. The food was Uzbeki, which is to Russians what Mexican is to Americans — cheerfully ethnic, but not too threatening. Arresting pictures of downtown Baku were showing on the television set. The pictures focused on a large building of Soviet design and a wide empty street. The visual tedium was relieved every few minutes by a passing Lada.
“Ever been to Baku?” I put my hand on her knee. It was plump and warm.
“No.”
She glanced at me and looked away, staring, so it seemed, at the stuffed animal heads mounted on the wood-paneled walls.
“How long have you lived in the States?”
“Thirteen years.”
“Like it?”
“It’s okay.”
“Got family?”
“Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“Just trying to get to know you.”
“What’re you doing out here if you’re big-time foreign correspondent? Why aren’t you at Stork Club or something?”
“I’m not sure the Stork Club is still in business. Anyway, I prefer Brighton Beach. It’s got character.” I swallowed some vodka, trying to pinpoint the place where the evening had gone south. She had seemed friendly enough when I’d picked her up in a bar an hour or so ago.
“Character,” she snorted.
“Is that so wrong?”
“You’re liar,” she said. “You think I live in the fucking Soviet Union for fifteen years and not learn how to tell?”
“Hey, that’s a bit steep,” I protested, holding up my hands.
“I met too many men like you.” She grabbed her handbag and stood up, spilling the last of her wine. “Fucking Americans. They think every Russian girl is slut. Tell her big story to sleep with her, then gone.”
I followed her out of the restaurant.
“Hey,” I said, plucking at her sleeve. “I like you. I’m not spinning you a line, honest. I really am a journalist. Don’t you want to come back and talk about this?”
She shook my hand off.
“Come on. Don’t be like that. Let’s grab a coffee and start over. We won’t—”
She cut me off, saying something in Russian.
I shook my head. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“She’s telling you to get lost. Even you don’t need any Russian to understand that.”
I recognized the voice. I turned. Istvan Laszlo was standing about ten feet away. Lana glanced at him and then took off. I didn’t blame her.
“Mr. McIlvaney.”
“Mike McIlvaney is dead,” I said evenly.
The gangster smiled. “I’m sure you’ve told people that, but the truth is, Richard Churcher is dead, Mr. McIlvaney. And you took his name because you thought if you did that, I would never find you.”
“I didn’t know you were looking.”
“Maybe not me specifically, but you knew someone would, sometime.” He passed me the article I had written to make my apartment down payment. “A small miracle. Richard Churcher wrote a magazine article about Budapest years after he died in a freak car smash. It’s enough to make you believe in God.”
I said nothing.
“So I read the story and I have an idea. I have been looking for Mike McIlvaney for many years and I can’t find him. He’s vanished off the earth. But Richard Churcher has risen from the grave. Then I call a guy in America and he explains all about the Social Security number. I found out that Churcher was an American citizen. He was born here. Not too difficult to put it all in place. You get a Social Security number with his name and you live as him. You looked a little alike. And you grow your hair and a beard and think maybe nobody will notice. Maybe nobody would have…” He moved closer and lowered his voice. “Except for this.” He folded the article up and slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Too bad for you I like to travel.”
“It’s not a crime to change your name. What do you want?” My voice shook. I could see the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans, under a blue jacket, and my life that I’d previously thought of as sub-standard suddenly seemed shining and rare, a precious, precious thing.
“I want to walk,” the gangster said. “Let’s go to the beach.”
Rain threatened and the beach was empty. Seagulls dove and screeched, fighting over a ragged piece of food. The gangster looked out to sea.
“The Duna flooded this year. They found Ana’s body buried in a field.”
Ana. My chest tightened.
“She had been beaten to death. Cops were able to tell that, even after all this time.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“What’s this got to do with me?”
“The day she went missing, I felt it in my gut that she was dead.” The gangster put his fist to his stomach. “And that you had killed her. You’d beaten her before and threatened her. That’s why she no longer wanted you as a client. She was frightened of you.”
“Isn’t this a little far-fetched?”
“You were hanging around at nights waiting for her to finish work, so I had Peter walk her home. But the night she disappeared Peter got held up and he didn’t meet her. And the next day she doesn’t turn up for work. I think immediately of you and your threats. I came to your apartment and you had also gone, rather suddenly, the landlord said.”
“I got called away on a job. This is stupid, Istvan. I can understand that you’re upset at losing one of your working girls, but I didn’t kill her. I loved her. I love her still. Look at me, my life’s a wreck because of her.”
“You were obsessed with her,” the gangster said. “Not quite love, something else. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her, but you did it. And your life’s wrecked because you can’t live with yourself.” He pulled the gun casually out of his jeans.