“Question?”
“Yes.”
“And what would that be?” asked Mór, his back still to Gordon.
“Well, two nights ago they found a dead girl on Nagy Diófa Street. She had no superficial marks, only her face had turned a bit blue. I’ll go by the coroner’s office, but what do you figure she could have died of?”
“Son, you’re not asking me seriously,” said the old man, turning around. “So many things that it’s not even worth listing them all. Was it suicide?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why do you want to know?”
“Because I was on the scene, and I want to write an article about it, only there’s nothing to write. Besides, something’s not quite right about this girl.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Mór. “In that neighborhood there aren’t too many upright ladies.”
“This was no run-of-the-mill prostitute, Opa, but a Jewish girl who was probably from a bourgeois family.”
“Is Dr. Somkuthy still the chief coroner?” asked the old man.
“Yes.”
Mór stepped over to the telephone and had the operator connect him to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Within a few minutes he was talking to Dr. Somkuthy.
“They’ll be doing an urgent autopsy on the girl,” he told Gordon after putting down the receiver.
“You didn’t have to do that, Opa,” said Gordon. “Really. I only asked you what the cause of death might have been.”
“Son, since you’ve been working for the Evening, this is the first time you’ve asked me a question concerning an article of yours. So it must be important to you. I’ll add that your question is foolish, for if anyone should know, you certainly should, that unless someone has a knife sticking out of their heart or has just been pulled out of the Danube, it’s practically impossible to say what did them in without an autopsy. You can go to the coroner’s office this afternoon.”
Meanwhile it had begun to rain in big, swollen drops. Gordon hugged the buildings as he walked quickly along Aradi Street without an umbrella. Silence now reigned in Skublics’s building; only the stink accompanied Gordon up to the sixth floor. He opened the attic door and glanced around but didn’t see the girl anywhere. He knocked on the inner door. In a minute a hoarse, smoke-saturated voice called out: “Get lost.”
Gordon began pounding on the door. Again came the voice: “What do you want?”
Gordon said he’d gotten his name from Vogel and that he wanted a word with him. Finally, Skublics let him in. All Gordon could make out in the dark hall was a stunted old man with an idiotic goatee. Skublics went on ahead, opening up another door.
Gordon found himself in a living room furnished with exceptional taste: carved furniture, leather armchairs, Turkish carpets, a crystal chandelier, and paintings on the walls. Just one thing was missing: a window. Gordon was beginning to suspect they were in the heart of the building, and he was certain that this flat was entirely windowless; yet it might well have a separate exit to the attic. Suddenly he found it hard to imagine he could be in the right place. This was not how he’d imagined the apartment of a black-market photographer. Just what he’d expected, he couldn’t have said, but not this. Moreover, he saw nothing that so much as suggested that Skublics even had a camera.
“What do you want?” Skublics shot out his question once again. Gordon was now able to get a good look at him. The short old man was wearing a good quality suit, complemented by a gold-chained pocket watch. His hands were bony and his fingers long, like the feet of a sparrow hawk. He’d let his nails grow, and this only strengthened Gordon’s impression that he was talking with an aged bird of prey. His sunken eyes topped off a face of baggy and pale parchment-like skin. He spoke fast, as if spitting out his words. “What do you want? I don’t want to ask again. I don’t care whether Vogel or someone else sent you, out with it!”
Gordon momentarily dropped his head and took a deep breath. He was just about to reply when a door sunk deep in the wall opened up, and out stepped the scrawny girl. She was buttoning her blouse. When she saw Gordon, her eyes turned away and she quickly went back where she’d come from.
“What do I want?” Gordon now asked in a quiet, menacing voice.
“What you saw here is none of your business,” the old man proclaimed. “You can get going, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Not until you answer my question. You took a picture of a young girl barely over twenty with slightly curly black hair.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Of course you do,” said Gordon, stepping closer to him. The old man did not draw back. “A green-eyed Jewish girl. With a big birthmark on her left arm.”
“I don’t remember any yiddie gal.”
“No?”
“No.”
“And what is that girl doing here?”
“I took her portrait.”
“Full figure, nude?”
“It’s my business who I photograph and how. It’s not me who decides but my clients.”
“Your clients.”
“Them.”
“Does the vice squad know about your little business?”
Skublics turned beet-red. Gordon had gone too far. He shouldn’t have threatened the old man, at least not now and not like this. He couldn’t have proven a thing, and it wasn’t at all out of the question that the vice squad already knew what Skublics was up to. What good would it do to file a complaint at headquarters? Nothing for now. Not until he learned what he wanted could he do a thing. Gordon was certain that Skublics had taken the girl’s picture, and he was also certain that he wouldn’t get anything out of him.
“I advise you to leave,” hissed Skublics.
“I’ll be back again,” said Gordon, turning around and slamming the door behind him.
The Grand Boulevard had come alive. True, it wasn’t quite as noisy and full of people as on most Thursdays, but the city was indeed starting to rise from the dead. Temporarily, at any rate, for Gömbös’s wake had begun at three o’clock in the rotunda of the Parliament building, and a good many people planned to pay their respects at the prime minister’s bier before the funeral on Saturday. While riding the tram to the newsroom, Gordon read the Budapest Journal’s coverage of the wake. True, the general public would be able to pay its respects, but in actuality, the Parliament building was open only by invitation. He had to be there on duty, and he already shuddered at the thought. He liked neither open coffins nor seeing corpses. Gordon loathed the thought that he’d have to stand there in front of the Parliament building and follow the funeral procession through downtown all the way to Kerepesi Cemetery.
Gordon had barely stepped into the newsroom when the crime section’s editor, Gyula Turcsányi, greeted him with a shout: “A fine good morning to you, Mr. Gordon! May I ask where the hell your feet have been taking you? The whole office is working nonstop, and you’re sauntering about town?”
Gordon would gladly have turned right around and left without pause, but instead he returned Turcsányi’s stare. “I was working,” he calmly replied.
“Working?” Turcsányi shot back. “And on what? If I may ask.”
“On the Róna case.”
“Who in the name of loving God cares a flying shit about that?” snapped Turcsányi. By now, even those who’d been typing furiously turned to listen. Turcsányi was capable of swearing on the verge of blasphemy when riled up. “Your place is here, not anywhere else. Róna is yesterday’s news. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re a daily paper—a newspaper. It’s in the name! News-paper. We need news, Gordon, and Róna hasn’t been news for a week already.”