At Vlado’s office, Damir had taken to collecting fragments of spent sniper bullets he’d found on streets and sidewalks. They were torn and tarnished bits of brass. In six months he had amassed 79-he recounted them every week or so-and when he was burning off nervous energy he’d sit at his desk tapping the cup up and down to the beat of some tune in his head, occasionally rattling them like a cup of crushed ice.
One saw boys in the street collecting for their own desks and bedrooms, legions of tiny amateur experts who’d learned to identify the range, caliber, and origin of nearly every sort of weapon. They also knew the habits and accuracy of various neighborhood snipers, and if you asked they’d tell you the present likelihood of being fired upon if you stepped into a nearby alley or intersection. They had mapped out lines of fire in their heads the way Mediterranean boys familiarize themselves with local ruins and landmarks, hoping to earn tips from tourists.
Kupric stood for a moment, then plucked something from a wall shelf behind the manager’s desk. He returned with his arm outstretched, handing Vlado a small, flat tin of cigarettes. Nicely displayed on the lid was a hand-drawn scene of Sarajevo in its former glory, against an orange backdrop.
“Please, with my compliments, as well as those of the manager,” Kupric said.
By now Vlado was half expecting a welcoming committee to march through the door, unfurling a WELCOME INSPECTOR PETRIC banner while chanting factory slogans.
“Tell me,” Vlado asked, “are your police appointments always so public?”
Kupric seemed crestfallen. His smile vanished. “It’s not as if people know why I’m talking to you,” he said. “Or even that you’re working for the Interior Ministry. I have the manager’s trust. I am a foreman. And when I said I was receiving an important guest from the police he was only too happy to accommodate me. If he had asked for more information I was ready to tell him it was a small matter of the government seeking help in identifying tobacco smugglers, but as it was he never bothered to ask. As I said, he trusts me. And so does your ministry.”
Kupric lit a cigarette, snapping a silver Zippo shut with a rebuking click. “I would have thought my sort of attitude and ability would be reason for confidence, not ridicule.”
“Perhaps I’m just not familiar with the way these things work,” Vlado said, unsure whether to feel appalled or stupid. He reached into his bag, shuffling through papers until he found a spiral pad and a pen.
“So then, Mr. Kupric, if you will bear with my relative inexperience in these matters, I am told you have news of Mr. Vitas. Perhaps you could begin with the first time that you heard his name mentioned with anything you considered improper or illegal behavior.”
Kupric’s face went long and grave. He said that he’d first heard of Vitas entering the cigarette trade a few months back.
“It was all pretty vague then, something about a ham-handed attempt to stuff Drinas into empty Marlboro cartons. Not much future in that game. One round of sales and then your credibility was burned for good. Unless you were Interior Ministry police chief. Then maybe you felt like you could make your own rules.”
“And this was when?”
“Two, three months ago. Not so long. The next thing I hear, maybe a few weeks after that, is that he was piecing off a share of the incoming tobacco. We like to complain here about supply, but we had plenty stockpiled from before the war. And no matter how much fighting there is, another load always seems to come in over the hills just in time. The U.N. won’t lift a finger for us unless you pay the right people, and even then it’s hard. But by truck and by other means, it gets here. Even by donkey cart once.
“So, anyway, this was the supply line Vitas wanted to tap into. As I said, the word on it was vague, but he was supposedly using his people to pry loose some as it came over the mountain.”
“ ‘His people?’ Meaning, Interior Ministry police?”
“Who knows? But why not. Easy enough for him to say they were confiscating it for prosecutions in smuggling cases. Easy enough afterward to then make it all disappear.”
“And might I ask where this ‘word’ was coming from?”
“From my sources, of course.”
“Some names would be helpful. Or even a single name.”
Kupric assumed a look of ridicule, as if he was dealing with a rank amateur.
“I am not much good as an undercover man if I blow my sources,” he said, snorting smoke out his nostrils. “Suffice it to say, these are people who know what they are talking about. These are people who are plugged into the networks, the supply lines, and we all know where those supply lines eventually lead. So obviously they have their reasons for wanting to remain anonymous, and if we don’t indulge them, or if we start throwing around their names in the wrong circles, then they’ll be of no use to us at all inside of a week, I can tell you that for certain. Besides, it is their bosses you want. Not them.”
Still, Vlado chafed at the idea.
Kupric continued. “The longer Vitas stayed in, the more pressure he applied. There are ways this sort of thing is done in this kind of business. One way is to start killing your competitors, frowned upon these days because it attracts the wrong kind of attention. Another way is like with any business, through sweat and hustle. You undercut your competition’s prices, move in on their markets with better service and faster delivery.” Another new capitalist who already thinks he knows it all, Vlado thought with amusement. “Then there’s the way Vitas used. He simply began throwing his weight around, and this only invites retaliation, and not the sort that is likely to leave you standing. I think that’s why Vitas is dead.”
“You think? Or you know?”
“I know, or know as well as I ever could without having seen the shooting or heard the order.”
“How so?”
“Like I told you, it was the word in the network. One day it seemed to be everywhere: Vitas had pushed too hard, and with too little evidence of having the force to back it up. He was a man with a title and a name, but little else in the way of connections that would help him survive any serious challenge. The only way to deal with that kind of threat was to take out the name and the title. Which meant taking out the man himself. If you make yourself a target in a war zone, sooner or later you’re going to be hit. And that’s what happened to Vitas, sooner rather than later.”
“Is anything you heard ‘in the network,’ as you say, in the way of specifics? Or about the structure of these competing operations that might offer some hints as to who was responsible. Who might have been hurt the most by what he was up to, for instance?”
“Specific as far as who gave the order? None. Nor is it likely that anyone who knows will talk about it, unless he wants the same fate. As for the structure, and who was being hurt, take your pick. Any of a half dozen men in this city had enough power to have ordered it, or even another two dozen from the next rung down, although taking out the chief of the Interior Ministry police probably would come from the top, and you’ve doubtless seen the intelligence reports on that chain of command.”
He had, in fact-four single-spaced typed sheets that Kasic had tucked into the slim file to brief Vlado on the current state of smuggling in the city. That information squared neatly with Kupric’s assessment-a half-dozen men, each at the top of a fairly small operation, each with chunks of the markets for every consumer good from gasoline to meat.
After a short pause, Kupric said, “Look, I’m not going to be able to solve your case for you, or point the finger at your man. I’m only telling you what was the common knowledge to be heard during the past two weeks by anyone with ears.”
“Though I suppose you’ll want extra compensation for this ‘common knowledge,’ if you haven’t already gotten it, or whatever it is they parcel off to you from the larger action for these choice pieces of information.”