“Only what is due to me. And nothing that will generate anything more in the way of illegal traffic. I only parcel off, as you put it, the share that would inevitably come my way anyway Only enough to keep my hand in the game so I can keep my contacts alive.”
“All for the greater good, of course.”
“You act as if you are above all this, with your exemption from the army and your regular pay and your heated office. So tell me, do you have a family?”
“Yes.”
“And they are still here in the city?”
“No,” Vlado said. “Gone to Germany.”
“Yes, I see,” followed by a silent stare, as if Vlado’s answer had closed the case. “Mine is still here. Four boys and a girl. And my wife, of course. All living in four rooms, although we really can’t use the fourth room, the largest, because it faces south across the river and the window is gone and the walls are full of metal. So don’t tell me how I should get along in life, or that I am holding back too much, and don’t think that you can dictate in any way what I can or can’t do.”
For a price I could, Vlado nearly said, though he wasn’t at all sure what that price would be, or who would pay it. He only knew he was weary of the justifications for everyone’s petty chisel, one game of scramble and hustle after another, and usually for nothing but water, a little extra food and a roof over your head.
CHAPTER 6
From the cigarette factory, Vlado recrossed town toward the city center, to meet the second of Kasic’s sources. He was a butcher, Muhamer Hrnic, who ran a meat counter in a market hall near the outdoor Markale Market. By now it was midafternoon, so the crowds had peaked out. Only a few dozen people were still walking among the stalls and counters inside the dim, drafty hall. This was the best time of year for the half dozen or so butchers who’d set up shop along the long walls of the building. The weather was cold enough to keep their meat from spoiling even though there was no electricity, and the doors and windows of the building were kept open to keep it that way. As customers stooped to peer into the counter windows their breath fogged the glass.
On the counters in the middle of the hall, a few forlorn women in shawls and head scarves tried to peddle the last of their small piles of loose cigarettes and other odds and ends. Others offered orphaned bottles of Sarajevska Piva, the local beer still being brewed, though lately it tasted sourly of corn and old socks.
Nearby at one end of the room were a few card tables selling old sections of garden hose, plumbing joints, clamps, assorted nuts and bolts, tangled lengths of wire, and light bulbs burned to within a few hours of their expiration. It was as if a crew of handymen had dumped out the contents of their toolboxes. Vlado glanced around for Grebo’s card table, but he and Mycky had either packed it in for the day or were selling outside this afternoon.
Hrnic’s meat counter was at the far end. He was a large man in a white smock streaked with the dried blood of cows, goats, and lambs, darkened into streaks and squirts, then smeared. The smock looked as if it hadn’t been washed in weeks. He had a wide face and gray eyes, and close-cropped silvery hair with lank bangs with a few strands drooping toward his eyebrows like untied shoelaces.
His meat looked reasonably fresh. Two sides of what Vlado supposed was lamb were hanging from hooks, suspended over the counter. In the display case there were a few passable pork chops, and arrayed on top were several large boles of deep brown cured meat, the salty ham that went down best with a little bread and a few belts of plum brandy
The prices never failed to make Vlado gasp, thirty Deutschemarks a pound for the fresh meat, forty and more for the cured ham.
Vlado introduced himself quietly, and Hrnic ordered a teenage girl behind the counter, probably his daughter, into action. She poured hot water from a thermos into a cupful of instant coffee and sugar, then whipped them into a chocolate-colored froth. She brought them over to an empty counter where Hrnic had led Vlado. The butcher then directed his daughter toward the cured meat, holding two fingers apart to indicate the width of how much she should slice. She nimbly wrapped the chunk in white paper and brought it to Vlado.
“For your troubles,” the butcher said.
Everyone was so generous today.
Vlado ignored it for a moment, saying, “I suppose you know why I am here. You’ve supplied us with certain information on Esmir Vitas, and I’m looking for any leads or ideas on why he might have been killed and who might be responsible.”
Hrnic followed with a tale similar to what Vlado had heard from Kupric, only this time Vitas was said to be horning in on the meat trade. He was pushing too hard too fast, not going about it the way one had to these days. Then word filtered out that he would soon be dealt with, that he didn’t have the muscle to back up his title. It was, of course, common knowledge. Then he was dead.
“Tell me, then, if this word was such common knowledge, don’t you suppose a man with the contacts Vitas had would have heard it, too, and would have taken steps to either stop it or fight back? And surely he wouldn’t have been foolish enough to meet someone down by the Miljacka alone and after dark.”
“I suppose you would know these things better than me, being from the Interior Ministry’s special police,” Hrnic said. He said it with a hint of a sneer, as if Vlado was himself damaged goods by having come from the same ship that until yesterday had such a corrupt captain at the helm.
Vlado took a moment to explain his position, and the ministry’s promise of his independence. None of it seemed to inspire anything but further scorn.
“So then you don’t even have good ministry contacts,” Hrnic said.
Vlado was feeling pushed toward a dead end. “No. No ministry contacts to speak of. But we’re here to talk about your contacts. Where does your meat come from?”
“Igman,” he said proudly, like a winemaker who had just mentioned his grapes came from Bordeaux.
“Mount Igman? A dangerous place, by all accounts.”
“Yes. We like to say that depending on which way a lamb falls when he is slaughtered he could end up on the platter of one side or another.”
“In fact, any sort of steady supply from such an unsteady source as Igman would seem to indicate a certain of cooperation with, what should we call it-unfriendly sources? Tell me, do you agree to this cooperation, or does your source do that? Or maybe it’s both of you.”
The smile drained from Hrnic’s face. He looked back toward his meat counter, pretending to check on business, although Vlado saw there were no customers at the moment.
“I cannot tell you for sure of course,” Hrnic continued in a lowered voice. “I only know that my supplier says that Igman is the source. All other arrangements are left to him. I am the last man in a very long chain, so who am I to say where this chain really leads.”
“Unless we decided that for this investigation we should pull in the links of this chain, one by one, which we can do, you know.”
“I was given strict assurances that this would not happen in this case. Strict assurances that my security would be protected,” Hrnic said, his voice rising again, his face reddening.
“Your security” Vlado said, feeling tired. “What good is your security when you have information that the chief of the Interior police is about to be killed and you don’t bother to share it until he is dead. How valuable can it be to ensure the protection of a source such as that?”
“And I am telling you, I’ve been ensured I will be protected.”
“Ensured by who?”
“The Ministry. By the people you don’t really work for, because you are so ‘independent.’ They told me to cooperate with you, but that I was not to jeopardize either my connections or my operation.”
“Yes, your operation,” Vlado said, and a vision came to mind of a rattling contraption with worn belts and pulleys, wheezing and smoking. He looked over at Hrnic’s counter, at its tough husks of cured meat and the stringy lamb, which may have been mutton or even goat for all Vlado knew, and he contemplated the meager profit possibilities at this level of what passed for organized crime.