Just around the corner from the entrance, as Vlado knew from his one previous venture, was the nearest place of business for local prostitutes. By dusk a few had always gathered, like birds flocking at sunset to the bare sheltering trees of a park.
Any earlier and they’d have been too well lit even for the U.N. to tolerate. They’d be ordered off by some sentry dipping his face low into the gathering as much to catch a whiff of perfume as to maintain discretion as he advised them, quite civilly, to please clear off, commander’s orders.
But there was no shooing them once darkness fell, not unless the garrison commander wanted a mutiny on his hands, for what other pleasures were there to be taken from this forlorn posting. The French were assigned to abut the frontlines of two sworn enemies, camped along the banks of a river coveted by both while shells and bullets sailed overhead in either direction. Your blue helmet was good for little more than scorn and a guaranteed ticket home if you made it through your six-month tour of duty unscathed. So what did it matter, then, if one bought an occasional woman, or even if a particularly enterprising soldier or two went into a little business for themselves as employers of the local talent. Better to have that sort of distraction than to have too much to drink and perhaps put your fellow soldiers at risk as well.
The spot was exactly where Vlado had made his own ludicrous transaction with the edgy young prostitute-“the bank teller” was how he thought of her now-and he tensed as he rounded the corner.
He found four women waiting, spaced a few yards apart. A sentry was posted just a bit farther around the bend. You could just make out his rifle barrel and the tips of his boots.
None of the women was smoking. That would have been spending their wages as they worked.
Vlado cleared his throat. Four faces rose to meet his, and he saw her right away, the third one down the line. She wore a red wool dress, still looking a bit prim and businesslike for the profession, although the dress looked rehemmed, or so he would have guessed, about four inches above the knee. The difference from before was that her makeup was heavier, caked and penciled with obvious care but leaving an impression of-what? – certainly not passion, nor willing abandon. Something melancholy, frozen. Yet she was definitely surer of herself than a month earlier, it seemed.
“I’m Inspector Petric,” he said, “and I need to question the four of you for a moment about a shooting last night.”
“Which one, there were only about a thousand,” replied the nearest woman, the tallest, with long dark hair. She wore a fake fur coat slouched open to reveal a silky black dress. The other two, he noticed, were quite conventionally dressed. Either they were newcomers or they simply didn’t care. Or perhaps with a captive clientele like this, there was a certain market for sheer normalcy, the fantasy shopclerk whisked off the street and straight into your armored personnel carrier.
“I’m interested in a single shot fired a little before nine, just before closing time, and probably the loudest one you would have heard all day if you were standing here for long. The victim was standing across the river, a little downstream. Maybe fifty meters from here. Maybe more. And it wasn’t a sniper. Whoever shot him was standing right there with him.”
“And you think maybe we climbed up on the bags here for a better look, or to maybe offer a better target,” the first one piped up again, now lighting a Marlboro, showing off her wealth and, in turn, her position among her peers. “Listen, the last thing that’s going to catch my attention is a gunshot. Unless they’re shooting at me they’re welcome to fire all day.”
“It’s not the shot itself I’m interested in. It’s the moments just before or after, anything you might have seen or heard right around the time of curfew. The footsteps of someone in a hurry. A car driving on the road by the river, that’s rare enough these days. Or any customer you might have turned loose in that direction just before. Anything at all, really, because the streets weren’t exactly crawling with witnesses at that hour.”
“Well, sweet one, we’re sorry, but there was nothing out of the ordinary to report from here.”
“And you’re the spokesman for this business association?”
“For the U.N., in fact.”
She extended her hand, as if for a very British handshake. “Chief of public affairs, U.N. bureau of personal services,” she said, cackling with a husky wheeze.
Vlado turned toward the others. “So nothing comes to mind then from last night. Nothing out of the ordinary or even noticeable,” he asked, but the first one was still the only one talking.
“If we told you what came to mind from last night you’d get so excited we’d have to charge you,” she said, while the others shrugged mutely. “Otherwise, it was nothing but the usual run of lonely faces and insulting offers. Am I right, ladies?”
A series of small nods. Vlado’s woman in red stared at the ground. He wanted to take her by the shoulders, force her to look him in the eye, though he couldn’t say for sure if it was only because he wanted some answers to his questions. Whatever, it was an obvious dead end as long as the taller woman was in charge. He should have let Damir handle this, as his first instincts had told him. Damir would have had this experienced old crone chatting and sharing cigarettes with him by now, spilling half her life’s story along the way.
“Well. If anything does occur to you later, I’m right down the block, fourth floor. Inspector Petric.”
“Don’t worry, we know the place,” the first woman’s voice called after him as he strolled around the curve of sandbags. “Some of our best customers work there. Good tippers, too, I hear.”
Her cackle rose high into the darkness, and Vlado flushed in spite of himself.
By the time Vlado reached his apartment a misty cold rain was falling. He was fatigued and hungry. It was his longest workday in months.
Yet he was energized in a way he hadn’t been since the beginning of the war. Certainly the case had problems, severe ones. But for all its portents of fear and difficulty, he’d no sooner go back to cases of murdered gypsies and drunks than he would go back to that slaughterhouse, with its stench of blood and panic.
He’d begun the investigation with doubts of his own abilities, and some persisted. Was he in over his head? Perhaps. But who wouldn’t be on this landscape, where rules and allegiances could change by the hour.
Far more worrisome than his lack of expertise was the thrust of the early evidence, such as it was. It seemed too pat, too tailored to his own needs, and those of the Interior Ministry. It might well be a concoction, either for the gain of the informers or for their bosses, who may have been eager to hide something far more complex and lucrative. Even if they were telling the truth, what would it matter. Their stories provided few useful details.
If Vlado was merely interested in disposing of the case in a tidy fashion, as Garovic would doubtless prefer, he felt sure that he need only hand over his and Damir’s four “sources” to Kasic for further questioning. Then, given enough time for more persuasive interrogation or more creative imaginations to bear fruit, Kasic’s people would emerge with enough to craft a conclusion.
Someone would be selected from the rough list of mobsters to take the blame. Perhaps the mobsters would even nominate one of their own, seizing a chance to further winnow the competition. The fellows at the slaughterhouse certainly wouldn’t be above such a trick.
Then the case would be turned back over to Vlado for its official closing, a fiction that he would sign and offer in triplicate to the appropriate international observers. It would be wrapped in the same soiled bundle with Vitas’s bloodied reputation, waved a few times before an uninterested world, then dropped out of sight and forgotten.