“My genius neighbor built it,” Glavas said, following Vlado’s stare. “Nearly burned down the apartment first time I tried it. But it worked, in its way. No matter, though. Ran out of wood after three days. And that’s after it cost me forty marks. Live and learn.”
Glavas picked up a second wool blanket from the couch and draped it across his back as he sank onto the couch. A half-filled bowl of beans sat on an end table.
“I hope I haven’t interrupted your lunch,” Vlado said.
“If only you had. That is a time when I would always welcome an interruption. That and when I have to take a shit on these stinking toilets. I allow myself one flush a week. I just can’t bring myself to waste water by pouring it down the john after hauling it up six flights of stairs.”
Vlado glanced around the room. There was a stylish green wing chair in silk upholstery, a thick Oriental rug on the floor, finely woven. He glanced upward and saw two nice pen and ink sketches, elegantly framed, and an oil painting that, even to Vlado’s unpracticed eye, looked worth a small fortune.
“Please, Mr. Petric, do tell me, although I’m hardly the impatient sort who needs to get straight to the point, what would bring a police inspector to my door.” He leaned forward slightly, as if harboring his own little surprise.
“I’m investigating a murder. The victim had your name and address in his pocket, and I thought he might have visited you recently, perhaps even sometime in the last several days.”
Glavas slowly leaned back, raising his eyebrows. “Ah. Esmir Vitas, then?”
“Yes. So he was here.”
“Oh yes. Tuesday, I believe it was? Or whatever day it was three days ago. I don’t bother to identify the days as such anymore. They are either good or bad, mostly depending on the visibility, and then they’re dead and gone. But I remember Vitas all right, yes. My only visitor in months, quite literally And until you arrived I thought he might be the last one for several months more. When you knocked I assumed you were just another of the bored children with nothing to do but make themselves a nuisance by knocking on an old man’s door, then run away laughing as soon as the door opens. Or worse, they don’t run away at all. ‘Please,’ I tell them, ‘why don’t you run along and play out in the shelling. Call down some artillery on us. Let us watch out our windows while you run for your lives.’ ”
He broke into a wheezy chuckle, burbling toward the ledge of a deep cough before somehow bringing himself under control.
“So then,” he continued, now smiling. “You have decided, perhaps, that I am a suspect in this murder?” saying it as if the prospect pleased him.
“Mostly what I think is that I’d like to ask you some questions. I want to know why Vitas came here, and what, if anything, he wanted to talk about. Were you friends?”
“No. I’d never met him until that day. A Tuesday, did I say? And a horrible Tuesday it was. Grenades zipping around all morning. Man next door was killed, just stood in the courtyard like he was waiting for it. Some people do that, you know, just give up and go out there asking for it. Boy just above here was out on his balcony. Lost an arm. And in the middle of all that there’s a knock at the door. Three of them actually, and when I finally open up this Vitas fellow is waiting, filling the doorframe in a dark blue overcoat. I knew he wasn’t from around here, too. Clean as a whistle. Not a speck of mud on him.”
“And you hadn’t been expecting him?”
“No more than I was expecting you. Phone’s dead so he couldn’t have called. He’d gotten my name in town and came looking, or so he said. He wanted to talk.”
“About what?”
“A great many things, as it turned out. He was here a few hours. And he got right to the point, as I assume you will.”
“Maybe we could start just by going over your conversation with him, as much of it as you can remember. Even the parts you don’t think are particularly interesting, if you don’t mind. Because the things that seem meaningless to you might be of great value for me.”
“Yes, I thought you’d say as much. It’s exactly what Vitas said,” and with this Glavas burst into a hoarse wheezing laugh that quickly melted into a coughing jag. It took a full minute for the hacking to subside.
“He’d brought a card with him,” Glavas said. “And he wanted to ask me about it. A 3-by-5 index card with my name and signature on it and a small red circle in the upper-right-hand corner. A card from the inventory files of the National Museum. You’re familiar with the place?”
“Yes, right on the river. Saved, just barely.”
“Saved, indeed. By our valiant militia, our thugs in green camouflage. Art lovers, every one, I’m sure. Raging against the philistine Serbs in their enlightened, selfless struggle. But that is another story. So Vitas showed me this card, pulls it out of his coat pocket with a flourish, as if he’d brought me the Hope diamond. Then he looked me straight in the eye, just as you’re doing now, and he said, ‘Can you tell me the significance of this?’
“And I said, ‘Indeed I can, for hours on end, Mr. Vitas, hours on end. Only I’m not sure you’ll care to hear the whole story,’-which is when he told me what you’ve just said. Tell him everything, no matter how insignificant. Let him sort out what was important. Just keep talking until nothing was left to tell. Then he offered me a cigarette from a fresh pack. Marlboros, in fact, which I don’t suppose you’d happen to have?”
“No. Only Drinas. But I do have a fresh pack.”
Glavas curled a hand out from his coat, waiting as Vlado tore open the flimsy paper. He grabbed the first cigarette greedily, an expression of relief unfolding on his face as Vlado leaned forward with his lighter. Glavas sank back on the couch, sucking in the first draught of smoke just in time to smother a rising cough. A wide grin spread across his face. “There,” he said. “Much better. Even with Drinas.”
He inhaled a second time just as deeply while Vlado waited, then exhaled a long, luxurious plume of smoke before resuming, half a beat slower than before.
“So, then, Vitas lit my cigarette, the first of many, so I hope you’ve brought more than one pack. Then he said, ‘Well, why don’t you just tell me what you know about the card, and when you’re finished we’ll go back over some of the things I’m interested in.’ I told him this could literally take hours, because that card had a history going back a half a century, and the fact he was in possession of it told me its history was perhaps still being revised.
“ ‘Oh don’t worry about that, Mr. Glavas,’ he said, in a most gentlemanly way. He was like a fine young nephew who’d dropped by for tea. Quite pleasant in his way. Put me completely off guard. ‘I am a very patient man,’ he said, ‘and by the sound of things neither of us will be going anywhere anytime soon.’ For you see, the shelling was still making quite a ruckus. I was surprised he’d come at all, much less arrived in one piece with such an unflappable air. And you say now he’s been murdered. You’re certain of that.”
“I’m afraid so. Saw the body myself.”
“Ah, a shame.” Glavas shook his head, tapping his cigarette against the arm of the couch, then brushing away some spilled ash with the quick flicking motions of a fastidious man. He leaned back to savor another slow draw on the cigarette.
“Might I ask how it was done?” Glavas asked. “The murder, I mean.”
“Shot through the head. Down by the river at night. Most likely so it would look like he was a sniper victim.”
He seemed to consider this a few moments, then grunted, as having made up his mind to get on with it.
“Well then, so where was I?”
“The index card, the one with the red dot. You said Vitas had one.”