"What took you so long?” the manager said to the young man. "This maniac nearly broke my hand. Didn't you hear me scream?"
"I was fixing a pipe downstairs when I heard something. I came up as fast as I could."
I held up Maryam's picture. "This woman. I'm looking for a guy who used to hang around her. A pimp."
"Go to hell. We're not answering any of your questions."
The young man said nothing, but I could see recognition in his eyes. He also remembered Maryam.
"Shorter than me," I said. "Black hair. Small eyes. No beard. No mustache. Slimy looking."
The manager's face was like a tomato, anger and humiliation making his blood vessels expand. He started shouting at me to get out when his eyes darted over my shoulder, and whatever he was about to scream died in his throat.
I half-turned and saw a man and a woman enter the lobby. The woman was young and thin and blond. The man was pudgy and in his early forties. She was wearing a black dress and high heels. He was dressed in a gray suit and a blue tie. He looked drunk and had a stupid smile on his face. She looked businesslike and serious. If they noticed us at all, they gave no sign of it. She led him by the hand across the lobby straight to the staircase. The clicking of her heels on the exposed stone gradually diminished till they couldn't be heard at all.
"I'm willing to pay for the information," I said.
"We're telling you nothing," the manager said. "And if you don't get out of here, I'll call the police. I have friends there, and they'll be glad to work on you some." He reached for an off-white telephone on the counter, and I put Maryam's photo back in my pocket, turned around and walked away. He yelled curses and threats at me till I stepped out into the street.
Outside, the night was quiet and the street empty. I put my hand in my pocket as I walked, rummaging for my almost depleted pack of cigarettes. I had one out when I noticed a tall, thin figure approaching from fifty meters away. He passed under a streetlight, and I saw it was the lanky guy with the wrench from the hotel, the one who had come to the manager's rescue.
At first I thought he was there to fight me, and I tossed my unlit cigarette away and got ready to do battle with my fists, having failed to bring my knife. Then I saw that his hands were empty, and he was holding them palms out and fingers splayed, letting me know that he was weaponless.
He came to a stop ten feet away, shifted on his feet, and said, "I know who her pimp was."
"What's his name?"
He shook his head and gave me a sly smile. "The money first."
I handed over some bills. He wanted a little more, and I was in no mood to argue. I wanted the name of the pimp. Without it, I might never know who killed Maryam Jamalka. I handed over the rest of the money.
"The name," I said.
He told me. I knew that name. Knew it and should have guessed it myself. I wanted to curse and punch and kick that son of a bitch till he couldn't draw breath enough to ask me to stop. But I kept calm and showed the lanky man from the hotel nothing.
"Go back to the hotel," I said, "before the fat guy notices you're gone."
He grinned. "He won't. He went upstairs with one of the girls. That's the only good thing about the job, you know. The girls. They're nice."
His grin got wider, exposing his gums, and my fingers twitched, urging me to curl them into fists. I stretched them out along my thighs. To the man I said, "Go on now."
He turned and went back to whatever back door he'd used to get in front of me on the street. I started to head south but then remembered I didn't have my knife with me. This wouldn't do. When I went to have a chat with Charlie Buzaglo about him being Maryam Jamalka's pimp, I wanted to be armed.
At home I got into the shower and let the spray pelt me for a while. Eventually I soaped up, rinsed myself, toweled dry and put on clean shorts and a shirt. I made myself a cup of tea and added a liberal amount of sugar. I sat on the edge of my mattress, holding the cup in both hands, taking the occasional sip.
Charlie Buzaglo. The rat-faced low-life smuggler whom I had seen just the other day with a young girl at his side. Another young prostitute, probably, one to fill the vacancy created by Maryam Jamalka's death. Slimy was the word Mr. Gordon had used to describe the man for whom Maryam Jamalka had given up her apartment, and the word fit Charlie Buzaglo like a glove. And the foreign name—American, Lydia had said. His first name sounded American. That made me smile. Charlie Buzaglo was as far from an American as I was from a Chinese.
I finished my tea and brushed my teeth before realizing that I craved a cigarette. I took it out of the pack, looked at it, and pushed it back in. I lay in bed, staring at the dark-shrouded ceiling with the jutting outline of the bare bulb.
My mind turned to Ahmed Jamalka and Sima Vaaknin. Both had lost a sister. And more than once. Ahmed lost Maryam the first time when she ran away from home and he did nothing to help her. He lost her a second time when she died. Sima had lost a sister somewhere in her past. And she lost another sister when Maryam had committed the cardinal sin of the call girl and got herself a pimp. At first I thought that Sima had been too harsh, but now that I knew the identity of the pimp, I revised my judgment.
I thought of my four sisters, all gone in the gas chambers or due to the wretched conditions of the camps. I was the eldest sibling, the only son. Blanka was the oldest daughter. She'd been twenty-five when we were put on the train to Poland. She had one child, a three-year-old named Gabor. He was probably gassed on arrival, as nearly all young children were. Blanka had suffered three miscarriages and had once told my mother she thought she'd been cursed. Maybe when she was on the train, she'd changed her mind. It must have been easier to comfort a single son during that horrific train ride than three or four.
Sofia was twenty-one and had just gotten married seven months before the expulsion of the Jews of Hungary. It had been a simple ceremony. Very little to eat, very little to drink, but a happy day all the same. She'd been pregnant when she died. Her husband had survived. I'd met him in a camp for the displaced after the war. He'd elected to return to Hungary.
Sarlota was seventeen. Tall and willowy. Her face was the most similar to mine. She was quick to laughter, and to anger as well. She used to sing when she worked around the house. Songs in Hungarian and Hebrew. She had belonged to a local Zionist youth group and had wanted to immigrate to the Land of Israel since she was fifteen. I remembered how she had badgered my mother for permission to go. She'd wanted to join a kibbutz, to raise chickens and crops under the hot sun, to never be hated by her neighbors for being a Jew. But my mother had refused, and Sarlota fought and argued, but never disobeyed.
The last was Julia, who was only fourteen. Her eyesight was bad, and I recalled taking her to buy eyeglasses in Budapest. She had blue eyes like my mother's. She also had her nose and jawline and had learned to emulate Mother's frowns. I had been thirteen when she was born, right after I'd had my Bar Mitzvah. I remembered my father putting his arm around my shoulder and drawing me aside, talking to me in an earnest voice, telling me that now that I was a man, I had to take care of my baby sister, of all my sisters, and my mother, as well. He had been sick for some months. And I later realized he had known his days were numbered. His trust in me was misplaced. I did not stop the murder of my sisters and mother. Nor did I save my wife and two daughters. Everyone was killed but me.
I ran a hand over my face and scalp and nape. My heart was pounding, and every hair on my arms stood up. I gritted my teeth and tried to erect a wall in my mind to keep the memories at bay. It was too late, I knew. Tonight would be a bad one. I would close my eyes and see. My dreams would bring me my sisters, and they would not be pleasant dreams of childhood memories and family gatherings. They would be dreams of death and fire and suffering. They would be dreams of guilt and heartrending grief. They would be wicked visions of gas chambers, barbed wire fences, snarling dogs and guard towers. They would keep my sleep brittle. They would make me scream.