“I’m Hungarian,” he answered. “Here on holiday.”
The Hungarian spoke in a distinctive Transylvanian accent. Semyonov had never been particularly good at speaking foreign languages, but he had an ear for detecting dialects. It was a skill he’d sharpened on the police force, when he’d been required to shadow visiting aliens.
“I’ve never been out of Moscow, but I encountered a student from Budapest once,” Semyonov continued. “He sent me a recipe for stuffed cabbage that he wrote on cigarette paper and smuggled to me through one of the prison guards. He was crazy. I still haven’t made the cabbage.”
“Are you the house detective?” the Hungarian asked.
“Yes, I’m a detective.” Semyonov yawned and cracked his neck, feeling an attack of bursitis coming on in his shoulder. “Most of my job is boring, but being sent after a nice-looking girl isn’t so bad.”
The Hungarian forced a smile.
“Can you tell me anything about her?” the detective inquired.
The Hungarian shrugged. “Not really. Pretty piece of ass. Throws her money around.”
Semyonov continued to rifle through the girl’s toiletries, picking through them one by one and lining them up on the bathroom counter. “Do you know where she gets her money?”
The Hungarian curled his lip and folded his arms across his chest. “Maybe her daddy,” he replied.
Semyonov took out a small pad of poor-quality paper and made notes for himself in his own shorthand. There was an unmistakable clarity to finding the spigot of any investigation—the person from whom all of the answers would flow sooner or later, in one way or another. It was the same when he’d been investigating murders and black market rings, and was especially true now, when his detecting revolved solely around espionage.
“Must be her daddy,” he agreed. “Say, you wouldn’t want to have a drink with me, would you? Since your plans with the American girl have fallen through?” Semyonov’s nose pointed left as he smiled, and the Hungarian was transfixed by the man’s broken features. His interest turned to annoyance when the Russian detective put his arm around him and squeezed his shoulder.
The Hungarian shrugged him off and walked out of the suite. He knew it was imprudent to be rude—even to mid-level hotel employees—but he didn’t plan on sticking around Moscow long enough to need any favors or fear petty repercussions.
The Great Detective, for his part, had expected the slight.
“Good morning,” the pretty receptionist bid him as she checked her appointment book. The Hungarian nodded at her instead of returning the greeting. He hated speaking Russian.
As soon as he slipped the unmarked, bulging envelope into the mail slot, the girl found his name, saying, “Yes, here it is,” and reached behind her for a towel, which the Hungarian rejected.
“I brought one,” he explained and the girl told him to suit himself, but insisted he take her towel anyway. Rules were rules.
The Hungarian seized the graying rag and threw it to the floor as soon as he entered the bathhouse.
“Fabi,” the Hungarian called to the preparatory masseuse. Fabi was dripping in perspiration—a pool of it having formed in a palm-sized ledge perched at the top of his domed belly. When he tipped forward to crack his knuckles, the pool dribbled over Fabi’s middle and tinkled off the tip of his penis as if he were taking an unconscious piss. The masseuse then smacked his hands together three times, letting the echo bounce off the sopping tile walls of the steam chamber, and signaling to the Hungarian and a meaty woman who had come in behind him, that it was time for them to strip naked.
Fabi took the Hungarian first, slapping and pounding his back and legs, before grabbing his head in his hands and cracking his neck in two quick spins to the right and left. It was a sudden and unlikable way to be handled, but left the Hungarian feeling strangely titillated—much like he felt after completing a job.
With a slight bow, Fabi took the Hungarian’s hand, shaking it hard, before moving on to the woman. She raised her arms over her head—as if she were being arrested—and the Hungarian watched the masseuse slap her breasts with a towel.
The key Fabi had given him was cupped tightly in his palm as he entered the next chamber. The Hungarian would’ve loved to bypass the rest of the gauntlet and head straight to the locker room for a rendezvous with his new gun, but once he entered the bath house, he knew there was no turning back or skipping any of its prescriptions. With his usual resolve, the Hungarian looked out onto the four marble beds and chose the one closest to the single gas lantern that illuminated the chamber. He placed the key inside his cheek, laid down on his stomach and waited for one of the baton girls to come. To his chagrin, he got a fatty with yellow skin tone and sodden pubic hair.
“Take it easy around my bladder,” the Hungarian ordered. He’d forgotten to use the toilet. The girl ignored him, and he watched her belly-folds waggle as she beat him with a club wrapped in a hot, wet towel until his muscles felt like noodles.
His luck in treatment providers got no better until he entered the fifth chamber, where he was oiled by a fair brunette. Fit and graceful, her only shortcoming was an engorged upper lip. She was also kind enough to use the loufa he provided instead of the ones dubiously sanitized by the house. He thanked her by patting her bare buttocks.
“Atta girl,” he grumbled.
The Hungarian felt good and was especially glad that he’d chosen not to eat that morning. The gauntlet was a vigorous cleansing ritual that partnered well with a liquid diet and the Hungarian decided it was high time for a forty-eight hour reprieve from solid food. He entered the last chamber—the sauna—confident that his reflexes would be sharper and infinitely more precise due to his fast and looked forward to handing Fabi’s son the key in exchange for a rolled bath mat that contained his new weapon.
“Hello there,” a reclining man rasped, before clearing his throat and trying again. “Hello, I said. Fancy meeting you here.” The ugly hotel detective sat up, leaning his elbows onto his knees.
“I’m sorry, have we met?” the Hungarian lied.
“Quite late last night. At the Hotel Rude.”
The Hungarian leaned forward and squinted as if he was trying hard to place him. “Yes, yes of course. I’m not wearing my eyeglasses, so I didn’t recognize you.”
“Nor were you last night. You must be ashamed of them, like I am. I’ve yet to touch mine and they were imposed on me over a year ago.” The detective sat up and leaned against the wall—his bent up face at odds with his body. Back at Hotel Rude, he’d looked rather lumpy in his overcoat, but here, naked and in unforgiving light, his physique revealed itself as lean and muscular.
“You lift weights?” he asked.
The Hungarian shook his head no.
“You should try it,” the detective counseled. “It helps keep the weight off. Look at me—I’m over fifty, although I won’t tell you by how much—and I don’t look much different than I did twenty years ago.”
He patted his taut abdomen and the Hungarian’s face flushed.
“No, really,” the detective continued. “I know it works. I fight—or at least I used to. What’s more, I use a punching bag in the mornings.”
The Hungarian sat down on the wooden bench facing the detective and stood up again. He looked out the small porthole of a window into the locker room, but Fabi’s son was nowhere in sight. The masseuse had asked him explicitly to wait in the sauna until his son was ready for him.
“You should try it.”
“What?”
“A punching bag,” the detective clarified.