Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

The Iron Angel by Edward D. Hoch

With so many changes taking place in Eastern Europe, the adventures of Michael Vlado carry a special interest, for the author has carefully researched the changing social environment, particularly in post-Ceausescu Romania, and how the Gypsy tribes are being affected. This episode finds Vlado in search of a mysterious, three-eyed statue that appears to be the key to a murder investigation...

Michael Vlado’s Gypsy village in the foothills of the Carpathians had remained free, so far, of the turmoil that had swept through much of Romania since the collapse of the Socialist government. In many communities Gypsies had died, or been driven away, and Michael had intensified efforts to find a new home for his people. But as spring returned to the Carpathians all seemed well for a time.

Even Michael’s old friend Segar, once a captain in the government militia and now an official of the transition government, had taken to driving up to the village of Gravita as he had done so often in the old days. That was why Michael saw nothing unusual in his arrival that April morning when the horses were out in the field and the first of the spring flowers had blossomed.

“Good morning, Captain. A nice day for a ride in the hills!”

Segar smiled. Though he no longer wore his old uniform, he still liked being addressed as Captain. “My visit is not entirely one of pleasure,” he admitted. “Do you remember an American girl named Jennifer Beatty? She rode up here on a motorcycle and stayed a few days.”

Michael nodded. “It was at the time the old king was murdered and I took over the leadership of my tribe. How could I forget? I’ve wondered sometimes whatever happened to that girl. I hope she returned to her country.”

“Unfortunately, no,” Segar told him, looking off into the distance where the two mares were romping. “She’s in Bucharest, and she seems to be involved in a killing. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Is she accused of it?”

“Not yet. She’d been snorting heroin with some other young people, and she was a bit high at the time.”

“Snorting heroin?”

“Drug addicts think it’s safer than using contaminated needles.”

Michael knew there was some reason for Segar’s visit. “What do you want from me?”

“You were her friend for that brief period.”

“More than three years ago.”

“True, but she asked for you while being questioned. She won’t talk to anyone else.”

“You want me to return to Bucharest with you?”

“Yes, if you could follow me down in your car.”

“I hate that city, even more so now for what they’ve done to my people.”

“I think the worst of the oppression is over.”

Michael shook his head. “Last week a small group of Gypsies passed through here from Poland, heading south. They told of gangs of young people wrecking the homes of wealthy Gypsies, trying to drive them from the country.”

“I think the worst is over,” Captain Segar repeated. “Return with me to Bucharest. You can help the girl and you can help me.”

“Who was murdered?” Michael asked.

“A Gypsy.”

The capital city had changed little since Michael’s last visit. A few statues had been removed and the name of the late president, Ceausescu, was nowhere to be seen. Otherwise, the buildings were as Michael remembered them. He recognized the old militia headquarters at once as Segar turned into the parking garage connected to it. “This is our police headquarters now,” his friend explained.

“Then you are back in police work?”

Segar shrugged. “It is the only work I know.”

He led the way up to his second-floor office, then picked up the telephone and issued a curt order for Jennifer Beatty to be brought in. He explained that she was being kept in a holding cell while they decided what to do with her. “The murdered man was a Gypsy named Jaroslaw Miawa. He was found stabbed to death in a cellar where Jennifer and some others were snorting heroin. She insists no one touched him, that he was wounded before coming there.”

“Would that have been possible? What does your autopsy show?” Before Segar could respond, the door opened and Jennifer Beatty was brought in. Michael remembered her as a young woman of twenty-two who’d stolen a motorcycle from her boyfriend and driven it into the foothills to hide from him. Now she was in her mid-twenties, though somehow she looked older. Her blonde hair was streaked with some sort of coloring and the healthy outdoors look he remembered was tarnished. Her eyes were tired and the lids sagged, though that might have been from a night without sleep. “Hello, Jennifer,” he said, getting to his feet.

“You came! Thank God you came! Tell these people to release me.” Her face seemed to come alive at the sight of him.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“You’re the Gypsy king, aren’t you?”

“These days in Romania that means even less than it did three years ago.”

“I brought Michael Vlado as you requested,” Segar told her. “Now you must give us a statement as you promised.”

“I don’t know. It’s so confusing—”

“Could I speak with her alone?” Michael asked.

“All right,” Segar agreed.

She reached out to touch his arm. “Wait. Do you have a cigarette?”

Segar took a pack from his pocket and gave them to her. “They’re not American,” he said apologetically.

“I’ll smoke anything.” She lit one and tried to relax as Segar left them alone in the little office.

“I was hoping you’d be back in America by now,” Michael told her.

“I started back. I got sidetracked.”

“How was that?”

She shrugged. “I decided to stop off at Switzerland for a few days. They had this park in Zurich where you could buy drugs legally and take them quite openly. The city government even supplied clean needles. I think they’ve stopped it now. The idea was to keep addicts in just one area of the city, but it didn’t work too well.”

“So you were back on drugs.”

She nodded, drawing on the cigarette. “And before I knew it I was back here. I hooked up with a guy, and when I told him about Romania he wanted to see it. Travel is easier now, and there was no problem driving here from Zurich. We both had American passports.”

“What happened to him?”

“He wanted drugs and he got arrested the first week we were here. I haven’t seen him since. After that I fell in with a German named Conrad Rynox. I like him a lot. His crowd is into snorting heroin, which I’d never done before.”

“Did you know the man who was killed?”

“Jarie. Jaroslaw Miawa. He hung around, liked to gamble. That’s how he got money for the heroin.”

Michael jotted down the name, asking her to spell it. Then, “Tell me what happened last night.”

“We were in this cellar on Furtuna Street. When Jarie came in I could see he was hurt badly. Then we saw the blood. He’d been stabbed, more than once. He said a few words and then he just died there, on the cellar floor.” Segar slipped back in while she talked.

“What did he say?”

“Something about an iron angel. The three eyes on the iron angel.”

Michael glanced at Captain Segar. “Mean anything to you?”

Segar shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Is there someplace in the city that has an iron angel — a park or a church, perhaps?”

“I don’t know of any.”

“You might try contacting the churches. There aren’t that many of them anymore.”

Segar nodded and made a note.

“What does the autopsy say about the dead man’s wounds? How far could he have walked before collapsing?”

“We found no blood on the pavement outside, which is why we’re questioning her further. He couldn’t have gone too far after he was stabbed.”

Michael Vlado nodded. “And you say he was a Gypsy? Did he have a family?”

“A brother here in the city. The rest of the family moved west years ago.”

“Do you really think Jennifer is involved?”

“We found her with the body.”

“The others all ran away,” she explained. “I stayed. He was my friend and I was hoping he was still alive.”

“Will you release her?” Michael asked.

“Not now. Perhaps tomorrow, after the court hearing.”

“She stayed with him, for God’s sake! Would his killer have done that?”

“That argument will weigh in her favor,” Segar conceded, “but the laws and the courts are different now. We must follow regulations to the letter. Here is the name and address of the victim’s brother. If you can learn anything from the Gypsies, it could help her.”

Michael had the unpleasant feeling that Segar had somehow recruited him to act as a detective. Either he was setting up Michael for some sort of trouble, or there was something about the case that Segar couldn’t trust to his own assistants. Michael didn’t like it, but maybe Jennifer Beatty deserved another chance.

The brother’s name was Sigmund Miawa, and Michael found him in the morning at a Gypsy enclave by the edge of the city. He was tall for a Rom, with a fairness of skin that suggested mixed blood and intermarriage. He was a watchmaker, with a caravan that housed his wife Zorica and their child. It was a wonder that he continued to live as a Gypsy.

“It is a sad day for my family,” he told Michael. “Perhaps you can honor us by taking part in the funeral service for my slain brother.”

“Of course,” Michael quickly agreed.

“To have a Gypsy king here, even a king from a neighboring tribe, would honor his memory.”

“The police are trying to find who killed him.”

“It was the drugs that killed him, whatever they say.”

“As he was dying he spoke of the iron angel. What does that mean to you?”

“Nothing. A myth. I have heard men speak of worshiping at the iron angel, but I think it is only a saying.”

“A saying not known in my hills. It is not a Rom saying.”

“Nevertheless—”

“Your brother spoke of the three eyes of the iron angel.”

“The Trinity, perhaps. It would be some sort of Christian symbol.”

Michael Vlado said no more until after the funeral. There was only a small group of mourners, Sigmund’s family and a few others. It was explained that Jarie had not lived among them, that he had chosen the ways of the city. And his city friends, perhaps fearing the police, had not come to the funeral.

Jaroslaw Miawa was buried in an unmarked grave over the hill from the Gypsy enclave. As they walked back together, his brother explained, “Feelings against the Rom are at a high pitch right now. We fear the wild city youths might desecrate the graves if they found them. We know where he is buried, and when times are better I will place a marker there.”

“You should go out into the countryside where the living is better,” Michael suggested.

“I have never been a wanderer. My work is here, and I doubt if old Kurzbic could manage without me.”

“He is your employer?”

Sigmund nodded. “I am not a Rom when I am at work. I do not have the typical features of a Gypsy and it is easy to pass as a Romanian. That is something my brother always resented. His Gypsy heritage was more obvious, and it kept him from the sort of job I have.”

Sigmund Miawa used public transportation to go to work, and he was grateful when Michael offered him a ride. “I could not tell Old Kurzbic that my brother had died, or he would ask too many questions. I simply took off half a day.”

The store where he worked as a watchmaker was near the center of the city on Calea Grivitei. Michael parked his car down the street and went into the shop with Sigmund. From the name “Old Kurzbic,” he’d expected the store owner to be a man in his seventies, but Kurzbic could not have been more than sixty. He was balding and wore thick glasses, but showed no other sign of aging. His handshake was strong as he greeted Michael. “Welcome to my store. Feel free to look around.”

In addition to jewelry, the small shop sold antique watches and clockwork mechanisms designed to amuse adults as well as children. “Whoever made these things?” Michael marveled, examining the miniature figure of a magician who waved his wand and produced answers to previously prepared questions.

“Such devices were popular in the late eighteenth century,” Kurzbic explained. “Basically they were clockwork automatons, designed to perform any number of wondrous tasks. In a sense it was the golden age of the watchmaker’s art.”

“Do you sell them?”

“Some are worth a small fortune today, but only to collectors.”

“You should guard these with care.”

Kurzbic nodded. The reflection of the overhead lights danced off his thick glasses. “I am careful. Everything is locked up well at night, and I keep a gun behind the counter.”

Michael glanced at the more modern watches and clocks, and then bid farewell to Sigmund and his employer. “One other thing,” he asked Kurzbic. “Did you ever hear of something called the iron angel?”

The older man blinked. “A prize-fighter, wasn’t he? Many years ago?”

“Said to have three eyes?”

“I believe so. One in the back of his head, they claimed, because he was so fast. The memory is vague but I think he was called the Iron Angel.”

“That was the Iron Engine,” Sigmund Miawa corrected from his worktable. “I remember going to see him in my youth. I think Ceausescu’s government had him shot as a traitor because he refused to be part of the Olympic team.”

Kurzbic nodded. “Iron Engine, Iron Angel — you may be right.”

Michael left the shop and drove back to Captain Segar’s office. The court hearing was over and Jennifer Beatty was waiting for him. “They said I can go,” she told him.

He glanced at Segar. “Do you have any leads yet?”

“None. Here are the things from the dead man’s pockets.”

A shabby wallet with a few bills in it, some coins, a stubby pencil, a handkerchief, a key, and a folded piece of paper bearing the number 470. Michael looked them over, and saw little of interest. “What’s the key for?”

“His apartment. It’s in an old building a few blocks from where he was found. The address is in his wallet and we checked on it.”

“He lived alone?”

“So far as we know.”

“Is 470 his apartment number?”

“No. We don’t know what that is.”

Michael noticed the piece of paper was perforated along one edge, as if it had been torn from a notebook. “All right,” he said to Jennifer. “Ready to go?”

“I was ready yesterday.”

He said goodbye to Segar and promised to call him later. Outside, he asked the American girl where she was living. She wiped her palms nervously against the sides of her jeans. “I’ve been staying with Conrad Rynox,” she answered quietly.

“The leader of this little drug group?”

“He’s very good to me,” she answered defensively. “I love him.”

He decided she was not really his responsibility. “All right, where does he live?”

“Furtuna Street. Across from the cellar where I was arrested.”

“Tell me something,” he said as they got into his car. “You knew Jarie Miawa. Did you ever see him with a knife?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“There wasn’t one among his belongings. Most Gypsies carry knives, especially in a city like this. It might indicate he pulled it out to defend himself and dropped it when he was stabbed. Perhaps he wounded the killer with it.”

“I never saw one,” she said, looking away.

As they turned into Furtuna Street, he pulled up to the curb. “Jennifer, I have to ask if you’re doing the right thing going back to this man Rynox. He’s been supplying you with drugs, hasn’t he?”

“Sometimes.” She looked away. “I’m cutting down. Pretty soon I won’t need them any more.”

“I’ve known addicts before who said that. Come on, I want to meet Conrad Rynox.”

She was reluctant at first to introduce them, but when Michael insisted she finally led the way into the apartment building. There was no elevator so they climbed five flights to the rooms she and Rynox shared. Michael hadn’t known what to expect, but he shouldn’t have been surprised to find a bearded man, apparently well into his thirties, asleep on the sofa in his underwear. He woke up when Jennifer shook him, and reached for her.

She danced away and announced, “We have a guest. Try to make yourself presentable, Conrad.”

He sat up, bleary-eyed, making no effort to cover his hairy legs. “You come for some H?” he asked.

Michael shook his head. “I’m a friend of Jennifer’s. I don’t need any heroin, and neither does she.”

Conrad Rynox, if that was his name, spoke German rather than Romanian. He picked up his wristwatch, shook it, then tossed it aside. “What time is it, Jenny?”

“One-thirty. It’s time you were up.”

Michael could tell by his eyes and general manner that Conrad was still high on drugs, though he seemed reasonably coherent. “Do you know a man named Jarie Miawa?”

“Sure, I know Jarie — knew him, that is. He’s dead, isn’t he? Do I remember that right?”

“Yes, he’s dead,” Jennifer confirmed.

“Thought so. Came in bleeding like a stuck pig. That was last night, wasn’t it?”

“Two nights ago. Everyone ran away and left me for the cops.”

“I’m sorry, Jenny. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“Jarie talked about the iron angel,” Michael said. “Do you know about it?”

“Iron angel — sure! It’s the answer to all problems, the fountain of youth, utopia.”

“Does it exist? Have you seen it?”

“I’ve seen it, just once. It was like nothing else on earth, man! There were a half-dozen fires burning around it, and there it was, shrouded in smoke. We approached like worshipers one at a time, through the smoke, to peer into its three eyes and learn our destiny.”

“Where can I find it, Conrad?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I think Jarie was stabbed there. Otherwise why was it on his dying lips? I need to find the killer, or else the police may arrest Jennifer again.”

“It is nearby,” he said. “But I’m not sure I could find it again. I’ll try to find out where.”

Michael could see there was no chance of learning more at the moment. “I’ll be going now,” he told Jennifer. “This is the hotel where I’m staying, and the phone number. Please call me if he learns anything.”

“I will,” she promised.

He went back downstairs. Glancing toward the end of Furtuna Street, where it intersected with Grivitei, he realized for the first time that he was just around the corner from the watchmaker’s shop where the victim’s brother worked. Sigmund was sitting behind the counter where Michael had left him only a couple of hours earlier.

“I thought of another question,” he told Sigmund. “Is there somewhere we could talk?”

“There’s a coffee house down the street.” He turned toward Old Kurzbic at the rear of the store. “Can you handle things while I go for a cup of coffee?”

“I handled them all morning,” the shop owner grumbled.

“I won’t be more than twenty minutes,” Sigmund promised.

Over coffee Michael said, “Your employer didn’t seem too pleased with your taking a break.”

“Sometimes he feels sorry for himself. He knows more about the business than I ever will. I think he only hired me so he’d have someone to converse with. On days like today there aren’t many customers.” He took a sip of coffee. “But what was it you wanted to ask me?”

He repeated Conrad Rynox’s description of the iron angel. “Did you ever hear anything like that before?”

He shook his head. “It sounds like a narcotic dream, all those smoky fires and the angel in the middle. It couldn’t really exist, could it?”

“I don’t know,” Michael Vlado answered honestly. If this Gypsy didn’t believe in the iron angel, why should he? “Do you know Conrad Rynox?”

“Slightly. He’s an occasional customer at our shop.”

“The number 470 was on a small paper in your brother’s pocket. Could it be an address?”

“None that I know of.” He thought about it. “That number would be about two blocks down from the cellar where his body was found. It wouldn’t be connected.”

“Connected? What do you mean?”

“In these old city blocks the building basements often run together. A person can enter on one street and exit through a building on a street around the corner.”

“But 470 wouldn’t be one of them, in any direction?”

“No. It would be too far away.”

They finished their coffee and walked back to the shop. Kurzbic was behind the counter waiting on a customer with a damaged alarm clock. “I’ll see you later,” Michael told Sigmund, leaving him at the door.

He went back to where he’d left his car and was about to get in when a woman stepped from a doorway. Her clothing told him at once that she was a Gypsy, but at first he didn’t recognize her.

“Michael Vlado!”

“Yes?”

“I am Zorica Miawa, Sigmund’s wife. We met briefly at the funeral this morning.”

“Of course. For a moment I didn’t remember.”

“There was no reason why you should.”

“I just left your husband. We had a cup of coffee together.”

She was a small, dark woman a bit younger than Michael — perhaps around forty. Her eyes had the deep intensity associated with Gypsy beauty, and he imagined she’d broken more than one Rom heart in her youth.

“I must speak to you about my husband and Jarie.”

He held open the car door. “Get in here.”

She slid in next to him but he made no attempt to start the engine. “I heard you asking Sigmund about the iron angel. He knows more than he pretends. The men talk about it. I have heard it mentioned in their conversations.”

“Is it some sort of cult? A bizarre religion, or even a sexual thing?”

“I don’t know. Jarie went there often. He spoke of the cellars, and the heroin-snorting, and the iron angel. My husband was intrigued, but I don’t know if he’d ever been himself.”

“There was a number on a piece of paper in Jarie’s pocket — 470. Mean anything to you?”

“No. An address, perhaps, but I don’t know where.”

“How did you happen to find me here?”

She hesitated only an instant. “I was shopping on this street and saw you returning to your car.”

Michael nodded. “You’d better go now. I have to see Captain Segar.”

She smiled slightly and slipped out of the car. He watched her walking back along Furtuna Street and wondered if she might have been there spying on her husband. Or on Jennifer Beatty.

Back in Segar’s office, Michael was openly discouraged. “I’m no detective. I’ve gone about as far as I can, but I’ve learned nothing about this so-called iron angel except that a great many people seem to know about it.”

“If a great many people know about it, but not the police, that implies something beyond the law.”

“Perhaps, but in which direction? Maybe drugs are involved, maybe it’s merely a heroin-induced fantasy. Then again, it could be a sort of religious cult. Jarie Miawa might have been stabbed to death as some sort of sacrifice.”

Segar snorted at that. “What sort of angel would demand a blood sacrifice?”

“The Angel of Death.”

“Michael, you are seeing darkness where there is only human fallibility. I am convinced that drugs are the key to this.”

He told Segar about his meeting with Conrad Rynox. “I hate to see Jennifer back there with him.”

“Do you think they might be still using that cellar for their activities?”

“I doubt it, so soon after Jarie Miawa’s murder.” But Michael wondered about it. “I suppose I should look at the place where his body was found.”

“Go there tonight,” Segar said. “I can equip you with a body microphone and I’ll be waiting outside with some men. This is the number where we found the body — 117 Furtuna.”

“I know. It’s right across the street from the apartment Jennifer shares with Conrad.”

“You’ll do it?”

“All right.”

They waited until darkness descended on the city, soon after dinnertime, and Segar carefully taped a microphone and small transmitting unit to Michael’s chest. “With that Gypsy tunic you wear, no one will notice it,” he assured him.

“I hope I’m doing the right thing,” Michael said, aware that Jennifer might be back in that cellar, if anyone was.

Segar had two men with him, and they dropped Michael at the corner of Grivitei and Furtuna. “We’ll be listening,” he promised.

Michael saw that old Kurzbic’s shop was dark, and he pictured Sigmund back in the caravan with his wife and child. He walked around the corner, seeing only a few pedestrians hurrying home, and made his way to the building numbered 117. The sign outside identified several offices located there, but once past the front door he made his way back to the cellar stairs. The door was unlocked and no sound reached him from the darkness below. He turned on the light and started down.

The basement area was empty except for a few upended crates which could have served as seats for the heroin sniffers. He moved around it, wondering if he should report in to Segar. There was a door, perhaps leading to one of the adjoining cellars. It was unlocked and he swung it open.

Almost at once he saw the figure, about ten feet in, lit only by the faint glow from his side of the basement. It wasn’t an iron angel, or an angel of any sort.

It was Conrad Rynox and he was dead.

Back at headquarters, Segar slumped in his chair, staring at Michael Vlado. “You found me another body when I wanted you to find a murderer.”

“I found what was there.”

“He was stabbed just like Miawa, though this time the wound was right to the heart. He didn’t live long enough to run away.”

“The killer is getting better with practice,” Michael observed. “When I touched him the body was cold. Any idea how long he’d been dead?”

“Several hours. They’ll do an autopsy right away.”

“What about Jennifer?”

“I’m sorry, Michael. I’m having her picked up for questioning.”

“Tell your men to search the rest of those basements.”

“I’m having that done too.”

Michael was waiting when Jennifer Beatty arrived. “He’s dead, isn’t he? They told me he’d been stabbed and I know he’s dead!”

“I’m sorry, Jennifer. He was never any good for you.”

She flared into anger at his words. “How would you know?”

“He gave you heroin—”

“He gave me lots more besides that! Where is he? I want to see him.”

“Perhaps later,” Segar murmured. “First I must ask you some questions. If you do not wish Michael to stay—”

“He can stay.”

“Would you like a lawyer?”

“I have no money for one. My God, do you think I killed the only man I ever really loved?” Her eyes flooded with tears.

Segar sighed, perhaps realizing that communication would be difficult in her present condition. Still, he pressed on. “When was the last time you saw Conrad Rynox?”

“This afternoon,” she answered listlessly. “Michael drove me back to the apartment and we found Conrad asleep on the sofa. After Michael left a little before two I fixed Conrad a light lunch. Then he said he had to go out for a while. That was the last time I saw him.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

She shook her head. “He often went out without telling me where, especially if he needed drugs from his supplier.”

“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope your memory improves, Miss Beatty.”

“It was someone across town. His address is in the apartment. I insisted Conrad give it to me in case I got desperate some day when he wasn’t home. Now are you going to let me see him?”

“First I want you to go over the contents of his pockets.” Segar dumped a plastic evidence bag on the desk in front of him. There was German and Romanian currency, gripped by a golden clip, a leather wallet with some papers, a few coins, a handkerchief, some unidentified capsules, and a six-inch spring knife with the initials J. M. on it.

“That’s Jarie Miawa’s missing knife,” Michael observed.

“Looks like it.”

“He... he took it off Jarie’s body,” Jennifer said. “He went through his pockets before the police arrived, looking for drugs.”

“These are deadly things.” Segar demonstrated by pressing a button on the side of the knife. The spring-powered blade shot out one end.

Michael was more interested in the wallet. He looked through its contents, found an apartment key, some routine identification cards, and a folded slip of paper with a number on it.

“117,” Michael read.

“The building where we had our drug parties,” Jennifer said.

“Where Jarie Miawa died,” Segar added.

Michael frowned at it. “The building was right across the street from his own apartment. Why would he need to write down its number?”

“Maybe to give to someone,” Segar speculated. He took out a second evidence bag. “Here are his watch and rings. A battery-powered wristwatch with the correct time. No clue there to when he died.”

“I saw that in his room.” Michael picked up two fancy rings. “What about these, Jennifer? Was he wearing them both when he left you?”

“Yes. I gave him the sapphire.” She seemed close to tears again.

Segar was starting to gather up the objects when the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up and listened intently. “Fine,” he said. “All right.” He hung up and turned to Michael. “The autopsy shows he died within a short time of eating, probably around two o’clock.”

“It was after two when he left the apartment!” Jennifer insisted.

“He must have crossed the street to number 117 and been stabbed to death in the basement almost at once,” Michael said. He was remembering meeting Zorica, Sigmund’s wife, on that street.

The phone rang again and this time it was one of Segar’s men, reporting that a search of the connecting basements in the block had yielded nothing unusual.

“Can I see him now?” Jennifer asked again.

Michael tried putting an arm around her shoulders. “What good will it do? It’ll only make you feel the loss all the more.”

She shook off his comforting arm. “I want to see him! It’s my right!”

Michael and Segar exchanged glances over her head. “All right,” the captain said. “Come this way.”

“Life might be better for you now,” Michael tried to tell her as they went downstairs. “You can get into a treatment program and stop your dependence on drugs.”

“It’s not just the drugs, it’s not even Conrad, really. It’s just that this is another ending. My life has been too full of endings. When I fled into the mountains to your Gypsy village it was an ending, and when I left Zurich it was another ending. By now I’ve run out of endings.”

“Here we are,” Segar said, holding open a white door with a No Admission sign. The attendant pulled out one of the drawers and lifted the sheet.

Jennifer froze, staring at Conrad’s chalk-white face, thinking thoughts that Michael couldn’t imagine. Yes, it was another ending for her. There was no denying that.

A low moan started then deep in her throat, building toward a fearful culmination. Michael, standing across the open drawer from her, tried to move, then shouted, “Segar! The knife!”

It was tight against her chest, just beneath the breastbone, and she had only to press the button for the spring release. They both saw the spurt of blood as the blade went in, and even as Segar grabbed her Michael knew it was too late.

In all the years that he’d known Captain Segar, he’d never seen anything hit him as hard as Jennifer Beatty’s death. He sat in his office chair, his face almost as ashen as Conrad’s had been. “How could I have done it, Michael? When I was distracted by those phone calls she must have slipped the knife up her sleeve or into her blouse. I never even noticed!”

“Neither of us noticed. She didn’t want us to. She decided she wanted to die like that. Perhaps she was thinking of Juliet stabbing herself and falling on Romeo’s body.”

“My God, Michael! Do they read Shakespeare in your village?” At least he was stirring a bit, and some color was creeping back into his face.

“I read it, and I’m sure Jennifer Beatty did too. She was an American kid, over here attending college, and she just took the wrong turn in the road. If there’s fault to be found, it started a long time before you or I ever knew her.”

Segar shook his head, as much to clear it as to deny the truth of Michael’s words. “There is nothing to keep you here any longer,” he said.

“Yes, there is.”

“What’s that?”

“The iron angel.”

“A heroin dream, nothing more. Our men searched the basements and found nothing.”

“Wouldn’t an angel more likely be up than down?” Michael was examining the contents of the victims’ pockets, especially the numbered slips of paper. “This 470 and 117. They could have been written by the same person. The sevens are almost identical. And both slips seem to have been torn from a notebook of some sort.”

“We know what 117 is — the address of the office building where they gathered for the heroin parties. But what about 470?”

Michael pondered that, studying the slips of paper. “I can’t believe Conrad would have written down the street number to give someone. And why should he have needed it for himself?” Then suddenly he knew. He knew it all. “Up, Captain, up! The angel is up, not down.”

“Up?”

“On an upper floor of one of those buildings, where your men didn’t search. Come on — I’ll wear the body microphone again.”

“You’re going back there? It’s almost midnight.”

“I have to bring the killer to justice. I owe Jennifer that much.”

As soon as he saw men entering the building at 117 at this late hour, he knew it was the place he sought. This time he went upstairs instead of down to the cellar, following people to the top floor of the old building. No one stopped or questioned him. He passed through a door with the others and found himself in a large darkened loft area lit only by a half-dozen small, smoky fires. Beyond them, the focus of everyone in the room, stood an ancient statue of iron, as tall as a man, its colors chipped and faded with the passage of time. The men approached one by one, and as they turned away they seemed to drop an offering into one of the burning pots.

Michael joined the line, speaking softly into the body mike. As he drew nearer he saw that each person paused only an instant before the statue, gazing into its three evenly spaced eyes.

Then it was his turn. He saw the faded face of the iron angel and looked into its three eyes and gazed upon the truth he had expected.

To his left, through the smoke, old Kurzbic appeared holding a Luger pistol. As he raised it to fire, it seemed to Michael’s eyes that everything moved in slow motion. It seemed that Segar would never make it across the room before the Luger fired.

But then he was onto Kurzbic, toppling him to the floor as the weapon fired harmlessly toward the ceiling. Lights went on and people scattered in every direction as more police filled the room.

From the floor Segar asked, “What did you see in the angel’s eyes, Michael?”

“Today’s number is 525. The iron angel is a gambling device.”

Later, though he was bone-tired, Michael Vlado dictated a statement to complete Captain Segar’s investigation. They were back in Segar’s office.

“Somewhere, while adding to his collection of eighteenth-century clockwork automatons, Kurzbic came upon this large figure of an iron angel, fitted with three eyes and spring mechanisms to bring random three-digit numbers into view at the push of a lever. One digit appeared in each eye opening, and because they were small a viewer had to step right up to the statue to read them. Kurzbic decided to set up a daily lottery, a sort of numbers game, selling chances on whichever number the buyers wanted to play. He recorded the number in his book and gave the player a slip with the number written on it, as a receipt. Those were the slips we found on Jarie and Conrad. In the latter case, Conrad simply played the address of his drug den because he felt it was a lucky number.”

“It wasn’t lucky for him,” Segar said. “What were those fires for?”

“Simply to burn up the losing tickets after betters had checked the day’s number. Kurzbic must have feared a police raid would have turned up numbered slips in everyone’s pockets. He had the master list, of course, to check for payoffs, but he kept that well hidden. I believe Jarie Miawa must have confronted Kurzbic on the night he was killed. Perhaps he discovered that with his clockwork skills Kurzbic was fixing the mechanism to stop only at numbers on which there’d be few winners, avoiding those that were getting a heavy play. In any event, Miawa was stabbed. He managed to stagger downstairs to the heroin den and died there. Kurzbic could have quickly wiped up any spots of blood on the steps.”

“What about Conrad Rynox?”

“It was his death that identified Kurzbic as the killer. Shortly before the murder I saw him toss his wristwatch aside because it had stopped. Yet when we found his body the battery-operated watch was running perfectly. Conrad left the apartment with a watch that wasn’t running and had it fixed within a few minutes. The only possible conclusion was that he visited a watch shop and purchased a new battery. Kurzbic’s shop is across Furtuna Street and just around the corner on Grivitei, and Sigmund told me he was an occasional customer there. There’d have been no time for him to go anywhere else, according to the autopsy report. During those important minutes I’d taken Sigmund down the street for coffee, and old Kurzbic was alone in the shop.”

“That’s the trouble. He was alone! If he killed Conrad, how did he get his body around the corner to 117 and into the basement?”

“You’re forgetting that the basements in that block all connect. Conrad must have indicated he knew the truth about Jarie’s death. After Kurzbic replaced the battery he stabbed Conrad and pushed his body into the basement, waiting until later to move it over to where I found it.”

“Hundreds of people must have known Kurzbic ran this gambling game.”

“Of course! They bought numbers from him every day, and if they couldn’t wait to hear the winner they went at midnight to watch the angel’s wheels spin. I should have guessed a gambling involvement from the beginning. The first thing Jennifer told me about Jarie Miawa was that he liked to gamble. When I finally made the connection in my mind between those three-digit numbers and the three eyes of this fabled iron angel, I suspected an antique gambling device of some sort. That pointed me toward Kurzbic and his collection of clockwork automatons. When he saw me tonight he knew it was over and drew his gun, probably the one he mentioned keeping behind his counter.”

Captain Segar sighed and signaled that Michael’s statement was at an end. He looked tired himself. “I must thank you again, old friend. I could never have concluded this case without you.”

Michael Vlado shook his hand. Without them, Jennifer Beatty might still be alive, but neither spoke those words. Perhaps it wouldn’t have made any difference. Perhaps her number had simply come up, on the face of another iron angel somewhere.