Invisible Murder

ÁNDOR WAS STARING at the piece of paper Bolgár had put down on the table in front of him. It didn’t exactly look official, and he doubted the document would ever be presented to the tax authorities or any other official for that matter, but the mere fact that it had been written down gave it a certain, unarguable weight.

It was an IOU. And the amount was a staggering two million forints. Tamás! he protested silently to himself. How in the hot, stinking bowels of hell could you sign this? But that was just what he had done—Tamás Rézmüves, with big adolescent swoops to the T and the R.

“Tamás isn’t eighteen yet,” Sándor said in a sort of legal reflex. But he also knew that didn’t matter here. The IOU in front of him had nothing to do with Hungarian law.

Bolgár leaned back until his wicker chair creaked under the pressure. They were sitting on the patio at Bolgár’s house, in a village that wasn’t so terribly different from Galbeno apart from the fact that the cars were bigger and newer. Only Bolgár’s own house stood out, and then some—it must be five or six thousand square feet, Sándor thought, with a two-story central core and two lower side wings surrounding the patio. Facing the street there was a tall wrought iron fence with so many curlicues and flourishes that it made his eyes swim when he tried to look through it.

“Sándor, my friend,” Bolgár said slowly. “Your brother is a man, and this here is his signature. Do we agree on that much?”

Sándor thought about Valeria and the girls and about the money for the new roof. He nodded.

“Yes.”

Bolgár smiled.

“Good. Then we can work out the rest.” He gave a curt, brisk wave with one hand, and a teenage girl came out of the house with a tray of bottles and glasses. “It’s hot,” Bolgár said. “I’m sure you would like a beer.”

The girl set the tray down on the little wrought iron table between them with a bang. Her sullen face radiated antipathy; she obviously wasn’t thrilled to be waiting on the men.

“My daughter,” Bolgár said proudly, completely disregarding her rebellious glare. “Give your daddy a kiss, girl.”

The girl leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek without the slightest change in her facial expression. Then she disappeared back into the house. Bolgár raised his glass, and Sándor’s reflexive politeness forced him to do the same even though he actually had no desire to drink with this man. The beer was so icy-cold that he felt it all the way down his esophagus; it was almost painful.

“Why did Tamás borrow so much money?” Sándor asked.

“Business,” Bolgár said. “Your brother had an item to sell, but he had to borrow money for the trip, transportation, room and board. It all adds up, you know.”

“But … two million?” You could buy ten airplane tickets for that kind of money, Sándor thought.

“Shall we say there was … a certain element of risk. Your brother couldn’t just take the bus.”

Sándor felt a shiver in his gut that had nothing to do with the chilled beer.

“What kind of item?” Sándor asked. “And where did he get it?”

Bolgár shook his head.

“Your brother was extremely tight-lipped about the details. Still, I trusted him, which is why I invested such a large sum and put him in touch with some men in Denmark who could help him. But now I’m starting to have doubts. I haven’t heard anything, you see. From him or the Danes. And so now I’m asking myself: Who is going to pay me back my two million forints?”

Bolgár’s eyes came to rest on Sándor with a weight that made it clear it wasn’t actually a question.

“FELISZIA. CAN I ask you something?”

His little sister was standing in front of the house with her forearms immersed in an orange plastic basin, washing clothes. The front of her pink T-shirt was covered with wet splotches.

“What?” she asked.

Sándor looked around. One of Vanda’s two boys was chasing the other with a little, yellow squirt gun. Both of them were screaming with delight. Vanda was nowhere to be seen, and he couldn’t spot Valeria either. Probably just as well.

“The money Tamás thinks he’s going to earn in Denmark. I know it’s because he has something to sell. But do you know what it is?”

She shook her head. “No. He didn’t say anything about that.”

“Feliszia, it’s important. I think he’s in trouble, but I can’t help him unless I have some idea what it’s about.”

Feliszia regarded him with calm, dark eyes. She had become so beautiful, he thought. So very much alive.

“What kind of trouble?” she asked.

“Well, Bolgár for starters.” He didn’t want to bring up the NBH just now.

“That man,” she said in exactly the same tone Valeria had used. “I didn’t want Bobo to borrow the money from him. But he did it anyway.”

“Tamás borrowed two million forints.”

“Two million?” Feliszia looked startled. “But why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“That idiot,” she whispered. She had tears in her eyes now. “What is it?” He placed a hand on her arm awkwardly. “Feliszia, what’s wrong?”

Suddenly she wrapped her soapy arms around his neck and hugged him tight. It took Sándor so much by surprise that he just stood there like a peg doll with stiff, mechanical joints. Feliszia let him go again and looked at him with the same confusion he had seen before in both her and Vanda’s faces. He was their brother, and yet he wasn’t. The distance between them suddenly hurt; he didn’t want it to be there. He wanted to belong.

“I really want to help,” he heard himself say. “I just don’t know how.” And this time he meant it; he was no longer just trying to persuade her to talk to him.

“He was so angry,” Feliszia said. “About that business with Vanda’s apartment, about what happened in Tatárszentgyörgy.”

Sándor bit his lower lip. He remembered his own feeling of impotent shock when he heard about the tragedy in the little village forty kilometers from Budapest. Someone had set fire to a house where a Roma family was living. When the inhabitants tried to escape from the flames, they were gunned down. A father and his five-year-old son.

“Was it someone you knew?” he asked.

“No,” Feliszia said. “But it doesn’t matter. They were Roma.”

“You’re angry, too.”

“Yes, I am. So you see, I understand Tamás.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said the only thing that could save us was money. Lots of money. So we could get out of here, and no one could hurt us.”

“Feliszia, this isn’t going to save anyone. Tamás is up to his neck in it, and so are we. And everything is just getting worse.”

She shot him a furious, betrayed look, which pierced him to the soul. A little girl with a filthy pink stuffed rabbit on her lap, confused and afraid and surrounded by strangers.…

“Well, it’s not my fault,” Sándor said defensively. “I’m just trying to help.…”

She plunged her arms back into the basin so abruptly that soapy water splashed out in all directions and began to scrub at the wet clothes with quick, fierce jerks.

Then her motions slowed. She pulled up one shoulder and used it to rub a soapy smear off her cheek.

“I don’t know what he wants to sell,” she said. “And I don’t know where he got it from either. But you could try asking Pitkin.”

THE DOG WAS barking, very loudly and insistently with just a split second between each deafening woof. Its lips were pulled so far back that every single tooth was visible and most of its glistening pink-and-black mottled gums, too. Sándor remained motionless, standing in the relative safety on the other side of the ramshackle fence. It was bigger than most of the village dogs, and he rather thought a German shepherd had been added to the mix not too many generations ago.

“Hello?” he called, tentatively. “Is Pitkin home?”

Pitkin lived in “the old village,” as people in Galbeno called it, even though only three buildings there were still even marginally habitable. It was a collection of wattle and daub huts a little farther up in the hills, closer to the source of the spring, but otherwise just a little farther away from everything. No road, just a winding path. No electricity. Roofs that were patchworks of rusty metal plates, plastic, and straw. Galbeno wasn’t actually the end of the road, Sándor reflected. There was a back of beyond beyond the back of beyond.

A man came out of the house. His back was so stooped that his head with its plaid cap jutted out between his shoulders like a turtle’s. His trousers were being held up by a pair of black suspenders, and his torso was clad solely in a yellowing vest.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Sándor. My mother’s Valeria Rézmüves.”

“Valeria’s boy? How tall you’ve grown!”

Sándor shrugged. “Is Pitkin home?” he asked.

The old man nodded. “Come in,” he said. “Shut up, Brutus.”

The German shepherd mix stopped barking immediately. It wagged and danced over to the old man, who patted its head with a calloused, gnarled hand. Sándor ventured inside, closing the gate behind him by the simple expedient of looping a bit of dark-green binder twine over the top of the post.

Inside the hut itself it was so dark that at first Sándor could barely make out the details. The floor plan was the same as in Valeria’s green house. One room, a shelf for sleeping and seating along three of the walls, a wood stove, and a door. No TV here, of course, since there wasn’t any electricity. Also lacking was the cleanliness and order Valeria insisted on.

A moped was parked in the middle of the room. A blue, three-speed Kreidler Florett, Sándor noted, recollecting specifications picked up in his teenage years that he hadn’t realized he still remembered. The smell of gasoline mixed with the pungency of dirt and human body odor. The moped was definitely the cleanest thing in the room. New wasn’t quite the right word, but maybe newly purchased? There was something about the way it was polished, and probably also the fact that it was parked in the middle of the house, that suggested that the joy of ownership hadn’t lost its luster.

“Pitkin, this is Sándor,” the old man announced. “Valeria’s boy.”

A pile of blankets in the corner moved, and a large, droopy form sat up.

“Tamás?” Pitkin said. “Is Tamás home?”

“No,” Sándor said. “Not yet.”

“He’s been a little under the weather lately,” grunted the man who must be Pitkin’s grandfather. “He must have eaten something that doesn’t agree with him. But if you’ll sit with him for a bit, then I can go down to the council office.”

“Are you going, Grandpa?”

“Yes, Pitkin, but Sándor’s here now. So it’s okay if I nip out for a bit.”

You would have thought Pitkin was eight rather than eighteen, Sándor thought. How sick was he really? But then it dawned on him that it wasn’t just this momentary discomfort making Pitkin seem like a child. Feliszia had mentioned it, too; she had described him as “a little immature,” and that was no exaggeration.

“You will stay, won’t you?” the old man said, and even though his voice sounded casual, there was an intensity in his eyes that made it clear that it was a plea. “I also have to pick up a couple of things at the store.”

Dear God, Sándor thought, how long has Pitkin been sick?

“Of course I will,” Sándor promised, sitting down on the bench to demonstrate that he wasn’t about to run off. “Take your time.”

Pitkin followed his grandfather with his eyes as the old man put a jacket on over his yellowing vest—despite the heat—and straightened his cap.

“I’ll be home again soon, boy,” he said, and Sándor was a little unsure whether the boy being referred to was him or Pitkin.

“When’s Tamás coming back?” Pitkin asked once his grandfather had gone. “He said it wouldn’t take that long.”

“I don’t know, Pitkin. What was he was going to do?”

But Pitkin wasn’t that gullible. His face suddenly went blank, and he blinked a couple times.

“He was just going to earn a little money,” Pitkin said. “With his violin.”

Sándor stifled a sigh. Pitkin was clearly smart enough to lie, he thought, just not smart enough that the lie wasn’t obvious.

“That’s a nice moped,” Sándor said. “Have you just bought it?”

Pitkin’s face lit up like a sunrise.

“It’s a three-speed,” he said. “It can go seventy on a flat road.”

“That’s great. What did you have to pay for it?”

“Tamás bought it for me. He said.…” Pitkin stopped.

“What did he say, Pitkin?”

But Pitkin just shook his head.

“I wish he’d come home again,” he said. “It’s so boring here without him.”

“You’re good friends, you and him?”

Pitkin nodded so his dark hair danced.

“He’s my best friend.”

“So you would want to help him, if he needed it?”

“Of course!” Pitkin’s serious face practically radiated indignation. “He’s my friend.”

“Yes, and he’s my brother. And I really want to help him.”

“Help him with what?”

Sándor hesitated. He suddenly found it hard to lie to this big, vulnerable child-man. So he chose some words that were actually true. “Help him come home,” Sándor said. “He’s been gone too long.” Pitkin nodded. “That’s right.”

The dog came into the house. What was its name again? Brutus? Very apt. It gave Sándor a suspicious look just to let him know that it was keeping its eye on him. Then it lumbered over to Pitkin and nudged its head under Pitkin’s hand to entice him to stroke it. Pitkin scratched the dog behind the ear so it closed its eyes and moaned in pleasure.

“Do you know where exactly he was going?”

“Denmark. He said Denmark.”

Sándor knew that much already.

“What was he going to sell?”

“Just something we found,” Pitkin said.

“Where?”

“The hospital in Szikla.” Pitkin bit his lip. “He told me not to tell anyone that.”

“It’s okay, Pitkin. It’s just me.”

Suddenly the look on Pitkin’s face changed. He stood up abruptly, fumbling his way past the moped to the door. He barely made it out before the first wave of vomit splashed onto the ground.

Sándor got up instinctively without knowing what to do. Hold Pitkin’s forehead? Clean up the mess? The dog whined and bumped Pitkin with its nose, and when Sándor took a step closer, it turned its head and growled. Sándor sat down again.

Pitkin wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“It won’t stop,” Pitkin said, his voice making it clear he found this unfair. “I haven’t eaten anything at all today and still it just keeps coming.”

He sank back onto the bunk, on a pile of quilts and pillows. The dog was sniffing at the pool of vomit outside, but when Pitkin snapped his fingers, it obediently came back in and sat down next to him.

“Do you want a glass of water or anything?”

Sándor asked awkwardly.

Pitkin shook his head. “I’m tired,” he said. “I think I’m going to take a nap.”

“What was it you found?” Sándor tried one more time.

“I can’t talk now,” Pitkin grunted and lay down.

“Not even to help Tamás?”

But that appeal no longer had any effect.

“He said I couldn’t tell anyone,” Pitkin said, closing his eyes.

Sándor sat up straighter. The dog followed his every move.

“Pitkin.…”

A fake snore was all that came from Pitkin.

“You’re not really asleep.…” Sándor tried. But all he heard was more snoring, and he began to realize that he wasn’t going to get anything else out of this conversation. He got up slowly so as not to alarm the dog. Pitkin opened his eyes.

“You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Well, you’re just going to go to sleep, right?”

“But you promised my grandpa.”

The fear shone out of Pitkin’s eyes. Sándor didn’t know if he was always afraid of being alone or if it was just because he was sick. Either way, he couldn’t resist the boy’s obvious terror.

“Okay, I’ll stay for a bit,” he said.

Pitkin grunted in satisfaction and made himself more comfortable. Sándor sat quietly next to him until the old man came back.

THE NEXT MORNING Bolgár’s BMW was parked outside Valeria’s house when Sándor went out to pee. Stefan was leaning against the front door with his arms crossed. When he spotted Sándor, he straightened up and started moving.

“Mr. Bolgár wants to talk to you,” he said.

Sándor had pretty much guessed that.

“So early? Can’t it wait until I’ve had a pee?”

Apparently it couldn’t. There was a certain inevitability to the way Stefan was blocking his way.

“Now,” he said.

A few hours later Sándor was once again sitting on a bus. Not the local one this time, but an old, blue Ford Transit minibus. All seventeen seats were occupied, and the aisle between the seats was stuffed full of luggage in suitcases and plastic bags. He was the only one from Galbeno, but most of the others were from similar villages or from Miskolc’s Roma ghetto. Three women had their own section at the very back of the bus where a couple of sheets could be rigged up as a curtain at night. One of them was traveling with her little daughter, a girl of about four. The rest of the passengers were men.

Sándor was sitting on a worn, gray imitation leather seat that was already sticking to his thighs, with his feet awkwardly wedged on either side of the cardboard box of food and water that Valeria had presented him with, and his feeling of unreality grew until he was seriously considering banging his head against the window a couple of times just to check if it hurt. Outside the window Miskolc’s industrial district slid by, a gray and rusty brown landscape of fences and crumbling concrete, dented steel containers, and high smokestacks from the time when smokestacks were a symbol of progress, growth, and jobs.

Ten days ago, he thought. Ten days ago I was a law student. I was living in Budapest. I had a future.

Back then he had enjoyed the illusion that he was the master of his own life, that he could steer it in whichever direction he wanted. With a few limitations, of course, and as long as he was good and careful about not breaking the rules. Since then he had been jerked this way and that, first by Tamás, then by the NBH, the university, his professor, his mother, his family, and now most recently Bolgár.

“We’ve heard from Denmark,” Bolgár had said when Stefan deposited Sándor on the patio like the previous time. “Your brother needs you.”

“Tamás? What for?”

“Who asks why when his brother needs help? He just wants to talk to you, he says. Don’t worry, Sándor; we’ll take care of everything. At no extra charge. You’re leaving this afternoon.”

Again it wasn’t a question. Not even a demand for his consent. His compliance was taken for granted. But Bolgár might not have trusted completely in his obedience after all; as he was put on the bus, Stefan took his wallet, removed his Visa card, and gave it to the driver before handing Sándor back his money.

I’m going to Denmark, he told himself. It didn’t really make any sense. If he had been the cowboy in one of the two tattered Morgan Kane novels he had in his bag, he would have a clear mission at this point: someone who needed to be found, rescued, or avenged. Of course there would also be bad guys and trials and tribulations, and a dynamic hero who would see things through to their conclusion and emerge victorious in the end.

Sándor had a hard time seeing what his mission was. And an even harder time picturing the victorious hero.

Bolgár wanted him to help his brother. But with what? he wondered. Presumably with selling whatever the heck he and Pitkin had found, on some ultra black market to a buyer who was no doubt a criminal and possibly worse. What an outstanding start to his law career that would be.

But you don’t have a law career anymore, an icily sarcastic voice jeered in his mind. And if you don’t get Bolgár his damned two million forints, you might not have a family anymore, either. Because that was what this was about. It was never said out loud, but that was the implication. It was the reason he hadn’t refused to go, the reason he hadn’t even protested when Stefan took his credit card. Valeria and the girls. Their lives and ability to survive in the village. He didn’t even dare contemplate what consequences it might have for them if he stood up to a man like Bolgár.

He rubbed his forehead with his wrist and suddenly felt like talking to Lujza. Not to tell her where he was going or what had happened so far. Just … because. Because she was his real life, the one he had had before he became hopelessly trapped in this web of family and past and veiled threats.

He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket. If he was going to call, it made the most sense to do it while it was still a domestic call. But when he tried to turn the phone on, it shut off right away. The battery needed to be recharged.

He sat there for a while with the phone in his hand. Then he let it drop back into his pocket.

Maybe it was better this way. He had no idea what he would have said to her anyway.