Invisible Murder

LOOD OR MONEY. This wasn’t some vague hypothetical choice; it was a practical problem. The blood was flowing out of him with every single heartbeat, and his ability to move, think, and act was flowing away with it. Sándor didn’t know if he was dying or not. Maybe there was no point in speculating about the future.

And the money. The money that Tamás had given his life for. It was all here in his hand, in a gray, blood-smeared envelope that was almost as thick as Blackstone’s International Law.

He didn’t have much time or many options. He clumsily got up onto all fours and couldn’t get any farther than that. Walking and standing were not in his current repertoire. A stab of pain shot through his hole-riddled palm when he put his left hand on the floor, but if he was going to take that envelope, he would have to ignore the pain. It turned out you could reach a point when the pain became irrelevant. What mattered were the mechanics. What you could and what you couldn’t do. He couldn’t stand up without falling down. And if he fell, he would stay down. He could probably crawl on all fours if he used his left hand, too, so that’s what he did.

He crawled past the person in the white suit. At the moment he didn’t care who was lying there inside the suit, nor did he care if the man were alive or dead. He didn’t have any spare energy to waste on anger or curiosity. Hand-knee, hand-knee, that was all that mattered. Past the Finn with only half a head. Out of the door. Out.

Halfway across the threshold he was hit by a wave of weakness. His arm buckled, he rolled halfway onto his side, but the doorframe stopped him and keep him from collapsing completely.

“You’re not going to make it, phrala.”

He looked up. There was Tamás, Mulo-Tamás with the red, bleeding eyes.

“Shut up,” Sándor mumbled. “Out of my way! You know this whole thing is your fault, right?”

Mulo-Tamás didn’t move. “Not just my fault,” he said.

Sándor didn’t have the strength to argue with an evil spirit that might not even be there. He tried to crawl farther, but his body wouldn’t obey.

“I did it because I had to,” Mulo-Tamás said. “So the family would survive. So we could get by. Who knows? If you hadn’t turned your back on us, maybe I wouldn’t have fucking needed to.”

“Move,” Sándor repeated feebly.

“You turned your back on us.” Mulo-Tamás’s bloody eyes burned. “You turned your back on your own people, your brother and your sisters, your own mother. Just so you could get by in the gadjo world. And where did it get you? Nowhere. Soon you’ll be as dead as me. And what will happen to the family then? Your death is hardly any purer than mine.”

Sándor’s head sank.

“The money,” Sándor mumbled. “Feliszia’s school. The new roof. An apartment for Vanda. Tamás, I’m not turning my back on them.”

“You just don’t want anyone to know we exist.”

“Yes. Yes, I do. Lujza is going to meet you all. If … well, if she wants to.” I don’t think I have the strength to love someone who isn’t brave enough to be himself, she’d said. But … what if he was brave enough now? What if he could stop being just half a person? Somewhere deep down, he knew perfectly well that that was why he backed down so easily, why he never stood up to confrontation, why he was afraid of the authorities and walked away from most fights—even the most important ones. A half person has a harder time keeping his balance than a whole one. Maybe it was about time he quit being a half-brother, too.

“Phrala,” Sándor said. “Enough now, okay? Te merav. You’re killing me.”

But Mulo-Tamás wasn’t there anymore. There was nothing there.

Sándor clung to the doorframe and managed to pull himself up onto his knees. The front hall was empty. Nina wasn’t lying in the middle of the floor anymore, and he really hoped that was because she had managed to get away, and not because Frederik had dragged her off somewhere.

He wasn’t going to be able to get away. He heard car doors closing and footsteps outside. He had minutes or maybe only seconds left until they were here.

His heart hammered in an attempt to force the blood around his body faster. He clung to the doorframe with both hands and managed to struggle to his feet. The hole in the ceiling was still there, but there was no chance he would be able to reach it and not much chance that he would avoid detection even if he could. But the money. Maybe he could get the money up there.

One try. He didn’t think he had it in him to do any more.

Come on now, phrala. Do it!

He wasn’t sure if the voice came from someone else or if it was from inside him. Wasn’t sure if it was Tamás’s or his own. Maybe it didn’t matter, either. Maybe it was one and the same thing now.

He threw. Flung the envelope up, toward that dark opening up there. It was pretty much going to take a miracle, he thought. And that was exactly what he got—a perfect arc, with more strength than he actually had, and a precision that even on a good day would have been remarkable. The envelope disappeared through the opening into the jumbled chaos of wires and insulation material and darkness.

Sándor staggered a few more steps before his legs gave out. The fall almost killed him, but he managed to crawl another few meters. Then he could go no farther.

He lowered his head on to his one aching arm and lay down to wait for help or judgment. For whatever was going to come next.

Okay, phrala. You did what you could.