The Confession

3

We took a quick survey of her windowless bedroom-a vast, too-soft bed, half-full wardrobe, wide-mirrored vanity filled with all kinds of blush and mascara and lipsticks. If she had left on her own, she wasn’t interested in doing her face. On the outside of the bedroom door was a pale square with four screw holes where a lock had once been. Woznica explained: “The previous tenants had, yes, a child. Sometimes, you know, they had to lock him in.”

I could never imagine locking Agnes in her room.

“What do you think?” Emil asked as we walked back to the station.

I stopped for a crowd of teenagers in exercise shorts to jog by. “How can he be fat with so much energy?”

“If you can afford it, anything’s possible.”

Emil was the one militiaman who knew this firsthand. Lena had brought an unnationalized fortune to their marriage, and though they lived among the rabble, one look at Lena gave them away. She visited the station in current Western fashions, new hairstyles, and though she wore little jewelry, the long neck beneath her black, bobbed hair was hereditarily built to support a string of pearls. Her drinking problem, and the fact that he had saved her life, were the only reasons any of us could figure for her choosing a clumsy peasant like Emil for a life mate.

“It looks like shell shock,” he said.

“Those shakes?”

“Was he in the war?”

“That would be a long time ago.”

He shrugged. “Let’s check his file.”

Files on public officials were kept in the basement of the Central Committee on Victory Square. We caught a bus from Woznica’s neighborhood, got out at the vast circle of roads around a huge statue of a man and woman holding up a torch, and made our way to the columned Central Committee building. Before it stood the Lenin of all capitals, a recent gift from Our Friend, arm elevated like the couple in the middle of the square, stepping into the future, the wind raising his jacket. A guard stood smoking at the small side door, beneath the emblem of the hawk at rest. The sight of our Militia certificates did nothing to excite him.

The records room was down a dark, musty corridor, and Milos, the old Slovak record keeper, wasn’t known for his helpfulness. Beneath a large, smiling Mihai, he scratched the gray stubble on his cheek. “I don’t imagine you have the proper forms, do you?”

“What forms?” I asked.

Milos opened his hands. “Read your regulations, comrades. Article seventeen-fifty. Permissions for all Militia inquiries must be prefaced by signatures from your superiors. Isn’t that old Karl Moska?”

Emil shook his head. “Subsection three,” he quoted: “‘This article pertains to investigations not previously authorized by Militia decrees G-34 or G-72.’ These are blanket decrees which cover Homicide Department work.”

Now I was impressed.

Milos shoved a thumb over his shoulder at the wall of black drawers. “Don’t mess them up.”

Comrade Malik Woznica, his brief file told us, was forty-eight years old and married to Svetla Levin (daughter of a Russian tailor who had moved here with the Red Army). He had been suffering from an unknown neurological disease for the last decade. The doctor’s report offered no answers, but speculated that the cause might be found in a mining town where Comrade Woznica had spent two years as Party boss before developing his condition. The water in that region, said the doctor, was known to have been contaminated by mercury, and the town was almost famous-in the medical community, at least-for its cancer rates. As for Comrade Woznica, only morphine seemed to help the condition. I wondered aloud if Woznica was hooked on his medication.

Emil shut the file. “The way he was jerking around, I’d say he hasn’t touched it for a long time.”

“Maybe she took his prescription with her. For herself.”

“Or to sell. But she couldn’t move in the first place.”

“Give me the name of that doctor, will you?”

Back at the station, I called Dr. Sergius Brandt’s office at Unity Medical, but his secretary curtly informed me that the doctor was out of town. “When will he be back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’d like an appointment.”

I listened to static while she, I assumed, examined his schedule. Emil was on his own telephone, checking in with Lena. He was smiling.

“Two weeks.”

“What?”

“The doctor will be able to see you in two weeks. Wednesday the twenty-first.”

“This is official business,” I told her. “I’m not a patient, I’m a Militia inspector.”

“Comrade Doctor Brandt is a busy man.”

“So am I. I’ll be there at noon. Tomorrow.”

Before she could protest, I hung up.