The Confession

61

I drove home with the first light, having whispered a farewell to Tania’s sleeping form. I showered and changed, and by three was at the station. Emil was in, so I sat on his desk and took one of his cigarettes. He winked. “Got some interesting news for you.”

“Me first,” I said. “Watch out for yourself and Lena. Nestor found out where I live.”

“You saw him?”

“He tried to break in while I wasn’t there.”

Emil frowned.

“I took Magda and Agnes out of the city. You might consider the same thing for Lena.”

He nodded very seriously. “Okay.”

“Another thing: A Frenchman named Louis Rostek saw Nestor last spring at the camp. The commander won’t tell me anything, and the guards don’t know what it was about. But I think he told Nestor that Antonin had put him away.”

“A Frenchman?”

“Someone I know. Through Georgi.”

Emil dragged his fingers through his hair. “I think my interesting news will stand up to yours.”

“Tell me.”

“The lab came back with prints on Stefan’s bedroom window and those fish soups. Guess who his window-climbing dinner guest was.”

“Don’t make me guess,” I said, as his phone began to ring.

He reached for it and winked. “Nestor Velcea. Matched his work camp fingerprint card perfectly.”

I watched him lean into the telephone. Stefan and Nestor Velcea, sitting at the same table eating fish soup-why? Was Stefan involved in the crimes? No. Then who came to the door? I didn’t know how to put it all together.

Emil hung up. “Sorry, but that was Lena. She’s vomiting everything she takes in. And,” he said with a grimace, “she’s a little hysterical.” He got up and went for his coat.

I stared at the empty doorway after he left, then wandered slowly toward my own desk. Louis’s role made sense-the scene at the camp was of one man’s loyalty to another, of a friend who had put some clues together. I remembered that Antonin Kullmann’s paintings had even made it to Paris-his success enabled his downfall. But the scene in Stefan’s kitchen over fish soup-

On my desk was a phone message from Georgi.

I met him in the cafe attached to the opera house on the corner of International and V. I. Lenin. It was another of those Habsburg monstrosities that seemed not to have changed in the last fifty years, with the exception of its nonplussed waiters, who smoked in the back corner and watched you wait.

Georgi handed me a list of names of people who might know the whereabouts of Nestor Velcea. As I looked it over, he said, “They’re all writers. Nestor didn’t like painters.”

“So I heard.” I pocketed the list. Georgi was looking good. He had a new hat, something a friend had brought from Vienna-not Louis, though. “Tell me more about him.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

It was a tough thing to ask, but Georgi was up to it. “I met Louis some years ago. ’Forty-seven, — eight? He was spending some time here at the expense of the Writers’ Union. He was thinner then, that’s for sure. The women went wild for him. French accent and all. You can imagine.”

“Sure I can.”

“My book had just come out, and they had me read a little bit. Louis was impressed. I can’t say I liked his poems-he was a little too didactic in those days.”

“In what direction?”

“You know, glories of world revolution and all that. He’s calmed down a lot since then.”

“Did he know Nestor Velcea?”

“Apparently they’d met each other during the war. ’Forty-four or so. I’m not sure. He knew Nestor was a basket case, but thought he was talented.”

“Did you think Nestor was talented?”

“I never saw his paintings, never met him until he came to my party.” Georgi gave an elaborate shrug. “Nestor was already in the camp when I met Louis.”

A waiter appeared and reluctantly took our order. Then he returned to the smoking group, the order still on the notepad he had dropped into his pocket.

“You should have seen it when they met again at the party. They embraced and cried like father and son.”

“Before I showed up.”

“Yeah. Before.”

I noticed my thick fingers were pulling at my rings, sliding them up a knuckle, then back. “What did Louis think about Nestor’s imprisonment?”

Georgi pulled out a cigarette. “He wasn’t in the country when they took Nestor away. He was supposed to come in on the same day Nestor was arrested, but something kept him-some visa problems, I don’t know.”

Nestor went to the train station to meet a foreign agent, but the foreigner didn’t arrive.

“Anyway, Louis didn’t hear about the arrest until maybe six months later, when he came through again. That’s when I met him. And, of course, he was angry. When Louis is angry, you don’t want to get in his way.”

“He has a temper?”

“Not at all. That’s what makes him so tough. If you’ve done enough to get Louis angry, you know you’re in for big trouble.”

“What did he do then?”

“When?”

“When he found out Nestor had been taken away.”

Georgi puffed a couple times, spreading smoke. “He lodged a complaint. He felt sure he could get Nestor out, maybe because he was a foreigner. But he went directly to Yalta Boulevard, to the Office of Internal Corrections. Can you believe it? Walked right in, alone, and came out a few hours later, furious. They hadn’t let him talk to anyone. They had him sit in the waiting room for something like two hours, then told him the officer had left for the day.”

“Who was the officer?”

Georgi shook his head. “No idea.”

I wondered what had happened that day. It was hard enough to get into Yalta Boulevard, particularly a foreigner. And then expect to free someone? Louis knew that. The only way he could have expected to have any pull in Yalta Boulevard was if he was connected to state security. Probably as an informer.

The waiter finally appeared with our coffees and placed the bill under the sugar bowl. Georgi scooped a spoonful into his coffee and stirred.