Why Dostoyevsky?
Crime and Punishment, never heard of it? Powerful prose …
You’re through with lyricism, I see.
Won’t fill my belly. If you don’t want the spooks interested in you, get interested in them, Jícha recited. I can’t let you keep the photos, but take a good look at em. Remember these guys’ handles. Some of em you know. I don’t like tellin you this, but there’s certain … indications … that they’re in on a few things with the Laotians, that is the Hmongs.
So what’s this really about, Jícha? I don’t trust you.
Could be anything, ideology’s down the crapper, that leaves cash, he livened up. Christ, I mean we did amazing trade with these countries, an the KGB an our idiots were in on it. Look, Semtex, weapons, drugs … we’re talkin billions … in dollars, an you think those scumbags’re gonna give it up? Debts, liabilities, secret couriers, under-the-table expenses, established channels, Jícha was delirious.
Get a good look at these mugs, an if any of em start buzzin around, get word to me or Rudy. Or drop by here. Those Hmongs a yours draw em in like bugs to a lamp. We’ll let the mosquitoes get a little suck, an then bam! the hero thumped his fist on the table.
A little suck, an whose blood, Jícha?
I don’t remember now what his answer was, but whatever he said it came true. In a different way, in a different place, and by then he wasn’t around anymore.
Hey, I don’t wanna see those ugly mugs anymore … ever again.
That’s the whole thing, Jícha slammed his fist down. Christ, no one wants to, but I mean we gotta put these guys to the wall!
Hadraba nodded solemnly. Member the Šistecký case? he asked.
Yeah.
Recently, briefly and over breakfast, the Šistecký case had been a nationwide source of amusement. The papers were full of it. Unidentified perpetrators had given a certain sadistic ess-tee-bee scumbag from the fifties the classic forty-eight treatment from the eighties. Kidnapped him, locked him up in a cellar for two days, and then let him go. It was a just demonstration and provocation. The Communist Party declared him a victim of terrorism, which he was. The martyr’s hair turned gray, he didn’t know how long they’d leave him there. Rightfully he’d expected to have a few of his own interrogations performed for him on a new stage with a revised cast. No one beat him up though, no one even spoke to him.
Yep, that was us, said Hadraba. An that’s just the beginning. You read about Major Razseda?
That’d been in Poland. They’d killed him. And his wife.
Yep, jailer bitch, just like the rest. An Honecker! We don’t give a damn what deals the new governments made with the old ones. This is about concrete individuals … these guys ruined … lotsa lives … they gotta pay. The folks that were in the camps’re old, lots of em’re dead, it’s up to us. Sooner or later. I mean a lot of us’ve got active experience. You too, Potok.
Aright, aright, I said. But I got my own life.
You’re a racketeer! Jícha sputtered.
My business, I said. I’m not goin in with you guys.
If you’re not with us … Hadraba said with a laugh.
I’ve heard that one somewhere before.
Yeah an you’ll hear it again, it’s the leitmotif of every community, said Jícha.
What about Čáp?
He’s a nut, said the poet. Ravin on about earthworms.
An you about people!
Worms don’t have souls!
You donno beans, porter!
Degenerate sectarian!
Don’t argue! Hadraba barked, and we stopped.
You still got a chance to play ball with us. Know this guy? Jícha tossed another photo on the table. It was the Shark Hunter. Only he had glasses and a European suit on, and no tattoos on his face.
No. I refuse to testify.
Závorová.
That got me, now he was talking about the light of my life, my one miserable hope, and he was smiling.
I’ll keep an eye out, ask around, I said. Laotians, Mongs, Kanaks, what do I care.
Lemme explain, that repulsive person said, drumming his fingers on the tabletop.
The Hmongs live on the border between Vietnam and Laos. The ess-tee-bee’s interested in this guy. Someone hired em, maybe the KGB. The factories here were fulla Vietnamese, an their agents. Some worked for the Sovs. But this guy, Jícha tapped the photo, he must be somethin special, he just came now.
Seems kinda wild to me. I find it hard to believe.
Never let anything surprise you.
I’ve heard that one too.
Well here’s somethin you haven’t heard: this guy speaks Czech.
Aw baloney, now I started laughing.
See, you do know him! shouted Jícha. That’s proof!
Learned that one in the spookhouse, huh.
I picked up a few things.
Bowdlair, “Carrion,” know it? I asked.
Sure, how could I not? You had that moron too? The one with the forehead? We don’t have a handle on him yet.
No doubt you’ll track him down, I said sarcastically.
Spare the sarcasm. It might come in handy later.
We went on sparring like that till we’d had enough. Said some sort of goodbyes to each other.
Though it was still pretty early, I didn’t feel like sticking around the bar, Padre Booze had already left. Maybe I’ll look him up sometime an talk him outta livin at the Dump, persuade him to move in with us, no doubt that’d be a worthy deed. The street was empty, dark. I felt a twinge of anxiety, I didn’t like what Jícha had pulled on me back there. Why go diggin around in old stuff when time’s flyin like a mad horse … but there was somethin strange about Hunter, that photo with the glasses, it was definitely him … gone were the days when we mixed up the Laotians … he stood out as the only one with a powerful build, plus he was the chief, had authority … gotta peek at a map, see where it was he hunted those sharks, I made a note to myself, striding along a street lighted only by windows, the streetlamps were broken … my city, me, I talk with this city. An I got nowhere to run to. So I look.
I picked up the pace through Prague 5, with its dilapidated old gardens, the bushes’ slender arms reached out for me, beckoning me inside the bars, into the heavy stench of soil and rotten leaves … yeah right, I thought, I also felt bad I couldn’t tell my buddies … this was my business, but what if Hunter … then we’ll get rid of him somehow, I’ll see.
The pavement was broken in spots, but I like to jump … by the time I got to Liberation Avenue I was feeling pretty weary … but not enough to drown out the anxiety … my temples throbbed, today was too much, as usual … the run-in with the hitlers had been short but tough, the talks at Černá’s had culminated quite unpleasantly, plus if they knew about her … it might also be bad for She-Dog … an me! The day should’ve been at an end by now, I just wanted to be with my tribe … an fast … a person or two walked the avenue … APOTHEKE, a big pharmacy on the corner blinked in green neon, the light was strange and sharp, and I sensed somethin still in the air … Don’t take it easy! I howled to myself, following the example of my Hungarian great-grandmother, mother to a smuggler, an skidded to a halt … A car had been followin me for two blocks, here the streetlamps were on, so I used the old shop window trick an caught its reflection in the glass. Just before the pharmacy I noticed a bookstore, an I’d love to have She-Dog here now! maybe she could shrink me down an slip me into the pages of some, if possible, noble-minded book, cause old actor Potok is more or less all danced out for the day.
I came to a stop beneath one of the lamps, and to make damn sure they could see it was me, I lit up a smoke right in front of my face.
Engine cut, the car quietly glided toward me through the night air, big an black, the way they like em … I leaned in the window to find Side Pocket staring right back at me. Hadraba’d named him that after the spook kicked him in the balls. Those eyes hadn’t changed. Once upon a time I’d had the chance to see them cloud over with rage, the black dots of his pupils rising out of the mist of his psychopathic gaze like two pinheads, the shafts buried in his brain. Once upon a time I’d been afraid of him, once upon a time I’d dreamed of killing him, but that’s a whole different story. He laughed.