When the elevator stopped, he booked through the lobby and out of the hotel. He felt good, or at least good enough to keep himself moving.
Even in the stink of that rotting city, he could still smell Magda in his nostrils. No mistake about it. Someone definitely had the same perfume on. He walked as quickly as his sore legs allowed through the congestion of Nyugati’s underpass. The noise and commotion had grown even worse, but he saw no sign of the skinheads or even the Jesus freaks. A cloud of smoke hung from the filthy ceiling. Bums lined the walls of the rear hallway. They passed around plastic bottles of dubious vintages and tried to stay warm. Someone among them made monkey noises as Brutus passed. He pointed at a youngish guy smirking at him without teeth. “Just because you’re homeless,” Brutus said, his voice still strange because of the swelling in his tongue, “don’t think I won’t body slam your ass.”
He stepped over the glimmering pool of his own blood, which now lapped at the torn remains of that old man’s discarded necktie. Confident that no one was watching, Brutus opened the locker. The bag had grown heavier. He swiveled his neck as he passed again between the rows of homeless families, expecting a bottle, or worse, to come flying at his head. Their chatter stopped as they watched him go.
The fleet of tiny cars on the körút formed a four-lane parking lot that went all the way to the bridge and produced its own noxious weather system. Streetlamps and electric billboards washed the city with a sad damp glow. Everything still appeared fuzzy in Brutus’s right eye, but it had become easier to discern shapes and movement around him. The cold air both revived and punished him in the same breath. The sky had grown dark, but there was still no sign of the snow he expected. With the Independence Day festivities winding down, a hostile depression colonized Budapest, occupying its buildings and subjugating its citizenry. Hungary maintained the highest suicide rate in the world, and now Brutus understood why. It got dark so early. Even the capital city was gray and listless; he didn’t want to imagine what life was like in the small towns. Most of the people meandered down the street like zombies, though small packs of young people continued to make noise and smash empty beer bottles.
He stopped in front of the hotel to catch his breath and watched in shock as a bum lifted up a filthy child no older than J. J. so that he could fish his tiny hand into a red metal mailbox. They were stealing the stamps and throwing the torn envelopes to the ground.
Hopefully Magda had already mailed that letter home to Joan. Ten or twelve days. After he dropped the bag, Brutus would only need to stay out of sight for ten or twelve days, until his letter arrived and Joan got the word out about Sullivan’s bullshit. No problem. Maybe he should have kept a copy of the letter for himself. What if Magda had forgotten to send it?
Or what if she had read it and turned it over to Sullivan? The thought had never occurred to him. What if that was her perfume in the hotel? It had to be. No one else had the same perfume. It was impossible, but she had been right there. Something was going seriously fucking wrong. It didn’t make any sense at all. He breathed deeply, tried to compose himself. His mind was playing tricks on him again. He grew dizzy. He was close to breaking down.
He sweated profusely. The bag had grown so heavy that he could hardly hold it any longer. He had to get rid of it. He clutched it to his chest and ran, pushing past the other pedestrians on the sidewalk. People hollered at him in a language he couldn’t understand. Still tied up in knots and chains and padlocks, Brutus got an idea, one that would definitely make himself bigger. A delay tactic that might buy him enough time to get gone. He stopped in the park and opened the lid of a plastic garbage can. The smell was atrocious. He pulled out a bag of trash and dropped the weapons in the can. It felt great to get the weight off his hands. He tore open the trash bag and dumped the fetid contents all over the firearms. That Irish motherfucker would love sifting through this mess of banana peels and broken glass, the half-decayed remains of a cat. He would tell Jimmy where to find the guns, then hop in a taxi and get out of town. Head for the Buda Hills, he’ll say to the driver. Or, better yet, he could hide out in the forest down on Margit Island. Live off the land.
He stopped outside Eve and Adam’s and tried to settle his heart rate. The windows were all fogged up. The beer sign shined down on him and the steam of his breath. People inside were singing along with the jukebox. He couldn’t make out the song. Probably that “Strange Fruit” bullshit again. Fat tourists sang pop songs while trapped at the very heart of the abyss, only they didn’t even know it.
Eve and Adam’s was significantly more crowded this time. Some girl was tending bar instead of Jimmy, who was nowhere to be seen. Cool — that motherfucker was bad news. Brutus wasn’t about to back down from a fight, but he didn’t want to invite trouble from that dude either. The same stool was available. He planned to tell this girl where to find the rifles and then bail. Everyone was speaking English this time; he didn’t hear a lick of Dutch, German, or even Hungarian. Without taking his order, the bartender brought over a pint of Guinness and a shot of Jameson. She didn’t even look at him when he tried to get her attention. Instead, she walked the length of the bar, scooped up a couple thousand forints’ worth of tips along the way, and stuck her head in the back room. Jimmy emerged to much fanfare. He waved off the drunken greetings from different gangs of regulars, who patted him on the back like he was some kind of celebrity. He took the stool next to Brutus.
“The fuck you think you’re doing?”
Brutus struggled to keep his cool. He envisioned himself shattering a full pint glass over this guy’s Lucky Charms-eating skull and then stabbing him slowly in the eye with the broken end. “Jimmy. Just having a little drink. You know. Buy you one? Hey, another beer down here for my man!”
Jimmy got up real close in Brutus’s ear, like the motherfucker who called him a nigger while he pretended to be asleep. That was a lifetime ago. “I see that you’re empty-handed. You have no idea what you’re involved with, boy.” Assorted drunks continued to vie for Jimmy’s attention. “You are going to disappear, you hear me? This is bigger than you can imagine. Fuck with me on this and dental records are not going to help your next of kin identify your body. Because there won’t be any goddamn body, heh.”
Brutus tightened his hand around his beer, felt the smooth bulb of the glass on his fingertips. “You’ll get your fucking weapons.”
“You better hope so, sweet pea. Now I want you to get your filthy nigger ass out of my bar, get what belongs to me, and just maybe—maybe—I’ll let you keep both of your hands, heh? If you’re not here with my parcel in fifteen minutes I will place a call to some colleagues of our mutual acquaintance. After that time I can no longer guarantee your safety.”
Brutus loosened his grip and took a long swallow. “They’re very close. I just wanted to get the lay of the land here first.” He sipped from the whiskey to buy himself a few seconds to think, then slowly put the glass back down. Pure fear coursed through his bloodstream. He could feel it in his fingertips, in the pulse of his neck.
“Good to see ye, Tommy!” Jimmy said to someone behind Brutus’s back, then whispered again to him, “Do yourself a real big favor. Go get what belongs to me and bring it here, heh.”