Legends

“A trolley to Svobodova Street.”

“How is it a rich U.S. like you does not hire taxi cabs?”

“I have a theory that you don’t really know a city until you’ve ridden its public transportation.”

Radek rolled his head from side to side in dismay. “Here all the people who take public transportation dream to take private transportation. You want to go to the Vyshrad Station?”

“I would like to get off a hundred meters before it and walk the rest of the way to work off the meal.”

Radek laid a forefinger along a nostril. “You want to case the joint first.”

“Where did you pick up case the joint?”

“So I am crazy about old U.S. movies.” He transformed a thumb and an index finger into a pistol and jammed it into the pocket of his Tyrolean jacket. “I have a gub in my pocket, Mister.”

“What movie is that from?”

“Woody Allen. Take the Money and Run.”

“Uh-huh. Let’s go.”

Sitting in the back of the trolley, listening to the sparks crackling off the overhead electric cable, Martin studied the faces around him looking for the one that was conspicuously uninterested in him. Normally he prided himself on being able to blend into a crowd even when there wasn’t one. Now, however, he was in too much of a hurry to take the usual precautions. His American clothes, especially his shoes, made him stand out in any Czech crowd and people, naturally curious, would inspect him, some openly, some furtively. Martin figured if someone were following him he would be careful not to look at him at all. In the long ride from the mom and pop’s eatery to Mala Strana, then queuing to wait for a trolley on another line, Martin, still an artisan of tradecraft, didn’t have the feeling he was being tailed. Which, he knew from experience, could mean that the people following him were very good at it. Radek noticed him noticing the passengers around him. “If you are not wanting girls, what are you wanting?” he asked. He leaned closer so the haggard woman on the aisle seat brazenly scrutinizing the American couldn’t overhear him. “Cannabis, ganja, hemp, hashish, bhang, sinsemilla, cocaine, crack, angel dust, horse, methadone, LSD, PCP, uppers, downers. Only identify it, Radek will find it for less lousy U.S. dollars than you pay me a day.”

“I’ve never even heard of half these things,” Martin said. “What I’m wanting is to stretch my legs when we’re within walking distance of the Vyshrad Station.”

“Next stop,” Radek said, obviously disappointed that his procurement talents were not being put to the test. He plucked at the cord running the length of the trolley above the windows as if it were a guitar string. Up front a bell sounded. As the trolley ground to a halt, the doors scraped open. Once on the sidewalk, Radek pointed with his nose. In the distance, on the other side of the wide street, Martin could make out a shabby communist gothic structure trapping the last quarter hour of sunlight slanting in over the Vltava on its dilapidated roof, which was crawling with pigeons. He turned to Radek and offered his hand. “I won’t be needing your services anymore,” he announced.

Radek looked dejected. “You paid for ten hours, Mister. I still owe you seven and a half.”

“Consider the unused hours a gratuity.” When Radek still didn’t shake hands, Martin brought his own up to his eye and snapped off a friendly salute. “Good luck to you in medical school, Radek. I hope you find a cure for Alzheimer’s before Alzheimer’s sets in.”

“I kick myself for asking someone like you only thirty lousy crowns an hour,” Radek muttered as he turned and headed in the opposite direction.

Sucking on a Beedie, Martin strolled down Svobodova Street in the direction of the river. He passed a row of apartment buildings, one with the date “1902” etched over the door and a “Flat for Sale” sign in English on the inside of a ground floor window. Across the street loomed the Vyshrad Station in all its communist-era decadence. The station consisted of a central carcass and two broken wings. Dirty white stucco peeled away from the facade like sunburnt skin, exposing the dirty red bricks beneath. The windows on the Svobodova side were boarded over, though there were hints of fluorescent light seeping between the cracks in several of the second-floor windows that weren’t well jointed. The pigeons, in twos and threes, were fluttering away from the roof in search of the last rays of sun as Martin made his way back up Svobodova, this time on the station side of the street. Trolleys clattered by, causing the ground to tremble underfoot. Behind the station a commuter train sped past in the direction of Centrum. Dog-eared posters advertising Hungarian vacuum cleaners and reconditioned East German Trabants were thumb tacked to the boards covering the ground floor windows. Near the gate leading to a path around the side of the left wing of the station, someone had chalked graffiti on the walclass="underline" The Oklahoma City bomb was the first shot of World War III. Martin eased open the gate on its rusty hinges, climbed the brick steps and walked around to the back of the station. The passage was obviously in daily use because the weeds and vines on either side had been cut away from the brick footpath. Making his way along what used to be the platform when the station had been in use, Martin glanced into one of the wings through a sooty window shielded by rusting metal bars. Inside, two young men whom he took to be gypsies, wearing vests and corduroy trousers tucked into the tops of leather boots, were emptying large cartons and setting out what looked like packets of medicines on a long trestle table. Two young women dressed in long colorful skirts were repacking the items into smaller boxes and sealing them with masking tape. One of the young men caught sight of Martin and gestured with his thumb toward the main station doors further down the platform. Martin nodded and, a moment later, pushed through the double door into the station’s onceornate central hall, fallen into dilapidation and smelling of wet plaster, evidence that someone had tried to patch over the worst of the building’s wounds. A broken sign over the door read “Vychod—Exit.” The tiles on the floor, many of them cracked, shifted under his feet. A wide stairway curled up toward the second floor. Painted on the wall above the stairway were the words “Soft” and “Shoulder.” A squat dog with a blunt nose stood on the top landing, yelping in a hoarse voice at the intruder. A handsome, elegantly dressed woman in her fifties peered down from the railing. “If you are looking for Soft Shoulder, do come up,” she called. “Don’t mind the dog. His bite is worse than his bark, but I will lock him up.” Reaching for the dog’s leash, the woman pulled him, still yelping, into a room and shut the door. With the dog barking behind the door she turned back toward Martin, who was leaning on the banister to take the weight off his game leg as he climbed toward her. A half dozen thin Indian bracelets jangled on her thin wrist as she held out a slender hand. “My name is Zuzana Slánská,” she said as Martin took her hand.

He noticed that her fingers were weedy, her nails bitten to the quick, her eyes rheumy. He suspected that the wrinkled smile on her gaunt lips had been worn too many times without laundering. “Mine’s Odum,” he said. “Martin Odum.”

“What African country are you buying for?”

Figuring he had nothing to lose, Martin said the first thing that came into his head. “The Ivory Coast.”

“We don’t often deal with clients in person, Mr. Odum. Most of our business is mail order. As a matter of record, who sent you to us?”