Budapest Noir (19 page)

“So you turned up,” she said, looking up at him.

“That’s right.”

“And what happened?”

“I’ll tell you on the way,” replied Gordon.

“On the way?”

Gordon didn’t answer; he was already standing by the telephone and calling a cab. He was getting so good at using his left hand that he didn’t even need a pencil to dial. “Got it. We’ll be down in ten minutes. Tell him we might even spend the night there, so he should come prepared.” With that, he put down the phone and started rummaging about among the papers on the telephone stand. He pulled out a brochure, dialed again, and reserved a double room for two nights.

“What’s this all about, Zsigmond?” asked Krisztina, standing up.

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

“What?”

“What I found out.”

“And this is so dangerous that we have to leave?”

“It might be,” said Gordon, going over to the closet. “But I’ll need your help, too,” he said, looking her in the eye. “I’ll throw together a few things right away,” he said, and he flung a couple of pieces of clothing onto the bed. “Would you get yourself ready? I’d like to leave as soon as possible.”

Krisztina sighed, then angrily gathered up her drawings and packed away her pencils, pens, and notebooks. Mór meanwhile stood quietly at the kitchen door.

“Opa,” said Gordon, as he turned to his grandfather. “Would you get my suitcase off the top of the closet? I can’t grab it.”

The old man walked over to the closet and pulled down the worn old vulcanized fiber suitcase, which had seen better days. “What have you gotten yourself into now, son?”

“Nothing I can’t climb back out of,” replied Gordon. “Opa, I’ve reached my hand into something that could go who-knows-where. I’m worried for Krisztina and for you, too. I know you don’t want to come with us, because . . .”

“My jams and preserves,” said Mór.

“Them. And you don’t want to travel anywhere else, either. But at least keep the door locked, even when you’re home. Have you bought enough fruits and vegetables?”

“I’ve got apples, pears, and grapes—sure, the grapes are a bit shriveled up by now—but the chestnuts will soon be ripe, too. Why?”

“I won’t be so worried if for a couple of days, just a couple, you didn’t go roaming away from home. You’ve got enough fruit now for canning. And you’ve also said you never have time to write down your recipes.”

Sticking his index finger in his vest pocket, Mór looked at Gordon without a word.

“You’re right,” he finally said. “It wouldn’t hurt if I wrote down the best ones.”

“You see. There was the one from the other day, the apple jam.”

“That,” said the old man with a dismissive wave of the hand, “that was nothing special.”

“It was to me. Write out the recipe. We’ll be back on Wednesday. Maybe sooner.”

W
hen they got down in front of the building on Lovag Street, the taxi was already waiting for them, and behind the wheel was Czövek, as Gordon had requested. The cabbie grinned with satisfaction. “I kiss your hand, miss. I heard we’re off on an outing. Where to?”

“To Lövölde Square,” replied Gordon. With a look of profound disappointment, Czövek put the car into gear and headed off. He didn’t say a word; nor did Krisztina, who drew to the far side of the backseat and stared out at the traffic. Gordon quietly cursed himself for not having had Mór rebandage his hand, but he hadn’t had the time. He’d ask for cold water at the hotel.

After they parked on Lövölde Square, Krisztina turned to Gordon. “Wait for me here. You don’t need to come up, Zsigmond. I’ll hurry.” Czövek opened the door for her, and as she exited, she lit a cigarette. Gordon leaned back and shut his eyes. The trip wasn’t a short one to begin with, and it would feel even longer with Krisztina in such a merry mood. But he didn’t blame her.

He opened his eyes a few minutes later at the sound of the door slamming shut. Krisztina sat down next to him, and Czövek slipped back in behind the wheel. “And where are we going now?” he asked. “Back to Lovag Street?”

“To that little resort village up in the Bükk mountains. Lillafüred, to be precise—the Palace Hotel.”

Czövek gave a quiet whistle, adjusted his driver’s cap, and backed the big, bulky car out onto the street. He then drove down Andrássy Street toward Heroes’ Square. From Arena Road he turned onto Kerepesi, which would take them to Route 3. Gordon looked at the speedometer. Sixty kilometers an hour. Glancing at his watch, he calculated that at best they’d arrive at 6
P.M.
, if not later.

The buildings gradually grew sparser along the road, and Gordon shuddered. Leaving Pest, even if that only meant venturing to the city’s outskirts, invariably gave him an unpleasant feeling. He couldn’t say why. It was as if he’d wound up in another world. A foreign world whose rules he could only guess at. If he’d had the choice, he wouldn’t leave Pest. Gordon had not spoken of this even to Krisztina, though he suspected that she knew.

As the buildings became ever more tattered and the side roads looked muddier, Gordon felt worse. Until, that is, they had left the city altogether. Now he breathed a sigh of relief, even if he did continue to look out on the flat landscape with suspicion—small villages nestled off in the distance, dense woods, cheerful little towns. One such town was Gödöllő, where Gordon had been once before. Indeed he’d even gotten into the Grassalkovich mansion, the residence of the head of state, Miklós Horthy. The
Evening
had sent him to a reception there whose guests included several American diplomats. What with its otherworldly elegance, the mansion made a good impression on Gordon—certainly a better one than did the other people on hand. The Budapesters rode astride the high horse of their big city airs, and those from outlying regions couldn’t have stripped away their stale provincialism for all the treasures in the world. This only confirmed Gordon’s feeling that he was indeed in a different land.

“I said you should buy a car,” said Krisztina, who was likewise looking out at the countryside.

“Furthest thing from my mind,” replied Gordon.

“But there was that pretty little Graham-Paige. It cost just eight hundred pengős.”

“Where would I go with a car?”

“Right now, for instance, you’d go to Lillafüred, with me.”

“And I was supposed to buy a car for that? To take you to Lillafüred?”

Krisztina looked at him and shook her head, but didn’t reply.

“Besides,” Gordon added, “I don’t have the nerves to drive in Budapest.”

Krisztina turned back to the window. Only when they reached the vicinity of Gyöngyös—the town wedged between the northern edge of the plains and the foothills of the Mátra range, and whose proximity signaled that they had at last arrived in the mountainous north—did she speak again.

“Will you tell me finally what this is all about? Or do you want to keep playing the part of the cloak-and-dagger detective?”

“Of course,” said Gordon, “of course.”

“Then tell me. We have plenty of time yet.”

“The dead girl was called Fanny Szőllősy,” Gordon began. “She was the daughter of the owner of Arabia Coffee, his only child. Just how she ended up in the hands of Csuli, I don’t yet know; which is to say, I know, but I don’t know how things got that far. She was in love with Shlomo, the son of a rabbi, Rav Shay’ale Reitelbaum. I suspect it was the young man who got her pregnant, and then somehow word got out, whereupon the rabbi put his son on a ship to New York.”

“And how did Fanny end up on the streets?”

“That I do not know.”

“Did her father kick her out?”

“I don’t know, Krisztina, but I believe the answer lies at our destination,” he replied, filling her in on what he’d learned from the Szőllősy family’s maid. And, of course, from the coffee merchant’s wife.

“So the reason we’re headed to this charming little resort tucked in the mountains,” observed Krisztina, “is to have a chat with the former maid, Teréz Ökrös, in her nearby village of Bükkszentkereszt.”

“And because you’ve been wanting to come here for a while,” said Gordon.

“Zsigmond, there’s no sense mixing up the two. We’re coming because you have business here. And not for my pleasure.”

“And because I didn’t want you to stay in Budapest,” Gordon added. “I don’t think you’re safe there just now.”

“You’re worried about me?” asked Krisztina, raising her eyebrows.

“Yes, you.”

Krisztina didn’t say anything. For a couple of moments she was lost in thought. “What do you figure this is all about?”

Gordon shook his head. “I don’t know, Krisztina. I only have a hunch.”

“What’s that?”

“Something bad. I really hope what happened is not what I think.”

“What do you think happened?”

“You don’t want to know,” Gordon replied.

“But I do want to know. It’s you who doesn’t want to tell me.”

“I can’t tell you, because I’m not sure about it yet. I’ll tell you everything once I’ve gotten to the bottom of it.”

“And when will that be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a couple of days. This week.”

“This week,” said Krisztina with a brooding look. “Now that you mention it, I almost forgot. I have to give Penguin an answer this week.”

“I know; I haven’t forgotten.”

“Fine, then.”

I
t was well past six by the time they arrived in Miskolc, that bustling northern city at the edge of the Bükk range. Lillafüred was not far. Czövek drove with confidence along the windy mountain road that led to the lakeside hotel, as if he’d been here more than once.

Night had fallen. Only sometimes did they see the glimmering lights of a car approaching from the opposite direction or had to swerve to avoid a stray knapsack-equipped tourist trudging along. They stopped at the mountain railway crossing, for the charming little tourist train just happened to be chugging by, children’s faces pressed against the glass of the cars as their parents sat wearily beside them. In the distance shone the lights of the Palace Hotel.

Gordon stared in silence at the building bathed in light on the shore of Lake Hámori. Ever since he’d first seen this sumptuous architectural masterpiece back in 1931, he didn’t understand just what it was doing here. Even then, of course, he’d come here to work, but he couldn’t fail to notice both the storybook beauty of this palace and, indeed, its utterly anachronistic nature. Such palaces were owned by ancient German families; centuries ago, their rooms played host to conversing kings, knights, and princesses. And generations lived and died in the village that stretched out below. Then the kings and princes gave way to modernity, and slowly but surely the palaces were gnawed by time. And then there was this building, which arose here hardly six years earlier, ostensibly with the aim of serving as a hotel. Built in the style of something right out of the Middle Ages, from the era of Hungary’s fabled King Matthias. Gordon reflected on all this as he looked up at the imposing structure. The car now made its way alongside Szinva Creek, turning and, finally, coming to a stop in front of the hotel.

A uniformed bellboy opened the car door. Krisztina got out; then Gordon did as well. “Pull off to the side,” Gordon called to Czövek, “I’ll be back right away.” The bellboy gathered up their bags and followed Gordon and Krisztina into the opulent lobby. Men in hunting outfits and tuxedos hurried along to the restaurants in the company of their wives, who wore expensive evening dresses and sagged from the weight of all their jewelry. Gordon headed to the reception desk.

“A reservation under the name Gordon,” he announced in a measured tone, “a double room, two nights.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, paging through the book before him. “Please be so kind as to follow the bellboy up to the fourth floor.”

“My driver needs lodging for the night, too,” said Gordon.

“Why of course. Indeed. If you prefer, I can recommend some private homes where he can sleep.”

Taking the slip of paper on which the clerk had written the addresses of several local homes, Gordon turned to Krisztina. “If you want, go on upstairs. I’ll let Czövek know where he can go; then I’ll be right up.”

“Hurry,” said Krisztina, heading off after the bellboy.

Czövek was sitting on the hood of the car, having a smoke. On seeing Gordon approach, he jumped off.

“Listen, Czövek,” said Gordon, “here are some addresses where you can find a bed for the night.” Giving him the slip of paper and a five-pengő coin, he added, “And here’s the money. This will cover your breakfast, too.”

“Thank you.”

“Go on ahead, and be back here tomorrow morning at nine.”

T
he bellboy had just stepped out of the elevator when Gordon returned to the lobby. Gordon pressed a pengő into his palm and went up to the fourth floor on his own. Upstairs, the elevator doors opened quietly and he stepped out onto the thick, spongy carpet. It was practically daylight in the hallway, so strong were the lamps. Looking at the numbers on the doors, Gordon turned right and, midway down the hall, opened the door to room 304.

A lamp burned on the little table by the balcony. From the bathroom came the sound of gurgling water. Gordon crossed over to the balcony window and pulled aside the curtain, looking out upon the silhouettes of the slender trees clinging to the steep mountainside and the light of the moon sparkling on the surface of the lake.

The bathroom door opened. Krisztina stepped out in a satin nightgown Gordon had given her as a Christmas gift a couple of years ago. Her hair fell freely about her shoulders. The light streaming out of the bathroom filtered through the delicate fabric against her skin.

Gordon flung away his trench coat, took off his blazer, and loosened his tie. Krisztina walked over to the bed and slipped under the blanket. “What are you waiting for?” she asked, looking at Gordon. “Come on over here.”

Gordon didn’t wait a moment longer.

Eight

I
t was past eight by the time they awoke. But Gordon had started up in alarm more than once in the course of the night: the silence was disconcerting. Every time, though, he fell back to sleep. Finally, in the morning, he got out of bed and went to the bathroom. At the cost of several minor cuts, and in nearly half an hour, he’d managed to shave. He was still in the bathroom when Krisztina appeared.