Complication (13 page)

I was half-amazed to find a payphone at the end of the block, but maybe it had been given historical landmark status in our cellular age. The local emergency number was even stickered on the unit. I dug some coins out of my pocket and picked up a blue handset practically writhing with graffiti. No surface was safe in this city.

I'd leave an anonymous tip. Tell the police what happened and hang up. No sooner had I slotted the coins than my chest cavity rattled in the onset of a major cardiac event. I dropped the payphone, hand shooting to my heart. Instead I felt the contours of my shirtpocketed cell phone quivering with an incoming call. I'd left the thing on vibrate/scare-the-fuck-out-of-me mode. Glad at least the plunge in the canal hadn't killed it. I took the phone out and glanced at the caller ID.

 

BOB HANNAH

 

Of course.

With everything that happened at the gallery, I'd forgotten that I'd called, left a message. This right before I tried to impersonate him with lethal ineptitude. Being other people is harder, more dangerous, than you might think. Even with that realization it took a good two seconds to understand why I had a sudden urge to curl up in a little ball on the sidewalk, squeeze my eyes closed, and scream obscenities.

Bob Hannah's business card.

The curator had it in his pocket.

The payphone receiver swayed on its cord, proscribing tighter and tighter circles while the cell buzzed in my palm like some polymer cicada. I wondered if it was possible to lift prints from a business card after it had been underwater. What else had I touched? The handrail going up the stairs. A doorknob maybe. Coins in the donation box. I'd kicked the curator's glasses. Shoe prints—could they get shoe prints?

I'd have to let Bob Hannah's call go unanswered. I'd call him back after I spoke anonymously with the police, after I got back to the hotel and booked a flight. I'd return Bob Hannah's call from Tahiti or Thailand or wherever some quick Google query told me had no extradition treaty with the Czech Republic.

Instead I answered.

“Bob Hannah calling,” said the voice on the other end. He was American, had the flat, regionless intonations of a TV news anchor. “Received your message. We should talk. Face-to-face would be best. I'm on assignment much of this afternoon but perhaps you could meet me in, say, one hour? I'll be at the St. James Church, near Old Town Square. Can you find this place?”

“I have a map.”

“Just the two of us. No detective.”

Then he hung up. Another tram rattled by. One of the anarchist kids on the sidewalk shot me a look. His shirt had CLOWNING FOOL, a band I guess, printed in thick gothic letters. I slipped the cell back into my pocket and reholstered the payphone. Upon second glance the kid's shirt said DROWNING POOL. I stood rooted in place, weighing my options. The woman in the window on Kampa Island had either called the police or she hadn't. They'd either found the curator's body or they hadn't, he was alive or he wasn't. Tying me to him would take time. There was no reason to panic. I snatched my coins from the return slot of the payphone. From now on I would be all about leaving nothing behind.

 

My suit had apparently shrunken as a result of my diving expedition because taking
Prague Unbound
out of my inner pocket on the train back to Old Town turned into a silent comedy of tugging and pulling, jerking and twisting. The thing just would not come out, until it did, with sudden, mocking ease. More likely the book had expanded, the pages having soaked up water, though in truth they looked neither damp nor warped. On the subject of St. James Church, the guidebook had this to say:

Not the sort of advice you'd find in Lonely Planet.

I went on reading.

Like many travel guides, I assumed this one had multiple authors and was edited on the cheap, but there was no “About the
Contributors” section to be found, and neither could I locate the name of any editor before the train pulled into Můstek station. Getting the book back in my pocket meant running the whole jerking, tugging, shoving gag reel in reverse.

I was able to find St. James without bothering any shopkeepers or spitting on any homeless people. Saints and angels dogpiled in relief above the church entrance like some medieval version of the
Sgt. Pepper's
album cover. Inside, every lavish nook and gilt-edged cranny of the narrow church burst with iconography, as if these holy things had fled three or four larger churches and taken up refuge in this one. There was a St. James Church in Chicago, too. I'd been there for a wedding. It looked like a dentist's waiting room compared to this place.

At this hour the light from the clerestory above struggled to penetrate the lower reaches, leaving the dark pews and carved wooden pulpits in a twilight haze. A sign at the entrance warned that photography and cell phones were forbidden, but except for an older couple whispering along the aisle, the place was deserted.

A voice spoke my name from the darkness and I caught a flicker of movement at the left edge of the nave. As my eyes adjusted, I could just make out a man beckoning in the middle distance. I made my way down the center of the pews and as I neared the transept crossing, a hand extended into my face.

“Bob Hannah,” the hand's seated owner announced. Judging by the hand, he was a big guy. The failing light obscured most of his face, but I could see he was somewhere in his mid-forties. Wavy brown hair. A head oversized and squarish plopped on rounded shoulders without the intercession of a neck. He wore a black suit much like my own (so much for the curator's theory that I was overdressed for a journalist), but his ballooned where mine slackened. We looked like Laurel and Hardy after a wardrobe mix-up.

“Apologies for the venue,” he said as I shook his hand and settled into the pew next to him. “Not the church-going type myself, but I'm interviewing an organist who is giving a concert here as part of the festival. They say St. James has the second-most beautiful organ in all of Europe. Lucky guy that James, eh? Now that I've broken the ice with a penis joke, let me ask you—is this your first time in Prague?”

I nodded.

“A wonderful city. Magical even, though less so every day. How does the song go? ‘
In the days when you were hopelessly poor, I just liked you more
.'” He sat for a moment as if trying to recall the rest of the lyrics or maybe formulate another dick joke. “Truth be told, you ask me, there is no such thing as a beautiful organ. The noises they make. No coincidence organists are not happy people. Being subject day and night to those awful sounds, it does something to them. I've met my fair share. Their skin is universally horrible. Ashen, starved of B12. I feel for them, though, I do. Years of grueling practice, countless recitals in dismal churches, an ever-dwindling number of suitable instruments. Audiences shrinking, aging, growing every year more geriatric and indifferent. I imagine these organists alone in hotel rooms. They sit on bed corners, feet planted on the floor, ties undone and collars loosened. They stare at the walls and their heads are filled with awful sounds.”

The church acoustics gave his voice a disembodied quality, and it was difficult to read his expression as he spoke. My eyes were still adjusting, struggling to pick out details in the half-light. Next to Hannah sat a white cardboard box roughly the size as an accordion case. In the distance behind him, several life-sized marble figures were draped over the hulking mass that must have been Vratislav's tomb. The Count would've needed a jackhammer to get out.

“Whenever an organist is late for an interview, I think the worst,” Hannah continued. “Did you know organists have the
highest suicide rate of any classical musicians? And they're not punctual, these organists. Not as a rule. The man I am speaking with today was supposed to be here two hours ago. I even brought him a cake,” he nodded toward the box at his side, “A
bublanina
sponge cake. It has cherries. Are you hungry? We could eat the cake and he'd never know the difference.”

I forced a smile and shook my head.

“Maybe we could just look at the cake? No—you're right, that would just make it worse.” Hannah drummed his fingers on the box and then forced himself to stop with what seemed a supreme act of willpower. “Very well. So, your message. Your brother. Detective Soros. Let me start by saying I am truly sorry. I did not know Paul Holloway, but when I got your call, I felt a certain responsibility to set the record straight. Which is not to say I believe our detective friend is trying to mislead you. Not deliberately. Was he drunk when you saw him?”

“I don't think so, no.”

“Good for him. But why did he have you call me?”

“He said I should ask about my brother's right hand.”

Bob Hannah nodded. “The one they cut off.”

“Cut off? As in severed?”

Hannah made a crude chopping motion, followed by a shrug.

“He didn't tell me that part. Jesus, nobody ever told me that part.”

“Right Hand of God,” Hannah pronounced, as if that should make everything clear.

“What's the Right Hand of God?”

“He didn't tell you that either? Maybe that's a good sign. Maybe he's getting better.” Hannah checked his cell phone again, glanced at the cake box, grimaced. “The Right Hand of God is a local legend of sorts. Dates back to the seventeenth century, probably earlier. Has variously to do with a goblin or demon. Or gypsy or Jew. Or serial killer or psychotic Balkan gangster, depending on
which era's boogeymen are being invoked. The Right Hand of God commits a murder each year. Late August usually, early September. He then severs the right hand of his victim. According to legend, this marks said victim as being unworthy of a seat at the right hand of God, meaning Heaven. Said victim is thus not only relieved of his mortal coil but damned for all eternity. I must say that sitting next to a cake can make you incredibly hungry.”

“How do they know his hand was cut off? They never found a body.”

“They don't know. All they had to go on was the rather impressive bloodstain on his right sleeve. And there was the timing. According to Soros's theory, your brother vanished just when the Right Hand of God was poised to strike again. ”

How much of this had my dad known? Did he have any copies of the police reports? Would he have had them translated from Czech into English? I didn't know. Easy to curse the old man now, but back then I'd been reluctant to ask about details. It was half a decade too late to feel indignant about his possible lack of oversight.

“So the hand was never found?” I asked.

“I don't believe so. Does it make a difference?”

I supposed not—either way he was gone. Near the altar, vespers began lighting candles, the flames emerging colorless and fragile in the middle distance. Wherever I looked, eyes looked back at me, cherubs, saints, angels, Madonnas, and Christs staring out from the lusterless paintings and dark wooden statues perched on the balustrades.

“How did you get hooked up with Soros?” I asked.

“Started with an All Hallows' Eve piece,” said Hannah. “Little thing I wrote about spooky local legends, ghost stories and such. Right Hand of God I learned about from the first landlady I had here. She was the superstitious sort. A sparrow flew through an
open window and into my apartment once, and she was convinced it was an omen of death. So convinced she made me pay next month's rent early, just in case, though I think she was trying to drive me out because I could never get accustomed to the Czech habit of removing one's shoes at home. Said my clomping around was keeping her awake, ruining her floors. But then she died that fall, so maybe the sparrow
was
an omen. Anyway, I wrote a few sentences about the Right Hand of God, along with stuff about the begging skeleton outside the Karolinum, the headless coachman of Jánský vrÅ¡ek Street. Rabbi Löew and his obligatory Golem, Edward Kelley and other alchemists and black magicians who called Prague home in its heyday. A week later, Detective Soros phoned. He was very upset. You think he's salty in English, you should hear him speak Czech. Man can swear for half an hour straight without once repeating himself. He said the Right Hand of God didn't belong in my story, that it wasn't a myth or legend at all. People really were being killed each autumn, corpses showing up without right hands. He said he had proof. So I met with him. He gave me this.”