Complication (3 page)

“Because of your letter.”

“But you must also have reasons.”

“He was my brother. I want to know what happened.”

“And if I tell you, what then?”

I shrugged. “Then I go home.”

She fell silent, regarding me behind a curtain of cigarette smoke. “Maybe you have a certain way you wish to remember
your brother. What I say could change your idea of him. Please understand I have told no one. What I say is only for you. No one else can know.” Vera snubbed out her cigarette and edged closer, fingers unnaturally long and white as she placed her hands flat upon the table's surface. “Your brother,” she uttered in a low voice, “stole a watch.”

I waited for her to go on.

She didn't.

“A watch,” I prompted. “Like what, a Rolex? A Tag Heuer?”

“Not an ordinary watch. The Rudolf Complication.”

“Is that Swiss?”

Vera leaned back, placing a hand to her throat and blinking in rapid succession. “You don't understand. The Rudolf Complication is not a watch for knowing what is the time. Not something you wear. It's art. An important work of art. Of history. When Paul disappeared, he was planning to take this watch from a gallery near the river. Or had already taken it. I don't know for 100 percent.”

“I'm not following you.”

“On the other side of the river, between Malá Strana and Kampa Island, is a canal called Čertovka. Means in English ‘the Devil's Stream.' Near the—”

“Why do they call it that?”

She shrugged. “Something about an old woman who lived near there in olden times and everyone thought she was a devil. The villagers painted little devils all over her house as a warning for, I don't know, to other villagers I guess. There's a big wooden wheel in the canal. A famous water wheel. You have probably seen it on postcards.”

“Paul didn't really do postcards,” I said.

But I remembered that he had sent at least one. Nearly a year after he'd left Chicago, six months or so before he died. It was
from some place called the Prague Torture Museum and featured a medieval engraving of a man spread eagled and strung upside down by his ankles, hands bound behind his back. Two men on either side of him held the handles of a large saw they were using to divide their prisoner in half at the crotch.

On the back, Paul had written:

“Near this waterwheel is an art gallery called the Galleria Čertovka,” Vera continued. “I worked there. I helped Paul plan to steal the watch. Your brother and the Rudolf Complication, they disappeared together. For five days Paul was missing. Then some of his clothing was found in Karlín, in Prague 8, after the flood. An expired work permit in his name and blood stains that matched his blood type. Karlín is far from the gallery. Far from where Paul lived, far from anywhere Paul has a reason to go. The watch was never found. There was another person, a third man helping to steal the watch. It was his idea. His plan. This is why I wrote the letter. Your brother, he did not die of the flood. I believe Paul was killed. That this third person, he murdered Paul.”

I experienced the same slow-mo knee-jerk as when I learned Paul was dead five years ago. Shock, but not surprise. Across the room, two women with matching hoop earrings kissed each other on the cheek. The older guy at the bar in the stocking cap was looking our way, but he turned his head the moment he realized
I'd noticed. Or maybe the timing was coincidence. It was a conversation to make you paranoid.

“He was killed,” I said. “You're sure about this?”

Vera nodded.

“Did you tell the police?”

She twisted her lips and looked sharply away.

“The police. Did you speak to them?”

“Not about Paul. Of course, they asked questions to all workers of the gallery. Interpol also investigated. But they wanted to know only of the watch. The Rudolf Complication. Nobody asked about Paul.”

“This third man you mentioned—”

“I don't know him,” she interjected. “Only Paul knew this man. This was for my protection. If this man was caught, he could not tell the police of me. If I was caught, I could not tell the police of this man. Only Paul was in the middle. Paul was not protected.”

Except, I reasoned, if Paul was caught, he could have told the police about both of them. Of course, that conclusion depended on him being alive. Which meant at least two people had reason to see that he wasn't, one of whom was sitting across the table from me.

“How did my brother know this other guy?” I asked.

“I couldn't say,” Vera said.

“He must've told you something about him.”

“He said the man had slick hair.”

“Slick like stylish, or slick like oily?”

“Just slick.”

“Did slick have a name?”

“Martinko Klingáč.”

“That should make things easy enough.”

She shook her head. “It's not a real name. Martinko Klingáč
is from a story for children. Slovak fairytale just like, oh, what is it? Rumpelstiltskin. Martinko Klingáč means the same as Rumpelstiltskin.”

Before she could continue, the waiter arrived and unloaded two tall beers filled precisely to the .5 liter mark on the glass. Vera insisted on paying right away—or maybe that's just how they did it here. The waiter made change from a coin purse, then wandered off to pick imaginary lint from his shirt as Vera snubbed out her cigarette and pushed the ashtray to the edge of the table.

“I must go,” she said.

“Our drinks just got here. I just got here.”

“I can't stay. I'm sorry.”

“So when can we meet again?”

She pushed back her chair and stood. She was taller than I'd imagined. At least as tall as my brother. “It is not possible,” she said.

“I flew ten hours for this?”

“I've told all what I can say. Please understand.”

“This isn't even my suit,” I sputtered. “These aren't my goddamn shoes. Do you know what it's like trying to walk around in someone else's shoes?” I knew I wasn't making any sense and forced my mouth to stop before I embarrassed myself. Her eyes dropped and she pulled on a thin black leather coat, hands climbing white and spidery as she did up the buttons.

She was really leaving, just like that.

“Why tell me anything at all?”

“Someone should know.”

“The police. They're the ones should know.”

“They have no interest.”

“Why now? After five years.”

She slung her purse over her shoulder.

“The word for beer is
pivo
,” she said. “If you want more, just tell to the waiter
pivo
. When you wish to leave, have the barman
call for you a taxicab to your hotel. One from the street will cost you twice as much. Where are you staying?”

“I'm going to the police.”

“That's not a good idea.”

“We meet again tomorrow or I go to the police.”

She muttered something, her voice drained, inflectionless. Czech seemed a language well suited to muttering. Then she looked at me and said, “In Wenceslas Square there is a statue of a man on a horse. We can meet there at six thirty in the evening. But you must not go to the police. You must not tell anyone what I have told you. I have my reasons for this.”

“Fine. Tomorrow. Man on a horse.”

“And you will tell no one.”

“I won't tell anyone.”

“Say that you promise.”

“I promise. Cross my heart. Whatever you do here.”

She regarded me for a moment longer before reaching some silent conclusion and then turned and walked across the room and was up the stairs and gone. The fiftyish man across the bar, the one with the stocking cap, watched her walk off then smiled and gave me a knowing little nod. Like he and I were in on some secret. I looked away and caught my own twin reflections in the two glasses of beer on the table. Two warped faces wondering what to do next.

Report on the investigation into the Zrcadlové Bludiště Incident 12 December, 1997

 

The following report has been compiled by the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism (ÚDV) at the behest of Detective Zdenek Soros of the Prague Metropolitan Police. Materials herein have been transcribed from audio recordings discovered at the declassified State Security Services (StB) archives. Names of third parties deemed non-essential to the investigation have been withheld in compliance with the 1992 Act on Protection of Personal Data.

 

These transcriptions and the accompanying documents do not in our estimation constitute a comprehensive record of the 1984 investigation of Eliška Reznícková and the Zrcadlové Bludiště
¹
Incident. Recovered audio recordings appear to be incomplete and certain documents explicitly cited or alluded to within said recordings are missing. It's unknown whether files related to this case were intentionally compromised during the days leading up to or in the immediate aftermath of the revolutionary November Events of 1989, either by members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSČ), the Ministry of the Interior, State Security Services (StB), or other parties, or whether
documents have gone missing through some clerical or other institutional error. We do not know the number of related materials that may be missing or destroyed, nor the nature of those potential materials. While its our hope that further documents related to this case may be unearthed as we continue cataloguing and digitizing materials stored in the StB archives, it's impossible to speculate on the likelihood of such an occurrence.

 

The concluding summary of events subsequent to the StB's involvement in the Incident at Zrcadlové Bludiště is based on our own independent, present-day investigation. Recommendations for any future related investigations and/or legal actions also appear at the end of this report.

Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism (ÚDV)

170 34 Poštovní úřad

Praha 7

Poštovní schránka 21/ÚDV

 

AUDIO RECORDING #3113a

Date: September 24, 1984 [Time unspecified]

Subject: Eliška Reznícková

Case: #1331—Incident at Zrcadlové Bludiště

Interview session #2

Location: Bartolomějská 10, Prague, Praha 1

Investigator: Agent #3553
²

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I don't play the accordion.

 

[Unintelligible—duration 4 seconds]

 

AGENT #3553: We must begin again. Please state your name.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: My name is Eliška Reznícková.

 

AGENT #3553: Your age.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I'm twenty-seven years old.

 

AGENT #3553: Occupation.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: You know my occupation.

 

AGENT #3553: Please state it once more.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I work at the Black Rabbit. It's a tavern.

 

AGENT #3553: Located where?

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: On Ostrovní Street, in Nové Město. Prague 2.

 

AGENT #3553: Describe the duties you perform.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I pour beer. I take money and put it in a cash register. I wash and stack glasses. When the customers leave, I lock the front door. If my boss
is coming in the next day, I sweep up. Those are my duties. I don't play the accordion, either at work or at home. I don't know anybody who plays the accordion.