Читать книгу The Roma Plot - Mario Bolduc - Страница 13

Bucharest, November 27, 2006

Glancing quickly about, Max O’Brien got the lay of the place. Beer mugs on every table, which the harried personnel hadn’t had time to pick up. At the counter, prostitutes, attracted here by the presence of hundreds of foreign conference-goers, just like the young Russian woman at the Intercontinental’s bar the previous evening. Two prostitutes were chatting over a glass of cognac: a blond one, tall and skinny with a nose that had had been worked on. The other smaller, rounder, with black hair and waxy skin.

At the far end of the room Max discovered Toma Boerescu hiding behind a slice of chocolate cake the size of his head. Max ordered an espresso and sat in front of the former cop after almost tripping on the man’s walker carelessly left lying around.

“It’s stuck,” Boerescu spat out between two bites of cake. “I can’t get it to fold.”

Max pushed the walker away.

“And this glorious piece of cake is a gift from some of my old party friends to celebrate fifty years of membership.”

With his fork, Boerescu looked like a mountain climber about to reach the top of Everest. Instead of eternal snow, however, he was facing down a mountain made of whipped cream and diabetes. Next to him, the rest of his meal: a Moldavian tochitura, pieces of pork, liver, and smoked sausages cooked in pork fat.

“Either your doctor’s your uncle,” Max said, “or you’re not being entirely honest with him.”

Boerescu pushed the dessert away. Took out a pill bottle. Max helped him open it. The old man swallowed blue, red, and yellow pills with a sip of mineral water. Finally, he asked, “Do you have the money?”

Max nodded. He’d taken out $200 from a cash machine near the hotel, using a credit card with one of his pseudonyms.

Boerescu raised his head and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “The one on the right, with the brown hair. You can have her half off.” He smiled as if he’d just told a funny joke.

“What are you talking about?”

“The two whores there at the bar. The one with the brown hair is cheaper.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t you notice? She’s a Gypsy.”

The “Little Paris” of the Balkans had had its own Baron Haussmann, though one completely mad and afflicted by early senility: Nicolae Ceauşescu. A cobbler, son of a drunkard from Scorniceşti, he’d fought his way to the top of the Romanian Communist Party by using Joseph Stalin’s method: backroom deals and treachery. Vestiges of his presence as head of state were visible throughout the country. As if, even years after his death, it was still impossible to get rid of his stink. Romania was changing, though; soon enough the country would be the newest member of the European Union, joining the other former people’s dictatorships of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

“Good old Vlad Ţepeş,” Boerescu said as the taxi turned onto Brătianu Boulevard. “You see tourists looking for him all over the city, as if he should be remembered, as if he was the George Washington of Romania.”

Max looked at him without understanding.

“In America every fountain, every tavern, every river or stream or puddle quenched the thirst of your national hero. But Vlad Ţepeş … a statue here and there. A few words in a brochure. So the tourists are disappointed, of course! On the other hand, this whole fascination for him … for the character. It’s a bit exaggerated, don’t you think?”

“Vlad Ţepeş?”

“Fifteenth century. He resisted the Turks, the fight of his life. He used to impale prisoners, traitors, all sorts of people. Impale them while they were still alive, of course. It was a common practice back then.”

“A charming fellow, clearly,” Max added.

“You might know him by his stage name — Count Dracula. Dracula meaning ‘dragon.’ Back in the good old days of Ceauşescu, the Bram Stoker novel was forbidden, banned! After all, it was an attack on the good standing of all Romanian people. Another fantastic policy destroyed by the revolution of ’89.”

A few minutes later Boerescu asked the driver to drop them off near a church. The two men walked up to the forecourt. Actually, it was more like Toma Boerescu struggled over the paving stones, leaning heavily on his walker. He’d managed to digest his meal, which was reassuring. A few passersby smiled at them. How wonderful to see a son being so attentive to his old man! Max sighed. His fixer was costing him $300 a day. He wasn’t sure he was getting his money’s worth.

A handful of young touts were milling in front of the church selling concert tickets. The eternal George Enescu’s suites, sonatas, and rhapsodies for bored tourists.

“So not the best performance, these ones, but better than some of the others,” Boerescu said, grabbing a flyer. He gestured at a second group of touts trying to lead music lovers toward another church.

The old man paid the woman at the booth for two tickets and led Max inside. The crowd in the nave was sparse, a few courageous souls, like them, braving the humidity of the place to listen to the concert. In the choir, musicians were blowing on their hands, warming them up. Max was beginning to wonder what this whole escapade was about.

Boerescu pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose loudly under the scandalized stares of a few tourists. To them, Boerescu certainly looked like a homeless man come to warm up his feet for a few pennies while listening to Enescu’s music.

The orchestra started, according to the program, with Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano. Despite a few blunders, they attacked the piece with an energy that surprised Max. For a long moment, he was rooted in place, completely transfixed by the music. In the middle of the piece, a half-frozen pigeon flew across the nave — which was covered in droppings — without breaking the attention of the spectators. At least, Max told himself, the day wouldn’t be a complete loss. The violin, darting, throbbing, wailing sometimes, with almost a Romani air, made him deeply melancholic.

Max’s thoughts returned to Kevin and his family. In 1998, for Gabrielle’s birthday, Max had gone over to the Dandurand household, ready to celebrate the day with them. He’d had the impression his friend was avoiding his eyes, was hiding something. Caroline, meanwhile, was simply beaming. She was holding back, trying to keep whatever it was she wanted to say a secret for now, a surprise. Over a few drinks, while Gabrielle was tearing through the gifts, Caroline, incapable of holding back any longer, announced she was pregnant. Max was over the moon. More than Kevin, it seemed. Why did he have that air about him?

“We’re going back to Montreal,” Caroline had explained.

She’d been offered a job with the Gazette that included generous maternity leave. When Raymond had heard the news, he’d invited his son to work for Nordopak.

“I forced Kevin to agree,” Caroline said.

Kevin smiled. A sad smile that hid plenty behind it. “Marketing. Folding flyers and stapling brochures … you get the idea.”

“Kevin, please …”

It was only after the meal that Max found a moment to speak alone with his friend. “What does this mean?”

Kevin remained evasive. He’d been wanting to tell Max for a while but hadn’t dared.

“And what about your father? You always told me you couldn’t stand him.”

“We’ve made peace.”

He wasn’t very convincing. But, once again, Max wasn’t about to call his friend out on his lie.

That night, as he left, Max had wished good luck to the three of them. No, actually, the four of them. Caroline made him promise he’d come visit in Montreal. In only a few days, or so it seemed to Max, they packed everything they owned and got on the road. Max felt abandoned. All these years he’d been there, supporting the family from behind the scenes. And now, suddenly, they were gone from his life. He decided to not chase them to Montreal, to not show any neediness. What would it look like if he came to visit them? As if he were living the family life vicariously. Whatever the case might be, with their leaving, Max was bereft of the only genuine friendship he’d ever developed in New York.

Had it really been genuine? Once again, Max was being delusional. Caroline had known nothing of his true identity, what he did for a living. And she certainly hadn’t known what he’d dragged her husband into.

No, when it was all said and done, it was probably best for the Dandurand family to get far away from New York.

Months later, Max was sleeping soundly when his cellphone rang. Still half asleep, he’d felt Isabel turn and stretch out for his phone. Isabel, a secretary for a real-estate developer in Spanish Harlem — a bit player in the operation he was currently running. He startled awake and grabbed the cellphone out of her hand before she could answer. Isabel shrugged, mumbled an insult in Spanish, and got up to go to the bathroom. A few moments later Max heard the shower running.

“Robert? You’re with someone? Am I bothering you?”

“Caroline …”

She was calling from Montreal to give him the good news. It was a boy. Sacha.

Sacha-the-Red.

Max felt someone tugging on his sleeve. Toma Boerescu, his eyes insistent. Time for his medicine, probably. Instead, the former cop nodded at a small man seated alone a few rows away. Boerescu whispered in Max’s ear, “Petru Tavala.”

Confused, Max looked at Boerescu. The old man added, “He owns a café on Gabroveni Street. More of a restaurant, really.”

Max gestured for him to go on.

“Early in the morning last Thursday he served breakfast to your friend, Kevin Dandurand.”

Max glanced at the Tavala character, then back at Boerescu. The old dog had managed to pull a lead out of thin air, after all. He’d probably realized he was about to lose his cushy gig with Max.

The old man smiled. “Petru Tavala loves music. A shame these amateurs are just ruining poor George Enescu!”

Petru Tavala had no interest in confiding in two strangers he encountered in a church, but the café owner did love to talk. About this or anything else, why not? He didn’t have much time, though, only a few minutes. It was high season, after all. With this conference, with the holidays in full swing, all he had time for was working himself to the bone. But better that than starving, right? It could be worse; it’s always worse, or better! Who knows anymore! Anyway, sure, he’d seen a foreigner in his coffee shop early one morning.

“Kevin Dandurand?” Max asked.

“I only learned that was his name when the others came asking about him.”

“The police?”

“No, no. They were these guys who reminded me of the Securitate … you know what I mean? Serious, austere, looking like there was a conspiracy afoot! They snooped around, asking the same question ten different ways, as if to trick me.” They’d wanted to know whether he’d heard anything, overheard the conversation.

“What conversation?” Max asked.

“Dandurand was with another man. He had a moustache, the other one. I heard everything, but I didn’t understand a thing. They were speaking English together …”

Boerescu was translating for Tavala.

“Who was the other guy?” Max pressed.

“A Gypsy. That’s why I remember. They sat at the table farthest from the door. They ordered coffee and breakfast. They seemed on good terms. They started laughing all of a sudden.”

Old friends?

“Like I said, me and English …”

In any case, whether or not they were close friends, it was clear they weren’t strangers.

But a Rom who spoke English?

“They stayed, I don’t know, maybe an hour, maybe a little more.”

“And then?”

“Then they shook hands and the Gypsy left. The stranger seemed worried. He paid for the coffee and the breakfast. Then he left.”

“And you didn’t understand a word they said?”

“For years they forced us to learn Russian,” Tavala said. “And now they say English is the language that matters! Do you think that’s fair?”

The decline of Russian in Eastern Europe didn’t matter much to Max, but he was intrigued by the idea of Kevin meeting a Romani man in Bucharest. The guy from the Zăbrăuţi Street dwellings maybe, where Kevin’s personal effects had been found?

“I saw the picture of the man who died in the apartment,” Tavala said. “It wasn’t the same man at all.”

Clearly, Max would need to find this strange Romani man to understand what had happened. His meeting with Kevin had preceded the fire by a few hours at most.

They left the café owner behind and made their way out of the church. Once outside, Max turned to Boerescu. “Do you think the authorities are trying to hide something?”

“Because of the two agents?”

Max nodded.

“They weren’t police, according to Tavala.”

“Okay, besides the police, there might be other groups, no? More secretive organizations?”

“The Securitate doesn’t exist anymore, hasn’t in a long time.”

“Don’t you find it strange that some unknown organization is after Kevin? They weren’t cops, it seems. And what about the English-speaking Rom? Why hasn’t he come forward?”

“He’s a Rom. He’s got everything to lose by revealing any ties to Dandurand.” Boerescu sighed. “Does your friend, Kevin, have anything to hide? I mean, besides the murder of Gypsies?”

“Maybe.”

The weather had warmed a little, and a fine fog had replaced the previous night’s snow. Winter was a lost cause in Bucharest. Max raised his collar and began to walk toward Unirii Boulevard, followed by Boerescu.

“Did you know that, traditionally, Gypsies stayed away from multi-storey buildings?” his fixer asked. “Nothing worse to them then all living stacked one on top of the other.”

Which hadn’t stopped the poor souls from piling up in that hellhole on Zăbrăuţi Street.

“Are we far?” Max asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Ferentari. Are we far?”

The first three cabs refused to take them to their destination. It was a rule taxi companies had put in place a few years earlier. Even the buses, the trains — barely anything made its way into the neighbourhood. There was less public transportation in Ferentari than in the rest of the city, but more police stations. Ferentari, the Bronx of Bucharest. The whole place had been left to rot, while the Roma, chased out of the countryside, scrabbled for a living in its ruined streets.

Much worse than the Bronx.

Only the walls of buildings remained, all lined up in Soviet fashion. Between them, trash heaps and dozens of wild, famished dogs. It was hard to even figure out which building it was that had burned. The Roma — the vast majority of the neighbourhood’s population — had already settled back into their apartments, moving their worthless knick-knacks back into soot-darkened rooms never to be repainted.

Probably the most unusual part of this whole story was that fire trucks had actually come to the neighbourhood that night. And that an investigation had been opened. It was a rare thing indeed for anybody to do anything to help the Roma’s lot. They were left to fend for themselves, to deal with their own problems and catastrophes. And yet, on Zăbrăuţi Street, an exception had been made. More signs of a setup.

Max tried to put together the pieces he’d found so far. Kevin had reached Bucharest a week earlier and met a Rom in a coffee shop. He’d then gotten into an argument on Zăbrăuţi Street with another Rom. There he’d allegedly killed the man and lit a fire to hide his tracks. But why, then, had he left personal belongings in the building, making himself easy to identify? Whomever had set him up hadn’t known about Kevin’s training. The first thing Duvall had taught Kevin was how to cover his tracks — unless he was leaving them purposely to confuse whoever was looking for him. Why was Kevin in Bucharest? A job gone bad? Which one?

“Do you want to see inside?” Boerescu asked.

The two men were leaning against a taxi, staring up at the building. The cab driver was nervously glancing this way and that. Max turned toward their driver, who, he noticed, had pulled out a handgun and was very visibly holding it aloft as a warning to whoever might be looking. It was clear now why he’d agreed to bring them to this neighbourhood: he was prepared.

“Let’s get out of here,” Max said. “I’ve seen enough.”

After taking his leave from his fixer and paying for a cab back to wherever the man wanted to go, Max thought of returning to the hotel but couldn’t resolve to end the day between the four walls of a poorly soundproofed room — despite the five very optimistic stars on the establishment’s brochure. Lost in thought, he wandered up Nicolae Bălcescu Boulevard and opened the door to a bar near Traian Vuia Street. Max ignored the conversation between the men at the counter dissecting the last World Cup results for — Max was certain — the hundredth time. Instead, he walked to the back of the room and sat down beneath a very old air-conditioning unit that probably hadn’t worked since King Michael’s abdication.

The television was playing on low volume. Max could see flashing images reflected in the large mirror placed behind another row of seats. On the news, tears, lamentation, and anger. Roma demonstrating in front of Parliament, begging for compassion for their brothers and sisters. And a speech by Victor Marineci. The Romani MP was demanding justice for his brethren. Pleading for a more just and fair Romania, even for the travelling people, as they were sometimes known. The patrons sitting at the bar clearly couldn’t care less. Another small tragedy of life.

“Let them all burn!” the barman shouted in English before approaching his new customer. “What can I get you?”

“Peace and quiet. And a pint.”

Max sank deeper into his seat. Those who were trying to hang Kevin Dandurand out to dry clearly lacked imagination. According to Pavlenco, in the past six months, there had been four other fires in derelict buildings inhabited by Roma.

After the first beer, another. And a third. The server’s animosity had turned into indifference. Max had almost forgotten the man’s existence when he approached the table again. “Someone on the phone for you.”

Max raised his head. He wasn’t sure he’d understood. But the bartender was pointing to a phone booth on the other side of the room. Max got up and squeezed himself into the cramped, dusty phone box, closing the door behind him. He picked up the phone.

“As cold as in New York, right? Nice weather to sell Christmas trees on a street corner.”

Kevin.

“What’s going on? Where are you?”

Close by, clearly, since he’d seen Max walk into the bar.

“I’m in a bind, Max. I need your help.”

Kevin’s specialty. Calling Max to the rescue. After Astoria, Bucharest.

“Tell me where you are. I’ll be right there.”

“It’s more complicated than that, Max. Too complicated.”

Silence on the other end of the line. Max was waiting for the rest.

“I didn’t set the fire. Didn’t kill the Roma.”

“I know that. Just tell me what happened.”

“All in good time. For now I’ve got more urgent matters. I need to ask you a favour.”

“Nothing is more urgent than getting you out of here. I’m bringing you back to Montreal and —”

“Listen, Max, I don’t have much time.”

Max fell silent.

“Tonight you’ll get a phone call from a friend of mine. Cosmin Micula.”

“Kevin, this isn’t the time to —”

“Let me finish.” Kevin’s voice was firm, bordering on hard. “Just do what he says, okay? Go with him. You can trust him.”

“Kevin, please, this isn’t the time to play games.”

“Don’t tell anyone anything, Max.” He added, “And be careful. The people who are after me, well, suffice it to say they’re powerful. Very powerful.”

“Who?”

Kevin ignored the question. After a long silence, he continued. “I knew you’d come. I knew I could count on you.” Then, “Be careful, Max.”

“Kevin …”

But he’d hung up already.