“I thought he was working on eye colour.”
“Ears as well. Folds, curves, extrusions …”
The officer pointed at Emil. “Is he deaf?”
“I arrived right before the removal.”
The man nodded. Emil understood that this high officer was Oskar Müller, husband to the young woman.
Müller got up, stepped around his desk, and stood in front of Emil, observing him for a long time. Finally, he pointed to the Paolo Soprani on the chair. “Play.”
Emil couldn’t understand what he was being asked. He understood the words, yes, but couldn’t get his head around the meaning. Play? Müller became impatient. The guard shoved him toward the accordion. Without daring to turn around, Emil grabbed the instrument. His legs were weak, all of a sudden. He sat on the chair, got back up immediately, but Müller gestured for him to sit back down. Emil’s fingers were fixed, rigid, as if he no longer had mastery over his hands. He raised his eyes. Everyone was looking at him, Müller, of course, the SS, and Müller’s wife.
“Play!” the officer barked.
So Emil played. Timidly, at first, clumsily. His hands searching for the keys, his fingers slipping on the keyboard, his movements halting. But, soon enough, music filled him, occupying him entirely, the bellows working the fear out of him. He let himself be carried by the rhythm his fingers — now obeying him — imposed on the Paolo Soprani. Nothing existed anymore. These Germans, the Kommandantur, Birkenau, the entire Third Reich, the war, the endless war. Emil played what he felt in his heart; he played for his life, somehow knowing that the accordion was his only means of survival. He played and played, as if time no longer existed. And then, suddenly, weariness overcame him. When Emil finally stopped, on the verge of collapsing, he raised his eyes. No one had moved. They looked at him strangely; he was scared all over again. What did all of this mean?
Oskar Müller cleared his throat and told his wife, “The Jew, the other one, we won’t need him anymore. This Gypsy is much better.”
6
Bucharest, November 27, 2006
The official cause had been determined: the use of portable stoves and space heaters in a confined and insalubrious environment. During an early winter cold snap, all of this ad hoc heating equipment had been cranked to maximum power. A Romanian winter under a heavy grey sky. Bucharest’s citizens stooped their shoulders as they quickly went about their affairs. Those on Zăbrăuţi Street in Ferentari, well, they wouldn’t be going anywhere anymore. Twenty-three bodies last time they counted, including eight children who didn’t even have the strength to leave their parents’ squat. The fire caught them as they were sleeping; they didn’t stand a chance. Bodies found in the trash-lined staircases, right in front of back exits on the ground floor. They’d been boarded up for years. Desperate men and women clawing at the doors, trying in vain to escape. Within five minutes it was all over, the smoke had taken them before any of the firemen had time to reach the building through the neighbourhood’s mazelike streets. Six storeys in flames as gawkers and neighbours, most of them Roma living in similarly squalid conditions, stood by and watched until late in the night. Fellow Roma crying in the streets, guessing the fate of their brethren in the burning building.
“The preliminary investigation yielded traces of accelerants, which leads us to believe the fire was deliberately lit,” Adrian Pavlenco declared from behind his desk at the Bucharest General Inspectorate.
Clearly, American TV detectives had guided Inspector Pavlenco’s sartorial choices. The national Romanian television station broadcast police procedurals in the afternoon, with subtitles, of course. He was going for Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, or maybe Law & Order. His clothes were a size too small, showing off his lean build. According to Toma Boerescu, Pavlenco had transformed his own basement into a gym. More gossip learned at the coffee machine.
“So what’s the link to Kevin Dandurand?”
Pavlenco raised his eyes to Josée, who’d just asked the question. He then glanced at Max O’Brien and Marilyn Burgess, standing a little off to the side. Max thought this Burgess woman was small, delicate, and surprisingly wispy for an RCMP agent. He hoped she wasn’t part of the Fraud Division. When they’d all introduced themselves to one another before the meeting started, she’d scanned Max’s face for a beat too long, as if he reminded her of a person or a picture she’d seen before. However, he’d taken a few precautions. He’d played so many characters over the years for his scams that he’d become used to changing his appearance and wearing the clothes of other men. To Josée and the others, Burgess included, Max looked like a calm, collected New York banker used to conducting business on the golf course. The favourite pastime of his alter ego, Robert Cheskin.
Be that as it may, Max had a twinge of worry over Marilyn Burgess’s insistent gaze. She might be an expert with a photographic memory, mentally riffling thought her department’s open cases.
“The fire seems to have started in a fourth-floor apartment,” Pavlenco explained. “An apartment left abandoned, in principle. A body — presumably the tenant — was found in a room that served as a kitchen.”
“A Rom?”
“We haven’t identified him yet. Always difficult with those people.”
“Once again, I don’t see the link to Kevin,” Josée declared.
“Some of his personal belongings were discovered in the squat. Clothes and a suitcase, among other things.”
That was Marilyn Burgess speaking. Her voice was confident, professional. She seemed to know her stuff, Max thought. Burgess appeared deeply connected to this whole mess, in a way Max couldn’t quite understand. Was it ambition? Perhaps she couldn’t stand the thought of letting an obscure Romanian police officer get all the credit for handling the investigation.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Josée insisted. “He could have been robbed.”
“Ms. Dandurand, please —”
“Neighbours witnessed a fight in front of the building, followed by both men going up to the apartment,” Pavlenco said, cutting off Burgess.
“The tenant was stabbed to death,” Burgess added. “Perhaps the suspect tried to hide his crime.”
“Kevin is no killer,” Max said.
The three others turned toward him.
“I wish I could be as confident as you,” Pavlenco said. “The only way to know for sure is to find him. My men have gone through the whole city with a fine-toothed comb and we’ve gotten nowhere. Kevin Dandurand has vanished.”
A silence fell.
“For now, all that we want to do is ask him a few questions. We need to know what he was doing in a building full of Roma. Know why he was in Bucharest, and in a neighbourhood like Ferentari.” Pavlenco turned toward Marilyn Burgess.
She nodded. “Kevin Dandurand has had run-ins with the law. Thanks to Interpol I’ve obtained a copy of a police report out of New York.”
Max closed his eyes. Here it came. The old stories he’ d tried to hide coming to light. The East River warehouses.
“New York? What are you talking about?” Josée didn’t have a clue. Max and Kevin had never revealed their secret to anyone.
“It is, in fact, Mr. Cheskin here who paid for his friend’s bail,” Burgess said, turning to Max.
Josée faced Max, too, waiting for an explanation.
“Ancient history,” he said. “Kevin had nothing to do with the fire. You’re wasting your time. Going down the wrong path.”
Adrian Pavlenco ignored the remark.
“That’s not all,” Burgess said. “Victims of fraud in New York, Chicago, and Atlantic City have identified him as a con man by his picture. In the