Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

“No matter what kind of country we want to have in the future,” Kasic said, “the old ways sometimes still work best. Don’t misunderstand me, Vlado. You’re the boss. As I was saying, we want to come clean on this, the quicker the better. That’s why when I began to hear certain things this morning about Vitas himself, it became all the more important that we immediately give up our jurisdiction.”

“What sort of things?”

Kasic lowered his head, shaking it slowly, the portrait of a grieving son.

“I’d always heard he was a straight shooter,” Vlado prompted.

“So had I. None straighter, in fact. But maybe with a war on he felt the rules were different, or that they no longer applied.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be a little more specific.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re interrogating now.” Kasic broke into a broad smile. “In fact as long as you’re here you’d probably like to ask me a few things about my own whereabouts last night. I’ve certainly got motive enough. My promotion was pretty much automatic once Vitas was gone.”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Vlado said, taking care with his tone. “I’ll have to know where you were at the time of the murder and, assuming you have an alibi, where you were when you first heard of it, who told you. Your reaction. Not only from you but from others. And so on.”

Kasic nodded, stubbed out his cigarette. “Very good. You’ll have all of the time you need for those things as soon as this conversation is over. But, in getting back to Vitas …”

“His lack of virtue.”

“Yes. The black market, I’m afraid. Nothing fancy. Meat, cigarettes, and liquor, mostly.”

“Marlboros, for example?” Vlado asked, reaching across to Kasic’s pack and helping himself to one.

Kasic smiled. He offered Vlado a light and took a cigarette for himself. “Yes, Marlboros. Drinas, too. And he apparently got in deep enough to get himself killed. It’s no real puzzle why, I suppose. Either he was squeezing someone or someone was squeezing him. It came to a head and somebody had to be gotten rid of. It turned out to be Vitas. As for who pulled the trigger, well, we could probably spend the rest of the war tracking that one down if it’s like most of these cases. You know how it works.”

“Actually, I’m not sure I do. Our little department seems to have lost touch.”

For the first time Kasic seemed mildly embarrassed. “Yes. This great dent we’ve put in your business. And just when you should have been learning the ropes. Well, the way it usually works these days is that when somebody wants to buy a triggerman he gets some soldier who’s down from the front for a day or two, someone looking for a few extra Deutschemarks for himself or his family. He’s given a gun, a name, and maybe even a location and a time. He does the job, stashes his wad in a mattress somewhere away from a window, or anywhere else it won’t be burned or blown to bits, and vanishes back into the mud. That description narrows it down to a few thousand. But if that’s indeed what happened, it’s not the trigger we’re really interested in. It’s the one who gave the order, the person who presumably is high enough in the smuggling network to order the killing of the chief of the Interior Ministry’s police.”

“You seem to already know a lot about this case.”

“Which is either praise for my men’s quick work this morning or a diplomatic way of saying that we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. True. And I’m not suggesting at all that you rule out other possibilities. I’m only telling you where our earliest leads are pointing.”

“Then you have some leads for me.”

“Yes, although only in the broadest sense.”

Kasic pulled open a desk drawer, one that presumably had been filled with Vitas’ own work until this morning. He removed four thin file folders and placed them on the desk. “I’m told these people might be of some help,” he said, tapping the files. “They’ve already steered us in a certain direction, as I said.”

“And these people are …?”

“One is a butcher. The other’s a production foreman at the cigarette plant. The other two are involved in the supply of black-market whiskey. All four have been doing some undercover work for us. They’d heard things about Vitas before now, but naturally they hardly felt free to pass it along while he was in charge.”

“Word must have traveled fast.”

“In these sorts of networks it usually does. These four gentlemen came forward with their stories before I even reached my desk this morning. Motivated by the thought of bonuses, no doubt. It’s yet another way of profiteering, and these people are hardly without their own guilt. In fact, my biggest concern about not having our own people on this is that I’m afraid at times you’ll feel like a fish out of water. Our sources aren’t exactly the conventional sort, even for undercover people. We can’t pay them much to begin with, so most of their wages come from skimming their own profits from the system we’re trying to shut down. Which of course puts us in the odd position of having to tolerate it. Let’s face it, we’re all novices at this game. Before the war half of them were either driving taxis or living in some mountain village, wondering how many eggs they might be able to steal from the neighbor’s henhouse. Ask this ‘butcher’ here where to cut a rack of lamb and he’ll probably point to the rump. Even the racketeers who had some experience beforehand are operating at a level now they never would have dreamed of, with their own private armies, even now, even after October. But these informers at least know the streets, even if they aren’t always what you’d call street smart. A bit rough around the edges you’ll likely find.”

“Sounds like they’re not much good for anything.”

“I wonder that myself sometimes. But Vitas always figured they were worth it.”

“Maybe because he was using them to tie him into the market.”

“Possibly, and if that’s so then any of their information could be suspect. But for the moment it’s the only place we have to start. Unless of course you turn up something. Or unless there was something at the scene. But from what I saw of your report earlier, there was little or nothing.”

So he had read the report. “Yes, precious little.” Vlado thought for a moment of the folded paper in his pocket, with the name and address in Dobrinja, then let the thought pass without comment.

“Yet I must say,” Kasic said, “even though these people of ours are far from angels, their stories ring true.”

“What makes you say that?”

“What reason would they have for lying? Sure, they might pick up a few D-marks for their troubles, but passing the word on something like this would only seem to make them vulnerable to whoever gave the order.”

“Unless they’re in league with whoever gave the order.”

“Maybe. But we’ve done a pretty good job of vetting these people. And don’t think that we haven’t ever checked up on them. There are others who do nothing but inform on our informers, just to make sure we’re getting a straight story. So I doubt they’d risk their relationship with us by peddling us rubbish. We can put them out of business very quickly. Besides, these four men work in four different places, with three different products, and they live in different parts of town. As far as we know, they’ve never even spoken to each other. Yet their stories are strikingly similar, at least in the way they pertain to Vitas. And another thing, at their roots, all of these illegal operations are quite simple, whether you’re talking about chain of command or chain of supply. Their aims are simple, too: lots of money with as little trouble as possible. Even when it’s tempting to look for complicated solutions and convoluted schemes, the longer you see these people at work the more you realize what a straightforward master greed usually is.