Peter Pišt'anek - Rivers of Babylon

Mozoň is not afraid of anything. Just in case, he cocks the gas pistol in the pocket. One shot of tear gas will allow him to leave without hindrance. He finishes his coffee.

Through the smashed door enters the hotel lawyer. The phone call caught him at a rare moment when he was present in the building. Since the lawyer has been selling entitlements to five Škoda Favorit vehicles, he was in his office manning the phones. He couldn’t wriggle out of it. The lawyer knows that the hotel works by itself, like a well-oiled machine. The department chiefs can handle everything. But extraordinary events, such as a shoot-out in the lounge, are different. If only because they have to be covered up. The lawyer can’t afford any special attention to be paid to the Hotel Ambassador: even those unfortunate Škoda Favorit cars were ordered for the hotel.

“Yes, I’ll take care of that,” the lawyer tells the waiter after hearing a detailed report about an unidentified man who was drinking coffee. “First, the clean-up. Wash off the blood in the hall! Was it Rácz’s?” he asks hopefully. “No,” says the waiter. “The boss wasn’t hit.”

The lawyer goes up to Mozoň. The waiter listens eagerly.

“Good morning,” says the lawyer.

“Good morning,” Mozoň answers.

“Would you accompany me to my office?” the lawyer asks loudly, because the waiter is listening. “It’s only a formality.”

“No problem,” says Mozoň and gets up.

The lawyer points, “This way, please.”

In the lift Mozoň says, “Shit, how long is it since we last met?”

The lawyer reflects, “Ten years?”

“Could be,” says Mozoň. “So you’re the assistant manager?”

“Hotel lawyer, to be precise. But the manager is… indisposed, so I’m standing in for him. And what about you? If I’m not mistaken, after they kicked you out of law school, you went to police college. Still there?”

Mozoň’s face takes on a confidential expression. He nods.

The lift stops at the second floor. They cross the corridor and the lawyer unlocks his office. They enter.

“Will you have a vodka?” the lawyer asks. Mozoň nods. “I’m so happy that we’ve met after all these years!” the lawyer says and pours the drinks. They clink glasses and the lawyer pours again.

“So how goes it?” the lawyer asks after the fifth vodka. “Are you here on duty?”

“What?” the drunken Mozoň just waves his hand. “It’s all fucked up! Everything!” He’d served the people his entire life, if you please, and what did he get? The height of ingratitude! Nobody cares that Mozoň happens to be a family man. He never hurt anyone. Even if he had beaten people up, it was only because they were some kind of tramp: a dissident, student, or writer. “We won’t let them destroy our republic!” And how did they repay him? They threw him, together with the others, out on the street.

“You’re ex-State Security?” the lawyer asked almost jovially. All his worries had evaporated.

Mozoň is a lawyer, too. He studied law at cops’ college. For two years he went to lectures every Wednesday, like an idiot. Mozoň has a doctorate, too. His classmate may pour him another drink. “Your health!”

Mozoň drinks his vodka. He’s as good a doctor as any other policeman. But when they sacked him and he was looking for a job, he was told everywhere that his diploma was only good for wiping his arse. “So where’s the justice?”

“So what do you live on?”

Mozoň’s expression becomes confidential. Contradictory feelings do battle within him: on one hand, deeply inculcated service secrecy and confidentiality, on the other, the desire to show his old college mate that Mozoň, too, is somebody to reckon with.

“So what do you do? Private detective?” the lawyer keeps asking.

Mozoň shrugs. “Something like that. Come with me, and I’ll show you something,” he suggests.

“Is it far?” the lawyer asks.

“Let’s take a taxi,” Mozoň decides, stumbling into the lawyer’s bureau.

The lawyer agrees. Even though he’s had a lot to drink, a persistent instinct at the back of his cranium tells him that his old mate from law school could be useful to him.

“Shall we?” Mozoň asks, getting up with effort and moving towards the door.

“Let’s go, then,” says the lawyer. He takes the office keys off the desk and puts the bottle in his coat pocket.

A silent taxi driver drives them to the villa overlooking the city. The men start to sing. They cheerfully clap each other on the back. They imagine themselves always to have been the best of friends. Mozoň needs a friend, someone he could like and who’d like him in return. Comradeship is sacred.

“Women are cunts,” he says to the lawyer sotto voce, as if afraid that the moment they get out of the car the taxi driver will go and tell his wife.

The lawyer nods. He’s divorced; he’s been through the mill. He pays crazy amounts of child support for three children. But the lawyer won’t let himself be fleeced. His salary is small and they can’t deduct much from it. What he makes, he makes on the side. His ex-wife, blast her, knows about that but can’t do a thing about it. She’d love to have the shirt off his back.

The bottle travels from the lawyer to Mozoň and back. When it’s empty, they throw it out of the taxi window onto the pavement. They soon reach their destination. The villa can be seen towering behind a sandstone wall. Mozoň pays the driver and keeps every penny of the change.

Standing to attention, with drawn faces, Šolik and Tupý endure a dressing-down from a drunken Mozoň. Mozoň had known he had the stupidest subordinates, but had no idea that they were that stupid. Their stupidity cries to high heaven. They couldn’t sort out one bloody currency dealer. Go on like this and they’d soon be on the street scavenging from rubbish bins.

Mozoň relishes his anger. He’d like to impress his friend with his power. The lawyer is embarrassed at witnessing a scene he’d rather not see. But the two humiliated cops clearly don’t mind. They peek at the lawyer with curiosity. They’ve never had a visitor before. They let Mozoň’s pep-talk come in one ear and go out the other.

“They’re the ones firing guns in the hotel!” Mozoň informs the lawyer. “These fools! As if they didn’t know that if they were caught they couldn’t have got out of it so easily. We’re outside the law, you prats!” he reproaches Šolik and Tupý, “Outside the law!”

“He punched me in the fathe,” Tupý says in self-defence. “Then he thtarted running. I tried to thtop him. To thtop him escaping.”

Šolik hurriedly backs him up. “He wouldn’t listen, chief. He wouldn’t show us the contents of his pockets. He said that he worked in the hotel as a stoker. He reacted to a body search with violence.”

The lawyer joins in, “Listen, men!” The lawyer has no idea what they’re on about. And he’s not interested. But he’d like to know what they’d charge to get back to the hotel and take the stoker out of circulation somehow. It doesn’t have to be today or tomorrow. The lawyer just needs to know he can be certain about one thing: the stoker’s days are numbered. Can that be arranged?

The three secret policemen, the humiliated and the humiliater, smile; their eyes soften as if they’d remembered a snatch of a long forgotten tune. Mozoň clears his throat. “Anything can be arranged,” he says. But the lawyer should explain why he’s interested in liquidating a petty currency dealer.

“A petty currency dealer?” The lawyer is beside himself. He explains briefly to the cops how dangerous a character Rácz is. He has the entire hotel and surroundings in his hand. Everybody is scared of him. The currency dealers do exactly as he says, he’s their uncrowned king. The hotel lawyer has a lot of fine plans for the Hotel Ambassador. But he needs a free hand to realise them. The hotel employees would be sure to elect him manager, instead of the old one, who is completely incompetent, but everyone’s afraid of the stoker. He’s a blackmailer: he can close down the heating in the hotel at any time, and then people freeze. He’s got tons of money. The lawyer is worried that, as things are, the employees would elect Rácz manager out of fear. The lawyer is offering his new friends a hundred thousand crowns to liquidate the stoker.