Mulengro, page 11
“The other half,” Will said.
“Yeah. Right. I don’t need to see how they live.”
God, Briggs thought, what a dump. When they reached the backyard they saw a pair of raggedly-dressed children watching their approach with big dark eyes. There was a circle of dead coals in the center of the yard that looked as though a small bonfire had been burned there a week or so ago. Beer cans were littered everywhere. Briggs wondered why the fire marshal wasn’t down on these people for having an open fire inside city limits. And this place . . . But then he thought of his own apartment. It wasn’t exactly the Taj Mahal either.
“You got a quarter, mister?” one of the children asked, stepping up close. “Maybe a dollar? My mother’s sick and I need the money to—”
Briggs cut him off with an abrupt motion of his hand. The boy looked expectantly at Will who quickly shook his head. Grinning, the boy said something in Romany that made his companion laugh. Then the pair of them ran off, vaulting over the fence at the back of the yard and disappearing between the buildings on the far side. The two men turned back to look at the house to find a middle-aged Gypsy woman studying them. She stood by the back door in a lowcut blouse and long pleated skirt. Smoke curled up from the pipe she was smoking.
“Why are you men here and not Detective Castleman?” she demanded before either of the detectives could speak.
“Ma’am?” Briggs began.
“You are police, yes? When the police have a problem, it is Detective Castleman who comes to see us. We know him, he knows us. It is better to deal with those you know, heh?”
“We’re with a different department,” Briggs said. “My name is Patrick Briggs and this is my partner Will Sandler. We’re here to see a Mr. George Luluvo.” He dug out his wallet and flipped it open so that she could see his badge. “Is Mr. Luluvo in?”
“Big George is sleeping.”
“Could you wake him please?”
“No. He is not sleeping. He is gone away for the day.”
Briggs sighed. “Look, ma’am. We can play this two ways. The nice way is for you to let us have a word with Mr. Luluvo and then we’ll be on our way. The not-so-nice way is for us to go back downtown, get a warrant, and then take Mr. Luluvo away with us. Which way do you want it?”
“What do you want with Big George? Are you here to arrest him?”
“We just want to talk to him, Mrs . . . ?” Will said persuasively.
“My name is Tshaya Luluvo and we don’t have anything to tell you. Ask Detective Castleman. Ask our World’s Fair worker. We are innocent of all crimes, but poverty. As God is my witness, we have done nothing.”
Briggs sighed. The woman’s broad features were impassive, but there was no give in her eyes. She matched him, stare for stare.
“We’re not here to arrest anyone,” Will said. “We just need to talk to Mr. Luluvo about a case we’re working on.”
“I think you had better go now,” Tshaya said.
“You’re just making it hard on yourselves by refusing to cooperate,” Briggs told her. “We can be back here in less than an hour with a warrant, Mrs. Luluvo.”
Tshaya looked off across the yard, studiously ignoring them. She puffed on her pipe and hummed to herself. Briggs shifted from foot to foot, trying to wait her out. Finally Will touched his arm.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Briggs nodded. “Okay. We’ll play it the hard way.” He looked at Tshaya but she continued to ignore them.
They picked their way back down the driveway and settled heavily in the front seat of their unmarked Dodge.
“Looks like nothing’s going to be easy about this case,” Will remarked.
“You said it.”
Briggs stared at the house for a few minutes longer, then started the car and pulled away from the curb, giving the car a little more gas than was necessary. The rear tires squealed and left a rubber burn on the street behind them.
“You see?” Tshaya said as she watched the policemen leave. “This whole city becomes prikaza for us. Last night Ingo is murdered, and this morning Stevo finds Old Lyuba dead in her rocking chair on the porch. Now the shangle come to trouble us. There is no more luck for us here. Must we wait until we too die?”
Big George shook his head, the decision made. “We will leave. Now.”
“Good. You and I—we have both been too tired. A little traveling will let us rest. And if God will it, the bad luck will stay here and not follow us.”
“Bater,” Big George said.
By the time that Briggs and Will, over Castleman’s protests, returned with a warrant, Big George and most of his kumpania were on back roads leading to Kingston in a caravan of eight touring cars and stationwagons filled with Rom and their belongings.
eleven
The black Lincoln made its way slowly down the street and pulled up in front of Stevo Gry’s house, disrupting a sidewalk baseball game. The young players good-naturedly hurled a few well-chosen French epithets at the occupants of the car, moving on down the street in a laughing cluster when Yojo gave them the finger. Turning off the Lincoln’s engine, he glanced at Janfri and the momentary humor died in him. Janfri was staring at the porch where Old Lyuba had died. The house looked empty, but her rocker still stood patiently in the morning sunlight, as though waiting for her to return.
“At least she died peacefully,prala,” Yojo said. “Not like the others.”
Janfri couldn’t disagree with that. But he still couldn’t shake the feeling that it was too appropriate the way Lyuba had died, just when she was going to put him in touch with a drabarni whom she thought could help him. This Pika Faher’s daughter that none of the other Rom seemed to be familiar with. He knew Lyuba’s death was yet a further indication that Ottawa had become too prikaza for the Rom, but at the same time her dying had effectively cut off his only starting point. His search was ending before he’d even taken the first step.
He tried to tell himself that this was a sign from o Beng that the pursuit of this Mulengro was not his affair, but at the same time he knew he’d accepted an obligation from the old woman last night and it must be fulfilled. Not simply because the hand of this enemy had struck him personally, but because she’d told him it was his duty to stop Mulengro and he had accepted it. Not in so many words, perhaps, but the knowledge had passed between the old woman and himself all the same. And now she was dead and he was left with . . . what? He sighed. Old Lyuba’s death was simply too convenient. He could sense Mulengro’s hand in it—already he gave his enemy the same name that Lyuba had—but he didn’t know where to turn now.
“There is nothing for us here,” Yojo said.
“I know.”
“Only prikaza.”
Janfri turned to his friend. “I have to go up on the porch, prala. Just to . . . I don’t know. Stand there.”
Yojo nodded, somewhat nervously. With all that had happened of late, the possibility of mule making their presence felt seemed more probable than it ever had—except perhaps for when he and Janfri were boys and traveling with the Lowara Rom through Europe. The old men of their uncle’s kumpania would tell the swatura around the camp-fires to chronicle the history of the Rom and to keep it alive. But sometimes the old men told other stories and then they had listened to tales of o Beng and mule with wide eyes and hearts beating fast.
Glancing at the porch, Yojo was sure that the old woman’s muli was still present, guarding the place of her death. They had brought no baXt foods with them as an offering, nothing of luck. The ghost might be displeased or would not remember who they were because of that oversight. It was nearing noon as well. Traditionally the mule were said to walk from sundown to sunrise and for half an hour at noon. There was no luck to be gained by turning the muli’s attention to them. But that was what Janfri felt they must do, so . . .
“You can wait here,” Janfri said as Yojo reached for his door handle. “I won’t be long.”
He was out of the car before Yojo could argue. Yojo thought of following, then weighed his nervousness against Janfri’s wishes and decided he would simply keep watch from the car. He pulled out his tobacco and began to roll a cigarette as Janfri made his way up the walk and onto the porch.
Janfri paused at the top of the stairs, not really certain what he was doing here. He knew that Stevo was gone. Most of the kumpaniyi in the area were packing up and leaving. It was the sensible thing to do. They’d return when the luck changed. He supposed the real reason he was here was because he’d promised Lyuba that he would come today. Even though she was dead, it seemed the respectful thing for him to do. He moved slowly across the porch, the uneven boards creaking under his weight. When he reached the rocking chair, he stared down at it for long moments, then sat down. The chair moved under him, back and forth, until he stopped the motion with his foot.
What had Old Lyuba been doing out here on the porch last night? Trying to remember the name of Pika Faher’s daughter, or to understand what it was that moved against the Ottawa Rom? Or had she simply been remembering her life as the old will, searching for a pattern in amongst the spill of years that made her what she’d been? Had she felt her heart stopping and known that she was dying? Or had she seen him coming, this Mulengro of hers, with his ghosts in tow and the toadlike features of o Beng where his face should be? If legends could be real, perhaps it was Martiya who had come to claim her, or the third son of Moshto, the god of life. He was the son who destroyed any part of the world that was beyond repair and rendered it into the raw material that his eldest brother would use to make new life.
Janfri placed his hands on the arms of the chair, disturbed at the turn his thoughts had taken. His mind was filled with thoughts of mule and death and magic, for all that he’d never considered himself a superstitious man. He looked across the porch. Che chorobia. How strange indeed. He sat a moment longer, then as he started to rise, his gaze fell on a crumpled piece of paper that lay against the support post by the porch’s stairs. He picked it up, unfolding it carefully, and looked at the roughly scrawled pencil marks on it. They were pat-teran. There was the patrin for drabarni, followed by symbols indicating distance and direction. If this was a message from Lyuba to him, it said that the magic worker could be found about an hour southwest of Ottawa. An hour by car or walking? What lay southwest of Ottawa? He closed his eyes, trying to think, the scrap of paper a heavy weight in his hand.
“ ’Allo, monsieur Gitan!”
He looked up at the sound of the boy’s voice to find one of the street urchins who’d been playing baseball regarding him from the lawn.
“Ils sont tous parti, monsieur Gitan.” They are all gone, Mister Gypsy.
“All but the ghosts,” Janfri said. The boy regarded him without comprehension, so he repeated the words in French. The boy made a quick sign of the cross in the air between them and ran off down the street. “All but the ghosts,” Janfri repeated. He shoved the pat-teran message into his pocket and made his way back to the car. He needed to look at a map of southern Ontario. When he reached the Lincoln, he glanced back at the house and the empty rocker on its porch.
“Ashen Devlesa, Lyuba,” he said softly. “Te aves yertime mander tai te yertil tut o Del.” May you remain with God, Lyuba. I forgive you and may God forgive you too.
She needed no forgiveness that Janfri knew of. He merely spoke the benediction to help speed her muli on to the land of shadows. A small gust of wind stirred some litter at the bottom of the stairs as he watched. It was just a quick rustle that was gone almost before he noticed it. He knew it was a little past noon and took the movement as an omen of Lyuba’s approval. He was not a superstitious man, nor did he believe in magic. But he could learn. Feri ando payi sitsholpe le nayuas, Uncle Nonoka used to say. It was in the water that one learned to swim. If Mulengro was truly one who had mastery over mule as Lyuba claimed he did, and if he was after Janfri, the Rom knew he was in water so deep that he could only hope that he wouldn’t drown before he did learn how to swim.
The Lincoln’s seat cover was hot against his shoulder blades when he got back into the car. Yojo regarded him curiously.
“Did you find what you came for,prala?” he asked.
Janfri took the scrap of paper from his pocket and showed it to Yojo. “I found something,” he said.
Yojo looked from the patteran on the paper to the porch of Stevo Gry’s tsera and a shiver of—not so much dread as otherworldliness— touched his spine. Old Lyuba, like most Rom, was illiterate. But the older Gypsies, and those brought up on the roads of Europe as he and Janfri had been, knew other ways of communicating. With tufts of grass twisted in a certain way, or bits of cloth hung on the trail above normal eye level. And with symbols that could be scratched in wood, in dirt, on stone. Or scrawled in pencil on a scrap of paper such as the one Janfri held in his hand. Lyuba had made her patteran and died, but her message went on, as though she spoke from beyond the grave.
“Perhaps,” Yojo said, “all the luck’s not gone yet.” Janfri nodded. “When all our luck’s gone, prala, the blood no longer moves in our bodies. That is something the Gaje have never understood.”
“Gaje si dilo,” Yojo replied. The non-Gypsy is a fool. Janfri smiled without humor. Unfortunately, if Mulengro was the man in black that Joji Anako had seen walking down Scott Street with the mulo of Romano Yera, he was neither Gaje nor a fool.
twelve
“Look, Tom,” Phillip Baker said. “If I hear anything—anything at all—I’ll call you right away. You know that.”
Tom sighed. He had the phone receiver propped between his shoulder and ear and was sitting on the long beige couch that took up one length of his living room. Across from him, two of Gillian’s oil paintings hung on the wall. One was an expressionistic rendering of the Rideau Canal in winter—a view from the MacKenzie King Bridge downtown that was a swirl of jagged colors against an almost-realized backdrop of the canal, with the Laurier Street Bridge rearing up behind it. The other was a realistic study of a ballerina on a street corner in the Market that somehow turned the incongruous background into a perfect setting.
“Yeah,” Tom said into the phone. “I know.”
“It’s only been a day or two,” Baker continued. “He’s probably found himself a retreat in the Gatineaus and is planning to stay there until he comes to grips with the shock of the situation.”
“Maybe. Did you try Angie again?”
Her answering service said that John’s agent was still out of town. Tom had tried it twice this morning anyway, and the message was still the same as the one he’d gotten yesterday. Doug hadn’t heard anything either. That was why Tom was on the phone with Baker again. They were supposed to start recording soon and Baker was the producer this time out.
“I can understand your being worried,” Baker said, “but I think the man deserves his privacy if he wants it. If he wanted our condolences, we would have heard from him. Why don’t you just let it lie, Tom? If he hasn’t been in touch with either of us by the end of the week, then we can start to worry. But by that time Angie will be back and we’ll have somewhere to begin looking for him.”
“Okay. I guess you’re right. It’s just . . .” Tom sighed again, cutting the sentence off. The bad feeling that was building up inside him just didn’t make any real sense. “I’ll talk to you later in the week.”
“Do that. How’s your own work going? Are you still planning to use that Cimarosa Concerto?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Good, good. I’ve a few ideas I’d like to bounce off of you on that one, but right now the other line’s on hold and I’ve got to run. Don’t worry about John, Tom. I’ve known him for a couple of years and he seems to have a pretty good head on his shoulders. It would take more than a fire to twist him around.”
“I suppose.”
“Don’t worry, Tom. Talk to you later.”
“Yeah. Right.”
Baker cut the line at his end and Tom slowly brought the receiver from his ear and cradled it. He wondered if Baker would still think that John had a good head on his shoulders if Tom told him what John had said before he disappeared into the crowd that night. Brow furrowed, Tom reached for an album jacket that lay on the coffee table and studied it. John Owczarek looked back from the jacket photo. He was standing in an open field, holding his violin the way the old time fiddlers held theirs for photos—in the crook of his arm with the bow dangling from his index finger. The title was at the bottom of the jacket. Until We Meet Again. Tom wondered when that would be, as he laid the album back down on the table.
The party last night had done nothing for the restlessness that was prowling through him, except that he’d woken up with a mild hangover this morning. He knew he wasn’t being good company by the way that Gillian had avoided him at the breakfast table—a late breakfast. She’d already been at work for an hour or so by the time he got up. He knew that if he could pinpoint what it was that was bothering him so much, he’d be able to get on with his day-to-day life. But it wasn’t just the cryptic statement that John had tossed to him before he’d vanished that night. It was more a sense of impermanence that those few words had made him aware of; the simple fact that everything changed. Sometimes people changed so that you could hardly recognize them anymore. He’d seen that happen when he ran into people he’d gone to high school with. But other times . . . other times you discovered that you’d never really known the person in the first place, and that left you wondering how much you really knew about anybody. Even yourself.
Was that it? At forty-seven he was just beginning to realize that he wasn’t really sure who he was or what he wanted out of life. Music had been so important for so many years. And of course his family— Gillian and Matt. But he was one person when he played, another with his family, still another at gatherings like last night’s little party. . . . So many faces. Everybody had their masks. Was it because John’s mask had been so perfect that this was all bothering him so much, or because he wasn’t sure when he was wearing one himself? He rubbed at his temples. He didn’t need an identity crisis right now.
