Carnival of Shadows (19 page)

“I don’t know why I have to tell you, but I feel that if I don’t tell you, then we might have difficulties between us. I want us to be friends. I want to stay here with you. I don’t want to go back to State—”

“And I don’t want you to go back—”

Michael looked back at her then, just for second, his eyes unerring. “Let me say what I have to say, Esther, or I might just lose the will to say it.”

She nodded. Her heart was beating ever such a little bit faster.

Michael looked away once more.

“I want to stay here with you, Esther, but there is something in my mind, and I don’t think it should be there, and it stops me…” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I think about you, Esther. I think about you a lot.”

Esther didn’t know where to look. Her heart—beating ever more rapidly—was right there in her chest. She could feel it so strong. Why was it that the heart, the very thing that seemed to represent all that love entailed, was nevertheless most evident when you were afraid? Was she afraid? Was that what she was feeling? Or was it something else entirely?

“I think about you in a way that someone like me shouldn’t think about someone like you…”

And then—as if to defy all the laws of rightness and rectitude—Michael turned toward her, and he reached out his hand and touched her arm. His fingertips merely drifted across her skin, but it was as if they possessed a fierce electrical current.

Esther flinched, but she did not withdraw.

She sat there on the chair, all of thirty-four years of age, and felt every joint go weak and useless.

Esther, without looking, reached for her glass. It was right there at her feet, but she misjudged, and the wineglass, now almost empty, toppled over. Miraculously, it did not break, but the last inch of wine spilled out across the plank-board floor. It looked like blood.

Esther reached to set the glass straight, and even as she did, she felt Michael’s hand touch her shoulder. She looked up. He rose to his feet, and then he took her hand and brought her to her feet also.

Esther shuddered, both in excitement and trepidation. She did not know where to look, and so she simply held his gaze as he stood there, the expression on his face one of almost unashamed simplicity. Her knees barely held her weight. He raised one hand and touched the side of her face. She believed she would faint.

“No,” she said, but she did not shrink back from that touch.

His hand was beneath her chin then, and he somehow drew her toward him without her even being conscious of moving.

Without thinking, she reached up her left hand and placed it on his waist. Michael breathed deeply, and then he dipped his head and kissed her hard on the mouth at first, and then more gently across her cheeks, her eyelids, her forehead.

It was as if everything fell away then—every agreement, every opinion, every
now-I’m-supposed-to
, every accepted rule about how one should behave and why.

Michael was unbuttoning the front of her housedress, and she paused for just a moment before she said, “Not here… Inside…” She took his hand and led him back into the kitchen, to the stairs, and once on the upper landing, she knew there was no going back. She opened her bedroom door; he followed her inside, and they kissed again, fiercely, hungrily, and when he struggled with the clasp of her bra, she simply undid it for him. His hands were on her breasts, her dress was around her waist, and then she felt it just slide to the ground, almost as if gravity itself was telling her that this was inevitable.

Esther stood before him in nothing but her stockings, her garters, and her panties. He smelled so good. He kissed her again, harder, and for a moment she believed she would lose all consciousness. Her head was swimming, and it was merely due to the fact that he was holding her so tight that she did not fall to the floor.

A momentary flash of something made her say, “No, Michael…” But she did not mean it, and it sounded more like a plea for forgiveness rather than a request that he stop.

Michael tugged his T-shirt over his head. Esther unbuttoned his pants; they slid to the ground and he kicked them away.

Her hand moved on his thigh, and before she could think a further thought, he had taken that hand and put it right between his legs.

She closed her eyes and exhaled. She touched him, and he was so hard, and the smell of him, the warmth of his skin, the way it felt as he pressed himself against her…

And then he said, “Oh…” And for a moment there was an awkwardness in his body. He pulled back and glanced down.

Only then was she aware of the sensation on her thigh, that feeling of warmth, the way it trickled down toward her knee.

She smiled awkwardly, almost embarrassed for him, and then she started to laugh and found she couldn’t stop, and when Michael realized that she was not in fact laughing at him, he started laughing too.

She took a towel from the dresser and wiped her leg. She undid her suspenders and slipped off her stockings. She turned back to Michael, now dressed in nothing but her panties, and said, “I reckon it’s my turn next.”

She led him to the bed, and they lay down beside each other. She showed him what to do, how to touch her, how to find the place that needed to be found… slowly… no, even slower than that… yes, that’s right, just there, just there…

And afterward, for a while, they just lay there in silence, and when he was ready once more, when she had brought him back to life, she became the first woman that Michael Travis made love to, the woman that took his virginity.

And when they were done, he told her that he loved her, and she said, “You don’t love me, Michael Travis. You just fucked me, and now you
think
you love me.”

And he said, “No, Esther. I love you.”

And Esther Faulkner, wondering what the hell she had done now, did not argue with him.

13

It was midafternoon by the time Travis reached the university. He spoke to a young woman in the reception building, and she made a call.

“Dr. Ebner will be through to see you shortly,” Travis was informed. “If you’d like to take a seat.”

Travis did as he was asked, waiting for no more than five minutes before another woman appeared in the foyer of the building. She was petite and attractive, perhaps in her late thirties or early forties, and yet wore her hair in a severe style, tied back from her face and captured with a black bow.

“Agent Travis?” she said.

Travis rose and nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“If you’d like to come this way.”

Travis picked up his hat and followed the woman. She showed him down a corridor on the left side of the building and into an office.

“Take a seat,” she said, and Travis did so.

“So, how can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Dr. Ebner,” Travis said.

The woman smiled. “Hard though it may be for you to comprehend, I am Dr. Ebner.”

Travis’s surprise gave him away. “I am sorry, I was—”

“Expecting a man?”

“Well, yes,” Travis replied, now feeling awkward.

“Well, I am truly sorry to disappoint you, Agent Travis, but I am Dr. Sarah Ebner, Department of Foreign Studies. If you need foreign studies, then I’m the best that the University of Wichita can offer, certainly as far as mainland Europe is concerned. If you want Asia and the Pacific, then I will direct you elsewhere.”

“I really didn’t mean—”

“No need to apologize, Agent Travis,” Sarah Ebner said, smiling. “As a female academic, especially the head of a department, I am constantly reminded of my basic failure to meet everyone’s expectations.”

Travis didn’t know how to respond, until he saw that Sarah Ebner was withholding herself from laughing.

“I
am
sorry,” Travis said. “I was just with Professors Beck and Saxon, and they seem to fit the bill as far as university lecturers are concerned. My own preconceptions, and I apologize for them. You are very young, and not at all what I expected. I thought you were Dr. Ebner’s secretary.”

“That’s because you are a dinosaur and a misogynist, Agent Travis, and when women take over the world, you’ll be sorry.”

Travis really did feel ignorant. “So, could we please begin again?”

Sarah Ebner smiled. “Tell me what I can do for you,” she said.

Travis withdrew the diagram from his pocket and slid it across the table. As he did so, he recalled the moment in the diner with Laura McCaffrey.

Well, I presume you’re going to be following up on the regulus…

Travis glanced away, cleared his throat. “As far as myself and the professors have been able to ascertain, this is a constellation known as Regulus—”

“And it was tattooed on a man’s body?”

Travis looked surprised. “Yes, it was. How did you know?”

“Because, Agent Travis, this is Fekete Kutya.”

“Fek—what?”

“Fekete Kutya. It’s Hungarian. It means Black Dog, very simply.”

“Black Dog.”

“Yes.”

“And that is?”

“They are a Hungarian criminal organization. They are dangerous people.”

“There were other tattoos as well,” Travis said. “Seven dots, very small, between his toes.”

Dr. Ebner leaned back in her chair. “More than likely, those are his kills.”

“Meaning he has killed seven people.”

“Yes, exactly. The first eight killings are tattooed between your toes, the next eight between your fingers, and then you do not kill anymore; you just tell others to do the killing.”

“And you know of this organization because?”

“Because I am Austrian, because Austria borders Hungary, because I am head of the Department of Foreign Studies, and it is my business—”

“I am sorry, Dr. Ebner. I am being a dinosaur again.”

“As I said, I deal with mainland Europe, mostly eighteenth century to modern day, and now… well, now we are specializing more and more in texts and treatises on National Socialism and Italian Fascism under Mussolini, but Hungary is also important, certainly more since the civil uprising of 1956. It is fresh in peoples’ minds, you see? Other Eastern European Communist regimes are nervous. They want to understand what it was that prompted this popular revolt. The other issue they appreciate, of course, is that any social instability lends itself perfectly to a marked increase in crime and corruption, and I can tell you that there was a significant upsurge in activity from this Hungarian group just before and during the recent unrest. This, not unsurprisingly, consolidated their position and strengthened them greatly. They are like your Mafia, Agent Travis, but maybe more dangerous and more terrifying.”

“And why would someone like this be here in Kansas?” Travis asked.

“I have no idea,” Dr. Ebner said.

Travis took back the slip of paper and stared at it. Suddenly, a completely different world had opened up before his eyes. Hungarian organized crime, this Fekete Kutya, and one of their own murdered in Kansas at a carnival? In truth, it possessed an almost surreal quality.

“The more I try to understand, the less I understand it,” Travis said, realizing only as the last word had left his lips that this was a thought he’d had no intention of voicing.

“And that is perhaps one of the most valuable lessons a human being can learn,” Sarah Ebner said. “What is that old Chinese proverb? A wise man is a man who knows he knows nothing. Something like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Travis said. “I didn’t mean to concern you with the details of this.”

“It is quite all right, Agent Travis.”

“So what can you tell me about these people?”

“Not a great deal, to be honest. Fekete Kutya is something I am only indirectly acquainted with. One of those things that comes with territory, as opposed to being the territory itself. Historically speaking, they are a very old organization. They go back hundreds of years. They have their roots somewhere in the fifteen hundreds, as far as I know. The history of Hungary is very complicated compared to the history of your country, Agent Travis.”

“So who were they, these people? How did this organization begin?”

“From what I understand, it was something to do with the territorial wars of the time,” Ebner said. “Hungary was part of the Ottoman Empire. There was a battle in a place called Mohacs in the early fifteen hundreds and the Hungarians were crushed. The king was killed while fleeing from the enemy. The Hungarian nobility was divided, and each camp elected their own king, one called John Zápolya, another called Ferdinand the First. Then Hungary was divided again, and there were three territories, the west and the north under the control of a people called the Habsburgs, the central and southern territories under Ottoman rule. Lastly there was the east. This was called the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom, and it was ruled by the son of John Zápolya. Even later, that part of Hungary became the principality of Transylvania. It was from here that the Black Dog came.”

“And they were native Hungarians?”

“Yes, Hungarians loyal to the Zápolya line, and Black Dog was a secret organization committed to regaining control of all of Hungary for Zápolya. They were terrorists, Agent Travis, and they assassinated their enemies, sent spies into other parts of the kingdom, and they did everything they could to overthrow the Ottomans and those loyal to the Habsburgs. Finally, the last of the Black Dog were crushed, and it seemed to disappear. Then, after the First War, it was revived, perhaps only in name, because the Black Dog of today is not the same organization. This is simply a criminal organization, an organization that does not ally itself to any political party. As I said, they are not dissimilar to your Mafia.”

“So a man with these tattoos… could be other than Hungarian?”

“No,” Ebner said. “Membership is restricted to Hungarian nationals alone. At least it always has been, and I would be very surprised if that condition had changed. Such organizations exist the world over, as you know, Agent Travis. I wouldn’t be surprised to find indigenous organized-crime networks and groups for every country on earth. Even the Mafia, ostensibly and historically a Sicilian organization, has become its own offshoot here, but still, even in America, it remains the province of Italians only.”

Travis was quiet for a little while, just considering the ramifications of what he had learned. Now he had a nationality, not only a nationality but evidence that the victim from the carnival belonged to an organized-crime network. This information would need to go to Bishop immediately.

“I am really grateful,” Travis said. “This has significantly narrowed the playing field for us. However, I have to ask you to maintain complete confidentiality regarding this discussion,” he added. “This is an ongoing federal investigation.”

“Say no more,” Ebner replied.

Travis rose from his chair and extended his hand. “Dr. Ebner,” he said.

Ebner took his hand and they shook. “Agent Travis.”

“I shall work on my misogyny and general ignorance,” he said.

“Good to hear it,” Ebner replied, smiling. “Then you may just escape retribution when we take over the world.”

Once beyond the confines of the university campus, Travis stopped at a phone booth and called Information. He noted down the address of the Wichita Bureau Office, and he drove over there.

From the lobby, they called down one of the local agents, a young man by the name of Gary Delaney. Delaney said there would be no problem replicating the diagram that Travis showed him and getting a copy of it back to Kansas. Travis wrote a few words of explanation to SSA Bishop, added the fact that the deceased also carried seven tattooed dots between his toes, and waited while Delaney attended to it. He returned after fifteen minutes, handed the original diagram back to Travis, and asked if there was anything else Travis needed.

“No, we’re good here,” Travis said, and thanked Delaney for his help.

Travis went back to his car. Next step was to return to Seneca Falls and inspect the crime scene itself. He had not seen the specific location of the body’s discovery, at least not in daylight, and he would have to get back rapidly if he wished to make his examination before daylight was lost completely. To date, the only person to make an official examination of the site was Rourke. Sheriff he might be, but he was not FBI. Perhaps there was something to be found there that everyone else had missed. Perhaps they had not missed it, merely failed to recognize its import or relevance in this case. Travis had asked that John Ryan remove a section of the carousel so he could see precisely where the dead man had been discovered that night. He knew that Doyle wanted to get the carnival running again; he knew that they wanted to move on as soon as possible; he also knew that he could not commit a graver error than failing to detain the whole carnival until this matter was resolved.

Travis headed away immediately, made good time, and upon arriving, he found the carnival site a seeming hive of activity, the central marquee being the location for some kind of staggered meal service for the employees. Doyle was there, as was Valeria Mironescu. Doyle seemed pleased to see Travis.

“Are we making progress, Agent Travis?” he asked as he rose from one of the benches and crossed the marquee to greet him.

“Please, I don’t wish to interrupt your meal,” Travis said, “but I need to see the precise location of the body’s discovery.”

“We already took care of that,” Doyle said. “As requested, John removed a number of boards from the carousel’s platform so you could more easily see beneath it.”

“That is much appreciated, Mr. Doyle.”

“Do you need Ryan with you?”

“No, I am sure I’ll be fine. Please, continue with your meal.”

“Well, go right ahead,” Doyle said. “You know where it is. If you need anything, then just head right back here and let me know.”

“Thank you,” Travis said, and then he glanced at the Mironescu woman—seated just a handful of yards away. She looked at Travis in the precise moment that he looked at her. She did not smile. She did not glance away. She looked at Travis without hesitation or expression—utterly implacable and unflinching. Travis felt a sliver of electricity run through his body. Did he shudder? Did he actually shudder? What on earth was that sensation he felt?

Travis nodded an acknowledgment at the woman, and then she smiled so gently, so sensitively, that he felt once again awkward, just as he had when first they’d met. That smile seemed to express such a sense of kindness, and he could not even define how it made him feel. Not small, not insignificant, nothing like that. It was almost as if she was trying to get him to see something. But what?

We are no different
.

“Sorry?” Travis said.

Doyle frowned. “What?”

“Did you say something, Mr. Doyle?”

“Just that you should head on back here if you need anything else, Agent Travis.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you,” Travis said. He turned and started walking. He glanced back after a few moments. Neither Doyle nor the Mironescu woman were at the table.

Travis knew he’d heard nothing. He tried to give it no further thought. He made his way across the field toward the carousel and stepped up onto the platform. He could clearly see where John Ryan had removed a number of planks from the base of the thing. He maneuvered his way between the horses and knelt at the edge of the aperture. He placed his hands on either side and leaned down to look horizontally along the ground both left and right. The grass was a good two feet beneath him, allowing more than adequate room to crawl beneath the platform and really inspect the area. He would have to do this, of course, as there was no way to determine that the section of platform removed was directly above the precise location of the body.

Travis returned to the car and fetched a flashlight. He took from his jacket pocket the pages upon which he had imprinted both the outline and the sole of the dead man’s shoes. He laid his jacket on the backseat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and tucked his tie between the buttons of his shirt.