, was gunned down in broad daylight on Budapest’s streets by men in balaclavas, sparking a national outcry. Even the prime minister angrily declared, “Whatever this is in Hungary, it is not public safety!”February 1998
Lajos sat in his office, holding two new case files in his hands and no new people in his custody. Was it possible? he asked himself. The crimes in question bore every stamp of the Whiskey Robber—two men, good looks, bad wigs, hats—everything but the gunfire.
The old Lajos would have found it inconceivable that the first robbery had even occurred at all. He’d been conducting constant business-hours drive-by surveillance of the Grassalkovich Street OTP. Not only had it just been robbed again by two men in Whiskey Robber-esque costumes, but this time one of the perpetrators had squeezed off three shots from a Parabellum pistol. None of them hit anyone; they were all fired at the video camera, prompting, according to witnesses, an argument between the two robbers about following directions. Could the Whiskey Robber’s accomplice have forgotten his spray paint?
Then, six weeks later, on February 5, 1998, two men with similar physiques, without masks, and said to be wearing hairpieces robbed another city OTP. Again gunfire, though only a single targeted shot this time that destroyed the now serving board. What really set the robbery apart, however, was the shot that didn’t go off: after taking out the service board, the perpetrators had pulled out a wired explosive device and placed it on the counter, announcing that it was a remote-controlled bomb. Actually, it was two premium Cuban cigars wrapped with transistor radio wire to a battery, a bullet cartridge, and the face of a digital watch. But as a bluff, it had worked to perfection. If these gigs were the work of the Whiskey Robber, he’d certainly shown a willingness to up the ante.
Both robberies were covered by a burgeoning media that now included two more Hungarian television channels. The government had finally privatized the airwaves, and the two new commercial networks launched with Kriminális copycats as their showpieces. But aside from the lone account of the second robbery in Népszava (the robber in a joking mood), the media did not attribute the bullet-marked heists to the Whiskey Robber. To Lajos’s relief, he wasn’t even pressed for comment.
At eight years of age, the independent Hungarian media was hardly a model of journalistic rigor and responsibility, unless perhaps if judged against its nonexistent past. For the majority of local journalists, covering crime was a privilege, and the pervasive aura of criminality in the nation’s capital lent an air of exhilaration and significance to even the shoddiest tabloid operations. In that regard, the postcommunist 1990s in Hungary was not unlike the fabled golden age of American sports in the 1920s and 1930s, when journalists rode the rails with the ballplayers they unapologetically mythologized. The tall and handsome chief of the Budapest homicide department, Péter Doszpot, happily became a larger-than-life celebrity. A regular on Kriminális and the other crime shows, the thirty-five-year-old Doszpot was invariably shown wearing black leather jacket and sunglasses, riding in to fight the city’s dark side in his red Alfa Romeo convertible (a gift from the Italian carmaker). The only thing he lacked was a theme song.
Lajos, who wore the same style jacket, didn’t have the right look—or an evil nemesis—and wasn’t offered a free car. But on the days when he didn’t have use of one of the department’s Volkswagens, Lajos could usually hitch a ride with the affable reporters to the crime scene.
Kriminális host László Juszt, who had been given an entire wing of offices at Hungarian Television, spun off his television show into a theater production, the Kriminális Cabaret, which caricatured the country’s crime problems and government corruption scandals. The show, which ran for three months in Budapest’s Little Broadway theater district, featured the harmless Whiskey Robber as Hungary’s court jester, a lovable lout in an out-of-control lot. (The actor who portrayed the Whiskey Robber—wearing a business suit and wig, and carrying flowers and a whiskey bottle—was József Zana, father of Gabi’s and Attila’s friend rapper Gangsta Zoli.)
But though the media had no shortage of crime material, it was getting harder to make light of it. That spring a Bulgarian diplomat was found stabbed to death in his home with his mouth taped shut. A member of Parliament was killed when he was hit by an oncoming car while trying to fend off an attacker attempting to steal his parked vehicle. And since January, a serial killer had been stalking the city’s shop clerks.
Needless to say, Prime Minister Horn could have picked a better time to have to make the case that Hungary was the safest and most progressive country in the former Eastern bloc. But with only a few months left before two momentous votes—his own for re-election, and that of the U.S. Senate on Hungary’s acceptance into NATO, a key endorsement for foreign investors as much as a military safeguard—that was the task ahead for Horn.
Like both of Hungary’s democratically elected prime ministers before him, Horn would fail to make his case for re-election. A month before the first round of voting, a Hungarian media mogul, János Feny, was gunned down in broad daylight on Budapest’s streets by men in balaclavas, sparking a national outcry. Even the prime minister angrily declared, “Whatever this is in Hungary, it is not public safety!”
The blame game quickly began. Horn announced that he would fight for stricter immigration laws, claiming that 80 percent of the country’s robberies and murders were committed by foreigners. The interior minister, who oversaw the police department, accused Parliament of neglecting to adequately fund the police. (Adjusted for inflation, the police department budget was 14 percent lower than it had been in 1995.) And inside the Death Star, Budapest police chief Attila Berta began sniping about a certain robbery chief. The city’s robbery division, Berta had said, was suffering because Lajos Varjú was upset about not receiving kickbacks.
Berta’s charge drifted down to Lajos’s office in early March. Upon hearing it from one of his colleagues, Lajos dropped what he was doing and headed to the emergency stairwell. He’d had it. He’d been running one of the busiest departments at the police with less than half the cars, equipment, and people he needed. The KBI had refused his requests for help tracing the marked bills. Dance Instructor was threatening to quit to devote himself to his new and possibly more lucrative hobby of training carrier pigeons. With no more cars to crash, Mound had lost interest in everything but fishing. Of course, Lajos hadn’t hidden his dismay at the fact that his request for pay raises for his staff had been denied for the nth year in a row. But unlike many of his colleagues, he had never asked for or accepted bribes. Lajos bounded down two flights of stairs to the fifth floor, walked straight past Berta’s protesting secretary, and flung open the door to Berta’s office, where the city police chief was in a meeting with several other top cops.
“You’re stupid and you’re a liar,” Lajos bellowed at Berta. Then he turned around and stormed out, slamming Berta’s door shut. After sixteen years as a cop, Lajos had just turned over an hourglass on his career. His only chance to save his job now would be to catch the Whiskey Robber. Quickly.