Bérdi’s team was trying to wrap up its investigation. Though Gabi hadn’t been as forthcoming as Attila early on, he’d finally confessed to all thirteen robberies in which he had participated and even allowed investigators to confiscate his house as stolen property. It was pretty clear to Bérdi that he was merely the sidekick.
So far, Attila’s stories about gambling the money away and spending it on cars and trips for his girlfriends had checked out. Technically, he owned no property: the Villányi Street apartment was a rental, and the town house on Rezeda Street was in the name of his grocery clerk friend Zsuzsa’s daughter, Sylvia. But Bérdi still hadn’t found Attila’s first two accomplices: Károly “Karcsi” Antal, his former UTE teammate, and Attila’s cousin László Veres, whose names Attila had belatedly surrendered in what Bérdi interpreted as a desperate attempt by the robber to appear cooperative and trustworthy. Bérdi believed those accomplices—both Székelys from Attila’s hometown—could provide key information about any leftover loot. The only question was how long it would take to find them, because apparently they had fled Hungary. The Romanian authorities said they were “working on it,” which, given the absence of an extradition treaty between the two countries and Romania’s warm feelings toward Hungary, might have meant “fuck off.”
Worst of all, Bérdi was finding that solidifying the attempted murder charges based on evidence from the Heltai Square shoot-out was a nightmare of Dallas book repository proportions. All that was certain after two inconclusive sets of ballistics tests was that there were bullets fired from several directions, from different guns, some of which had ricocheted off cars and apartment buildings. As far as who was aiming where and why, the best thing he had to go on was a sworn statement from Ferenc Laczik, the sight-challenged policeman who had chased after Attila. Laczik attested that at least one shot fired by the perpetrator was targeted directly at him, because he remembered looking straight down the barrel of the man’s gun.
It wasn’t until sometime in April that Attila had legal representation. The lawyer Éva had found had refused to take the case after reviewing Attila’s file full of signed and detailed confessions. It was Zsuzsa who finally netted a counselor through one of her relatives: failed mayoral candidate George Magyar.
It was only a matter of time before someone like Magyar would enter the picture. The fifty-one-year-old attorney had brown eyes that darted around in their sockets when he spoke, as if he were calculating the potential earnings of each syllable. Though he had never handled a criminal case before, he was certain Attila’s would be a success. “Your confession is absolutely illegal,” Magyar told Attila during his first visit to the jail, unveiling his defense strategy. “There was no lawyer present.”
Attila didn’t know what the slope-shouldered attorney was talking about. He reminded Magyar that on the night of his capture he had signed away his right to a lawyer twenty-six separate times. But Magyar, who was pondering a second mayoral run after commanding 1 percent of the electorate in 1994, was not easily deterred. He kept Attila talking and soon seized upon another trifle: According to Attila, the police had (appropriately, Attila thought) given him some whiskey during his confession that long night at police headquarters. (“Never,” Keszthelyi later said of the charge; “Only at the end,” said Mound.) Magyar nearly jumped out of his chair. He’d hit pay dirt. His client had been hauled off to the Death Star, deprived of a lawyer, and then induced into a drunken stupor before being forced to confess. Johnnie Cochran, eat your heart out. If there was ever a case made for the International Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, Magyar told Attila, this was it. As for his fee, Magyar understood that Attila was broke, but he had some ideas. He planned to market Attila’s story; they would split the profits. Attila mentioned that he’d been typing up his life story. A wonderful idea, Magyar said. He would start working on a book-publishing deal, perhaps with the Mai Nap reporter Judit P. Gál as cowriter. And another thing: no more media interviews without his approval and receipt of a negotiable payment.
Attila wasn’t sure what to make of Magyar. But he could appreciate his pluck, and at this late stage and with no other options, Attila had to hire him. After crossing out the lines in Magyar’s contract stating that Attila was responsible for reimbursing Magyar’s gas and parking costs, Attila signed Magyar’s agreement for representation. But there was still one thing that Attila wasn’t sure his new lawyer understood: he had no intention of retracting his confession. He’d robbed banks until he was caught, at which point he gave himself up and ended the game. He’d played by the rules, as far as he understood them, and had no intention of starting to lie now just as a legal strategy. Fair was fair.
If the police or the prosecutors were going to change the rules, however, that was another thing. Attila went to both Valter and Béla “Blinky” Bartha, the two main investigators on the case, and told them straightaway that if they charged him with attempted murder, he wasn’t going to stand for it. He would escape.
Valter had heard such a threat a hundred times before and no one had ever escaped from the Gyorskocsi Street jail. He told Attila to sit tight; he would be able to read his case file soon enough. Attila spent his mornings typing and jogging in circles around the outdoor exercise walk box, waiting for the other sandal to drop. He traded candy with the guards for getting the cook to make him scrambled eggs, and he drank whenever he had a supply on hand. In the afternoons he did push-ups and leg-sits and played Pente with his new cellmate, an Ecstasy dealer called Zoli. Loser had to do sit-ups. At night Attila didn’t do much sleeping.
Finally, on July 2, nearly six months after his confession, the investigative phase of the government’s case against Attila Ambrus was complete. Bérdi put the final evidentiary file listing the charges against him into the cabinet in room 309. Attila was informed that he was free to read the file, and he asked to see it immediately. He was led upstairs, where he took his regular seat in the green armchair and began to look at the documents. It didn’t take long for his eye to settle on the word he was looking for: gyilkosság. Murder.
As far as Attila was concerned, his case was settled. Just as he did that autumn eleven years earlier in Romania, he granted himself permission to leave the prison in which he was wrongfully being held. He would do whatever was necessary to get out.