Using translation help from Hayati Orhon, officers from the National Police spoke to the Wingates’ guests late into the night. Yaziz stayed until the unhappy end. He’d arrived in the fancy neighborhood, Kavaklidere, earlier that day, on a lead from a butcher in Ulus about his missing witness from Anit Kabir—she was a gypsy girl, hawking copper pots up and down these streets. Yaziz eventually tailed her to the big house, owned by one of Atatürk’s generals and conveniently located between the Wingates’ and Burkhardts’ houses. Now, hours later, Yaziz found himself at the far end of the city without transportation in the middle of the night. One of the sergeants gave him a ride home.
The city block where he lived in Yenişehir, the new downtown, was a cement wall of joined apartment buildings that all looked alike. Even to Yaziz. Especially when he was so weary that he mistakenly identified his own building. He ended up walking the last block, rather than confess his mistake to the sergeant. The walk, at least, cleared the fuzz from his mind, and he would be good for another hour or two.
He limped slowly up the stairs to his apartment on the top floor. There was an elevator, which sometimes ran, but that wire cage more often than not entrapped him. Even this exhausted, he preferred the security of the stairs.
With each step of the first two flights, he breathed deeper. He puzzled over the mysteries that disturbed his life. Only yesterday he’d received the summons about trouble at Anit Kabir. Who had wanted to kill a gypsy? Now, he wondered, who would want to kill a student photographer?
Unrelated deaths, perhaps, except for the presence of Miss Anna Riddle at both crime scenes. Although he’d changed his mind about her guilt after today’s incident in Ulus, she was not entirely free from his suspicion.
It could be weeks before the autopsy was done. But Yaziz needed no report. Tonight’s victim was surely the result of murder. As the first one so clearly was.
The camera had been smashed. Yaziz had led the Americans to believe that the damage was the result of the man’s falling on it. Yaziz knew better. The camera had been destroyed deliberately. The film it contained had been removed.
What was on that missing film?
Perhaps there’d never been any film in the camera in the first place. Still, someone hadn’t wanted something seen. Plans for the revolution that frightened Bulayir? Such plans—had they been in progress next door in the big house?—could easily be seen from the spot where the photographer had fallen.
What did the Americans, they who had their finger in every pot, have to do with this latest development?
Yaziz rounded the third flight of steps. Paused while his laboring breath settled a fraction. Trudged on.
Then there was the mystery of what Erkmen was up to. Yaziz had never trusted his curly-headed colleague. Theirs was a friendly rivalry, long underway before yesterday, when Erkmen appeared under the lamppost outside the nargile salon.
Why had he wanted Miss Riddle’s purse?
It wasn’t that Erkmen was so incompetent. No. His greatest fault was that he was a little harsh in his treatment of the public. Which, in itself was only a nuisance and not a problem.
The problem Yaziz had with Erkmen was that both of them vied for the top. Both of them moved swiftly through the ranks, swifter than the norm. But Erkmen wasn’t koreli. Yaziz did not know what had generated the favors being showered on Erkmen. He’d always thought his rival’s success was on account of some distant family connections with the police.
After tonight, Yaziz was no longer sure. He’d seen Erkmen dressed in a servant’s uniform at the general’s house. What was he up to?
But the biggest surprise development during tonight’s surveillance, discounting the complication of the murder next door, was when he saw Murat show up. Apparently the old judge was on the general’s guest list. Yaziz felt betrayed. Why hadn’t his old friend told him he was on such familiar terms with one of Atatürk’s men? Close enough to be invited to dinner? Clearly, Murat had some information Yaziz did not know and could have used.
Yaziz staggered a bit on the last flight of stairs.
He was in better shape than this. His weakness was the result of festering problems. Erkmen, with the newspaper. Erkmen, caught examining Miss Riddle’s purse. Erkmen, prowling the neighborhood tonight, too.
Left Yaziz with a sense of foreboding.
Which only doubled when Yaziz saw Erkmen leave the general’s house and cross the street. Enter the house that belonged to the assistant minister, Ahmet Aydenli.
Instead of going home. Most people would go home. After leaving a party.
Then, his apprehension was realized. Like a bad dream come to life. With the scream.
Yaziz shouldn’t have been surprised. To find the troubling Miss Anna Riddle at the American party.
All the same. He was. Trouble followed that woman. Like stray cats after a piece of meat. During the days of sacrifice.
With a deep sigh, Yaziz took the last step. Onto the fifth floor landing. He stumbled into darkness. The light bulb had apparently burned out again. He groped for the lock, rattling his keys, stabbing at the dark. Finally his door creaked open and Yaziz tripped inside to the sour smell of unwashed dishes.
“Nasreddin!” he called, throwing his key ring with a clatter onto a small table by the door.
The Angora cat didn’t respond. He usually sulked when Yaziz left him this long—twenty hours, this time. The storks, in their nest overhead, reminded him of their presence with a clap of their bills and a rustling of sticks.
Yaziz stepped closer to the table and reached for the lamp. Something crinkled and squished underfoot, which made his fingers hesitate over the lamp’s switch. He flicked it on.
Dim light cast about the disaster of the room. Books and papers and dirty cups and plates spilled across table tops. Pillows and soiled shirts tossed across the sofa. His open gym bag by the door reeked of sweaty underwear.
The place was just as he had left it.
He never thought of himself as being untidy. As long as the floor remained free of clutter, then he was content. Sometimes Nasreddin bounced things onto the floor and chased them around. A cat toy. That’s what Yaziz had stepped on.
But he didn’t recognize the bundle on the floor, wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. Similar to the package he’d seen Ozturk Bey attempt to hand over to the red-haired Burkhardt child in his copper shop today.
He bent down and picked it up. Carried it to the table and brushed aside bread crumbs from his breakfast. The string that tied this package was the thin, green kind that shopkeepers often used to tie up their customers’ purchases. The knots were too tight and tiny for his thick fingers, and he had to rummage in a drawer for a knife.
With a snip, the string fell aside, and the newspaper wrapping unfolded. It was a sheet of that day’s Republic News. He unwrapped the bundle the rest of the way and stared at a note, handwritten in a crude pencil scrawl: “More of this if you drop the matter of the gypsy.”
He lifted the note, and underneath lay a cube of raw opium.