A persistent tapping on the door woke him. It wasn’t Ivan’s day.
“Mr. Weiss. It’s Annie.”
He lumbered to the door and unchained it, letting her in.
“What are you doing here? I told you—”
“Yes. I know,” Annie said. “I need to talk to you.”
“What is it?”
“Before I go to Stephen’s tonight, you need to tell me the whole story.”
“Van. I told you his name is Van. You have his address?”
“No. We’re getting picked up. I have his phone number.”
He slid the chain back on the track.
“Why didn’t you call?”
And then he understood.
“You still don’t believe me.”
He scanned the room, taking in the dark curtains and the squint of light coming through, wondering when it would ever end. Why could he see things that others could not? He turned to her again. She stood taller, her shoulders in perfect alignment, and he could see she was intent, determined. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, which made her face look more angular.
“You accused a man of murder, Edward. I needed to talk to you about this in person, not on the phone.”
He watched her inhale deeply, waited to hear what other excuse she would give him. Everyone had an excuse.
“You never told me what happened. No bullshit. Isn’t that what you said? You owe me that.”
She slid her hand into her back pocket and pulled out the business card.
“Here. You see? It’s all here.”
She pushed the card into his hand and he read the words for himself:
STEPHEN HÁZY
c. 36 1 438-5629
“Is this number real? Have you called him?”
His question made her pause. “No. I haven’t. But he called Will, and Will’s old boss has been in touch with him, and another American businessman from General Electric whom Will knows.”
“I can call him right now.” Edward reached for his cell phone and sat back down in the depression on the couch where he had fallen asleep after lunch.
“No, wait,” Annie said. “What are you going to say? What if he asks how you got the number?”
“I won’t tell him. I want to be sure it’s him. If he picks up, I’ll recognize his voice and I’ll hang up.”
“But your number and name will show up on his phone.”
“I have no problem with that.”
Edward began to punch in the numbers.
“But I do. Stop! He’ll want to know how you got his number. Please think this through.”
Edward stopped. She was right. He needed to remain calm with her. He didn’t want to put her and Leo in further jeopardy. Yet reason kept dissolving in his head, the vortex of his emotions sucking everything into a blinding hole. As he clutched the business card, the tangible sensation of his daughter’s killer in his hand made his chest hurt. He had a suffocating urge to dial Van’s number, just once, so he could breathe. Then he had a thought.
“How about if you call him and ask for his address?”
“I never call him.”
“Tell him you want the address to give to your babysitter. I’d think you’d want to do that, anyway, right? I’m not the bad guy, Annie. If someone murdered your son, what would you do? Can you answer that question? Of course you can’t.”
She took her phone and dialed the number, holding the phone between them so he could hear.
“You’ve reached Stephen Házy. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you. Have a good day.” The message continued in Hungarian and then the voice mail beeped. It was Howard. No doubt about it.
Annie spoke into the mouthpiece.
“Hi, Stephen. It’s Annie. We’re looking forward to seeing you tonight. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind giving me a quick call. I need your address to give to our babysitter. Thanks. Bye. See you soon.”
She hung up.
“Van calling himself Stephen,” Edward said, feeling an urge to spit. “Does he have your number? You didn’t leave it with him.”
“Yes. He has it.” She pushed a stray hair off her face and looked hard at him. “My name and number will show up on his ID. And he called Will at the police station, remember? I told you about that. You don’t trust anyone, do you? I came here in earnest, Edward. I need to understand what is going on.”
Again, he heard Sylvia telling him to lower his voice.
“My daughter—Deborah—had a habit of picking losers.”
“What do you mean by losers?” Annie asked, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch.
“Drug addicts. Hippie types. Boys who couldn’t hold down jobs. Van was one more in a long line of them. His father committed suicide when he was a kid—a six-year-old kid. Said he heard the gunshot and found him. That tragedy was Van’s calling card.”
“I know about the suicide. He told me when we ran into each other. But he didn’t tell me that he found his father. That is tragic. God, that’s unthinkable,” Annie said, taking hold of her ponytail and pulling on it. “You can see that, can’t you?”
“Ran into him again?” he said, ignoring her question. He refused to get sucked into the quicksand of Van’s victimhood. He was living with his own god-awful tragedies.
“I told you about this. I was coming to see you. He was waiting for a client. At the end of your street.”
“And do you really believe he was waiting for a client?”
“I know he was. I saw the client. A man. They walked off together.”
“You don’t think it’s an odd coincidence that he ran into you near my street?”
She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising. “I honestly don’t know.”
“How did you meet him the first time?” Edward asked.
“At Luigi’s. It’s where all the American expats go for Italian food. Will and I go there a lot. We met Stephen the day we met you.” She bent her head away from him, thinking.
“Another coincidence?” Edward said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I think he was already at the restaurant when we arrived, but I can’t say for sure. The restaurant isn’t far from here. A business associate of Will’s—someone from GE was having lunch with Stephen . . . Van, but now I don’t know for certain. Maybe they were just having coffee. I don’t know. The GE man introduced us. He said Stephen was working as a translator. Stephen gave us his card—that one,” she said, pointing to the card in Edward’s hand. “He offered to help. He was friendly. Nice, like you said. He called Will and showed up at the police station after Will’s wallet was stolen.”
Edward shook his head at the irony of it. “And how did he know what police station to meet you at?”
“Will probably told him when Stephen called to see if he could help. Will told him not to bother.”
“I’d say it was another funny coincidence. Maybe he was following you. Did you consider that?” Edward asked.
“No. Of course I didn’t. Why would he do that?”
She looked at the curtained windows.
“Maybe I should leave.”
“Don’t you see? That’s how he operates. He helps. He slides in there like he did with Deborah. Am I right? Don’t you see?” Edward stabbed the air with his finger. “Always an excuse. Bad childhoods. Victims. Tragedies. Who hasn’t experienced something unforgivable? We’re all victims of life.”
“Maybe he came here to rectify his father’s death,” Annie said. “I’m not making an excuse for him. I’m just trying to understand.”
“You think so? And what about my daughter’s death? Who rectifies that? Why did you come here, Annie? I’ll tell you why. You don’t believe me.” Edward readjusted his hip. His back ached. He didn’t have the energy to explain himself to her. He was done with explaining. He had Van’s phone number. “Whether you believe me is inconsequential, you understand? I know what I know.” He drew in a long breath, surprised by how much effort it took.
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you,” Annie said, raising her voice. She straightened her back in defense. “I’m confused. You’re telling me I’m in danger. You said he murdered your daughter. Now you’re suggesting he’s following me. I deserve to know the full story. You know I do.”
He heard Sylvia telling him to calm down. Don’t raise your voice, Edward. You scare people.
Edward remembered the day he met Van at Deborah’s apartment in Boston.
“You want the full story? My daughter lived in a basement in Boston. A six-hundred-and-thirty-three-square-foot condo. Deborah called it a garden apartment. I gave her the down payment. If I hadn’t . . .” He clenched his jaw. “If I hadn’t helped her purchase that place, she would have come home. Van never would have followed her.”
“You wanted to help her,” Annie said.
Edward waved his hands. “Our house had too many stairs. Her MS had gotten worse. She was living in a wheelchair. She insisted on being independent.”
“She sounds like you,” Annie said. “What was Van doing?”
“Popping her pills, using her. What’s he doing now?”
“He’s a translator.”
“So he says. Did he tell you he was living off her money? Did he tell you that?”
She leaned back, then leaned toward him again.
“No. He didn’t.”
“That’s right. As soon as Deborah moved into her condo, he moved in with her. Next thing, they’re married. A year later, she’s dead. Know what her death certificate says? ‘Asphyxia, multiple sclerosis.’ It doesn’t say opioid overdose. You understand? Insurance doesn’t pay for overdoses. He did his research. He was careful to do it right.”
Edward felt light-headed, the knot of rage pressing against his ribs. A truck honked long and loud outside. But when he looked at Annie’s worried and confused face, he questioned whether she had the capacity to believe Van could murder someone.
He pushed himself to keep talking. “Translator? What’s he translating?”
“He goes to business meetings. That’s why he was at the breakfast yesterday.”
Edward swallowed. “Did you see his eyes, Annie? My wife didn’t want to believe me either. Can you blame her? Who wants to believe their daughter’s been murdered by their son-in-law?” He sat up. “My daughter Nan—she’s on the fence. She won’t say either way. My friends in Florida tell me I’m grieving. Give it time, they say. What time?”
His eyes burned with tears.
“I want to understand,” Annie said, moving closer to him on the couch.
“Look, Deborah was in a wheelchair for thirteen years. Her symptoms started at twenty-nine. Dizzy spells. Sudden falls. At first, I thought she was on drugs.”
“Did she have a problem with that?”
“No. She wasn’t on drugs. It was the early signs of her MS. Strangers on the street thought she was drunk—like your co-worker. Same issue. Before her diagnosis, one doctor told her to go out, have fun. Told her she was pretty and smart. ‘Enjoy life,’ he told her. She was insulted. She went out plenty. She loved life. That’s how she met Van. She was volunteering at some drug rehab center, helping losers.”
“Drug addiction doesn’t mean you’re a loser. It’s a disease,” Annie said. “I know about that, Edward.”
“Look, Van’s a loser, and so am I. I gave her money when she got sick. If I hadn’t given her money every month, paid for her condo—”
“You can’t keep second-guessing yourself like that.”
“Sure I can. Aren’t you second-guessing why you came to Hungary?”
Annie looked away, then met his gaze. “Yes. I am.”
“All right, then. We agree on something. I like you when you’re not lying to yourself.”
She grimaced, pulling her knee to her chest.
“The truth is, Deborah framed everything in her perky, blind way. When she had to get a cane, she used to say to me, ‘Dad, the cane distinguishes me. People get out of the way. They let me cut in line.’ Always looking for positives, my Deborah. A bit like you.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Edward, we can stop,” Annie said, her voice softening.
“Oh, no. We’re going to finish this.” He wiped the dry corners of his mouth. “All those years helping drug addicts, believing in losers. Where’d it come from? Maybe her mother. Why did you work with homeless men? What’s the thrill in that?”
“I feel good helping people. I told you that.”
“Why? What is it?”
He waited for her to answer. He could never understand what it was with Deborah. Why she put herself in jeopardy with life suckers. That’s what they were.
“To offer hope, and I guess, honestly, I feel empowered by that. Like I matter. Like I’m not standing on the sidelines. I couldn’t help my sister and brother, so I try to help others.”
“My daughter spent the best years of her life thinking about others.”
“She sounds like an amazing, caring person,” Annie said.
Edward pushed himself up. “I’ve got to get some water.”
“Let me get it,” Annie said.
While she filled two glasses from the tap, he allowed himself to feel some satisfaction that she would leave here armed with the full story. Whatever she chose to believe about Van—that he was nice and suffering and all that bullshit—something else deep inside her would harbor doubts. He had what he needed to get to the bottom of Van’s lies. He squeezed Van’s business card against the palm of his hand and felt the thick paper softening from his sweat.
“Here you go,” Annie said, handing him his glass. “I’m glad you got an air conditioner.”
He drank the tepid water, spilling some on his pants.
“What medication was she taking?” Annie asked.
“Vicodin. It’s a painkiller. You know it?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s no different from heroin, only more expensive. You have to keep upping the dose. Once she was in the wheelchair, I sent her money, direct deposit to her account. She told me not to, but I insisted. Sylvia—my wife—insisted, too. We were stupid. I should have made her come home. We could have built her a ramp. Bought one of those electric contraptions for stairways. I sold medical equipment, for chrissake. It would have cost us nothing!”
“She wanted her independence and you helped her with that,” Annie said.
“No. I ruined her. She lived in that basement with a pill addict and a drinker—he liked his alcohol, too. Worse, he was a vampire living off her. What’s a thirty-eight-year-old drug addict doing with a wheelchair-bound woman ten years his senior? She didn’t care about conventions. I supported them both. Then Deborah began losing the use of her hands. She needed help eating and drinking. She said Van was her prince. He did the grocery shopping. Cooked. Fed her pills for her spasms and pain—had her money, a place to live, pills. Why not get married so he could get her life insurance, too?”
Annie shook her head. “I know you’re going to get mad, but I have to ask you: Is it possible it was an accident? You truly think he planned it?”
Edward heaved a breath as he thought about Van—now calling himself Stephen – walking into his Deborah’s life the moment she was most vulnerable. “Yes. He saw an opportunity. What’s there to understand? Why is this so difficult for people to comprehend? What else did he want except her money? Free rent. Pills. Life insurance. How many times do I have to say it? What could he possibly offer her—love? That’s what Deborah said: ‘love.’ ” The thought made Edward’s stomach twist. “And what the hell is he doing with you, Annie?”
“Nothing. What do you mean?” She looked away, at the floor.
“Don’t you think he knows you know me?”
“How would he know that?”
“Watching. I’ll bet my life he’s had his eye on this place.”
“Why?”
“Because he knows I’m onto him.”
“But we met him by accident at the restaurant. The expat world is tiny. It’s easy to run into other Americans.”
“That’s right, and he’s not stupid. He knows I’m here and that I’m not fooling around. He doesn’t want you to believe what I’m telling you. He wants to get the word out that he’s an upstanding, good man. He wants to get you on his side. It’s not more complicated than that. I need a drink.”
She started to get up again, but he stopped her.
“No. I’ll get it. I have to move.” He pushed himself from the couch and shuffled into the kitchen. It was coming together in his mind. A kid’s puzzle. Ever since Van met Annie, he had been watching her. Saw Annie come over. Gets entangled in Will’s business. Van invites them over to his place. Plays innocent.
At the kitchen sink, he placed a new glass under the tap and remembered how Deborah looked at him with her large blue eyes—her mother’s eyes. Deborah had a flat forehead and small plump red lips, as if all the juice remaining in her life had flowed into her voice and mouth—and eyes. “Let me be me, Dad,” she’d said to him. “Why do people assume that what they want for me is what I want for me?”
Deborah said Van was coming off years of drugs. “Got a bad start in life, Dad,” she said. “His father came over from Hungary after the ’56 uprising. Van heard the gunshot and found him in the room, Dad. A little kid. Six years old. Can you imagine?”
Really? Imagine it? Oh, yes he could. He’d fought in the war. Walked through the gates of Dachau hell. Deborah’s naïveté drove him insane. Annie’s, too. What about the Jews? Thousands of them were children with bad starts.
Everyone has to follow their own path in life, Dad. You know that.
Damn right. Leaning against the sink, Edward drank from his glass and refilled it once more. Look, Dad. You’ll just have to trust me on this one. I know it’s hard to understand right now, but he loves me. Who didn’t? Deborah befriended everyone she met. She ran a circus of ne’er-do-wells beginning with the stray cat she brought home when she was three. Christ. She cried for a week when it died.
“This caring business,” Edward shouted to Annie, turning toward her. “He cared so much, how come he killed her? How come he managed to give her too many pills? What’s complicated about giving someone the right dose? He worked it out just right. You don’t have to believe me, Annie, just get me the goddamn address!”
The familiar dizziness overtook him. He grabbed the edge of the countertop.
“Edward, is it your sugar?” Annie said, coming up beside him.
“It will pass.”
He let her steer him back to the couch. She was small yet stronger than he expected when she grabbed his armpits and helped lower him to the couch. This time he lay back against the cushion, one leg stretched across the couch.
“The truth, Annie?” He looked up at her standing beside him. “He’s a killer. Plain and simple. You like him? Don’t be a fool like my daughter—like me. I should have stopped him. Van’s a charmer. He crushed a few extra pills into my daughter’s milkshakes over the course of several days until she couldn’t wake up. It was too much for her system. Her MS was affecting her ability to swallow, so he crushed up the pills. A few too many is what he did.”
“I’m trying to fathom it . . .”
“That’s right.”
He closed his eyes. He was exhausted. Once again, he saw Deborah wheeling down the long bowling alley of a hall to her garden. A large oak tree shaded a flagstone patio. He remembered the hanging plants—pink impatiens, sweet potato, and vinca vines cascading down a wooden fence.
“What’s going to happen when things get rough?” he had asked Deborah.
A tall, thin man with shoulder-length hair stepped out onto the patio. He wore sandals and bent over to kiss his daughter on her lips.
“Van, this is my dad.”
“Coming from work?” Edward said, knowing the instant he saw him that Van didn’t have a job, was a drug user. A bloodsucker. A slouch with red-rimmed, glazed eyes in the middle of the day.
“Dad. Don’t start with the first degree.”
“Why don’t I let you two spend some time together,” Van said, turning to the door. “I can run a few errands and come back.”
“Don’t be silly, honey. I told you what he was like.” Deborah wheeled closer to the door, blocking Edward. “You alienate everyone you meet, Dad. Why do you assume that what you want for me is what I want for me? Why? Why do you do this? Why?”
“Why?”Edward said, opening his eyes. Annie was standing over him, her hand on his shoulder.
“You dozed off for a minute.”
“What time is it?”
Old age and infancy. Not much difference between them. He looked at his watch. Two o’clock.
“I’m going to leave now,” Annie said.
He sat up. “What time is the party?”
“Seven to nine. We’re getting picked up at six forty-five.”
“Call me when you get his address, will you do that?” He squeezed the business card curled inside his fist. The address was one of the remaining pieces of the puzzle, the one he needed and was about to get.
“Yes. I told you I would.” She moved to the door. “You should register with the embassy. They can protect you.”
He tried to soften his voice. “Thank you. Are you going home now? Where’s Will? Where’s your son?”
“He’ll be home in a few hours. Leo’s home wth the babysitter.”
“Good. Be careful, Annie.”
“I will.” She glanced at the windows. “I can always call the police,” she said, letting out an exasperated sigh. She walked over to the door.
Six feet away from him, he saw her youth, the years still ahead of her like a point in the horizon in one of his paintings. It made him ache for his daughter, for his wife.
“Thank you, Annie.”
“Sure. See you, Edward.”
As soon as she left, he got up to chain the door, then went over to the window and waited until he saw Annie reappear in the distance, jogging down the tree-lined sidewalk.
She was the only person in sight, though he knew that Van might be out there, hiding.
Watching her.
Watching him.