Act of God (19 page)

My greeter appeared from what I took to be the kitchen with a portly man in a double-breasted gray suit and silk tie. This one had black and gray hair worn thick and full, with a matching beard that was either just coming in or had been freshly trimmed. The portly man dismissed the other with a pat on the arm and came toward me.

“I can help you?”

Up close, his irises were almost black, with dark smudges under the eyes and on the hooded lids above them. “Are you Grgo?”

“It is my pleasure owning this establishment. And you?”

“John Cuddy.” I showed him my identification. “I’m here to ask about a couple of your customers.”

“Which of these?”

“Abraham Rivkind and Darbra Proft.”

He pursed his lips. “This will need some time, yes?”

“Probably.”

“Come.”

I followed him to a square table for four in a corner, him pulling back a chair for me, then pushing it in under me and taking the one to my right. Unlike the other tables, this one had no silverware, just the tulip vase and candle and a large brass ashtray like an emperor’s crown with a pair of dry-docks for cigars and more for cigarettes.

From a jacket pocket, Grgo took out two cigars. “You will join me?”

“No, thanks.”

He didn’t ask if I minded his smoking. “This city say I must have my table in ‘Smoking Section.’ If I not sit here, they charge me and I must pay fine.”

My greeter came over and hit his boss’s cigar, puffs of bluish smoke drifting upward. When we were alone again, Grgo said, “So, you come from Mrs. Rivkind.”

“Yes.”

“What you want from me?”

“How about your last name?”

“Easy. Radja.”

“Like the basketball player?”

“The one the Celtics love to get play for them, but I don’t think so. He make too much money for Italian team. We very distant cousins, I think.”

You get a person talking, it’s good to keep them talking. “Croatian?”

“Yes, so. From Zagreb, me. You know the country?”

“Never been.”

“You should not go now. It is disaster.”

“You’ve been back since the war began?”

A vigorous puff. “Yes, so. When we hear the Serbs attack us, three of my Hrvat friends—‘Hrvat’ is what one Croat call another—three my friends from here and me go on plane there to fight.”

“To fight?”

“Of course to fight. The Chetniks—this is our word for Serb fighters—the Chetniks attack city of Vukovar across the Danube. We fight so long as we can. One my friend from there, we go school together in Zagreb before I come over here, he is on ambush with me, but I don’t know this before he look at me, he say, ‘Hey, I know you somewheres.’ And Mate and me realize we friends from thirty years before. And so we want to talk, about relatives, friends, but we cannot. The Chetniks come with their trucks and hardened cars—no, cars like tanks?”

“Armored cars?”

“Yes, so. They come up the road, and we kill them. We kill first the front car with shoulder rocket, big boom, then the last car, boom-boom, then the Chetniks jumping out from all trucks. We kill very many, but my friend Mate, he killed, too. Thirty years, and he killed after we see each other again five minutes.”

Radja shook his head and sculpted his cigar ash on the tray. “The Serbs, they are stupid, they celebrate their big holiday, you know what it is?”

“No.”

“It is day in year 1389 they lose the big battle to Turks at Kosovo. They lose, they live under Turks five hundred years, and they celebrate. They animals, too, I tell you. Vukovar fall, they come to hospital there, they take three, four hundred people out from hospital. These some Hrvatska—Croatia—soldiers, many civilians, all wounded and no guns no more. The Serbs take them to pig farm, then kill them, bury them in cornfield with bulldozer.” He looked up at me, the hooded eyes moist. “Bulldozer for grave. The Serbs for their own, they build grave houses.”

“Grave houses?”

“Yes, so. Little houses like big house you live in, only small, over grave. They put in there things for dead person to use, like radio, refridge, these things. Then they go out, have celebration like picnic at house on the Days for the Dead, but their church—the Orthodox—their church don’t like it.”

“How long were you in Croatia?”

“Two, three months. There was no more bullets for guns, no shoulder rockets, no shells for—what is word, ‘artillery’?”

“Yes.”

“No more for that, neither. Croatia get more bullets, I go back.”

“You think the war will last that long?”

A grunt. “The war, it last centuries now already. The Serbs and the Croats and the Muslims. I kill your brother, you kill my family. You kill my family, I kill your village. The United Nations think it can stop this? How can you stop war when neighbors kill you, when neighbors you have in your house, Serb friends like I got from school, Peda or Borislav, come kill you? I tell you, in Sarajevo, the Chetnik snipers with the telescope rifles on the hills, they shoot at their own house.”

“Their own houses?”

“Their apartment house. You see, that way the sniper know which window Serb, which Croat, which Muslim, so he shoot at the right windows. And the hate, the hate it is passed down to the children like the good silver and the jewels. What the Serbs do to Vukovar, the city is gone. Sarajevo, soon. The worst, though, this is the
ciscenje.
”

“What’s that?”

“The ‘cleansing.’ The newspapers, the television, they call it the ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Rape, burn, bomb. I tell you, the Serbs, they rape girls, Croatia girl, Muslim girl, twelve, thirteen years, don’t matter to them. They rape like Ford make cars, the ‘assembly line’ thing. They rape them in front of parents, then kill them. Dead girls can have no children, so no more Croat, no more Muslim after the cleansing. But the Serbs, they don’t care which ethnic, so long as she not Serb. Hungarian, Greek, Italian, don’t matter to them.”

The Croatian Nazi government slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Serbs during World War II, but it didn’t seem like the time to bring it up. “Mr. Radja—”

“Grgo, please. Nobody know Mr. Radja, everybody know Grgo. I tell you what you want, you ask.”

“You knew Mr. Rivkind well?”

“He was good customer, good man. I open up this restaurant, there not many in Leather District. Mr. Rivkind, he come here once. I recognize him from street, I wait on him myself, he come back. Then he come back all the time.”

“The police think he was killed by a burglar, a robber.”

“I think so. That night, I hear the alarm noise, even in here. I go out to see, the fire trucks and the police cars come everywhere.”

“Did you see anything else?”

“I don’t know what you mean?”

“Did you see anyone else that night, anything strange?”

“No. I am in this room until the alarm noise.”

I nodded. “Did Mr. Rivkind bring his wife here very often?”

Radja took the cigar out of his mouth, pursing his lips as he scraped off more ash. “Not so much. She live in Sharon, long drive for her to meet him or them to come on weekend.”

“How about people from the store?”

“Yes, so. Everyone from store. You work for Mr. Rivkind, I give you discount.”

“Did Mr. Rivkind bring people from the store to eat with him?”

“Yes, I just tell you.”

“Darbra Proft?”

The hooded eyes became sad again. “Her I don’t want in my restaurant anymore.”

“Why not?”

“There is … argument. She throw things. Not good for business.”

“When was this?”

A shrug and a small puff. “Month? I don’t know.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

Radja looked away from me, toward the center of the room. “She come in, with man I don’t see before. Seem nice, but old for her. She come in, make big thing that she know me, that I know her. They sit. Then I am in kitchen, waiter come for me, he say come quick. I see her stand up, throw wine at the man. She is very loud, very …” He flapped his hands wildly around him in a limp-wristed way. “She act like end of world. Then she leave, poor man red from wine and red from shame, too. I try to help him, but he want to leave. Who can blame this? No, I tell you, I don’t want to see her again.”

“Did she come here often?”

A big puff. Around it, “Like others.”

“Like the others from the store?”

“Yes, I tell you already.”

“Did she eat here with Mr. Rivkind a lot?”

A bigger puff. “Everybody from store eat here with Mr. Rivkind. This is the way he is. He take people out to lunch and dinner at Grgo’s.”

“Did it seem that they had more than a business relationship?”

“I don’t talk on my customers that way.”

“Loyalty?”

“Loyal, yes. When I come here from Zagreb, I don’t have the two cents. I work hard, I start this restaurant, I starve if Mr. Rivkind don’t find me, come back all the time with his people. I go to his funeral, I cry like the babies. Loyal? I learn in Croatia, when you loyal for communist party, for Soviet ‘guests,’ for anything big like that, it don’t get you nothing. It take advantage of you. When you loyal for country, like my Hrvatska, you feel good, even if it don’t help you. But when you loyal for person, for person help you, they remember you. Mr. Rivkind remember me, I loyal for him.”

One last try. “Grgo, if nobody will talk to me about Mr. Rivkind, how can I help his wife?”

“I don’t know this. I just know I don’t talk on these things.”

“Did Mr. Rivkind ever talk with you about his business?”

“Yes, so. All the time.”

“What did he say?”

“He tell me things are hard. He has to tell me? What is this first thing people stop when they lose job? They stop eating in restaurants close to job. Shame to see other workers still there, shame, too, for those workers still have jobs. You not have job, you still need the hair cut, and things to drink and eat, but not at restaurant like Grgo’s.”

“Many people from Value Furniture lose their jobs?”

Smoke wended out his nostrils in two wispy strands. “Enough.”

“Any of them angry at Mr. Rivkind?”

“I don’t think so. Nobody can be angry at him. He was good man, good to all.”

“Somebody didn’t think so.”

“Then it is somebody don’t know him. At his funeral, I think of all the things I learn Catholic in Croatia, good things to say about dead person. But it is Jewish funeral, so I don’t think it is right to say them. In Zagreb, a friend of mine from school, he was Greek, and I go to his father’s funeral when he die. I am nine, ten years, but I remember my friend tell me what the people say. When it is time to put coffin into ground, they say, ‘The earth that fed you now will eat you.’ ”

Christ. “Did you say that?”

“No. But I think this.” Grgo Radja stubbed out the cigar. “Funny thing to think for man who own restaurant, I tell you.”

L
IKE RADIOLOGY, THE DEPARTMENT
I wanted was below the lobby. One wing of the basement had painters doing touch-up work, the sign MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING/AMBULATORY PATIENTS temporarily propped against a pillar.

Inside the doorway was a waiting area with a receptionist sitting behind a desk. Putting down the Lawrence Block paperback I’d been carrying since the last visit, I gave my plastic hospital card to her, and she used a machine to stamp it through several self-carboned forms. With a pencil she handed me, I filled out a “yes/no” information sheet that seemed interested mainly in whether I had any shrapnel or other metal parts in my body.

An attendant who introduced herself as Maureen came through a set of doors and led me into a locker room with a wooden bench flanked by classy new lockers and dented old ones. Looking at the new ones, Maureen said, “These are from Italy. Paid a fortune for them, but guess what?”

She had an accent like a friend of mine in the army who’d grown up near Milwaukee. “What?”

“The company over there shipped the things without keys.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Uh-unh. That’s why we have to use these old ones.” She pointed me toward the dented lockers, which looked like they’d been salvaged from a high school gym just before demolition.

Removing the key for Number 16, I said, “Are you from Wisconsin by any chance?”

“No, upstate New York, outside Buffalo.”

“Sorry, it’s just—”

“I know. We sound like Wisconsin, and we never lose our accent no matter where we move to.”

I got the feeling she thought I was nervous and was trying to make me feel better, so I just nodded.

“Okay, Mr. Cuddy, please take off all your clothes except briefs and socks. Put on one of these outfits back to front and step through that door when you’re done.”

“Thanks.”

I stripped and put on the johnny coat and, a new one on me, johnny pants. There were also plastic envelopes that folded inside out to form something like slippers for your feet. When I was finished, I picked up my book and key and went through the door.

Maureen was waiting on the other side. “Let me take those from you. You won’t be able to read, and the key doesn’t work so well inside the chamber.”

Chamber.

We went into a large room. There was very little in the way of furnishings beyond a big metal cylinder like an iron lung from the fifties and a fancy gurney table in front of it.

“Please sit on the end of the table.”

When I did, Maureen used a strip of cloth maybe six feet long to bind my shoulders back. I suddenly had a vision from Saigon during the Tet Offensive, suspected Vietcong, on their knees in the street, their arms bound behind them at the elbow, causing them to arch forward, like—

“Am I hurting you?” said Maureen.

“No.”

“You just grimaced, and I was afraid—”

“No, thanks. I’m okay.”

“Good. Now, please scoot back so you’re able to lie flat on the table facing the ceiling. A little more … good. Now just lie still, please.”

I did. Maureen padded my left elbow and taped a circular ring like a juggler might use on my left shoulder, as though my shoulder were my head and the ring a straw hat. Then a triangular foam support was wedged under my calves and restraints strapped across my waist.

She said, “I’m going to slide you in now.”