That always made Caroline laugh. “Your bosses are ready to send you to the ends of the earth for a few bucks out of some deadbeat’s pocket! Now that would make a good story!”
The last thing Max needed was publicity. Caroline burst out laughing when he pulled a confused face. A loud, confident laugh that made you want to follow her anywhere. Kevin tried to make her happy, to do everything for her, and sometimes fell just short. As did she. But they always ended up back together after a fight or an argument, falling on their feet like champion gymnasts. Sometimes, right in the middle of a conversation, Max would notice a shared smile, a look between them. He’d glance away then, feeling as if he was intruding, not wanting to insert himself too deeply in their intimacy, especially because he wasn’t revealing his true identity to his friends. Max made sure to keep them as far away as possible from his own scheming. To always play the role of protective older brother. It was a lie, another one, but it comforted him; it was the most beautiful lie in the world.
And so Max tried to help them out, giving secret gifts they knew nothing about. Like that training seminar in Colorado with a motivational speaker of some kind.
“He’s just amazing! You should read his book, Robert.” That was Kevin telling Max he couldn’t go to the seminar because he was flat broke. So Max made a cheque out to the motivational speaker without telling Kevin.
Another time Caroline’s computer suddenly died on her. Max knew they were tight on cash, so he came up with a prize she’d never heard of for her to win. One morning a representative from a technology company knocked on her door with a brand-new machine.
And then there were the jobs. Once the holiday season had come to a close, Kevin worked part-time as a personal trainer at the Manhattan Sheraton’s gym. Max found him better employment with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Kevin was none the wiser.
Max didn’t get anything in return for his generosity. Kevin and Caroline weren’t marks he was fattening for the kill. He had no intention of fleecing them at some point after winning their trust. No, that wasn’t it at all. He was investing not in some grift, but in their happiness. He was always looking for ways to make them happy, to make their lives richer, fuller, to protect them from anything that might come their way. An impossible task, Max would come to realize. Fat and happy but in a cage is no happiness at all.
3
“Did you know Nicolae Ceauşescu loved Christmas trees? Each one of his forty villas was decorated with them. Isn’t it ironic? There wasn’t a single other Christmas tree in the country.”
Max O’Brien whipped around, furious at being caught daydreaming. He hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t the man before him. Tiny, bent over, Toma Boerescu looked eighty years old on a good day. He was precariously balanced upright by a walker even older than he was. Could barely breathe, it seemed. And his breath stank of palinca, a moonshine expertly distilled in the slop buckets of Transylvanian farmers. On the lapel of what had to be at least a thirty-year-old pea jacket, he had a star — probably some sort of military decoration.
Before Max could answer, Boerescu added in approximate English, “Ceauşescu prohibited any Romanian from cutting down fir trees for Christmas. Environmental protection was the reason. Oh, how the Conducător was ahead of his time!” A twinkle in his eye, the man burst out laughing. “Robert Cheskin?”
Max shook his hand.
“Toma Boerescu. But you can call me Tom. I know you Americans love abbreviations. Tom Boerescu. Now that’s not too bad a name, right? Sounds like a hockey player!”
The old man pointed down Brătianu Boulevard. “Let us walk, if you don’t mind.”
Boerescu continued to chatter idly about Nicolae Ceauşescu and his immoderate love of Christmas trees, which he had imported straight from Moldavia every November. “The army delivered the trees a few weeks before Christmas.”
Ceauşescu didn’t have many occasions to admire them, unfortunately. It was impossible for him to be simultaneously in every one of his forty villas. He could only visit them one after the other, according to a schedule kept entirely secret, established by his wife, Elena. For security reasons, of course. Despite his extensive powers, Ceauşescu wasn’t gifted with ubiquity.
“One day he thought someone was trying to poison him. According to him, the branches of his trees were covered with some sort of substance that gave off a lethal gas of some kind.”
Boerescu burst out laughing. “Because, you see, the trees came from the north! The Romanian gulags were there, where he’d sent many of his political enemies.” He hesitated. “Not without reason, if you ask me.”
He pointed to the small red star on his lapel, a decoration given to him by Ceauşescu, most likely. “Romanians realized too late they punished an exceptional man.”
An old Communist! Just his luck.
A few tourists passed them on the sidewalk, hurrying toward their tour buses. Farther off, mothers with their strollers made their way between skateboard-riding teenagers and tiny dogs.
Boerescu hesitatingly gestured toward a bench a couple of lovers had just vacated. He dropped onto it heavily, inviting Max to join him. Pulling out a handkerchief from his pocket, the old man told Max in a muted voice how for more than thirty years he’d been a loyal servant of the Romanian police. Oh, those were the good old days! Thanks to their hard work, there was barely any crime. And when they did catch someone, you could be sure the culprit wouldn’t commit the same crime twice. No, criminals were repentant: Romania’s prisons had a way of knocking sense into even the hardest heads. These days, well, things had changed. In any case, Boerescu still knew a few people at the General Directorate for Criminal Investigations.
Max imagined the mocking smiles behind the back of this old shipwreck of a man as he struggled his way into the directorate straight from another time, coming for his annual inspection of his old stomping ground from all the way behind the Iron Curtain.
“You’d be surprised at what you can learn around a coffee machine,” Boerescu offered, eyes twinkling.
“About Kevin Dandurand, for example?” Max suggested.
“Came in from Montreal by way of Zurich a week ago. He claimed to a customs agent he’d be staying at the Helvetia. Never checked in.”
“His movements around town?”
“No idea. No one saw him, no one spoke to him. They couldn’t even find the cab driver who brought him into the city.”
“So someone might have picked him up.”
“Maybe.”
“Who’s in charge of the case?”
“Inspector Adrian Pavlenco.”
Boerescu explained that Pavlenco was conscientious and professional, an ambitious young guy impressed by American methods. He’d been confined to investigating criminal fires for the longest time, and hated it. He spent his days in rubber boots trudging through wrecked homes and smelling smoke. He did have a cordial relationship with the media, though, despite the lingering stench on him.
Boerescu made a face. Back in his day, the media had been nothing more than the mouthpiece of the Romanian police. Puppets, really, used to make the work of inspectors easier. Things had changed, unfortunately. The press gave itself licence to criticize. Asked questions. Demanded answers. Cloaked itself in irreproachable morals. Freedom of the press? Bullshit! The press had all the freedom, more like! Freedom to cause mayhem, which only helped the bad guys!
The old man blew his nose loudly. Then, with a tired gesture, he pulled a folded newspaper out of his jacket pocket, and showed it to Max. “Twenty-three Roma burned alive in a building on Zăbrăuţi Street. For once a story about Gypsies makes the front page.… Usually they’re somewhere in the middle, between soccer scores