13 Once again Betty had slept well in her old bed. When she got up her mother was already sipping her coffee and munching on a roll. She put on a pair of denim shorts and a short-sleeved blouse and, with flipflops on her feet joined her mother for breakfast, but Mireille was already finishing. “ Bonjour, chérie, et au revoir” was all she had time to say. She could still hear the sound of Mireille’s car driving off toward her office when she sat down at her mother’s computer. It was slow to turn on – the computer was four years old, and still ran Windows 95 – and, once it was on, Betty began to search for the CD slot, realizing after a minute or so that the computer had none, only a slot for 3-inch diskettes. Why hadn’t her mother told her that when Betty told her, the night before, that she wanted to use her computer? Of course: they had spoken in French and Betty had just said disque, which could just as well stand for disque souple as disque compact. She changed into jeans and sneakers, put on a bra under her blouse, got her handbag and walked out of the house. She would take the metro back to the apartment and, once there, call for a taxi with a request that the driver help her carry her computer, monitor and printer down the stairs into the cab, and then into the house. The air was cool, considerably cooler than it had been the previous week. She had noticed the cooling the day before, but hadn’t paid much attention to it, but this time she felt a shiver. She went back to the house to borrow one of her mother’s cardigans, just as she had done when she was a teenager. Mireille liked them loose-fitting, and they felt nice and tight on Betty. She liked the feeling around her torso. And along with it came another feeling that began in her breast and spread throughout her body. She wasn’t sure if she liked it but could not deny that it was there. This is it, she thought. Maman told me that when I was ready I would know it, and I know it. Because of a CD drive? Why not? Not only does love work in strange ways, but so does désamour. Why isn’t there an English word for that? How about unlove? She thought that had heard the word in songs, as a verb, but if love could be both a verb and a noun, why not unlove? She decided while mounting the steps of the Côte-Vertu station that, when she got back to her mother’s house, she would look it up in the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged) that sat so prominently on the far right corner of Mireille’s desk, facing Le Petit Larousse and Le Petit Robert that stood upright, between bookends, on the far left. She had her own Larousse at the apartment, but she would leave it there for now. Not so her Oxford Canadian Dictionary, Paul’s birthday present to her the previous year, which she found indispensable. She would take it back with her. She already visualized herself at her old desk, in her old room, in front of her own computer, when she boarded the train. ”I talked to that girl Yasmina at Citibank,” Tom said as Claudia was driving them towards the address that they had been given for Haris Karimaj. Girl? Claudia thought. She’s close to thirty! “She knew Daniel Wilner,” Tom went on, “and he had been at the bank just a couple of days before that night at Old Nick’s.” “She knew him?” Claudia asked with a smile. “Yes. I noticed her blushing when she talked about him, so I asked her if they’d been in a relationship. You remember what the super said about him. ‘Not what I would call a relationship,’ she said, ‘but, uh...’ So I asked if anything happened between them on that last day, and she said no, he’d told her that he’d just met a girl and had had an exhausting weekend. But the previous time that he’d been there, in May, she admitted that something had happened.” “How about you and her? I noticed something there.” Tom laughed. “Good eye, Detective. Nothing happened last night, we just sipped some wine and had some Middle Eastern snacks, and talked about Daniel Wilner.” “So he hadn’t been there between May and October? No wonder they didn’t suspect anything when he didn’t show up again.” “That’s what Yasmina said.” They arrived at Karimaj’s block. Claudia found a parking space about four buildings away and they walked up to the house. Tom rang the bell. “Yes?” a female voice said through the intercom. “New York Police,” Tom said. “We would like to talk to Haris Karimaj, if possible.” “Sorry,” the woman, obviously from the South of England, said. “I’m afraid it isn’t.” “What do you mean?” Tom asked “He’s not here. He went back to Kosovo to visit his family, now it’s been liberated.” Family? Claudia wondered. Did that mean wife and kids, or parents and brothers and sisters? “When do you expect him back?” Tom asked. “I wish I knew. Soon, I hope. I’m his girlfriend.” “May we know how long you’ve known him?” Claudia asked. “About six months,” the girlfriend said. “Does it matter?” “It would have mattered if it had been longer, but no, it doesn’t. Sorry to have bothered you, Miss...” “Sheila. No bother. Shall I let you know when he comes back? He’s not in trouble, is he?” “No, we just need some information about something that happened last October.” “That’s before my time, innit? Shall I tell him you called when he comes back?” “Yes,” Tom said, “please tell him Detective Radnovich came by. He knows how to get in touch with me.” “Bye, then,” Sheila said and switched off the intercom. “Back to square one, aren’t we?” Claudia said as they began walking back to her car. “Not really,” Tom said. “There’s still Emrush Thelu...” “You really like saying those Albanian names,” she said with a laugh, “don’t you?” She had meant to add ‘unlike Spanish names like mine,’ but thought better of it. It would only make her partner even more defensive. There was already some palpable tension between them over his refusal to talk to Omar Murova when they had the chance, the day before. But Tom beat her to the punch. “I like saying all kinds of exotic names, including Spanish ones,” he said with a laugh of his own, “if they’re really Spanish. I have my reputation as the linguist cop, you know.” They were back at her car. “ The Linguist Cop. That could be the title of a newspaper column. It’s something you could get into when you retire.” “If there are still newspapers when I retire,” Tom said, laughing again. This time Claudia joined him. “Maybe a book, then,” she said as she buckled her seatbelt. “So how do we find this Em Rush, or whatever his name is?” He gave her the directions. “What I was going to say...” “... before you were so rudely interrupted...” They were laughing again. “... was that Thelu is married with little kids and is much less likely to go scooting off to Kosovo on a moment’s notice. His wife is also Kosovar, so they would probably go as a family, and that would take a little planning. Karimaj can just say ta-ta to his English bird and hop on a standby flight to Rome... “The flight wouldn’t be standby, Mister linguist cop, the passenger would.” “Touché. Hop standby on a flight to Rome or Athens or wherever, and make his way to Kosovo by way of Albania or Macedonia. I don’t think the Thelu family could do it quite that way.” But it turned out that they had done it, somehow. Just like Haris Karimaj, they had left on Monday. Perhaps even together. Claudia felt like saying, Let’s go back and talk to Omar, but she was tired of the runaround. They drove back to the precinct. It’s time to look at other pending cases, she said to herself. After inserting the disc Betty double-clicked the icon for CD Drive (D:), and a window with four folder icons appeared, titled Articles, Fun, MW and Stuff. Double-clicking on Articles revealed subfolders: Drafts, Published_95, Published_96, Published_97, Published_98 and Ready. The subfolders in turn contained files, most of which were Word documents, which Betty knew well, but some had extensions that were not .doc and she didn’t know what to do with them. The names of all the Word documents had the form of a date with the format yy-mm-dd, but as she passed the cursor over them she noticed that in each case the “Date modified” was later than the nominal date. She concluded that Daniel had named his article files for the day on which he began to write them, and her conclusion was confirmed when she right-clicked on the icon and then left-clicked Properties: the date after “Created” did in fact coincide with the one that constituted the name. Each of the published articles that she opened bore a title at the head, and the date and medium of publication at the end. The drafts, on the other hand, had neither. It appeared, then, that Daniel did not title his articles until they were finished. Aside from some articles that had been published in magazines, some of which Betty was familiar with and some not, most of them had seen the light in local newspapers in Upstate New York, in such places as Albany, Utica and Plattsburgh. The Ready folder contained only one article, with a strange title: Heq qafe. It was probably a reference to coffee, Betty thought, in some exotic language, maybe Hebrew. But as she scanned the first paragraph she saw that it was about Albanians. This could be important, she said to herself, considering Daniel’s fate. She would print it out and read it later, she decided, and, since he had marked it as ready – presumably for publication – she would perhaps try to get it published. Marni Clark, a friend from McGill, worked at the Gazette and might tell her how to go about it. Its “Date modified” was 10/2/98. Was that February 10 or October 2? Undoubtedly the latter, since Daniel did all his work in the States, and his computer would certainly use the American convention. And October 2 was the day that he flew from New York to Montreal for his sister’s wedding, two days later! His last article, in all probability! She clicked on the “Back” button twice and found herself in the CD Drive window again. She opened the Fun folder, and found that here the names of the files were initialisms, mostly three-letter ones: AWL, BCS, MLR, QED. AWL was a few paragraphs, obviously incomplete, under the heading The American Way of Love. MLR was lyrics for the Maple Leaf Rag, which she recognized as having been sung at Daniel’s memorial by a group of his fellow players from the Canadian soccer team at Columbia. She opened the folder called MW with some trepidation, because she suspected that it might have to do with their father, Miki Wilner, perhaps even the planned book that Megan had mentioned. She was right. There were two subfolders: Articles and Life. The Articles folder had files named by dates, like Daniel’s own articles, but here the dates ranged from 58-09-27 to 73-09-27. Exactly fifteen years’ worth of articles! She opened the earliest and found that it was headed German, West German, Germanian, by Michael Wilner, translated by Daniel Wilner. The last one was The End of the Seventh Day, with the same attributions. My God, Betty said to herself as she looked at the date once again, this was just before he died, and just after I was conceived! She felt drained. But just before moving her right index finger to the power button to turn off the computer, a two-word phrase jumped into her mind: Millennium bug! She didn’t really know what it was, but she knew that it had something to do with years of the twentieth century being indicated with only two digits, without the leading 19. Paul thought that it might cause serious trouble. And Daniel’s dating and naming of files did just that! She turned off the computer with the resolution that, once she turned it on again, the first thing she would do would be to convert all the years from yy to 19yy. On their way back to the station, Tom Radnovich and Claudia Quintero agreed that, for future reference, they should try to find out more about Sheila, such as her last name and her immigration status. Claudia went to her desk immediately after they walked in, but Tom noticed that Brian Lin was motioning for him to come over to his desk. “I’ve been checking out Wilner’s pictures,” Brian said. “It’s quite a job, because he used low-capacity cards, only sixteen or thirty-two megs, so there’s quite a few of them. And any one card has different kinds of pictures on them. Some of them are what you could call photojournalism, some are personal, and some could be one or the other, but there’s quite a few shots of women in what looks like an intimate setting, nothing that I, as a cop, would consider pornographic, but, you know...” “Yes, I understand he was quite a ladies’ man,” Tom said. “It takes one to know one,” Brian said with a malicious grin, “doesn’t it?” Tom grinned back. “Well, he was a very good-looking guy,” Brian said, this time in the out-of-the-closet tone of a connoisseur of good-looking guys. “There’s something I’m curious about,” Tom said. “Can you open the card that’s from... May ninety-eight?” “Sure,” Brian said. “Here they are... fifty-four pictures.” Tom looked at the monitor, searching for pictures of Yasmina Sliwa, and found two of them. In one she was seated on a park bench, dressed in a low-cut black dress and smiling at the camera in a sexy manner. In the other she was in bed, with only her head and arms out from under the covers, her hair disheveled, her expression that of being surprised by the camera. So it was true that something had happened between them in May. Then he remembered something else that Yasmina had told him. “How about the most recent card?” he asked Brian. “That’s from September and October,” Brian said. After some clicks of the mouse he said, “There’s quite a few of a little boy and his mom...” “That’s his son Sam and Megan,” Tom said. And so they were. Megan looked plumper than she was now, and her breasts indicated that she was still nursing. “...and then there’s what looks like a wedding...” “That’s his sister Betty’s wedding.” Betty was radiant in a wedding dress that was surprisingly high-necked for the current fashion and sky-blue, not white. Paul, the groom, was handsome but stiff-looking in a beige tuxedo. “...and here’s another girlfriend. These seem to be the last personal pictures he took.” Tom turned toward the monitor again to look at the pictures. What he saw made his heart stop. Marni had told Betty that, given the topicality of Kosovo, the Gazette might well be interested in publishing a posthumous article, even if written nine months earlier, by a journalist who had been there and who was a native Montrealer. And so, after downloading Daniel’s folders into a new folder that she had created and named DW, she spent some twenty minutes putting 19 before all the yy-mm-dd dates, the article newly named Ready/1998-09-30 being the last to undergo the process. She then printed it out – it came to four pages – and began to read it. Kosovo was mentioned, of course, but so were Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Italy and New York. There were a couple of references of the form As I already wrote in these pages. Betty knew that those would have to be edited out, and in any case there was no indication of what paper the article had been destined for. It was, in fact, about Albanians in general: their clans and clannishness, their custom of the blood feud (gjakmarrje) codified in the Kanun, and the expression heq qafe – which can mean ‘dispose of,’ ‘dispense with,’ ‘expunge,’ ‘snub,’ ‘get rid of’ and the like – used to describe eliminating one’s enemy without the formalities of the code of laws known as the Kanun. The article went on to more details of the Kanun, explaining that it had supposedly been promulgated by a Kosovar prince named Lek Dugagjini, who had fought against the Turks in the 15th century. But in Betty’s mind the various meanings of heq qafe began to spin and tumble like the sides of a die, until they landed on ‘dispense with.’ Hadn’t Harvey quoted Paul as saying to “Dick” that his relationship with Daniel was one that he could dispense with? And hadn’t “Dick” confused relationship with relative? If “Dick” had mentally translated dispense with as heq qafe, then he could easily have misunderstood Paul as saying, “That’s a relative I want eliminated.” Betty shuddered. To think that here, in Daniel’s last completed article, lay a possible clue to his fate! She recalled her phone conversation with Paul, the preceding Thursday. She had sensed, she now remembered, that Paul had left something out, and of course it was what he had said about the relationship he could dispense with. Paul had told her that he had not seen Dick since the time of that exchange, and didn’t even know where Dick was. A scenario now formed in Betty’s mind: Interpreting Paul’s comment, no doubt meant as a joke, as a desire to have Daniel eliminated, Dick had decided to fulfill that desire as repayment for Paul’s legal work on his behalf. She needed to find out more about “Dick.” It was very likely that he had connections with Albanian gangs in New York; Daniel’s article mentioned how the various Albanian clans and clan-based gangs interconnect across the globe. Tom Radnovich seemed to know about these things. Betty knew that she needed to communicate her findings to Tom, or perhaps Claudia. Preferably Claudia. Well, she wondered, should she call back Harvey and take him up on his offer to find out more about Dick? Or should she call Paul directly? It gave her a start to realize that until this moment it had not occurred to her, in the eighteen or twenty hours since her confrontation with Paul, to talk to him. What effect would She felt, almost physically, a void in her heart, un vide au cœur, in the place where that love had lived for eight years. Except that it wasn’t painful, nor did it feel like a hunger or thirst that needed to be sated. Counting the time with Gérard, she had loved a man (or a boy) for nine years now. It was time to give that reflex a rest. She could now give free rein to her lustful fantasies, like the one about Cary Seligman, without guilt or remorse. Of course she probably wouldn’t see Cary again, but there was no shortage of available men in Montreal. So, she asked herself, when should she call Paul? At lunchtime? That would be a good time. There wouldn’t be enough time for a long conversation, which she didn’t want. She looked at her watch: 11:33. Another half-hour... Her cell phone rang. “Hi, Betsee,” Harvey said, “I’ve got Dick’s name for you. Its Rexhep Shkodra.” He spelled it out for her before telling her a few more details and hanging up. She looked for Claudia Quintero’s number in her call log and found it. Tom Radnovich got to Claudia Quintero’s desk just as she was clicking off her cell phone. “I’ve got some hot news for you,” he said. “And I’ve got some hot news for you.” They both laughed. “Ladies first,” Tom said. “Well, I just got a call from Betty Wilner in Montreal. She told me about an Albanian guy from Kosovo who was there last year, under asylum that her husband Paul had helped him get. And as far I can understand there was some sort of exchange between then that the Albanian misinterpreted as Paul wanting to get rid of Daniel. And then the guy disappeared. This was a few weeks before October fifteenth.” “That’s really interesting.” “But there’s more. Guess what the Albanian guy’s initials are.” “No!” “Yup. His name is Rexhep Shkodra.” “Wow! Well, let me tell you the news that I found. Remember what I told you earlier that Yasmina told me about Wilner, that he’d just met a girl and had a quote exhausting unquote weekend with her?” “Of course I remember. It was just a few hours ago.” “Well, that girl is... was Lejla Begović.” Claudia looked at him, dumbfounded. “This was at the time when she may already have been engaged, or something, to Omar Murova,” Tom explained. Claudia smiled. “Yes, I know,” he went on. Was he poking fun at her habit of referring to her boyfriends as fiancés? But that didn’t seem to be it. “We need to talk to Omar,” he said. So he was admitting that she had been right when they were at the tire shop. “But now,” he concluded, “we have an angle, which we didn’t have before.” “But now you also have your RS or SR. At the very least we can try to find out if someone named Rexhep Shkodra came into the US last October or late September.” “Yeah, of course. Rick has contacts in INS. It’ll be faster than going through channels. But I want us to talk to Omar.” “So what are we waiting for?” “Lunch,” Tom said. “And a phone call I have to make.” Megan had thought that Sam would ask about ’tie Betty after she left, but he seemed to have forgotten her. That, in a way, was an encouraging sign. It meant that he would be all the more likely to have forgotten Tom Radnovich, and whatever bad feelings he might have had about him, by the time Tom came to Toronto. She had not called Tom back yet to tell him that he was welcome, but would do so soon. And when, after lunch, her cell phone rang and the number displayed on the screen was Tom’s, she was not surprised. A bit anxious, perhaps: what if he was calling to cancel his July weekend proposal? She let the Spanish tune tinkle on a few times before pressing Talk. “Hi, Tom,” she said. “Hi, Megan.” He paused, seemingly waiting for her to say something, but at last he went on. “We’ve found something that may be of interest to you.” “You mean, Daniel’s hidden safe-deposit box?” “Yes.” “Betty told me about it.” “Well, there are some pictures that Daniel took of you and Sam, back in September...” “Yes, that was the last time he was in Toronto. He sent me prints of those.” She paused as a great big sob began to well up inside her. “They’re very precious to me.” “I can imagine,” Tom said with a sympathetic sigh, and fell silent again. Still nothing about the July weekend? Was he waiting for her? Should she just go ahead and tell him to come? Megan Kenner, the old Megan Kenner, even before she was May Green, never had any trouble telling guys that she wanted them, verbally or otherwise. When she saw Daniel in math class at North Am, she looked him straight in the eye and smiled when he looked back at her. That had been enough... Tom cleared his throat. “About that Fourth of July weekend...” “Yes?” she said, anxious again. Was he canceling? “Is that a ‘yes’ I just heard?” he asked with a chuckle. She laughed, relieved at last. “Is that what you wanted to hear?” she asked in return, using her sultry May Green voice. “What do you think?” “Are we just going to keep asking each other questions?” They laughed together. “Well, if you want it to be yes then it’s yes.” That was some runaround, she thought. “Good. I’m looking forward to it.” Pause. “I’m very attracted to you.” Wait till he sees me at my best, she said to herself before saying, once again as May Green, “Likewise, Detective Radnovich,” pronouncing her lover-to-be’s surname as three separate syllables: Rad. No. Vich. It seemed to Tom that Omar Murova, unlike his brother Safet, was not surprised to see the detectives returning to the shop only a few hours after the first visit, and that he was rather eager to talk to them. At first Safet had insisted on being present at his brother’s questioning, but Tom told him firmly to stay away, and Omar did not seem to mind. Perhaps he had resented not getting the attention that Safet had been getting. And his English turned out to be considerably better than Safet’s. “Is this about the Wilner case,” he asked, “or about Lejla?” “If you don’t mind,” Claudia said with seeming impatience, “we ask the questions.” “Okay,” Omar said. “Excuse me.” He smiled at Claudia, who half-smiled back at him. “Let’s take a walk,” Tom suggested, and they went the same way as he had done with Safet and Orsini on Friday. “First of all,” he went on, “there’s something we need to settle once and for all. Were you or were you not present at Old Nick’s on the fifteenth of October last year?” Omar hesitated. “Yes or no?” Tom asked again. “Yes,” Omar said, “I was there. I ran away because I didn’t want it to get back to the mosque that I had been in a bar, even though I didn’t drink. Well, I did drink, a Pepsi.” He smiled at Claudia again. “So you were present at the shooting?” Tom asked. “I was in the bathroom when it happened. I heard some shots and I ran outside. I didn’t wait for the others. I took the subway home.” Claudia took her turn, from an unexpected angle. “Does the name Rexhep Shkodra mean anything to you?” Omar began to blush. “Sure, everybody knows about Rexhep. He’s a big man in UÇK... I mean KLA.” “We know UÇK,” Tom said. Claudia’s cell phone rang. She looked at the screen, and her face showed an impatience to take the call. “Excuse me,” she said, and walked away about ten paces. Tom took over the questioning about Shkodra. “Was he in New York last October?” he asked. “Maybe,” Omar said, and, in response to Tom’s stare, added, “yes, I think so. He is a friend of Haris Karimaj. Maybe cousin. I am not sure.” “Did you ever meet him?” Tom asked. “No,” Omar said firmly. “Are you sure?” “Look, Detective Radnovich, I know that if I lie to police and later you find out I lie, I am in trouble. So if I tell you I never met Rexhep, please believe me.” “Okay,” Tom said. “Do you know anything about where Rexhep Shkodra might be now?” “Probably back in Kosova. Everybody is going back there now that it is liberated.” He paused. “From Serbs,” he added with a malicious smile. “From Serbs like me, huh?” Tom said in an attempt to treat Omar’s remark as a joke. “Not like you, Detective Radnovich. You are American. Honest police officer. Serbian police, milicija, they are crooked and brutal.” Tom happened to know that a few years earlier the name had been changed from milicija to policija, but it didn’t matter. “Specially to Albanians in Kosova.” “Are you thinking of going back to Koso...” He had begun to say Kosovo in the usual way, stressing the first syllable, but changed to the Albanian accent. “... to Kosova?” Omar seemed to appreciate the detective’s linguistic sensitivity. “No,” he said. “I would not go without my brother, and he is married to Silvana.” There was only the slightest hint of dislike in Omar’s enunciation of his sister-in-law’s name, and Tom probably wouldn’t have caught it if Imam Becker hadn’t talked about it. “Also, he is partner in this business.” This was something that Tom hadn’t known, and might be of some importance. He wondered if Orsini knew, and, if so, why he hadn’t told Tom. Claudia was back. She gave Tom a meaningful look, as if to say, that was an important call. “Why don’t you go back to work?” Tom said to Omar. “Detective Quintero and I need to talk, and we’ll talk to you again.” “I am at your disposition,” Omar said. Tom resisted the urge to say, it’s disposal. They walked back to the shop, Omar approached the workspace, and Claudia and Tom went to the sidewalk. “That was Betty Wilner,” Claudia said. “When you were making your phone call after lunch, I had the idea to call her and ask her if she’d found anything among Daniel’s documents on the disk that might be like a journal or a diary, and she said no, but there were lots of drafts of articles that read like they could be journal entries, and the last one is from October twelfth. Guess what it’s about.” “Tell me.” “A girl from Bosnia that he’d just met. He calls her Nina, but it’s you-know-who.” “I remember Megan telling me that he always changed the names of the people he wrote about,” Tom remarked. “Betty is sending it to me by e-mail. And I think we should read it before we talk to Omar any more.” “You’re right,” Tom said. “The more we know in advance the better, as they taught us in the academy.” “As long as we don’t give away what we know,” Claudia said. They went back to find Omar, who was talking to Safet in Albanian. “We’ll come back and talk to you some more later,” Tom said. “Thanks for your cooperation,” Claudia said. “You are welcome, Detectives,” Omar said with another smile at Claudia.