“Baro Rom,” I answered, repeating the word Esma had applied to Tobar, the so-called Big Man who had established himself in a place of clan leadership.
On the narrow road through Vo Selo, we stopped again to ask an old lady about Ferko. She responded with emphatic motions up the hill.
“That there,” said Goos as he again got behind the wheel, “is Ferko’s house.” He was pointing at the little palace.
I processed. “Can’t be the same guy.”
“I asked her for Ferko Rincic. You heard me. She said we have to be very special because he treats the whole lot of them like they’re wackers, not even worth hello.”
We drove up the rest of the hill and parked at the side of the road in front of the huge house. Now that we were here, I could see that construction was still incomplete. Electrical wires sprouted from the turret walls. More revealing, an open trench near the road showed a sewer pipe without a connection. For all its grandness, the house seemed to lack indoor plumbing.
The perimeter was guarded by a white stucco wall about eight feet high, capped with pieces of jagged glass cemented in place. Two wooden doors of the same height stood at the center, with an iron lift-latch between them. A stick could have easily secured entry, but no one would dare, since there were three dogs who charged us in fury, barking and snarling, jumping at the breach between the doors and revealing their pink gums and huge teeth slimed with foam. They were all the same breed, brindled but with the pointed faces of Dobermans.
Goos looked around for a while, then suddenly raised a finger and returned to the car. He returned with the little takeaway box in which he had saved the remains of his lunch as a possible snack, and a small branch he’d picked up from the roadside. From the carton, he extracted three logs of cevapi, which he held to the gate. The dogs suddenly quieted, bounding against each other for a chance at the scent.
“Prepare to bash off,” he said. He shoved me behind him, then lifted the latch with the tree branch. He pulled the gate open, tossing the cevapi a good fifty feet toward the road. As the dogs ran off baying for the meat, he jerked me inside and bolted the gate.
We were now in a courtyard. A fire pit, with some speckled graniteware pots thrown beside it, was nearby, and several rugs and a mattress lay before the front doorway, making me think that some or all of the residents slept here. A bell on a string extended near the door, and Goos gave it a jerk. In response, we heard voices and motion on the other side.
The man who threw the door open was in some senses Ferko. It was undoubtedly the same man, with the same broken nose and bad teeth visible when his mouth gaped in surprise. But he was dressed resplendently, as if for date night, had it occurred in the 1990s. He sported a big-collared shirt of chartreuse and turquoise blocks, and it was open almost to his waist, revealing a heavy gold chain that held a watch the size of a sommelier’s salver over his pelted chest. When he raised his hand, every finger bore a thick gold ring.
Now that the door was ajar, a hefty woman, whom I instantly recognized as the wife I’d seen in the wrinkled picture Ferko had brought to court, peeked behind him. Clinging to her skirts was a little boy of about four. In the rear of the open passageway that had been revealed, I could see a portrait of a caravan drawn on the stucco in the overripe style of paintings on black velvet.
Ferko looked us up and down one more second, then said something to Goos in Serbo-Croatian and slammed the door.
“He says we don’t belong here,” Goos told me.
We rang the bell several more times. Goos yelled out in Serbo-Croatian that Ferko was required to speak to us, and finally, as a last gambit, screamed that unless Ferko spoke to us now he could receive no share of the reparations the Court someday might pay on the case. After all of that, Ferko responded with one sentence from the other side of the door that Goos instantly translated.
“He says he has called a neighbor to round up the dogs, and he will set them on us if we don’t leave now.”
We discovered almost at once that the threat had not been vain. A thuggy-looking fellow, unshaved, with dark greasy hair and a distinctly hostile look, arrived with the dogs tugging him along by the leashes he’d fixed to their collars. He was wearing a black leather jacket, odd garb in this weather, and I thought he might be hiding a gun.
We were in better stead with the dogs, however. The cevapi did not seem far from their minds, and only one of them growled a bit as we backed away.
21.
Back to the Salt Mine
So Ferko is the richest man in town?” I asked Goos when we were under way once more in the small Ford. We were both in a somewhat wounded state and seemed eager to get back to Tuzla to take stock of the day.
As we traveled, we speculated about Ferko, although I offered most of the commentary. Goos’s responses were limited, one-word answers or grunts, his mood expressed principally in the vehemence with which he shifted gears.
Given the fact that Ferko could summon a hood to menace us, he was clearly a person of stature in some organization. Drugs seemed the most likely business—there was said to be a lot of meth, often call ice, in Bosnia. Indulging in ethnic stereotypes, it was also possible that Ferko was boss of a gang of child thieves or beggars, or full-grown pickpockets. One thing was sure, though. The fellow who’d come to glower at us didn’t have the look of anyone attached to a legitimate businessman.
Taking for granted that Ferko was a crook of some kind, I weighed the implications for our investigation. In order to protect his identity, Ferko had never answered the questions routine for virtually every other witness, stuff like ‘Where do you live?’ and ‘What do you do for a living?’ So he hadn’t lied about those matters. But between staging the grave and claiming under oath that his wife was dead—assuming my eyesight was good and she wasn’t—his testimony was worthless, even by the most forgiving standards.
Deepening my dismay was the realization that I was going to have to call Esma. I took it that today’s revelations about Ferko would be news to her, because any trial lawyer puts her entire career in jeopardy by allowing a client to lie under oath. Yet Esma was the only person who might be able to get Ferko to sit down with us again to see if there were any explanations that might help us salvage the investigation. We were facing the law’s version of real tragedy: the murder of four hundred people goes unpunished because the lone witness manufactured a bunch of eccentric lies.
Just outside of town, we pulled over in a spot with cell reception in order to get our bearings. We were at the side of a potholed road, just wide enough to qualify as two-laned by Bosnian standards. Beside us, weeds had already grown up thickly, and a stand of firs stood on the other side. I had just set my navigation app for Tuzla when a car pulled in behind us, a white vehicle with the word POLICIJA appearing amid a band of blue. In the sideview, I saw two policemen alight, one heavy-set, one thin.
I assumed they’d stopped to be sure we didn’t need help, but Goos had another impression.
“Oh, sweet Jesu,” Goos said. “Not again.”
He rolled down the window and tried to chat up the fat cop who’d come to the driver’s side. In the meantime, the wirier one ambled up to my window, leaning on the door to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn’t escape. Goos again pulled out our court credentials, but the cop flicked a hand at us, as if the documents irritated him further.
“He says we both need to get out,” said Goos.
We did, and the two leaned us on the fender, frisked us, and took our cell phones, passports, and wallets.
I thought they might look the documents over, but the fat cop simply slipped them in his back pocket. He returned to their car, while his partner watched us, his hand on his pistol, still holstered but with the white covering flap unsnapped.