Budapest Noir Read Online Free PDF Page B

Mór’s jams were more often failures than successes, but this one was decidedly edible. Not that Gordon could have said what kind it was, but it was tasty. Perhaps apple and gooseberry. Or quince and rose hip. Maybe pear and rhubarb. Or else the old fellow had his very own way of conjuring peaches into jam. Gordon shrugged and spooned the contents of the jar into his mouth. In the living room he took his blazer off the chair and paused momentarily in front of the vestibule mirror, where he adjusted his hat before closing the door behind him.
    The super was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the building’s entrance. “Good morning, Mr. Editor!” he greeted Gordon, with a smile that stretched from ear to ear.
    “You, too, Iváncsik,” said Gordon, and turned in the direction of Nagymezo Street. He might as well board a tram on Kaiser Wilhelm Road, he figured. He bought an 8 O’Clock News at the tobacconist’s and got on the tram. He changed at Apponyi Square and by eight-thirty was at the newsroom, where work was under way full-steam. Nearly every typewriter was occupied by someone feverishly typing away. Gordon glanced about, then walked up a floor to Hungary ’s newsroom. There he was greeted by the same spectacle. He turned to the clerk sitting by the entrance. The fiftyish man might have unevenly buttoned his blazer, but he always knew everyone’s business.
    “Is Mr. Vogel here?” Gordon asked.
    “Even if the pope himself were to die, Mr. Vogel would still start his day in the New York Café with a brioche and a cup of black coffee. Only once did he not take his breakfast there: when the Romanians occupied Budapest. And not because the place wasn’t open. He said he didn’t have an appetite.”
    Jenő Vogel had already finished his brioche and was reading the previous day’s French newspapers while sipping his coffee. Gordon sat down across from him.
    “Say, Gordon, how much do the Spanish Civil War and the situation in Abyssinia worry you?” asked Vogel, lowering his copy of Le Figaro.
    “Each on its own or the two combined?”
    “Combined.”
    “Not one bit.”
    “And on their own?”
    “Why should I fret over it?” asked Gordon. “For some odd reason Mussolini needs Abyssinia, and he’ll get it, he will. And if the Spaniards want to slaughter each other, even in the best-case scenario all I can do is take exception to it in principle. Because there’s nothing I can do about it, that’s for sure.”
    Vogel knit his brows, nudged his glasses up to his forehead, and took to pulling at his fleshy ear. “You didn’t come by to talk about the Abyssinian situation,” he informed Gordon.
    “No,” Gordon confirmed. “You know the inner city’s sex industry pretty well, Vogel.”
    “You might say,” said Vogel, casting Gordon a suspicious eye.
    “I’m looking for someone.”
    “Who isn’t?”
    “Not just one someone, in fact, but two.”
    Vogel crossed his thick hands over his imposing belly and listened, motionless, his face not so much as twitching, as Gordon described the dead girl.
    “I haven’t seen her,” he finally said, shaking his head.
    Gordon wasn’t surprised, but he continued. “Who takes nude pictures?”
    “Why do you want to know?”
    “Because I saw a nude picture of the dead girl.”
    “Who is that hooker to you?”
    “No one.”
    “Then why are you interested?”
    “Because I don’t have enough for an article. Have you read the story in 8 O’Clock News ?” Vogel slowly nodded. “It was in there, too. It wasn’t enough that I was there on the scene. That’s just half a column on page seven.”
    “And you want page two.”
    “Or page one.”
    “Or page one,” repeated Vogel. “A front-page story is a front-page story.”
    “Well?”
    “I’m all ears,” replied the rotund journalist. The rims of his wire-frame glasses had splayed out completely over his head.
    Gordon sighed. “Next week I’ll be having a word with Gellért about the Róna