Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [74]
The weak and weary part he had cold. Branko had been traveling for twenty hours, a low-budget itinerary from Sarajevo via Zagreb, Frankfurt, and JFK, with lengthy layovers at every stop.
Here is what the passport control officer saw as Branko lumbered forward with his overnight bag and his documents (his boss, Marko Krulic, had fixed the visa with a cooperative consular officer, paying twice the amount Branko would be earning for the commission): He was a tall man, about 6’3", with the rangy build and sharp cheekbones of those Slavic toughs the NBA favors for their Euro guile and rigid fundamentals. Pale skin with the translucence of boiled cabbage. He wore a black leather jacket, too large and with too many silver buckles. His black pair of acid-washed jeans sported a label no American had ever heard of, and his lank black hair was a longish version of a style from 1957.
But it was Branko’s eyes that prompted the passport officer to ask a few extra questions, just before they took his prints and snapped his photo. It wasn’t the bleached-out blue that demanded your attention; it was their chilly quality, as if he were staring up at you through an inch of frozen pond. The war had done that for him, the war and all its enthusiasms of killing on the run, house by house.
Krulic, his commander, was now his boss, and in the manner of most war profiteers he had diversified into the multiple rackets of peacetime—drugs, stolen cars, bootleg designer wear, and duty-free vices of every ilk. Branko was a hired gun, and the target in Baltimore had only recently to Krulic’s attention. It seemed that war-crimes investigators in The Hague had finally made their way down the pecking order to Krulic and were struggling to collect evidence. Krulic knew something that they didn’t: that the most incriminating witness now lived in the States, having made his way to an apartment on the fringes of Fells Point back in ’98.
Branko had to have the job the moment he heard about it. Dubbed episodes of Homicide were an obsession, and he felt he knew the entire cast by name. He spoke just enough English to believe he would be able to engage them in witty conversation, should he happen across them in a bar. And, who knows, now maybe he would.
Krulic was aware of Branko’s television addiction, but figured that a killer was a killer. His bigger worry was Branko’s inexperience with handguns. Most local jobs were dispatched with AK-47s or RPGs.
“You won’t be able to just blow up his house, you know,” Krulic had said. “Well, not unless you can arrange some sort of gas leak. But be tidy, be smart.”
To Branko, being smart meant carrying out the deed in such a fashion that, one day, he would settle down on his couch before his Soviet-made television to see his exploits immortalized by the actors he knew and loved. Perhaps the killer—the one modeled after him—would even have a fling with Melissa Leo, or at least a flirtation. He liked it when she talked tough, although he suspected from the clothes she wore that maybe she didn’t like boys. But surely, he had thought, he scanned the credits of an episode only two nights before his departure, some of those writers must be yearning for a breakout idea. Well, he was about to give them one.
These were the contents of Branko’s pockets and overnight bag as he exited customs: two changes of clothes, a toothbrush, $50 in cash, a credit card (he was under strict orders to use it only to rent a car), a fake New Jersey driver’s license, the address for a homeless shelter where he was supposed to sleep, a telephone number for a contact who would supply his gun, a Fells Point address for a bar called Flip’s, and a return ticket to Sarajevo, reserved for Sunday. That gave him only two nights, but he was a fast worker.
The target was Dusko Jevic. Branko knew only that the man worked at Flip’s, at 1900 Aliceanna Street, where he supposedly swabbed floors, hauled garbage, killed rats, and did a little bouncing. His name was pronounced