Read Invisible Murder for Free Online

craftsmen and artisan metalworkers who had created the mansions in the Palace District by the National Museum. The building had been in a state of disrepair for ages, but in recent years the pace of its decline had picked up as if the building was trying to beat the bulldozers to it. Like a man committingsuicide to avoid being murdered, Sándor thought. The plasterwork was peeling off in sheets, and it reeked of dampness, brick dust, and dry rot. The rooms still had four-meter ceilings, but the electricity came and went, the water pipes were corroded and smelled like sewage, and after four months of empty promises and sheets of black plastic, he had ultimately given up and had repaired the window in his room himself.
    He thought back to the yelling, stomping Magyar Gárda crowd who wanted to “save Hungary” and the newspapers and TV channels that were full of stories about hard times and unemployment and the risk of national bankruptcy. At the university, everyone was talking nervously about what would happen if the government stopped paying salaries and grants. Soon, there might be no such thing as free education. Or free medical assistance. Or pensions.
    Everything is falling apart, he thought. We’ve struck an iceberg, and now we’re sinking.
    Couldn’t this all have waited just a year or two? He was so close. Soon he would have his bachelor’s degree. If things went to hell then, he might still be able to land a job with a law firm. Perhaps come back for his master’s later or get it through one of the private schools. With a salary, he would be able to move. At least out of the Eighth District, to a place where the buildings weren’t falling apart and people didn’t mistake him for a filthy Gypsy all the time. “Just because you have dark hair,” as Lujza had put it.
    He trudged up the stairs, making sure to stay close to the wall where the steps were most solid.
    A teenage Roma boy was standing there, leaning against Sándor’s door—long, black hair and a macho attitude, skinny hips and tight jeans, dusty boots and an I-dare-you grin that was wide enough to reveal that he was missing one of his canines.
    “Hey,
czigány
,” the stranger said, and it was only when the boy actually grabbed his shoulders and slapped his back several times that Sándor realized it was his brother.
    O N THE DAY of the white vans, Sándor had been eight years old. There had been four vans. One was an ambulance, the second a kind of minivan, and the last two were police cars. But all of them were white.
    The vans followed the switchbacks in the road, zigzagging their waydown the hillside to the bottom of the valley where the village was. Reddish-yellow dust swirled up around them.
    “Look,” Tibor said, scratching his nose with his index finger. “Someone’s coming.”
    Sándor gave his fishing line a little tug, but it was depressingly clear that there was nothing on the other end besides the hook he had fashioned out of bent wire.
    “What do you think they want?” he asked.
    “Don’t know,” Tibor said. “Want to find out?”
    Sándor nodded. It wasn’t often that strange cars came to Galbeno. He and Tibor left their fishing poles behind, hopped over the creek, and sprinted down the path that led back to the village.
    “We can always come back later,” Tibor said. “Maybe the fish will bite when we’re not looking.”
    They weren’t the only ones who were curious. People were craning their necks from the shelter of their porches, and the crowd of men in front of Baba’s house stood up slowly and haphazardly and set down their guitars. Attila, who had been harnessing his gaunt, brown horse to the firewood cart, passed the reins to his oldest son and disappeared into the house. Shortly after, he was back with a couple of empty sacks, which he tossed onto the cart, and gave the horse a slap on the flank that sent it off at a bumpy, reluctant trot down the wheel ruts toward the woods.
    The vans bumped their way