St. Petersburg Noir

by Julia Goumen

  “Your game can wait. Doesn’t look like homicide ... The wife came home and found her husband dead in front of the door. Looks like she’s been drinking. Maybe she even killed him herself. Go check it out. If there’s any sign of foul play, I’ll send the operative. Here’s the address.”

  That was the third time today we were hearing about the operative.

  The courtyard, rain, the jeep, hand crank ... In a month I’d be ready for some kind of pull-starting engine contest.

  The address was in the farthest reaches of our precinct, next to the railroad embankment, in one of the barracks built after World War II by German prisoners. Back then they were barracks, that is. Afterward they repaired them and slapped a bit of plaster on the walls, and offered it to the ex-cons returning from a hard-labor lumber camp who didn’t have a place to live. A homey little spot that had earned the name Blue-Light District because of its plentiful bashed-up inhabitants, with all manner of bruised faces and shiners. It wasn’t a favela in Rio, of course, but strangers were well advised not to set foot there. Locals either, as a matter of fact. It might be hard to find your way out with a shiner that all but blinds you.

  We had already been to the district once today about a duel fought by the local “nobility.” We separated them when the gentlemen had just squared off to fight, having chosen their weapons (broken bottles, or “roses” as they call them). High society, in other words.

  This time I grabbed a flashlight, just in case, since the electricity had been turned off in most of the barracks because of unpaid bills. I prepared myself mentally to come face-to-face with real crime.

  The jeep kept a steady course, somehow coping with the absence of a real road. We reached the barracks without incident. Farid was chewing out his beloved Rubin soccer team for losing to Barcelona. “Isn’t it time for them to take a short vacation? The coach too. Fifteen days in the drying-up tank should do it. To get them moving again. Their bosses pay them big bucks, and they don’t even bring in a penny. I understand losing to Zenit— but to Barcelona?”

  The buildings didn’t have any numbers on them, but Farid knew the area like the back of his hand. He could have found any address blindfolded.

  “Which pad?” he asked.

  “Number eight.”

  “Third floor,” he said automatically, turning off the engine.

  We got out of the warm vehicle. The three-story structure appeared black against a still-blacker sky. Fantastic. All we needed was some lightning, a flock of crows, a peal of thunder, and, in the background, an airplane plunging to earth, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake. It was a good thing I brought the flashlight. Candles or torches gleamed here and there in the dark windows. The age of nanotechnologies. Kupchino, St. Petersburg, Russia in the twenty-first century ... At least the landline still worked, since someone had managed to call the police.

  I entered the building first, lighting the way and scaring off the rats. I won’t go into any detail about the smells that assaulted us. I’ll just say that week-old garbage smelled like Dolce & Gabbana in comparison. On the first landing we were greeted by some petroglyphs, with the message Dead hedgehogs go north. The artwork of young junkies—I recognized the elevated style.

  The middle-aged woman who had called the police met us at the door. Sitting on the floor. Leaning against the wall. With a half-empty bottle of vodka in her hand. I tried to get her to tell me what had happened. She tried to answer me, but her tongue wouldn’t obey her. She had been at the bottle for quite awhile already. Not to mention the stress of the situation. It’s a wonder she could dial the number at all.

  While I was busy trying to bring the woman to her senses, Farid turned on his own flashlight and ventured into the apartment to take a look. He didn’t stay long. Thirty seconds later he was back, crossing himself. Farid the Muslim was crossing himself!

  I shone the flashlight directly in his face. It looked like it was made of stone. What had he seen in the apartment? Dismemberment?

  “Alex,” he said in a hollow whisper. “There’s ... in there ... ”

  “What?”

  “The builder.”

  “What builder?”

  “The one from earlier. The same one. I’m seeing things. For my sins. Allah is punishing me for my sins.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. What did he mean, the same one? What sins? Since when did Allah make sinners hallucinate? Pushing aside the babbling wreck of a driver, I boldly went into the apartment, where no policeman had gone before, and noticed that instead of a lock, the door was held shut by the sash of a housecoat tied to the doorknob.

  The dead body was lying in the hallway, a few feet away from the entrance, facedown. He was wearing a khaki work jacket. I was already less nervous than I had been in the morning. I was getting used to things. Without feeling any squeamishness I lifted up the head of the already cold body by the hair and pointed the flashlight square in his face.

  Then I crossed myself too. I did it without even thinking, and just about dropped the flashlight. It was the builder who had choked on the dumpling, the one I had written up so scrupulously in my morning report. There was no mistaking it. I examined his hand. The oilcloth tag was still hanging on the string.

  I stood up, wiping the sweat from my forehead. Just take it easy, I told myself. Two people can’t share the same hallucination. Even if Allah really wants them to. Shining the flashlight in front of me, I walked on further. The two-bedroom apartment looked like the interior of a Berber’s desert tent. A minimum of furnishings, maximum of cockroaches, dirt, and empty bottles. The bathroom had no door, which theoretically wasn’t the end of the world. Not long ago I had been in the castle of some highborn nobleman. He had several bathrooms, all with glass doors. They say it’s fashionable. Good design. Especially good for the noble guests and girls in love with the nobleman. It’s a place for them to show off their fancy undies. There was probably design in this bathroom too.

  I didn’t trip over any more dead bodies. I tried to find papers or IDs that would tell me who lived here, but I was unsuccessful. More than likely they didn’t even have any. I went back out to the landing. Farid was sitting next to the woman and staring dully into the darkness.

  “Get up, buddy. Allah has forgiven you. For the time being. It really is our builder.”

  Farid stirred. He said, “You’re sure?”

  “Yup. He’s wearing the tag.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “Stopped by for a visit. Wanted some beer to wash down the dumpling.”

  I bent over the woman. She had conked out and was snoring loudly through her broad nostrils.

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Farid said.

  “To be honest, my head’s gone into a tailspin. She said that it was her husband. But one guy can’t have two wives. This may not be the West, but it’s not the Orient. And even if he’s her husband, he couldn’t have come here on his own. He’s friggin’ dead.”

  “I agree. Dead men don’t walk.”

  “We’ll have to call the duty officer. Explain the whole thing. Have Evseyev call the morgue and get in touch with those blockhead orderlies.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Let’s get her inside first.”

  Farid got up off the floor. We grabbed the dame by the arms and dragged her into the first room, steering clear of the builder in the hallway. She seemed to weigh about two hundred pounds. Cursing, we hauled her up onto a three-legged couch. I found a red telephone dating back to the Comintern era in the other room, so I called Evseyev and explained the situation. As I had suspected, he was completely baffled. He told me to stop messing with his head and to return immediately to the department.

  I would have been baffled too.

  “What are we going to do?” Farid asked predictably.

  “No idea. But I’m not writing up a report on him. I’ve already done it once.”

  Farid lit up a cigarette. I bummed one off him and started to sm
oke too, even though I’m a health nut. We were silent for a while, thinking about the unusual circumstances we’d found ourselves in.

  “We can’t leave him here,” Farid said, breaking the silence.

  “Are you suggesting we take him to Evseyev? That’ll make him happy.”

  “No, we’ll drop him at the morgue. It’s not far from here, next to the hospital.”

  “What do you mean by ‘drop him’?”

  “We’ll load him into the glass and take him there. He’s a tough guy, he won’t fall apart.”

  I still hadn’t quite figured out all the police jargon, and I had no clue what “glass” could mean here. But I didn’t let on.

  “Will he fit?”

  “We packed eight in there once.”

  “And what are we going to tell them at the morgue?” I pressed.

  “That the body’s been registered, they’ve got the papers, so they should take him. If they don’t, we’ll just leave him on the doorstep.”

  On one hand, the prospect of taking care of a stranger’s corpse didn’t inspire enthusiasm. On the other hand, I wanted to get to the bottom of this and find out how the poor builder had ended up in the Blue-Light District. Curiosity won out.

  “Okay, let’s do it.”

  The lady muttered something and turned her face to the wall. Farid glanced around the room, went over to the window, and jerked down a single curtain, stained and discolored. When we went back into the hallway, he asked me to lift up the body and then shoved the curtain under it.

  “It should hold.”

  We grasped the corners of the improvised stretcher and at the count of three elevated the body off the floor. The curtain started ripping, but didn’t split. Farid took the lead and stepped out onto the landing, the flashlight lodged under his armpit.

  “I wonder,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, “how much they pay the orderlies for this little task.”

  “Maybe they do it for love, not money,” Farid replied. “I’m so fed up with my relatives saying, Why do you bother being a cop? There’s no money, no respect in it. And I figure, how am I going to live as a civilian? I don’t even have a car. That’s how those orderlies figure too, probably. Money isn’t everything, you know. Watch out, here’s a step missing. Don’t trip.”

  From somewhere on the second floor, a woman’s shrieking cackle rang out, and I almost let go of the curtain. Man, this really was like something out of a B-movie thriller. Dead hedgehogs go north.

  I found out what the “glass” was when we emerged from the mildew and stench of the entryway into the fresh air. It was just the area in the back of the jeep for detainees. It was designed for two people. Or sometimes eight. Maybe even more. In any case, the builder would have plenty of room.

  We placed him carefully in the rear of the vehicle, and Farid piled the curtain in next to him.

  “We’ll have to treat the backseat with chlorine tomorrow,” he said, closing the glass. “Or we might catch something.”

  He got behind the wheel and lit up a cigarette. The smoke deodorized the jeep better than any disinfectant could.

  “In the old days, when I worked out in the country, I used to drive all the stiffs around in the glass,” Farid said with an air of nostalgia.

  “Why was that?”

  “It was a mess. There was just one morgue for the whole county. And the morgue-mobile only served the town. There was just one car for the rest of the county, and it was always broken. So I had to deliver the body myself, if it was more or less fresh. You can’t expect the relatives to bring the body to an autopsy. I remember once we were delivering this guy. Not a homicide. Heart attack. First, we had to swing by the department to get some papers stamped. I stepped out to drink some tea. And across from the department was the drying-out tank.”

  Farid stepped on the gas, swerving to avoid a water-filled pothole.

  “I don’t want the engine to die. The alternator is already on its last legs. Right, so what was I saying? ... Their boss often borrowed drunks from ours. Just for the numbers. Our boss didn’t mind—it created more breathing space in the aquarium. On that day there wasn’t a single drunk, though. The boss at the drying-out tank begged ours, C’mon, just give me one, or I’ll never be able to leave here. Our boss was a real card. Sure, he said, take that one in the glass out there, they just brought him in. A minute later the sergeant comes out of the tank with his nightstick, opens the glass, and barks, Get out! The stiff doesn’t answer, naturally. The sergeant shouts again, Didn’t you hear what I said, you goon? I said get out! Silence. Then the sergeant bashed him over the head with his stick. Then gave him another one in the chest. The dead guy fell out of the jeep. The sergeant was about to pick him up, when he noticed that the sot wasn’t breathing anymore. He runs to the duty officer, his eyes popping out of his head, and shouts, Your drunk out there expired! The duty officer says, What do you mean, expired? You killed him with your stick! Everyone saw it. We’ll have to call the district attorney. The sergeant makes a break for the door and takes off running. They tried to catch him for two months, but he finally turned himself in. Was exhausted from hiding out in cellars and barns. They forgave him, saying it was only the first time. He’s never taken a nightstick into his hands since.”

  We started driving up the overpass. Farid stepped on the gas once more so he could make it up the incline, but the wheels started spinning on the wet asphalt, and the engine conked out.

  “Goddammit!” he barked, smashing his fist against the steering wheel. “The tires are bald. And I forgot to shift into four-wheel drive. Okay, out you go.”

  He put the emergency brake on and passed me the hand crank. I sighed and climbed out into the rain. But the engine wouldn’t turn over—not on the third try; not even on the tenth. Either I was too tired, or the jeep was. Farid, cursing up a storm, climbed out too.

  “The morgue is just a stone’s throw away. Just over the bridge there.”

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  “We could push it to the middle of the bridge. It’ll start when we coast downhill.”

  “We’ll have to stop someone to help us. We can’t manage by ourselves.”

  There were no cars in sight, what with the late hour and all. It was getting close to one in the morning. When my uniform was sopping wet and my shoes felt like I had fishbowls on my feet, a traffic cop driving a Lada drew up alongside our jalopy.

  “What’s the problem, boys?” the round-faced lieutenant asked, rolling down his window.

  “Won’t start. Will you help us push? Or pull us, maybe?”

  The traffic cop reluctantly got out from behind the wheel and walked around our jeep. “Why are you knocking yourselves out? Put that prizefighter back there to work.”

  “He can’t. He’s not feeling well,” Farid explained.

  “Well, who’s feeling good right now? Hey, buddy!” The lieutenant tapped on the glass. “The officers are out here bustin’ their asses in the rain, and you’re in there chillin’. You scared of a little work?”

  “Let him be,” Farid said dismissively. “It’s like trying to squeeze water from a stone.”

  “Well, make him get out, at least. It’s extra weight. Listen, buster, move your butt.”

  “Don’t,” I said, stopping the lieutenant, who was reaching out to open the door. “He’s a wild one. He’ll get away, and we’ll have to chase him all over again.”

  We finally got the jeep started up, but we had to cut the engine again at the morgue. Farid and I went up to the back entrance and rang the bell. While we were waiting for someone to come, I read a soggy printout that hung on the left side of the door:

  Funeral Home

  Cheap. Discounts for Wholesale Customers.

  Wholesale? Buy three coffins, get one free? Are you friggin’ kidding me? They might as well say, All incoming are free.

  Footsteps sounded from inside, and a light went on in the peephole.

  “Who’s there?”

 
; “The police. We brought a client,” Farid said, pointing to his cap.

  The lock and bolt jangled and the door opened. A whiff of something both foul and sweet-smelling escaped outside and enveloped us. An elderly man with a handgun was standing in the doorway. He looked like the night watchman. When he had convinced himself of our good intentions, he tucked the handgun back into his belt.

  “Live ammo?” Farid asked.

  “Tear gas,” said the watchman. The smell of beer suggested that the pensioner wasn’t just catching some z’s on the job. “Who did you say you brought?”

  “A client,” I answered. “Where should we unload him?”

  “No, no, boys,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re closed. You’ll have to register the person at eight a.m., please, those are the rules. Palich will be here, and you can hand the body over to him. Go on now.”