Natalia Smirnova: St. Petersburg Noir

Next to a shopping center Driver slowed down and dashed out to buy cigarettes in a little dive with the nostalgic name 3.62. I seemed to remember that was how much a half-liter of vodka cost when I was a kid. Farid had a discount there—he checked out their daily scuffles. By the door a soaking wet beggar sat in the rain on a piece of cardboard, exhorting the public through a megaphone to donate money to him for bread. He amplified his voice without shame or timidity, like a guide on Nevsky Prospect inviting tourists on a canal boat ride. “Hurry up, hurry up! Just one piece of bread! Don’t pass up your chance to help the needy. You won’t be sorry in the next world!”

Coming out of the dive, Farid the Muslim sinned against the Koran yet again. Instead of extending charity as he was supposed to according to the one of the five pillars of Islam, he chased off the beggar. He called it “checking his license.”

Our multicultural duo sped over to a nine-story building that rose up just behind the shopping center. A few minutes later the G-Wagen screeched to a halt by the entrance, next to an ambulance with a sleeping driver in it. Farid turned off the engine; leaving an empty cop car with the engine running wasn’t advisable. There were always people willing to take it for a spin. This wasn’t Beverly Hills, after all. Better to let the inspector spin the hand crank one more time.

I noticed a large warning sign on the moldy wall of the building:

Thanks to the residential supervisor for his concern. Next year the word “balcony” would have to be replaced with the word “wall.”

We ducked into the entrance hall. It was so leaky and damp it seemed to be raining inside the building. I went up in the ramshackle elevator. Farid walked up to the fifth floor. They say that after a certain incident he had become “elevator shy.” Once, some big bosses decided to check on how one of the then-inspectors was dealing with a routine domestic violence call. The bosses were big in the literal sense too—two of them two-hundred-pounders at the very least. The inspector was also not given to shunning God’s bounty, judging by his amplitude. Plus Farid himself. The higher-ups didn’t want to walk all the way up to the last floor, so they all squeezed into the elevator together. The elevator up and ground to a halt halfway; it couldn’t cope with the load. To add insult to injury, not one of them was carrying a cell phone or a walkie-talkie. They called out to the residents for help. Like, “We’re police, we’re responding to a call, we’re stuck! Call the repair service!” “Ah, the pigs? Well, you got just what you deserve!” It’s no secret how ordinary citizens view us, in spite of the heroes on TV. Some of them even started jeering. “We’re going to rip off your car while you’re in there sweating!” Farid nearly had a stroke. They stood there in complete darkness between the fifth and sixth floors for nearly two hours, praying that the cable wouldn’t snap. Since then Farid refuses to set foot in an elevator, even in his own building. He takes the stairs, and only the stairs. Besides, it’s good for the heart.

The apartment where the drama was being played out was a completely ordinary, no-frills, working-class affair. Two small rooms, a kitchenette, and a narrow hallway. The deceased was lying on a bed in the room closest to the entryway, where his wife and son had carried him. His wife—his widow, rather—wasn’t sobbing, as I would have expected. She sat silent at the head of the bed and stared at her husband. She was in shock.

A paramedic filled us in. The wife and son had been watching TV, while the head of the family was in the kitchen eating. He was a construction worker and was grabbing a quick meal; the construction site was next door, and it was cheaper to eat at home. He was running late, and swallowed a dumpling whole, it seemed, without chewing it. When he was choking, trying to cough it up, he fell and broke a plate. When the wife and son ran into the kitchen, he was writhing on the floor, clutching at his throat. The son rushed to the telephone, the wife tried to extract the dumpling, but it was lodged there and wouldn’t budge. Asphyxiation. The paramedic had no doubts about the cause of death. An accident. He had removed the dumpling from the dead man himself.

After leaving us their number, the paramedics rushed off on another call. I went into the kitchen. A broken plate on the floor, a few stray dumplings in the corners—those were the only traces of the incident. I would probably agree with the paramedic that it seemed impossible to contrive an accident like that, to “make it happen” on its own. And there was no reason to, either. I was young and inexperienced, of course, but just by looking at the wife I could state with certainty that homicide was out of the question.

The son came into the kitchen: a kid, about sixteen, pale as a wall poster bleached by the sun. “I’ll clean it up now,” he said, nodding toward the shards.

“Don’t do that. Go get the neighbors. We need two witnesses. And get your father’s ID too.”

While he was trying to talk the neighbors into coming over, I called Evseyev and reported the situation.

“Question the next of kin, and cough up a report for sending the body to the morgue,” the duty officer said. “And get back here on the double. More reports are about to start pouring in. I’ll send someone to pick up the body.”

That was about what I had planned to do. Cough up a report and question the relatives, as they taught us in the training course.

I went back into the hallway. Without entering the room, I asked the widow to help her son find the documents. The woman nodded and left. I stood in the doorway, unwilling to go in and be face-to-face with the dead man. Like I said, I wasn’t used to it. It’s one thing at a funeral, but another thing entirely in domestic circumstances. I wasn’t squeamish or suspicious, I didn’t believe in the living dead, but I couldn’t shake those zombie movies from my mind. Maybe I could just draw up the report right here in the doorway? I thought. It’s not a murder, after all. There’s no need to search for evidence or find fingerprints. Especially since they already moved the body from the kitchen into the room, disrupting the original circumstances of the incident…

I peered at the dead man. He was clothed in the dark-green jacket that construction-site foremen usually wear. He must have really been in a hurry, since he didn’t bother to take it off while he was eating. Poor guy. The paramedic had wrapped a bandage around his head and jaw, like someone with a toothache. Suddenly I imagined that the fellow was about to sit up, take off the bandage, and smile, saying that it was all a joke and everyone was invited in to finish off the dumplings.

“What’s holding you back?” Farid’s voice sounded somewhere behind me.

“I’m just not used to it, that’s all.”

“Aw, c’mon, he won’t bite.” He entered the room calmly and leaned over the builder’s face. “It’s as clear as day. He died all by himself. Nothing to be afraid of.”

Sure. He won’t bite…

The neighbors arrived: two old ladies. As you’d expect, both of them shaking their heads, “what-a-pity” and “woe-is-me.” I asked them to come into the room and observe the examination. I sat down on a stool by the head of the body and took out an official form. If this had been my hundredth case, I wouldn’t have been nervous. I could have filled the thing out with just my left hand in five minutes. But a debut is a debut, so the whole thing took about forty minutes. I didn’t want to show my inadequacy. Recalling the instructions they gave us during the course, I began describing the circumstances from the general to the specific, as clearly and legibly as possible, and without making any spelling errors. This wasn’t exactly easy. First, I’m no Leo Tolstoy, and second, a dead man lying right next to you doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. I couldn’t find the right words. I kept losing my train of thought, so I ended up describing the clothes the dead man was wearing twice. I had no time to do it over, and you weren’t allowed to cross things out, so I just left everything as it was. Farid checked in on me a few times and tried in annoyance to hurry me up. The old lady witnesses patiently carried out their duties as citizens, whispering about what a wonderful neighbor he had been, although sometimes he took a drop too much. I could have done with a little drink myself. Just a tad—for the confidence.