Darrell Schweitzer - Full MoonCity

“I’ll buy a magazine and wait for you in there, okay?”

Accordingly, in went Ovid and I to find the Boys in Blue busy on the ground floor examining an open lift, the floor and walls of which were very bloody. I’d been at two or three actual crime scenes before, yet here it was as if a madman had thrown crimson paint around. The smell, however, wasn’t of paint but of a slaughterhouse. I presumed my presence was explained cursorily by Ovid, since various police nodded at me before, as I supposed, reporting circumstances to him in Romanian.

“So, Mr. Story Writer,” Ovid said after peering assiduously, “what do you notice?”

“Less blood on the floor outside than I’d have expected,” I suggested.

“And that was probably caused by us police and by the ambulance people. It seems there are some bloody tracks and drops on the sixth floor, but again not too much blood is in the corridor up there.”

“So she was attacked inside the lift, with the doors shut.”

“Precisely. And I think I know how.”

Ovid stepped inside the lift fastidiously, crouched, and peered at the paneled rear wall, which was almost unstained. Then he inserted his little finger somewhere amongst the woodwork and pulled. The rear wall split in half, opening as two floor-to-ceiling doors. Behind was a space large enough for a couple of people to stand, or kneel, between the true rear wall and the false wall. And the true rear wall was bloody, as were the insides of the doors.

“Here,” said Ovid, “is where the killer hid, to burst out suddenly between floors. I told you this building was made for the Securitate, but about six thousand special spies spied upon the secret police themselves by such bizarre methods as this. No doubt a microphone would have been hidden inside the elevator, but here’s a back-up, just in case. A man sitting on a stool could look and listen through the tiny hole in the wall.”

The sheer shock of being between floors in an otherwise empty lift when suddenly the wall opened and another person emerged! The victim might faint or even die at once of a heart attack.

Ovid explained in Romanian, and the lesser police looked at him in admiration.

Of course we climbed the white marble stairs to the sixth floor rather than using the lift.

It seemed to me that the tracks up there were rather narrow to be those of shoes or trainers. They became vague after not too many paces.

Adriana pointed through the café window at one of the tall white apartments around the piazza, blue sky showing through ornamental turrets along the edge of the rooftop.

“Sniper watchtowers,” she said. “You could shoot down into any rebellious crowds.”

We were inside for the air-conditioning. So were some bleached-blond youths wearing gold chains, sunglasses pushed up on top of their heads, sons of the new rich.

“You say the tracks of blood were narrow.” She shuddered and crossed herself. “I think a werewolf killed that woman in the elevator. Probably the Inspector thinks so, too, but he wouldn’t tell you that.”

“Werewolves aren’t real,” I protested.

“In Romania they are. And weredogs, priccoltish . With a million dogs on the streets it can’t be surprising if at least one is a weredog. It’s the perfect place to hide. Unless,” she added with what seemed at first a wonderful lack of logical connection, “Badelescu thinks a Turk did it. Maybe he hopes that’s the answer.”

“Why blame a Turk?”

“They ruled us for three hundred years; consequently, many Romanians don’t like them much. Better a Turk than a werewolf. I’ll see if there are any news reports yet.”

Flipping open her phone, amazingly she googled.

“How can you do that?”

“You can do it anywhere in the city center.”

I thought of old women draped in black guarding a single cow or a few geese by the roadside out in the country. Truly, the last shall be first technologically.

“No, nothing yet.” Rather too soon for news.

“Will you take me to Max? And maybe I can see you tomorrow?” In fact, I felt a bit tired, but also I wanted to make notes about the murder scene.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t know. I’ll phone. Yes, probably.” She wasn’t going to seem overeager, but she wanted me to feel eager.

Max’s place proved not to be far, just beyond the boundary where Ceaus?escu’s architectural master plan had erased a vast area of the old city-houses, churches, whatever was in the way-to make space for ostentatious modernity.

The flat was on the top floor of a modest block. To the front, the outlook was upon a line of trees, then some open grass, then low houses with red roofs suddenly abutting a towering wall of vast white apartments. Directly below was a very modest old cottage to which were attached a clutter of small corrugated-roofed sheds, surrounded by rows of vegetables and bean poles-I even spotted some geese and hens-all within a green-painted picket fence.

Incongruously next to this relic of the past was a sizeable ultra-posh house in Art Deco style, gleamingly white.

“Probably an old lady died there and her heirs accepted an offer they couldn’t refuse,” said Max. Max was short and burly and wore an assertively black moustache, although his hair had lightened and receded a long way. I didn’t know if he dyed the moustache.

“So the old woman directly below hasn’t died yet?”

“I’ve never seen her.”

My room contained a double bed, a large wardrobe, and a bench press that seemed to have strayed from some gym. Frills were lacking, yet the furnishings sufficed for sport that I anticipated with Adriana. On the bed, I mean, not on the bench press.

“Chap called Silviu may be coming round to take us somewhere,” Max told me. “Couple of days before I went to the island, Silviu told me the sad story of how his mother’s son by a previous marriage had suddenly died from premature kidney failure. He begged me to lend him three hundred dollars for the funeral because his mother couldn’t afford it. So I did. Very next day, I bump into Silviu and he proudly shows me this expensive new camera he just bought. You know, innocently shows me the camera because he’s so excited and happy. I ought to have got mad at him. But it was my own fault. You don’t lend money to people here unless you’re willing to regard it as a gift. Some day they’ll do something for you, perhaps. Well, Silviu phoned an hour ago and I said, ‘Come and drive us somewhere tonight, right?’ ”

“Somewhere?”

“Educational. In your honour. Writers in the crime line need to research sleaze.” So saying, Max cast himself upon a sofa and reached for an elegant, glossy English-language magazine, published for expats no doubt, its cover a stylish photo of giant terracotta garden urns. Thumbing to the back, he intoned: “Royal Orchid Male Sacred Spot Massage. A gentle digital technique for contacting these subtle places. In the internal way a lubricated finger will be inserted into the anus, and then it will gently massage around the chestnut-sized and -shaped prostate. This feels better when you are somewhat erect and excited and if it’s done during the intimate massage (don’t worry, the girls will take care of that). It will produce a very thrilling orgasm.”

“You’re making that up.”

“I’m not. This is Bucharest. Take a look.”

I looked, and it was true.

“I thought that mag was the local Homes and Gardens .”

“And casinos and escorts.”

“Um, I don’t want a finger stuck up my bum, Max.”

My writerly colleague grinned. “Do you have piles? Don’t worry, we aren’t doing any such thing. Tonight will only cost a few dollars for drinks. It’s purely educational. Background research. Anyway, what kept you?”