Full MoonCity (19 page)

“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?”

“Ovid Badelescu got called to a murder site.”

“Do tell!”

I proceeded to, but didn’t inform Max about the concealed doors at the back of the lift-I might want to use that detail some day myself. I also excluded Adriana’s notion that a werewolf was responsible. Or a weredog, hiding out among the multitude of anonymous mongrels.

Shortly before Silviu arrived, a long cry and a chorus of yapping from outside drew me to the window. The cry was like that of a muezzin calling worshippers to prayer. A middle-aged woman wearing a baggy multicoloured dress and headscarf was driving her horse and cart loaded with scrap metal and other rubbish that might be worth something. Her cry had excited the dogs. As I watched, she halted beside the humble cottage, dismounted, and rattled the picket gate with a stick. And waited.

Presently, a black-clad shape emerged from the cottage, cradling what I identified as a broken old clock of some bulk. With a surprisingly sprightly step, the old cottager bustled to her gate and handed over the relic, to receive in return, after humming and hawing, some scrap of paper, which might have been a banknote-if so, here in Romania it would have been thin plastic that looked like paper.

As the horse and cart and the scrap-woman’s outcry proceeded onward, the strangest thing happened. Half a dozen strays sidled from different directions toward that garden gate. The black-garbed cottager glanced about, as though to ensure that no one was observing her-she wouldn’t spot me at the window high up-then she offered her hand over the gate. Was she about to feed the strays with scraps? But she was holding nothing that I could see.

One by one those desolate dogs proceeded to lick, or slobber on, her palm-I was put in mind of nothing so much as movies of Italian gangsters kissing the hand of their Mafia godfather! This done, the cottager withdrew her hand, and then herself quickly back into her home.

Travelers in unfamiliar countries often misinterpret things and leap to the wrong conclusions, but I’ve always had a strong sense of intuition, a belief in quasi-magical linkages that others call coincidences. In my novels, such is the way that a dark crime is often solved. There’s a logical sequence of circumstances, yet this is only revealed-illuminated, if you like-by illogical means, by an illogical route. That Ovid should have driven me directly to that blood-stained lift in the former Securitate building, then that I should come to Max’s and overlook that cottage, cast adrift while time and town planning advanced, and that I should glimpse the owner, queen of canines, whom Max had never seen… this spoke to me inwardly, compellingly.

Silviu proved to be a tall, wispy person, wearing a somewhat soiled lightweight cream suit. His eyes seemed to me very blue, and his English was quite good. What an honour to be meeting a famous colleague of famous Max.

We descended to the street, to climb into an elderly white Dacia that had suffered bumps and scrapes through the years. Although it was early evening by now, the air was still sultry and cloying. I felt a strange mixture of reinvigoration due to my sighting of the crone of the cottage, and languor, as though I was surrendering to whatever the night might contain.

First, we went to an open-air restaurant to drink beer called Ursus and eat rolls of minced meat and salad, and spend, or rather, squander, some time. Time seemed to have a way of melting in this city. Apparently we were to meet a mad genius. But after an hour the man phoned, depressed-his father had a sudden brain tumour. Maybe an excuse, maybe true or half-true. And that was the last I heard of the genius. Silviu went off and brought back a newspaper, and the murder did feature. Silviu translated the story, but already I knew more than the reporter had discovered.

Then Ovid phoned my mobile.

“Paul, where are you?”

I consulted with Max, who took the phone and said, “We’re at the meech”-I think-“place on,” and he named a street. “But we’re going to Herastrau afterwards.”

They talked for a while, then Max ended the call and handed my phone back.

“He’ll try and join us.” Then, surveying our surroundings, he remarked that under Communism people went to restaurants for show, not for the food-to be seen in such a place, rich enough to buy a meal, of which they would then eat every morsel, instinctively, even if it burst them. Silviu listened politely and nodded. He had cleaned his plate, and I guessed that Max would be footing the bill, unless he and I shared it. I wondered if the crone of the cottage had ever been near a restaurant during her entire life. I thought of an appetite so voracious that a person would ravage a body bloody in a lift.

***

Herastrau proved to be a sizeable lake within a park. By now evening had arrived. We halted on a tree-lined roadway inside the park, behind a line of cars far more luxurious and up-to-date than Silviu’s. Silviu seemed edgy. Dogs lay round in the gloom like mounds of earth. On a bench a shaven-headed man, dressed in a leather jacket, was lounging.

“It’s all right, Silviu,” said Max. “I’ll give him a little money. Car insurance,” he told me. “Even though Silviu’s car is an old wreck, best to be on the safe side.”

Evidently Max knew how much, or how little, to give. I felt a double sense of mild menace at Max’s casual determination to show me how
au fait
he was with life here, and at the implications of my not knowing the ropes. My host, full of bonhomie, was also my rival. Which would explain, in retrospect, this particular outing tonight.

Scarcely had Max returned from paying Leather Jacket to keep an eye on the car than Ovid drew up behind us in his BMW. Getting out, Ovid waved casually at Leather Jacket, but Ovid certainly didn’t bother to cross the road to say anything to the man. So probably Max had wasted his money, seeing that we were now associated with an Inspector of police. It struck me as only mildly sinister that Ovid should turn up immediately after us, almost as though we were back in Securitate times when everyone’s exact whereabouts were monitored.

A short walk brought us to a big, though modestly lit, building on the shore of the lake. Two suited bouncers stood outside, smoking.

Inside, a few men sat at tables with beautiful girls, and a little crowd of likewise lovely tall girls were shuffling round in a slow dance to the background music. A trio of the Bleached Boys sporting gold looked like pimps in this setting.

“The girls aren’t in their underwear here,” Max pointed out. “They can wear casual clothes, so there’s no pole dancing, if you’re disappointed. This is classy sleaze.”

We sat and ordered beers, the cheapest option.

“Anything new about the lift murder?” I asked Ovid.

“Autopsy,” he said. “Terrible claw-like injuries and animal-like bites. The Turk may have worn specially adapted gauntlets and not had his own teeth anymore but special false fanged ones. If he needs false teeth, maybe he’s fifty or sixty years old, though very strong.” After saying which, he winked at me. Was he teasing me? Or satirizing himself? And avoiding confiding whatever the police now knew?

When our beers arrived, girls came to sit with us. One plumped herself on my lap and wiggled about.

“You can talk free for ten minutes,” whispered Max, “then she’ll ask you to buy her a drink. That’s only about ten dollars, so you decide.”

“What’s your name?” I asked my sexy burden, whose face was unusually broad, her eyes wide-spaced, though her figure was impeccable.

“Luciana. And what do they call you?”

Quite soon I said, “Where did you learn such good English?”

“In school, of course. I also speak German and Italian. A lot of Italians live in Romania, and Germans visit.”

“So, Luciana, do you like working in this place?”

“It’s better than my hometown. But I’d like a real job sometime.”

“What do you mean by a real job?”

“Oh, a shop assistant, for instance.”

“My God, speaking four languages you could at least be an interpreter or an air hostess.”

Max whispered, “If you ask a schoolgirl in the countryside what she wants to be, she’ll say a prostitute, so she can meet foreign men.”

Ovid and Silviu were talking in Romanian all this time, ignoring the girls on either side of them, who reacted by chattering behind their backs, displaying nail varnish.

“Will you buy me a drink?” asked Luciana. “Or else I can’t stay with you.”

I decided to do so, as did Max for his own blonde companion.

“If you want to take yours to the flat,” mentioned my host, “it’s best you both arrange to meet outside, then the club doesn’t get commission.”

“Doesn’t the club object?”

“No, it’s understood. So long as you don’t actually leave the premises along with her.”

Prompted, Luciana squirmed and said, “I love sex. Will you take me home tonight for a hundred dollars?”

“Offer her two thousand lei.”

“Oh no, that is much too little,” protested Luciana. “Fifty dollars.”

“But I already have Adriana,” I told Max.

“Maybe you ought to have variety. In case you overvalue Adriana.”

Evidently Max had my best interests at heart!

Just then Ovid’s mobile jangled and his side of the conversation certainly intrigued Silviu and all of the girls.

Ovid looked across at me. “There’s been another killing. Same MO. Modus operandi,” he added. “I must go.” He threw an arm around his neglected girl and hugged her. “Don’t worry, the arm of the law will protect you.” She giggled.

“May I come with you?” I asked.

“Yes. No. Yes. Why not? Taxi for you afterwards.” He threw down some money.

“How much do I owe for the drinks?” I asked Max.

“We’ll sort it out tomorrow. You’ll need a key.” He fished in his pocket. “Oh, do you mind if I take a girl home with me?”

“Of course not.”

How could I possibly mind? Yet I did. Not for any moral reason, but because this seemed a bit, shall we say, oppressive, as regards myself rather than the girl. However, I was about to walk out on my host.

The crime scene, as I reckoned when a summoned taxi finally returned me, was only about three kilometres from Max’s flat, in a big apartment block not completely fitted out inside, and consequently only semi-occupied. Not a lift, this time, but a coin-operated mini-laundry in the basement. The victim was another young woman. The discoverer was her boyfriend, when she failed to return to their flat; although he had been taken back upstairs for questioning, and the body was about to be zipped up by the time Ovid and I walked in. I glimpsed something from a butcher’s shop, or abattoire, like paintings by Soutine of carcasses of beef. Flayed, was my impression. A torn, blood-soaked skirt and blouse, and other scattered garments, lay as if really needing the services of the half-full washing machine which yawned open.