Kozma and I lived in Block 45, the last one in the row beside the riverbank. After us there was only the end of Belgrade, but it could easily have been the end of the world. At night, the darkness on the other side was that deep.
Before us stretched Block 44, which was kind of logical, but it was preceded by number 70, while on the other side of the wide avenue sprawled blocks 63, 62, and 61. Someone had had a lot of fun with numbering them.
All of it was part of New Belgrade, over 200,000 souls in the country’s largest dormitory. That’s what they used to call it anyway, but now big business had found its way here too. Car dealerships, shopping malls, private hospitals, a lot of eradicated green areas. Our little park was among the few resisting rampant urbanization.
Blocks and their history was my hobby, because retirees need to have one. Well, they don’t have to, but if they don’t, they quickly go mad. It started with me wanting to know who’d built the uneven ceiling in my apartment. Every morning, I would try to imagine heroes of the socialist labor of the sixties draining the surrounding swamps, as part of the Yugoslav postwar reconstruction. I had trouble imagining it.
Just as I had trouble coming up with a defense against Kozma’s bishop. Checkmate in two moves. When I looked up, Kozma was smiling at me.
I sighed and toppled my king. “I didn’t agree to anything.”
“But you will, won’t you?” He raised his eyebrows. “Now you have to.”
I didn’t have to do anything, and he knew it. At our age, everything happens voluntarily. That’s why I loved this oasis of ours, where we hid from the world, too-frequent elections, pension cuts, and uncollected garbage. That’s why I loved this block, this park, this table. Our table.
“Didn’t I tell you not to come here anymore?” shouted the girl with restless eyes as she hurried across the park.
Kozma and I rolled our eyes. Not everyone agreed it was our table.
They called her Gigi, nobody knew why. Nicknames don’t always have rational explanations. She was between fifteen and eighteen — it was hard to say. Somewhere along the way I’d lost my sense of youth. Didn’t matter, she was far too young to be shouting at the elderly.
All the girls she dragged along with her wore torn jeans and baseball hats. They all carried phones and beer cans in their hands even though it was only two p.m. (since they were probably underage, the time of day was, in fact, a moot point). One of them rolled a spray can between her fingers
Gigi stepped up onto our table, kicked over our chess pieces, and climbed down on the other side as if walking across a pedestrian bridge. “Mom and Dad think I’m in a gang, the school thinks I’m in a gang, the police think I’m in a gang.” She was virtually growling at Kozma. “All because of you.”
She swung her arm but only tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Kozma twitched and closed his eyes anyway.
I stood up. “Now that’s enough.”
“Shut up, Grandpa. You’ll get yours too. Being tall won’t save you.”
I remained standing and the moment passed. The aggression fizzled out of her. She seemed to realize it too.
“I’m watching you,” she said, backing away. “If I see you after dark, you’ll be sorry.”
We watched them go. The last one gave us the finger as they disappeared toward the river. I turned to Kozma, who squatted down to collect the pieces.
“Almost getting beat up by little girls doesn’t bother you?” I asked, while he stood up and started arranging the pieces. “Are you dragging me into one of your failed projects again?”
“So, you want to do it?” he asked quietly.
I sighed. “What have you come up with now?”
“It’s not like with the girls, Ranko, I swear. This one’s the real deal. I think he’s killing women. New ones come to him twice a week, but no one ever sees them leave. They come in, they don’t come out. I’m worried. Why are you looking at me like that? Here, you can be white this time.”
In his former life, Kozma was a policeman. During his career he sat in an office, a pencil pusher. Maybe that was the problem: too much paperwork, too few actual cases.
So his retirement hobby was quite different than mine. He wanted to solve a case for once in his life, to see how it felt. That desire was stronger than any realistic possibility of him actually succeeding, and it was certainly against the law. Officially he did not represent any authority in any capacity anymore.
And he had already made some blunders. Because he reported their daughter to the cops, Gigi’s parents were even more unpleasant to us than she was, if that’s possible. Kozma’s former colleagues had to warn him on several occasions, and they even threatened me. They asked what I was doing the whole day instead of keeping him on a short leash.
But Kozma was my best friend and my first neighbor. You don’t say no to either.
After our second chess game — Kozma won both — I reluctantly looked up when Kozma whispered, “Here he comes.”
He pointed to a balcony on the fourth floor where a pale young man wearing John Lennon glasses stood. He scowled at the yard below, his gaze not reaching our park, flicked a cigarette butt into the air, and went back inside.
“What do you say?” Kozma asked.
“He doesn’t look like trouble, if that’s what you mean. Or crazy. If you’re so sure, why don’t you report him?”
“He could be innocent.”
“Ah. You’re not so sure then.”
Kozma smiled. “But what if the police don’t find anything? He’ll become cautious, and then they’ll never catch him.”
“How do you even know women don’t leave his apartment? They might just sleep over and leave later.”
He made a circle around his eye with his thumb and index finger.
“You look through a spyhole? The whole night? You’re crazy, not him.” I shook my head. “What do you think he does with them if they don’t come out?”
He started sawing his forearm with the side of his palm.
“And stuffs their arms and legs into suitcases? C’mon! How come no one sees him removing the suitcases?”
“From now on we’ll be watching for that too. That’s why I need you.”
Glancing impatiently down at the board, I noticed Kozma’s rare oversight. I had an open passage to his queen, and after that his king was for the taking too.
“So, you have a plan?” I asked, mostly to divert his attention, and moved my knight. He seemed not to notice the threat since he responded with a pawn. His queen was mine.
“A new one is coming tonight, first time this week.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Speaking of which, we have to go. I’m taking the first shift.”
He stood up and started packing away the pieces, and with them the triumph within my reach. I sadly watched him close the wooden box and put it under his arm. He marched off not bothering to check if I followed.
I did follow. What else could I do?
We went around the building to the front entrance. We both lived on the ground floor, my apartment next to his.
In front of the neighboring entrance, virtually another building merging with ours through a double wall, there was a black limousine waiting, blocking us and cars from both directions. A robust, gray-haired man in a long coat exited the vehicle and hurriedly entered the next building. The limousine waited for one of the other cars to move and only then backed out of the street. Our neighbor Mira was sitting on a bench across the street smoking a cigarette. I asked her what was going on.
“Some big shot,” she whispered. “Goes to see the cardiologist on the fourth floor.”
“I know him,” Kozma said. “The loudmouth threatening everyone in Parliament.”
I didn’t really know what he was referring to because I didn’t read the newspaper, but it was enough information for me. A cardiologist on the fourth floor of a building without an elevator was quite the joke. A patient was prepped for the exam before even reaching the doctor.