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 smoke 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.”