tires and drove away.
Ramses wiped the sweat off his forehead. He was panting. He pulled off his gloves, bent down to the lying thug and felt his neck for a pulse. Nothing. He tried the wrist. No pulse either.
“Fuck!” he said.
A halo of blood was spreading around the hulk’s head. The snow absorbed it like a sponge.
The night sky got cleared, and the moon pierced through the clouds. He heard the wailing of police car sirens in the distance. He remained standing there on the sidewalk, waiting for the police car to arrive. He took out his cell phone and dialed Steve’s number. The line was busy.
“Damn! Unbelievable!”
He looked around, seeking for help.
A young couple went out of the nightclub, but when they saw what had just happened, they hastened to walk away. No one wanted to spend their weekend in a police station office as a witness or to be pulled out of their jobs, later on, to act as a witness in court.
The blaring sirens were close now. The police car turned around the corner with flashing lights. Four cops jumped out of the car onto the crunchy snow, handguns at ready.
They shouted at him in Russian. He did not understand exactly what they were saying, but he was a good guesser. He stepped away from the dead body and put his hands up in the air.
It stopped snowing.
TWO
The journey to the police station took about fifteen minutes. It was a noisy environment. People walked to and fro, shouting and slamming doors.
A bald policeman with a bushy walrus mustache emptied Ramses’s pockets. They took off his shoelaces and jeans belt. Then they made him go through mug shots and took his fingerprints. No one spoke English here, and his driver’s license was the only piece of information they could use.
The Walrus filled in his police charge sheet, put it before Ramses and offered him a pen.
Ramses pushed the document aside. “Dude, I ain’t signing anything until I get it translated for me, all right? Into English.”
The Walrus lifted his hands in dismay.
Ramses spent the night in a “monkey house”, as they called holding cells in Russia. It smelled of stale urine, puke, and disinfectant. Half a dozen prisoners sat with him on a long wide bunk. Boozers, thieves, abusive husbands.
At the crack of dawn, the door opened, and the Walrus pointed at him and gestured to step out. He clamped his wrists with handcuffs.
The cell door closed with a bang. Ramses winced. “Oh, what a dump!”
He turned and saw a young blond woman in the corridor. A strict suit. Modest make-up. An impenetrable face.
“My name is Ksenia Romanova,” the woman said in English in a cold voice. “I’m going to act as your interpreter.”
“Morning to you, missy,” Ramses said, offering his hand. “God, I’m thrilled to have someone speaking English here. You’re a godsend.”
She ignored his extended hand and started walking. The men followed her. They threaded their way through the five-storied building into the interview room. It was spartan. A table. Three chairs. A lamp over the table. No windows.
An old man in uniform was reading documents at the table.
The interpreter said, “This is Alexander Petrovich Romanov, the police chief of this police station. He will also be the investigator of your case.”
Ramses nodded and sat at the opposite end of the table. He looked at the old man and leaned back in his chair. “Hey, wait a minute. His last name is Romanov, too? So it’s your dad who’s running this funny farm here, ain’t he?”
Ksenia Romanova frowned and turned to her father to interpret the American’s words. The man frowned, too. Even the way they frowned was the same. Father and daughter, no doubt.
“Okay, I got it.” Ramses sat upright. The handcuffs clattered against the table surface. “I’m in no position to open my mouth here. I’ll keep silence, no worries.”
“That would be better,” the Russian woman said with no trace of emotion. She opened her notepad and uncapped her pen.
They asked him all kinds of questions about his name, occupation, relatives, place of residence.
“Did you kill that young man?” the police chief said.
“That heavy mob tried to rob me,” Ramses said. “There were three of ‘em. Armed. That was self-defense on my part. This is my first visit to this country, and it’s been a frosty reception, I gotta admit.”
“The man you killed was a minor. He was under eighteen years.”
Ramses glanced at the interpreter. “Well, a minor on steroids, then. The guy was bigger than a bear. Anyway, they didn’t show me their IDs. Introduced me to their gun instead.”
“We called the hospital. He died this morning.”
“Oh, shit.” Ramses looked at his big hands, which had gotten him in trouble so many times.
“We have already notified your consulate. We’re expecting a US consulate official to arrive soon.”
They kept asking him loaded questions to verify his statement against the information they had received from the US consulate. Then he was led to a solitary confinement cell.
Monkish solitude is all I need now, he thought.
They brought him cabbage soup with bread. He ate it all up.
In a couple hours, he was in the police chief’s office. On the wall, there was a big clock with President Vladimir Putin’s portrait. Ksenia Romanova was ready with her notepad and pen like a straight-A student.
A fortyish man in a suit was sitting beside her. His hair was parted at one side. He folded his hands on his chest and spoke with the American accent, “Are they treating you here well, Mr. Campbell?”
“Can’t complain. Thank you, sir.”
“My name’s Peter Rambler. I’m a US consulate official. Hope you realize that your current situation here is a grave one.”
Ramses gave a nod. “Yes, sir.”
“Let me tell you,” Rambler went on, “that American citizens abroad cannot invoke the U.S. Constitution to defend a criminal prosecution brought by a foreign government.”
“I can see that, sir.”
“But, according to an international treaty, an American individual detained abroad has the right to consular notification and representation.” Rambler paused. “That’s why I am here.”
Rambler put on his glasses and opened his files. He was looking like Clark Kent now. “You’ve committed a murder. On the crime scene,
