The dream I had that night left me flabbergasted. It was such a crazy thing that I couldn’t even believe my mind imagined it in the first place. I dreamed that Lincoln had come to our time and zealously begged the President of the United States to teach him how to play the saxophone. Right in front of the President, the guest from David Letterman’s show—the lady who looked like an old potato—kneeled, taking his socks off while giving him a surprisingly skillful blowjob with a reverent expression on her face.

Near the two, I saw Jefferson hanging around with a scruffy draft of the Constitution in his hands. He looked confused and desperate, trying to figure out which amendment to take out so he could add a new one, according to which the President was obliged to receive at least four blowjobs from his subordinates every single day. The goal was to achieve full transparency on the matter, eliminate potential public scandals, and, at the same time, allow the head of state to attend to his duties completely satisfied and undistracted by sexual tension.

The only problem was that the volume was already full, and all the amendments were so relentlessly referring to one another—sometimes mutually exclusive—that it was simply impossible to add anything else. Eventually, Jefferson found himself at his wit’s end and scribbled the new amendment on a ragged piece of paper, attaching it to the last page of the volume with a giant yellow paperclip. The journalists immediately nicknamed the text “Jefferson’s loose amendment” and took turns shaking his hand and taking pictures of him embracing the United States Constitution in various poses.

Then I dreamed of something even wilder than this.

I was at the head of a vast, raging wildfire. It was hot—terribly hot! At some point, the severe flames surrounded me from all sides, and I was caught in a trap. Behind my back was the Great Wall of China, which I had just built singlehandedly, hoping to protect myself from the insidious Mongols. Unfortunately, though, their barbarous warriors kept a close eye on me the whole time and set the steppes north of Hetao on fire. As a result, the entire valley of the Huang He River was burning now, with black, pungent clouds of smoke rising in the sky and advancing north—all the way to Genghis Khan’s yurt. Every morning, he came out of it yawning; he stretched and sniffed the air, and if the smoke wasn’t enough, he sent his leather-clothed men to flame the fire with giant bellows made of ram hide. He had just announced his brand-new doctrine called “Asia is for Asians,” and all his subjects and voters were very excited about it despite the horrendous ecological and war crimes their hordes were doing in northern Cathay. Eventually, the fire closed in on me, wedged me in a narrow gully, and burned the tip of my nose.

I nervously woke up.

My nose was still burning, which wasn’t a good sign. I worriedly rolled my eyes, focusing them on its tip, but I saw no smoke or flames. It just felt hot. I blinked a couple of times and looked around. The sun was peeking from behind the edge of the window frame, and its light was crawling furtively toward my face with the insidious intention of blinding me. For now, though, only my nose was in danger.

I drowsily turned around and tried to go back to sleep. It was nearly September, but the hellish heat continued in full swing, with no relief appearing on the horizon. I never managed to doze off after that. I turned and tossed in bed for about half an hour, and in the end, I got up.

Lara was missing again, and this time, I wasn’t surprised at all. However, as promised, she had sprinkled sugar on the bloodstain, although I had no idea where she got that from. I went onto the balcony, still having a bad feeling about last night’s accident, but when I looked down over the railing, I didn’t see any trace of the dead bellhop in any of the dumpsters. They were all clean, and the sunshine reflected brightly off their metal bodies.

I stepped back inside and looked through the pile of dirty shirts and t-shirts for a relatively clean piece of clothing, and when I found something that wasn’t scandalously foul, I put it on, happy and satisfied that my little trick still worked. Then I put on my pants, brushed them clean of the dust, straightened my collar, and left the room. I climbed down the stairs, deliberately avoiding the elevator.

Down in the lobby—so much closer to the ground—it seemed at least four times hotter than upstairs. I had the feeling I was in limbo! The heat was devastating, and I could feel the sizzling hot air coming from the outside, making me want to run back to my room, fill the bathtub with cold water, and submerge in it until midnight. Obviously, Sandra had done just that because she was nowhere in sight. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t seen her around for a while.

Despite everything, I naively headed toward the exit, and when I walked out, I immediately realized the magnitude of my stupidity. If it felt like limbo inside, outside was true hell! Nowhere could I see any living creature except for a couple of mentally deranged pigeons, wandering exhausted on the sidewalk like lost phoenixes, who looked for a shadowy place to burn down in peace.

I braced myself and ran to the Ford but decided to act wisely now. I didn’t hop in right away but opened the front doors and waited a couple of minutes for the inside of the car to cool down. Unfortunately, staying in the open sun wasn’t wise either. Not more than thirty seconds later, after pacing nervously around and probably looking too much like the crazy birds, I impatiently placed my butt in the front seat.

I momentarily felt the urge to grab my gun and blow my head off. Even in hell, I believed, the temperature would be far more agreeable than inside my car. The only problem was that my iron friend wouldn’t do such a horrible thing to me. He would surely misfire, so there was no point in trying him.

Instead of this, I opened my mouth as widely as I could, put my asbestos mitts on, and drove down the street as quickly as possible. There were only two places in the city where I could escape the terrible heat. One was the milk bar near my apartment building, and the other was the Twelfth Precinct with its cool and relaxing toilets. I chose to visit the second place because I was afraid if Lara appeared at some point, she would reject what I had in mind. Now was the right time to do it!

Exactly twenty minutes and seventeen seconds later, after a wild race against the cruel and heartless death galloping after me, I made it to the police station and halted my vehicle at the curb, my tires screeching with what little rubber they still had. I felt as if I had just won the Paris Dakar. When I jumped outside, I could hardly believe I was still breathing and didn’t even bother to close the car door because no one would be able to get the Ford moving in this weather.

After that, I ran to the building, stooping as if thousands of meteorites were falling from the sky, wildly rushed inside, and zipped behind the receptionist’s back, who had just taken on the task of patting down two schoolboys for explosives. The guy didn’t even know what flashed for a second beside him! He turned around to see, but it was in the wrong direction, and after that, it was too late—I was already gone.

I impatiently jumped into the elevator, hyperventilating from the sharp temperature change, and it wasn’t until I reached the second floor that I could finally close my mouth. I literally sweated a dam lake’s worth of sweat, and when I started knocking on Inspector Greensboro’s door, I felt as if I had come out of the shower without toweling off. At some point, even the door became wet because of me! Maybe that was why I just pushed it open and stepped inside without wasting more time.

Inside the office, the familiar furniture style I remembered from my previous visit here met me—the fancy oak desk, the pretentious executive leather chair resembling a king’s throne, and the numerous portraits of political celebrities hanging on the walls as if the people working here needed a constant reminder that we were in the middle of the Cold War. I recognized Kissinger, Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the latest Dalai Lama—the rest were unknown to me.

I shyly looked around myself. There was no evidence that Greensboro was at work. It was dark in the room because the blinds were almost closed, and I wondered what to do. It probably wouldn’t be very nice of me if I started ransacking the magnificent desk without asking its owner for permission, but on the other hand, I was presented with the rare opportunity to look at the documents he kept inside. Maybe I could find my report somewhere in the drawers, which Greensboro claimed he didn’t have, but I didn’t believe him. In any case, I hoped at least to take a better look at my contract again because I desperately wanted to reexamine the part with the penalty clauses.

I hesitated briefly, then rolled up my sleeves and started searching. I was racing against time because there was a lot of bullshit in the drawers that didn’t concern me. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to give up. I just had to recollect at least part of the mysterious events in my life during the past few weeks because otherwise, I would never be able to close my damn case.

Unfortunately, after ten minutes of hideous rummaging through documents, I found nothing worth my attention. I looked around again, desperate, but then suddenly remembered that the previous time, Greensboro’s copy of the contract didn’t actually come from his desk but from his secretary’s. So it was probably still there—in the secret room where the inspector zealously kept his peculiar office nymph hidden.

I slowly turned to look at the door and then back at the desk, where the big, red button glowed alarmingly in the semi-darkness. The drawers were still open, and the mess inside was horrendous! It all looked like a stationary store after heavy bombardment with the full ammunition load of a B-52. There was no reasonable chance I could ever put the documents in order, even if I spent ten years, arranging things! Everything in Greensboro’s life had its strictly reserved place, so his secretary was probably the only person who could accomplish such an ambitious task. On the other hand, if I left the mess and just pushed the button, and the inspector turned out to be banging his office beauty in her room, the situation would become even more embarrassing!

Since I didn’t want to sneak out of there empty-handed, despite the risk, I hastily shoved all the documents inside and closed the drawers, trying to make a plan on how to distract the inspector’s attention from the disarray if such a need emerged. My plan mainly relied on performing magic tricks and various stunts, and when I was ready with the details, I bravely pushed the red button.

I heard the familiar humming and the secret door cracked a bit. It made me shudder, anticipating something terrible to happen, like hell breaking loose and spilling over my poor head, but fortunately, everything was alright. Instead, the situation remained peaceful and eventless, and I thought delightedly, “What a wonderful surprise! I can’t believe, for once in my life, my luck worked!”

After that, I approached the door and recklessly pushed it open. The soft and gentle light from the only window in the premises fell on my face and allowed me to see an interior, which an industrious woman’s hand had taken care of, obviously. Everything in there was in pristine order, and compared to it, the inspector’s office now seemed to me like a pigsty. The problem was that I actually happened to be right about the banging. Inspector Greensboro was really quietly screwing his secretary on her desk. Well, he wasn’t precisely screwing her, but her skirt was twisted around her waist, and her blouse was almost undone, with one of her boobs out of it.

They both slowly turned their heads to look at me, and since we were clearly in the middle of a situation where I didn’t belong, their expressions were rather inquisitive. I stared at them, too, and although I desperately wanted to say something reasonable to explain my unreasonable presence here, I couldn’t find anything in my stupid head. So I just closed the door and walked back to the desk in the other room, embarrassed.

I sat in the visitor’s chair and patiently waited for Greensboro to come out and execute my death sentence. I thought he would rush inside right away, furious and foaming at the mouth; he would slap my face twice and call security, and they would throw me out his office window on the second floor. Nothing like that happened! Instead, I had to wait almost three minutes, sweating, before he appeared in the doorway, immaculately looking—wearing a buttoned-up shirt, a tie, and a jacket as if he had just returned from an audience with the queen of Great Britain. He walked to me and sat on the edge of his oak desk—a gesture rather too casual for his style, which probably indicated he was mad at me. Then he tapped his manicured fingernails on the desk surface.

I kept waiting patiently without saying anything because I was determined to see where the wind would blow before I talked. After a while, the inspector stood up and went to the window to let some light into the room. He adjusted the blinds so that the entire opposite wall was covered with flecks of sunlight, and a couple of them fell on Margaret Thatcher’s face, making it look like she had a piece of white duct tape on her upper lip. It very much resembled Hitler’s ubiquitous mustache.

“You look awful,” Greensboro remarked when he returned to me. This time, he sat on his “throne” with his back straight and his hands palm down on the desk like a freshman in a religious boarding school.

“Well, no. I feel wonderful!” I answered. “Never been better, actually. I’m just returning from hell, and down here on Earth, it looks like paradise to me!”

As far as I knew the guy, he probably wouldn’t mention anything about my unforgivable intrusion into his personal life, so I played possum and spared my excuses. I was totally right; he didn’t say a word about it.

“So, what brings you here so urgently?” he asked me instead.

“For a starter, not too much. It’s only a blackmail case, two kidnaps, and four murders.” I grabbed my Santa Claus bag and started taking out presents in an enviable arithmetic progression.

“Whew,” the inspector whistled, impressed. “I can see you haven’t wasted time with petty thefts or B&E! Wouldn’t you want to throw in some bombing assault or national treason?”

“Of course! But I prefer to keep these for later,” I grunted sullenly. “I’ll use the heavy stuff when the local police screw everything up, and I have no option but to turn to the federal authorities!”

He didn’t even bother to take offense at my words. Like everyone else in this country these days, he clearly thought he was doing his job just fine, and if something was wrong, the fault lay in the system. And since I was nobody, he didn’t even need to listen to my complaints.

“Okay, let’s take it easy then! Let’s start with the blackmail since you’ve got only one for now,” The cop suggested, ignoring my bad mood.

I shrugged and briefly filled him in on my latest discoveries. Naturally, in order to make things more exciting and eye-catching, I represented Lara’s disappearance as a kidnapping, too, and I also changed the crime scene and some other details when I described the bellhop’s murder. I just didn’t want to get involved in something nasty and write tons of statements right now. By the way, I only came as close as three murders—not four—but I was sure they would become at least four until Greensboro moved his ass to investigate them.

Just as I anticipated, the inspector wasn’t too impressed with my little and not very punctual report, although I couldn’t really tell for sure. He wasn’t the kind of person who would show any emotion, even if someone raped and killed his favorite grandmother and sent her severed head to his house with a Christmas card in her mouth.

“I knew you wouldn’t think twice when you start mixing yourself up in things,” he assured me when I stopped talking. “And I also knew you wouldn’t bother yourself with insignificant and banal details like hard proofs.”

“Well, if you make an effort to gig in at the situation at Villa Nueva, you might find some yourself,” I snapped, annoyed. “What do you expect me to do? Cross a few cartridge belts on my chest and go for the entire Vietnamese army alone?”

“No, but you do realize I could not search people’s houses without a warrant or at least strong signs suggesting that a person is being injured at that particular moment, right? And if I have no reason to suspect anything and no proof, I have nothing to convince the judge to issue a warrant for me!”

“But you can, at least, send two agents to snoop around the mansion, I guess,” I replied grimly. “I’m pretty sure they’ll see some very interesting things there. And if you make them drop by the landfill, too, you might even find a few corpses and a bunch of reasons to suspect everything! I don’t think you’d need a warrant for these.”

“If I only had enough people to send them everywhere you go and search every place you visit!” Greensboro sighed wearily. “Besides, even if we find dead bodies in the landfill, how do you suggest connecting them to the DEA’s chief? I think you’re aware I just cannot attach every murder in this country to Kurvallo! Besides, even if I had a reason to believe something was wrong with the Drug Enforcement Administration, I’d have to send the clues to the Internal Affairs Bureau and not investigate myself. I’m just not allowed to!”

It was true, by the way. I knew that perfectly, and I didn’t even cherish hope Greensboro would arrest the man. I just wanted to make some noise about it and provoke Kurvallo or Tanaka to take the wrong step. And if I managed to learn anything about Sonya in the process, so much the better!

Right then, I heard some noise to my right, and the door to the secretary’s room quietly opened again. The mermaid with arms as slim and finely shaped as fancy French ballpoint pens and a figure resembling an old-fashioned typewriter came out of there. To my surprise, she carried a tray with two cups of tea and a sugar bowl, even though I hadn’t asked for anything like that, and I didn’t even like tea. She came to us and silently put one of the cups in front of her boss and the other in front of me.

Interestingly enough, the mermaid didn’t look embarrassed by the awkward situation I caught her in a couple of minutes ago, and maybe that’s why—since I had already seen her boobs—she hadn’t buttoned up her shirt all the way. When she leaned over to put my cup on the desk, her shirt neck opened slightly, and it allowed me to see part of her right breast with the nipple. After that, the secretary shot a quick glance at me, and just for a moment, a tiny speck of dust “got into” her left eye—the one that Greensboro couldn’t see—and it made her blink.

Then she disappeared back into her secret cave.

“So what have we got here so far?” The inspector tried to sum it up after his beauty was gone. “It’s two murders in the drug affair you investigate and another one, which might be connected to it, right? Unfortunately, we have no bodies, which is kind of unpleasant, but whatever. Apart from that, we have a possible kidnapping of a girl named Sonya, and we also have another girl who is just missing, but we think she might be kidnapped, too. The two victims are supposed to be held in the private residence of the DEA’s boss, but of course, we can’t be certain of that. At last, we got a blackmail attempt, although no one has made a formal complaint yet.”

I looked at him sourly without replying. As always, Inspector Greensboro’s “sharp” and “investigative” mind kept up with everything I was saying! The problem was that this time, he was totally right. I really couldn’t blame him for his lack of enthusiasm because I was just throwing presumptions at him with insufficient evidence to support them.

“You’ll have to write a novel’s worth of statements if all these crimes happen to be true. You know that, right? You’ll be a witness!” the cop remarked thoughtfully after a few seconds.

I nodded apathetically.

“Of course. I’ll write a bible if you want, but I’m afraid that while we waste time here with red tape, all the clues in Villa Nueva and Eternity will be gone, and with them, the girls too!”

“That is if the girls are even there!” He reminded me dryly. “The way I see it, you can’t be sure about that.”

I didn’t reply again. I didn’t even know why I had come here in the first place. The guy was right. He had no reason to ask for a warrant, and even if he had a reason, why would he stick his neck out and put his career at risk for a failed PI like myself and two redneck chicks from the Midwest? After all, the fucking DEA chief was involved here, not some stationmaster in a godforsaken prairie town!

In fact, I could understand the inspector’s reluctance to act, and I even started to like him to a point. The man was civil, at least. He had every right to throw me out of this place after everything I had done to him, especially after my impudent breaking into his office and poking my nose into his love affairs. In this train of thought, I would have probably crushed his skull with a blunt object if our roles were reversed.

“Okay, I’ll send a few officers here and there,” Greensboro unexpectedly agreed after a short pause. “We’ll see what comes out of it. You shouldn’t hold your breath, though! If things are really what you’re saying they are, then there’s not much chance for an active investigation.”

“I won’t hold my breath. Don’t worry!” I promised dejectedly. “I’m famous for my pessimism all the way to China and back, and I’d rather expect to bear the brunt eventually.”

“And about Villa Nueva,” the cop ignored my ironic attempt. “I’d suggest you stay away from this, at least for now. Okay? You can’t prove anything, and the only thing you’ll achieve is bringing yourself severe trouble. Believe me, this is well beyond you or me!”

I thanked him and stood up to go. Again, I felt like a fucking movie character—lately, it was happening quite too often! This time, I was in the role of Batman, who fought alone against all the villains in the world and even the police. The only difference was that, unlike Batman, I didn’t give a damn about the fucking system—whether it was the most advanced democracy in the world or not, whether it needed change, or anything else. I was just neck-deep in shit and couldn’t give up anymore. So maybe I was more like the catcher in the rye then—desperate, lonely and unable to understand the world I lived in.

I turned around and left the office, highly depressed. As I closed the door behind me, I suddenly heard a typewriter rattling in the secretary’s room, but the noise it made seemed rather weird—distinctive and excessively rhythmical, almost resembling Morse code. I wondered whether it was supposed to mean something. Unfortunately, I had never learned telegraphy, so the mystery remained unresolved. I had to make my peace only with my sexual fantasies, which quickly faded away as I walked down the corridor.

On the ground floor, the weather hadn’t changed much. The heat that rushed through the main entrance was still devastating, and I realized I would have to experience the same temperature shock as when I arrived—only it would be reversed this time. When I spotted my Ford through the window, it almost seemed to levitate above the ground, as if the pocket of hot air beneath the car supported it and prevented it from touching the asphalt. Even the receptionist in the reception booth was so dazed that instead of wondering how I had entered unnoticed, he only gave me a military salute like I were a doomed gladiator destined to meet his death in mortal combat with the terrible Cyclopes.

I casually waved my hand at him and walked outside, stepping into hell again. I hopped into the vehicle, but when I sat in the front seat, the hot leather immediately burned two holes in my pants, causing huge blisters to emerge on my buttocks. They hurt terribly, but at least they made my journey a little bit easier after that by insulating me from the seat. I only had to keep my balance while bouncing up and down on them, and everything else was fine. I encountered a small problem while waiting at traffic lights because the fluid in the blisters started boiling, but I knew my problem would be solved soon enough when I reached the milk bar in my neighborhood and sat in a bucket full of ice cream.

Sadly enough, my plans for relief turned out to be just pipe dreams. The establishment was closed. Its roller shutters were down, and there were no signs of life inside, which surprised me a lot because it always worked. It was strange indeed, but only until the moment when I noticed a large group of people right across the street.

I made a U-turn and cautiously approached the men to see what was going on, but when I pulled up at the curbside, my ragged brake pads whined so horribly that it came across as if a hundred-year-old locomotive at full speed was trying to stop. Everyone in the group immediately turned to look at me, which meant half a dozen cops and two plain-clothes guys. They were all gathered around a dumpster, where a pair of legs stuck out sinisterly.

I shuddered involuntarily when I saw the officers and thought that the bellhop from my hotel had somehow turned up here by some minimal yet achievable chance. I suddenly wanted to stomp on the gas and drive away—tires screeching and everything else—but it was too late. I had already attracted everybody’s attention in the stupidest way possible.

With a trembling body and heaviness in my stomach, I stepped out of the Ford, desperately trying to dig a few foreign words out of my mind and pretend I was a lost European tourist. I had two problems, though. I couldn’t find anything nor decide what sight I was looking for. This city was clearly no fucking New York or San Fran, and there was nothing to see but garbage cans and crime scenes, which, of course, weren’t worth seeing.

Soon, I realized I was actually making things worse and acting guilty without committing any crime. The legs just couldn’t belong to the dead bellhop. The guy inside the dumpster was barefoot, and his feet were so dirty that nobody would let such a man anywhere near a hotel. His shoes were thrown outside on the pavement, and I could safely bet they had survived both the First and Second World Wars because they had almost no toe boxes left. Besides, the stranger’s pants could hardly be called pants without an enormous amount of imagination, and I was sure the rest of his garments included a long brown leather coat with holes in it and an old, beaten tin basin.

Far more confident now, I took a few more steps and walked straight to one of the plain-clothes guys. He looked rather unappealing—pretty much like the grocer in your local grocery shop. He was short, baldheaded, with a round face, a round figure, and puffy, round hands with round knuckles. The man wore a cheap blue suit and smiled somewhat grotesquely against the background of the sticking legs behind him. He also had a strange necklace made of human mini-skeletons. The dude looked at me, intrigued when I approached him.

“What’s going on here?” I asked him rudely as if I were the master of all corpses in this city and had the right to know everything about them at any moment.

“Nothing. It’s just a bum,” the little man with the weird necklace answered. “Are you from Forensics?”

“No. I’m Inspector Mellrow from Bad Guys Division!” I barked and pompously looked around the scene.

He slowly examined me from head to toe.

“You don’t look too bad to me,” he announced after a while.

“My friendly appearance is deceptive,” I roared, trying to impress him. “But I have a vicious mind to compensate for!”

At this exact moment, one of the unformed cops came to me, visibly annoyed, and he wanted to know who the fuck I was and what the hell I was doing there. The bastard was heavyset, with fists like cannon balls, so I hesitated whether it was worth pulling the same trick again.

“This is Inspector Mellrow from the Rat Squad.” My new friend with the necklace unexpectedly introduced me, patting my back. His colleague suddenly got confused and mumbled something to excuse himself, after which he quickly scrammed. He shot me a disdainful look before he left, though. Following that, I was good to go in my new official role as a bad guy, and I was free to keep poking my nose around, undisturbed.

After a while, the unappealing little man, who was obviously a forensic expert, authoritatively started giving orders to the uniformed cops, and they—reluctant as hell—pulled the corpse out of the dumpster. The entire time, I was getting in their way while giving myself airs like a much-hated figure in the police hierarchy who never got tired of getting on others’ backs.

Eventually, the victim was sprawled on the hot pavement, and I was able to identify him with certainty. He was my old friend from the milk bar. Poor guy! His beard had grown twice as long as when I saw him the last time, and it was too long even then! Besides, his face and neck were smeared with something that looked pretty much like ice cream—a strawberry and blueberry with walnuts and caramel, I gathered.

“How on earth did he die?” I exclaimed grimly, without addressing anyone in particular.

The short baldy, who had already kneeled down to the body and taken on the task of examining it, didn’t react at first.

“He was beaten to death just like that!” After a while, the expert informed me, snapping his fingers to illustrate his words. “There are horrible bruises all over his body and lots of internal hemorrhages. He also has a pretty severe skull fracture, which is the most probable reason for his tragic end. And yet, the rest of his skeleton looks quite good; I think I’ll keep it! These days, it’s so rare to find corpses that no one claims, and this one here looks like it!”

I stared at him, shocked, and wondered what the hell he wanted to do with my old friend’s bones. Maybe he had an entire collection at home and lovingly rearranged them every Sunday, or perhaps he had found a way to shrink them, and after varnishing them, he used them to complete his necklace. Anyway, I didn’t really want to know.

“It’s too early to determine the exact hour of death,” the weirdo kept explaining to me, still working. “It’s hard to tell because the scorching weather messes with the natural body cooling. If I judge by rigor mortis and lividity, though, I’d say he died between four and five hours ago.”

“And what is your conclusion about the murderer’s profile?” I thoughtfully asked, even though I had no doubts about it. “I bet they killed him for a stupid reason!”

“It’s too early to tell this one, too,” the expert confidently assured me. “Until the chemical and microbiological examinations of the organs and tissues are made, we’re in the dark. First, we have to determine the exact cause of death, and then we can look for motives. If there is a murderer with motives at all, I mean!”

“But you just said the victim had a severe skull fracture, didn’t you?” I looked at him, surprised.

The guy looked back at me condescendingly as if such a terrible injury didn’t mean shit and the victim could have easily done this to himself on purpose.

“What about the ice cream all over his face then? Doesn’t that mean he had a fight with someone in the area?” I cautiously suggested and turned my head to take a meaningful look at the nearby milk bar, just in case.

The man of authority in the field of death casually followed my eyes and then smirked.

“You guys in Internal Affairs are just killing me!” He smiled after a moment. “You always assume everything is so goddamn easy, and the suspect is right under your nose. In this case, I guess you’d go to the coffee shop, line up all the right-handed men you find inside, check if anyone’s fingers have traces of ice cream on them, and boom! You’ve got yourself a murderer.”

“Why does the offender have to be right-handed?” I wanted to know, surprised, as I watched the guy cut the bum’s fingernails and put the pieces in a small baggie. At the same time, one of the cops drew a chalk outline around the dead body as if they had found it in this exact position.

“Well, it’s because of the fracture on his skull! It’s on the left side, which implies the murderer was right-handed,” the little man explained to me curtly.

“But what if the victim wore a helmet or something else serving a similar purpose, and the injury happened after the assault?” I speculated, not entirely satisfied with his train of thought.

The expert stopped his work for a second and looked at me, puzzled.

“If the victim wore a helmet, then such a victim would most probably survive the blow and retaliate, which would have made the situation slightly different from what it is now.”

“But if the perpetrator used an unconventional weapon, it would actually fight the presumption of his right-handedness, wouldn’t it?” I didn’t give up on complicating the murder puzzle further and further.

“What unconventional weapon? Like black magic?”

“No! More like a… small chair or something. In this case, the helmet would be enough to neutralize the blow, and there would be no skull fracture, but the victim might reel to the other side and hit his head on something else. It would make you wrong about the right-handed murderer!”

The forensic expert stared at me probingly.

“Was it actually you who killed this guy?” He suddenly pierced his small eyes into mine, trying to find the answer even without my confession.

“Of course not!” I was quick to dispel his suspicions. “I’m just watching too many detective movies, is all!”

The man shook his head meaningfully as if a detective who watched detective movies sounded disgustingly perverse to him, and he started arranging the clues he had gathered so far on the pavement beside the corpse.

I hung around a bit more, but since I clearly wasn’t going to help the investigation with my original ideas, I decided to walk away discreetly. The bum’s death wasn’t connected to my case anyway, and besides, I had already attracted too much attention to myself.

Before I left, though, I sneaked to the dumpster to see if the tin basin was still inside because I was afraid I had gone a little too far in reconstructing the crime scene and the forensic dude would put me on his list of suspects. The potty wasn’t there, but when I looked around, worried that someone might have taken an interest in what I did, I suddenly froze, alarmed.

I noticed a beat-up Chevrolet Impala—definitely older than my own Ford—parked at the curb only ten yards from us with its engine running. I had no idea how long it had been there or why, but the more disturbing thing was what I saw inside the car. I recognized my other old friends—the albino guys—talking to one of the cops who smoked by the driver’s door. I was slightly behind their backs, so none of them couldn’t see me.

I shivered, uncertain. On the one hand, it was a rare opportunity for me to have a chat with the bastards at last and ask them what the hell they wanted from me, but on the other, I knew they would probably give me some bullshit and never tell me what they were really up to. I would only give myself away and make them more careful, so perhaps it would be better if I followed them instead. I felt pretty much like a bum who had found something exciting in the trash, which was too heavy to take with him, but at the same time, he didn’t want to leave it, and now he didn’t know what to do. After a few seconds, the guys in the Chevy ended their conversation, the driver kicked the car into gear, and the vehicle peeled out surprisingly fast for a hopeless wreck like theirs.

It was only then that I finally recovered from my indecisiveness. I quickly rushed toward my car, but I did it so recklessly that I tripped on the dead body at my feet and fell, almost embracing it. I literally drove my right knee into the corpse’s chest, and my left elbow jabbed into his throat in a seeming attempt to kill the guy again. All the cops goggled their eyes, flabbergasted, as they watched a supposed police inspector—in whose role I still was—destroying evidence and covering up the tracks of the murderer by causing further damage to the victim. I was fortunate that the forensic master had gone somewhere at this moment because he would have had a heart attack if he hadn’t. After I pulled myself together, I nervously jumped to my feet and ran toward my car, hopping inside.

Unfortunately, it was too late. The albino guys were already too far, turning around the corner a few blocks from me. Their clunker demonstrated clearly that either we lived in a mirrored universe where older cars were faster and more agile than the others, or the physical laws in our world simply had a day off. My Ford just looked at me, disappointed and upset. After so many impossible races in the past few weeks, with so many monsters like Porsche or Ferrari, now was the time for my beauty to shine, but alas! The street ahead was utterly empty and boring now.

Since I had nothing else to do here, I slowly drove the car toward my place, but we were both in a bad mood. During the entire ride, the Ford huffed and complained every time I pressed the gas pedal or the brake, and its nearly tireless, round wheels rattled on the asphalt almost as much as if they were triangular. In such an oppressive atmosphere, we reached my apartment building one minute and thirty-two seconds later, and when I climbed up the stairs, my relentless radiator met me, promising me an even more oppressive afternoon and a horrible and suffocating night after that.

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