Copenhagen Noir

think she’s disappeared? Have you talked to her boss? Her family?” I stand up and walk out in the middle of this conversation. I call the teacher’s college that, according to Kirsten, she attends. They haven’t seen her in six weeks and have been wondering why she hasn’t called in sick. They wrote to the address on Turesensgade but Lucille hasn’t contacted them. They have also tried her cell phone. “I’m glad you called,” the secretary says, “I didn’t know who to contact. Lucille didn’t specify a contact person on her information card. Are you her father?” I hesitate a moment. “Yes,” I lie, “I’m her father.”

I rest for a while at the hotel. It’s already twilight. Deep-blue late afternoon. I close my eyes and feel a pang of homesickness. See Brooklyn in my head, the corner of Flatbush and Bergen where I live in a small, badly heated apartment. The eternal noise of traffic, howling ambulances, horns, and shouting, the rumble of underground trains. Suddenly I miss Joe, who serves me coffee and asks about my bronchitis every morning when I sit down in my regular window seat at his diner. The subway trip to the West Village, to the modest office where I write my mediocre poems, job applications, and the few ad copy assignments I get that put bread on the table; the sounds, smells, the people I see every day and make polite conversation with, all the strange faces gliding past me on the street for the first and only time. The sea of humanity, the loneliness. But also that sense of being a part of something, of belonging. That’s my life. A beer at the bar when the Giants are on TV. The weekly stroll to the laundromat. Mrs. Rabinowitz, my next-door neighbor, who once tried to get me in the sack when we were both younger, and who has now focused all her love on a small fat dog named Ozzie, whose barking keeps me up half the night. I see her painted face, her blinking, near-sighted eyes: “How are you today, Mr. Thomsen? Going out?” It occurs to me that she must have Russian blood with that name, a thought that makes me sit up with a start because now I see Dmitrij in my mind’s eye, strangling Lucille with his bare hands, the longhair and the suntanned guy in the background; it looks like they’re in a summer house, I glimpse an orchard and a gray sea in the distance. I get up, badly shaken, and reach for the bottle of gin. Shortly after, I hear the telephone ring, but I’m unable to speak. I read the display: Kirsten’s number, lit up in green.

Much later that night, stumbling out of Jagtstuen, a bar on Israels Plads where I’ve been drinking heavily for several hours and playing all the oldies on the jukebox, my first impulse is to wake Kirsten up. I want to kiss her. I want to touch her white, matte skin. Then I tell myself: No, no, don’t do it, don’t you dare do it. I manage to turn around and stagger down the hushed street toward the hotel. A rat scurries under a car. I fish around in my pockets for my cigarettes. It starts to rain, a light drizzle. Suddenly, a car roars up the street at high speed. I’m startled, automatically I step back. Whining brakes as it turns the corner at Turesensgade. The car is red. And slowly, through my foggy head, it dawns on me that it’s Dmitrij’s car. I try to get a grip on myself, to walk straight, I’m swaying from being so drunk. I hold onto a building and edge over to the corner. Back against the wall and carefully turn my head to see what’s going on. What’s going on is that Dmitrij and his dark- skinned helper are lifting something out of the trunk. It looks heavy. My heart skips a beat. Obviously they are in a rush, they act harried and nervous, constantly checking up and down the street. Dmitrij apparently tells his helper to hold the door; he lurches while carrying his heavy load into the hallway. The door slams. But his helper comes out again, they forgot to lock the car. He grabs something from the glove compartment. Holds it up, studies it intently for a moment. Dmitrij half-stifles his cry from an open hallway window: “Maks! Maks!” And then a bunch of Russian I don’t understand.

Maks puts the object in his pocket, and he whistles as he disappears into the building.

Silence. My head is buzzing. The rain is pouring down. I slide to a crouch and feel my stomach turn. Then I throw up and once more splatter myself. It takes me forever to stand up. After I finally find the hotel and my bed, I sleep in my clothes, a heavy, dreamless sleep. And wake up late Thursday morning with a remarkable headache and pain in my stomach. The usual thoughts: Where am I? Who am I?

So his name is Maks, the dark-skinned guy. That’s the first real thought I have after doubting if what I thought happened actually happened, being so wasted, and what did happen? Maksim, that’s what. I know that familial variation of the name from Brooklyn. Maksim. With the gun. I’m sure it was a gun he was staring at. Then I remember everything clearly. I stink of vomit. Oh God, I’d forgotten about that. I get up, take a shower, pick a clean shirt from the closet, find a plastic bag and stuff my dirty clothes inside. On my way out I drop it off at the reception desk to be washed.

After standing in the passageway on Turesensgade for almost two hours (freezing with a rumbling stomach), Dmitrij, Maks, and the suntanned man come outside and get in the red car. A Mazda. They take off and turn right at Nansensgade. I realize this is my chance. After a few minutes, and just as before, a mother with a baby on her arm opens the front door and I duck inside. It’s one o’clock. People are at work, the hallway is quiet. The door is not hard to open. I use my pocketknife. I’m inside.

Empty vodka and beer bottles, full ashtrays. A horribly sweet, nauseating smell. Bedroom, living room, a tiny bathroom. An unmade double bed and a few mattresses on the floor. In the kitchen, a pile of dirty dishes, banana flies, pizza boxes, overflowing trash bags. I walk through the hall. I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I look like hell. I notice a kid’s drawing behind me, in a frame. I turn around. Lucille, 9 years old, written in a clumsy child’s hand. The drawing is a house with father, mother, and girl standing in front on the steps. Beside the house, a big lion, mouth wide open. Meticulously drawn flowers and butterflies. A shining sun, a cloud, a bird. In the lower left-hand corner, an odd little troll-like figure with fangs and horns. The drawing hangs crooked on the wall. A lump rises in my throat. Into the living room again. Behind some stacked chairs is the bundle they carried up last night. Packed in black sacks and heavily taped. I take a deep breath and kneel down. I manage to carefully strip off the tape in one spot. I peel the plastic sacks apart from each other, a small opening appears. A dead hand. A woman’s hand, already stiff and blue. A cheap ring with a fake stone of green glass on her ring finger. But it’s not Lucille’s hand. The skin is dark. I try to think quickly and clearly. I hear my teeth chattering. It must be one of the girls from Sydhavnen. Maybe even the one Maks smacked around. The stench is now unbearable. My hands shake as I tape it back up again, glance behind me, and see that I left the pocketknife on the floor beside the sacks; I pick it up and get out of there. My back is wet from a cold sweat. I wrestle with the door. Drop the pocketknife, finally tumble down the stairs. Four black men are waiting in the hallway, one is sitting on the steps. He doesn’t move as I pass by. I feign indifference. Say hello. One of the men standing there nods, but his expression doesn’t change. And when I reach the street and hurry off toward Orstedsparken, the red Mazda returns. I crouch behind a street workers’ tent. The three Russians jump out of the car and are met by the four black men stepping out onto the street. Before I know it, the suntanned man has been knifed in the gut. He gets stabbed again and again. He slides down to the sidewalk. Dmitrij hammers his fist into the jaw of one of the four, Maks is fighting another one and kicks him in the groin, the man doubles over. No one makes a sound. Blood flows on the sidewalk, down into the gutter, the gray asphalt turns black. The knife is knocked out of the hand of the man who stabbed the Russian. Maks pulls out a gun. But Dmitrij gestures to him: don’t shoot. The knifer and his three partners jump into a black car with tinted windows and drive away. Dmitrij picks the knife up, pockets it, he and Maks carry the suntanned man, possibly dead, to the car and into the backseat, they take off-and they’re gone. Only now I hear myself, my breath, fluty, mournful, raspy. I’m paralyzed from fright and have no idea what to do to get myself up and out of here, away from this crime scene. I think: What would have happened if the four men had barged in on me in the apartment? I swallow. They could just as well have. Why didn’t they?

Later I sit on a doorstep and drink coffee, while doing my best to consume a pitifully dry sandwich, turkey and mayonnaise. All I think about now is the hand in the sack. The body lying by itself back in the apartment, what will they do with that? Why haven’t they gotten rid of it? The relief that it wasn’t Lucille doesn’t hit me until late in the day. At that moment I grieve for the unknown dead girl. And it is clear to me that it must be some sort of mafia war going on here. The Russians versus the Gambian slavers. The Russians are presumably fighting for a share of the market. And now they’ve shown their muscle by killing one of the enemy’s girls. That’s my conclusion. At midnight something finally shows up on Internet news. A paragraph about an unidentified white male, dumped on the ground outside the emergency room at Bispebjerg Hospital, catches my attention. He has suffered multiple stab wounds and is in critical condition. Police are searching for family or others who know him. They are also requesting any information, if anyone has seen or heard anything, that could aid in clearing up this case. A description of the man. I turn the computer off. Lie on the bed. The water pipes sigh. Someone nearby is listening to Lou Reed. And then I think: It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Lucille. I nod off; all night long I’m tormented by troubled dreams and I wake at daybreak with a start, my body tense and stiff. I get up and drink some water. Get dressed and go out in the sleeping, duskgray city. It’s now Friday.

Isabel was no beauty queen, but she had a warmth that was special. Something open, generous,