Belgrade Noir

I cautiously made my way up to them and opened my mouth to introduce myself, but Hajji Pešić just tapped ash from her long cigarette into the ashtray and said, “Sit, Malavrazić.”

I planted my ass on the chair across from her.

“Drink?” she asked.

“Sure.”

As my double vinjak arrived, she decided to introduce the old woman: “This is my mother, Jefimija Dugalić.”

“A pleasure, madam,” I said.

She smiled cynically at that. Mean old hag.

“You look like him,” said Hajji Pešić.

“Like who?”

“Your grandfather.”

“You knew him?”

“No. But my mother did.”

The old lady nodded.

“That’s… nice.” I didn’t know what else to say.

Hajji Pešić pushed a folder across the table to me. It was old, battered, and on the front was written, Police Administration Belgrade.

I opened it. In it were some papers and black-and-white photographs of a handsome man in a three-piece suit, with a mustache like Clark Gable’s. Taken a long time ago, before World War I. There was an obituary between the papers with the name Aćim Dugalić. The name didn’t ring a bell.

“That’s my grandfather,” said Hajji Pešić, as though reading my thoughts. “My mother’s father.”

“Uh-huh…” I shook my head, not understanding.

“He died — well, actually, he was killed — almost a hundred years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

The old lady nodded her head.

I closed the folder, sipped some vinjak. I still had no idea what was going on.

“You have the autopsy report there too,” Hajji Pešić explained, waving away smoke. “The report from the head inspector who led the case…”

“Who cares about these reports after a hundred years?”

“I do, and so does my mother. The killer was never found.”

“And you’d like me to find him?”

“If you can…”

“Maybe I could, if you could get me a time machine.”

The old lady laughed.

“You can help us without that.”

“Me? But why me?”

“Did you see the name of the inspector who led the investigation?”

I opened the folder again, glanced down at the piece of yellowed paper. At the bottom was clearly written: Arsenije Malavrazić. My grandfather.

“So…?” said Hajji Pešić.

I looked at the old lady. Hey eyes shined with anticipation mixed with boundless sadness. I was suddenly reminded of the schnauzer that had died on me last year. Ah, what a dog…

“We’ll pay you, of course. How much?”

“Fifty euros a day, plus expenses.”

“Expenses meaning vinjak

, cigarettes, and taxis, I suppose?”

“Tools of the trade.”

She opened her expensive bag and handed me an envelope. Inside was more than was needed, but I didn’t protest.

“Get yourself a new shirt,” she said, and stood.

She pushed her mother to the door with the waiter’s help. The old lady waved as they moved her down the ramp at the doors.

I ordered another vinjak and looked through the folder again. Aćim Dugalić in black-and-white photographs, smiling and long dead, the report from my grandfather that I’d study in detail later, the obit that didn’t say much except that he’d died young, not even twenty-five years old…

Then I looked at the autopsy report. Poor Aćim had had a spectacular death: he had been beheaded. At the bottom was written the name of the doctor who had examined the body: Dr. Edward Ryan, an American.

My old man had been a cop, working in the criminal justice department with the Belgrade police. When he retired, he turned to one thing exclusively: making rakija. But strangely, he never drank it. He left that to me. I knew why: when you grow up watching your own dad destroyed by drink, you get to thinking that you’ll never have a drop of the stuff yourself.

I found my father in the backyard, in front of the still. The house he rented was a few streets down from the Gusan.

My grandfather had also been an inspector. His mentor had been Tasa Milenković, the first school-trained Serbian policeman. He worked before and after the war in the Glavnjača.

It had been a happy spot. The Glavnjača was the nickname for the administrative building of the Belgrade police, but it was also the infamous prison where criminals and political prisoners were housed. Between the first and second world wars, it had been packed with Communists in particular. The police, like today, had been corrupt and in the pockets of criminals and politicians, so they served mainly as the cudgel of state authority and a good litmus test to show what condition the country was in. In the Glavnjača people were interrogated, tortured, and then killed. My grandfather himself had taken part in an incident where two inmates had barricaded themselves in a room with ammunition. They’d tried to negotiate with the city governor. Instead of negotiations, they got shot.