Justine Saracen - The Sniper’s Kiss

She stared into space and seemed to be remembering.

“You feel a surge of power but also a little sadness because you know this man has no idea he is in the last moments of his life. How many more breaths will you allow him to take? You’re tempted to let him take another and another, because by now you’re half in love with him. But then you remember your duty and your homeland, and so, after a farewell in your thoughts, you fire. Your shot, your touch, is directly to his head. It’s a moment you never forget, and we have a name for it.”

“A name, for a kill? What’s that?”

“The sniper’s kiss.”

New York City, August 1942

“Patricide,” the detective said, sitting across from her at the interrogation table. He pronounced the word slowly, like something he’d never said before. “Don’t see much of that.”

Mia Kramer remained silent.

He leaned toward her, resting on his forearms. His rolled-up sleeves revealed an unpleasant amount of hair, and he gave off an odor of old sweat in spite of the fan that whirred from a shelf behind him. “The neighbors heard you fighting on the roof of the building. What were you doing up there anyhow?”

Mia sat back against her chair, seeking a maximum distance from him. “What do you think? It’s August, we live on the top floor of a tenement, and it’s like an oven inside. My father was drinking. We argued awhile, and I came downstairs again. I don’t know what happened after that.”

He slid a file toward him from the side of the table and opened it to typewritten papers stapled at one corner. He turned the pages leisurely, though obviously he’d already read them. “It says here you threatened him, that you hated him.”

“Everyone hated him. Everyone, except… that woman.” She looked away. “Wanting to do something is not the same as doing it.”

The detective read from the paper again. “‘That woman.’ You mean Agrafina Smerdjakov, otherwise known as Grushenka, the wife of Pavel Smerdjakov, the owner of the shop your father worked in. The neighbors across the alley heard the whole argument. They claim you called him a pig for screwing his boss’s wife, and in return, he said you were a pervert for doing the same thing.”

He glanced up, smirking. “I’ve always wondered how you girls do that, with no natural equipment.” He snickered. “But that must have made you pretty angry, knowing your old man was doing your girlfriend. Enough maybe to shove him off the roof.” He shook his head. “What you people get up to just amazes me. Like something out of a trashy novel.”

He clearly had an entire lurid scenario in his mind, half of which was correct, and she had no defense for it. She simply dropped her eyes. “Someone else was there. I heard my father talking as I went down the stairs.” It was a lie. She hadn’t heard anything.

“Who was he talking to?”

“I don’t know. Someone from the building, I suppose. Those neighbors who were listening so carefully, they must have heard him.”

The detective tapped the file with the back of his fingers. “Nope, nothing like that here.” He read from the report again. “So how come your father’s called Fyodor Kaminsky and you’re Mia Kramer?”

“His name was Kramer, too. They made us change it when we arrived. But when he got the job at Smerdjakov’s, he used his Russian name again. The customers liked that.”

“And Mia? That’s your real name?”

“It used to be Demetria Fyodorovna. They changed it at Ellis Island.”

“And your mother?”

“Has nothing to do with the case. She died ten years ago.” Mia waited for a reply, but he just stared and then stood up from the table. Another man stepped away from the wall where he’d been standing, and they conversed in undertones.

“Can I go now?” she asked.

“Yeah. Just stay away from married women.” The detective snorted, then strode with the other man out of the interrogation room.

A patrolman took her by the upper arm and led her along a corridor to a public room. Grushenka stood up from a bench as she entered. The pale Slavic face was as beautiful as ever, and the voluptuous body seemed to invite embrace. But Mia felt only disgust.

“I’m sorry, Mia,” Grushenka said, pressing her lovely full lips together in contrition. “I never meant to hurt you, or anyone.”

Mia walked past her without replying.

* * *

The tenement apartment was still sweltering in spite of the open windows. A paper bag full of trash that leaned against the wall added the odor of rotten vegetables. She lifted it gingerly by the damp bottom, laid it sideways on the shelf of the dumbwaiter, then reeled it down by its rope to the basement for the super to collect. Shutting the door cut off the fetid odor that rose through the shaft. As she turned away, the apartment door opened and Van came in.

“So, what the hell happened?” he asked, yanking open the icebox and snatching a bottle of beer. “I’ve just come back from the police station, and they said he fell from the roof. Or was pushed. Did you do it?”

“You expect me to say yes? I wasn’t there, so it could just as easily have been you. We both know how evil he was.”

He downed half of the bottle in several swallows, then wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “No, just a sanctimonious pig, a fanatic.”

“And you don’t call that evil?”

“No such thing as evil. We’re all animals who piss and fuck from the same part of our bodies. Some of us just do it in a more refined way.”

She grimaced. “You don’t have to be so vulgar, Van. If he wasn’t evil, why did you hate him so much?”

“Because he beat me once too often, especially after Mother died. And you know what he said when he beat me? That God smites us to drive out our impurities. That every blow hardens us and shapes us. Even after he started drinking and fucking every woman in sight, he was still whining remorse in front of his stupid icons.” He closed his eyes and finished the rest of the beer.

“So, why didn’t you kill him?” Mia took the bottle from his hand and set it with the other empties.

“I could have, and my conscience would have been clear. But I made a practical decision. If I killed him for being a pig, someone might kill me tomorrow for the same thing.” He reached into the icebox for a second beer.

“What a disgusting moral code.” She sat down, fanning herself with the newspaper.

“Okay, sorry. Well, whoever did it, I’m responsible for the funeral arrangements after the cops release the body. You’ll have to help me.”

“No, you’re going to have to do that yourself. Now that he’s out of the way, I’m getting the hell out of this place. I’m sick of nosy neighbors, of climbing up five flights every day, of having to stay on the roof every summer night until it cools. I’ve got a job offer in Washington.”

“Washington? What’s wrong with the accounting job you’ve got here?”

“Bookkeeping for a shoe store? No future in that. The government’s offering much better jobs for the war. This one’s with the Lend-Lease program.”

“Lend-Lease. What the hell’s that? Sounds like they’re loaning out lawnmowers.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t you listen to the radio? It’s war supplies. We make them and lend them to the Brits. Anyhow, I was going to announce it, but then this thing with Father came up. I’m leaving tomorrow. I need a few days to find a rooming house before I start work.”

He sat down, nonplussed. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Don’t worry. I’ll keep in touch, and the police will know where to find me. You can keep everything he left. The furniture, his filthy money, this cockroach-infested apartment. You’re the man of the house now. Enjoy it.”

Washington, DC, October 1943 (fourteen months later)

Mia glanced at the wall clock. Four thirty. Technically, she was supposed to be working, but she had nothing in her in-box, so she slid the new job application from her drawer and finished filling it out.

Age: Twenty-nine.

Education: Diploma—Manhattan School of Accounting.

Work experience and skills: Typist, accountant, Russian-English translation. Dictation in English or Russian.

Typing speed: Sixty words a minute. (She exaggerated only slightly.)

Mother’s and Father’s names: Ekatarina Kaminskaya, Fyodor Ivanovitch Kaminsky.

Her gentle mother had been gone too long to be more than a vague memory. But her father… well… her recollection of him was a mix of disappointment and fear, ending in disgust. He’d never really beaten her, the way he had Ivan, but his orders—that she dress like a drudge, that she give up her fun-loving American friends, that she be housekeeper in their tenement apartment—were absolute and tinged with threat. Her protestations simply elicited a slap from him. “Never question my authority,” he’d say. “A father knows what’s best for his children.” It was her first small victory to be allowed to take an accounting course at the local college, though he agreed only because he knew the dreary accounting job that followed would add to the family finances. And she’d had to fight hard to be allowed out of the house to volunteer for the Roosevelt campaign.

Well, the old tyrant had been dead over a year now, and the police investigation had gone nowhere. That was a relief, though she felt a slight shame for leaving the burial in Van’s hands. Well, Van, or Ivan, as his father had persisted in calling him, had inherited Fyodor’s bank account and possessions, of which the only things of value were a copper samovar and some gold-painted icons. As an atheist and a cynic, Van must have found that amusing.