The garage door squeaked loudly as Yuri raised it. The interior was mostly empty, in contrast to the other garages in the area, which were crammed to the rafters with everything but cars. The floor of Yuri’s garage was stained from more than a half century’s worth of drippings from leaky vehicles. The stale smell of gas and oil fumes hung in the air. There was a small collection of yard tools, including an old push lawn mower against one wall. A wheelbarrow, some spare cinderblocks, and a collection of lumber leaned up against the other wall.

With his cab safely stored for the night, Yuri carried his empty flask and the half-empty pint of vodka to the house. With his house key he tried to open the back door. To his surprise the door was unlocked. He pushed it open and suspiciously looked inside.

Yuri had been robbed once. It had happened only months after renting the house. He’d come home around nine o’clock in the evening to find the place trashed. The burglars, apparently irritated at not finding anything of value, vented their frustration on Yuri’s meager furniture.

Pausing to listen, Yuri could hear the television in Connie’s bedroom. It was then that he noticed his wife’s purse sitting in the middle of the Formica kitchen table along with the telltale wrappings from one of the neighborhood’s fast-food joints.

Yuri had been married for almost four years. He’d met his wife, Connie, when he’d first started working for the taxi company as a radio car driver and before he had his own vehicle. At the time he’d been rather desperate. His visa was about to run out. Marriage to a U.S. citizen seemed his only option.

Connie was an African-American woman in her twenties who’d seemed bored with her life and had been happy to flirt with the newly arrived Russian. She went out of her way to be nice to him and, using her position as a dispatcher, made sure he got choice runs.

Yuri had initially been attracted to Connie separately from his necessity to obtain a green card. As a youth in the Soviet Union, he’d loved jazz, which he associated with American blacks. Becoming acquainted with one socially was exciting. He’d known no Negroes as he’d grown up in Sverdlovsk but had seen them on television, particularly in sporting events, and was duly impressed.