Gorky Park

by Martin Cruz Smith

  ‘What’s this, early retirement?’

  ‘Not retirement, Pasha. A balloon, a bubble drifting heavenward, an eagle soaring free – in short, a man who has successfully evaded responsibility.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I just broke the case.’

  ‘There is no case for us anymore.’

  Arkady described the dead man’s teeth.

  ‘An American spy?’

  ‘Who cares, Pasha? Any dead American will do. Pribluda will have to take jurisdiction now.’

  ‘And the credit!’

  ‘Let’s name a day for him. This affair should have been his from the start. A triple execution isn’t our kind of case.’

  ‘I know the KGB. Those prick-twisters. After we do all the work.’

  ‘What work? We don’t know who the victims are, let alone who killed them.’

  ‘They get twice the pay of detectives, their own special shops, fancy sports clubs.’ Pasha rolled along on his own track. ‘Can you tell me how they’re better than I am, why I was never recruited? There’s something wrong with me because my grandfather happened to be a prince? No, you have to have a pedigree, sweat and dirt for ten generations, or speak ten languages.’

  ‘Pribluda definitely has you beat on the sweat and dirt. I don’t think he speaks more than one language.’

  ‘I could speak French or Chinese if I’d had the chance,’ Pasha rolled on.

  ‘You speak German.’

  ‘Everyone speaks German. No, it’s typical, the story of my life. Now they’ll take the credit when we’ve unmasked what, some, some—’

  ‘Tooth.’

  ‘Fuck your mother.’ It was the national expression of exasperation, not an insult.

  Arkady left Pasha in his funk and went to Nikitin’s office. The chief investigator for Governmental Directives wasn’t in. With a key from Nikitin’s desk, Arkady unlocked a wooden safe, which contained a city telephone directory and four bottles of vodka. He took only one.

  ‘So you’d rather be a snotnosed prick-twister than a good detective,’ he told Pasha as he returned. Inconsolable, the detective stared at the floor. Arkady poured out two glasses of the vodka. ‘Drink up.’

  ‘To what?’ Pasha muttered.

  ‘To your grandfather, the prince!’ Arkady offered.

  Pasha flushed with embarrassment. He stared through the open door at the hall.

  ‘To the Czar!’ Arkady added.

  ‘Please!’ Pasha shut the door.

  ‘Then drink.’

  After a few drinks, Pasha wasn’t so forlorn. They saluted the forensic detection of Captain Levin, the inevitable triumph of Soviet justice, and the opening of the sea lanes to Vladivostok.

  ‘To the only honest man in Moscow,’ Pasha suggested.

  ‘Who?’ Arkady asked, expecting a joke.

  ‘You,’ Pasha said and drank.

  ‘Actually’ – Arkady looked at his own glass – ‘what we’ve been doing the past two days hasn’t been too honest.’ Looking up, he saw the detective’s newly revived spirits start to sag. ‘Anyway, you said you “broke the case” today. Tell me how.’

  Pasha shrugged, but Arkady insisted, as he knew the detective wished him to. A day spent talking to old babushkas should have some reward.

  ‘It occurred to me’ – Pasha tried to be matter-of-fact – ‘that maybe something besides snow covered the sound of the gunshots. After wasting most of the day with the food vendors, I go and talk to the little old woman who plays the records over the loudspeakers for the skating in the park during the winter. She has a little room in the building at the Krimsky Val entrance. I ask, “Do you play any loud records?” She says, “Only quiet records for skating.” I ask, “Do you have a program of music you follow every day?” She says, “Programs are for television, I only play records for skating, quiet records played by a simple laborer, the same as I have since the war when I was in the artillery. I earned my job honestly,” she says, “for my disability.” I say, “That’s not my concern, I just want to know the order of the records you play.” “The right order,” she says. “I start at the top of the pile and work my way down, and when there are no more records I know it’s time to go home.” “Show me,” I say. The old woman brings out a stack of fifteen records. They’re even numbered one to fifteen. I was thinking the shootings probably took place toward the end of the day, and so I work from the back. Number fifteen, sure enough, is from Swan Lake. Number fourteen, you want to guess? The “1812 Overture”. Cannons, bells, the works. Finally, I’m getting smart. Why should the records have to be numbered? I hold the record in front of my mouth and ask her, “How loud do you play the records?” She just looks; she hasn’t heard a thing. The old woman is deaf, that’s her disability, and that’s who they have playing the records in Gorky Park!’

  Chapter Three

  A weekend in the country with the last snow of winter. Windshield wipers swatting flakes as thick as goose down. A bottle of spiced vodka to compensate for the car’s inadequate heater. The enthusiastic hiss of tires. Fifes, drums, horns, the galloping bells of a sled. Forward!

  Zoya sat in back with Natalya Mikoyan, Arkady in front with Mikhail Mikoyan, his oldest friend. Together the men had gone through Komsomol, the Army, Moscow University and the Law Faculty. They’d shared the same ambitions, the same binges, the same poets, some of the same girls, even. Slight and baby-faced under a mop of dark curls, Misha had gone directly from the Law Faculty to the Moscow City Collegium of Advocates. Officially, defense lawyers received no more than judges – say, 200 rubles a month. Unofficially, clients paid double or more, which was why Misha could afford good suits, a ruby ring on his little finger, furs for Natasha, a house in the country and a two-door Zhiguli in which to get there.

  Natasha, dark and so delicate that she could wear children’s clothes, contributed her pay as a Novosti press agency writer and one abortion a year; she couldn’t use the pill, though she supplied her friends. Not too much baggage on this sled. Forward!

  The dacha was thirty kilometers east of Moscow. As usual, Misha had invited eight or so friends to share the house. When the host’s carload entered, stomping snow off their boots, arms laden with bread, jars of herring and bottles of liquor, they were greeted by a young couple waxing skis and a fat man in a tight sweater trying to light the fireplace. More guests followed: a director of educational films and his mistress; a ballet dancer trailed ducklike by his wife. Skis fell, it seemed continuously, from the sofa. Men in one room, women in another, the late arrivals changed into outdoor gear.

  ‘A white morning.’ Misha waved expansively. ‘Snow more precious than rubles.’

  Zoya said she would stay with Natasha, who was still recovering from her last abortion. Outside, the snow ceased falling and lay deep on the ground.

  Misha found glory in blazing his own path through the woods. Arkady was content to follow and stop from time to time to admire the low mountains; he had a long, easy stride, and gaining on Misha’s fevered plunging was no problem. After an hour, they rested so Misha could clean the ice compacted between his shoes and skis. Arkady slipped out of his skis and sat.

  White breath, white trees, white snow, white sky. ‘Slim as women,’ birches were invariably called. Crutches for poets, too, Arkady thought.

  Misha worked at the ice the way he worked in court: with a fury, dramatically. As a small boy he’d had the biggest voice, like a tiny craft with an enormous sail. He hammered at his skis.

  ‘Arkasha, I have a problem.’ He let the skis drop.

  ‘Who is she this time?’

  ‘A new clerk, probably no more than nineteen. I think Natasha suspects. Well, I don’t play chess or sports, what else is there? The most ridiculous thing is that this child may be the most ignorant person I’ve ever met, and I live or die by her opinion. Romance is not a pretty matter, when you get right down to it. Or cheap. Well’ – he opened his jacket and pulled out a bottle of wine – ‘a little French Sauternes here, smuggled
home by that dancer you saw flouncing around the house. The finest dessert wine in the world. I don’t have any dessert. Want some?’

  Misha unwrapped the tinsel from the top and handed the bottle to Arkady, who slapped its bottom and shot the cork out. He took a swig. The wine was amber and sugary.

  ‘Sweet?’ Misha caught Arkady’s grimace.

  ‘Not as sweet as some Russian wines,’ Arkady said patriotically.

  They took turns drinking. Snow fell from boughs, sometimes with one heavy thud, sometimes as lightly and rapidly as the steps of a hare. Arkady enjoyed being with Misha, and the best times of all were when Misha shut up.

  ‘Is Zoya still on you about the Party?’ Misha asked.

  ‘I’m a Party member, I have a card.’

  ‘Hardly. What does it take to be more active? A meeting once a month where you can read the newspaper if you want. Once a year you get out the vote, a couple of times a year you circulate a petition against China or Chile. You don’t even do that. The only reason you have a card is that if you didn’t you wouldn’t be chief investigator. Everyone knows, so you might as well get the benefits out of it, get down to the District Committee a little and make some contacts.’

  ‘I always have a good reason for missing a meeting.’

  ‘Sure. No wonder Zoya’s furious. You should think of her a little bit. With your record you’d be a cinch to be a Central Committee inspector. You could travel all over checking on law-enforcement performance, whipping up campaigns, making the local-militia generals shit in their pants.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very appealing.’

  ‘That’s unimportant. The main thing is, you’d have access to Central Committee shops, you’d be high on the list for foreign travel, and you’d get close to the men on the Central Committee who make all the major appointments. You’d be on your way up the ladder.’

  There was a solid, porcelain quality to the sky. It would squeak if you rubbed your thumb on it, Arkady thought.

  ‘I’m wasting my breath,’ Misha said. ‘You ought to talk to Iamskoy, he likes you.’

  ‘He does?’

  ‘What made him such a celebrity, Arkasha? The Viskov appeal. Before the Supreme Court, Iamskoy denounces the authorities who wrongly arrested and sentenced the young worker Viskov to fifteen years for murder. Moscow Town Prosecutor Iamskoy, of all people, suddenly a protector of individual rights. Practically Gandhi, if you read Pravda. And who reopened the investigation? You did. Who forced Iamskoy into action by threatening to protest alone to the law journals? You did. So Iamskoy, seeing you won’t be moved, takes the completely opposite course and becomes the bold hero of the tale. He owes you a lot. He might also want to see the last of you.’

  ‘Since when do you talk to Iamskoy?’ Arkady was interested.

  ‘Oh, well, lately. There was a little problem of a client who claimed he’d overpaid me. He didn’t overpay me – I got the son of a bitch off. Anyway, the prosecutor has been surprisingly understanding. Your name came up. The episode was touch and go, let’s leave it at that.’

  Misha overcharged so much that an acquitted man complained? Arkady had never put the word ‘venal’ by his friend before. Misha himself seemed depressed by his confession.

  ‘I actually got the son of a bitch off. Do you know how rarely that happens? You know what you’re doing when you engage a defense lawyer? You’re paying a man to come before the court and disassociate himself from you. True! That’s what almost always happens. After all, you wouldn’t be on trial if you weren’t guilty, and I don’t want any guilt by association, I have my own much better name to worry about. Before the prosecutor even has a chance to point a finger, I publicly deplore this criminal’s acts. I am not only outraged, I’m nauseated. If my client’s lucky I might mention he never farted on Red Army Day.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘A little true. Except this one time – I don’t know why – I did everything. My client was not a thief, he was a father of small children, he was the son and support of the crippled woman sobbing in the first row, he was a modest veteran of famous battles, he was a faithful friend and an unstinting worker who was not a thief but only weak. Soviet justice, that narcoleptic judge and two ignorant arbiters, is harsh, yes, harsh as a feudal lord and human in the same way. Try to be smart and you’ll lose your head. But throw yourself on their breasts, say it was the vodka, it was this woman, it was a moment of madness and who knows what might happen? Naturally, everybody tries it, so you have to be an artist to rise above the general pathos. I did, Arkasha. I even cried myself.’ Misha paused. ‘Why did I ask for so much money?’

  Arkady tried to think of something to say. ‘I ran into Viskov’s parents two days ago,’ he offered. ‘His father manages a cafeteria near Paveletsky Station. What a story their lives have been.’

  ‘I truly despair!’ Misha exploded. ‘You’ll never know who to cultivate. Two days ago, I was lunching at the Writers Union with the eminent historian Tomashevski.’ The small craft that was Misha was off on a new tack with a fresh wind. ‘That’s the sort of man you should know. Respected, charming, hasn’t produced a piece of work in ten years. He has a system, which he explained to me. First, he submits an outline for a biography to the Academy to be absolutely sure his approach is consistent with Party policy. A crucial first step, as you’ll see later. Now, the person he studies is always an important figure – that is, someone from Moscow – hence Tomashevski must do his Russian research close to home for two years. But this historical character also traveled, yes, lived for some years in Paris or London; hence Tomashevski must do the same, apply for and receive permission for foreign residence. Four years have passed. The Academy and the Party are rubbing their hands in anticipation of this seminal study of the important figure by the eminent Tomashevski. And now Tomashevski must retire to the solitude of a dacha outside Moscow to tend his garden and creatively brood over his cartons of research. Two more years pass in seminal thought. And just as Tomashevski is about to commit himself to paper, he checks with the Academy again only to learn that Party policy has totally about-faced; his hero is a traitor, and with regrets all around, Tomashevski must sacrifice his years of labor for the greater good. Naturally, they are only too happy to urge Tomashevski to start a new project, to plow under his grief with fresh labor. Tomashevski is now studying a very important historical figure who lived for some time in the South of France. He says there is always a bright future for Soviet historians, and I believe him.’

  Abruptly Misha changed the subject again, and his voice dropped. ‘I heard about those bodies in Gorky Park, that you had another run-in with Major Pribluda. Are you crazy?’

  When they returned, everyone but Natasha was gone.

  ‘Zoya left with some people from the dacha down the road,’ she told Arkady. ‘Someone with a German name.’

  ‘She means Schmidt.’ Misha sat by the fire to work on the ice in his boots. ‘You must know Schmidt, Arkasha. From Moscow. He just took over the place down the road. Maybe he’s Zoya’s new lover.’

  Reading Arkady’s face, Misha saw the truth. His mouth open, his face red, he held his dripping boot.

  ‘Do that in the kitchen, Misha,’ Natasha said, and pushed Arkady down on the couch and poured glasses of vodka for herself and him while her husband stumbled out.

  ‘He’s a silly man.’ She nodded toward the kitchen.

  ‘He didn’t know what he was saying.’ Arkady took the vodka in two swallows.

  ‘That’s his method – he never knows what he’s saying. He says everything, so he has to be right some of the time.’

  ‘You know what you’re saying, though?’ Arkady asked.

  Natasha had a quietly arch sense of humor. The softest dark shadows around her eyes made them appear brighter by contrast. Her neck was so thin that she put him in mind of a starving child, an odd thing to become for a woman in her thirties.

  ‘I’m Zoya’s friend. I’m your friend. Actually, I’m more Zoya�
��s friend. Actually, I’ve been telling her to leave you for years.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You don’t love her. The fact is, if you loved her you would make her happy. If you loved her, you’d do what Schmidt does. They were meant for each other.’ She poured more for Arkady and herself. ‘If you care for her at all, let her be happy. Let her be finally happy.’ Natasha started to giggle. She tried to keep a straight face, but her pretty lips kept curling. She’d been as much of a clown as Misha when they’d all been at school. ‘Because, the fact is, you find her very boring. She had two or three good years when you made her interesting all by yourself. Now, even I admit it, she’s boring. And you’re not.’ She ran the back of a finger along his wrist. ‘You’re the only man I know anymore who’s not.’

  Natasha poured herself one more before going off to the kitchen very carefully and quite drunk, leaving Arkady alone in the living room. The room was hot, so was the vodka. Misha and Natasha had touched up the place with ikons and quaint figurines, and in the gold leaf of the ikons were reflections of the fire. Do for Zoya what Schmidt did for her? Arkady opened his wallet and took out a small red booklet with a profile of Lenin on the cover. On the left were his name, photograph and Party district. On the right, his dues stamps – he noticed that he was two months behind. On the last page a selection of inspirational precepts. The famous Party card. ‘There is only one way to succeed, there is only one thing, there is nothing else,’ Zoya had said. She was naked when she’d said it; the contrast between her card and her skin was something he remembered. He looked at an ikon. It was of a Madonna, a Virgin. The Byzantine face, especially the eyes gazing back, reminded him not of Zoya, not of Natasha, but of the girl he’d met at Mosfilm.

  ‘To Irina.’ He raised his glass.

  By midnight, everyone had returned and everyone was drunk. There was a buffet of cold pork and sausages, fish, blini, cheeses and breads, pickled mushrooms, even pressed caviar. Someone was shouting poetry. At the other end of the room couples hopped to a Hungarian version of the Bee Gees. Misha was stricken with guilt and couldn’t keep his eyes off Zoya sitting close to Schmidt.