Arkady said, “Vera Antonova is dead. That’s not a question.”
The clown didn’t answer. At least he didn’t strike a match, Arkady thought.
“She was a beautiful girl. That’s not a question either. I have her picture.”
The clown got to his feet and said, “I’ll show you how this works.”
He took a meter’s length of nylon rope, climbed the rail and reached up to two pulleys above his head. His sense of balance was phenomenal. Standing on a rail in the semidark, he ran the rope through the pulleys, made a loop in one end and handed the other to Arkady. “Hang on,” he told Arkady.
“Why?”
“You’re my counterweight.” The clown slipped a foot into the loop and stepped off the catwalk. He plunged until the rope snapped taut in Arkady’s hands. The rope was slippery and all Arkady could do was play it out until Petrouchka was gracefully delivered onto the dance floor. As his descent was noted by guests they made way and applauded. He gave Arkady a farewell wave.
Arkady felt like a fool and, worse, that he had missed something important. He didn’t know where but he was convinced he had met Petrouchka before, although not in greasepaint or a clown’s costume. A man elbows you in the Metro and you catch only a glimpse of his face, but the memory stays with you like a bruise.
15
At 5 a.m., while diehards stayed for the last dance, the last toast, the last laugh of the night, Arkady emerged from the Club Nijinsky to find the city in the path of a thunderstorm. Gusts of wind stirred litter on the street and fat drops of rain pinged off car roofs and windshields
Arkady had parked blocks away rather than submit the Lada to the gibes of parking attendants. Victor had put pots and pans inside the car in case of rain.
A man and woman hustling to beat the storm brushed by. Another couple ran past, the woman in bare feet to spare the high-heeled shoes she held in her hand. One pair of footsteps synchronized with his and he found Dima the bodyguard at his side. The Glock hung openly on Dima’s shoulder.
While Dima gave Arkady a pat-down, a Mercedes S550 limousine caught up. A side window slid down and Sasha Vaksberg begged a few more minutes of Arkady’s time.
Arkady was flattered but now he wished he’d brought a gun.
Vaksberg and Anya shared the rear seat with a red-and-white Spartak athletic bag. Arkady and Dima took jump seats facing rear in a conference arrangement. As the car pulled away Arkady felt its extra weight and stiffness of armor, bulletproof glass and run-flat tires. The driver must have pushed a button because the doors had silently locked.
“Could we have some heat back here, Slava? Our friend is a little damp from the rain.” Vaksberg turned to Arkady. “So, what did you think of our Club Nijinsky?”
“Unforgettable.”
“And the women?” he asked. “Did you find them tall and beautiful enough?”
“Amazons,” Arkady said.
Anya said, “It’s not by chance. Girls flock to Moscow with romantic ambitions of being models or dancers and Moscow turns them into escorts and whores. We wax them and pluck them and inflate their breasts like balloons. In short, we turn them into freaks of beauty.”
“Where are we going?” Arkady asked.
“An excellent question,” Vaksberg said. “We could go to my casino on the Arbat. No, that’s been closed. Or the casino at Three Stations. No, that’s been closed too. In fact, all my casinos have been closed. I was taking in a million dollars a day. Now, thanks to our judo master in the Kremlin, I’m just paying rent.”
Arkady appreciated how Vaksberg avoided saying Putin’s name. “Are you down to your last five hundred million?”
“You don’t have much sympathy.”
“Not a great deal. So we’re just going to drive?”
“And have a conversation. Am I correct, Anya?”
“I hope so.”
Rain drummed on the roof. Sitting backward, looking through heavy rain and tinted glass, Arkady lost track of where he was.
Vaksberg said, “I may be many things but I am not a hypocrite. When the dear old Soviet Union broke up, I made a great deal of money. It was like creating a new jigsaw puzzle out of old pieces. Granted, we took advantage where we could. What great fortune did not at the start? The Medicis’, the Rothschilds’, the Rockefellers’? You don’t think they all had bloody hands at the beginning?”
“So you’re aspiring to the elite.”
“The very best. But fortune is a bubble unless the state accepts the rights of private property. In an emerging nation—and Russia, believe me, is an emerging nation—that bubble can be easily popped. Who would want to do business in a land where rich men are poisoned or put in cages and shipped to Siberia? We thought we were the darlings of the Kremlin. Now we’re all on a little list.”
“Who is on the list?” Arkady was curious.
“Us, the so-called oligarchs. We were the idiots who put this lizard in power. Our lizard turned out to be Tyrannosaurus rex. I used to have more than twenty venues in Moscow. Now every single one is dark except the Club Nijinsky. I have chefs, floor managers, croupiers, better than a thousand people I pay every week simply to stand by. The Nijinsky is my last toehold. They will use any excuse to drive me out, and a scandal about a dead girl would do it.”
“Too bad. I think she was killed.”
“In that case, I want whoever did it.”
“Wouldn’t that create a scandal?”
“Not if it’s done right, not if it’s managed properly.”
“I don’t like where this is going,” Anya said.
Vaksberg leaned forward. Close up, he looked tired, skin rough as parchment and beard and brows dyed inky black, an aging devil relying on his makeup. He asked Arkady, “What are you doing here? You’re investigating by yourself? I don’t see anyone else.”
“I’m assisting a detective who’s following other leads.”
“As an investigator?”
“Yes.”
Vaksberg put it gently. “I talked to Zurin.”
“Prosecutor Zurin? At this hour?” Arkady had to admit that that possibility had not occurred to him.
“Yes. I apologized for calling him so late but I have never talked to a man more eager to unburden himself. He said that you had no reason to investigate anything because you were under suspension. In fact, he described you as a self-aggrandizing liar with a history of violence. Was Prosecutor Zurin correct? Are you under suspension?”
“Not yet.”
“But soon. Zurin was full of information. Did you ever actually shoot a prosecutor?”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Have you been shot yourself?”
“Years ago.”
“In the brain?”
“In the head.”
“Now, there’s a fine distinction. Described by Prosecutor Zurin, you are an unstable, brain-damaged impostor. Practically a rabid dog.”
“Is that what you are?” Anya asked Arkady.
“No.”
Sometimes the sound of the rain was overwhelming, as if a flood bearing houses, trees, cars was at their heels. Dima followed the exchange with his finger on the trigger. Arkady sympathized. People thought that one of the advantages of being fabulously rich was that you could shoot up the soft interior of a bulletproof car—shred the upholstery and soak it in blood—but at close quarters, with the armor and all, ricochets could be fierce.
Arkady said, “Leave the country until it’s safe to come back. You’re the head of a worldwide organization. I’m sure you have moved enough money overseas to have a fresh croissant and orange juice every morning.”
“They’ve confiscated my passport,” Vaksberg said. “I’m trapped.”
“Never a good sign,” Arkady had to agree.
“I need my passport so that I travel freely and conduct business. Also I insist on being able to return and defend my interests. For that I need intelligent, trustworthy people around me.”
“I’m sure y
ou have candidates by the score.”
“But they’re not here and the ones who are here are intimidated. Why do you think we’re meeting here and being half drowned? My office is bugged. My car and phones are compromised. I need someone who knows the law but isn’t held back by it. In a sense, Zurin gave you the highest possible recommendation. An investigator who killed a prosecutor. My, my.”
Slava steered around a barricade of orange tubs and let the car coast up an unfinished highway overpass, an elegant four-lane curve of concrete that terminated in midair. There were no cement mixers or generators or any other sign of recent activity. The car came to a halt ten meters short of the end of the ramp.
Slava unlocked the doors.
“You want us to get out?” Arkady asked.
Sasha Vaksberg said, “We have umbrellas. You’re not afraid of a little rain, are you?”
Anya said, “I’m staying here.”
“You will have to forgive me,” Vaksberg told Arkady. “I’m paranoid, but when you’ve been betrayed as many times as I have, you will be paranoid too. It’s a sixth sense.”
Dima opened an umbrella for Vaksberg as he stepped out of the car. Arkady declined an umbrella and walked up the ramp to a 360-degree view of the city. The lights of the city were as subdued as banked coals. Lightning played in the clouds and it occurred to Arkady that an overpass bristling with steel rebars might not be the safest place to be when great electrical imbalances were being redressed. If he were crisped, he wondered what in life he had left undone. For one thing, he had the key to Victor’s Lada. It would fall apart like a wagon in the desert.
Vaksberg tipped his umbrella back to see the rain. “There is no better place for a confidential conversation than outside in the rain.”
“Conversation about what?”
“You. You’re the man I’ve been looking for. Intelligent, resourceful and with absolutely nothing to lose.”
“That’s a harsh assessment.”
“It means you’re ready for a change of fortune.”
“No,” Arkady said.
“Wait, you haven’t even heard the offer.”
“I don’t want to hear the offer. Until tomorrow at least, I’m an investigator.”
Dima joined them, carrying the Glock openly. He asked Vaksberg, “Is there a problem?”
“No, just a little stubbornness.”
Dima asked Arkady, “What are you smiling about?”
“You’re carrying a gun in a lightning storm. You’re a human lightning rod.”
“Go to hell.” Perplexity covered the bodyguard’s face.
Arkady wondered whether death would make up for a lifetime of sleep deprivation. As for hell, he suspected that it would turn out to be more like Three Stations than fiery pits of brimstone and sulfur.
Through breaks in the clouds were glimpses of blue predawn haze. The storm beat a last drumroll in retreat.
Anya got out of the car and slammed the door. She didn’t look happy with anyone.
Vaksberg called, “Anya, you missed us.”
She pointed to the trunk.
“This?” Dima pointed at a rope that held the trunk of the Mercedes shut.
Arkady wondered since when did Mercedes use rope to keep their trunks shut?
Dima seemed to have the same question.
As he bent for the rope the trunk popped open and a stowaway sat up in the dark of the lid. At this point bodies moved slowly. The stowaway shot Dima with muzzle flashes one, two, three. Dima tried to return fire and his infallible pistol jammed. Staggering backward, futilely squeezing a trigger that wouldn’t give, he absorbed four hits before he dropped.
Slava also had a Glock. The driver’s pistol didn’t jam and he sprayed the Mercedes until his clip was empty, while the stowaway rolled to the side of the trunk, protected by the car’s armor. Just as the idea of retreat seemed to occur to Slava, he went down.
Arkady picked up Dima’s pistol. He was not a marksman—his father was an army officer who inspired in Arkady a loathing for guns—but he had grown up stripping and cleaning and generally tending them. A nine-millimeter round stood straight as a smokestack in the feed ramp of the Glock. Arkady cleared it, advanced a fresh round and, because he was a poor shot and the stowaway was hidden in the dark of the trunk, walked directly toward the car. Hurried, the figure in the trunk missed with the last rounds of his rack, strung together some “Fuck”s trying to reload a clip wrong way ’round, corrected and raised his gun when the sky split open. Facing the lightning, the stowaway blinked. The white light at his back, Arkady fired. The stowaway folded, toppled and dropped onto the ramp.
Arkady found a flashlight in the glove compartment. The shooter was a dwarf between thirty and forty years of age, muscular, in fairy-tale tights and a roll-neck sweater right out of Snow White, except for the Makarov nine-millimeter by his hand and a hole as round as a cigarette burn between his eyes.
“It’s Dopey,” Vaksberg said. “You killed Dopey.”
Dima and Slava were also dead, facedown, flat as fish, blurring the water with blood. Arkady felt around the interior of the trunk and found the courtesy light taped over, pulled the tape off and discovered a plastic supermarket bag that held a change of clothes, poncho, shoes and Metro pass. No ID. Nothing worth a ride in a car trunk, let alone murder. Arkady remembered the Spartak athletic bag in the passenger compartment.
“Wait! Let me explain.” Vaksberg saw Arkady veer into the car.
As Arkady unzipped the bag, credit-card receipts and dollars and euros in $10,000 rolls spilled out.
Vaksberg said, “They’re donations from guests leaving the fair.”
“For the Children’s Fund,” Anya said.
“Good luck. Once it’s in militia hands, you may never see it again.”
“You can explain to them,” Vaksberg said. “As you said, you’re still an investigator.”
“Not a popular one. How much cash is in the bag?”
“A hundred thousand dollars more or less,” Anya said. “The same in credit-card charges.”
“Well, believe it or not, to some people that’s a lot of money.”
“Does the militia have to know how much money?” Vaksberg asked.
“Are you bargaining? After you almost got us killed?”
“Yes. But in my defense, you didn’t seem to care one way or the other. I mean, Dopey was blasting away at you and you just walked up to him and shot him in the head.”
The lightning display faded to a steady rain. The day was off to a slow start but Arkady knew that sooner or later a patrol car passing the barricade would see a limousine standing on the ramp. If they came closer they would trip over bodies. Highway police accepted bribes for almost everything. Homicide crossed the line, and when Arkady added up the bodies, he still lacked a killer of the world’s most lovable dwarf.
Vaksberg asked, “What are you doing?”
Arkady put the Makarov in Vaksberg’s hand, aimed at the sky and forced Vaksberg’s trigger finger to squeeze off a couple of rounds.
“Making you a hero. That’s to prove to a paraffin test that you fired a gun.”
“You’re incriminating me?”
“Not at all. I’m making you a hero. Tell them what happened just as it happened, except that I wasn’t here. Act it out and get your stories straight.”
Anya said, “You’re leaving us?”
“That’s right. The Metro will be running soon. There’s a station ten minutes away. I’ll find my car. It’s not a Mercedes but it has no bullet holes.”
Vaksberg considered his role. “So I acted in self-defense. I simply walked up to this assassin and… Bang!”
Arkady said nothing, although he remembered how his father put it in an army manual: In the field, an officer should run only as a last resort and never in retreat. An officer who, under fire, can move calmly and confidently rather than race from one cover to another is worth ten brilliant tacticians.
It was Arkady’s ambition to die
before he became his father.
16
Although the night’s rainstorm had become morning’s drizzle, Yegor insisted on getting in line for hot dogs and beer at an outdoor kiosk.
“I knew you’d come,” he told Maya.
“Just until we find my baby.”
The clerk in the kiosk was brown, with dark eyelids and a scholar’s wire-rim glasses. He greeted Yegor tentatively. “Are you in a good mood today, my friend?”
“Definitely.”
“That’s good. You are always welcome when you are in a good mood.”
“We’ve been waiting an hour for some fucking service. I’m just kidding.”
“You are in a fine mood, I can see. You are our guest. Whatever you want.”
“You’re sure?”
“A hundred percent.”
“Ali is a good guy,” Yegor told Maya. “Indian or Pakistani?”
“Pakistani, please,” Ali said.
“Who somehow got stuck here in Moscow.”
“Stranded by fate. I came to study thirty years ago and here I am.”
“Some ignorant shits gave Ali some trouble.”
“Prejudice is a terrible thing. You bet I am the only Pakistani with his own kiosk.”
“Prejudice.” Yegor shook his head.
“But Yegor snapped his fingers and trouble disappeared. Now there are no more problems, at least not from violent youth, thanks to Yegor. You go to any other kiosk and you will hear the same story. Yegor is an important friend to have.”
Yegor pushed Maya’s hood back and revealed her blue scalp. “What do you think?”
“Quite exotic. How old is she?”
“Enough.” Yegor collected the food and hustled Maya away, but he was pleased. “Did you hear that? You have an ‘important friend.’”
“I don’t want a friend, I want Katya.”
“Agreed, but you can’t go talking about a fucking baby with potential customers. A deal goes both ways. You have to keep your end of the bargain.”
“I will.”
“And stay away from Genius. He thinks you’re the Virgin Mary. Don’t act that way around me. You should be happy I appreciate you the way you are.”
Three Stations: An Arkady Renko Novel Page 11