by Lee Vance
“I’ve been sleeping with you because you’re cute, and you’re kind, and you’re funny,” she said in a low voice. “And I decided to come home with you because you’re always talking about your dad and I could tell it was really important to you and I feel guilty about not having been nicer to you. But you’re on an express train headed straight for corporate America and the suburbs and the Lion’s Club and thirty-six holes of golf every weekend at the country club with the token black member, and that’s not what I want. You’re going to become the chairman of IBM or some other fascist organization and spend the rest of your life at meetings being an important man and that’s not what I want, either. So if you weren’t so goddamned nice to me all the time and so persistent, I would have already ended things between us, because everything about you is blindingly obvious and predestined and has crisp corners, and I just find that scary as hell.”
I felt gutted.
“So why are you crying?” I asked a few moments later.
“Because I’m confused,” she said. “And when you told me your fantasy about family life just now, about how you felt when you were little and your heart was breaking, it made everything worse for me. Because that is what I want. Way down deep, beneath all the things I want to do with my life, I want that kind of family and that kind of love more than anything. That’s why I’m crying.”
A wave of relief washed over me.
“Confused is okay. We can figure out confused together.”
“How?” she snapped. “I’ve fallen in love with you and that’s not what I want. How are you going to help me figure that out?”
“I don’t know,” I said, suddenly floating. “But I’ve got another fantasy. One I was too embarrassed to tell you.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“It’s simple. My fantasy is to make you happy.”
“Goddamn it,” she said, weeping again. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. That’s exactly the kind of stuff that’s messing me up.”
We’ve driven into a tulle fog, the visibility zero. The steering wheel vanishes as I turn to look at her. The blanket’s transformed into a bloodstained shroud, only her pale, lifeless face protruding.
“I’m sorry I let you down,” I say.
“You knew what I wanted,” Jenna says, receding as I reach for her. “You knew how important it was to me.”
The fog swallows her up. I stumble forward, grasping for her, and hear a voice calling me.
“Yo.”
Opening my eyes, I see Curtis looking at me in the rearview mirror.
“You doing all right, mon?”
“Yeah.” I wipe my cheeks with the palm of a hand, angry at myself for losing it in front of a stranger. We’re at the airport. “British Airways, okay?”
Curtis nods. My phone rings.
“Peter Tyler.”
“Where are you going?” Tilling asks.
“Moscow.”
“We seized your passport when we searched your home.”
“I have two. The second one was in my briefcase.”
Tilling doesn’t respond.
“It’s not that uncommon for guys who travel to the Middle East a lot,” I say hesitantly. “Because you need to send your passport to the different embassies for visas and you never know when they’re going to get it back to you.…” My voice trails off. “Grace?”
“You got in touch with Andrei?” she asks curtly.
“Not yet. But I think I know where he is.”
“Moscow?”
“Right.”
There’s another long silence. I can hear her breathing.
“The guy with the Felix tattoo,” I say, anxious for her take on Pongo’s story. “You figure he’s important, right? You think he somehow might be involved in Jenna’s murder?”
“He was looking for Andrei the day before your wife was murdered and he’s violent,” she says. “So yes. An old cop I knew used to say that one coincidence is a lead and two coincidences are a lock. He also told me never to believe anyone who’d already lied to me once. So it’s hard to get very excited about this guy if you aren’t going to give me enough to check him out for myself.”
“I would if I could,” I say, realizing how evasive I sound. Even if I were willing to betray Pongo’s confidence, doing so would lead Grace straight back to Turndale, and maybe to Katya. “We’re on the same side here, Grace. I swear it. I’ll get back to you just as soon as I speak with Andrei.”
“I make one call to the airport and you’re not getting on that plane.”
“Then we might never know what was in the package,” I say, wondering if she’s bluffing.
Curtis pulls to the curb and pops the trunk while I wait for her response.
“I don’t like a single thing about this,” she says eventually. “You be sure to stay in touch with me.”
The phone goes dead. Curtis hands me my bag as I get out of the car, then slips his shades up on top of his head to look me in the eye.
“You sure you’re fine?” he says.
“Nah worry, mon,” I reply, standing up straighter and slipping him a twenty.
“Jah bless.”
13
PACKED SNOW crunches underfoot as I follow a dimly lit path through Patriarshy Pond Park. The concierge at the hotel disapproved of my decision to walk, an exaggerated moue suggesting that Americans who wander through Moscow at night end up in the river, or, more likely, that he’d missed a commission opportunity in getting me a car. I ignored him, needing the exercise. The flight over seemed interminable, hour after hour confined to a small seat while I tried to imagine what Andrei could possibly have gotten mixed up in that would account for everything I’ve learned these past few days. I wish he’d answered his phone when I called from the hotel, and that we were sitting in a warm bar right now, drinking beers and figuring things out together. “If wishes were horses,” Tigger likes to say, “we’d all be drowning in horse shit.”
The square enclosing the park is surrounded by low-rise stone apartment buildings, about a third of the windows illuminated. Andrei’s street is on the northeastern edge. A gang of teenagers enjoying their Friday night are gathered around a bench nearby, smoking cigarettes and chattering in French, ice skates piled at their feet. Expats tend to cluster—I noticed an English hospital a few blocks away. I haul out the map the concierge gave me and double-check to make sure I’m still oriented. The map’s labeled with transliterated English names, making navigation in the Cyrillic-signed city an exercise in orienteering. One of the French boys calls toward me in a singsong voice as the others laugh. I’m reminded of something Andrei once told me—that the only thing most Europeans have in common is a dislike of the French. Still, they’re only kids.
Andrei’s building is six stories high, with a classical façade. His apartment is number eleven. I hang around across the street for a few minutes, scanning the exterior in a futile attempt to identify his windows and get an early read on whether anyone’s home. I’m feeling jittery. Two cops in a dented cruiser no bigger than a VW Beetle pass for the second time, the driver slowing so his partner can look me over. It’s time to move. Nervous or not, I’d rather be here than home in my kitchen, dry-firing my father’s gun. Crossing the street, I open the lobby door with one of the keys Katya gave me.
I climb the stairs, stopping briefly on each landing to check apartment numbers. High-gloss mahogany moldings frame beige-papered walls and brass-fitted doors, the finishes suggestive of a luxury Ramada. The halls are silent save for the click of an expanding pipe, the predominant smell wood polish. The entire building was probably purpose-fitted to accommodate Western executives on short-term assignments. I’ve stayed in similar places in London and Tokyo, the fridges stocked with calcified boxes of baking soda and desiccated limes. The hush adds to my nervousness.
Number eleven is on the fourth floor. I listen at the door without hearing anything. There’s no bell, so I bruise my knuckles briefly on hardwood and then
listen some more. Nothing. I dig keys and a penlight out of my overcoat pocket. It’s hard not to feel like a thief when you open someone else’s door. The alarm peeps like a baby duck and I enter the code hurriedly, relieved when it falls silent and a green LED blinks on. The door closes behind me with a metallic click, the apartment dark.
The narrow beam of my penlight trips over a chaotic jumble of items: a wilted plant on a counter, an overturned chair, a stack of magazines collapsed across the floor. I call hello a couple of times, listening to my voice die in the stillness. I realize that my greatest fear was of finding Andrei’s body, but there’s no smell of death—just the stale, sour odor of fermenting trash. Scrabbling one hand along the wall behind me, I locate a bank of light switches and flip them all up.
The apartment’s laid out like a loft, a long, high-ceilinged room apportioned into zones. To my right, dirty plates and glassware are stacked haphazardly around a stainless-steel sink in the kitchen, a number of the cabinet doors ajar. There’s a dining room table immediately in front of me, the surface littered with fast-food containers. Newspapers weighted with congealed cheese and catsup spill from the table to the floor, rancid grease rendering patches translucent. Beer cans are scattered everywhere, the tops dusted with cigarette ash. I move slowly to my left, toward the seating area. A yellowing pillow and a brown woolen blanket lie bunched on a white leather couch; a water glass on the coffee table contains a used condom. I pick up a few magazines from the parquet floor next to the couch and flip through them. Soccer, rock stars, and gay porn. The porn’s nasty, color photographs of tattooed men bound naked to benches, and worse. The captions are in German. I don’t know who’s been staying here recently, but it sure as hell isn’t Andrei.
Twin doors flank a wall unit surrounding a fireplace at the far end of the room. I try the left-hand door first, turning on a light and finding a filthy bath, porcelain fixtures crusted and wastebasket overflowing. Exiting quickly, I try the second door, opening it on a small, immaculate bedroom. There’s a neatly made bed, a bare dresser, and a nightstand. I spot a cell phone in a charging cradle on top of the nightstand and pocket it. Checking the nightstand drawer, I find a Russian-language book, the pages extensively highlighted. I slip the book in my pocket as well and move to the dresser. The drawers are empty save for a few pairs of clean socks and some folded boxers.
The closet contains a gray suit, a blue suit, three white shirts hanging neatly, and a single pair of treed black dress shoes on the floor. A small wall safe sits open, the keys in the lock. Two ties and a black leather belt dangle from pegs; my throat catches as I recognize one of the ties. It’s printed with a tourist map of Manhattan, prominent sites like Wollman Rink and the Empire State Building caricatured. Andrei had admired the tie on me over an Indian dinner in the King’s Road some years back. I’d slipped it off late in the evening and marked the location of the apartment Jenna and I were living in at the time with a razor-point pen, four or five pints of Cobra making me sentimental.
“In case you ever get lost,” I’d said. “You can hang the tie over the front seat of a cab and point.”
Tears well in the corners of my eyes as I brush my finger over the small black dot I made so many years ago. I leak like a fucking canvas tent these days, starting at the least touch. If Andrei were here, he’d laugh at me.
A door in the bedroom opens to an antiseptic bathroom stocked with basic toilet items. Rummaging through the vanity, I find three shoe box–sized cardboard boxes stacked beneath the sink, the top box open. I reach in and pull out a handful of condoms in foil packets, puzzling briefly before replacing them.
Feeling exhausted, I close all the doors, turn off the lights, and unshutter a large window in the main room that overlooks the park. Lifting the sash to admit some cool fresh air, I hop up on the sill, taking Andrei’s phone from my pocket and turning it on. I check my watch before dialing Katya’s cell number. It’s eight o’clock here in Moscow, noon back in New York. She answers on the fourth ring.
“Andrei?” she asks excitedly.
“No, Peter. I’m calling from his apartment.”
“Is he there?”
“No.” I turn sideways in the window frame, looking out over the treetops. “I think he’s cleared out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most of his clothing’s gone. He left behind a couple of suits and shirts, so he must have thought there was some chance he’d stop back, but he hasn’t been living here.”
“The alarm company said someone was coming and going.”
“Not Andrei. The apartment’s trashed. It looks like a gang of teenagers have been using this place for a rolling party. They left a bunch of magazines lying around, including some gay porn. Whoever they are, they’ve got Andrei’s keys and alarm code. Any ideas?”
“None,” she says, sounding crushed. “What are you going to do now?”
“Wait here. Talk to whoever shows up. See if I can get a line on Andrei, or find out anything about why he left.”
“Are you sure that’s safe?”
“I’m not sure of anything anymore,” I say, resisting the urge to remind her that she was the one who asked me to do this. “But I’ll be careful. Now listen. I need you to do a couple of things for me.”
“What does that mean exactly, that you’ll be careful?”
“It means I’m here and you’re not and I’d appreciate your not second-guessing me over the telephone.”
Silence.
“There’s no point in my going home without answers,” I add, trying to take the sting from my rebuff.
“I’m really scared, Peter,” she says in a small voice. “Andrei’s missing and you’re alone.…”
I’d like to laugh away her fears, the way I laughed away our shock back when we rolled Andrei’s car, but I don’t seem to have it in me.
“I’m going to be fine,” I say. “There’s no reason to worry.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Talk to William. Press him on why he let Andrei go. There’s got to be some connection between Andrei’s getting fired and his disappearance.”
“I’ll try to get hold of him,” she says resignedly. “He’s supposed to be at an art auction in Paris, but I suspect he’s actually off negotiating with the Dutch. What else?”
“Try your mother again,” I say, anticipating an angry response.
“That’s a waste of time,” she says stiffly. “I’ve been trying to persuade her to tell me things for years. I haven’t had any luck thus far.”
“Will you try?”
“Yes. Is that it?”
“That’s it. Call me back at this number when you can.”
“I will. You take care of yourself,” she says, sounding more like herself. “If you get hurt, I’ll be furious with you.”
“I wouldn’t want that.”
“Goddamned straight.”
The phone clicks and she’s gone. An arctic breeze rattles the open window as I fidget with the handset, and I button my coat higher, wondering how long I’m going to have to wait for Andrei’s squatter—or squatters—to show up. Despite Katya’s concern, I’m not too worried. Andrei’s bedroom hasn’t been touched, and his phone wasn’t stolen, suggesting that whoever’s been using this place has some sort of relationship with him.
I gaze skyward, seeing a full moon overhead. My dad traveled to a convention in Seattle when I was thirteen, and he called home late one night, waking me. His hotel had a telescope on the lobby terrace. We synchronized our watches and took simultaneous measurements of the angle between the moon and some familiar stars. He explained the parallax principle when he got home, telling me I could estimate the distance to a near object like the moon by assuming our dual observation points were fixed relative to the distant stars, and using the differences we’d measured in the position of the moon to triangulate on it. It took me a couple of days to get the math straight, my first result wrong because I’d forgotten to adjust for the curvature o
f the earth between Seattle and Brunswick. My final answer was within 10 percent of the distance I’d looked up in the encyclopedia. “Good,” my father said. “It’s like Archimedes and the lever. You can triangulate on anything with enough perspective.”
The breeze continues to freshen, whistling through the leafless trees across the street. Moscow’s quieter at night than New York. I can hear the wind, and the French teenagers still horsing around in the park, and something else—a low, familiar clicking I haven’t been paying attention to. A computer.
Getting to my feet, I begin searching the cabinets surrounding the fireplace. Sure enough, one of them is stuffed with electronic gear and a rat’s nest of cables. The cabinet door drops vertically to form a cantilevered desktop, revealing a laptop, modem, scanner, desk light, and a spindle of writable CDs. Tiny green network lights blink furiously, the hard drive chattering nonstop. Pulling up a chair, I turn the light on and slide the laptop forward, feeling the warmth in my hands as I rotate the case carefully, examining it. A silver sticker on the bottom is printed with a bar code and the words Turndale and Company. Taped directly above is Andrei’s business card. Pongo said William had asked several times about Andrei’s missing laptop. This must be it.
The computer opens to a standard Microsoft splash screen, but the language option is set to Russian, the familiar icons frustratingly cryptic. It takes me ten minutes to cajole the interface back to English. I’m relieved not to have to reboot, nervous the machine might demand a password.
The hard drive contains folders named in both English and Russian, the Russian folders all created within the last few months. I click a few of these at random. They’re HTML pages and associated data files, the data mainly digital pictures of naked guys doing stuff that makes me slightly queasy. Someone’s using Andrei’s computer as a Web server, uploading gay porn to God knows where. I unplug the network cord and the drive falls silent. Hopefully, the Web master, wherever he is, will notice his site’s down and stop by to fix it.