“Don’t hide. I can see you,” he sighed, crushing out his butt on the windowsill. “Come on out.”
The kitchen door, which had been opened just a crack so she could peek through, was flung open, and Lana walked right up to Veltsev. She wasn’t wearing the skullcap anymore and the clown makeup had been wiped clean, and in the thick shadow between the freely swinging sides of her untied robe he saw white, not of her clinging panties but her naked body. Slipping his hand under the robe, Veltsev felt her warm skin, which his touch covered in goose bumps. Lana leaned into him.
“Have you decided to tempt me?” Veltsev asked.
“I misled you,” she said.
“About what?”
“I … well, I’m not, I didn’t have plastic surgery.”
“So?”
Her belly tensed under his fingers. “You won’t laugh?”
Veltsev coughed thoughtfully. “Wait … You, that is, you mean you really are a virgin?”
Lana covered his hand with hers.
“Would you like to check?”
He didn’t say anything but neither did he take his hand away. Lana froze and stared at him, as if waiting for him to blink. Veltsev held her gaze, but the second the girl touched his zipper, he grabbed her wrist. Lana’s arm was so thin and frail he figured he was hurting her, though she didn’t think to stop him, let alone take offense. So, with one hand, she opened his fly, jerked his pants down over his hips, pulled down his underpants, took his prick, and stroked it, spellbound. For a minute, maybe more, they didn’t move, coalesced in a silent scene. Lana studied and fingered his quickly swelling manhood, and Veltsev, not thinking anything, kept holding her arm. Then she climbed on the bed and kneeled so that she was squeezing him between her thighs. The movements of her fingers, up until now cautious and even fearful, became brusquer by increments. Carried away, she began entertaining herself with the sensitivity of his flesh, as if it were a toy, and didn’t seem to notice when she scratched the tip with her nail. Gasping from pain, Veltsev crushed her small breast. “Now you …” she said, and let him go. Squeezing the burning spot with one hand, Veltsev caressed Lana with the other—just to distract her. “Not like that,” she sighed with annoyance. She hopped down and went to the sideboard and started digging around. Taking advantage of the break, Veltsev took his gun out of his holster, put it into his coat pocket, and slipped out of his heavy shirt. Lana came back with a jar of a fragrant ointment and mounted him again. With the cordiality of a hostess, generously, she rubbed it on his prick, as if it were a sandwich, guided it between her legs, and peered at Veltsev. He lingered a moment and didn’t press hard. Lana shrugged off her robe and tossed it aside. Seeing she was hurt and scared, Veltsev kept pressing—not leaning into her but pulling her toward him by the hips—softly, slowly, with the feeling that something awful was about to happen. But it didn’t, and Lana made no sound. It took a moment for Veltsev to realize he was completely inside her. Lana lifted and dropped back down, tilting her pelvis, either bracing herself or getting used to the pain, after which she renewed her cautious vertical movements. She came three times with convulsive shudders; each time Veltsev thought that was the end of it, but then Lana would start moving again.
At last she dug both hands into Veltsev, grabbed a fistful of undershirt and skin on his chest, and, as if making up for something she’d missed, began moving erratically, speeding up with each thrust, so powerfully and boldly the glass in the sideboard started rattling and dust rose from the rug. Holding her by the waist, Veltsev looked stupidly at her swinging breasts, the tips of her braids sticking to her clavicles, and her flushed face. The little man hanging from the chandelier was revolving slowly over her head. Gasping, Lana would grab Veltsev’s shoulders and then, as if trying to get away from him, retreat a little. To each of her exhales, which coincided with a dull, squelching thrust to his groin, a moan was now added, and she nearly broke into sobs. Veltsev felt like he was starting to suffocate, like a shivering heat was rising from his knees to his belly. Under the rug the bedsprings sang and creaked, and the metallic scream for some reason made him think of the couple who took the bullets in the club. “Damn, damn, damn,” he started intoning in time with Lana’s furious galloping, and he tried to move too, as much as he could. They came almost simultaneously: Veltsev with a quiet moan, crushing her hips; Lana absolutely silently, shuddering finely and collapsing on him facedown, as if she’d been shot.
After catching his breath he kissed her burning temple, moved her closer to the head of the bed, grabbed his crumpled coat, and locked himself in the bathroom. His bruised groin was copiously stained with blood and gave off the stunning aroma of a blooming flowerbed. The instant Veltsev approached the mirror it fogged up. He leaned his forehead against the foggy glass. Somewhere in the wall, a water pipe was rattling. There was a child’s toothbrush in the drinking glass on the shelf under the mirror. Veltsev glanced at his watch but stopped being able to see it before he could figure out what time it was. Like his opened wallet, the dial seemed to offer itself as a reminder of something important and forgotten. He ran his hand hard across his head, looked up and from side to side, and couldn’t remember anything. Thinking he might yet find some hint, he rummaged through his coat pockets, took out his gun, ejected the magazine into his hand, and put it back in the grip. That after yesterday there were just three cartridges left, he already knew. “Bang bang,” he said to his emerging reflection, set the Beretta where he could easily reach it from the bathtub, and crawled into the shower.
Lana maybe?
it occurred to him as he was soaping up his groin.
Standing stock-still, he looked up at the ceiling again, shrugged, and kept washing. Whether or not Lana was
his
woman he couldn’t yet say, of course. Just as he couldn’t say whether she’d been a virgin. On the other hand, as soon as he had washed off her blood, he realized something he hadn’t been able to put in words before: in his preferences he was guided less by the obvious pluses of his partners’ youth—if they couldn’t be his daughters, they were still a lot younger than he was—than by the fact that their age gave him—childless in deference to his profession—the illusion of a full-fledged family. His women were also his children. Not daring to acquire any real descendants, he acquired them in his imagination, which lent their bodily intimacy the characteristics of both conception and birth. His woman was like an improved Eve, not simply a resident but the guardian of paradise, holding the forbidden fruit in one hand and in the other the serpent tempter—by the throat.
Veltsev moved his head out from under the shower stream and listened: through the wall he heard a rumbling, first soft, then louder. He’d been hearing this rumbling for a while and hadn’t paid it any mind, thinking it was the pipe rattling, but once he turned off the water he realized the din was coming from the apartment and it was a fight, not the plumbing. Muffled blows and shuffling were interspersed with Lana’s cries and a man’s voice choking from fury. While Veltsev was drying off and putting his clothes back on, the point of the tussle became clear to him in general outline. The man, who spoke with a strong Asian accent, was demanding information from Lana about Sharfik (doubtless the smiling guy in the photograph) and about some major debt. “If he doesn’t come up with it, I’m coming for him!” the man yelled hoarsely. “He’s a dead man! Understand? A dead man! And that guy in the bathroom—does he know? Ask him.”
“Idiot!” Lana replied, sobbing. “That’s the renter. I told you.”
Dressed now, Veltsev attached the silencer to his Beretta, slipped a cartridge into its chamber, carefully, held his thumb down on the safety, touched the trigger, stuck the gun in his holster, flung the door open, and came out of the bathroom.
Lana, wrapped in her robe, was sitting on the bed holding her broken nose. Not only her face but her arms above her wrists and her neck as well were splattered with blood. The imprint of a slap burned on her cheek. Opposite her, his arms akimbo and legs spread, stood her attacker, a strapping, athletically built Uzbek wearing a sheepskin coat sprinkled with melting snow and a large Kalmyk fur cap, earflaps down. A small scar crossed the uninvited guest’s mouth on a slant from nose to chin, beads dangled from his fist, and the merest edge of his knife’s carved hilt stuck out of his fur-trimmed right boot top.
Birds of a feather
, Veltsev thought. Then:
Who the hell let this guy in?
“Who are you?” the Uzbek breathed out at Veltsev, turning toward him slowly, as if he were going to kick him.
Veltsev peered at a very still Lana.
“Go get washed, please,” he told her.
She rose silently; splashing him with the scent of her floral cream, she proceeded to the bathroom. The bolt clicked in the door. Veltsev collected the photograph from the sideboard glass and held it out to the Uzbek.
“I’m here because of him too.”
“What?” The Uzbek grabbed the snapshot and stared at it vacantly, as if it were blank. “Because of what?”
“I know where the money is,” Veltsev explained. “You came for the money, right? So did I. Let’s go.”
The Uzbek threw the photograph at his feet and swung his beads. “Where?”
Veltsev backed up and glanced into the front hall: a key with electrical tape wrapped around the handle was jutting out of the keyhole. “To get the money. I’m telling you. It’s close by.”
The area around the front of the house was spectral, tinted by the light from the windows. Big fat snowflakes were falling from the sky. The trees, the cars, the garages—everything with the exception of the Land Cruiser blocking the alley—was covered in a layer of white. The newly fallen snow creaked underfoot. Veltsev lit up, peered around as he was walking, and nodded at the Uzbek waiting in the lobby. Passing down the ravine between the cemetery fences and the business center, they descended to the Yauza. Not wide, ten meters or so, the channel appeared narrower than it actually was because of the ice frozen along its banks. Veltsev touched the thin crust with his boot tip, as if he were searching for something, took a few steps up and downstream. Saying not a word, the Uzbek shone the flashlight for him. “Here,” Veltsev said at last, pointing at random at the black water. “Only we need something to retrieve it with.” The Uzbek had come closer to the water too, and was regarding it warily. He was holding the light in his left hand, and the end of his knife hilt peeked out of his closed right hand. “We need something to retrieve it with,” Veltsev repeated, and walked over to the reeds on the riverbank. Pulling his gun out of the holster, he took a quick look around. Not far away, on the river, outside the circle of light, he heard the quacking of ducks, and down the opposite bank fireworks were chirring and exploding.
In the air, thick with snow, the shot clanged softly, as if getting stuck in it. The bullet hit the Uzbek at the very base of his neck, knocking out of his cap a puff of what was either steam or dust. The Uzbek dropped the flashlight, sat down briefly, and fell face-first into the water. After rifling the dead man’s pockets, Veltsev took his car keys and shoved the body with his feet farther into the water, where the current would quickly bear him away. The earflaps of his fur cap, which was still smoking from the shot, floated in the water. A double ribbon of blood danced on the bottom in the flashlight’s tiny glow.
The snowfall had been heavy enough that Veltsev didn’t find his own tracks on the way back. On the other hand, he did find a handprint on the driver’s door of the SUV, which was parked in the middle of the road. “Asshole.” Veltsev made quick work of searching the hash- and sheepskin-impregnated glove compartment, drove the car to the cemetery gate, and abandoned it there on the shoulder of the road. On the way the car phone rang twice, and both times he could barely restrain himself from answering with some graveyard humor.
When Lana found out what had happened, she clutched her head with both hands, dropped into the armchair feet first, and said, “That’s it. I’m a dead man too. “
“Why’s that?” Veltsev asked.
“He’d been on the phone arranging … a meet-up with his pals near the front door.”
“A meet-up—for when?”
Lana looked at the cuckoo clock. “Eleven-thirty. In an hour, I guess.” Still holding her head she turned toward Veltsev. “Listen, couldn’t you have asked me what was going on? Before you—”
“Do you have the 300,000 he was talking about?” Veltsev interrupted her.
“Where would I get that?” Lana’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ve got five hundred rubles till Wednesday.”
“And this Sharfik of yours—do you know where he is?”
“I told you where.”
Veltsev pulled his sleeve back over his watch. “In that case, calm down. They didn’t come for the money today.”
Lana dropped her arms. “What did they come for?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“He was going to have himself a horror flick. Do you have somewhere to go?”
“No.”
“I can put you up in a hotel for a little while.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have my passport.”
“Why not?”
“Baba Agafia has it.”
“So?”
“So she won’t give it back.”
Veltsev wiped his face, which was still wet from snow. “Damn. I can’t stay here long.”
Lana sniffed her swollen nose. “I’m not keeping you.”
Grinning, he gave her a close, appraising look. “That’s not likely to win you a star for heroism.”
Hugging her knees, Lana looked blindly ahead and fiddled with her toes. “Fine with me. We’ve got a whole cemetery full of heroes right here.”
Veltsev took the magazine out of the gun, brought it up to his eyes like a thermometer, and jammed the weapon back in the holster. “I’m asking you for the last time. Will you come with me?”
She didn’t answer, in fact she seemed to have stopped hearing him altogether. Veltsev took his wet cap off the shelf in the front hall, replaced it with three thousand-ruble bills, took one more look at Lana, and pushed the door open with his fist.