Red Square (2 page)

   
'I know, I know.' Arkady lifted the contact prongs and gently slipped the batteries back in. 'There was a woman in your car. Who is she?'

   
'I don't know. I
really
don't know. She had something for me.'

   
'What?'

   
'A dream. Big plans.'

   
'Is greed involved?'

   
Rudy let a modest smile shine. 'I hope so. Who wants a poor dream? Anyway, she's a friend.'

   
'You don't seem to have any enemies.'

   
'Chechens aside, no, I don't think I do.'

   
'Bankers can't afford enemies?'

   
'Arkady, we're different. You want justice. No wonder you have enemies. I have smaller aims like profit and pleasure, the way sane people live around die world. Which of us helps other people more?'

   
Arkady hit the transmitter with the recorder.

   
'I love to watch Russians fix things,' Rudy said.

   
'You're a student of Russians?'

   
'I have to be, I'm a Jew.'

   
The spools started to roll.

   
'It's working,' Arkady announced.

   
'What can I say? Once again, I'm amazed.'

   
Arkady laid transmitter and recorder under the notes. 'Be careful,' he said. 'If there's trouble, shout.'

   
'Kim keeps me out of trouble.' When Arkady opened the door to leave, Rudy added, 'In a place like this, you're the one who has to be careful.'

   
As the line outside pressed forward, Kim pushed it back with rapid shoves. He gave Arkady a black stare as he brushed by.

   
Jaak had bought a short-wave radio that hung like a space-age valise from his hand. The detective wanted to stow his purchase in the Zhiguli.

   
On the way to the car, Arkady said, 'Tell me about this radio. Short wave, long wave, medium wave? German?'

   
'All waves.' Jaak squirmed under Arkady's gaze. 'Japanese.'

   
'Did they have any transmitters?'

   
They passed an ambulance that offered vials of morphine in solution and disposable syringes still in sterile American cellophane. A biker from Leningrad sold acid from his sidecar; Leningrad University had a reputation for the best chemists. Someone Arkady had known ten years before as a pickpocket was now taking orders for computers; Russian computers, at least. Tyres rolled out of a bus straight to the customer. Women's shoes and sandals were arrayed on tiptoe on a dainty shawl. Shoes and tyres were on the march, if not into the daylight, at least into the twilight.

   
There was a white flash and a gust of glass from behind them, in the middle of the market. Perhaps a camera bulb and a broken bottle, Arkady thought, though he and Jaak started to return in the direction of the disturbance. A second flash erupted like a firework that caught each face in recoil. The flash subsided to an everyday orange, the sort of fire men start in an oil can to warm their hands on a winter's eve. Little stars rose and danced in the sky. The acrid smell of plastic was tinged by die heady bouquet of petrol.

   
Some men staggered back with sleeves on fire and, as the crowd spread and Arkady pushed through, he saw Rudy Rosen riding a blazing phaeton, upright, face black, hair aflame, hands clasped to the wheel, brilliant in his own glow but motionless within the thick, noxious storm clouds that whipped from the interior and out of the gutted windows of his car. Arkady got near enough to look through the windscreen at Rudy's eyes sinking into

   
the smoke. He was dead. There was that silence, that gutted gaze in the middle of the flames.

   
Around the burning car other cars were moving. Spilling rugs, gold coins, VCRs, a mass evacuation flowed to the gate. The ambulance lumbered off, ploughing over a figure in its headlights, followed by a Chechen motorcade. Motorbikes split into several streams, searching for gaps in the site fence.

   
Yet some men stayed and, as the stars drifted overhead, fought to catch them. Arkady himself leaped and plucked from the air a burning Deutschmark, then a dollar, then a franc, all lined with worms of burning gold.

Chapter Two

Although the ground was still in shadow, Arkady could see that the site was a layout of four twenty-storey towers around a central square - three of the towers were faced in pre-cast concrete while the last was still in a skeletal girders-and-crane phase that in the hopeful light of dawn appeared both gargantuan and frail. On the ground floors he supposed there would be restaurants, cabarets, perhaps a cinema, and in the middle of the square, when the earthmovers and cement mixers were gone, a view of coaches and taxis. Now, however, there were a forensic van, the Zhiguli and the black shell of Rudy Rosen's Audi sitting on a black carpet of singed glass. The Audi's windows were hollow and the heat of the fire had exploded and then burned the tyres, so at least it was the stench of burnt rubber that was strongest. As if listening, Rudy Rosen sat stiffly upright.

   
'Glass seems to be evenly distributed,' Arkady said. Polina followed with her pre-war Leica and took a picture every other step. 'Glass is melted closer to the car, which is a four-door Audi 1200. Left doors shut. Bonnet shut, headlights burned out. Right doors shut. Boot shut, rear lights burned out.' There was nothing to do but get on his hands and knees. 'Fuel tank is blown. Silencer separated from exhaust pipe.' He got up. 'Numberplate black now but a Moscow number is legible and identified as property of Rudik Rosen. By the wide spread of glass, origin of fire seems to have been inside the passenger compartment, not out.'

   
'Pending expert reports, of course,' Polina said to maintain her reputation for disrespect. Young and tiny, the pathologist wore one coat and one smirk summer and winter, her hair piled high and stabbed ferociously with pins. 'You should get the thing up on a lift.'

   
Arkady's comments were written down by Minin, a detective with the deep-set eyes of a maniac. Behind Minin a cordon of militia marched across the site. Arson dogs dragged their handlers around the towers, racing from pillar to post, raising their legs.

   
'Exterior paint is peeled,' Arkady went on. 'Chrome on the door handle is peeled.' There go prints, he thought; nevertheless, he wrapped a handkerchief around his hand to open the front passenger door.

   
'Thank you,' Polina said.

   
At Arkady's touch the door swung open, spilling ash on his shoes.

   
'Interior of the car is gutted,' he continued. 'Seats are burned down to frames and springs. Steering wheel seems to have melted and disappeared.'

   
'Flesh is tougher than plastic,' Polina said.

   
'Rear rubber floor mats melted around what appears to be puddled glass. Rear seat burned to springs. Charred computer battery and residue of non-ferrous metal. Flecks of gold probably from conductors.' Which was all that was left of the computer Rudy was so proud of. 'Metal shuttles from computer disks.' The megabytes of information. 'Covered with ash.' The file boxes.

   
Reluctantly, Arkady moved to the front. 'Flash signs by the clutch. Fragments of charred leather. Plastic residue, batteries in dash compartment.'

   
'Naturally. The heat was intense.' Polina leaned in to snap a shoe with her Leica. Two thousand degrees, at least.'

   
'On the front seat,' Arkady said, 'a cashbox. The tray is empty and charred. Under the tray are small metal contacts, four batteries, perhaps the remains of a transmitter and tape recorder. So much for surveillance. Also on the seat is a metal rectangle, perhaps the back of a calculator. Key in the ignition is turned to 'Off'. Two other keys on the ring.'

   
Which brought him to the driver. This was not where Arkady excelled. In fact, this was where he could have used a long walk and a cigarette.

   
'With the burned ones you have to open the camera aperture all the way just to get any detail,' Polina said.

   
Detail? 'The body is shrunken,' Arkady said, 'too badly charred to be immediately identifiable as male or female, child or adult. Head is resting on the left shoulder. Clothes and hair are burned off; some skull shows through. Teeth do not appear salvageable for moulds. No visible shoes or socks.'

   
Which didn't really describe the new, smaller, blacker Rudy Rosen riding on the airy springs of his chariot. It didn't capture his full transformation into tar and bone, the particular nakedness of a belt buckle hanging in the pelvic cavity, the wondering sockets of the eyes and the molten gold of his fillings, the trousers stripped for speed, the way his right hand gripped the steering wheel as if he were cruising through hell, and the fact that the pearlized wheel had melted like pink toffee on his fingers. It didn't convey the mysterious way bottles of Starka and Kuban vodka had liquefied and pooled, how hard currency and cigarettes had vanished in a puff. 'Everybody needs me.' Not any more.

   
Arkady turned away and saw that as black as Rudy Rosen was, Minin's face registered nothing but satisfaction, as if this sinner had suffered barely enough. Arkady took him aside and aimed him at some of the searchers among the militia who were stuffing their pockets. The ground was strewn with goods abandoned in the panic of the evacuation. 'I told them to identify and chart what they found.'

   
'You didn't mean for them to keep it.'

   
Arkady took a deep breath. 'Right.'

   
'Look at this.' Polina probed a corner of the back seat with her hairpin. 'Dried blood.'

   
Arkady went over to the Zhiguli. Jaak was in the back seat, questioning their only witness, the same unlucky man Arkady had met when he was waiting to talk to Rudy. The mugger with too many zlotys. Jaak had tackled him just inside the fence.

   
According to his ID and work papers, Gary Oberlyan was a Moscow resident and hospital orderly, and, by the looks of his coupons, due for a new pair of shoes.

   
'You want to see his ID?' Jaak said. He pulled back Gary's sleeves. On the inside of the left forearm was the picture of a nude sitting in a wine glass and holding the ace of hearts. 'He likes wine, women and cards,' Jaak said. On the right forearm was a bracelet of spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs. 'He loves cards.' On the left little finger, a ring of upside-down spades. 'This means conviction for hooliganism.' On the right ring finger, a knife through a heart. 'This means he's ready to kill. So let's say Gary did not wash up in a basket of reeds. Let's say Gary is a multiple offender who was apprehended at a gathering of speculators and who should cooperate.'

   
'Fuck you,' Gary said. In the daylight his broken nose looked welded on.

   
'Still have your forints and zlotys?' Arkady asked.

   
'Fuck you.'

   
Jaak read from his notes. 'The witness states that he spoke to the fucking deceased because he thought the deceased was someone who owed him money. He then left the nicking deceased's car and was standing at a distance of approximately ten metres about five minutes later when the fucking car exploded. A man the witness knows as Kim threw a second fucking bomb into the car and then ran.'

   
'Kim?' Arkady asked.

   
'That's what he says. He also says he burned his fucking hands trying to save the deceased.' Jaak reached into Gary's pockets to pull out handfuls of half-burned Deutschmarks and dollars.

   
It was going to be a warm day. Already the dewiness of dawn was turning to beads of sweat. Arkady squinted at a sunlit banner that hung limply across the top of the western tower.
'NEW WORLD HOTEL!'
He imagined the banner filling with a breeze and the tower sailing away like a brigantine. He needed sleep. He needed Kim.

   
Polina knelt on the ground on the passenger side of the Audi.

   
'More blood,' she called.

As Arkady unlocked the door to Rudy Rosen's flat, Minin pressed forward with a huge Stechkin machine pistol. Definitely not standard issue.

   
Arkady admired the weapon but he worried about Minin. 'You could saw a room in half with that thing,' he told him. 'But if someone's here, they would have opened the door or blown it off with a shotgun. A pistol won't help now. It just scares the ladies.' He dispensed a reassuring nod to the two street sweepers he'd gathered as legal witnesses to the search. They answered with shy glimpses of steel teeth. Behind them, a pair of forensic technicians pulled on rubber gloves.

   
Search the home of someone you don't know and you're an investigator, Arkady thought. Search the home of someone you do know and you're a voyeur. Odd. He'd watched Rudy Rosen for a month but never been inside before.
   

   
Upholstered front door with peephole. Living/dining room, kitchen, bedroom with TV and VCR, another bedroom turned into an office, bathroom with whirlpool. Bookcases with hardback collections of culture (Gogol, Dostoyevsky), biographies of Brezhnev and Moshe Dayan, stamp albums and back issues of
Israel Trade
,
Soviet Trade
,
Business Week
and
Playboy
. At once, the forensic technicians began a survey, Minin one step behind them to make sure nothing disappeared.

   
'Don't touch a thing, please,' Arkady told the street sweepers, who stood reverentially in the middle of the room as if they had stepped into the Winter Palace.

   
A kitchen cabinet held American scotch and Japanese brandy, Danish coffee in aluminum-foil bags; no vodka. In the refrigerator, smoked fish, ham, pât
é
and butter with a Finnish label, a cool jar of sour cream and, in the freezer, a chocolate bar and an ice-cream cake with pink and green frosting in the shape of flowers and leaves. It was the sort of cake that used to be sold in common milk shops, and was now a fantasy found only in the most special buffets - a little less rare, say, than a Faberg
é
egg.

   
Kilims on the living-room floor. On the wall, matched portrait photographs of a violinist in formal clothes and his wife at a piano. Their faces had the same roundness and seriousness as Rudy's. The front window looked down on Donskaya Street and, over rooftops, north towards the giant Ferris wheel slowly rolling nowhere in Gorky Park.

   
Arkady moved on to an office with a Finnish maple desk, Stairmaster, telephone and fax. A power-surge protector at the outlet, so Rudy had used his laptop computer in the flat. The drawers held paper-clips, pencils, stationery from Rudy's hotel shop, savings book and receipts.

   
Minin opened a closet and slapped aside American tracksuits and Italian suits. 'Check the pockets,' Arkady said. 'Check the shoes.'

   
In the chest of drawers in the bedroom even the underwear had foreign labels. Bristle brush on the television set. On the night table, travelogue videotapes, satin sleep mask and alarm clock. A sleep mask was what Rudy needed now, Arkady thought. Safe but not foolproof, was that what he had told Rudy? Why did anyone ever believe him?

   
One of the street sweepers had followed him as silently as if she moved in felt slippers. She said, 'Olga Semyonovna and I share a flat. We have Armenians and Turkmen in the other rooms. They don't speak to each other.'

   
'Armenians and Turks? You're lucky they don't kill each other,' Arkady said. He unlocked the bedroom window for a view of a courtyard garage. Nothing hanging outside the sill. 'The communal apartment is death to democracy.' He thought about it. 'Of course democracy is death to the communal apartment.'

   
Minin entered. 'I agree with the chief investigator. What we need is a firm hand.'

   
The sweeper said, 'Say what you want, in the old days there was order.'

   
'It was rough order but it was effective,' Minin said and they both turned to Arkady with such expectation that he felt like a mad dog on a pedestal.

   
'Agreed, there was no shortage of order,' he said.

   
At the desk, Arkady filled in the Protocol of Search: date, his name, in the presence of - here he entered the names and addresses of the two women - according to search warrant number, entered Citizen Rudik Abramovich Rosen's residence, apartment 4A at 25 Donskaya Street.

   
Arkady's eye was caught by the fax again. The machine had buttons in English - for example, 'Redial'. Gingerly he lifted the phone and pushed the button. The receiver produced tones, a ring, a voice.

   
'Feldman.'

   
'I'm calling for Rudy Rosen,' Arkady said.

   
'Why can't he call himself?'

   
'I'll explain when we talk.'

   
'You didn't call to talk?'

   
'We should meet.'

   
'I don't have time.'