Red Square (4 page)

What could explain this shop, this country, this life? A fork with three out of four tines, two kopecks. A fishhook, twenty kopecks, used, but fish weren't choosy. A comb as small as a seedy moustache, reduced from four kopecks to two.

   
True, this was a discount shop, but in another, more civilized world wasn't this trash? Wouldn't it all be thrown away?

   
Some items had no discernible function. A wooden scooter with rough wooden wheels and no pole, no bars to hang on to. A plastic tag embossed with the number '97'. What were the odds someone had ninety-seven rooms, ninety-seven lockers or ninety-seven anything and was only missing the number '97'?

   
Perhaps it was the
idea
of buying. The idea of a market. Because this was a cooperative shop and people wanted to buy . . . something.

   
On the third table was a bar of soap, shaved and shaped out of a larger, used bar of soap, twenty kopecks. A rusty butter knife, five kopecks. A blackened light bulb with a broken filament, three rubles. Why, when a new bulb was forty kopecks? Since there were no new light bulbs for sale in the shops, you took this used bulb to your office, replaced the bulb in the lamp on your desk and took the good bulb home so that you wouldn't live in the dark.

   
Arkady slipped out of the back door and walked across the dirt towards the second address, a milk shop, cigarette in his left hand, which meant that Kim had not been inside the cooperative. Up the street, Jaak seemed to be reading a newspaper in a car.

   
There was no milk, cream or butter in the milk shop, though the chill rooms were stacked with boxes of sugar. The empty counters were staffed by women in white coats and caps who wore the boredom of a rearguard. Arkady lifted a sugar box. Empty.

   
'Whipped cream?' Arkady asked an assistant.

 
  
'No.' She seemed startled.

   
'Sweet cheese?'

   
'Of course not. Are you crazy?'

   
'Yes, but what a memory,' Arkady said. He flashed his red ID and walked around the counter and through the swinging door into the rear. A lorry was in the bay and a delivery of milk was being unloaded, directly into another, unmarked lorry. The manager of the shop came out of a chill room; before the door snapped shut, Arkady saw wheels of cheese and tubs of butter.

   
'Everything you see is reserved. We have nothing, nothing!' she announced.

   
Arkady opened the chill room door. An elderly man huddled like a mouse in a corner. In one hand, he clutched a certificate naming him a volunteer citizen inspector to combat hoarding and speculation. In his other hand was a bottle of vodka.

   
'Staying warm, uncle?' Arkady asked.

   
'I'm a veteran.' The old man touched the bottle to the medal on his sweater.

   
'I can see that.'

   
Arkady walked around the storeroom. Why did a milk shop need bins?

   
'Everything here is special order for invalids and children,' the manager said.

   
Arkady opened a bin to see sacks of flour stacked like sandbags. When he opened another, pomegranates rolled around his feet and over the storeroom floor. A third bin, and lemons poured over pomegranates.

   
'Invalids and children!' the manager shouted.

   
The last bin was stacked with cigarettes.

   
Arkady stepped carefully around the fruit and exited through the bay. The men loading the milk tucked their faces away.

   
From the back of the shop, his cigarette still in his left hand, Arkady walked across a yard seeded with broken glass to the main street. On it, apartment buildings rusted in seams along drainpipes and window casings. Cars had the creased and rusted look of wrecks. Kids hung on to a rust-orange roundabout without seats. The school seemed to be built of bricks of rust. At the end of the street, the local Party headquarters was sheathed like a sepulchre in white marble.

   
At Julya's last address for Kim, Arkady dropped the cigarette as he approached a pet shop whose plaster had fallen from its facade in large, geographic sections. He heard Jaak and the car rolling close behind.

   
The only animals for sale seemed to be chicks and cats peeping and mewing in wire cages. The shop assistant was a Chinese girl carving what looked like liver for a customer. When the liver stirred Arkady saw that it was actually a spreading mound of bloodworms. He stepped behind the counter and into a back room as the girl followed with her cleaver and warned, 'This is no entry.'

   
In the back were sacks of wood shavings and chicken pellets, a refrigerator with a calendar for the Year of the Sheep, shelves with tall glass jars of teas, mushrooms and fungi, man-shaped ginseng and items labelled only in Chinese characters, but which he recognized from the herbal shops he had seen in Siberia. What looked like tar in a jar was black-bear bile; a larger bottle held a lumpish mass of coagulated pig's blood, good for soup. There were dried seahorses and deer penises that resembled peppers. Bear paws, another illegal delicacy, were stacked on a rope. An armadillo stirred, half-alive, on a string.

   
'No entry,' the girl insisted. She couldn't have been more than twelve and the cleaver looked as long as her arm.

   
Arkady apologized and left. A second door led up stairs littered with birdseed to a metal door. He knocked and pressed himself against the wall. 'Kim, we want to help you. Come out so we can talk. We're friends.'

   
Someone was inside. Arkady heard the careful easing of a floorboard and a sound like rustling sheets. When he pounded the door, it popped open. He walked into a storeroom that was dark except for a shoebox that was burning from the top down in the middle of the floor; he smelled the lighter fluid that had been poured on to it. Around the walls were television cartons, on the floor a bare mattress, tool kit, hot plate. He pulled the curtains aside and looked out of the open window at a fire escape leading down to a yard knee-deep in pet-shop junk: birdseed bags, steel netting, dead chicks. Whoever had been here was gone. He tried the switch. The light bulb was gone, too. Well, that showed forethought.

   
Arkady made a complete circuit of the room, looking behind the cartons, before he returned to the burning box. The sound of the flames was soft and furious at the same time, a miniature firestorm. It wasn't a shoebox. The side of it said 'Sindy' and showed a doll with a blonde ponytail sitting at a table, pouring tea. He recognized it because Sindy dolls were the most popular import in Moscow, displayed in every toy-shop window, non-existent on the shelves. The box's illustration also showed a dog, perhaps a Pekingese, that sat at the doll's feet and wagged its tail.

   
Jaak rushed in to stamp out the fire.

   
'Don't.' Arkady pulled him back.

   
The fire line edged down into the picture. As Sindy's hair burst into flame, her face darkened in alarm. She seemed to raise the teapot, then stand as her upper half was consumed. The dog waited faithfully as paper burned down around him. Then the entire box was black, twisted, spider-webbed with red, turning grey and gauzy, with a layer of ashes that Arkady blew away. Inside was a land mine, lightly charred, its two pressure pins up, triggered, still waiting for Jaak's foot to push them down.

Chapter Three

Arkady drew a cartoon car on a piece of paper. Crayons, he thought, were about the only thing he lacked. Amenities for rehabilitated Special Investigator Renko included desk and conference table, four chairs, files, and a closet that held a combination safe. Plus two 'Deluxe' portable typewriters, two red outside phones with dials and two yellow intercoms without. He had two windows dressed with curtains, a wall map of Moscow, a rollaway blackboard, an electric samovar and an ashtray.

   
On the table Polina spread a black-and-white 360-degree panorama of the construction site and approaching shots of the Audi, then detailed colour shots of the gutted car and driver. Minin hovered zealously. Jaak, forty hours without sleep, stirred like a boxer trying to rise before the count of ten.

   
'It was vodka that made the fire so bad,' Jaak said.

   
'Everyone thinks of vodka,' Polina sneered. 'What really burns are seats because they're polyurethane. That's why cars burn so quickly, because they're mostly plastic. The seat adheres to the skin like napalm. A car is just an incendiary device on wheels.'

   
Arkady suspected that not so long ago Polina had been the girl in pathology class with the best reports, illustrated and footnoted in punctilious detail.

   
'In these photographs, I first show Rudy still in the car, then after we've peeled him off and removed him, then a shot through the springs to show what fell through from his pockets: intact steel keys, kopecks melted with floor rubbish, hardware from the seat, including what was left of our transmitter. The tapes burned, of course, if there ever was anything on them. In the first photographs you'll notice that I have circled in red a flash mark on the side wall by the clutch.' She had indeed, right by the charred shinbones and shoes of Rudy Rosen's legs. 'Around the flash mark were traces of red sodium and copper sulphate, consistent with an explosive incendiary device. Since there are no remains of a timer or fuse, I assume it was a bomb designed to ignite on contact. There was also petrol.'

   
'From when the tank blew,' Jaak said. Arkady drew a stick figure in the car and, with a red pen, a circle around the stick feet. 'What about Rudy?'

  
 
'Flesh in that condition is as hard as wood, and at the same time bones break as soon as you cut. It's hard enough to pick the clothes off. I brought you this.' From a plastic bag Polina produced a newly buffed garnet and a hard puddle of gold, what was left of Rudy's ring. The cool pride on her face reminded Arkady of the sort of cat who brings mice to its owner.

   
'You checked his teeth?'

   
'Here's a chart. The gold ran and I haven't found it, but there are signs of a filling in the second lower molar. This is all preliminary to a complete autopsy, of course.'

   
'Thank you.'

   
'Just one thing,' she added. 'There's too much blood.'

   
'Rudy was probably pretty cut up,' Jaak said.

   
Polina said, 'People who are burning to death don't explode. They're not sausages. I found blood everywhere.'

   
Arkady squirmed. 'Maybe the assailant was cut.'

   
'I sent samples to the lab to check the blood type.'

   
'Good idea.'

   
'You're welcome.' Chin up, contemptuous from then on of the proceedings, she even sat just like a cat. Jaak diagrammed the market on the blackboard, showing the relative positions of Rudy's car, Kim, the queue of customers, then, at a distance of twenty meters, the lorry with VCRs. A second grouping was arranged in a loose orbit of ambulance, computer salesman, caviar van; then more space and half an orbit that included Gypsy jewellers, rockers, rug merchants, the Zhiguli.

   
'It was a big night. With Chechens there we're lucky the whole place didn't erupt.' Jaak stared at the board. 'Our only witness states that Kim killed Rudy. At first I found it hard to believe, but looking at who was actually close enough to throw a bomb, it makes sense.'

   
'This is from a memory of what you saw in the confusion in the dark?' Polina asked.

   
'Like much of life.' Arkady searched his desk for cigarettes. No sleep? A little nicotine would take care of that. 'What we have here is a black market, not the usual daytime variety for ordinary citizens, but a black market at night for criminals. Neutral territory and a very neutral victim in Rudy Rosen.' He remembered Rudy's description of himself as Switzerland.

   
'You know, this was like spontaneous combustion,' Jaak said. 'You get together enough thugs, drugs, vodka, throw in some hand grenades and something's going to happen.'

   
'A type like that probably cheated someone,' Minin suggested.

   
'I liked Rudy,' Arkady said. 'I forced him into this operation and I got him killed.' The truth was always good for embarrassment. Jaak looked pained by Arkady's lapse, like a good dog that sees his master trip. Minin, on the other hand, seemed grimly satisfied. 'The question is, why two fire bombs? There were so many guns around, why not shoot Rudy? Our witness - '

   
'Our witness is Gary Oberlyan,' Jaak reminded him.

   
Arkady continued, 'Who identifies Kim as an assailant. We saw Kim with a Malysh. He could have emptied a hundred bullets into Rudy more easily than throwing a bomb. All he had to do was pull the trigger.'

   
Polina asked, 'Why two bombs instead of one? The first was enough to kill Rudy.'

   
'Maybe the point wasn't just to kill Rudy,' Arkady said. 'Maybe it was to burn the car. All his files, every piece of information - loans, deals, paper files, disks -
were on the back seat.'

   
Jaak said, 'When you kill someone, you want to leave the area. You don't want to have to start moving files.'

   
'They're all smoke now,' Arkady said.

   
Polina changed to a happier subject. 'If Kim was close to the car when the device ignited, maybe he was injured. Maybe it was his blood.'

   
'I alerted hospitals and clinics to report anyone coming in with burns,' Jaak said. 'I'll add lacerations to that. I just find it hard to believe that Kim would have turned on Rudy. If nothing else, Kim was loyal.'

   
'How are we on Rudy's place?' Arkady asked while he followed the at once tantalizing and repellent smell of stale tobacco to a bottom drawer.

   
Polina said, 'The technicians lifted prints. So far they've only found Rudy's.'

   
In the back of a drawer, Arkady found a forgotten pack of Belomors, a true gauge of desperation. He asked, 'You haven't finished the autopsy?'

   
She said, 'There's a wait for morgue time, I told you.'

   
'A wait for morgue time? That's the ultimate insult.' The Belomor lit with a puff of black fumes like diesel exhaust. Hard to smoke it and hold it away at the same time, but Arkady tried.

   
'Watching you smoke is like watching a man commit suicide,' Polina said. 'No one has to attack this country, just drop cigarettes.'

   
Arkady changed the subject. 'What about Kim's place?'

   
Jaak reported that a more complete search of the storeroom had turned up more empty cartons for German car radios and Italian running shoes, the mattress, empty cognac bottles, birdseed and Tiger Balm.

 
  
'All the fingerprints from the storeroom matched the militia file on Kim,' Polina said. 'The prints on the fire escape were smudged.'

   
'The witness identified Kim throwing a bomb into Rudy's car. You find a land mine in his room. How much doubt can there be?' Minin asked.

   
'We didn't actually
see
Kim,' Arkady said. 'We don't know who was there.'

   
'The door opened and there was a fire inside,' Jaak said. 'Remember when you were a kid? Didn't you put dog shit in a bag and set the bag on fire to see people stamp it out?'

   
No, Minin shook his head; he'd never done anything like that.

   
Jaak said, 'We used to do it all the time. Anyway, instead of dog shit there was a land mine. I can't believe I fell for it. Almost.' A photo in front of Jaak showed the mine's oblong case, the two raised pins. It was a small army anti-personnel mine with a trinitrotoluol charge, the kind nicknamed 'Souvenir for . . . ' The detective lifted his eyes and regained his poise. 'Maybe it's a gang war. If Kim went over to the Chechens, Borya will be looking for him. I bet the mine was left for Borya.'

   
Polina had never removed her coat. She stood and buttoned the top with quick fingers that expressed both decisiveness and disgust. 'The mine in the box was left for you. The bomb in the car was probably meant for you, too,' she told Arkady.

   
'No,' he said and was about to explain to Polina how backwards her reasoning was when she left, shutting the door as her last word. Arkady killed the Belomor and regarded his two detectives. 'It's late, children. That's enough for one day.'

   
Minin rose reluctantly. 'I still don't see why we have to keep a militiaman at Rosen's flat.'

   
Arkady said, 'We want to keep it the way it is for a while. We left valuable items there.'

  
 
'The clothes, television, savings book?'

   
'I was thinking of the food, Comrade Minin.' Minin was the only Party member on the team; Arkady fed him 'comrade' as occasional slops to a pig.

Sometimes Arkady had the feeling that while he had been away, God had lifted Moscow and turned it upside down. It was a nether-Moscow he had returned to, no longer under the grey hand of the Party. The wall map showed a different, far more colorful city drawn with crayons.

   
Red, for example, was for the mafia from Lyubertsy, a workers' suburb east of Moscow. Kim was unusual in that he was Korean, but otherwise he was typical of the boys who grew up there. The Lyubers were the dispossessed, the lads without elite schools, academic diplomas and Party connections, who had in the last five years emerged from the city's metro stations first to attack punks and then to offer protection to prostitutes, black markets, government offices. Red circles showed Lyubertsy spheres of influence: the tourist complex at Izmailovo Park, Domodedovo airport, video hawkers on Shabalovka Street. The racetrack was run by a Jewish clan, but they bought muscle from Lyubertsy.

   
Blue was for the mafia from Long Pond, a northern dead-end suburb of barrack housing. Blue circles marked their interest in stolen cargo at Sheremetyevo airport and prostitutes at the Minsk Hotel, but their main business was car parts. The Moskvitch car factory, for example, sat in a blue circle. Borya Gubenko had not only risen to the top of Long Pond but had also brought Lyubertsy under his influence.

   
Islamic green was for the Chechens, Moslems from the Caucasus Mountains. A thousand lived in Moscow, with reinforcements that arrived in motorcades, all answering to the orders of a tribal leader called Makhmud. The Chechens were the Sicilians of the Soviet mafias.

   
Royal purple was reserved for Moscow's own Baumanskaya mafia, from the neighbourhood between Lefortovo Prison and the Church of the Epiphany. Their business base was the Rizhsky Market.

   
Finally, there was brown for the boys from Kazan, more a swarm of ambitious hit-and-run artists than an organized mafia. They raided restaurants on the Arbat, moved drugs and ran teenage prostitutes on the streets.

   
Rudy Rosen had been banker for them all. Just following Rudy in his Audi had helped Arkady draw this brighter, darker Moscow. Six mornings a week -
Monday to Saturday - Rudy had followed a set routine. A morning drive to a bathhouse run by Borya on the north side of town, then a trip with Borya to pick up pastries at Izmailovo Park and meet the Lyubers. Late-morning coffee at the National Hotel with Rudy's Baumanskaya contact. Even lunch at the Uzbekistan with his enemy, Makhmud. The circuit of a modern Moscow businessman, always trailed by Kim on the motorcycle like a cat's tail.

   
The night outside was still white. Arkady wasn't sleepy or hungry. He felt like the perfect new Soviet man, designed for a land with no food or rest. He got up and left the office. Enough.

There was grillwork at each landing of the stairwell to catch 'divers', prisoners trying to escape. Maybe not only prisoners, Arkady thought on the way down.

   
In the courtyard, the Zhiguli was parked next to a blue dog van. Two dogs with bristling backs were chained to the van's front bumper. Ostensibly Arkady had two official cars, but petrol coupons enough for only one because the oil wells of Siberia were being drained by Germany, Japan, even fraternal Cuba, leaving a thin trickle for domestic consumption. From his second car he'd also had to cannibalize the distributor and battery to keep the first one running, because to send the Zhiguli to the shop was equivalent to sending it on a trip around the world, where it would be stripped on the docks of Calcutta and Port Said. Petrol was bad enough. Petrol was the reason defenders of the state slipped from car to car with siphon tube and can. Also the reason dogs were leashed to bumpers.