“Said you were okay. I have to get back to work soon.”
I leaned against the railing near her. “I want to know why Valentina Sverdloff was killed.”
She gave a short tough laugh. “You know what I was before?” she said.
Russians always told you what they were before, before, before the Soviet Union crumbled, before everything changed. Physicists who now sold fur coats. Linguists who drove cabs. Guys who once ran market stalls were billionaires. You went up the scale or you went down, but everything had changed. It was as if they had all migrated to a different planet. Except for old people, like my Aunt Birdie’s friends. Old people stayed where they had always been; so did the poor in the countryside.
“What were you?”
She grunted a laugh.
“For a while, I was a scientist, I was educated as a scientist, and I was in forensics, and then I thought, fuck it, I’ll be a cop. It doesn’t matter, nothing changes, we’re master and slave, the elite and the mass, the hierarchy remains,” said Fetushova, “You know what it is, it’s fucking Orthodox Christianity whose aim is to enslave people, Maybe my grandchildren’s grandchildren will see some kind of civil society. I have three of them. You’re surprised?” She reached in her brown leather bag and took out a folder, opened it, showed me her children. Two girls and a boy, good-looking young people. In the boy’s arms was a baby.
“What are their names? Are they here in Moscow with you?”
No, thank God,” she said, and then seemed sorry she had revealed this and stuffed the pictures back in her bag.
“You said you were a cop.”
“You don’t believe me? I’m not fucking kidding you, Mr Cohen. I was. So I saw everything. I see everything. It’s all façade, the FSB is about money, the gangsters of the 1990s have moved sideways into it.” She sucked at her cigarette. “Literally. I mean literally. I saw how the corruption worked, small, bigger, I see it now and I can’t keep my mouth shut. My friends say I’m like a woman with Tourette’s syndrome, you know?” She blew a harsh puff of smoke in my face. “I still have friends in the police, I have friends in the FSB, retired KGB officers. You think the spook world was a place of endlessly reflecting mirrors and no moral spine, everybody and everything up for grabs during the Cold War? Now there is only money. Everything is money.”
“I believe you.”
“Most of all, as a cop, I saw how they treated women. Whatever the crime, the women were culpable. Rape was a joke at the police station most of the time. I imagine it still is. It was my beat. When I got here,” she gestured at the radio station, “I was still ranting, people thought I was nuts, and I was nuts, I am nuts. Valentina came to me, and I said, go the fuck away, it will get us all killed, and I’m a dead dog anyhow.” From inside the studio I could hear voices, and music.
“What about this radio station?”
“They keep us on the air to show what a free society we are, we say what we want, and they let us alone partly because it’s the only way the Kremlin assholes can get real information. They have a need to know, especially the big shots at the FSB. Funny, right? They need our little station because they need a source of fact, they need us because we report things as they are. On the other hand, we could go off the air any minute, poof, but for now, we’re all there is.” She sucked in more smoke.
“Money? You were talking money.”
“I told Valentina, she had to be careful, but it made her crazy when she discovered how many girls were being prostituted and how many officials were pocketing the cash, and the one thing you don’t talk about here is their money, especially where our leader is concerned.” She sneered as she said it. “I told her, but she didn’t listen. She talked and talked, she thought she was impregnable, an American girl with rights. Free speech, Marina, she says, I can say what I want. We don’t have free speech. Putin said so. He said Russians never had free speech.”
“What happened?”
“Finally, Valentina got me to go on the air with it, to tell about deputies who keep girls at home, who offer them to foreign diplomats, one had a book of pictures, so friends could choose the beauties they liked, some of them were little, twelve, thirteen. I told only facts.”
I felt bands tightened around my head.
“Valentina felt she should put herself on the line if I did. She called in to the show, gave her real name and supported me with more cases.”
“My God.”
“Also, Valentina had a video.”
“Fuck. What did she do with it?”
“I made her give it to me, but I don’t know if she made copies or put it on the Internet or sent it to somebody. A couple of top FSB guys are in it, a little girl.”
“Fuck.”
“Yup. Fuck is right.” She smiled. Her teeth were discolored. “So you want me to give you Grisha Curtis? You plan to kill him, you want to avenge your friend, like in the novels?” She cracked another smile. “I’ll put out some calls. But don’t tell me what you plan to do.”
I agreed.
“You don’t care anymore about what happens to you, as long as you get him, isn’t that right? Artie? That’s what Valentina always called you.”
“Yes.” I took hold of her dry hand, the skin peeling. “Get me the video. Please,” I said.
“You were in love with Valentina, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“She was a good girl. If I can get the bastards, it would be fine, we have nothing, no laws, no courts, no free speech. Whoever thought it would have been Yeltsin, that old fatso sot, who left the press alone? He had something. But this one.” Her eyes glistened. “What the fuck, the economy is probably going down the tubes in a few months and we can all wallow in the shit together.”
I started for the door.
“Take it easy,” she said, her voice down a few decibels. “Your pal Sverdloff might still be alive.” She shook her head. “But do this quietly. Find Curtis. You don’t want somebody killing Sverdloff before you get there, if he is alive.”
“Be careful,” I said. “You be careful.”
She snorted, rolling her eyes, pulling at her shabby green sweater that barely covered her fat belly. “Careful? You want me to find this tape for you, you want me to find this Curtis for you, and you say be careful?”
“I’ll give you my numbers,” I said.
“I have your number,” she said, and hoisted herself off the step, went back into the radio station and closed the door.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“Artemy Maximovich Ostalsky? Artie Cohen?”
That night, I saw the man in the blue and white jacket again. Near Pushkinskaya, he suddenly appeared. He said my name, I turned.
Compact man, medium build, with short elegantly cut white hair and light brown eyes like milk chocolate, he wore a pair of pressed khakis, a white Oxford shirt, the sleeves neatly rolled to his forearms, which were tan.
Only the loose skin around his neck and the deep lines in his face made me think he could be seventy or even more. On his feet were the Timberlands, he had the blue and white seersucker jacket over one arm-it was a hot, heavy night-and he could have passed for a well-heeled tourist strolling Moscow’s main street in the early evening.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know him, or want to, and before I ran into the subway, the man smiled lightly, shrugged and then walked away as if he’d made a mistake about knowing me. But he knew my Russian name.
He saw that I had heard him, that he was right, that it was my name, and then he ducked into a car waiting at the curb. I felt I was going crazy, but it’s what happens to you in Russia, and after that, I saw a horse.
*
“It really was a horse,” said a hooker standing in the doorway of McDonald’s. “You aren’t crazy,” she added, munching her Big Mac. “Every night, they bring horses in from the country. People come out of bars and clubs late and they ride across the city. The gypsies bring them, and people ride, and sometimes girls wait until their men
are drunk enough to buy them diamonds at all-night shopping malls, and then they put the boyfriends on the horses and watch them ride away.” She looked at me and burst out laughing. “You think I’m telling you the truth?” she said. “You want to come someplace with me?”
I shook my head, and she was gone. All that was left of her was the wrapper from the burger tossed into the gutter.
I looked at my watch. It was pushing eleven. I found a cab. Heading back to the apartment, I realized where I had seen the man in the blue and white jacket who called out my name. I had seen him at the bus station when I arrrived from the airport. He had been waiting for one of the children on the airport bus. I didn’t understand. I didn’t have time for it, either.
At the apartment, I climbed the stairs, changed my sweat-soaked clothes, and took the rest of Larry Sverdloff’s cash out of my bag. Then I packed. I put Grisha Curtis’ files and my clothes in the suitcase. While I was checking my phones, messages, texts, e-mails, I heard somebody pounding at the door.
When I opened the door, I saw Igor, the caretaker, with a package in his arms.
“Yes?”
He hesitated as if working out what to say to me.
“Look.”
I took the package and peeled back some of the newspaper. It was a tangle of old bones.
Taking my arm, Igor made me follow him down the stairs into the ground-floor apartment. Half of the walls were covered with marble slabs, the rest was empty and unfinished. Empty cups stained with tea littered the floor.
In the bathroom floor was a hole. It had been covered up with linoleum, and worn, turd-colored Soviet carpet, both now pushed aside in a heap. Igor pointed to the hole in the ground.
“Somebody died here,” he said. “This is interesting for a historian like yourself?”
“Travel writer,” I said, and turned to go back up to the apartment. But Igor wasn’t finished and he followed me doggedly. He pointed to the bones.
Maybe it was the tension that made me start to laugh. I couldn’t stop. Sitting on a toilet floor in Moscow beside a Russian named Igor who had produced some old bones like an offering. What else could I do except laugh? He looked at me like I was crazy.
“You think this is funny, the bones of the dead?” and crossed himself three or four times, and I pretended not to understand.
“No, not funny, never mind. What do you want?” I knew this Igor had an agenda.
Did he want some money? Did he think the bones valuable? Did he plan to call the cops and accuse me of – what? Tell somebody a weird American was occupying the top floor flat? He told me he was afraid of the bones; he said that old bones could bring terrible curses on people who did not bury them properly and asked if I would wrap them up again and find suitable burial ground.
I pushed some bills into his hand because I wanted to get rid of him. He smiled a lot now and offered me a smoke. He didn’t leave though.
“Right, what else?” I said, and gave him more money.
“Somebody comes to see you!” he said. “Young guy, black hair, you know this guy?”
“What was his name?”
Igor was silent, but I knew it was Grisha Curtis. I told Igor to get lost, and he went back down the stairs. The bones, which I saw were from a butcher shop, I put in a closet. It didn’t mean anything. It was just Igor wanting money, wanting to stall and bargain before he told me about Grisha coming by.
Grisha Curtis had been here. He knew the apartment where I was staying. I started figuring how to bait Grisha Curtis, how to get him to visit me again.
He knew I was in Moscow. He knew where I was living.
Had it been a set-up? Was it the manager at Tolya’s club? Willie Moffat?
I didn’t care. I wanted Grisha here. I wanted him at the door. I wanted him to hunt me down in Moscow, in a bar, a restaurant, on the street. No more disguises, I thought. I’d show myself everywhere, I wanted him to see me, find me, get in my face.
When I saw Curtis, when I looked at him, I’d know if he had killed Valentina.
I couldn’t wait. I figured the best way was to show myself around, try to flush him out, draw attention, get him to come for me. Come on, I thought. Come get me!
I put on my best clean shirt and the expensive shoes from London. Gun in my pocket, I went over again to Pravda222, this time as Artie Cohen.
Come on, I thought again. I’m waiting.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
At the front door of Pravda222, I asked if Konstantin was on. He wasn’t. I asked if Sverdloff was in, and made sure the girl at the front desk knew he was my pal. Over the sound system, Frank Sinatra was singing “Come Fly With Me”, in that voice that crackled with so much sexual vanity.
I knew that nearby, in the shadows of the fancy apartment buildings, there would be plenty of security. Moscow was full of big men with weapons under their jackets, who knew how to make themselves invisible, at least to tourists.
The girl at the desk, long legs, polished skin, pearly teeth, picked up the phone, smiled at me, considered the condition of her long fingernails and rings, and then smiled again, more fulsomely this time, and led me inside.
Late at night, Pravda222 was a different scene. The girls and boys who served drinks were dressed up in skinny suits by some local designer, tight jackets, narrow pants. The new Russians understood style, they had been told this endlessly by Western fashion writers. It made them preen.
“What’s your name?” said a girl at the bar in perfect New York English. “Where are you from?”
“Can I buy you a drink?” I said.
“Sure.”
We exchanged bullshit conversation about stuff, movies, food. The girl next to me showed me her red crocodile Hermès bag, a Birkin, she said, stroking it lightly.
“These are the little gods of Moscow,” she said, and told me she had waited five years for it. She made me look at it as if it were a rare work of art. Together we inspected the skin.
She was a talkative girl. I thought she might have more to say, something I could use. I bought her a drink, I asked if I could buy her another drink and let her know I knew Tolya Sverdloff.
“Do you know this place well?” I said.
“Of course,” she said.
“Do you know the owner?”
“Tolya Sverdloff? I wish,” she said.
She stroked her bag like a pet. The club filled up. The girl with the bag spotted a good-looking man in a good-looking suit and lost interest in me and tripped away in his direction.
Rich Russians read all the magazines-I’d seen them in the bookstores-and they knew what to do. They looked good, even if they seemed to be in costume. The men wore linen shirts, sleeves rolled up casually, jeans, pale leather Prada loafers, no socks.
I moved to a table in the corner, back to the wall, ordered ginger ale and a salad. The couple next to me on the dark soft leather banquette were Brits and they wanted attention, they wanted to get in on things, they had heard me speak Russian to the waiter, they had seen the girl with the pearly fingernails treat me like a big shot, they wanted a piece.
“That looks rather good, actually,” said the woman, peering at my salad.
“Smoked eel,” I said politely.
“Yum,” she said, and went on chattering, telling me an oligarch, a friend, a Russian friend, very dear, such a lovely man, not at all just about money, always helping people, had rung ahead to say they would be made welcome at the club, at Pravda222, which was the only place worth going in Moscow he had said, their own private oligarch. Just really philanthropic, they had seen him at the White Nights Ball the other week. They had seen him in St Tropez.
Nice, I said, and continued eating.
“You are?” said the woman, who was wearing tight white jeans and a strapless top.
I told them my name was Art.
“From the States?” she said.
“New York.”
“Oh, great, brilliant,” she said. “We absolutely adore New York, don’t we,
darling? I’m Dee, everyone calls me Dee, of course, and this grumpy old man is Martin, my husband.” She put out her hand and touched his shirt.
The husband, Martin, who was not interested, nodded. He was drinking cognac steadily, glancing at me, looking pissed off while I talked to Dee.
The noise rose. The music played. The crowds swirled around as if it were a party at somebody’s house, nobody staying in one seat at one table, but moving around, greeting, kissing, joking.
“Let’s order some fizz, darling, shall we?” said Dee and the husband snapped his fingers for a waiter, and one of the girls in a tight pants suit, striped, like a clown’s, appeared. He ordered a bottle of Cristal.
“Oh, darling, nobody drinks Cristal anymore. Let’s have a nice Pol Roger Rosé, make it a magnum, shall we? A nice year. What’s a nice year, darling? So there’s enough for Art, here. We love New York,” she said. “We always stay at the Mercer. We just adore it. Last month we ordered two chairs by the Campana Brothers from Moss, for the children’s room, of course, it’s the most divine shop, you must must know it, and Murray-he owns it, of course, you know that-is the most extraordinary man with such brilliant taste. We see him every year at Art Basel in Miami,” she said, then turned to the husband. “Can we have some caviar, darling, the lovely stuff I like so much, darling?”
The husband grunted. The woman said to me, “Our friend Tolya who owns this club is the only one who can still get the great Beluga, you know.”
She rattled on. Her braying English voice penetrated even the noise of the bar. She was very tall and very blonde and looked like a horse. I was startled when she said “Our friend Tolya”.
“Tolya?” I said.
“Oh, yes, you know, that marvelous Russian chap who owns this place, and the others, New York, London, such a genius, the food and wine, the people.”
“You know him well?” I said.
“Enough,” she said. “Yes, of course, we’ve been to his wonderful house in Notting Hill, a book launch, wasn’t it? Yes, for someone we know a bit. ”
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