Back then, when they’d first met, Cono had been an even freer bird, not yet swept up by one tontería, one foolish mission, after another, and another. He was already a rich young man, but keeping to his simple ways. Hitchhiking down to Almaty from Russia, he had noted in some of the women shades of the Slavic features of Antonina, his mother’s mother. Those hints of her face brought her voice to his mind, her precise speech in Russian and French and late-acquired Portuguese. Through her meticulous care with words she preserved the elegance and dignity of her childhood in Russia, before her family was obliterated in the Bolshevik uprisings, before poverty became her new way of life and the path to her early death.
Cono loved the hitchhiking—the open roads, the expanse of countryside in summertime as he walked beneath lost white clouds drifting across high blue skies. Often he wouldn’t bother to wave down a car or truck when he heard it approaching, preferring instead to walk, to feel the strength in his legs and the tranquility in his mind. He would sleep in fields of hay or barley or sugar beets, clearing a spot for himself so he could see the stars, which he knew by heart in both hemispheres. He would talk to Antares and Alrisha and Denebola as if they were friends until his unnatural need for sleep began to sweep over him. No matter what dew or dust or insects of the field made his body their home, he slept like a buried stone, and was replenished when morning came.
Before that first visit to Almaty eight years ago, Cono had walked from the Russian town of Chelyabinsk all the way to the Kazak frontier, where three border guards were surprised to see a traveler on foot. After many rounds of vodka, a show of juggling skills, and several wads of cash delivered in enthusiastic handshakes, Cono won a visa stamp to enter the vast, infant nation of Kazakhstan.
It was much farther south, on his first day in Almaty, that Cono met Timur, and that same evening he met Timur’s friend Muktar, the painter. Despite being several years younger than the two Kazaks, Cono was adopted as an equal. The three caroused together for weeks, bedding girls, exchanging them, drinking a lot.
Then Timur got called back to duty, and Cono fell into the arms of a young woman named Irina. Muktar was left to find his own amusement, and returned to his old ways of brooding in his tiny apartment filled with pencil drawings, solvent fumes and half-finished oil canvases.
The Mercedes cruised past the hardscrabble shanty flats at the edge of the city and started to rise on the constant incline of the Almaty grid. The driver stopped the car a block down from the Hotel Ratar, leaving Timur and Cono to walk in the darkness of Panfilov Park. When they reached the festooned and dilapidated Zenkov Cathedral in the center of the park grounds, they stepped into the moonlight shadow of the church. The trees were musty, hinting of approaching autumn.
“Cono, my brother!” Timur exclaimed. The two embraced and slammed their hands against each other’s shoulders. Cono felt the pistol sheath beneath Timur’s expensive leather coat, at his left armpit, and his hand lightly grazed the bulge of another gun wedged into the belt at Timur’s spine.
“Such a good-news friend,” Cono said in Russian as they pushed each other apart, smiling. Timur took off his shades.
“She’s safe, a little cut up. And still beautiful, your tart friend. How could she bring you all the way to Almaty? There must be more—some unfinished business.”
“Ah, Timur, there is always unfinished business, and tides are always turning. Where is she?”
“Right there.” Timur pointed at the bright block of lights spelling the name of the Ratar through the branches. The “T” was burned out.
“And the Chinese, the Kitais?”
“All happy, gone away. I made them take their dead friend with them, in a bag.” The slight change in the timbre of Timur’s voice told Cono it was a half-truth. “So, Cono, why the trouble of flying to Almaty on such short notice, a man with so many women? Didn’t think I could spring your girl?”
“I came to say thanks, and to show the flag.”
“The flag of which country? Hah! I know,” Timur rolled his eyes. “The country around your own two feet.” Timur looked Cono up and down, searching for changes in his appearance since last time; there weren’t many. “And by the way, the bomb scare wasn’t necessary.”
“Just a little insurance, in case you had been tied up. Busy guy like you, chief of the whole damn National Security Bureau, keeping the entire country safe.”
The pleasant scent of mulch was suddenly poisoned by a stench like that of burning hair. A few trees away, five figures were squatting around an open fire. They were roasting pigeons on sticks, and the feathers were crackling in the flames; filaments of singed plumage floated up through the branches.
Cono and Timur walked in a loop past the World War II monument of elephant-size bronze faces lit by an eternal kerosene flame. When they were beyond the glow of the war memorial, Timur broke the silence.
“Your friend, she’s going to be in trouble.”
Cono cocked his head. Again, the timbre of Timur’s voice had shifted. “What do you mean?”
“She saw too much. Maybe heard too much, too.”
“Traders disappear all the time in this town, part of the business risk. She’s smart enough not to say anything,” Cono said. He knew the murder of Xiao Li’s client wasn’t the problem; it was something else.
“Her customer was in a delicate position.” Timur cleared his throat. “He had a heap of cash, probably working as a carrier, just meant to give and go. Apparently he didn’t make the delivery on time and was dipping into the purse to pay for his pleasures. Unfortunately, he had no idea who he was working for.”
“Ah,” Cono murmured. “So the dead man’s comrades weren’t just doing business. They were Beijing boys, working for their government. Probably aiming to buy off somebody high up. Maybe even a minister or two.” In the faint light Cono saw the clenching of Timur’s jaw muscles, the pulsing of his temporal artery.
“Probably.”
Cono pulled a thick envelope from his back pocket and with a whip of his hand lodged it in Timur’s armpit, next to his gun strap. Timur jolted as he stabbed his right hand into his jacket, reaching for the handgun. The envelope dropped with his movement. He picked it up and handed it back to Cono.
“Thanks, swifty. Those gifts aren’t necessary anymore. The girl’s for free. But you owe me.”
Cono slid the envelope into his vest, keeping his surprise to himself; this was a generosity Cono had never seen in his friend. “Very charitable of you, brother.”
“I’ll get her down from the hotel now,” Timur said. “Then I’ll meet you around back at the Cactus.” Timur snapped open his phone to dismiss his driver for the time being, and the two men waited among the trees to see that the car had driven off.
One of the Pakistani doorkeepers at the Cactus stifled a fleeting sense of recognition as Cono walked in, his bag on his shoulder and a two-day growth on his face. The Cactus was done up like a ranch from America’s Wild West, with yellow pine posts and hip-high railings dividing the dark, low-ceilinged space into little corrals with benches and wooden chairs. Here the Russian and Kazak and Uzbek and Kyrgyz working girls would gossip until the men arrived—the Turkish entrepreneurs, the mafia thugs, both Russian and Kazak, the oilmen from Europe and America, and the embassy functionaries from all corners of the world. The atmosphere was lightened by the trickle of college students who loved to dance—many of them sons and daughters of the regime, who were occasionally surprised and embarrassed by the presence of their fathers.
It was a place where the Chinese merchants never came. They always met their women in more private settings.
Cono asked the Pakistani bartender to put on the old salsa and Brazilian music he knew they had. As he turned away from the bar, a Tsingtao in hand, a Kazak girl flashed her smile of silver front teeth and asked him to dance. It was a custom in this part of the world for women to cast their teeth in gold or silver, a remnant of the need for portable wealth. Cono admired the broad, angular struc
ture of her youthful face. “Not now, bright flower,” he replied in Russian, and went to a seat in a corner that was darker than most. It was early, but there was already an intermittent stream of men stepping through the doorway onto the creaky floorboards. Timur came in alone and went to the bar. He’d seen Cono, but ordered a vodka and drank it all before coming to sit at Cono’s table.
“They’re bringing her,” Timur said.
Cono heard the voice of the doorman snapping in English, telling a woman she would have to pay to get in, like all the other girls. Then Cono was startled to hear Xiao Li’s voice, arguing back in ferociously vulgar Mandarin before adding sweetly in English: “Here just friends. No business.” Cono heard the clack of her stiletto heels as she stepped in; it was a full minute before her head, elevated with haughtiness, turned toward Cono. His heart lost its rhythm when he finally saw all of her, now even more breathtaking than before, but his elation was checked by the momentary alarm in her eyes as she spotted Timur. Yet she kept her composure and stepped toward them briskly and sat next to Cono.
Cono pressed her good hand in his. Her other hand was bandaged, and at the edge of a light sweater she had wrapped around her neck like a makeshift scarf, Cono could see a small flap of white gauze. They greeted each other with their eyes. When little glistening crescents appeared on Xiao Li’s lower lashes, she looked down abruptly to search her purse. Cono lit her cigarette and she tapped his forearm with two fingers to say thank you, as she had always done.
“Your friend saved me, but …” Xiao Li spoke in Mandarin before Cono cut her off. He looked at Timur, who was eyeing the dance floor and taking another hit of vodka.
“She says you saved her. Let’s speak in English so Timur understands. Timur, she says thank you for keeping her alive.”
Timur raised his glass in a silent toast, still looking toward the dance floor, and downed the drink.
Xiao Li’s palm was moist in Cono’s hand.
“Mister, you good man. So good. So powerful.” Xiao Li reached across Cono to touch Timur’s arm with her bandaged hand. He withdrew his arm and said, “All for my friend.” Xiao Li pulled Cono’s hand into her lap; with her finger she drew in his palm the Chinese character 蛇. It meant snake.
Timur waved the waitress over for another vodka and leaned closer to Cono. “I never should have been seen head-to-head in public with the Chinese at the Svezda.” His voice was low and tense. He switched to Russian, which he knew Xiao Li wouldn’t grasp. “I could have just sent my toads. I went myself. All for a tart. All for you.”
Xiao Li had lit another cigarette by herself, with a huff and a twist of Cono’s thumb, but she was listening intently, trying to recognize a word or two in what they said.
“Here’s how you pay me back,” Timur said. “We’re taking bids from the oil companies for the readjustment of the contracts that you helped with four years ago. I need a go-between I can trust. You did such a good job last time. No leaks.”
Cono leaned closer.
“This time you’ll get the numbers from the Chinese, too, and an advance gift in cash, a show of goodwill. Then you can make the rounds of the other guys you know so well from last time—the Anglos, the French, the Italians—and see what their numbers are, how much goodwill they are offering. Then I’ll give the numbers to Kurgat, our esteemed minister of the interior, and he and the premier can decide how to reallocate my country’s resources in the most advantageous way. The minister hates the Chinese, but they’re pushing hard and hinting big numbers so they can finally get in.
“And then you go back to wherever your two feet want to be,” Timur concluded. “And everyone will be happy.”
“The Chinese you packed off are no doubt already happy,” Cono said, his mind racing to understand what Timur was really asking of him. “By killing their own delivery man they showed the minister they’re not like their competitors. These guys are working for Beijing after all, not just another oil company. It will be hard for Kurgat to say no to them.”
“It’s lucky for him that you’re in town,” Timur said, smiling. “Even a minister needs help sometimes.”
“Poor Minister Kurgat.”
“You will help.”
“Do I have a choice?”
The club was now crowded and beginning to seethe. The Brazilian music had given way to Celia Cruz roaring “Azúcar!” through the speakers. Cono pushed back the table and leaned toward Timur. “Can’t resist this. Just a quick dance before we go.” He stood and grinned at the scowl on his friend’s face. “Not with you, brother—not your kind of music. I meant with her.” Cono pulled Xiao Li up and joined the rhythm with his hips well before the two reached the dance floor. He saw a pair of Timur’s men glancing toward their master as he guided Xiao Li along the railing, and recognized the tall one with the thin white face as the brute who had nearly beaten to death two of Xiao Li’s working girlfriends the last time Cono was in town.
Timur watched closely from the shadows, but the couple were not talking, only lost in their swirling embraces.
The music climaxed and Xiao Li arched backward toward the floor as Cono held her head and the small of her back. He made her rise in a sweeping spiral, and as his body blocked Timur’s view he slid one of his cell phones under the sash around her waist.
“It’ll be as hot as July for a few weeks,” Cono said as he kissed her sweaty temple. “Keep the baby mouse out of the chopsticks. Get out of Almaty. I put five thousand in your purse. My cell number is under the address Sleeper.”
Xiao Li wrapped her arms around Cono and pressed her cheek to his chest. She squeezed him lightly at first, then harder and harder, until Cono saw Timur approaching.
They bumped through the crowd back toward the table. Xiao Li took her purse. Cono lifted his traveling bag. “I think we’ll take a room at the Hotel Tsarina,” Cono said. “A high room with one of those broad balconies and a view of the premier’s palace.”
Timur shrugged. “Sure.”
He led the way as they pressed through the odors of perfume and sweaty groins toward the door. The two toads in black leather jackets hustled in behind them. There were two more guards waiting for them as the group exited onto the veranda and down the steps to a patch of trees lit by the sparks of a shashlik brazier. Cono saw the shashlik man glance up and then quickly look down again to be sure he saw nothing. There were two cars waiting, neither one the gray Mercedes that had driven them from the airport, and more toads.
Timur flashed a lighter, but was holding no cigarette. At the signal, two of his men grabbed Xiao Li and thrust her into one of the cars. She cried out for Cono as they closed the door on her kicking legs. A high-heeled shoe fell to the ground before they managed to slam the door shut.
Xiao Li was pressing her face against the inside of the window, panic in her eyes. “Just a little insurance, to make sure you don’t change your mind about being my helper,” Timur said. “She’ll be at a good hotel, good service.” He bent down to pick up the fallen shoe and gave it to Cono. Cono was dazzled by the sharpness of the spike he held in his hand. In the fraction of a second in which he glimpsed Timur’s face and measured the distance of the men around him, Cono swung the point of the heel into the neck of the tall guard he’d recognized, the thug who had brutalized Xiao Li’s friends. Cono’s own awareness of his action, the idea of it, appeared in his mind only after it was done. He had pulled out the stiletto before the others could see the sweep of his arm, and they had noticed no more than a quick change in his posture. The man crumpled to the asphalt, clutching his neck, blood seeping out in a dark stream. Only Timur took a step backward from Cono and pulled the gun from his armpit. The others quickly crouched against the cars, looking for snipers as their injured comrade lost consciousness.
“I’ll keep the shoe until I see her again,” Cono said. “And if she’s touched by anyone, they’ll go down like the toad who swallowed this.” Cono rotated the shoe so the dagger-like heel was pointing up.
“Cin
derella will be safe as long as you do your job,” Timur said, putting his gun away. He screamed at his men in a mixture of Kazak and Russian, and the car holding Xiao Li sped off. Cono got into the other car with Timur and two of his men. As the Mercedes accelerated, Cono’s head was thrown back against the seat.
“Not so fast, slow it down,” Timur barked to the driver. To his right Cono saw the raised eyes of the shashlik cook shaking his head. The bloodied thin-faced man was left for others to pick up.
Cono mentally replayed the scene in the Cactus, and the earlier one in the park. Timur’s discomfort, his agitation, had been obvious, but his duplicity—Cono couldn’t fathom how he’d missed that. Feelings of guilt and incompetence made the small shoe in his hand seem heavy. Cono wiped the shoe’s heel on the carpeted floor of the car. He’d been blind to the truth on Timur’s face, but his reflexes were intact. He wondered, in fact, if his reflexes were leaving his thoughts behind. And yet the attack couldn’t be just a reflex—he had struck the brute he recognized, no one else. Maybe the thinking had been done long before, and the reaction was already primed. What other thoughts had already taken hold without his awareness, and had already primed a reflexive trigger?
And Timur? He could have shot Cono right there, because he knew the blow came from Cono, with his strange quickness—Timur had experienced it first-hand more than once. There must be desperation in Timur’s need for Cono. And maybe Timur, too, was happy to see the thin-faced man taken down, for different reasons.
They pulled into the shimmering driveway of the Hotel Tsarina. Cono and Timur got out and stood next to the car.
“Don’t worry about your little china doll,” Timur said. “Do you really think I would return her to you compromised?” He shook his head with a laugh. “I know you better than that, brother. You would hunt me down and find a way to make me pay. No.” He shook his head again. “She’ll be well taken care of. You have my word.
Performance Anomalies Page 3
