by Ted Mooney
CHAPTER 31
“THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND, then. Do I hear three fifty? Will anyone say three fifty? No?” The auctioneer brought down his gavel with a crack. “Sold, to the gentleman in the back row.”
Since first entering the auction hall, Max had been on the lookout for Turner, though he hadn’t settled on an appropriate course of action, if action was even what he wanted. Then he’d been almost immediately distracted by the unforeseen presence of Véronique and the Russian she was with, who was undoubtedly the business partner she’d told him about and most likely her lover. The two of them had moved down a place each, so Max was seated next to her on the aisle, and her gardenia-laced perfume only added to his distraction. He hoped she wouldn’t flirt with him in Kukushkin’s presence, but even as he entertained this thought she leaned one breast into the crook of his arm and whispered, “I never thought I’d see you tonight.”
“Likewise,” he replied as quietly as he could.
“Are you here to bid?” she asked.
“No. Actually, I’m looking for a guy who works here, somebody called Turner.”
“Really!” She withdrew for a moment and whispered rapidly in Russian to Kukushkin, who nodded. Then she again put her lips to Max’s ear. “That’s him in the third row, over against the right-hand wall.”
Looking, Max saw that it was.
“Lot sixteen,” said the auctioneer. “Bidding for this item, a particularly fine example from the Brezhnev era, will begin at one hundred fifty thousand francs. Who will open the bidding? Thank you, Madame. One hundred seventy-five, who will say one seventy-five?”
When it came to marital infidelities, Max had observed, the wronged party invariably reacted in one of two ways—equally comic and devoid of logic—by blaming the betrayal either on the loved one or on the interloper. To his utter lack of surprise, Max fell into the latter category. It was the more practical position, he supposed, if reconciliation was your goal, but choice initially played no part; you reacted according to your nature, pure and simple. What to do about the situation, however, was another question entirely, one in which reason might conceivably be brought to bear, if you proceeded with care and discipline.
“Thank you. Two twenty-five? May I hear two hundred twenty-five thousand? Yes? The bid is now with the gentleman in the back.”
Again Max felt Véronique’s breast against his arm, her breath in his ear. “Turner,” she whispered. “Wasn’t he the one who hired your wife to bring these flags back from Moscow in the first place?”
He looked at her without responding. Maybe, he thought, there was a shape to the evening’s events and accident didn’t figure into it.
“Fair warning, then … Anybody? So, sold at two hundred twenty-five thousand francs.”
Kukushkin leaned past Véronique to speak to Max. “In Russia, we have joke. We say, everything Soviet leaders told us about socialism was total lie. But at same time, everything they told us about capitalism was completely correct. This is the world we inherit, no?”
Max laughed politely. “You won’t get any argument from me.”
The porters were removing the sold lot from the stage.
“Véronique tells me you are filmmaker. I think this must be very expensive occupation.”
“It can be. But I don’t make Hollywood films. All I need is enough money to make the next film, although even that much can be hard enough to scrape together, believe me.”
“Yes. I think Hollywood films must be like making war. Moving many people and much heavy equipment around for months and months—even years—with timing impossible, long supply lines, unpredictable results. Very costly. If you succeed, everyone is hero. If not, then you, the general, will be hanged in the streets like a dog.”
Max thought this an odd thing to say to a new acquaintance, but since it was also perfectly true both he and Véronique laughed.
“Now Kolya’s the king of capitalists,” she explained. “But his background is a little different from yours and mine. So he brings a unique perspective to business affairs.”
“I can imagine.”
The porters brought the next lot in and placed it on the display easel. This was another of the prize pieces, featuring head-and-shoulder images of Lenin and Khrushchev, shown side by side at daringly equal size, shortly before the latter’s fall from grace. The bidding began at a hundred fifty thousand and continued briskly until it reached three seventy-five. There was a lull, then a man who sounded unmistakably Swiss put in a preemptive bid of five hundred thousand. At the same moment, Max, caught up in the drama of the sale, felt Véronique’s hand squeeze his thigh hard. She lifted her chin brusquely in the direction of the exit, where Turner, already halfway through the door, was making a hasty departure. The hammer came down on the lot. With a glance at Kukushkin, Max excused himself and, still lacking a clear plan, hastened after the man he believed to be his wife’s lover. It had never occurred to him that Turner might actually flee.
The area immediately outside the auction hall was deserted except for security and another of the auction-house girls in black, her superior status indicated by a second pearl choker immediately above the first. There was no one on the marble staircase, and Max heard no footsteps on the lower flights.
“Excuse me,” he asked the girl, “is there an elevator?”
“Certainly. Right over there.” She pointed down the corridor.
But when he reached the elevator, the ornate needle above it indicated that it was already descending. He debated trying to outrun it using the stairs, but immediately saw that by escalating the level of physical exertion he’d be committing himself to an outcome that could only be more physical still. It would embarrass everyone and almost certainly prove counterproductive. As a compromise measure, and to regain some degree of dignity, he recalled the elevator, took it to ground level, and had a look around the street outside. Once convinced that Turner had eluded him, he went back inside, relieved that he’d avoided what surely would’ve been a fiasco. He reached the fourth floor just as the auction was letting out. Reason, care, and discipline, he reminded himself.
Kukushkin and Véronique emerged from the sale arm in arm, their expressions growing concerned when they spotted him. They made a handsome couple, expensive looking and substantial. “Apparently Mr. Turner was in unusual hurry tonight,” Kukushkin said. “Perhaps because he made so much money.”
“Yes, I lost him,” Max admitted. “Is he a friend of yours?”
The crowd flowed around the three of them and down the staircase, talking excitedly. It had been a very successful sale—over ten million francs, twice the expected gross.
“Oh, I have small business with him from time to time. Besides, he is fixture in art world, well known in certain circles. And you, you know him well?”
“No,” said Max. “I’ve only met him once.”
The couple stared at him, waiting for him to say more. When it became apparent he didn’t intend to elaborate, Kukushkin smiled at him in what seemed to be good-natured sympathy. “May I propose, in that case, you join us for a drink? Véronique and I would greatly enjoy the honor of your company, and my club is around the corner. You might find it amusing place.” He leaned forward and added, in a melodramatic stage whisper, “Russian, very Russian.”
Max hesitated, seized again by the sense that he’d stumbled into something much larger than it had first appeared, with his part already choreographed. But he brushed away his doubts. In times like these, forward was the only possible direction. “It would be a pleasure,” he replied.
After walking a couple of blocks, they arrived before a massive oaken door with no windows and no apparent street number. Instead, it bore an iron-grillework peephole at eye level and, just below that, seven brass Cyrillic letters, Meдвeдь, meticulously polished and set flush into the wood. Kukushkin, his fist poised to knock, turned playfully to Max. “Do you know what it is meaning, this word?” He pointed to the brass letters.
“So
rry, I don’t have any Russian at all. But I guess it must be the name of the place, right?”
Kukushkin roared with laughter and began to pound the door thunderously, announcing his presence in shouted Russian for good measure.
“It means ‘The Bear,’” Véronique told Max, as if apologizing for Kukushkin’s failure to answer. “The bear, of course, is a symbol for Russia.” She shrugged. “Sentimental—but really, these days, who cares?”
“Not us,” said Max, testing his ground. She smiled—a little grimly, he thought.
Finally, the iron bar covering the peephole slid to one side and a pair of ice-blue eyes appeared at the grille. Then the bar slid shut again, the door swung open, and a blast of cigarette smoke and disco music escaped into the night. The three new arrivals filed in, the door closed loudly behind them, a deadbolt slammed shut. From several quarters, shouts of welcome greeted Max’s host.
“You realize,” Véronique whispered, “that when Kolya calls this place his club, he’s speaking literally.”
“You mean he owns it.”
“Exactly. Along with many other things, of course.”
They were standing beside a long mahogany bar that serviced the entry area. Set against the opposite wall was a red leather banquette with a dozen small zinc-topped tables positioned closely before it. A tall muscular man in a black suit and gray roll-neck sweater—the manager, Max presumed—came forward to give Kukushkin a crushing embrace and the traditional three kisses. He ceremoniously pressed his lips to Véronique’s hand and shook Max’s, then returned his attention to his boss, and they at once fell into serious conversation. At a glance from Kukushkin, Véronique took Max’s arm and guided him past the bar to three broad steps that led down into the primary space. They stopped there at the threshold, as if their mission were purely educational, arranged for Max’s benefit, as perhaps it was.
The club had two stories, with a mezzanine running around the three nearer sides and projecting a few feet over the main floor. Semicircular booths of black leather lined the walls, which were covered with flocked red wallpaper, while widely spaced tables occupied the center of the room. Beyond them, in the back, was a parquet dance floor on which six or seven conspicuously well-dressed couples were dancing in desultory fashion, colored lights playing over them from above. Finally, against the rear wall, on a shallow platform that stretched the width of the room, was a fifteen-foot-tall effigy of a bear, rearing up ferociously. Hollow and made from clear acrylic, it was filled with water in which a hundred or more goldfish swam contentedly. To either side of this extravagance, and effortlessly upstaging it, half a dozen improbably beautiful women, expressionless and perfectly naked, their pubic hair shaved into identical vertical strips, lent themselves to the music with neither complaint nor enthusiasm. Flower arrangements towered here and there about the room. Except for colored spots over the dance floor and those trained on the girls and the bear, the lighting was dim, but Max guessed there were maybe forty patrons downstairs, with another twenty-five on the mezzanine. It was a little past nine thirty.
“Yes,” Max said after a time. “Quite Russian.”
“It’s not my favorite place,” Véronique allowed, “but sometimes it has its advantages.” She smiled at him. “Anyway, we have a private room upstairs that’s very nice. I’ll show you.” With a quick glance over her shoulder, she added, “Kolya will be along any minute. We’d better hurry.”
CHAPTER 32
OUT OF THE AUCTION HOUSE and onto the street, Turner forced himself to slow down, turning corners randomly until he sighted an inconspicuous, mid-block brasserie, soothingly crowded. Squeezing himself in at the bar, even though a few tables remained free, he ordered a double whiskey and drained it at once. He ordered another and, despite the bartender’s disapproving gaze, bolted it down too. He grew somewhat calmer. By the time his third drink arrived, he remembered that he was armed, that he’d just made a little under ten million francs, and that he was, for better or worse, in love. He made an effort then to behave more befittingly, sipping rather than gulping his drink and examining his surroundings in the mirror behind the bar as if considering, in a detached if not entirely theoretical way, what they might be worth to him should he decide to make an on-the-spot offer. Before long, he was himself again.
It was fear, of course, that had driven him from the auction floor.
He had lived with various kinds of fear all his life. About this he was undeceived and also, though he admitted this to no one, unashamed. It took a clear eye and philosophical cast of mind to see the benefits embedded in this accident of temperament, one which for him had been compacted into a kind of credo: I fear, therefore I am. It was that simple. So many had less.
And yet.
Lately—he couldn’t say exactly when—he had begun wondering if this view hadn’t outlived its usefulness, or worse, without his noticing, had ceased to be true at all. For instance, he knew quite well that he harbored little fear of Max Colby. Over the years, he’d had to deal with his fair share of disobliged husbands, and by now he knew pretty much what to expect from them and how to handle it. Even Kukushkin, whose threats and messages had been far from subtle, was no longer enough to inspire real terror, at least not face-to-face. It was clear that Kolya, despite his air of understated, carefully tended ruthlessness, wanted to maintain a healthy distance from whatever extralegal activities might be carried out at his behest. He saw himself as a gentleman and, for the most part, wanted others to as well.
So if what had driven Turner so precipitously from the auction was fear, it wasn’t the kind to which he was accustomed. Two worlds he had believed were completely separate had just now collided, to effects unknowable at best. That the woman with the tattoo had seen fit to bring Max and Kukushkin together—their meeting seeming less and less plausibly accidental—both puzzled and alarmed him. The fear unfolding in him now, he saw, belonged to an entirely new order that rendered his old credo useless. He was afraid this time of losing something irreplaceable, he was afraid for someone else.
After paying his bar bill, he walked for some time without purpose, avoiding the larger thoroughfares. When he happened past a bus stop shaded from its streetlight by a chestnut tree, he sat down and, after several seconds wasted pointlessly in thought, called Odile’s cell. To his surprise, she answered on the second ring—though still talking over her shoulder to someone else, as if to indicate she wasn’t alone, not at home, not to be trifled with.
“Hi, it’s me. Can you talk?”
“Hang on a minute.”
He heard her walk into another room and close the door. Somewhere in the background children were laughing.
“So, Turner, my dear. How was your auction?”
“From a financial point of view, outstanding. We netted about twice what I expected—a little under ten million, after the house cut.”
“We? Who might that be?”
“Well, you can have half of it if you like,” he heard himself say.
She laughed. “Thank you, but no. This sudden wealth, I think, would be difficult to explain.”
“Suit yourself.” He took a deep breath. “But there were some other surprises, too.”
“Such as?” Odile said quietly.
“Your husband was in attendance, for one thing.”
After a small silence, she said, “He saw the article in Le Monde. He asked me to go to the auction with him, and when I said no, I guess he decided to go by himself. Did you talk to him?”
“No, but I think we can assume he knows.”
“Yes, he noticed the watch, I’m fairly sure. And of course, if one puts that together with everything else …”
“But there’s more. He was sitting with Kukushkin and a woman I don’t know, probably his girlfriend. She knew your husband. In fact, she seemed to be introducing them right there for the first time.”
“What? I don’t believe you.”
“I left before the end—to avoid Kukushkin, of course. But I do
wonder what direction your husband and Kukushkin’s conversation might’ve taken, especially given a discreet nudge by this very enthusiastic girl. Any ideas?”
There ensued a much longer silence. “What does she look like?”
“Late twenties, blond, some kind of tattoo on her arm. A wheel, I think.”
“I don’t know her.”
“It seemed that she and your husband hadn’t expected to run into each other, but I’m not really sure about that. Anyway, she was clearly with Kukushkin—his date, as it were—and she introduced them right away. Almost as if she’d already spoken to each about the other—favorably, by the looks of it—and their curiosity was sufficiently piqued for her to bring them together.”
This time the silence was so long that Turner wondered if the connection had been lost. “Hello?”
“I’m here.”
“Look,” he said, “I need to see you.”
She sighed. “That can’t happen tonight, Turner. I’ve got to be somewhere.”
“Somewhere?”
“A dinner party at Rachel and Groot’s—you know, my houseboat friends. It was meant to make Max forget about the auction, though obviously that didn’t work.”
“But Odile, something’s happening, something serious. I can feel it. Kukushkin, your husband … I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t. It’s a waste of time.”
“What’s that boat called? It has a Dutch name, doesn’t it? The Nacht something or other?”
“No, you’re absolutely not to come down there! Do you understand? For any reason at all.”
“But just in case.”
Again, a pause. “What’s that? I can’t hear you clearly. You’re breaking up.”
“At least call me later, so I’ll know you’re all right.”
“Hello? Hello? Damn these things.”
The connection seemed perfectly clear to Turner. “Odile?”
“Shit! Now I can’t understand a word you’re saying. All I’m getting at this end is static. But I’m grateful for the alert, if you, by some chance, can hear me. Yes? No? Fuck, that’s it, it’s pointless to go on. We might as well be talking to outer space.”
