Three Stations ar-7

by Martin Cruz Smith

  "So am I. May I have Vera's photograph, please?"

  "Oh." Spiridona found it in her hand and thrust it at Arkady. "Now will you go? I can't believe you showed this to my dancers."

  "But I didn't show them this."

  He dug into his jacket and gave Spiridona a different photograph and watched her gaze swim over the filthy mattress, Vera's half-stripped body, the butterfly tattoo resting on her hip.

  Spiridona hung up. "I don't understand."

  Arkady said, "Neither do I."

  "Dear God, how could this happen?" She dropped the picture as if it were a spider. "Who could do this to her?"

  "I don't know." He described the circumstances in which the girl was found: "Dressed like a prostitute, tattooed like a prostitute, on a prostitute's bed, carrying a prostitute's knockout powder."

  "I can't explain it. It isn't the Vera I knew."

  "Who was?"

  "A free spirit, you could say."

  "Sexually free?"

  That drew a wistful smile. "Everyone is different. In a ballet company there are three or four genders. Vera was popular from the first and men and women were drawn to her like bears to honey. She was ambitious. She could have had any of a dozen millionaires, so why would she be selling herself at Three Stations?"

  "Do you know who those men are?"

  "I can give you a list but it would be incomplete and out-of-date. She was a fickle girl. She roomed at the university. You should talk to her roommate there."

  "What was she studying?"

  "Languages. Foreign affairs."

  Arkady was impressed. Foreign affairs was usually reserved for the elite. It was hard for Arkady himself to believe but he had once been a member of Moscow's "Gilded Youth," when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

  "How did she get on with the other dancers?"

  "Fine."

  "No particular enemies?"

  "No."

  "No particular friends?"

  "No."

  "You interviewed her before taking her on as a dancer?"

  "Of course. This is not the Bolshoi. I am more of an ornament than a teacher and the girls do more or less what they want. But this is also the Club Nijinsky. People expect a different wild and crazy theme every week but also, for the amount of money they're paying, a touch of culture. Not too much, maybe ten seconds' worth. Some pirouettes or a tableau vivant. Girls line up to be a Nijinsky dancer, to have all those wealthy men admiring you, enamored of you." She lit a cigarette and dramatically exhaled smoke that twisted into arabesques. "Worshipping you."

  "Is her family in Moscow?"

  "Her parents died in the terrorist bombing of the Metro. Her brother died in the army. He hung himself."

  "Why?"

  "He was gay."

  Which said quite enough. Hazing new recruits in the Red Army was routine. For "homos," torture.

  "When did this happen?"

  "Around New Year's. She was upset but nothing unusual. She was a focused person, that's why this"-she indicated the photo of Vera in the trailer-"makes no sense at all."

  "Did she dress well?"

  "Nothing cheap or shoddy."

  "But no diamonds."

  "No."

  "So tonight you had your dancers pose in all five basic ballet positions except the fourth. Was that supposed to be Vera?"

  "Yes."

  "Why didn't someone take her place?"

  "Vera often showed up at the last moment. I admit I made allowances for her. The girl was carrying a full scholastic load. I respected that."

  "Did you report her missing?"

  "If she had been gone a week. She led an active social life. That's part of being young, isn't it? The energy?"

  "Did she ever use drugs?"

  "None of my girls do or they're dismissed immediately. I won't have it."

  "When was the last time you saw her?"

  "Thursday afternoon at rehearsal."

  "The exact hours?"

  "From two to five. We only rehearse twice a week because, as I told you, the dancers for the most part create their own choreography. All I ask is that they don't fall off the runway."

  "Her mood was…"

  "Upbeat always."

  "Please remind me, the theme for this weekend was…"

  "Abused children. Girls in particular. I put together costumes that mixed different elements, such as Lolita, Hello Kitty, Japanese schoolgirls and the ballet phase in little girls."

  "I saw it. There seemed to be something missing."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Whatever Vera would have represented. You can look at the photograph if that will help you remember."

  Her eyes darted as briefly as possible to the photo.

  "I suppose you could say she looked like a prostitute."

  "Did the dancers choose which costume to wear or did you assign them?"

  "I assigned them. I saw them as an ensemble."

  "Do you recognize what Vera was wearing when she was killed? The skirt, the top, the boots?"

  "One can't be certain."

  "What is your first impression?"

  "It does look like the costume."

  "That you selected for her?"

  "Yes, but they weren't supposed to take the costumes home. Why would she wear it at night anyplace as dangerous as Three Stations?"

  "Has she recently mentioned any travel plans?"

  "None." Isa Spiridona corrected herself. "None that I know of."

  "Can you think of anyone who might wish her harm? A former lover? A jealous colleague?"

  "No. The career of a dancer is brief enough. One wrong step, one fall, one trip."

  "As distinct from a fall?"

  "Yes. That's why dancers are so superstitious." Her attention returned to the photo. "The tattoo is new."

  "Since when?"

  "Two weeks."

  "Thank you. That helps with the time line."

  Spiridona pursed her lips. "You are kind to put it that way."

  Arkady gave her his card. "In case you recall anything else. It's probably best to call my cell phone. I'm never in my office." Leaving Madame Spiridona's office, Arkady had to press against the wall as three Chinese dressed in black and carrying loops of cable hustled out of the service elevator. The elevator sat there, doors open, practically an invitation. Arkady entered and pressed five.

  When the doors opened, he stepped into a world painted black. Platforms, catwalks, rails and hooded lights designed to disappear. Below was the world of color, where beams of light dyed the air red, blue and green. A globe glittered and spun as dancers waved to an endless pulsating beat. From five floors above, it all seemed virtually remote.

  Petrouchka sat on a middle catwalk looking sad as only a clown could be. He idly kicked his legs over the side and ignored Arkady's arrival.

  "I know why you come up here," Arkady said.

  "Why?"

  "To be alone."

  Although his costume was baggy, it couldn't hide the clown's muscularity any more than greasepaint could hide his condescension. "That's right, and yet you're here."

  "You're the man who flies on the wire," Arkady said.

  "You're still here."

  "Well, I've never seen a stage from this angle before." As his eyes adjusted, he saw a spaceship, a chandelier, a baby carriage-props of yesterday's entertainment, suspended from the ceiling. On the catwalk next to Petrouchka lay a harness and neatly coiled wire and rope.

  "What will it take to get rid of you?"

  "A few questions," Arkady said.

  "About what?"

  "Flying."

  "I don't think it's for you."

  "Why not?"

  "Well, there are two kinds of fliers. A two-wire flier is hauled around like a suitcase, safe and slow. The one-wire flier goes where he wants as fast as he wants. This is a one-wire rig." He looked Arkady up and down, "You are definitely a two-wire man."

  "You mean a man on the ground at the other end of the wire?"

/>   "A man. Or a sandbag."

  "What is your name?" Arkady asked.

  "Petrouchka."

  "You're still in character."

  "Always. The same as you. You are a policeman, aren't you?"

  "How did you guess?"

  "You've got that 'doormat of the world' look."

  "You think so?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Did you know Vera Antonova?"

  "I don't know. Who was she?"

  "A dancer here at the club."

  "No, I'm new here myself."

  "You're not from Moscow?"

  Petrouchka lit a cigarette. The match was wood, and rather than blow out the flame, he let it drop into the canopy of floodlights.

  "Some clown," said Arkady. "Do you want this place to burn?"

  "For every question, a match. That's the game."

  "Are you crazy?"

  "See, that's two." The clown struck another match and let it drift down toward coiffures, bare shoulders, decolletages. Arkady knew it was unlikely any live flame would get that far, but all it took for a disaster was one person screaming "Fire!"

  "Will you stop?"

  "And another." Petrouchka struck a third match and let the flame get good and set before letting it drop. "More?"

  Arkady said, "Vera Antonova is dead. That's not a question."

  The clown didn't answer. At least he didn't strike a match, Arkady thought.

  "She was a beautiful girl. That's not a question either. I have her picture."

  The clown got to his feet and said, "I'll show you how this works."

  He took a meter's length of nylon rope, climbed the rail and reached up to two pulleys above his head. His sense of balance was phenomenal. Standing on a rail in the semidark, he ran the rope through the pulleys, made a loop in one end and handed the other to Arkady. "Hang on," he told Arkady.

  "Why?"

  "You're my counterweight." The clown slipped a foot into the loop and stepped off the catwalk. He plunged until the rope snapped taut in Arkady's hands. The rope was slippery and all Arkady could do was play it out until Petrouchka was gracefully delivered onto the dance floor. As his descent was noted by guests they made way and applauded. He gave Arkady a farewell wave.

  Arkady felt like a fool and, worse, that he had missed something important. He didn't know where but he was convinced he had met Petrouchka before, although not in greasepaint or a clown's costume. A man elbows you in the Metro and you catch only a glimpse of his face, but the memory stays with you like a bruise.

  15

  At 5 a.m., while diehards stayed for the last dance, the last toast, the last laugh of the night, Arkady emerged from the Club Nijinsky to find the city in the path of a thunderstorm. Gusts of wind stirred litter on the street and fat drops of rain pinged off car roofs and windshields

  Arkady had parked blocks away rather than submit the Lada to the gibes of parking attendants. Victor had put pots and pans inside the car in case of rain.

  A man and woman hustling to beat the storm brushed by. Another couple ran past, the woman in bare feet to spare the high-heeled shoes she held in her hand. One pair of footsteps synchronized with his and he found Dima the bodyguard at his side. The Glock hung openly on Dima's shoulder.

  While Dima gave Arkady a pat-down, a Mercedes S550 limousine caught up. A side window slid down and Sasha Vaksberg begged a few more minutes of Arkady's time.

  Arkady was flattered but now he wished he'd brought a gun.

  Vaksberg and Anya shared the rear seat with a red-and-white Spartak athletic bag. Arkady and Dima took jump seats facing rear in a conference arrangement. As the car pulled away Arkady felt its extra weight and stiffness of armor, bulletproof glass and run-flat tires. The driver must have pushed a button because the doors had silently locked.

  "Could we have some heat back here, Slava? Our friend is a little damp from the rain." Vaksberg turned to Arkady. "So, what did you think of our Club Nijinsky?"

  "Unforgettable."

  "And the women?" he asked. "Did you find them tall and beautiful enough?"

  "Amazons," Arkady said.

  Anya said, "It's not by chance. Girls flock to Moscow with romantic ambitions of being models or dancers and Moscow turns them into escorts and whores. We wax them and pluck them and inflate their breasts like balloons. In short, we turn them into freaks of beauty."

  "Where are we going?" Arkady asked.

  "An excellent question," Vaksberg said. "We could go to my casino on the Arbat. No, that's been closed. Or the casino at Three Stations. No, that's been closed too. In fact, all my casinos have been closed. I was taking in a million dollars a day. Now, thanks to our judo master in the Kremlin, I'm just paying rent."

  Arkady appreciated how Vaksberg avoided saying Putin's name. "Are you down to your last five hundred million?"

  "You don't have much sympathy."

  "Not a great deal. So we're just going to drive?"

  "And have a conversation. Am I correct, Anya?"

  "I hope so."

  Rain drummed on the roof. Sitting backward, looking through heavy rain and tinted glass, Arkady lost track of where he was.

  Vaksberg said, "I may be many things but I am not a hypocrite. When the dear old Soviet Union broke up, I made a great deal of money. It was like creating a new jigsaw puzzle out of old pieces. Granted, we took advantage where we could. What great fortune did not at the start? The Medicis', the Rothschilds', the Rockefellers'? You don't think they all had bloody hands at the beginning?"

  "So you're aspiring to the elite."

  "The very best. But fortune is a bubble unless the state accepts the rights of private property. In an emerging nation-and Russia, believe me, is an emerging nation-that bubble can be easily popped. Who would want to do business in a land where rich men are poisoned or put in cages and shipped to Siberia? We thought we were the darlings of the Kremlin. Now we're all on a little list."

  "Who is on the list?" Arkady was curious.

  "Us, the so-called oligarchs. We were the idiots who put this lizard in power. Our lizard turned out to be Tyrannosaurus rex. I used to have more than twenty venues in Moscow. Now every single one is dark except the Club Nijinsky. I have chefs, floor managers, croupiers, better than a thousand people I pay every week simply to stand by. The Nijinsky is my last toehold. They will use any excuse to drive me out, and a scandal about a dead girl would do it."

  "Too bad. I think she was killed."

  "In that case, I want whoever did it."

  "Wouldn't that create a scandal?"

  "Not if it's done right, not if it's managed properly."

  "I don't like where this is going," Anya said.

  Vaksberg leaned forward. Close up, he looked tired, skin rough as parchment and beard and brows dyed inky black, an aging devil relying on his makeup. He asked Arkady, "What are you doing here? You're investigating by yourself? I don't see anyone else."

  "I'm assisting a detective who's following other leads."

  "As an investigator?"

  "Yes."

  Vaksberg put it gently. "I talked to Zurin."

  "Prosecutor Zurin? At this hour?" Arkady had to admit that that possibility had not occurred to him.

  "Yes. I apologized for calling him so late but I have never talked to a man more eager to unburden himself. He said that you had no reason to investigate anything because you were under suspension. In fact, he described you as a self-aggrandizing liar with a history of violence. Was Prosecutor Zurin correct? Are you under suspension?"

  "Not yet."

  "But soon. Zurin was full of information. Did you ever actually shoot a prosecutor?"

  "That was a long time ago."

  "Have you been shot yourself?"

  "Years ago."

  "In the brain?"

  "In the head."

  "Now, there's a fine distinction. Described by Prosecutor Zurin, you are an unstable, brain-damaged impostor. Practically a rabid dog."

  "Is that what you are?
" Anya asked Arkady.

  "No."

  Sometimes the sound of the rain was overwhelming, as if a flood bearing houses, trees, cars was at their heels. Dima followed the exchange with his finger on the trigger. Arkady sympathized. People thought that one of the advantages of being fabulously rich was that you could shoot up the soft interior of a bulletproof car-shred the upholstery and soak it in blood-but at close quarters, with the armor and all, ricochets could be fierce.

  Arkady said, "Leave the country until it's safe to come back. You're the head of a worldwide organization. I'm sure you have moved enough money overseas to have a fresh croissant and orange juice every morning."

  "They've confiscated my passport," Vaksberg said. "I'm trapped."

  "Never a good sign," Arkady had to agree.

  "I need my passport so that I travel freely and conduct business. Also I insist on being able to return and defend my interests. For that I need intelligent, trustworthy people around me."

  "I'm sure you have candidates by the score."

  "But they're not here and the ones who are here are intimidated. Why do you think we're meeting here and being half drowned? My office is bugged. My car and phones are compromised. I need someone who knows the law but isn't held back by it. In a sense, Zurin gave you the highest possible recommendation. An investigator who killed a prosecutor. My, my."

  Slava steered around a barricade of orange tubs and let the car coast up an unfinished highway overpass, an elegant four-lane curve of concrete that terminated in midair. There were no cement mixers or generators or any other sign of recent activity. The car came to a halt ten meters short of the end of the ramp.

  Slava unlocked the doors.

  "You want us to get out?" Arkady asked.

  Sasha Vaksberg said, "We have umbrellas. You're not afraid of a little rain, are you?"

  Anya said, "I'm staying here."

  "You will have to forgive me," Vaksberg told Arkady. "I'm paranoid, but when you've been betrayed as many times as I have, you will be paranoid too. It's a sixth sense."

  Dima opened an umbrella for Vaksberg as he stepped out of the car. Arkady declined an umbrella and walked up the ramp to a 360-degree view of the city. The lights of the city were as subdued as banked coals. Lightning played in the clouds and it occurred to Arkady that an overpass bristling with steel rebars might not be the safest place to be when great electrical imbalances were being redressed. If he were crisped, he wondered what in life he had left undone. For one thing, he had the key to Victor's Lada. It would fall apart like a wagon in the desert.