Three Stations ar-7

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Arkady said, "We're lucky the hinges were a clean break. The man at the body shop never saw one so… immaculate."

  Victor said, "It's not my door. This door is held on by wires."

  "It will need some work. The main thing is, it opens. Shuts, pretty much. They tried to match the color."

  "A black door on a white car? Next time, why don't you just drive it off a cliff?"

  "I was on the shoulder of the highway. Someone tried to run me over."

  Arkady resisted the temptation to point out that Victor owned a car that already looked as though it had been driven over a cliff.

  "I found this." He opened an envelope and shook out the half ticket from the trunk of Vaksberg's Mercedes.

  Victor stared. "You got this? What is it?"

  "A ticket of some kind."

  "Is it?"

  Arkady tried to think of something that would cheer Victor.

  "The wiper works."

  Victor led Arkady to the squad room even as he shot Arkady a sharp glance. "You know kids race on that highway all the time. It could have been one of them getting out of control. Did you see them?"

  "No."

  "Did you report them?"

  "No."

  "Did you shoot at them at least?"

  Victor had set up laptops and old-fashioned paper dossiers to search among the dead. Each disc held a thousand dossiers and each dossier held a detective's account, interviews, forensic photos and autopsies of women who died of unnatural and unsolved causes in and around Moscow over the last five years. Arkady eliminated domestic squabbles, which still left a crowd since more than twelve thousand Muscovites died of unnatural causes in a year.

  Arkady drew a clumsy version of ballet positions.

  Victor said, "I didn't know you were such a scholar of the dance."

  "It's as if Vera wore a sign saying 'Victim Number Four.'"

  "Or her limbs happened to lie in a way that you and you alone construe to be a ballet position. What any normal person would notice was her bare ass."

  Victor took a halfhearted swat at a fly that was making a tour of the room's fly strips, plastic spoons and take-out cartons.

  "You know this would make some sense if it would do anything for Vera. Her case is closed. There is no corpus and the chances of gaining a conviction without a body don't exist."

  "Unless somebody confesses."

  "No body, no show. All they have to do is outwait us."

  "For a moment, assume I'm right, far-fetched as that may be. If you have a killer who is counting up to five bodies and he's reached five in his mind, he's going to disappear on us. He could go to ground for a year or two and then start all over again with a new set of dance partners."

  "We're missing number three."

  "That's right. So let's narrow the search to women eighteen to twenty-two, student, dancer, sexually molested, murdered, OD'd, unknown causes. Make it within the last two years before Vera."

  "Just two?"

  "If I'm right, this is a compulsive character. He doesn't have a Five-Year Plan. He can't wait that long."

  He watched the fly make the arduous trek up the wall, across the ceiling and around a light fixture only to reach journey's end as a buzz on a ringlet of flypaper. Arkady got home after midnight and found Anya sitting in the dark.

  She said, "I wanted to apologize for how I acted at the train station."

  "Well, you seem popular with the kids."

  "But not with you."

  "You were exhausted, you should have stayed here. Have you eaten today?" Arkady asked.

  When she had to think, he went directly to the refrigerator and pulled out leftovers from the night before and put the kettle on for tea.

  "I have no appetite," Anya said.

  "Who would at this hour?" He sliced sausage and black bread.

  "Can I stay one more night?"

  "You can stay as long as you need. Did anyone see you when you were out?"

  "Just the children. I won't snoop if that's what you're worried about."

  "I'm sure you have snooped. You probably opened every drawer in the apartment. You may have opened drawers that haven't been opened in years. Right now, the main thing is nobody sees you. While you're dead, you're safe."

  "And when I want to be alive?"

  "At the right time. What kind of car does Sergei Borodin drive?"

  "A huge American car. Why do you ask?"

  "Someone tried to run me down today." Arkady poured two cups of tea. "When a person tries to run me down, I want to know why. Is he a killer or a jealous lover? It makes a difference."

  "Go to hell."

  It was good, Arkady thought. Her color was back and she started to pick at her food.

  "So you're still on the case," she said.

  "It would help if we had a witness. You don't have any recollection who attacked you?"

  "None."

  "But you haven't answered my question."

  "First tell me who you are sleeping with," Anya said. "Or is that none of my business?"

  "It isn't. But to be fair, no one."

  "The woman who was living here, the doctor…"

  "Is in Africa. Or Asia."

  "You and women," Anya said.

  "Not a success story, I'm afraid."

  "Why did she leave?"

  "Because she wants to save the world. I don't."

  "That's not who I see."

  "Who do you see?" He expected a gibe.

  "I see a man who didn't desert me."

  Anya kissed him and pulled back.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "Please don't be."

  Things were in motion, some secret word had been spoken, because they kissed again. There was still time for Arkady to walk away from a case he did not fathom and a woman he did not understand. He knew there was no case and no investigation. What were the chances of a happy outcome? He could stop now. Instead, he moved around the table and gathered her up. She was incredibly light and he discovered while her body was small it was deep enough for the rest of the world to disappear.

  Afterward, still in bed, she dipped a sugar cube into her cup and sucked the sweet tea through.

  29

  As soon as Itsy saw the amulet in the baby's basket, she mobilized the family, no matter that it was in the dark of night. They had encroached on a Tajik cache of heroin hidden under the crates they had been using as firewood for the trailer stove. The amulet was an eviction notice. A parade of runaways with a crying baby was likely to interest people. However, few people were likely to be outside on such a damp night. Besides, the baby had become too precious to Itsy to give up. She had little concept of the long term. At heart she knew that the long term did not apply to her. All she had were day-to-day survival skills but she had no complaints. School, office, a comfortable old age held no appeal for her. In many ways her life was perfect.

  Leo and Peter lagged behind. They were in the heavy eyelids phase of sniffing. Everyone had different stuff. Aerosol, model glue or shoe polish. Itsy wanted the boys along because they were big enough to provide some protection; otherwise, the responsibility fell on Tito, who had trotted along one side of the group and then the other until they reached Kazansky Station, where they huddled and waited for the boys to catch up. A three-week-old baby, even one as well swaddled as Itsy's, was not meant to be out in the damp and cold.

  "The boys left their gear," Milka said.

  Their sniffing gear, Itsy thought. Their stupid cans and bags.

  "Stay here." Itsy handed the baby over to Emma.

  Itsy ran back the way she had come, with every step rehearsing the things she was going to say to Leo and Peter when she found them.

  The railway shed was a shadow set in a field of rails. She paused on the tracks to listen for a footfall or voice. Although she had a flashlight, she kept it dark. Her senses had been educated by living on the run and she saw the deeper, darker trench for undercarriage repairs, caught the scents of ashes and urine
and heard the drip of rainwater from the open sleeve of a drainpipe. There was no sign of magical Tajik warriors astride either thunderclouds or floor sweepers. All the same, she was uneasy about being near Tajik goods.

  The trailer stove still held embers and a diminishing nub of warmth. As Itsy maneuvered between bunk beds she remembered the grandiose plans she had had for a portable crib. It could still happen once she established a new base. It was just a matter of getting through the night.

  Itsy smelled blood. She stepped down from the trailer and looked under the wheels. Then she returned to the lip of the trench and this time turned on the flashlight. Leo and Peter were facedown on the bottom of the trench, each with a hole of not much account in the back of the cranium. Their caps had been tossed in afterward. Itsy had promised Leo a new pair of used basketball shoes. A cigarette was still stylishly cocked behind Peter's ear, the cigarette he never smoked. A buzz in Itsy's head was faint at first but growing to monumental dimensions. Her mother said, "Isabel is a beautiful name," and the flashlight died.

  The second shot dropped Itsy into the trench and a pair of silhouettes took her place.

  "And one more for good luck."

  His gun made a dull pop.

  There was a moment of quiet satisfaction, terminated by the sound of padded feet approaching fast.

  "What's that?"

  "A fucking dog."

  Tito hit the nearer shooter chest-high. Both landed in the trench, the dog on top.

  "Get him off me."

  "Stay still." A second figure looked down from the edge of the trench.

  "Off me."

  "Don't move."

  "God!"

  "I don't have an angle."

  "Mother of…"

  "You have to stop moving."

  "Neck."

  The man on the edge aimed as best he could and fired. The tussling continued in a one-sided way.

  "Ilya, you all right? Ilya?"

  The second shooter found Itsy's flashlight and shined it into the trench.

  His brother said nothing because his carotid artery was torn and the dog was pulling him without resistance one way and then the other. Blood everywhere.

  "Ilya!"

  As Tito looked up, his eyes lit. He dropped the man from his jaws and started for the steps, gathering speed as he came. The second shooter emptied the rest of his clip on the dog and was still squeezing the trigger when the animal rolled back down the steps, dead ten times over.

  Decisions had to be made. In ordinary circumstances, the shooter would never leave his brother behind. Ilya had been a master at tying up loose ends. Dead, Ilya was the biggest loose end of all. Just the logistics. Getting Ilya to the Volvo or the Volvo to Ilya. Finding a cartridge for every round he had fired. Digging two more graves. For the sweat alone he deserved a bonus.

  Something flitted across the shooter's face. An orange laser that moved as erratically as a butterfly came to rest on the nameplate of his coveralls. He felt the coolness of the air.

  "Fucking Tajiks."

  That much he figured out before the bullet hit.

  30

  Morning at a sobriety station meant the time had come for all the zombies to dress and shuffle out the door, for station attendants to hose the floor and remake the beds with rubber sheets, and for Swan, the medic, coming to the end of a twenty-four-hour shift, it was time to drop into a chair and light a cigarette as if his life depended on it. Swan was not quite a doctor and not quite a pirate. He talked with his eyes closed. "God is dog. Dog is God. God is shit."

  "It's catchy," Arkady said. "I heard it a few days ago when I came for Sergeant Orlov."

  "As long as they're not hurting themselves or anyone else, they can say what they want. We take care of our guests. If they're bleeding, we put on a plaster. If they throw up, we make sure they don't choke to death. We even saw the legs off their beds so they won't be injured if they fall out. They fall out of bed a lot. We also afford them privacy."

  Surely such a bed had a future in the furniture department, Arkady thought. The "Moscow Model," for shorter falls.

  "The station log?" he asked.

  Swan lifted a ledger-size book from his desk.

  The log was simple: name, time of admission, time of release, condition and, in some instances, in whose custody or to what hospital. The fine of 150 rubles for disorderly conduct was picayune, but demotion at the workplace and grief at home could be serious. A hundred dollars could make all that disappear and Arkady would have expected Sergei Borodin to take that route, yet there was his signature boldly written in ink. Admitted three nights before at 20:45, released 23:00. Arkady noticed that according to the log, Roman Spiridon was admitted at the same time.

  "Borodin said he wanted privacy, and then he gets the ward in an uproar with his 'God is shit' routine. That's all I need, trouble with the church."

  "Did Borodin get drunk often?"

  "Who said he was drunk?"

  "He admitted himself?"

  "It's like any club. There are special arrangements for regulars."

  When Victor was brought in, a courtesy call went to Arkady to come fish him from the tank. It was an arrangement some might call collusion. More and more Arkady found he was deviating from the straight and narrow.

  "So Sergei Borodin came to be alone."

  "Who said he came alone?"

  Arkady was befuddled. "Why would a sober man bring anyone to a drunk tank?"

  The medic inhaled hard enough to make his cigarette spark. "Sometimes I think the sexual revolution completely passed you by. If you think about it, it's an intimate situation, isn't it? The nudity. The dark. The beds."

  It took forever for the coin to drop.

  "Here?" Arkady had never considered the drunk tank right for an erotic rendezvous.

  "It's ideal for rough trade, for a customer who likes a touch of squalor and a little risk."

  "Who with?"

  Swan went back through the log. Every other week or so, the names of Sergei Borodin and Roman Spiridon arrived and left together. The one time Borodin came alone was the night Spiridon stayed home, slipped into the bath and opened a vein.

  Swan said, "I noticed old scars on Borodin's wrist. He'd tried to harm himself before. It's really a call for help, you know."

  "You mean Spiridon's wrist."

  "No, look in the log. Spiridon came here alone, got half the drunks here shouting they were God and went his merry way."

  That was at the same time Roman Spiridon was slipping into his bathtub, Arkady thought. Two Spiridons, two separate places. It worked for electrons but not for any larger entity.

  Arkady showed the medic the photograph he had taken from Madame Spiridona. "Who is this?"

  "Borodin. Sergei Borodin."

  Arkady took it back. Maybe there were two Borodins.

  "How well do you know him?"

  "Just from here. To be honest, I sometimes have trouble telling them apart."

  "You never talked to him?"

  "The usual. He was kind of sad and shy. A suicide is a suicide."

  No, Arkady thought. In the proper hands, suicide was murder.

  31

  A male voice answered the phone.

  "Hello. Who is this?"

  "Anya's neighbor."

  "Anya who?"

  "The dead Anya, who else. Think about it. I'll call back in a minute. Talk to Mother."

  Arkady hung up.

  He took a bottle of vodka out of the refrigerator and poured it into a glass. When people used to propose a toast to world peace, his father would say, "I'm sick of toasting world peace. What about world war?" To the old son of a bitch.

  Arkady drained the short glass in one go and let its warmth spread through him like water down a chandelier. He stood the bottle and glass on a counter.

  He took ten minutes and called again.

  This time the voice said, "Renko, what do you think you have?"

  "A witness."

  "Impossible."
>
  "Why?" When there was no reply, Arkady said, "See? You can't deny it without admitting you were there."

  "Where would that be?"

  "Where 'God is shit.'"

  A thoughtful pause. "Something can be arranged. Where are you?"

  "I told you, I'm in the apartment across from hers. This will cost a hundred thousand dollars."

  There was a whispered consultation at the other end. Sergei came back on the line and said, "I don't know what you're talking about. Stay there. I'll come by in three hours with at least a hundred thousand."

  "Here in one hour." Arkady rang off.

  It had sounded like Sergei was calling on a mobile phone. He was already on his way.

  Arkady stood at the kitchen window. The sun lingered, a wan spectator to twilight. The road workers on his street had filled the pothole, again. They loaded their tar pot and compactor onto a truck and left the repair guarded by pylons with reflective stripes and a sign with the international symbol of a man digging, although on this detail all the crew were women. The crew supervisor was a man who seemed unfamiliar with a shovel. For his part, Arkady had taped one voice-activated recorder on the underside of the kitchen table and another recorder in the small of his back. At the end of the block, a black Hummer parked and took up the space of two ordinary cars. Sergei Borodin got out swinging a briefcase as if he hadn't a care in the world.

  Arkady cracked the door. He heard footsteps climb the stairs until they reached the landing below.

  "Renko?"

  "Yes?"

  "No emotions. We're all grown-ups. Just business, right?"

  "Just business," Arkady agreed.

  Out of his Petrouchka costume, Borodin looked like an average athlete in designer sweats, but Arkady recalled being impressed by Sergei's daring as he flew on wires in the Club Nijinsky. Physical courage Sergei had. What murderers usually lacked was empathy. He recalled Sergei sitting on a catwalk and dropping lit matches on the dancers below.

  And what did Sergei see in Arkady besides a former investigator, bitter, cashiered and out of shape?

  Arkady said, "Do you mind if we talk in the kitchen? At parties, people always end up in the kitchen." He kept Sergei in the corner of his eye as he led the way. "I want you to set the briefcase on the table. If there's a gun inside, and you don't tell me right now, I'll kill you."