by James L. May
“That’ll do. He didn’t say kill him,” said a voice. “Bring that one, too.”
The knee was removed and I was pulled roughly to my feet. Petrovich, insensible, had to be carried. I was frog-marched.
They pushed us to the floor at the feet of a man sitting on a stool. His bare legs were covered in ink like all the others, a pair of crucifixes wrinkled by the skin on his knees. One elbow rested on a small table that also supported a bottle of vodka and a glass. And then, his face—
“So, it is him,” he said.
Instead of seeing his face, you read it: INDIAN. The blue letters of the tattoo blocked their way over the cheeks, three to a side. They were like a cloud, a haze. Somewhere behind them were wizened features, hooded eyes.
“Yakov Petrovich, fuck. You know I’m always glad to see you, but do you really think coming here was a good idea? The boys don’t like it when you let in the cold air. Shrinks their pricks. I can tell them we are old friends, but …”
That got a round of nasty laughter. The man in the chair—he had to be the Golubov that Petrovich had asked for—not smiling at his own joke, waited for the chuckling to stop. For all the world he looked like a monarch attended by courtiers in the privacy of the royal chambers. A glance at Petrovich showed me he still wasn’t supporting himself. His eyelids fluttered, and his head hung limp on his neck. Blood ran from his nose and a cut on his cheek.
“If you really don’t mean for him to—to be killed, you should be careful.” The laughter stopped abruptly. My voice had come out louder than I’d meant, more shrill. But somehow it felt less dangerous to speak up than to wait and see where this went. “He’s an old man. He can’t take any more than what you’ve given him already.”
The seated man turned the letters on his face towards me. “Who says I don’t want to kill him?” From behind, someone cuffed me. Golubov addressed the room. “This fuck wants to come into our place and tell me what I want and don’t want. What do you think of that?”
“Yakov Petrovich,” I said desperately, “he has friends. People you wouldn’t want to have as your enemies. Just let me take him to the hospital and we won’t bother you anymore. We made a mistake coming here.”
“Fuck your mother, I’ll say you made a fucking mistake.”
“We weren’t trying to cause you any trouble. Our case doesn’t involve you. Petrovich only—”
He cut me off. “Your case involves your mother’s cunt-hairs. But this is fucking interesting. ‘Your case.’ You’re telling me this old prick has gotten himself set up as a detective here, too?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, he told me you knew each other in Odessa. We only wanted to ask a few questions. A man was killed—”
“The cunting fuck. Should have known he’d find a way to keep sticking his prick where it didn’t belong. The great inspector!”
“He never thought you had anything to do with it. It was a man named Gennady Antonov. Listen, let me take him—”
“Shut your fucking mouth.” He swore at me with a voice grown small, almost prim, with authority. I stopped talking.
Above the tattoo, the man’s brown hair was thin and graying. He sat back in his chair, taking a sip of vodka. When he spoke again he was once more addressing his men, not me. “Inspector Yakov Petrovich, from Odessa. Yids, you know, they’re thick on the ground in Odessa. Not the Inspector, he’s all right that way. But in Odessa, the yids are organized, ganged-up like you would not believe. These are none of your egg-sucking peasant Jews who pull the plow themselves because the horse has the shits. No, these ones are smart like you and me. At least like me. They have guns, women. They wear fur coats, they like diamonds, they like vodka. And they deal with their own kind, like they always do. This is my home town. Disgusting. Sometimes it gets so that a real Russian cannot make a living with honest thieving.
“One yid is Red Shloem. This is fifteen years ago, during one of those not-so-good times, understand? Back then I had a little gang that worked the port warehouses. This is mostly good work. Easy. You find the right guard, who will consent to being knocked out in return for a share of the profits, and your only other worry is hiring boys who can carry heavy boxes without dropping them.
“Well, this changes when Red shows up. First he kills two guards who won’t work with him. Both Russians, by the way, so who can blame them for not wanting to help the kike? Okay, after that everyone is more on edge. It’s much harder to find a guard willing to lie down for you, because he’s not sure he’ll be getting back up again. This would be aggravating on its own, but it gets worse. Somehow, after doing this stupid thing, this Red Shloem is the only one able to do business in all of Odessa. Somehow he has an inside line. You have heard about a promising shipment that you might lift? Oh, too bad, Shloem’s gang got it two days ago. Naturally he is drinking champagne in all the places Jews drink and driving around in a new Kraut car all day with two whores who don’t mind a circumcised prick, maybe they are Jewesses as well, I don’t know. You can tell this is a fucking mess.
“So then, what? Shloem has an inside line? That’s okay, I have my own lines that are not so bad. I hear about a shipment of fancy women’s things due to sit on the dock for a few days. Underthings, you know? To cover up their cunts. You laugh, but these things are easy to sell if you know the right places in the city, and light to carry. Plus, wherever you go, whores like them, so the boys will take payment in kind because they know they can exchange two dozen pairs for about three good fucks. Depends on the going rate. Anyway, the important thing is, the way I get this information, I am sure Shloem will have gotten it, too. We know some of the same people. I am a bit disgusted by this, because he’s as greasy and offensive as any Jew, and I like to think better of my circle of acquaintance, but it’s true.”
Sweat crawled down the collar of my shirt, but I dared not move. The room’s boredom had converted to hostile interest with Boris’s first blow to Petrovich. By now I felt that the men’s tattoos had become a hundred violent eyes on their skin. Still Petrovich hadn’t stirred. Even if he had, there would have been no chance of making a break for it.
“I have not been doing much business, and a job would be nice. But what would be nicer would be to see Shloem crawl back up his mother’s cunt and disappear. So I think I will send a note to someone on the police force. Inspector Petrovich here, he’s known. Competent man, people say. They say he knows how to take a hint. Also they say he’s a bit of a dick-head, likes being a policeman very much and thinks that it makes his balls enormous, but in the end I decide, okay. I get a message to him, to let him know about this shipment I know about.
“Easy, right? I thought so, too. When Red Shloem finally gets around to lifting these underpants, the cops, led by the heroic inspector, let him and his gang break into the warehouse. Then they surround it and tell him to come out with his hands up.”
He stopped, took a drink. “It goes even better than I hoped, because Shloem decides not to put up his hands and instead to shoot his way out with his little revolver. Lo and behold, he gets shot in the prick by a policeman who actually knows how to handle a rifle, and then they put one in his head for good measure.
“Okay, then. Everybody should be happy, wouldn’t you say? I am certainly happy. So what do I do? I go to see the inspector. I figure we’re friends now. I want to explain how I helped him, talk with him about what he might do for me in return, as a friend. The inspector has an office that you have to walk down a dozen halls to get to, then you give your name to a cop sitting on his cunny behind a desk. Okay, I give my name. They know me at the station, know who I am. I wait.”
Golubov steepled his much-inked hands in front of him and sighed. It was an asymmetrical gesture: the left ring-finger had been cut off at the second knuckle. “Who do you think comes out to greet me? Is it your fucking inspector? No, not likely. Two overgrown cocksuckers in uniforms made for elephants appear and throw
me in a cell. The fucker has me put in a cell for questioning about four other jobs, two of which I had nothing to do with. And he doesn’t even appear himself to do the questioning, he has some other son of a bitch do it. Can you believe he would squeeze my balls that way? After I did him such a favor?”
There’d been more laughter while Golubov told his story, but Boris had held his face still as a mask. He’d taken up a place near Golubov, and now watched me with a look of deadpan aggression. I was trying to think of what to do next when a voice interrupted.
“Doing you—a favor now.” It was Petrovich, breaking off in the middle of his sentence to shake his head and catch his breath. His gaze seemed a few degrees off from where it ought to be, and an effort to wipe the blood from his cheek had only smeared it. But at least he’d pulled himself most of the way upright.
Golubov concluded without acknowledging him. “Of course I’m telling this fucking story to show you can never count on a cop. And maybe to show you’ve got to squeeze his balls back, and fucking harder, till they pop, when you have the chance.” At last he turned to the old man. “So why should I trust any fucking favor you offer to do me now? Why not have Boris give you another kicking?”
“We should talk in private,” said Petrovich.
“You want me to give you the kicking my fucking self?”
“Golubov,” Petrovich muttered, as though to himself. “Always with you gangsters, it’s take out our schmeckels and compare before we’re allowed to get down to business.”
“What? What? This yid talk is supposed to remind me of the good old days, maybe? What fucking business do you think I have with you?”
“—’S your schmeckel,” said Petrovich, still in his own world. “Who am I to tell you not to take it out? Only, no need to rattle my teeth. Loose enough already.”
“What do you want, you old fuck?”
Somewhere behind my anxiety, I was amazed that the old man could keep his brashness up, even after being knocked out. In a way I admired it. But Boris only seemed to be waiting for a hair to vibrate the wrong way. “Yakov Petrovich,” I hissed.
The old man shook himself. “All right. Yes. What I want is only a few answers to a few questions. If you know anything that helps, it would be good for you. Earn you a good opinion in certain quarters.” He gestured vaguely around the room. “Good opinion for the lot of you.”
“I need your good opinion like I need a cunt with ears.”
“Not mine. Infosec’s. That you need a lot. Who do you think I’m working for? Information and Investigation. You know something that helps them, that would look good. Proves how ‘socially close’ you are.”
“You sound like you are recommending fucking graft to me.” He looked at me. “Do you know what fucking graft is?”
“No,” I said.
“This is funny,” Golubov said without smiling, still talking to me. “Because there are obviously no bigger fucking grafters in this camp than you and this fucking old man. Graft is when someone like you or the inspector here, in between sessions of licking his jailers’ balls, helps to run his own prison. You see? The toadying fuckwit works to keep himself in jail. Going out there to work in the forests, that’s graft. Nosing around and ferreting out information on behalf of the camp bosses, that is major fucking graft. You want me to answer questions for the Cheka, you want me to graft. Are you telling me I should go out and find some secret policeman’s balls to lick?”
Petrovich was dabbing at his bloody face with the sleeve of his coat. “What I’m saying is you need friends. All of you here in your sauna do,” he said. He seemed to be growing more lucid rapidly, but the continued dabbing robbed the words of some of the conviction they might have had. “Tell him about the case, Tolya.”
“The man who was killed first was named Gennady Antonov,” I began tentatively. To my surprise, Golubov didn’t cut me off. “And now another, too, Nail Terekhov. Antonov worked at the camp museum, Terekhov in the alabaster workshop.”
“That means fuck-all to me.”
I tried to keep the tremor out of my voice. “Antonov died yesterday morning, down by the bay. Terekhov they found today, out in the forest.”
“Like I said, you can go fuck yourselves. I know fuck-all about any of this.”
“Fine,” said Petrovich. He’d gotten some of the blood off, though it left his mustache pink. “You’ve never heard of either of them. Let’s come at it another way. What do you know about the quay? What’s happening down there that I should know about?”
Golubov sighed. “Go fuck yourself, Petrovich. Really, it’s fucking lucky for you the Reds sent you to the camps, isn’t it, old man?” For the first time, he sounded a note of something more than urbane brutality. His voice had grown tired. “Couldn’t believe it when I heard you’d retired from the force. You’d have never given it up yourself, it would have been like yanking your own balls out. Someone must have had enough and kicked you out, was that it? I heard from someone you were living with a daughter, playing cunting nursemaid to a pack of fucking grandchildren. But now you’re here, doing whatever it is this is a part of, and you get one last chance to act like Chief Fuck again. Is it doing it for you? Does it put a little blood back into your dried-up old prick? That’s even worse than graft, really. You want me to call you ‘Inspector’? Now? You’re an informant. Even the grafters out there, your fucking ‘politicals,’ call an informant a slug. And I know you. You don’t even do it for whatever you get from it. You do it because you like it.”
There was silence for what felt like a long time. Petrovich didn’t move, but what Golubov said had affected him. I could see his mustache flutter each time he inhaled—he was breathing heavily. With every second that went by, I felt the danger rising like mercury. Around us, the diamonds and lines and circles, the devils and naked ladies waited. Shoulders and fists knotted in the human wall. I tried to read Golubov’s expression to see what he would do, but with the tattoo I couldn’t.
At last the urka boss opened his mouth. “Get them the fuck out of here. I don’t want to look at this son of a whore for another minute.”
Outside, cold air rinsed the odor of unwashed bodies from my nostrils. The place had reeked like a zoo. My relief at having escaped with our lives mingled with gratitude at returning to the world of more-or-less human smells.
“Are you all right?” I said to Petrovich.
“Give me my cane.”
He’d dropped it during the attack, of course. Spotting it on the floor as we walked out, I’d calculated rapidly that picking it up was worth the risk of drawing the anger of the urki hustling us out. We’d need it: Petrovich had been able to stand up on his own, but his arm had to be slung over my shoulder just to reach the door.
“We should go to the hospital,” I said.
“Not necessary. Just need to sit down. Take me back to the cell.” We went a little way, Petrovich laboring and leaning hard on my shoulder, me taking short steps to keep pace with him.
After a minute he stopped. “Thought Golubov would be willing to talk,” he said breathlessly. He was aiming at the tone of instruction I’d grown used to, but I could hear the strain in his voice. “Didn’t think he’d do that. Should have tried to get him alone. Might have gotten more out of him. He had to act hard in front of his men, but you see he knows he needs Infosec.”
“Are you sure? That wasn’t what it looked like to me.”
He waved for me to take him over to the wall of a nearby building. When I did, he propped himself against it with one arm. “You saw how they’ve managed the strike? Got rid of their clothes. What they did was throw them into the stove, one pair of trousers after another. Fed Camp Administration a line about how it was all lost in the laundry, and they can’t go out and work naked in the snow, can they? Well, fine—but try a stunt like that without friends in Administration and see how long it is before you’re out in the wind wi
th your fingers and toes turning black.”
I took the point, but it still didn’t make much sense. “You said before they were socially close. You mean to tell me they can get away with something like this, as long as they don’t let it look like they’re defying Administration?”
Petrovich nodded. “But they’ve got to keep it plausible, and they’ve got to hope no one’s patience runs out. And by now they’ve been at it four or five weeks, ever since it got cold. They’re pushing their luck. When the bosses send new clothes, they just get rid of those, too. Someone’s sure to resent that sooner or later. Means Golubov’s going to need some help if he’s going to make it last much longer. I thought being owed a favor by Infosec might tempt him.”
Four or five weeks without a visit to the bathhouse would explain the smell. Even in Quarantine we’d been taken to bathe every ten days or so. Better to stink than work, maybe, but the urki’s plan still seemed crazed.
Petrovich could see my incredulity. “Give me some snow,” he said. He rubbed what I handed him against his cheek and lips to get some of the blood off, then held what remained up to his eye. “It sounds odd to you, but I promise, this is what they’ve been babbling about every day back in KrimKab. I’ve had to hear about it all month. They’re fretting over the ‘effect on prisoner morale,’ the ‘very real possibility of violence.’ They worry about the situation ‘getting out of hand.’ Whose hands do they think it’s in now, I wonder?”
He was still slurring some words, but I couldn’t tell whether that was from concussion or only damage to his mouth. I hoped it was the latter. It wouldn’t do our investigation any good if he had to be put to bed for a day.
