Vodka

by Boris Starling

  “There’s nothing here for you, Investigator,” Sabirzhan said without looking up. Irk felt momentarily wounded, as though the time they’d spent in Petrovka together meant nothing. Then he remembered trailing Sabirzhan around Moscow the previous weekend, and felt that Sabirzhan had a right to his hostility, even if he didn’t know it.

  “How much vodka’s kept in here?” Irk asked.

  Sabirzhan straightened, adjusted his pince-nez and decided to answer. “A wagon and a side cart.” A large amount.

  “How much, exactly?”

  They looked like an odd couple: Sabirzhan with yellow eyes behind his pince-nez, Irk’s softened features neatly clustered together, too cerebral and gentle for all this. Sabirzhan relented, as though humoring an old friend. “If we hadn’t stopped them, they’d have gotten away with more than a million bottles.”

  Irk’s left eyebrow was naturally arched; he raised his right to join it. Muscovites drink a million bottles of vodka every day. It’s a hell of a number, whichever way you look at it.

  “And there’s, what, twenty men dead in here?”

  “Twenty trespassers—that makes it their own fault. You’re not the one being fucked, Juku, so don’t make the motions.”

  Irk knew Sabirzhan was right, up to a point. The Mafia’s quarrels were with each other rather than with the man in the street. So long as they didn’t affect members of the public, why not let them batter each other to death? In any case, the argument was academic. Once the Pooh-Bah that was Yerofeyev got hold of this case, he’d administer a coat of whitewash sufficiently comprehensive and swift to make any builder proud.

  Irk walked gloomily around the warehouse, more to show that he wasn’t going to be pushed around than in any real hope of uncovering anything useful. Chechen cadavers lay tangled together in contortions that wouldn’t have been out of place at an orgy. If there was ever any dignity in death, Irk thought, it hadn’t found its way here.

  He caught a glimpse of something, an image subliminal enough to be a memory. He blinked and looked again, knowing for sure what he’d seen and unsure whether he hoped he was wrong. There, beneath two dead Chechens who looked to have fallen on top of him, lay a young boy.

  Irk leaned down and rolled the first Chechen away. The body was brittle hard under his fingers—rigor mortis was setting in quickly. The second Chechen seemed to be clinging to the boy. Taking a deep breath, Irk yanked the man’s arm from around the child’s torso. Irk’s stomach heaved, and he bit back the bile as his mouth filled with saliva; it wouldn’t do to be sick here, in front of half of the 21st Century. The Chechen went spinning onto his mate and the boy was left exposed, alone, bloodied and naked.

  There they were: the same marks as on the other bodies. They were clearer this time, much clearer, perhaps because the victim was slightly less decomposed than the others had been, or perhaps because the killer had been more adept at inflicting them. Irk didn’t care which. He cared only that he knew now what they were.

  Not a crescent, or an angled letter “T,” but both, laid across one another. Together they made the most famous Soviet symbol of them all—the hammer and sickle.

  Rodion and Svetlana arrived at the repository a few minutes later; the school and orphanage were just across the street, after all. Irk met them at the edge of the scene and took them aside.

  “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a dead body before,” he began, “but…”

  “I was in Afghanistan,” Rodion said indignantly.

  “I meant Sveta.”

  “Never.” Svetlana shook her head and swallowed nervously.

  “Then I should warn you, it’s pretty horrific in there. Think what you will of the Chechens, but there’s a boy in there who’s one of yours…” They looked more resigned than horrified, and why wouldn’t they, when this was the fourth. “Someone you knew and cared for, perhaps more than the other kids, perhaps less, but … I’m sorry I have to do this, I’m so sorry, but I need to know what his name was, and at least one of you will have known him.”

  Irk clasped Svetlana’s shaking hands between his. “OK?” She nodded.

  As he led them back through the slaughter, Irk was grateful that the 21st Century men stood aside and didn’t crowd them. They knew that there were those for whom death was part of life, as it were, and those for whom it wasn’t. Irk took Svetlana and Rodion up to the boy’s body and stepped away. Svetlana gasped and crossed herself. Irk thought he saw her swaying, but when he reached out to steady her, she batted his hand away; she was fine. Rodion, closer to the corpse than either of them, shut his eyes and shook his head.

  “No,” he said, and Irk thought he heard anguish in his voice.

  “I need his name, Rodya.”

  Rodion opened his eyes again and looked up at Irk. “I meant, no, I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Me neither,” Svetlana said.

  His miniature Estonian flag apart, Irk’s desk was empty. Its blank cleanliness stood like a reproachful tract of Siberia in the crowded hubbub of ancient typewriters and crime reports piled into tottering turrets. A man who’d taken five weeks’ vacation would have left his desk like this, not a man working on a case of serial murder.

  Missing Persons was still checking their files to see if they had any record of a boy answering to the victim’s description. That he wasn’t one of Prospekt Mira’s had come as a shock, there was no denying that, but the more Irk thought about it, the more it made sense.

  For a start, he could no longer deny that the Chechens were responsible. The child had been with the men who had attacked the repository. Sidorouk reckoned he’d been dead longer than twelve hours, which meant they must already have killed him before going to the repository. They must have intended to leave him there as a signal, a warning. The only alternative was that he’d been killed earlier by Lev’s men, there in the repository, and whichever way Irk looked at that, it made no sense.

  As for the kid not being from Prospekt Mira, perhaps the Chechens had decided it would be more effective to spread the net wider. Until then, Lev had been obliged to explain himself only to the thousands of people who worked at Red October, but if news of the latest murder was made public, he would have to answer to millions of Muscovites, all fearful that their own child would be next. It was, Irk acknowledged ruefully, smart thinking from Karkadann.

  As for the hammer and sickle—well, Irk had to look no further than what Karkadann had said to him about the Chechen diaspora and the national exile to Kazakstan. The carvings were a defiant display of hatred against a regime now gone. That Lev had despised the Soviet Union just as much as the Chechens seemed to have escaped Karkadann’s notice, or perhaps not. In Irk’s experience, men’s hate is greatest when they see themselves reflected.

  When he went down to the squad room, the uniforms were packing up. Irk called over to them.

  “Gents, have you got a moment? I need some manpower.”

  “Nothing doing, Investigator,” one of them answered. “We’re due at Mytninskiy in half an hour.” Mytninskiy was Moscow’s largest audio, video and computer market, way up in the northern suburbs. It was open daily until six. Irk checked the duty roster. The men’s shifts for today were over; they were going to the market not as policemen, but to act as muscle for one of the gangs who controlled the place. It was known as “extra-departmental guard duty,” just one more form of semi-institutionalized corruption.

  “Hell, we’ve got to get some greens somehow,” said a second man. He turned to his mate. “Yarik, you got my pager?”

  “What do you need pagers for?” Irk asked.

  “So we know when the exchange rate rises. We pass the news on to the traders, and they put their prices up. Sorry, Investigator. Another time, and all that.”

  They left the room at a jog. Irk looked at the calendar on the wall: the last day of January. Was it only a month ago it had seemed that, having gotten rid of the Communists at last, everything would fall into place? The boil had indeed been lanc
ed, but the doctors, instead of caring for the patient, were busy going through his pockets.

  The door was still swinging behind the uniforms when Denisov came in. He hadn’t been down here in so long, Irk wondered how he’d found the way without help.

  Denisov had his hands behind his back, his traditional marker of bad news. “You know what I’m going to say,” he said.

  “And you know what I’m going to say.”

  “That he’ll fuck it up completely?”

  “Of course. You take the case from me, Denis Denisovich, and it’s as good as unsolved. You know that as well as I do.”

  “I can’t help that, Juku. The kid was found at a gang shootout. Give the case to Yerofeyev—you have no choice.”

  Irk shook his head. Denisov opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

  “What?” Irk said.

  “Nothing.” Denisov shook his head twice and left the room without a backward glance.

  It had been an apology, Irk saw, the words that had died on Denisov’s lips. It had been an apology, only Denisov didn’t know the word for “sorry.”

  Irk rang Lev to tell him that he would be dealing with Yerofeyev from then on. Lev clicked his tongue. “If you’d listened to me, Investigator, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this state now.”

  Hadn’t Lev given Irk his full confidence? How many more people would let Irk down over this? He snapped back an answer before he could stop himself: “In that case, how many more children have to die before you change your mind about talking to Karkadann?”

  “I’m not the one killing them, Investigator.”

  Irk slammed the phone down. It rang again instantly.

  “Prosecutor’s office.”

  “Is that Investigator Juku Irk?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “I’m phoning from Pravda. I’d like to talk to you about the child you found this morning.”

  41

  Saturday, February 1, 1992

  It had turned even colder than before, a frigid morning under brumal skies to remind Muscovites that progress toward a brighter future, whether political or meteorological, was never smooth.

  If it was chilly outside, the atmosphere in Borzov’s office was positively glacial. Borzov himself stared gloomily at his hands and said nothing, wheezing through a blocked nose. Arkin did most of the speaking, from between teeth clenched so tightly that Alice feared he would grind them down. His message could hardly have been clearer had it been carved in ice. “Does everyone understand me? There is nothing—nothing—more important to the reform program than this auction, and I will not have it jeopardized under any circumstances. I need assurances from each of you that you remain fully committed to the auction.”

  “I won’t negotiate with that barbarian under any circumstances,” Lev said.

  “We’re talking about children’s lives here,” said Alice. “Surely the priority has to be putting an end to these murders.”

  “Mrs. Liddell, if the reform program collapses in ruins, millions of children’s lives will be at stake, not to mention their futures. Of course the murders are horrific, but for the international community to withdraw its support would be to give in to the killers. More than that, it would send a message that their tactics have succeeded. Is that what you want? No, the auction must go ahead. Those responsible for the murders deserve punishment, not victory.”

  “And you have Petrovka’s word that we’ll leave no stone unturned,” Denisov said. “The case has been passed to organized crime”—he indicated Yerofeyev, who dipped his head with a modesty that hardly became him—“and our best men are working on it.”

  “Investigator Irk?” Arkin asked.

  “This is no longer simply a homicide case,” Denisov said. “Departmental rules—”

  “Departmental rules be fucked. Everyone I’ve spoken to says Irk’s the best man in Petrovka.” Yerofeyev’s incompetence remained implicit. “He’s been on the case from the start, hasn’t he? Then put him back there, now.”

  “With all respect, Prime Minister—”

  “That’s a direct order. This could make or break the country’s good future, Denis Denisovich. Your handling of the case will determine whether it makes or breaks your career.”

  News of his reinstatement pleased Irk for all of several seconds. His anger was consuming. It wasn’t just that Pravda had gotten the story—how, he didn’t know, but he’d move mountains to find out—they had also found the boy’s name, Modestas Butautas, while the police were still trawling missing persons files. Once more, Irk felt the police’s failings as his own.

  Pravda had devoted the front page and the next four to the story, and they’d gotten most of it right: the victims’ names, the fact that the latest was a street kid originally from the Latvian capital, Riga, the circumstances in which they’d been found and the power struggle for control of Red October. All in all, Irk acknowledged, a pretty good job—perhaps he should phone the reporters and offer them jobs at Petrovka. They seemed a damn sight better at unearthing facts than most of the detectives he worked with.

  He thought about going down to the basement to have it out with Kovalenko, once the Petrovka press department’s Cerberus and now its lapdog, but what good would that do? He’d given Kovalenko a bottle of Eesti Viin; Pravda had obviously offered a crate. A man’s loyalty nowadays was not to whoever paid his salary, but to whoever paid his bribes. The only surprise was that the story had taken so long to get out.

  It was the main feature on all TV news bulletins by mid-morning, replete with grainy video footage—the Chechens had delivered a tape to one of the news agencies of Karkadann ranting at the camera: “For decades, Russians have been guilty of the most barbarous cruelty toward Chechens. Now, perhaps, you will start to understand our suffering.” Channel One, the government station, was circumspect in its reporting, offering commentators with expressions of suitable gravity; Channel Two, with no official information, thrust microphones into the faces of people on sidewalks and found answers to satisfy any demagogue: the Mafia should sort themselves out, privatization should be stopped, the country was going to the dogs.

  It was the kind of story—perhaps the only kind of story—capable of shocking Muscovites out of their habitual mixture of smug complacency and cynical resignation.

  The lights in Irk’s apartment flickered, rallied and went off for good. Irk sighed. It was the third blackout in as many days, all caused by the same thing: residents using heaters so inefficient that they overloaded the antiquated electricity grids and blew fuses throughout entire buildings. He decided to pay the Khruminsches a visit; their apartment would be warm and light, a veritable Hilton compared to this place.

  Irk’s car started on the second try. Traffic on a Saturday was lighter than during the week, and he made good time. On Bolshaya Yakimanka, he passed a series of flyover struts, built and willing but as yet without a flyover to support. The stems of steel and concrete stretched forlornly skyward like flowers searching a sun, emblematic of a city on the rise, disposed to take any direction as long as it led upward.

  This headlong, lemming-like quest for a better tomorrow had always been the root of Russia’s problems, Irk thought. First the never-never utopia of socialist brotherhood, and now the rush toward capitalism in which business was equated with crime. Greed is a natural human attribute, but whereas Western countries had regulations to check the worst excesses of businessmen intent on accumulating money and connections, Russia did not. The successful Russian businessman’s strategy was therefore twofold: to build his own power base, and to demolish the competition through malicious rumors, brute force or subterfuge. How could you run an economy and a country on these lines without ruining them too? It was impossible. Organized crime all too easily perpetuates the conditions in which it can flourish. Left unchecked, it would soon become an indivisible part of the body politic.

  Outside Okhotny Ryad metro station, women clutching goods for sale formed a line along the sidewalk. Each s
tared straight ahead, like suspects in an identity parade. As Irk drove past, he saw the line suddenly fragment and dissolve. When three police officers appeared a moment later, they found nothing other than a crowded street of people going about their business. The moment the cops had turned the corner, the line re-formed as easily as it had evaporated. The women weren’t breaking the law, just avoiding having to pay bribes.

  Everyone was at it, that was the problem. Everyone was at it because that was the only way to survive. Irk wasn’t simplistic. He knew that Russia’s problems ran way deeper than the Mafia. The country could not hope to change its crime without changing its police, its politics, its morals, its values. Like Moses, the Russians needed to spend forty years in the desert so that the old generation could die off and a new, liberated one emerge. In the meantime, a man did what he could.

  Rodion answered the apartment door, propelling himself smartly backward when Irk extended a hand in greeting. “It’s bad luck to shake hands over the threshold of a doorway,” he said. “If you do, you’ll have an argument.” He tutted at the skepticism on Irk’s face. “You Estonians, you’re all the same: you think superstition’s for peasants and bumpkins.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Of course not. Just because you can’t explain something doesn’t make it any less true. Come on in.”

  “What happened to your chest?” Irk said as he followed Rodion into the sitting room.

  “My chest?”

  The top button of Rodion’s shirt was undone and the next one was missing. Irk indicated three diagonal scars on the skin left visible in the plunge.

  “Afghan medals,” Rodion said. When Irk narrowed his eyes in confusion, Rodion explained: “Gorbachev himself decorated us, in Red Square on Victory Day. I pulled my collar open and pinned the medals into my bare flesh, so that they’d draw blood—because into those little pieces of metal we had poured the blood of our friends, the blood of those who died and those who went as children and returned as old men. Those medals held the pain of our hearts.”