Restitution

by Lee Vance

  The door opens fifteen minutes later, admitting a tall ash-blond woman wearing a long white coat over a black cable-knit sweater and pale blue corduroys, half glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She extends a hand.

  “Emily Anderson.”

  “Peter Tyler.”

  Emily has short-cut nails and a firm grip. Her accent is Kansas, or somewhere thereabouts, and I’d guess she was voted queen of her hometown agricultural pageant about twenty years ago.

  “You’re a friend of Andrei’s?” she asks.

  “Yes. We started work at the same company, and roomed together at business school, a long time ago.”

  “Peter,” she says, smiling. “You and Andrei played basketball together.”

  “Yes.”

  “Andrei told me stories. He’s very fond of you and your wife.”

  I smile back, glad she knows who I am but uncomfortable meeting someone who doesn’t know about Jenna.

  “I’m having some difficulty catching up with him. One reason I stopped by was to see if you had a number or an e-mail address where I could reach him.”

  “I’m afraid not,” she says, her smile fading.

  “He isn’t staying in his apartment. Do you know if he’s still in Moscow?”

  “I haven’t seen him recently.”

  “He left his job. His sister, Katya, doesn’t know where he is.”

  She purses her lips, frowning.

  “I don’t think I can help you.”

  “Maybe we could discuss it over coffee,” I say, realizing she’s about to blow me off. “I’d like to learn more about your work here. And I do want to make a contribution.”

  She glances at her watch, shaking her head negatively.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve got to get on a plane later, and there’s a stack of paperwork I need to finish.”

  “Please,” I say, abandoning any pretense. “I really need to speak with Andrei. Both his sister and I are worried about him. Anything you can tell me about his life here might help me figure out how to get in touch with him.”

  “Why do you need to talk to him so urgently?”

  “It’s complicated,” I say, knowing how lame I must sound. “If you give me a few minutes, I can explain.”

  She lifts her chin slightly to study me through her glasses.

  “There’s a place across the street that makes good coffee. It’s smoky, but they have heat. Let me just tell Vladimir where I’m going.”

  Vladimir is the broken-nosed man, and he’s waiting right outside the door. Emily speaks a few quick sentences in Russian to him. He replies at length, handing her a thin sheaf of paper. She looks concerned.

  “Problem?” I ask, hoping she isn’t going to change her mind about coffee.

  “I have to deal with something quickly,” she replies, not looking at me. “I’ll meet you by the front entrance in a few minutes.”

  She hurries away, white clogs slapping on the stone floor, her ponytail swaying. A rancid odor makes me turn. Vladimir’s crowding me from behind.

  “You boxed?” I ask, tapping my nose.

  “Boxed?”

  “Fought.”

  “Fought,” he repeats. “Yes. Mussulmans, in Afghanistan. There is trouble. Here,” he says, tapping me on the chest lightly, “is no trouble. Understand?”

  I inhale as shallowly as possible, wondering how a thug like Vladimir ended up working in an AIDS clinic. He cups one hand behind his ear, miming someone trying to hear better.

  “Understand,” I say.

  Emily ignores my attempts at conversation as we cross the road and enter a dimly lit café. The only other customers are two young men in working clothes, smoking cigarettes and drinking from glass tumblers at the bar. The bartender sings out a greeting, but Emily barely acknowledges him, ordering coffee with a single word and leading me to a corner table. She edges her chair away from me as she sits, eyes not meeting mine.

  “Vladimir told you something,” I say, guessing at the reason for her abrupt change of attitude.

  “He looked you up on the Internet. He printed out some news stories about your wife’s murder.”

  “And you read that the police suspect me.”

  She looks up at me and nods, blue eyes magnified by her glasses.

  “The cops are wrong,” I say, anxious to convey my sincerity. “I’m here because I’m trying to find out who murdered her. I’m looking for Andrei because I need his help.”

  The bartender walks over, setting down two white earthenware cups and a lidless metal pot, black coffee grounds visible on a cushion of brown foam. He scoops a spoonful of foam into both cups before filling them with viscous coffee. Emily cradles her cup in both hands, eyes still locked on mine.

  “How can Andrei help you?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “A little while ago you said it was complicated. Why don’t you just explain as best you can and I’ll try to follow along.”

  Ignoring her sarcasm with an effort, I stitch together an abbreviated version of recent events, covering the package, Andrei’s firing and subsequent disappearance, and Pongo’s visitor.

  “Andrei’s in the middle of everything somehow,” I conclude. “I’ve got to find him to understand what’s going on.”

  Emily hasn’t moved except to lift her cup to her lips, not giving me any hint as to her reaction.

  “I can try to get a message to him,” she says quietly.

  “You know where he is?” I ask excitedly.

  “I know some people to call. One of them might be able to get hold of him.”

  “Can you give me their names?”

  “I can’t. Not without speaking to them first.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to be careful,” she says firmly. “The politics here are complicated. My primary concerns are the clinic and my patients.”

  I slump back despondently, frustrated that she won’t divulge anything more substantial. Glancing around the café, I see Vladimir at the bar, a glass tumbler in his hand. He must have followed us, afraid I might beat his employer to death with a coffee cup.

  “Why does the clinic need so much security?” I ask, trying a different tack.

  “Moscow’s a difficult environment. The WHO team I was with had all sorts of problems—theft, extortion, embezzlement, you name it. Vladimir and his boys have been a godsend. We haven’t had a single incident of any kind.”

  “WHO?”

  “The World Health Organization. I was working for them when I first came to Moscow, studying drug resistance in tuberculosis patients.”

  “I came across one of the clinic’s advertisements,” I say, hauling the condom Dmitri gave me out of my pocket. “I assumed you were focused on AIDS.”

  “Who would have guessed that a girl from Omaha would become the condom queen of Moscow,” she replies, a smile flitting across her face. “We’re focused on AIDS and TB. Tuberculosis is the number-one killer of AIDS patients in the Third World. WHO finally woke up to the link a couple of years ago and started advocating that the diseases be treated in tandem.”

  “TB’s curable though, right?” I ask, trying to draw her out.

  “Today. Maybe not tomorrow. A full-blown TB course lasts six to eight months, and the pills are expensive. What do you think most people in the Third World do when they start feeling better? Continue taking pills they don’t think they need, or stop treatment early? An abbreviated drug course kills off the weak bacilli and lets the strong survive. It’s the best-possible way to breed drug resistance. We’ve seen some superstrains recently that are virtually untreatable, and the mortality’s frightening.”

  She’s becoming more animated as she discusses her work, leaning toward me and using her hands to emphasize her words.

  “Drug development isn’t keeping up?” I ask, pouring more coffee for both of us.

  “TB will kill two million people this year, and the pharmaceutical companies are doing zero work on it,” she says contemptuously. “Ther
e hasn’t been a new TB drug in forty years. The big pharmas are all working on hair loss and impotence.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a businessman,” she says, making the word sound like an epithet. “You tell me.”

  “TB’s a Third World disease,” I say, catching her implication. “There’s no money to pay for drugs.”

  “Correct. Wait a few years, though. When resistant strains begin spreading to Europe and America, the pharmas will fall all over themselves researching treatments. A lethal disease that can be spread by coughing or sneezing? The First World will spend trillions.”

  “So how was Andrei involved in the clinic?” I ask, steering her back to the subject.

  “It was his idea. He dealt with the politics, found the space, raised the money, and recruited me to run it.”

  It’s startling to learn that Andrei was involved in so many things I know nothing about.

  “That’s a lot for him to have accomplished.”

  “Andrei knows people,” she says matter-of-factly. “Local businessmen, politicians, some senior army officers. One of the political guys is a deputy mayor. That’s how Andrei got our space.”

  “And why do all these important people support your clinic?” I ask, digging for any snippet of information that might shed light on Andrei’s activities.

  “Because we treat their children,” she says, sounding perplexed by my question. She checks her watch. “I’ve really got to leave soon.”

  “Just a few more minutes,” I protest, still suspecting there’s a clue in Andrei’s connections. “Do you ever speak with any of these influential people directly?”

  “Almost never. I give the occasional tour.”

  “So who’s handling the external stuff now that Andrei’s gone?”

  “Vladimir. He took over when Andrei left.”

  I look toward the bar again doubtfully. Vladimir’s chatting with the bartender, his army jacket draped over a stool. A tightly stretched knit turtleneck emphasizes the breadth of his shoulders. It doesn’t make sense that Andrei assigned a bruiser like Vladimir the task of representing the clinic to Moscow’s business and political elite.

  “Vladimir doesn’t seem like the administrative type.”

  “He and Andrei had a prior relationship,” she replies, shrugging. “They’d worked together before.”

  “Worked together on what?”

  “I don’t know,” she says evenly. “Andrei kept me out of things, and I made a point of not asking questions. It was the only way I could be involved.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is Moscow, Peter. Nothing’s ever straightforward. The deal I made with Andrei is that I’d do the medicine and he’d handle everything else.”

  So Andrei was involved in something shady. And Emily either doesn’t know the details or isn’t willing to tell me. I gulp the rest of my coffee glumly, my eyes drifting back to Vladimir. Maybe he and Andrei had a falling-out over this other business of theirs. He’s the one I really need to speak with, but he doesn’t seem like the chatty type. I look back to Emily. Vladimir aside, there’s still something fundamental that I’m missing here. I can feel it.

  “Of all the things Andrei could have given time and money to, what made him get interested in AIDS and TB?”

  A surprised expression flashes across her face, echoing the look Dmitri gave me when I asked if she and Andrei had been having sex.

  “He was concerned.”

  “There are lots of things to be concerned about,” I say, a half-formed thought hovering just beyond my reach. Dmitri smirked when he said I was confused, amused by my ignorance. Ignorance of what?

  Emily takes her glasses off, closes her eyes, and massages the pink indentations on either side of her nose.

  “What are you asking me?” she demands tiredly.

  The elusive thought clicks, shock rendering me speechless. Could I really be so clueless as never to have suspected that Andrei might be gay? Emily reads the surprise on my face and sighs. Taking a pen from her pocket, she scrawls something on a napkin.

  “My cell phone number. Assuming I reach someone who can help you, how should they get in touch with you?”

  I take her pen with numb fingers and scribble my details on a second napkin.

  “Can’t you tell me what’s going on?” I ask, recovering enough to make a final appeal. “Where Andrei is, or why he disappeared?”

  “I told you before,” she says, getting to her feet. “I don’t know anything. The best I can do is talk to some people for you.”

  She walks away and doesn’t look back.

  17

  I BUTTON MY COAT dazedly as I walk away from the café. The sun’s already set, despite the fact that it’s just past four, and the wind is rising. Triheaded streetlamps gleam high overhead, reflected light casting a pinkish moiré in swirling crystalline spindrift. I should be glad Emily offered to try to get a message to Andrei, but I’m feeling at sea.

  Andrei dated any number of girls over the years, inclining toward willowy European grad students working on esoteric political dissertations. I took to calling them all Giselle, after a flaxen-haired German feminist historian he brought to a dinner party in New York some years ago. She took a book from her backpack midway through the meal, shrugged her blouse down below her bare breasts, and announced loudly that the men seated to either side were welcome to continue conversing with her tits while she caught up on her reading. I’d asked Andrei about settling down once, curious about his serial relationships, and he said he couldn’t imagine domesticity with the kind of girls he found interesting enough to date. I’d laughed, surprised that the desire for family didn’t tug at him more strongly, but taking his point about the Giselles.

  An arctic gust penetrates my coat, evaporating the caffeine sweat slicking my skin and seeming to carry my illusions with it. Andrei lied to me about who he was. Incredulity at not having figured it out gives way to other equally disturbing thoughts. Does Katya know? Did Jenna? And why would Andrei have felt that he couldn’t tell me? More than anything else at this moment, I feel alone.

  Turning my collar up against the chill, I hustle through Lubyanskaya Square toward GUM, the old Soviet department store. The tourist map I navigated by last night touted it as a shopping destination. I need to buy another warm layer or I’m going to freeze to death.

  Foot traffic exits the square by way of a cellarlike pedestrian underpass, the curved concrete walls faced with thickly veined stone panels. An olive-skinned preteen wrapped in layers of ragged shawls approaches as I pass, begging for coins in a multilingual patois. I wave her off, but she darts in front of me and begins clapping loudly in my face, chanting something. I’ve lived in cities for a long time. Reaching to protect my pockets, I catch hold of a skinny wrist protruding from my coat. I haul the owner’s hand out of my pocket and jerk him forward. A fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy smirks at me, feral features lined with grime. He doesn’t even bother to try to pull away, probably figuring the most I’ll do is yell at him. Frustration boiling over into rage, I twist the boy’s arm so his elbow points skyward, then lean forward, using my weight to force him to one knee. Having chased phantoms for months, the urge to break the arm held solidly in my grip is almost irresistible. He moans, struggling feebly, as the girl shrieks and kicks out at me. An embroidered slipper flies off her foot, striking me in the chest. A hand touches my forearm as I ward her off. Looking sideways, I see an older woman in a fur hat staring at me, shock and disgust written on her face. What the hell am I doing? I let go of his wrist and back unsteadily toward the underpass steps. Bent over a few blocks away, hands on my knees, I try to contain the fury still coursing within me. I can’t believe I almost hurt a child. I’ve got to stay focused and hold it together. The only thing that matters now is my doing right by Jenna.

  GUM is about two hundred yards long, a cross between a modern mall and a Victorian greenhouse. Three wide, parallel, glass-roofed halls run the length of the b
uilding, each containing three stories of shops. Stone bridges with ornate iron rails connect the upper levels. The crowded stores have familiar Western names. I buy a sweater and knit hat at Benetton, wearing both purchases out.

  Removing Andrei’s phone from my pocket, I turn it on and call Dmitri. I promised him another hundred bucks to persuade his mother to meet with me. He answers on the first ring.

  “Allo.”

  “Dmitri? It’s Peter.”

  “My mother wants your family name.”

  Shit. I told him that I worked for Turndale—she’s going to look me up in the company directory.

  “Brown,” I say. There’s got to be a Peter Brown in an organization as big as Turndale.

  “She will meet now. At your hotel.”

  Dmitri sounds like he’s been drinking.

  “No,” I reply, figuring my false name will create some kind of problem at the hotel. “At GUM. I’m there now.”

  Dmitri covers his mouthpiece, a harsh rasp obscuring a whispered exchange.

  “There is a café,” he says. “Bosco.”

  “I saw it.”

  “We will meet at Bosco. Thirty minutes.”

  A clock in a store window reads 4:30.

  “Five o’clock.”

  “Five o’clock,” he confirms, hanging up.

  I wander through GUM aimlessly, depressed by the Christmas decorations, gravitating to the third floor because it’s less busy. Dmitri’s mother is bound to know more about what Andrei was doing, and might even have a contact number for him. At a minimum, she should be able to tell me who else he was close to in Moscow. Leaning against the metal balustrade edging a stone bridge, I shoot my cuff to check the time and realize the punk in the tunnel stole my watch. My rage rises again instantly. Jenna gave me the watch for my thirty-fifth birthday; it was the only keepsake of her I carried. Covering my face with my hands, I see Jenna before me, a strained smile on her face.

  “It wasn’t the gift I wanted to give you,” she said.

  I turned the watch over, reading the inscription while I decided how to answer. Peter from Jenna, my love always. A waiter cleared our dessert plates and poured the last of the wine. The lights of lower Manhattan shone across the East River outside the restaurant windows, and I could hear the hum of traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge high overhead.