Moscow Noir (19 page)

The next day I went to visit the inspector with a silly question: had they found any link between the 1973 case and today’s pedophiles from Moldavia? But, of course, there was no link. And, of course, no one wondered back in 1973 what had happened to the gray overcoat that the sex maniac wore to go skirt-chasing. Inspector Bullet had read in the 1973 file that the maniac had had a whole underground bunker, like an abandoned bomb shelter, right on the edge of Birch Grove Park. The police might have kept the white socks or the coat; but only the socks would probably have made good material evidence.

“What about the bunker?” I asked. “What happened to it? Where is it?”

“Who cares about the bunker, doc? When we come across a place like that, you know, a basement or an attic, we just seal it up and check the locks from time to time. So that winos or bums can’t live there. I’m sure that was what happened to the bunker. Sealed up and forgotten. Come on, let’s go. I’ll show you why we have Comrade Stalin and his minister of internal affairs, Lavrentiy Beria, to thank for a good cop shop.”

“Why Beria?” I asked absently, lost in my own thoughts.

Inspector Bullet didn’t answer. Instead, he proudly motioned me to follow him down the corridor, where it ended at a plywood door. He opened it, revealing another door behind it. This one was made of heavy, rough cast iron, painted blood-brown. It had something like a ship’s steering wheel, two feet in diameter, attached to it. No, it wasn’t a ship’s wheel—it looked more like the lock on a bank safe. I was standing in front of the door to a huge safe, the height of a grown man, covered in a slapdash way with multiple layers of paint. Numerous iron levers and knobs stuck out of the door—all parts of the locking mechanism.

“Does it work?” I asked in a grim voice, staring at the magnificent contraption.

“You bet,” said Inspector Bullet. “We have the key, it weighs almost a pound. But frankly, none of us has ever felt like going behind the door.”

He paused significantly, enjoying my confusion.

“No mutant rats or skeletons in rotten trench coats there, though,” he added shortly, and wiped his large face with his hand. “But I suggest you don’t go in there, either. Because … well, doc, I guess you’ve figured out this is an entrance to a bomb shelter. And our station is like the front lobby of the shelter. We’re on the corner of Peshchanaya Square and 3rd Peshchanaya Street, right? We go into the bomb shelter from here, and using underground passages we can walk all the way over to the lane of chestnuts on your 2nd Peshchanaya. Think there’s not a bomb shelter in your basement? It’s just locked. But if you go down into the basement, sooner or later you’ll end up in front of a metal door just like this one here. And behind it you’ll find a passageway all the way to the Sokol subway station, or even the airport station, where the old airport use to be, on the former Khodynka Field. There was a secret subway line that went all the way there from the Kremlin. So, you go for a stroll underground, and when you figure you’re lost, you start banging on this two-foot-thick door from the inside. But no one’s going to open it, because even if someone’s there, they won’t hear you. It could get lonely, don’t you think? Especially when it’s pitch-black in there.”

“You think Comrade Stalin and Comrade Beria wandered around in these bomb shelters?”

“Well, maybe they didn’t. But all the gray brick houses on all the Peshchanaya streets have these bomb shelters. They were built by German prisoners of war. You know, ‘You bombed ’em, you rebuild ’em.’ They say that in the ’50s, when Khrushchev set them free, they thanked everyone here for giving them the chance to return home with a clean conscience. And Comrade Beria, in addition to being the minister of national security, and then the minister of internal affairs, was also head of the prisoner camps. So it was all under his jurisdiction. The best buildings in Moscow are called Stalin buildings, but they should be called Beria buildings.”

“That’s all well and good,” I said. “Beria and company—very interesting. But are you going to catch the maniac?”

Inspector Bullet sighed and looked at me unsympathetically. “At least the girl is alive. She says when he laid her down on some mossy hill, she changed her mind. And then he asked her to put on white socks, like a schoolgirl. Just like the other maniac. She didn’t like the socks—too dirty. She began to fight him off. That’s it. The case is basically closed. Not gonna dig up anything more on him.”

“A hill … on the edge of Birch Grove Park, right by the concrete fence at Khodynka Field,” I said with sudden clarity. “And who took her there? It was probably him. That’s his place. Or
their
place? The same place as in 1973? And at first she followed him, as if … as if she were hypnotized. Right. See you, inspector; I’ll be back.”

“Hey, come work in the police force, why don’t you? We really need a shrink in the department,” replied Inspector Bullet.

The girl, Julia, gave me a much warmer welcome than her mother. The mother probably wasn’t too keen on paying me for another session. She just sadly gestured with her hand toward the girl’s room, saying, “Don’t be shocked. Her majesty’s wearing new clothes.”

The red-haired Julia had dyed her hair jet-black and put on black and red lipstick. Metal trinkets of all shapes and sizes dangled from her wrists. A metal cross hung between her large breasts, which were virtually spilling out of her T-shirt, and were spotted with pimples.

“Come to lock me up in the funny farm?” she asked.

“They don’t put goths and heavy metal fans away in mental institutions,” I said. “Now listen carefully, sweetie. Two days ago, a man in an overcoat stinking of dirt cracked open the head of a young woman. The police are looking for him. Do you catch my drift? You have the ass of a grown-up woman and the head of a teenager. And when someone lowers a rock onto a head like that, and the brains begin to—Did you say something?”

In one quick, nervous motion, the gothic Julia lit a cigarette and stuck it to her mouth. Then she took it out, smeared with lipstick, and stared at me silently.

“So I need you to fill me in on some details, here,” I said hastily, before she had quite recovered from the shock. “First, who was leading who? He you, or you him?”

“Him,” she replied immediately. “He took me to the cement fence.”

“You said there was a concrete slab. Was it hard?”

“Don’t worry, it was soft enough for my butt.” She was herself again, the first wave of shock already past. “It was covered with moss or something. It wasn’t concrete, I mean … it was really old, more like a tuft of something in the ground. To the left of the path leading to a hole in the cement fence by Khodynka, the field. So it was real soft. Try it yourself. If you need company, I’ll come with you. Doctors get a discount.”

“One last thing. When you were going there with him, what were you thinking about? What did you feel?”

“What do you think I was thinking about? I was thinking about
that
,” said Julia. “I felt a little high. I was like, you know, a little girl. Real curious. Like it was the first time. A big guy with a big thingy.”

“Did you think those thoughts before?”

“I used to do a lot of things before. And now—hello, grown-up world.”

I headed to the concrete fence, behind which the white towers of a whole new residential district, constructed on Khodynka Field in just under a year, soar up to the skies. The tops of the buildings bask in the sunset, and the fresh new walls glow pink, like the Cadillac Hotel. To the left stands the spire of Triumph Palace, the tallest residential building in Europe.

But all that is on the other side of the concrete fence. There, in a forgotten area of the old park, which is essentially a forest, twilight was thickening. An empty bench stood askew (what was it doing there—did someone drag it all the way over from the lane?), and weeds and burdocks grew on the tufty ground. Like gray mushroom caps covered with green mold, and slightly protruding from the ground at about knee height, there were two concrete slabs disappearing into the ground at a slant. A little farther on was another slab, level with the earth around it.

I thought I could make out something resembling small orifices, half covered in earth, by each slab. Passageways that once led down?

The slabs were covered with shards of broken bottles, sausage wrappers, and … a torn piece of foil—a condom wrapper.

So this was the place.

I had nothing more to do there.

Gray haze and a soft path silenced my footsteps. A shaggy dog emerged quietly from the bushes and stared at me with an unblinking, almost human stare, keeping a safe distance. Then it took two steps toward me. My heart fluttered in fear, but the the dog didn’t come any closer.

For two hours I listened to a plump editor from
Sokol
, the local newspaper. She had suggested I do an interview on the topic of psychiatry, because “we do this with all the prominent people in the district.” Then she talked about those who had died on Khodynka during the coronation of the last czar, when many people were crushed and their bodies were hauled away on carts. About Peshchanaya Square, which was built on a large graveyard for Napoleon’s soldiers. The remains of the French soldiers were taken away, nobody knows where. A similar story about the dead in Bratskoye Cemetery: they were buried during World War I, and their remains were exhumed under Beria and Khrushchev, when the remote suburb of Moscow was turning into a beautiful new residential district. The bunkers on the edge of Khodynka? Those were located in a special area that belonged to the Moscow Military District—part of the defense line at the farthest end of the airbase. Airplanes took off over the heads of soldiers, their propellers droning heavily, and flew further west, to the railroad. Nothing interesting, apart from that. Stories about the living dead from the past? No, no; nothing of that nature. I would have heard. I left the editor and walked home through the empty treelined streets in complete silence, greedily breathing in the fresh air.

Parks built on human bones. Graveyards that no longer exist. An ominous name—Khodynka. More parks, couples with baby carriages, cyclists, poplars, lime trees. Graveyard shadows sleep peacefully among bushes and alleys. Sleep, O souls of long forgotten soldiers. Sleep in the best neighborhood in Moscow. You are welcome here, because all cities stand on the bones of the past. Carts, then hearses, rolled down these streets. These days, from the open balcony doors, you could hear women’s laughter and music, and from the sidewalk you could see the tops of bookshelves and white ceilings with circles of honey-colored lights cast by chandeliers. A cat sat in the window and stared gloomily at the gray concrete below. The cat’s name was Grymzik. He belonged to my neighbor, and I was almost home. And I needed to make an urgent phone call.

“Sergey? Hi, how’s your precious health today?”

“Ah, good doctor! Nice to hear your voice. I’m great, actually. Physically exhausted, but glowing with mental health. I’m afraid I no longer make a very interesting patient. You’re a regular magician, I’ll have you know.”

“Believe me, Sergey, no magic involved whatsoever. What was it that bothered you? Depression and a couple of neuroses. Well, who wasn’t depressed in the ’90s? I used to have two patients who loved to discuss the benefits of suicide and its various methods with me every day. I didn’t try to contradict them, and even participated in their discussions. What do you expect from someone who’s been designing rockets all his life, and is then told:
Thank you, but we really won’t be needing any more rockets
. Rope and a piece of soap is the only way out. And you … half the people in the U.S. take Prozac; and they had no major crisis or economic collapse to contend with in the ’90s. So there’s no magic to it whatsoever. But you should hear about my new patient. You won’t believe it if I tell you. Actually, that’s why I’m calling you. Do you still have your connections in the archives?”

“Oh, I never lost them. Still work there. Deputy director, if can you believe it. So the entire archive is at your disposal. What exactly are you looking for?”

“Well, you see, it’s a very serious case,” I said, improvising. “A fetishist, a rapist, most likely a murderer. Fixated on particular objects, locations, and events from the past. And particular names. I have a theory, which I thought you could help me test. Just promise me that you won’t think I’m off my rocker when I start asking my questions. You wouldn’t believe what kinds of nutcases there are out there.”

“Indulge me,” said the archivist joyfully. “What particular historical fetishes does your maniac have?”

“Coordinate number one is the area between the edge of Khodynka Field and the back of Birch Grove Park. Apparently, that part of the city is connected with some important people. And I’m talking famous historical people—from the Soviet era. Some bigwigs in the ruling party. Then there’s a fetish, which is a summer coat, or an overcoat. Light gray, no belt, made from good material, like gabardine, worn by a man of above-average height. Do you think you could help me determine the exact era and style of an overcoat? It would help me figure out who he’s fixated with. Because the bastard wouldn’t tell me. So, the overcoat is coordinate number two. Then, since we’re talking crazy people here, there’s one peculiar detail: with him it’s all about underage girls—white socks and all that nonsense. And that’s your third coordinate. So, what do we get at the point of intersection?”

“Well, doctor, you’re an intelligent man. You know your history. It’s not what; it’s
who
. Some concrete historical figure. But I’m curious. This guy—does he wear the old-fashioned overcoat and rape young girls in white socks?”

“Sergey, don’t ask questions. Who’s the psychiatrist here? Yet, indeed, you guessed it. Only the particular location is also significant here—the back of Khodynka Field and Birch Grove Park.”

“But of course, my dear doctor. Let’s begin with the overcoat. It’s probably from the postwar era. In the ’30s, the fashion was to wear military-style overcoats with a belt. Then, after that, up until the ’60s … Well, take the photographs of the Soviet party during that muddy period between Stalin and Khrushchev, and you’ll see about five overcoats like that in every picture. As for underage girls, it’s perfectly clear. I’m sure you know who was infamous for meddling with them.”