Moscow Noir (9 page)
He used the sterile wipes from the car’s first aid kit to plug the wound, but he didn’t try to treat it with iodine for fear of passing out from the pain. He chewed a few painkillers and tried to calculate how much time had passed since he’d taken the bullet; in any event he was sure to go into shock soon and wasn’t going to last long on the capsule he’d just swallowed. He thought a moment and then dialed the Kalmyk’s number.
“Hello!” Kirila shouted, turning down his loud music.
“Where are you?” Veltsev asked.
The music stopped. “Still here. Why?”
“Do you have Promedol with you?”
“As usual. Why?”
“Wait. I’ll be right there.
“
If you’re not a fool
, Veltsev thought as he made his way through the deep snow to the alley,
you’ll drive away. Or shoot first. If you
are
a fool … Actually, the human heart is always a mystery. Everyone saves himself in his own way.
The Cayenne was parked in the same place by the business center fence. Using his gun to press the plug to his wound, Veltsev climbed into the backseat. Kirila half-turned and looked silently at his bloody clothes. When Veltsev held out his hand between the seats, Kirila quickly opened the army first aid kit in front of him.
Removing the cap with his teeth, Veltsev jabbed a needle into his belly through his pants, slowly pressed on the plunger, and spat the cap on the floor.
“Where’d you get that?” Kirila asked.
Panting, Veltsev set the empty syringe aside. “It’s nothing. I’ll live to see my wedding day.”
“The butcher’s going to weep over you.” Half-rising, Kirila picked up the syringe and put it back in the kit. The handle of a Walther flashed between the lapels of his jacket. “Let’s go, eh?”
“Not just yet.” Veltsev shook his head. “I have something else … I thought you wanted to help.”
“Yeah.” Kirila straightened up. “Sure. What?”
“I shot a guy here on the Yauza. I have to go clean it up. Will you help?”
“Let’s go, Batya. You should’ve said so first.”
“Godspeed then.” Veltsev nodded.
The current had not taken the Uzbek’s body far at all, a couple of meters, to a bend in the river where it must have caught on an underwater snag. Whistling, the Kalmyk stood on the bank and tested the ice with the tips of his boots. Veltsev pressed the plug over his coat with his left hand and cautiously freed his gun.
“We need something to retrieve him with,” Kirila said without turning around.
“No we don’t,” Veltsev answered, firing twice.
The bullets struck the Kalmyk with a
boff
right below the shoulder blade. Shaking his sloping, bearlike shoulders as if chilled, and shifting from one foot to the other, Kirila calmly peered back at Veltsev, lowered himself without hurrying, reached toward the water, and then just as smoothly lay down in it head first, as if it were a bed. Through all this the water didn’t so much as splash. “The butcher did cry,” Veltsev said, breathing heavily, and then he spat. “Three hundred thousand cried.”
Scooting behind the wheel of the Cayenne, he changed the sodden towels on his groin, wiped his fingers, and, looking at the dirty gun lying between the seats, remembered who he could go to for help. All his old working options connected with Mityai were obviously out. That left only two: head to the Sklif, or to the guy who was kicked out of the Sklif for drugs—Oksana’s classmate—who lived on Trubnaya.
Let’s try the last first
, Veltsev decided, and he started the engine.
Trubnaya
.
On the ice-packed road, the powerful SUV swerved from shoulder to shoulder; right in front of the exit onto Menzhinsky it took a turn that swung him around onto the median. Veltsev lifted his hand over the wheel and a tremendous shudder ran through it. His belly and left hip were numb, and a fever was rising from his groin to his chest that made his head swim. Veltsev tapped the SUV’s wheel with his nail. “Okay. Correction …”
Driving up to the apartment building at a snail’s pace, at the last minute he confused the gas pedal and brakes and slammed into the Geländewagen’s rear fender. Halfway between the front garden and the piled up cars, at the end of a bloodied rut, lay one of the trio’s gunmen, facedown. Veltsev had to step over him. He ran right into Lana by the lobby door. Gasping from fright, she backed off with her key extended like a weapon. Veltsev reached out his trembling open palm to her.
“It’s me.”
In the apartment she carefully sat him down on the bed, squatted next to him, peeked under his coat, buried her head in the sleeve of her pea coat, and started crying bitterly. “God, I … you … me …”
“I’m asking you for the last time,” Veltsev said, smiling in pain, “will you go away with me?” He freed his gun from under his coat and set it on the rug. “Or rather, will you drive?”
Lana looked at him skeptically. “Where? In what?”
“To see Dr. Doolittle. Can you drive?”
“Listen …” Swallowing her tears, she hugged him below the knees and gave him a gentle shake. “A medic lives right here in the next courtyard. He did an abortion at our house for Baba Agafia’s niece. Should we go see him?”
“Are you serious?” Veltsev frowned.
“Wait.” Jumping lightly to her feet, Lana kissed him on the lips and hurried into the kitchen, where Veltsev immediately heard the clicking of telephone buttons.
He took out his lighter and flicked it idly. Lana hung up with a clatter, came back, and sat down by him again.
“No answer.” Worried, she blew hard on the fist she’d brought to her mouth. “Let’s do this then. I’ll run over to his place, and if he’s home I’ll set it all up. If he’s not, we’ll go see your Doolittle. Can you hold on for a couple of minutes?”
Veltsev kept flicking the lighter and watching her silently. He heard but wasn’t listening to her. He was listening to himself, to the sensation that for some reason felt like a memory: right now he wanted to be with her more than any other women he’d ever been with. It seemed strange and at the same time simple, like the strawberry flavor of her lipstick.
She was saying something else, then she kissed him again, turned off the light, and ran into the front hall.
“Where are you going?” he asked with difficulty.
Lana spun around and turned the key over in her fist. “I told you.”
“Wait.” Veltsev tried to stand. “I’ll tag along.”
“Right,” she hedged, opening the door. “And if you check out, should I call an EMT? Or a hearse? Wait.” The door banged shut behind her and the lock clicked twice.
Veltsev lit up, leaned back on his elbows, put a cushion under his head, and lay down across the full length of the bed. The little man hanging from the chandelier swung in the smoke streams.
He woke himself up coughing.
A cobweb danced on the ceiling. Smoke from burning wool ate into his eyes and singed his throat. The cigarette had fallen from his fingers and set the rug pile on fire. Rubbing out the smoldering fibers with his sleeve, Veltsev glanced at his watch and shook his wrist, perplexed. He’d slept more than fifteen minutes. The plug had pulled away from the wound so that blood was seeping through not only his sweater but also the rug under his spread-out coat. Veltsev rose cautiously from the bed.
“Lana,” he called.
The reply was a ringing, rugged silence. Thinking his ears might be stopped up, he opened and closed his mouth. The floor rose and fell under his feet in big even waves. Propping himself up on the wall with one hand, Veltsev made his way out into the front hall. The door was still locked. He looked through the peephole, tugged at the bolt, opened and closed his mouth again, and listened. Somewhere far away, almost out of hearing range, in that rugged silence, he heard the gasping siren of an ambulance or the police. Suddenly the phone rang in the kitchen. Veltsev pushed away from the door but stopped half a step away. There was no second ring; the rugged silence had swallowed that up too.
He returned to the room and was about to lie down when the phone started wailing again, and again broke off after the first ring. Veltsev smeared the wallpaper with his blood as he hobbled to the kitchen. He could barely feel anything between his chest and knees, and it seemed like his legs were moving independently of his body, first lagging behind, then rushing ahead, which made it quite a trick to maintain his balance. The light was off in the kitchen, but the small room was illuminated by garlands of colored lights framing the window on the inside. The red light on the old telephone, below the dial, was shining. Sitting at the table, Veltsev picked up the receiver, brought it to his right ear, and held it with his shoulder. His left hand, stretching toward the dial, rested on the table. In the receiver he heard the nervous voices of Lana and Baba Agafia interrupting each other—the telephone was on an extension.
“… when I saw him I nearly pissed myself,” Lana rattled on, short of breath. “I thought, that’s it, he’s going to shoot me. My Phuket’s fucked. Can you imagine?”
“Oh, and about that card of his,” Baba Agafia chimed in, barely listening to her. “It fell out of his passport, but he didn’t notice. After I locked you in I found it in the snow, and when I got home I couldn’t believe it. Why go to a hotel, I thought, if you have a residency permit, and then, if you’ve already paid for the hotel, come all the way out here? Well, I’m no fool, so I went and turned on the television. And there—saints alive!—I saw his photograph and his name. And a number to call.” Baba Agafia sneezed loudly, with a chesty wheeze. “I nearly died.”
“And nice Farid, when he came over”—Lana spouted laughter—“after I called you I gave him a buzz right away and figured out about Sharfik’s debt … He was in the bathroom then … so I let that little fool Farid know”—she whispered wickedly—“and an hour and a half later he and Sharfik shoot it out.”
“You could have done it earlier, dummy,” Baba Agafia said reproachfully. “He and those downtown characters nearly fell into each others arms out there. Where are your brains?”
“Well, you shouldn’t have told such a massive lie then,” Lana snarled.
“Well, who knew they’d show up so fast, and in this blizzard?”
“Well, you just shouldn’t have. This guy wasn’t going anywhere.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he fell for me, that’s how. I don’t know why. But I can always sense what these lechers are up to. More than likely—it’s not all that complicated—it was my latest sew-up. Even I didn’t expect that this time. There was even a little blood.” Lana paused. “Yeah, by the way, what did you tell them, the ones who came in the Mercedes?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Baba Agafia sniffed. “They didn’t just not have three hundred thousand, they didn’t have a kopek. I said I wouldn’t let them in. Over my dead body. Well, I could see they realized they were barking up the wrong tree. They walked away, whispered their secrets, and drove off. And now, just before you, they called again. They said they’d be right over. With the money. What about yours?”
“Who?”
“Oh, little Farid’s mujahideen.”
“That’s why I’m calling. This guy fixed everything, looks like, finished them off. Amazing.”
“How do you know?”
“None of their cells answer.”
“That means you’re free. And you have the money. You got away from me and little Farid.” Baba Agafia cackled, tickled. “Where are you hightailing it to?”
“Thailand, like I told you. Tomorrow there’ll be last-minute tickets on sale at this office I know. We think we can pull it off. Hey, dead man,” Lana said away from the phone, “what do you think, are we going to get those tickets?” Baba Agafia could hear a muffled male voice. “The dead man says we are.”
“All right, then,” Baba Agafia sighed. “You and I have talked too long. They might still call and the phone will be busy. Are you sure you locked that guy in?”
“You want me to go over and check to see if he’s already broken out?”
“Oh, I’m just afraid of him, the murderer. That look of his … makes my skin crawl.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Lana chuckled. “He’s the one whose soul is hanging by a thread. If he has one, of course.”
“Listen”—Baba Agafia’s voice dropped to a whisper—“what if he’s listening on the extension right now? Ugh, I didn’t think of that.”
“Not likely.” Lana chuckled again. “That’s the least of his problems. And even if he
is
listening … Hello,” she said in lower voice. “Hell on the line. I’ve got your number. God will call when—”
“Curse that tongue of yours, fool!” Baba Agafia shot back. “Fear God, you shameless girl!” There was a staccato chattering, after which short beeps started leaping in the ether.
As if expecting to hear something more, Veltsev held the receiver to his ear for a while longer, and then, sitting up straight, he lowered it carefully on the hook.
Rattling the chair, which he pushed in front of him like a walker, he headed over to the still smoking bed, took his passport out of his pocket, leafed through it, shook it out upside down, and tossed it aside. The rug seemed to be tilting to the left with the whole bed.
It’s going to break where it’s weak
, he thought, remembering how yesterday at the registration desk he’d slipped his hotel card between the pages of his passport and how today he’d searched for it in his wallet without knowing what he was looking for. A hot sea seemed to be overflowing its shores inside him. Smiling distractedly, like someone dangling his last cigarette in his fingers, he pictured Lana’s tear-stained face as she sat in front of him, and wondered at this image, at how it already existed on its own, as if it were something outside of him, which meant that the laughing voice he’d just heard in the ether no longer belonged to him. The cuckoo clock on the wall shuddered. A moment later, its chilled steel struck half past 12. The bird’s door didn’t open, it just shook; however, behind the toy mechanism Veltsev heard heavenly thunder. Someone was fiddling with the lock in the front door very carefully. Without looking he picked up his gun, cocked the trigger, and chuckled at the little man on the string: no one had called.
Translated by Marian Schwartz
Bogorodskoe Municipality,
Eastern Administrative District, 1996
W
hen Nikolai Petrovich Voronov is sitting there like that and looking like that, expect trouble. Actually, if he’s looking some other way, you should still expect it. Nikolai Petrovich and trouble are twin brothers. Behind his back they call him Banderas, after the Spanish actor who conquered the world with his incredible muscularity and crazy machismo. When you look at the Hollywood Banderas, you can’t believe he actually exists. No one’s really like that. At least, that’s what they say. Me, I haven’t been to the movies for a long time. It’s expensive and pointless. Especially since a real homegrown Banderas is directly in front of me right now and I’m sitting here looking at him.
I realize that meeting a man like this on one’s life journey is tremendous good fortune. Don’t think I’ve got some alternative orientation or I don’t like women. God forbid. It’s just that Nikolai Petrovich is truly magnificent.
He’s forty or so, his hair’s the color of a crow’s wing (as they write in books), he combs it with a side part, but it’s too long. He’s been on duty for more than twenty-four hours but he’s wearing a snow-white shirt without a single wrinkle in it, and his collar, my god, his collar.
He has piercing eyes. Right now, as I write this, I can come up with only one comparison: a movie about sin city. The movies again, damnit, but that’s how it goes. Agent Voronov is top dog in the district of sin, the region of sin, the administrative division of sin. Strictly speaking, he’s sin and its nemesis all rolled into one.
He also has a mustache that droops down to the middle of his chin, deep wrinkles from his temples to the middle of his cheeks, and few teeth. Just the front ones, and those are smoked out, boozed out, brown. When he smiles—no more questions. A cop but an alcoholic. An alcoholic but he can stop. Can but won’t. He’ll kill. Without a second thought.
He lights up his third cigarette—he chain-smokes—in ten minutes, and through the poisonous haze of his Java Gold looks me right in the eye. His eyes are brown, but his look is icy, colder than the ocean. Our staring match has been going on for more than two months, ever since I came to work for him. That is, became the junior agent in the property crimes department of the Bogorodskoe Internal Affairs Department of the Eastern District Internal Affairs Department of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Department. It all happened so suddenly, it wasn’t my doing, but that’s beside the point today, the subject of a whole separate novel. I’ve been a bad boy. I’m twenty-four and my very smallest tattoo, a huge kraken devouring the world, starts at my right ankle and ends at my left ear. I spent all the money I made seven years ago—when me and the boys drowned this drug dealer, a guy in our class, holding him by the leg in the Yauza—on this tat. That was when I suddenly developed my acute sense of righteousness: I was able to convince everyone that selling drugs was very bad. We forced that monster to promise not to do it anymore and then took his money before finishing him off. To teach him a lesson. Then there were the ladies. We swept the district clean of pimps, small-time profiteers, and fences, but at some point the guys stopped me. Actually, it was too late. I’d turned myself into one big walking sign, a yakuza out of a Takeshi Kitano nightmare. Twigs, leaves, branches, Celtic knot, and Japanese dragons—all the world’s evil spirits battled it out on my body for the right to a free millimeter of skin. What was going on a little bit deeper inside me—well, best not to even try to understand that.
I had only two options left, and I chose the wrong one. Now I’m an agent, a puny sergeant with a regulation cannon, in puny Bogorodskoe Internal Affairs, where druggies steal drills from construction sites, and druggies rape druggies, sometimes without even being clear about their victim’s gender, and druggies kill druggies to get themselves a little heroin—drugs aren’t just born under tram tracks after all. And tracks are the only thing (if you don’t count druggies, of course) we have an abundance of in our district.
Nikolai Petrovich is sitting in his white shirt across from me smoking his fourth cigarette. Today’s kind of like a holiday for him. After the obligatory five years, they made him a major. He’s on duty, but there hasn’t been anyone at all on Boitsovaya Street, where our department is, for the last few hours. Even the lunatics are lying low. Pretty soon we’ll go out and celebrate his stars. Fuck every living thing.
I light up my second and look at Voronov. He’s relaxing. A meter and a half from us, behind the door, the perps and vics—all jumbled together—await their fate on the sagging vinyl bench in the corridor. Soon Nikolai Petrovich, a king in his white shirt, with two nonregulation guns in his tan underarm holster, will start seeing them. He’ll punish and pardon.
But for now he’s sprinkling some nasty Nescafé some broken Hindu brought him from the market early this morning into his cup. Voronov sprinkles in one spoonful. Two. Three. He pauses for a moment over the fourth and then throws that in too, with the decisiveness of Alexander the Great. Oh, and seven lumps of sugar. A stream of boiling water, a dirty spoon, the first noisy swallow. The agent lights up again and leans back in his chair, which is worn down to the veneer. He closes his eyes, takes a drag, and releases the smoke. Then—with just his eyelids—he gives me the order: Go. I open the door for the first time that night.
I cautiously slap the first petitioner on the cheeks. He’s been sitting there for a long time. Neighbors relieved him of the nice new TV in his room in a communal apartment on Otkrytoe Highway. Voronov has already warned me we’d be rejecting his appeal. This vic will never see a criminal case. He was born to suffer, to be a vic. I’m learning to be like Nikolai Petrovich. Why do you think the street our department’s located on is called Boitsovaya—Fight Street? Pretty strong people live and work here on Boitsovaya. To be blunt, they don’t have much choice.
Here’s another. They just brought her out of a jail cell. She threw her newborn in the garbage. She reeks of sweet cheap alcohol that makes me sick. In the time we spend questioning her I run out four times to our filthy two-holer—one for the cops and one for the crooks—and puke. I must be puking my stomach out. Voronov’s as calm as a sphinx. His ironed white shirt gets whiter and stiffer all the time. He says, “You’ll be going to that garbage heap soon. Believe me. There, in the garbage, you’re going to find the corpse of another newborn infant who had a couple of gulps of air and then got stupidly fucked up. You’re going to feel awful. You’re going to search for his damned mama furiously, you’ll find her, you’ll put her in that chair where you’re sitting now. You’ll sit where I am and look into her eyes in hopes of seeing hell. But what you’ll see is emptiness. Emptiness, my young friend. Emptiness is hell. And vice versa. I want you to lose your illusions as fast as you can and understand all about where, how, and why we are the way we are. Believe me. I’m one of the better ones.”
I get queasy again and dash off. Voronov waits patiently; today he has no intention of stopping.
“By the way, they’re going to give this mama two years’ probation. You’ll be very lucky if this story doesn’t repeat itself on your watch. But if it does, that’s bad. It could break you, even though by then you’ll be pretty tough.”
He hands me a vile cigarette. I try to strike a match and on the fifth try manage to light it. I see the various back alleys through the window. Every day I walk these alleys, but I don’t remember exactly what the streets are called. I’ll admit, I don’t want to either. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just endless emptiness. The whole Eastern District. Not too far from here you get to the school I went to. A little farther and there it is, the tram stop where, in a frenzy, I battered the painted iron kiosk with my fist, trying to take away the pain of love. And there’s the courtyard where I had my first dead body, a dead body whose name and murderer I found. I found him quickly, in the next entryway. At the time I was given a commendation—as the youngest detective. Only Voronov didn’t join in the general rejoicing at my success. He said, “One day everyone’s going to die. Absolutely. Then other people will come, either cops or doctors. They’ll come and tell you the cause of death. You just have to understand, student, that no one in my memory has ever been resurrected by that. Don’t take pride in it or you’ll start wanting to be a little like God.”
Later I cursed him all night long and couldn’t sleep. I think I cried. But in the morning he was standing on Boitsovaya, just like a monument to a poet. Smoking, blowing off the ashes. Waiting for me. He was always waiting for me. He liked working with kids like me.
“Life is a lot of things. And it takes crazy shapes. You don’t mind that I’m like a biology teacher, do you? Love your neighbors and your family. Everyone else deserves death. You think I’m wrong?”
He found a way of instilling all this wisdom of the ages in my head in the three minutes it took us to walk back to the department. I couldn’t remember school or the institute anymore. It was stupid, in fact, to remember those chalk-stained wusses. I had a real man walking on my left. Someone who had known life and then fucked it doggy-style. He always liked to be on top and couldn’t stand lying down. Or sitting down facing you. Or standing. Impressive.
His shift’s over and it’s time for us to go. We leave the department, slipping on the chipped steps, which are coated with a thick layer of ice. Today there hasn’t been a short-timer or drunk in jail—no one to hack the ice off—and the fat guard would never get off his fat ass. All he does is dream of somebody installing a bedpan in his chair so he’ll never have to get up again. We slip and curse and light up. Voronov starts the engine of his Moskvich, which he bought with his fifth wife’s money. His spouse never seemed to begrudge him anything. The most powerful mass-produced engine with the most affordable afterburner. On the highway this battered heap hits as high as 250 kilometers an hour. When they hear that sound, the sound of the engine on Voronov’s heap, young skinheads move to the shoulder out of respect. Right now we’re driving to the Field of a Thousand Corpses. It’s a special kind of place.
I have a little time now, while the car is warming up, while we’re driving. The whole trip takes about fifteen minutes. Let me tell you about this field.
Once, a very long time ago, after God created the earth and people divided it up into pieces, one particular town chopped up its own territory. Each ragged piece was attached to a specific district. Only somewhere, in the very rear end of the Eastern District where several boundaries come together, in Elk Island National Park, the police chiefs messed something up. They ended up with an odd piece of land that wasn’t anyone’s at all. A kilometer by a kilometer. No one lost any sleep over this. What kind of crimes could you commit on that pathetic patch of ground? But those who thought like that were wrong. When all the cops in the vicinity realized exactly what their lands bordered on, that patch of ground turned into a living hell. Unidentified corpses were ferried here, and here they rotted away. Local thugs and uniformed officers both came to settle their disputes. They set up meets here, and once, before my very eyes, there was a very real duel. Two young lieutenants fired at each other over a female expert from the district CSI. I was the second for one of them, and I had to stuff my new jacket into the gaping hole in the wounded guy’s belly. He turned white, then gray, and honestly, never before or after have I seen someone’s face change color that fast.
For those who know anything about life and death, the field is a cult location. That’s where we’re going. Actually, we’re nearly there. Coming toward us through the night, through the black branches, reflecting off the thin crust of ice, are the headlights of someone’s car zapping us in the eyes. They’re waiting for us. Voronov has a lot of friends.
“A guy died here once,” Voronov says, addressing no one in particular, and he kills the engine. But I know—he’s continuing my education. He’s teaching me how to live. We get out of the car and look both ways. A junior agent, Khmarin, takes the alcohol and snacks out of the trunk. “It probably took a few days,” Banderas continues. “His car broke down on the parkway and he crawled here. He lay here, rasping, calling for help. All kinds of vermin ate him up.”
“What kind of vermin?”
“All kinds. It’s a national park. They have wild animals here.” He spits a yellow gob long into the snow.
The oncoming car switches its beams to low. Men get out, shivering in their summerweight leather jackets. I know them only vaguely. District criminal investigations. All friends of my new boss. They’re scary, but I’m getting used to them. For them the field is a known quantity. For me it’s still wild and exotic. We shake hands. The men break up into groups while Khmarin and I serve up an improvised meal on the hood of a long American automobile. There are lots of cars, ten or so. They pull up one after the other, forming a lopsided circle. Each on his own side of the field. I’m cutting sausage with fingers stiff from the cold, and I realize that here today they’re going to solve a dozen crimes ranging from serious to very, just like that, easily, plastic cup in hand. One pours for another, the other for a third. They’re cutting deals, and first thing tomorrow morning they’ll start writing reports.
“Does everyone have some?” Voronov asks, lifting a ribbed white cup.
“Aaaaoooo!” the agents respond.
“Down the hatch,” my boss sums up, sending 120 grams of pepper Kristall down his throat in a single motion. We’re lucky. The Kristall factory is the Eastern District agents’ patrimony. At least we drink high-quality vodka.
Adam’s apples are bobbing. Up and down. The cops are getting a buzz on. Stealthily I pour myself a half at the hip. It’s comfy here sitting on this mossy piece of concrete. Slippery but comfy.