Traffyck (11 page)

“I told you not to get your ass so close to the flames,” said Shved
.
“Your cheeks are rosy,” said the nurse. “All four of them.”

Before his release from the hospital, Janos discovered, by way of a firm rejection, that the nurse was married but never wore her rings on duty.

Far south of Kiev, the short redhead leaned close to the young man in the baseball cap. Soon they were kissing and hugging, the baseball cap turned sideways, the station wagon changing lanes, the lovebirds obviously interested in something other than the idiot following them. Janos turned back to Kiev and phoned Svetlana to ask her to run the license of the tan station wagon.

“How was the meeting?”

“Good, but I need another favor. It’s probably nothing, but I’d like to place a bet on a horse, one which might have a chance. The woman suggests I find out about this horse.”

“The militia does not place bets, comrade. However, others in the militia may be following your horse.”

“What makes you say this?”

“Ah, Gypsy, much is known about you. I should not be telling you, but Chief Investigator Chudin called me into his office this morning, and I had to tell him about your meeting.”

“What was his reaction? And why this level of detail over the phone?”

“It does not matter, because everyone listens to everything. And because they listen to everything, it is all a jumble. Chudin assumes arson and a backfired insurance fraud. He wants to let the insurance company take over. If it were a man who had something in his past, he would not do this. But because she danced at several of Kiev’s clubs—”

“You mean he has no one on the case?”

“He put Nikolai Kozlov and his wet-behind-the-ears partner on it. Kozlov is on top, so someone else can be undercover. Perhaps that is who you followed. Anyway, I stand by my opinion. If it were a man in this situation, amateurs would not be on the case. And I hope someone is listening.”

“Will you run the number for me?”

“How quickly? I’d do it now, but it is crowded in the computer area.”

“I’ll come in this afternoon, around three.”

After he gave Svetlana the license number, Janos decided to go to Mariya Nemeth’s apartment. He entered the address into his GPS and saw that it was near the river.

He put a Sandor Lakatos CD on while he drove. The Gypsy violins reminded him of his and Svetlana’s trip out west the year before. Svetlana dancing atop the picnic table in the moonlight while he scratched away on his violin. Svetlana’s skin bronze in the moonlight, the whites of her eyes bright as she lay beneath him.

But as he thought of Svetlana again, he kept seeing another face … the face of Mariya Nemeth, her blond hair looking soft the way it lay on her shoulders. On the Lakatos CD, the mournful violin solo gave way to the
czardas
, and he accelerated the sputtering Skoda, anxious to see this woman who had aroused pastoral dreams of simpler yet more passionate times.

The tan Zhiguli wagon was parked next to a phone at a gasoline station. Inside, the young redheaded woman knitted with blue yarn. Beside her on the seat were a skein of green yarn and a finished green and blue mitten.

Outside, the young man stood at the pay phone pushing in coins. His baseball cap was on backwards, and when he began speaking, the young woman in the car could hear his side of the conversation as she continued knitting.

“They met at Borispol.”

“Yes, it was him.”

“Where?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. Maybe an hour.”

“It should be simply you and me and not this extra baggage.”

“Of course I know what to do. Give me an hour.”

The young man hung up and came back to the station wagon.

“Where are we going now?” asked the redhead.

“Back to Kiev to meet the others.” He started the engine. “She is on her bicycle. Because she has seen Nagy, we must fuck with her.”

“You have a filthy mouth.”

He laughed. When he stopped laughing, he said, “I don’t know why Vasily sent you and Katerina with us. You think this is a game? Others have been killed in games like this. Remember the first Dmitri? Moldavian traffickers cut his head off.”

The redhead was silent for a moment, then said, “I thought Pyotr made the decision about us coming along, not Vasily.”

“You talk about Vasily? Ivan will replace Vasily. He is stronger.”

The redhead stared at him as he started the station wagon and turned back to Kiev.

Although Mariya Nemeth’s husband was dead, the card in the slot for apartment three still said Viktor Patolichev. Janos pushed the buzzer several times. Mariya’s Audi was in the parking lot, and when there was still no answer he pushed the next buzzer over, apartment four.

“Who is there?” said the scratchy voice of an old man.

“My name is Janos Nagy.”

“What?”

He leaned close to the speaker. “Janos Nagy. I’m looking for Mariya Nemeth.”

“She’s in three,” said the voice. “This is four.”

“I know. There was no answer. I wondered if you saw her today.”

“Do you know her?”

“Yes, I know her. Please, it’s important. I see her car in the lot, and I wondered—”

“She left some time ago. I heard her bicycle clicking in the hall.”

“Her bicycle?”

“Yes. She is a very serious bicycle rider. Sometimes she is gone for hours.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“I only heard her leave.”

Janos waited out in his car several minutes and finally got out his notebook to write Mariya a note. But what would he say? That he followed the tan station wagon and it turned out to be a pair of grinning lovers? Or would he say he was worried about her, forgot to ask for her cell number, and wanted to check to make sure she was well?

Finally, Janos wrote nothing and headed back to Kiev. While he drove, he tried to imagine Mariya on a bicycle. He pictured her from behind, hips shifting side to side. Would she have changed to shorts, or would she be wearing her tight skirt? He recalled a book of photographs he had seen in a Khreshchatik Boulevard bookstore, photos of Marilyn Monroe leaning out a window. Marilyn’s
derrière
, as it was called in the book, dramatized unashamedly. For the first time in a long time, Janos felt the tug of passion in his chest that makes a man wonder how a woman can wield such power.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Mariya rode north, taking river paths nearly to the central city. Her route was generally uphill; and, fittingly, coming back was now downhill. At her turnaround, the odometer at the wheel hub clicked off twenty kilometers.

It was a cool day, perhaps the temperature of a body at a funeral. Not hot like the afternoon ride to Viktor’s video store. As she thought about the fire and Viktor’s closed casket, she pedaled harder, pushing her bicycle through the wind, arching her neck to watch where she was going. When she glanced down, she could see the shine of grease on the front sprocket. The chain finding and leaving front and rear sprockets made sounds like hummingbirds’ heartbeats.

She had already finished half the water in her bottle. Heading south, sun on her face, eyes stinging, she could have blamed the sun, Kiev’s fumes, perspiration in her eyes, but she did not. She knew she wept and accepted it, rode with it, purging the tears in an attempt to purge her memories of Viktor.

The last few kilometers the path entered dense woods and cool shade with no hint of the city. It was quiet, and she slowed and passed a runner and another cyclist. Most cyclists shied away from the cool temperatures. But she enjoyed cool air on her legs. With her riding shorts, she wore a long-sleeved shirt closed tight at the neck, and a sweatband beneath her helmet. This was enough for the woman who once danced at a strip club to The Rolling Stones’ “Play With Fire.” If only Janos Nagy could see her now. This morning she wears a business suit; now she wears skin-tight riding shorts, red and violet shirt, yellow riding helmet. A circus clown.

Nagy—in Hungarian, a large and important person. She recalled asking, like an idiot, if he might play his violin for her. She forced herself to think of the cool shower awaiting her instead of thinking about Janos Nagy, and especially about Viktor and what might have been.

At a parking area along the path, a green van with darkly tinted windows blocked the path’s exit into the small parking lot. She thought the van would have pulled ahead, but it blocked the path so completely she was forced to stop and walk her bicycle into the weeds. When she walked in front of the van, the passenger door opened and a thin man in a red baseball cap came toward her.

“Wait, Natasha,” he said. “I must ask you something.”

The man’s face seemed horribly disfigured, and Mariya kept her bicycle between her and the man and kept walking.

“Wait,” he said, pointing to his face. “I need help.”

She paused, was about to ask what he wanted when she noticed seams at the sides of his head, the man coming closer obviously wearing a mask. When she tried to mount her bicycle, she heard running feet behind and felt an arm locked about her neck. She screamed once before a hand covered her mouth.

Two of them, in rubber masks, shoved her bicycle aside and dragged her to the back of the van. She kicked out, hit a leg, felt the grip on her arms and mouth tighten. When they pushed her up toward the open back of the van she kicked both legs forward trying to slide beneath the van. But the two overpowered her and threw her into the van where she screamed once more before a hand was on her mouth again and the door slammed shut.

Perhaps she would die quickly, not the way Viktor died. She worked her mouth open around a finger, bit down, but had to let go when her arm was forced up behind.

The two handled her roughly as they gagged and blindfolded her. When she slapped out, she was slapped back and both her arms were pinned behind her. When she kicked, they straddled her legs.

“A she wolf!” said one of the men.

“No marks!” said the other.

They forced her onto the floor on her back. What felt like leather cuffs were put on her wrists, her arms extended and tied to what must have been opposite walls of the van. They did the same with her ankles. Finally, they let go and she was helpless, spread-eagled on her back on the floor of the van. It was carpeted. She could smell the carpet, like the smell of a new car.

The cuffs on her wrists and ankles were too tight to pull out of, too strong to break. The two men moved outside the van and whispered. But there was also a woman’s whisper. “It won’t fit in back.” A man answering, “Put the fucking seat down!” Car doors slamming. Then a man opening the front door of the van saying, “Never send Eve to do Adam’s work! Give me the gloves.” The man outside again. Doors slamming. A car driving off. Then the final closing door on the van popping her ears before the van drove off somewhere. Perhaps to hell.

They drove only a few minutes. During the drive, while the leather cuffs pulled at her wrists and ankles, she recalled working at a massage parlor, the customers arriving anxiously, thinking they would get more than a touch and a feel. Two or three girls for one man to keep him in line. The proprietress having guaranteed the man a “release,” as advertised in the brochure. And now here she was, tied up, blindfolded, and helpless the way many of those men would have liked her, their glazed-over eyes revealing how insane they might become if they could be alone with her.

When the van stopped, both men came into the back with her. One took off her riding helmet and sweatband. Their feet nicked her arms and legs as they stepped over her. One placed a foot on her stomach. The other giggled.

Then it was quiet, so quiet she could hear them moving on the carpet and breathing. The skin of her arms and legs tingled, and her muscles tightened in anticipation of pain. Her stomach cramped, sucking inward as if she could suck herself into her stomach and disappear.

“How would you like to be a little girl?” whispered a man to her right.

“Yes, Natasha,” said the other from between her legs. “Little girls are taught to watch for traffic.” He spoke in Ukrainian, but used the English word
traffic
.