Traffyck (16 page)

“Janos, I’ve been thinking about details, some things I might have overlooked … besides forgetting to give you my cell number when we met at the airport.”

Janos took his notebook from his pocket. “That was my fault. Tell me about tonight.”

“I’m no longer certain about their ages. I still think they were over eighteen. But there was something about their actions and what they said that made them childlike. At first I thought both men were insane, as I told the militia. But now I’m not sure.”

Janos wrote this down. “Anything else?”

“Something the young woman said gave me the impression there were two young women.” Mariya touched her finger to her lips. “Even though I heard only one, she referred to ‘them’ as if they were two couples.”

Janos unwrapped the pizza on the kitchen table while Mariya opened bottles of beer. They ate pizza and sipped beer until there was one slice of pizza left. They went through the ritual of offering the last piece to one another until Mariya laughed. She laughed with her hand to the open neck of her robe, a gesture, combined with her display of relief, which made Janos want to touch her. So he did. He reached out, touched her arm, and said, “What’s so funny?”

Mariya stopped laughing, shook her head. “I was thinking a short while ago I assumed life was over. And now I am eating MacSmack pizza.”

The shower and beer relaxed her some, but what relaxed her even more was Janos’ voice. He did not tell jokes. He spoke about himself, his Gypsy nickname—how he received it from a retired militia investigator named Lazlo Horvath, who now lived in Chicago in the US. Janos said Lazlo was like a father and they stayed in touch, speaking on the phone often. Janos said he and Lazlo sometimes spoke of the Gypsy dream of travel, yet in fact neither of them had traveled extensively. Janos spoke of a recent vacation to western Ukraine, told about giving a ride to a man who wore an American-style cowboy hat, a man who had gone back to visit the Chernobyl Zone where he’d been born before heading south to the Nikolaev shipyards. Mariya noticed a wistful look in Janos’ eyes as he spoke of Anatoly the Cossack.

They sat opposite one another on the sofa, both turned sideways so Janos faced her, his arm on the back of the sofa, his hand near her shoulder.

“I am boring the shit out of you,” said Janos. “The original object was to cheer you by telling humorous stories.”

“You don’t have to tell stories. It’s good simply having someone here who believes me.”

“Does it concern you if Kozlov does not believe you?”

“Yes. First I must deal with Viktor’s death and with so-called evidence he poured gasoline on himself. Now I must deal with this.”

“The men who took you in the van planned the kidnapping well. I feel guilty for having left you to follow the station wagon after our meeting at the airport.”

“It is my fault for going on a bicycle ride. I should have stayed here. Do you think these are the same ones who killed Viktor and your friend Aleksandr Shved?”

“Yes,” said Janos, standing up. “Perhaps not the same men.”

“But remember, Janos, there were also women. The one I heard spoke with authority.”

Janos smiled. “You are observant. While it is fresh, and since we are both more relaxed, we should go over what happened this afternoon and evening once more.”

As she told the story again, Mariya watched Janos’ reactions. When she told how the two men dragged her into the van, he stared at her. When she told about the removal of her shorts and the ankle straps they used, Janos blinked more than necessary. When she told about one man massaging her breasts while the other inserted fingers into her vagina, Janos looked away toward the window, where she could see his reflection against the dark of night.

In the robe, with her feet drawn up beneath her on the sofa, Mariya reminded Janos of a statue of the Madonna he had seen in church as a boy. The Madonna was surrounded by angelic children, and Janos recalled his boyhood fascination with one of the children. The child wore a robe and had blond hair. She looked up to the Madonna with eyes wide. Her hands were crossed demurely, one above the other. In the statue, whether on purpose or not, the sculptor had revealed the girl’s body in the folds of a robe draped smoothly and seductively. At least this is how it had seemed to an adolescent boy in church who’d often prayed he would find such a girl. He recalled telling Lazlo Horvath his first infatuation had been for a girl of stone. Instead of laughing as expected, Lazlo, then his mentor on the Kiev militia, had nodded knowingly.

When Mariya finished retelling the lurid details of the kidnap and assault, she folded her hands on her thighs exactly the way the angelic child at the Madonna’s feet had.

“You remind me of someone I knew when I was a boy.”

Mariya looked at him without answering.

“Never mind,” he said, trying to wipe the boyhood image from his mind. He was aware of having placed his hands on either side of his notebook as if in church holding a prayer book, as if he really was a boy again. He held the notebook up and studied it. “Do you feel able to answer more questions tonight, Mariya?”

“Yes.”

“Good. A few hours ago, you were kidnapped, your life threatened. You were told not to pursue an investigation, especially not with me. You were told your husband’s name and, consequently, your name would be disgraced. You say they mentioned Czech brothels and Moldavian traffickers and said to watch for
traffyck
. The first question is, why go on with this?”

“Can I put on my hooligan face?” she asked.

“Do whatever is necessary to answer the question.”

“I am tired of being controlled by men who are not fit to lick my feet! The one at my side said they were babes in the woods, but these were not babes. For once, my life was improving. No matter his past, I need to learn the reason for Viktor’s death! Can you think of a better reason to pursue his killers?”

“I cannot.” Janos again studied his notebook. “Therefore, tell me about Mariya Nemeth before she became Mariya Nemeth-Patolichev.”

She was born in Chernigov, raised an only child by her Hungarian mother after her Russian father disappeared. Her mother sent her to an all-girls’ Orthodox school in Uzhgorod. She ran away to Kiev with two other girls and took her mother’s maiden name. Eventually she got a job at a strip club and tried to save money to afford an apartment. But the pay for a stripper not willing to perform extra services was limited, and she ended up working in a massage parlor in Podil. While working at the massage parlor, she took classes at business school.

“This was my Bolshevik revolution,” said Mariya. “I took a job as a law office clerk, disposed of the skimpy wardrobe, and changed apartments.”

“So you were eighteen when you came to Kiev,” said Janos. “How old are you now?”

Mariya stared at him, her blue-green eyes innocent looking, so unlike a stripper’s or a massage parlor girl’s. She smiled and said, “forty-two.”

“You don’t look it. Now tell me about Viktor.”

Mariya met Viktor Patolichev when she was forty-one and he was thirty-nine. He had gotten into the adult video store business after limited success in a standard video store. Although Mariya told Janos what she knew about Viktor’s past during their initial meeting that morning at Borispol Airport, he asked her to go through it again. Viktor said he was the product of an unwanted pregnancy who spent time on the streets of Kharkiv, then ended up in an orphanage outside Kiev, somewhere to the north. After the orphanage, he supposedly lived in foster homes, then moved to Kiev when he was in his twenties. He had various jobs, making friends and eventually getting into the adult video store business.

“Did he know his mother’s name?” asked Janos.

“No. He said he had no memory of his early childhood. He once joked that at birth he was abducted by aliens and dropped off at the Saint Francis Home for Boys a few years later.”

“You mentioned he was sometimes strangely religious. In what way?”

“Besides talking in his sleep about God’s retribution and some kind of fellowship, he sometimes had weeklong binges of daily church attendance.”

“As a result of his upbringing at the orphanage, or at foster homes?”

“He never spoke of the foster homes,” said Mariya. “The orphanage was run by an Orthodox order. When Viktor went on religious kicks, I sometimes attended church with him. He seemed mesmerized, sometimes to the point of mimicking facial expressions of the priest.”

“Did Viktor speak of the orphanage in detail?”

Mariya thought a moment. “Only to say it was strict and run by an order of brothers.”

“He never spoke of teenaged years with foster parents, or attending school?”

“He said he took a few courses at the university. Business and marketing.”

“You knew him over a year, and this is all you know about him?”

“He knew even less about me. It was our agreement. The past was the past.”

“What about Investigator Arkady Listov from Darnytsya? How did Viktor know him?”

“They were friends,” said Mariya. “You must have spoken with Arkady.”

“I did. Arkady said attacks on female clinics and the fire at the video store do not seem like things a religious organization would do. He suggested I look into cults and mentioned brainwashing techniques. You mentioned Viktor’s behavior at church services.”

“Are you suggesting Viktor was brainwashed enough to set himself on fire?”

As he stared at Mariya’s look of concern, Janos remembered the young man and woman in the station wagon. Smiling like religious fanatics, or cult members.

“What are you getting at?” asked Mariya, tilting her head to one side.

“Cults,” said Janos. “I’m wondering about cults.”

“You suspect a connection between the Orthodox orphanage and the fire?”

“What do you think?” asked Janos.

After a pause, Mariya said, “The two men in the van … childlike, yet having a purpose. And the young woman with them said … Wait, give me a moment.” Mariya closed her eyes and spoke softly. “She said, ‘Hell is hot … but sometimes it is cool … especially at night when stars come out.’ She told me I would not be harmed. She said listen to what I was told. After this, the young man returned and gave his warning about pursuing any investigation.”

“You have a good memory, Mariya.”

“At night, when I am alone, I wish it was not so good.”

“I understand. Yet I must reveal something difficult. I have a source who indicates Arkady Listov, the militia investigator from Darnytsya who knew your husband, may have been involved in human trafficking.”

Janos was a question machine, asking so many questions she began to feel as though everything—Viktor’s death, the meeting at Borispol Airport, and her kidnapping this afternoon—had taken place years earlier. It was a marathon question-and-answer session, purging bad blood by hanging leeches on her. After she recalled the young man in the van saying Viktor was a recruiter, Janos kept pressing her and began standing up and sitting down and tugging at something in his back pocket. Suddenly, he had a pained look on his face.

“Is something wrong?”

“Normally, I would say no,” said Janos. “However, I admit I am in pain.”