Traffyck (4 page)

All of this occurred in spring when it was cool in the Carpathians and in northern Ukraine. During spring and even into early summer, the pulls and tugs of powerful elements in this subsurface world were in equilibrium. Good versus evil maintaining a delicate balance, which resulted in temporary harmony.

But in mid-summer, the weather changed and the heat was turned on by southerly winds and by a Kiev private investigator named Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved. Young people were missing, pornography makers were dead, and Shved wanted the Ukraine underworld to dance on hot coals. Unfortunately, excess heat can be dangerous.

Here is what Shved once said to his colleague Janos Nagy who had, like him, opted to leave the Kiev militia and start his own private business: “The underlying problem with increasing the heat, Janos, my Gypsy friend, is that often you cannot distance your ass hairs from the flames quickly enough.”

CHAPTER
TWO

In a small bathroom, all in white, including walls, sink, shower, toilet, towels, and vinyl floor, a woman, dressed in a body-hugging multicolored top and tight black shorts reaching mid-thigh, stood before a mirror. Her hands, encased in leather fingerless gloves, rested on her hips. She shifted her weight to her left leg, making that hip jut out to the side. Her blond hair lay disheveled on her shoulders. Ringlets of curls at her temples and neck were wet and tight. Her tanned arms and legs glistened with perspiration. A single droplet of perspiration hung from the tip of her small nose. The woman reached out her tongue, captured the droplet of perspiration, smiled at her image, turned sideways to the mirror, and admired her profile.
Not bad for a forty-two-year-old
, she thought.

The woman opened the bathroom door to a small bedroom. In the center of the bedroom were twin beds pushed together, both with tan, silk, flat sheets pulled back. A pair of men’s slippers tucked half under one of the twin beds disrupted the symmetry of the linen bed skirt. A violet-colored trail bicycle with an eggshell-shaped riding helmet hung upside down from the handlebars leaned against one wall. The woman walked to the bicycle, took off her fingerless gloves, and deposited them into the bowl of the helmet. She placed her right hand on the bicycle’s seat while massaging her buttocks with her left hand.

When the phone rang, she moved quickly to the night table beside the bed.

“Yes?” she answered in Ukrainian.

“Mariya, it’s me.”

“The voice is familiar,” she said, smiling.

“I’m sorry to have become the wet noodle after dinner last night … especially after your dance for me. I will make amends this evening.”

“How will you do that? Be honest, Viktor. Even if the SBU is listening, they’ll assume you’re simply attending to business. Be specific.”

“Your name is an irony, Mariya.” Something interrupted Viktor for a moment, the phone making muffled sounds before he was back, speaking more softly. “You start a man on fire. But please, I would rather not speak of these things on the phone.”

“What can we do in the apartment that we cannot do over the phone?”

“A taste test,” whispered Viktor.

“Wine tasting?”

“Mariya tasting.”

“In that case, I’ll shower. I just returned from a long ride.”

“You have ridden every day since spring.” Another muffled interruption. “And today you rode in this heat?”

“Yes.”

“In the black riding shorts, your buttocks shifting side to side drives men mad.”

“How can you say such a thing with explicit video containers staring you in the face? Perhaps I should ride without shorts.”

“What a man cannot see is more sensual, Mariya.” “So, why do customers flock to your hole-in-the-wall like seagulls in Odessa?”

“The customer is more aroused imagining what he will see than when he sees it. My hole-in-the-wall is an anticlimax. Especially when he returns home and begins watching the video for which he spent a day’s wage. Some forget to count their change, others return demanding their money back. You’ve seen them. Of course they act differently when a woman is here.”

“How do they act?”

“They hold video cases in front of their faces, hiding while they watch you. A woman in an adult video store is ambrosia.”

“For them or for you?” No answer. “Do you want me to come to your store today?”

“No! No, Mariya. Not today.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I can tell something is not right. You were talking in your sleep again last night.”

“What did I say?”

“God’s final judgment of the children … the same mumblings.”

“Mariya?” There was a change in Viktor’s voice, a lowering of pitch.

“What?”

“I’ll have to call you back.”

After she hung up, Mariya stared at the phone and waited. Viktor usually joked or changed the subject when she brought up the dreams, but something on the other end had interrupted him. Perhaps a jet was taking off at nearby Zhulyany Airport and he couldn’t hear her. No, she would have heard the roar over the phone and, as in the past, he would have simply waited for the jet to finish its takeoff.

Mariya touched a fist-sized quartz crystal resting on the night table beside the phone. She felt the unbending, unchanging sharpness of its corners. Viktor had given her the crystal after their marriage, saying its power would compel her to remain true to him. The crystal had been on the night table on her side of the bed ever since. Sometimes she reached out to touch its faces and corners as Viktor slept. Not really believing the crystal had power, but finding the feel of its symmetry, its solidity, and its always being there comforting.

When the phone rang, Mariya picked it up quickly. “Hi.”

“And hi to yourself.” A man’s voice, not Viktor’s. “My company has recently acquired premium apartments in all areas of Kiev. Perhaps you would be interested—”

“I have an apartment, comrade!” said Mariya, slamming the phone down.

On the night table beside the phone and the crystal was the wedding photograph. Only a month earlier, at the Polish Catholic church chosen by Viktor, the priest had said, “Do you, Mariya?” and “Do you, Viktor?” Only a month earlier they had made it official after living together for a year. During their prenuptial year together, Viktor had bought several insurance policies for his adult video store saying an adult video store in his section of Kiev’s southwest district needed insurance. The store was crammed between two dilapidated warehouses, and he feared a fire in the middle of the night. Viktor’s vow at the altar had been preceded by his vow to rid himself of the pornography shop within a year. Viktor hated it when she referred to his store as a pornography shop.

“It’s an adult video store, Mariya. The videos are seconds from closets with swinging doors at the backs of so-called bookstores. So don’t tell me who’s selling pornography!”

Mariya picked up the phone, tried the store’s number. No answer. Twelve rings and no answer, not even the answering machine. She tried again; still no answer after twenty rings. On the third try, she got a busy signal. She held the crystal with her left hand. It was unchanging, so unlike people’s lives. For a moment she wondered if it had all gone too fast—she and Viktor getting married when she knew virtually nothing of his past. She tried his cell phone number and got the message saying the phone was unavailable. Whenever he left his cell phone in his precious BMW parked in the back room with the overhead door closed, her calls never got through.

Mariya put the crystal down, went into the bathroom, refilled her water bottle, came out to her bicycle, and slipped the bottle into its holder on the down tube.

While Mariya placed several more unanswered calls to the store and to Viktor’s cell phone, she recalled Viktor’s lowered tone of voice before he had abruptly hung up. Something was wrong, and the phone was no use!

Mariya took her riding gloves out of the helmet, put them on, strapped the helmet beneath her chin, made sure her keys and cell phone were in the saddle bag, and carried her bicycle down the two flights of stairs to the street.

The reason Mariya took her bicycle instead of the Audi Viktor gave her as a wedding gift was that she knew she would make better time. She’d ride the bicycle path along the river toward the Caves Monastery, then side streets, zigzagging her way to bypass railway and bus stations. On side streets, she’d avoid afternoon traffic. But why the hurry? Simply because the phone didn’t work and because Viktor had lowered his voice? Yes, that was why. And if everything was as it should be, Viktor would greet her at the entrance and have a fine afternoon watching the browsers peer at her skin-tight riding outfit with smiles on their faces. At closing time, they would put her bicycle in the back of his BMW and tonight he would be in her arms instead of in the dream world, which had taken him away from her during the past two weeks.

It was only seven kilometers to the airport, and this morning she had ridden thirty along the trails. Seven kilometers was nothing, and if she kept up her pace she’d be to the store in minutes.

After the river trail, she faced the sun as she sped up side streets. When she turned and looked behind, she saw her shadow racing behind. On a downgrade, she shifted to a higher gear and kept it there. Even with the wind in her face, she kept up with and often passed moving traffic. She passed cars waiting at a signal, hugged the curb, and turned right before the signal changed.

As she neared the airport and the warehouse district of the video store, she was forced onto a main street and had to pass a two-block line of traffic on an airport overpass. One car had pulled close to the curb, forcing her to slow down. She shouted, “Move over!” in Ukrainian and snaked past. In her mirror, she saw a startled woman staring through the car’s windshield.

Back on side streets, she headed south, coasted through a stop sign, heard a horn sound and a man’s voice shout, “Hey, Natasha, wait for us!” The rush of wind at her ears had lessened, and she could hear the heartbeat flutter of chain on sprocket. Before the street to the video store, a Mercedes sedan sped alongside, keeping up with her. The voice from several blocks back said, “Hey, Natasha!” again. When she glanced sideways, she saw two greasy Mafia types in multicolored shirts, one at the front window, one at the back window, both with shoulders, heads, and arms out of the car. The one at the rear window reached out and slapped her behind.

“Natasha! You are my dream! I’ll never wash my hand again!”

“He is love starved for all Natashas!” shouted the young man in the front seat.

“I eat Natashas,” said another inside. “But I think you are Kimmy. I’ve seen you before.”

The men stayed even with her as she pedaled hard, watching side streets and alley entrances and parked cars, riding a fine line between parked cars and traffic, riding the edge of a crystal. As she approached one parked car, she saw someone inside and braked hard when the driver’s door swung out into her path. The Mafia thugs pulled ahead, shouted, and swore at the man who had opened his door. The man slammed himself inside and let her pass.

She raced ahead, passed a slow-moving truck. When she turned onto the street leading to Viktor’s video store, a traffic signal stopped the thugs behind the truck. They sounded their horn, screaming obscenities.

Once on the street, with warehouses surrounding her, she could see it. Several blocks ahead black smoke rose into the air where it was carried northeast by the wind toward the city.

She pedaled harder, causing a car to skid to a stop at an intersection. A militiaman shouted at her from his patrol car. Above, a jet coming in for a landing groaned and whined as it crossed over an airport fence. But the flashing lights of the militia car and the yelling militiaman and the jet and the honking horns no longer mattered. Soon she would be with Viktor. Soon she would be standing with him outside the burning video store. She’d tell him how much she had worried and he would hold her in his arms as the flames and smoke shot skyward.

A block away, she saw the video store was indeed the source of the fire. A series of attached buildings with flat, tarred roofs was also aflame, sending thick, black smoke into the blue sky. The video store was at the center of the inferno. Soon, very soon, she’d be close enough to see Viktor with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders raised in a perpetual shrug.

She rode the final block, yelling, “Viktor!” But none of the gathered spectators answered.

Mariya had entered hell, the video store blazing along with its attached buildings like a giant version of a roaring picnic fire when she was a girl. The fire so hot when her father cut slabs of bacon to put on a stick and shove into the flames and drip blackened grease onto rye bread for aunts, uncles, and cousins. The fire drying lips and eyes, beckoning her into its orange tunnels where nothing can live but fire.