Red Square (3 page)

   
'It's important.'

   
'I'll tell you what's important. They're going to shut the Lenin Library. It's collapsing. They're turning off the lights, locking the rooms. It's going to be a tomb like the pyramids at Giza.'

   
Arkady was surprised that anyone associated with Rudy cared about the state of the Lenin Library. 'We still have to talk.'

   
'I work late.'

   
'Anytime.'

   
'Outside the library, tomorrow at midnight.'

   
'Midnight?'

   
'Unless the library comes down on top of me.'

   
'Let me just check the phone number.'

   
'Feldman. F-e-1-d-m-a-n. Professor Feldman.' He recited the number and hung up.

   
Arkady set the receiver down. 'Terrific machine.'

   
Minin had a bitter laugh for one so young. 'The forensic bastards will strip this place and we could use a fax.'

   
'No, we leave everything, especially the fax.'

   
'Food and alcohol, too?'

   
'Everything.'

   
The second sweeper's eyes grew larger. The magnetic force of guilt made her stare at pearls of vanilla ice cream that traced a trail in the oriental carpet to the refrigerator and back.

   
Minin whipped open the freezer door. 'She ate the ice cream while our backs were turned. And the chocolate's gone.'

   
'Olga Semyonovna!' The first sweeper was also shocked.

   
The accused lifted her hand from a pocket and seemed to sink at the knees as if the weight of the incriminating chocolate bar were too much. Tears coursed down the folds of her cheeks and dropped from her trembling chin as if she had stolen a silver cup off an altar. Terrific, Arkady thought, we've made an old woman cry over chocolate. How could she not succumb? Chocolate was an exotic myth, a whiff of history, like the Aztecs.

   
'Well, what do you think?' Arkady asked Minin. 'Should we arrest her, not arrest her but beat her, or just let her go? It would be more serious if she had taken the sour cream, too. But I want to know your opinion.' Arkady really was curious to learn how zealous his assistant was.

   
'I suppose,' Minin said finally, 'we can let her go this time.'

   
'If you think so.' Arkady turned to the women and said, 'Citizens, that means you both will have to help the organs of the law a little more.'

   
Soviet garages were mysteries because steel siding was not legally for sale to private citizens, yet garages constructed of such siding continued to appear magically in courtyards and multiply in rows down backstreets. Rudy Rosen's second key opened the mystery in the courtyard. The hanging bulb Arkady left untouched. In the sunlight he could see a tool kit, cases of motor oil, windscreen wipers, rearview mirrors and blankets kept to cover the car in winter. Under the blankets there was nothing more unusual than tyres. Later Minin and the technicians could dust the bulb and tap the floor. The sweepers had stood timidly in the open door the entire time; the old dears hadn't tried to make off with even a lug wrench.

Why wasn't he tired or hungry? He was like a man with a fever but no diagnosed disease. When he caught up with Jaak at the Intourist Hotel lobby, the detective was swallowing caffeine tablets to stay awake.

   
'Gary's full of shit,' Jaak said. 'I don't see Kim killing Rudy. He was his bodyguard. You know, I'm so sleepy that if I find Kim, he's going to shoot me and I won't even notice. He's not here.'

   
Arkady looked around the lobby. To the far left was a revolving door to the street and the outdoor Pepsi stand that had become a landmark for Moscow prostitutes. Inside stood a line of security men who scrupulously let in only prostitutes who paid. Camped within the grotto darkness of the lobby, tourists waited for a bus; they had been waiting for some time and had the stillness of abandoned luggage. The information stands were not only empty but seemed to express the eternal mystery of Stonehenge: why were they built? The only action was to the right, where a semi-Spanish courtyard under a skylight invited attention to the tables of a bar and the stainless-steel glitter of slot machines.

   
Rudy's lobby shop was the size of a large armoire. A case displayed postcards with views of Moscow, monasteries, the fur-trimmed crowns of dead princes. On the back wall hung ropes of amber nuggets and the bunting of peasant shawls. On the side shelves, wooden, hand-painted dolls of ascending sizes crowded around plaques for Visa, MasterCard, American Express.

   
Jaak unlocked and opened the glass door. 'One price for credit cards,' he said, 'half price for hard currency, which, when you consider that Rudy bought the dolls from idiots for rubles, still gave him a profit of a thousand per cent.'

   
'Nobody killed Rudy over dolls,' Arkady said. Handkerchief on his hand, he opened the counter drawer and flipped through a ledger. All figures, no notes. Minin and forensics would have to come here, too.

   
Jaak cleared his throat and said, 'I have a date. See you in the bar.'

   
Arkady locked the shop and wandered across the courtyard to the slot machines. They displayed draw poker or revealed plums, bells and lemons on wheels of chance under instructions in English, Spanish, German, Russian and Finnish. All the players were Arabs who circulated joylessly, setting down cans of orange 'Si Si' soda to stack tokens. In the middle of the machines an attendant poured a silvery stream of tokens into a mechanical counter, a metal box with a crank that he kept in furious motion. He jumped when Arkady asked him for a light. Arkady caught his own reflection on the side of a machine: a pale man with lank, dark hair in desperate need of sunshine and a shave, but not frightening enough to account for the way the attendant wrestled with his lighter.

   
'Did you lose count?' he asked.

   
'It's automatic,' the attendant said.

   
Arkady read the numbers off the counter's tiny dials. Already 7950. Fifteen canvas bags were full and tied shut, five empty bags to go.

   
'How much are they?' he asked.

   
'Four tokens for a dollar.'

   
'Four into . . . well, I'm not good at mathematics, but it seems enough to share.' When the attendant started around looking for help, Arkady said, 'Just joking. Relax.'

   
Jaak was sitting at the far end of the bar, sucking sugar cubes and talking to Julya, an elegant blonde dressed in cashmere and silk. A pack of Rothmans and a copy of
Elle
were open beside her espresso.

   
Jaak pushed a cube across the table as Arkady joined them. 'Hard-currency bar, they don't take rubles.'

   
'Let me buy you lunch,' Julya offered.

   
'We're staying pure,' Jaak said.

   
She gave him a rich smoker's laugh. 'I remember saying that myself.'

   
Jaak and Julya had once been man and wife. They had met on the job, so to speak, and fallen in love -
not a unique situation in their callings. She had gone on to bigger and better things. Or he had. Hard to say.

   
The buffet had pastries and open sandwiches under banners for Spanish brandy. Was the sugar the product of imported Cuban sugar cane or the plain but honest Soviet sugar beet, Arkady wondered. He could become a connoisseur. Australians and Americans traded monotones along the bar. At nearby tables, Germans wooed prostitutes with sweet champagne.

   
'What are they like, the tourists?' Arkady asked Julya.

   
'You mean, special kinks?'

   
'Types.'

   
She allowed him to light her cigarette and took a thoughtful drag. She crossed her long legs in slow motion, drawing eyes from around the bar. 'Well, I specialize in Swedes. They're cold but they're clean and they're regular visitors. Other girls specialize in Africans. There's been a murder or two, but generally Africans are sweet and grateful.'

   
'Americans?'

   
'Americans are scared, Arabs are hairy, Germans are loud.'

   
'What about Russians?' Arkady asked.

   
'Russians? I feel sorry for Russian men. They're lazy, useless, drunk.'

   
'But in bed?' Jaak asked.

   
'That's what I was talking about,' Julya said. She looked around. 'This place is so low-class. Did you know that there are fifteen-year-old girls working the street?' she asked Arkady. 'At night girls work the rooms, knocking on doors. I can't believe Jaak asked me here.'

   
'Julya works at the Savoy,' Jaak explained. The Savoy was a Finnish venture around the comer from the KGB. It was the most expensive hotel in Moscow.

   
'The Savoy says they don't have any prostitutes,' Arkady said.

   
'Exactly. It's very high-class. Anyway, I don't like the word
prostitute
.'

   
Putana
was the word most often used for high-class hard-currency prostitutes. Arkady had the feeling, that Julya wouldn't like that word either.

   
'Julya's a multilingual secretary,' Jaak said. 'A good one, too.'

   
A man in a tracksuit set his sports bag on a chair, sat down, and ordered a cognac. A few sprints, a little cognac; it sounded like a good Russian regimen. He had the knotty hair of a Chechen, but worn long at the back, short at the sides, with a curly fringe dyed an off-orange. The bag looked heavy.

   
Arkady watched the attendant. 'He doesn't seem happy. Rudy was always here when he counted. If Kim killed Rudy, who's going to protect him?'

   
Jaak read from a notebook. 'According to the hotel, 'Ten entertainment machines leased by TransKom Services Cooperative from Recreativos Franco, SA, show total average reported receipts of about a thousand dollars a day.' Not bad. 'The tokens are counted daily and checked daily against meters in the backs of the machines. The meters in the slot are locked in; only the Spanish can get into them and reset them.' You saw . . . '

   
'Twenty bags,' Arkady said.

   
Jaak calculated. 'Each bag holds five hundred tokens and twenty bags is two and a half thousand dollars. So that's a thousand dollars for the state and fifteen hundred a day for Rudy. I don't know how he did it, but by the bags he beat the meters.'

   
Arkady wondered who TransKom was. It couldn't be just Rudy. That kind of import-and-lease needed Party sponsorship, some official institution willing to be a partner.

   
Jaak turned his eyes to Julya. 'Marry me again.'

   
'I'm going to marry a Swede, an executive. I have girlfriends in Stockholm who've already done it. It's not Paris, but the Swedes appreciate someone who's good with money and knows how to entertain. I've had proposals.'

   
'And they talk about the Brain Drain,' Jaak said to Arkady.

   
'One gave me a car,' Julya said.

   
'A car?' Jaak was more respectful.

   
'A Volvo.'

   
'Naturally. Your bottom should touch nothing but foreign leather.' Jaak implored her, 'Help me. Not for cars or ruby rings, but because I didn't send you home the first time we took you off the street.' He explained to Arkady, 'The first time I saw her she was wearing gumboots and a mattress. She's complaining about Stockholm and she came from somewhere in Siberia where they take anti-freeze to shit.'

   
'That reminds me,' Julya said, unfazed, 'for my exit visa I may need a statement from you saying you don't have any claims on me.'

   
'We're divorced. We have a relationship of mutual respect. Can I borrow your car?'

   
'Visit me in Sweden.' Julya found a page in her magazine that she was willing to deface. She wrote three addresses in curly script, folded the margin and tore it along the crease. 'I'm not doing you a favour. Personally, Kim is the last person I'd want to find. You're sure I can't buy you lunch?'

   
Arkady said, 'I'll just treat myself to one more cube before we go.'

   
'Be careful,' Julya told Jaak. 'Kim is crazy. 'I'd rather you didn't find him.'

   
On the way out, Arkady caught another glimpse of himself in the bar mirror. Grimmer than he thought, not the kind of face that woke up expecting sunshine. What was that old poem by Mayakovsky? 'Regard me, world, and envy: I have a Soviet passport!' Now everyone just wanted a passport to get out, and the government, ignored by all, had collapsed into the sort of spiteful arguments that erupted in a whorehouse where no customers had come to call in twenty years.