Tatiana: An Arkady Renko Novel (Arkady Renko Novels) (2 page)

Joseph couldn’t find more to say. He couldn’t even find the air.

“Let the birds read it.” The butcher cast the notebook into the wind, then tossed Joseph into the back of the van and climbed in after.

From everywhere gulls materialized. They descended as a succession of thieves, each robbing the other. Every scrap from Joseph’s pockets was snatched and inspected. A tug-of-war developed over a half-eaten energy bar. The birds were momentarily startled by a shot and a winner flew off, trailed by other gulls and screams of outrage. The rest settled into a sullen peace facing the wind. As the haze retreated, a horizon appeared and waves rolled in with the sound of beads spilled on a marble floor.

Time did not stand still at Vagankovo Cemetery, but it slowed. Leaves drifting from poplars and ash spread a sense of relief, informality and disrepair. Many sites were modest, a stone and bench in a wrought iron enclosure going to rust. A jar of flowers or a pack of cigarettes was evidence of care for ghosts that were at last allowed to indulge.

It could be said that Grisha Grigorenko had always indulged. He had lived in a grand manner and was going out the same way. For days, Senior Investigator Arkady Renko and Detective Sergeant Victor Orlov had trailed the dead man around Moscow. They started with an eviscerated Grisha at the morgue, followed by an herbal rinse and makeup at a spa. Finally, dressed and aromatic, the body was rolled out for view in a gold-plated coffin on a bed of roses in the basilica of the Cathedral of Christ the
Redeemer. Everyone agreed that Grisha looked, considering the hole in the back of his head, pretty good.

For a senior investigator like Renko and a detective sergeant like Orlov, surveillance of this nature was fairly demeaning, a task that a ticket taker at a movie theater could have performed. The prosecutor had directed them to “note and photograph. Stay at a distance from the funeral cortege to watch only. Use discretion and make no contact.”

They made a pair. Arkady was a thin man with lank dark hair who looked incomplete without a cigarette. Victor was a bloodshot wreck who substituted Fanta for vodka. Or tried. Because of his drinking no one dared work with him but Arkady. As long as he was working a case, he was sober and a good detective. He was like a hoop that stayed upright as long as it was moving, and fell when it stopped.

“ ‘Make no contact,’ ” Victor said. “It’s a funeral. What does he expect, arm wrestling? Hey, that’s the weather girl from television.” A blonde in black unfolded from a Maserati.

“If you wave, I’ll shoot you.”

“See, it’s even getting to you. ‘Use discretion.’ For Grisha? He might have been a billionaire but he was still a glorified leg breaker.”

There were two Grishas. There was the public benefactor, patron of charities and the arts, and a leading member of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce. Then there was the Grisha who had his thumb in drugs, arms and prostitution.

The funeral party was similarly mixed. Arkady spotted billionaires who had their arms around the nation’s timber and natural gas, lawmakers who were sucking the state treasury dry, boxers who had become thugs, priests as round as beetles, models
hobbling on stiletto heels and actors who only played assassins rubbing shoulders with the real thing. A green carpet of artificial grass was unrolled along the front row, where heads of the Moscow underworld surfaced in all their variety, from the old boys like Ape Beledon, a gnome in a coat and cap of Persian lamb, and his two burly sons; to Isaac and Valentina Shagelman, experts in insolvent banks; and Abdul, who had evolved from Chechen rebel to automobile smuggler and, in a dramatic career move, hip-hop artist. When Victor raised a camera, one of Beledon’s sons blocked his view.

“This is fucked.” It was Victor’s favorite expression. This football game was fucked, this card game was fucked, this salad was fucked. He was constantly fucked. “You know what gets me?”

“What gets you?”

“We’re going to go back with two hundred images in a digital camera of everyone at this fucked-up hole in the ground and the precinct commander is going to say, ‘Thank you very much,’ and then erase it right before my eyes.”

“Feed it to a laptop first.”

“That’s not the point. The point is, you can’t win. We’re just playing it out. I could have spent a nice day in bed passed out and pissing drunk.”

“And I interrupted that?”

“You did. I know you meant well.”

A priest droned, “Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk in the way of the Lord.” A golden crucifix swayed at belly level; a golden Rolex shone on his wrist.

Arkady needed a break. He took a turn around the cemetery, browsing among the headstones. It could be said it was his favorite
statuary. In black marble, a grandmaster glowered over a chessboard. In white marble, a ballerina floated through the air. There was whimsy too. A woodland spirit rose from a writer’s grave. A comedian cast in bronze offered a fresh carnation. On modest patches of grass, the living could sit on a bench and carry on a conversation with someone long departed.

Alexi Grigorenko stepped in Arkady’s way. “My father can’t be buried in peace? You’re going to hound him to his grave?”

“My condolences,” Arkady said.

“You’re interrupting a funeral.”

“Alexi, it’s a cemetery,” Arkady said. “Everyone is welcome.”

“This is harassment, and it’s fucking sacrilegious.”

“Is that how they speak in business school in America?”

Alexi said, “You weren’t invited.”

Alexi was a sleeker version of his father, stylishly unshaven, his hair curled at the collar with gel. He was part of a new generation that attended business forums in Aspen and skied in Chamonix and he let it be known that he expected to lead the family to the next rung of legitimacy.

Meanwhile there was a genuine disturbance at the cemetery gate, where the grave diggers were turning away a group bearing posters. Arkady didn’t catch what the issue was, but he did glimpse a photojournalist he knew. Anya Rudenko lived across the hall from his flat and sometimes occupied his bed. She was young and full of life and what she saw in Arkady was a mystery to him. Why she was in the cemetery, he had no idea, and she shot him a look that warned him not to approach. No stylish celebrities or sleek Mafia here. Anya’s friends were writers and intellectuals capable of folly but not of crime, and after a momentary fuss, they turned down the street and she stayed with them.

The priest cleared his throat and suggested to Alexi, “Maybe we should proceed to the eulogy before, you know, anything else happens.”

It had to be more than a eulogy, Arkady thought. This was Alexi’s introduction to many of the mourners, a tough audience. So far as they were concerned he was as likely to lose his head as wear a crown.

Victor said, “If he’s smart this is the part where he waves good-bye and runs for his life.”

Alexi began slowly. “My father, Grisha Ivanovich Grigorenko, was honest and fair, a visionary in business, a patron of the arts. Women knew what a gentleman he was. Still, he was a man’s man. He never let down a friend or ran away from a fight, regardless of the attacks on his character and smears on his reputation. My father welcomed change. He understood that we are in a new era. He counseled a new generation of entrepreneurs and was a father to anyone in need. He was a spiritual man with a deep sense of community, intent on improving the quality of life in his adopted Kaliningrad as well as his native Moscow. I promised my father to fulfill his dream. I know that his true friends will follow me to make that dream come true.”

“And maybe they’ll open him like a zipper,” Victor whispered.

Alexi added, “On a lighter note, I want to invite you all to enjoy the hospitality of the Grigorenko family on Grisha’s boat, anchored at the Kremlin Pier.”

Mourners filed by the open grave and dropped red roses on the coffin. No one lingered. The prospect of a banquet on a world-class yacht was irresistible and in a matter of minutes, the only ones left at the grave site were Arkady, Victor and diggers shoveling dirt. Grisha Grigorenko and his roses disappeared.

“Did you see this?” Victor pointed to the headstone.

Arkady focused on the stone. It must have been waiting only for a date, because a life-size portrait of Grisha was photo-engraved into polished granite. He wore a sea captain’s cap, and his shirt was open at the neck to reveal a crucifix and chains. One foot rested on the bumper of a Jeep Cherokee. An actual car key was in his hand.

Victor said, “This stone cost more than I make in a year.”

“Well, he got his head blown off, if that makes you feel any better.”

“A little.”

“But why shoot him?” Arkady asked.

“Why not? Gangsters have a limited life span. The story is that with Grisha out of the way, Kaliningrad is wide open. People don’t think that Alexi has what it takes to keep it. These aren’t schoolboys. If Alexi is smart, he’ll go back to business school and stay away from business. Are you going to the yacht?”

“No, I don’t think I can stifle envy any longer.”

Victor looked around. “Calm, serenity, the whole bucolic bit. You do that. I’m going to go find the yacht and piss in the river.”

As soon as Victor left, Arkady turned his attention to the grave diggers. They were still upset about the confrontation with Anya’s friends.

“It was a demonstration. You can’t have a demonstration without a permit.”

Arkady was determined not to get involved in Anya’s affairs but couldn’t help asking, “A demonstration about what?”

“We told them, no matter how famous a person is, a suicide is a suicide and can’t be buried in sanctified ground.”

“Suicide?”

“Ask them. The whole group is walking toward Taganskaya. You can catch up.”

“Whose suicide?”

“Tatiana.”

The other said, “Tatiana Petrovna, a troublemaker to the end.”

•  •  •

Outside the gates, Ape Beledon’s two sons shared a joint.

“The old boy has us waiting around like he’s the fucking Queen of England and we’re the Prince of Wales. When is he going to let us take over? I’ll tell you when. Never.”

“Real authority.”

“Real authority doesn’t devolve on you.”

“You take it. You exercise it.”

“You demonstrate it, like, you know, ‘Another great night here in Babylon.’ ”

“
Scarface,
Tony Montana. You call that a Cuban accent?”

“ ‘You wanna fuck with me? You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend.’ Then he blows them away.”

“I must have seen that DVD a hundred times.”

A cough.

“Don’t let Ape catch you smoking that shit.”

“He’s such a fucking schoolmaster.”

“Fuck Ape.”

“Fuck Alexi too. Mr. Silver Platter.”

By the time Arkady caught up with the marchers, their numbers had swelled to more than one hundred and they had reached their destination, the cul-de-sac where the journalist Tatiana Petrovna had fallen to her death the week before. The buildings were all the same: six stories of drab cement, with dead saplings that had been plugged in and forgotten. A bench and seesaw were streaked with bird droppings, but the front steps where she had landed were newly scrubbed and bleached.

No one had been arrested, although a television reporter who stayed with the marchers breathlessly speculated that Petrovna’s confrontational style of reporting had its risks. He couldn’t dismiss the possibility that the journalist had taken her own life for publicity’s sake. Officially, suicide was the call.

What had caught Arkady’s attention was that a neighbor had heard her scream. Suicide usually took concentration. People
who committed suicide counted pills, stared in fascination at their pooling blood, took the high dive in silence. They rarely screamed. Besides, Arkady didn’t see any neighbors. This was the sort of event that should have drawn gawkers to their windows.

The marchers lit candles and bore photographs that showed Tatiana as a negligently pretty woman at a desk, reading in a hammock, walking a dog, on the front line of a war zone. Her former editor, Sergei Obolensky, was in the forefront of the crowd. He was easy to spot because of his shaved skull, trim beard and wire-rimmed glasses. He and Arkady had met once and thoroughly despised each other. Through a bullhorn the editor demanded, “Where is Tatiana? What are they trying to hide?”

Anya and her camera seemed to be everywhere at once. Arkady had to snag her by the sleeve.

“You didn’t tell me about this.”

She said, “You would have told me not to come. This way we don’t fight. The police claimed that she jumped from her balcony and took her life. We demanded an independent autopsy, and now they claim they can’t produce her body. How can they lose a body?”

“They’ve lost bodies for years. It’s one of their functions. More to the point, do you have a permit for this demonstration? Without a permit this could be regarded as a provocation.”

“It is a provocation, Arkady. In the spirit of Tatiana Petrovna, that’s exactly what it is. Why don’t you join us?”

While Arkady hesitated, Obolensky appeared. “Anya, what are you doing back here? I need you up front to take pictures.”

“A moment, Sergei. Remember Investigator Renko? He marched with us.”

“Is that so? The one good apple among the rotten. We’ll see if it’s true or not.” Obolensky gave Arkady a mocking salute before moving on to welcome a group of university students to the demonstration.

“We’ll have two hundred marchers at least,” Anya told Arkady.

“You should have told me.”

“I knew what your answer would be and you didn’t disappoint.”

Everything was simple for her, he thought, so jet-black or snow-white. She held the advantage because he had never had that purity of conviction. If she was a spoiled child, he was a wet blanket, a spoilsport. As a journalist, Anya wanted to be close to the action, while Arkady was a man in retreat. She didn’t pretend to be faithful and he didn’t expect her to be. They were interim lovers. It simply happened that the margins of their lives overlapped. There were no expectations.