Moscow Noir, page 11
Maxim paused, although in the present situation this wasn’t very safe. But he couldn’t just walk past a friend who looked like he needed help.
“Nikita!”
“Oh, it’s you,” Nikita said, as though he hardly recognized the person he was speaking to.
“What’s all that?” asked Maxim, nodding at the plastic bottle that seemed to be a primary attribute of all the downtrodden and hopeless.
“You sure got this life thing all figured out. Looks like you got it made,” Nikita said, his voice so shrill he was almost shouting.
“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” Maxim scanned the hostile territory around him.
“What’s wrong with me? Where were you three years ago? I wrote to you from St. Pete. Tried to get hold of you. And where were you a year ago, when I was all alone, up to my neck in shit? What’s wrong with me?”
“Give me a break! I moved into a new place and got a new number. And I’m not in Moscow much anyway. Come on. What can I do to help you now? I mean it, right now.”
It was obvious the guy was in bad shape. He was angry at the whole world, and appeared comfortable that way. His body language was saying, Forgot about me, the bastards, stabbed me in the back! Not one single son of a bitch came around when I needed help. Well, I don’t need you assholes anymore. Scram! Guys like that never admit that it is they, and not the “bastards,” “sons of bitches,” or “assholes,” who are to blame for their misfortunes. Backed up by such sentiments, they enjoy not shaving and going for weeks without changing their underwear; guzzling Ohota or Baltika 9 as they go under, until they stop somewhere about six feet beneath the earth’s surface and worms start gnawing at what’s left of them. Even worse, Maxim once heard about a dog breeding company where bull terriers were fed a diet of homeless people, live homeless people, to turn the dogs into killers and cannibals.
“You should have helped me out back then when I needed it, before I ended up in Moscow,” said Nikita.
When, at last, he ran out of excuses to prop up his ego, Nikita told his story. It turned out that three years before, in St. Petersburg, he had made some big money and decided to move to Moscow. What’s the big deal, everybody’s going! It’s the city of unlimited possibilities. So he sold his Petersburg apartment and added that money to the bundle he’d received from Valya Matvienko for working on her election campaign, and bought a three-bedroom apartment at Pure Ponds, one that was big enough to house their whole damn platoon back in Kandahar. He partied for a month, spending dollars like they were five-kopek coins. After that, he settled in. Turned out that the easiest part was finding a mate. Or something like that. Whatever. She was beautiful, smart, sexy, and devoted. Or she seemed devoted back then. That was why, three months later, he awarded her the official status of wife, and a note was made of this both in his passport and in an official registry book.
Making a living in Moscow proved much more difficult. He tried opening a souvenir shop on Taganka. They wouldn’t let him. He set up a snack shop at Kitai-Gorod. It was burned down two weeks later. He signed a contract to deliver a small consignment of Polish perfume. He got cheated, cost him fifty grand. Well, after that he gave up on having his own business and got a job as a security guard at the Reutov casino. His salary, plus the interest he received on the Petersburg money he’d put in the bank, was enough to live on quite comfortably.
Fate, however, decided to play a trick on the Afghan war hero. The bank went bust. With great difficulty, Nikita managed to get a tenth of his savings back. But he lost even that at the very same casino where he worked. He went in one weekend just to try his luck. Just about hit the jackpot too. His wife’s devotion, like snow in April, began to melt steadily.
She soon turned into a terrible fury. Even so, her three other good qualities remained. She was sexy (though she stopped sharing that particular quality with her husband). Beautiful. And smart. In fact, she was smart enough to kick Nikita out of the apartment three days ago.
“What are you, some kind of wuss?” said Maxim. “Show her who’s boss! You’ve got fists, don’t you? Tell her to get the hell out.”
“She reregistered the apartment in her own name. I’m like the heir or something.”
“Then kill her! Have you forgotten how it’s done? Make it look like an accident.”
“I can’t. I just got baptized. I made a vow, for the rest of my life. Besides, look.” Nikita stuck his arms out in front of him, palms facing downward. His fingers shook visibly, like those of an alcoholic.
“Ouch,” said Maxim, shaking his head. “I’d head for a monastery, bro. And how about your vow never to touch the drink again?”
They were both silent for a moment, puffing on their cigarettes.
“How about this,” Maxim said, interrupting the silence. “I’ll kick her out myself. Then you’ll be off the hook. Where’s your place?”
Nikita gave him an address. It was nearby, 12 Pure Ponds Boulevard.
Maxim waited around until someone opened the door at the main entrance and then held it open for the young mother pushing a stroller. He went up to the third floor and turned off the switch in the fuse box he found in the hallway. Behind the door, where Nikita’s wife Zhanna lived, the television set fell silent.
Maxim went up one more flight of stairs. He waited, giving her time to call the electric company, who would tell her that everything was working down at the station and that she should check her fuse box.
Of course, Zhanna peered through the peephole, but not seeing even the smallest sign of danger she opened the door. Before she had time to realize what was happening, she was back inside the apartment, a hand pressed over her mouth and her arms clamped to her sides.
Maxim turned the key in the lock twice and carried Zhanna deeper into the apartment.
She tried to resist.
“Don’t make any noise,” he said in a whisper. “If you keep quiet, I’ll let you live. Got it? Whisper.” Slowly, he uncovered her mouth and relaxed his grip. Zhanna was silent as she studied the intruder.
“Money?” she asked softly.
“No.”
“Oh, I get it. My jackass sent you over to say hi. My ex-jackass, that is.”
“He said you were smart, and he wasn’t lying.”
It was then that Maxim noticed that she was also beautiful. Beautiful, as in sexy. The thought occurred to him that there was no real difference between one rape or two. Nikita would understand.
So he changed the character of his grasp: from clenched, to imploring.
He noticed with surprise that she did not try to resist. On the contrary, she seemed to press her body toward him (and she smelled so deliciously female!). She gasped with excitement.
Maxim had an instant hard-on.
But he didn’t lose his head. He took off his coat with the webcam that was always hooked up to the game server, and hung it up in the hall so that the camera was facing the wall. There was no reason for them to watch this.
Zhanna moaned. She squeaked. It was unbelievable. You only come across this kind of girl once every six months, Maxim thought to himself.
He drilled her in her cornhole like a wild animal. Like a baboon. Like an orangutan. And she enjoyed it.
That crazy bitch couldn’t get enough. “More!” she howled, cursing like a Shanghai whore giving herself to a platoon of sailors.
They peeled themselves apart. He listened without interrupting as she praised him. He listened as she cursed her impotent husband. As she begged him to stay. Forever. How happy they would be together. Fucking amazing. Those were the exact words she used: Fucking amazing. But she didn’t just say them. She sang the words, which lost their foulness and gained a certain eloquence. Maxim listened quietly, nodding his head. Dream on, baby, he thought. Dream on.
And then he drilled her some more, with the same ferocity.
He came.
Then he noticed she had an Adam’s apple.
Fuck!
A transvestite!
It was a dirty and dangerous game that Nikita had gotten him into.
He stayed cool, not letting on that he had noticed.
“Let me get us some drinks,” said the transvestite. “Okay?”
“Sure.”
The transvestite brought in two glasses of wine from the next room. And Maxim realized that he wouldn’t drink it even at gunpoint.
He took the glass.
“What’s wrong?”
“I want to watch you drink. You’re so beautiful, I’m sure you drink beautifully too. My cock is ready for action just watching you.”
The transvestite laughed, and took two sips. His Adam’s apple went up and down two times and then stilled. It wasn’t that big. But it was obviously a man’s.
Maxim set his glass down.
“Why don’t we start off with the usual question,” he said, his fingers locking around the transvestite’s throat. Not too tight, but probing. “Who are you working for? Tell me quietly.”
In all likelihood, at that very moment Nikita was glued to his own transmitter, which connected to an opponent’s webcam and mic, and it was extremely important that he not hear a thing. Each player had a transmitter that allowed him to hook up to his opponent’s channels and receive picture and sound from their webcams, broadcast nonstop. The pictures helped players track each other down if they recognized their opponent’s location.
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do. Now listen carefully: this is your one chance to stay alive. Tell me the truth. Everything, and in great detail. Who hired you and why? And what do they want from me?”
The transvestite shrank back. And spilled the beans. About how they sometimes sent people to him who he didn’t know. And he “served” them, the same way he had served Maxim. Then he would put clonidine into their wine. And when his client fell asleep, he would call a certain Artyom, who would finish them off while they were still knocked out. Then, at night, the body would be taken away by two bald guys in a jeep. The transvestite knew nothing more. The answer why seemed pretty clear, but who was behind this? That was the question.
Another question was how had Nikita turned into such a cunt? The traitor! But Maxim tried not to think about that.
“You don’t kill?”
“No,” answered the transvestite, blanching.
“So you guys have a division of labor and everything. You got one son of a bitch working as a decoy, another giving sexual favors, and the third does the killing. Four and five get rid of the body. You guys are a goddamn hockey team!”
“Please don’t kill me,” whispered the transvestite.
“Did you tell me the truth?”
“Yeah, honest. In the beginning I didn’t know what was going on. I just wanted to make a little dough. But then, after that first time, I couldn’t refuse. They’d get me too.”
“All right, you can live. Call him.”
“Who?”
“The killer, Artyom.”
When the door opened, Artyom got a blow on the head with the handle of a gun. As he was collapsing, Maxim saw that it was Nikita.
What a fucking world, Maxim thought. What a goddamn fucking world.
He even spat on the floor. Rather, he spat on Nikita’s stained jacket, which was his uniform.
“All right, holy man, start talking,” said Maxim when Nikita came to.
Nikita was quiet.
“Do you realize you’re not getting out of here alive, you Judas?”
Nikita nodded.
“Did you kill Arkady?”
Nikita nodded his head again, staring at the floor.
“Talk.”
“I had to.”
“What, does your five-year-old daughter have leukemia?” asked Maxim, recalling the thirty-year-old whose neck he’d broken, snapped just like a chicken’s.
“No, I owe big money. They took my wife. Gave me three months to pay.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred grand.”
“Holy shit!” Maxim roared. “What are you doing? I have the money. I have a million! I could have—”
“How was I supposed to know that? It’s like everybody just kind of up and left. Life fuckin’ pulled us apart in all different directions.”
“Okay. I give you my word that I’ll get your wife out of there. Now talk.”
So Nikita started talking again. He told Maxim how the program manager had decided to play under the table. Of course, he kept that secret from the organizers, who paid the prize money. Player number four was supposed to get ten million. No risks on his part, because the manager had put together an unofficial team. That was where Nikita was working. The unofficial team had two functions: guarding number four, and not letting opponents get near him. Also, they got rid of “extra” players using any means possible, including what they had tried on Maxim. The payoff for the mongrel team was supposed to come from the prize money that number four would receive. Nikita agreed. How much the others were getting he didn’t know; naturally, the manager would be taking the largest cut.
When Nikita finished, Maxim handed him a gun with one shot in it.
“Don’t worry about your wife, I’ll get her out. But don’t try any funny stuff, cause you know my response time was always better than yours. Do I make myself clear?”
Nikita nodded and moved into the far room.
Time slowed down to almost a standstill. It got as thick as ketchup that doesn’t want to come out of the bottle in the freezing cold.
Outside, a baby started crying.
Water rumbled in the pipes.
Then it got quiet.
Then a shot rang out.
“That’s it,” said Maxim. “Get dressed.”
The transvestite, chalk-white with fear, started.
“No!”
“Idiot. You’re going with me. You’ll be a witness.”
“Why?!”
“You’re not on trial, darling. But I have to explain to the investors why I crushed all those snakes and cut the manager’s balls off before I killed him.”
Maxim crossed the streetcar tracks and jumped the low barrier dividing the fetid boulevard from the street stinking of exhaust fumes. He strode toward the house with columns, digging the heels of his massive lace-up boots into the road. The manager had twenty minutes left to live. His moronic bodyguards, with earphone wires sticking out from underneath their jacket collars, had even less time.
The transvestite hurried along, sticking close by, in a tight English skirt, his face crumpled in fear. From an outsider’s perspective, it might have looked like a stately middle-aged man walking an exotic, purebred dog.
A bum sitting on a park bench took a sip from the bottle of extra strong Ohota he had just found—miraculously, almost full. What a wonderful evening, he thought to himself.
DECAMERON
BY IGOR ZOTOV
Silver Pine Forest
Translated by Marian Schwartz
Facewise, Ryabets resembles a skull: gaunt, with a deep-set, chalk-white gaze and lips slightly parted—a permanent grin of large yellowed teeth. At school they called him Skull behind his back but didn’t dare to his face, so they gave him a nickname from his last name: Ryaba.
Now that he’s on the wrong side of fifty, the skull resemblance applies to his whole frame: shriveled and bony.
At breakfast Ryabets is reading the Moskovskii Komsomolets police blotter. While he’s tapping around the butt end of his egg with a spoon, while he’s peeling off the shell, he skims through the second-grade girl lost in the taiga outside Krasnoyarsk—takes a bite of buttered bread and chews—the drunk officer who shot a soldier—takes a sip of ersatz coffee—the …
Under “Private Prison with Torture Chamber in Silver Pine Forest,” it says that the cops picked up a naked vagrant wearing handcuffs, right there on the street in broad daylight, with a cracked skull and evidence of beatings to his body. The vagrant called himself Andryukha and managed to say he’d been tortured in a cellar with “electricity and tongs.” He whispered the address, 43 Second Line, then fell silent. They didn’t get Andryukha to No. 67 Hospital in time. He died in a traffic jam without regaining consciousness. The cops went to the address but the jailers were gone and the trail was cold. But the prison was remarkable: three cells with a stun gun, tongs, a rack, a Spanish boot, and all kinds of other things. The two corpses were also Silver Pine Forest vagrants. An investigation is under way.
Ryabets sets the newspaper aside and looks out the window. July. Hazy, hot, and stuffy. When he’s finished with breakfast, he puts his Marlboros, towel, swimsuit, three big sausage sandwiches (carefully wrapped in that same newspaper so they wouldn’t go bad), a bottle of water, a bottle of 777 port, and a plastic cup into a paper bag.
He tucks his short-sleeved shirt into his pants and slips on his sandals. Two trolley stops to Kaluzhskaya and then the subway to Kitai-Gorod. The route remembers itself, even though the last time he took it was back in the early 1970s, when Kitai-Gorod was called Nogin Square. Transfer to the purple line to Polezhaevskaya. He’ll ask from there.
Not much out the trolley window has changed in all those years: dust, buildings, poplar trees. Here’s the arched bridge and to the left another bridge—red cables, looks new. Beyond that the river and the Krylatskie Hills. The trolley dives down a slope and stops at a square. Ryabets gets out.
A few streets fanning away, fences, and behind the fences pines and high dacha roofs. Ryabets glances around—should be here somewhere. There used to be a beer stand here, but not anymore. They’d gone from the beer stand to the dacha last time. Not him. His feelings were hurt so he went home. Bolt took his book away from him. A word clicked in his memory:Decameron. Oh yeah—a stinging sleet slashing at the burn site, his heel making little holes in the black muck—the cover was charred, with dark blue, intricate twisting letters, Bolt’s book … He came here in the fall, before the army. How could he not? No, later.
