“He came in a few days ago,” said Elisabetta. “He asked about Mr Sverdloff. My assistant talked to him, he wanted Valentina’s files, she said there were none, that she had taken them to America with her.”
“How was he?”
“Angry,” she said.
“Enough to kill?”
“My assistant was frightened, it’s all I know.”
Elisabetta went to the back of the building where I could hear the babble of babies, and returned with a short fat woman. “This is Marina,” she said, introducing the woman. “She is a journalist, but she helps us here at the shelter. I have to go.”
“Marina Fetushova,” said the woman, and lit up a stinky Russian cigarette.
I introduced myself to Fetushova. She didn’t move, just kept smoking.
“You help out here?” I said in Russian.
“None of your business.”
“I need information.”
“We can’t talk here,” she said, and without another word, she walked through the front door, blowing smoke into the open air. I followed her.
We were at the edge of a playground where a gang of eight-year-olds were climbing a jungle gym and skipping rope. Fetushova watched them.
Head set between beefy shoulders, she wore a sloppy green sweater and a gray skirt. In spite of the booming voice, and the fact that she swore like crazy, she had a cultivated accent.
“You’re a cop?” she said.
“Yes. From New York.”
“What is it you need?”
Her tone was brusque, almost hostile.
“I want to find somebody.”
“Who’s that?”
“Grigory Curtis.”
Fetushova swore, calling Curtis a prick and much worse, and then turned away.
I grabbed her arm.
“Don’t do that,” she said, shaking loose. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can’t talk to you here,” she said.
“What’s wrong with here?”
“Don’t be an ass.”
The sun beat down on the playground. The kids kept playing.
“So somebody knew about Val’s involvement here?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
“People watch this place?”
“My God, you’re naive. What do you think?”
Leaning forward, as close to her as I could without her slugging me, I said, without thinking about it, “I’m desperate.”
Her expression changed slightly, a mixture of sarcasm and sympathy.
“You don’t sound like a fucking pig cop,” she said.
“I’m a friend.”
“You’re from where?”
“Here.”
“Moscow?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“You’re interested?”
“I’m only talking to you while I finish my smoke,” she said.
“Give me one.”
She offered me the pack, and her lighter. I told her the street where I grew up, the street where we moved after my father lost his job, the school I went to.
“Yeah, me too, same time,” she said.
There was a flash of recognition. Now she understood, it seemed to say, she knew all about me. But I looked at her and saw an old Russian woman, not somebody my age. Maybe that was what her work had done to her.
“You remember the music teacher?” I said. “At our school?”
“Okay, forget the fucking small talk,” said Fetushova, drawing back, throwing her cigarette on the sidewalk, crushing it with her foot, walking closer to the playground.
“What happened here?”
“Fuck you,” she said. “I don’t talk about it,” she added, but she didn’t leave, just stood and watched as women came and went, bringing packages to the shelter. The kids played. The older girls watched them. In this shabby district, everybody was poor, shabbily dressed. But you could hear the traffic, the rumble, the scream of it.
In the middle of town, you saw a Moscow afloat on Russia’s supplies of oil and natural gas, heard the world bellowing for fuel, prices skyrocketing. In the center of the city, you could feel it, as if the resources, oil and gas, aluminum, nickel, diamonds, gold, and the revenues poured down a chute into the city from the Far East and the former republics. Money, money, money.
It was the biggest city in Europe now, ten, twelve, sixteen million, depending if you counted the floating immigrant population and dozens of billionaires. I could feel it flexing its muscles, bragging rights claimed like a prizefighter who had taken the title. But at the shelter, there were only the kids and the stained building and old women in headscarves who looked like Russian women had looked for centuries. They brought home-made dumplings, and black bread, whatever they could afford for the children.
The little girls in tiny blue shorts and striped t-shirts ran around, laughing. They clambered up the jungle gym. I thought of the children in the green square in London, hanging upside down. An older girl sat on one of the swings, swinging higher and higher. I watched her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
I saw it all over again. I saw the girl in the Brooklyn playground, I saw Masha Panchuk. Fetushova had picked up her bag, lit up another smoke, was getting ready to go.
“Was somebody hurt here?” I said. “In this playground?”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
I told her about Masha Panchuk, the way she died, I told her all the details.
She dropped her cigarette, hand trembling.
“My God,” she said.
“What?”
“Wait.” She hurried into the shelter where I tried to follow. “I said wait.”
“About a year ago, Valentina took this picture,” said Fetushova, returning with a print in a plastic sleeve.
Stomach turning, I looked at the picture. A girl on a bench, the jungle gym visible behind her.
“Here?”
“Yes,” Fetushova said.
The girl was wrapped like a mummy in duct tape. A doll was on her lap.
“Jesus Christ.”
“This playground,” she said. “The girl was thirteen. She belonged to a bastard very high up, close to the Kremlin.”
“Belonged?”
“He owned her. You can as good as buy these girls,” said Fetushova. “Somehow she got away. Somebody found her on the street and got her here. The son of a bitch thought the girl might talk. He hired a thug to do this. Shut her up. Tape her up. She was found like this.”
“Dead?”
“Of course.”
