cigarette. “Literally. I mean literally. I saw how the corruption worked, small, bigger, I see it now and I can’t keep my mouth shut. My friends say I’m like a woman with Tourette’s syndrome, you know?” She blew a harsh puff of smoke in my face. “I still have friends in the police, I have friends in the FSB, retired KGB officers. You think the spook world was a place of endlessly reflecting mirrors and no moral spine, everybody and everything up for grabs during the Cold War? Now there is only money. Everything is money.”
“I believe you.”
“Most of all, as a cop, I saw how they treated women. Whatever the crime, the women were culpable. Rape was a joke at the police station most of the time. I imagine it still is. It was my beat. When I got here,” she gestured at the radio station, “I was still ranting, people thought I was nuts, and I was nuts, I am nuts. Valentina came to me, and I said, go the fuck away, it will get us all killed, and I’m a dead dog anyhow.” From inside the studio I could hear voices, and music.
“What about this radio station?”
“They keep us on the air to show what a free society we are, we say what we want, and they let us alone partly because it’s the only way the Kremlin assholes can get real information. They have a need to know, especially the big shots at the FSB. Funny, right? They need our little station because they need a source of fact, they need us because we report things as they are. On the other hand, we could go off the air any minute, poof, but for now, we’re all there is.” She sucked in more smoke.
“Money? You were talking money.”
“I told Valentina, she had to be careful, but it made her crazy when she discovered how many girls were being prostituted and how many officials were pocketing the cash, and the one thing you don’t talk about here is their money, especially where our leader is concerned.” She sneered as she said it. “I told her, but she didn’t listen. She talked and talked, she thought she was impregnable, an American girl with rights. Free speech, Marina, she says, I can say what I want. We don’t have free speech. Putin said so. He said Russians never had free speech.”
“What happened?”
“Finally, Valentina got me to go on the air with it, to tell about deputies who keep girls at home, who offer them to foreign diplomats, one had a book of pictures, so friends could choose the beauties they liked, some of them were little, twelve, thirteen. I told only facts.”
I felt bands tightened around my head.
“Valentina felt she should put herself on the line if I did. She called in to the show, gave her real name and supported me with more cases.”
“My God.”
“Also, Valentina had a video.”
“Fuck. What did she do with it?”
“I made her give it to me, but I don’t know if she made copies or put it on the Internet or sent it to somebody. A couple of top FSB guys are in it, a little girl.”
“Fuck.”
“Yup. Fuck is right.” She smiled. Her teeth were discolored. “So you want me to give you Grisha Curtis? You plan to kill him, you want to avenge your friend, like in the novels?” She cracked another smile. “I’ll put out some calls. But don’t tell me what you plan to do.”
I agreed.
“You don’t care anymore about what happens to you, as long as you get him, isn’t that right? Artie? That’s what Valentina always called you.”
“Yes.” I took hold of her dry hand, the skin peeling. “Get me the video. Please,” I said.
“You were in love with Valentina, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“She was a good girl. If I can get the bastards, it would be fine, we have nothing, no laws, no courts, no free speech. Whoever thought it would have been Yeltsin, that old fatso sot, who left the press alone? He had something. But this one.” Her eyes glistened. “What the fuck, the economy is probably going down the tubes in a few months and we can all wallow in the shit together.”
I started for the door.
“Take it easy,” she said, her voice down a few decibels. “Your pal Sverdloff might still be alive.” She shook her head. “But do this quietly. Find Curtis. You don’t want somebody killing Sverdloff before you get there, if he is alive.”
“Be careful,” I said. “You be careful.”
She snorted, rolling her eyes, pulling at her shabby green sweater that barely covered her fat belly. “Careful? You want me to find this tape for you, you want me to find this Curtis for you, and you say be careful?”
“I’ll give you my numbers,” I said.
“I have your number,” she said, and hoisted herself off the step, went back into the radio station and closed the door.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“Artemy Maximovich Ostalsky? Artie Cohen?”
That night, I saw the man in the blue and white jacket again. Near Pushkinskaya, he suddenly appeared. He said my name, I turned.
Compact man, medium build, with short elegantly cut white hair and light brown eyes like milk chocolate, he wore a pair of pressed khakis, a white Oxford shirt, the sleeves neatly rolled to his forearms, which were tan.
Only the loose skin around his neck and the deep lines in his face made me think he could be seventy or even more. On his feet were the Timberlands, he had the blue and white seersucker jacket over one arm-it was a hot, heavy night-and he could have passed for a well-heeled tourist strolling Moscow’s main street in the early evening.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know him, or want to, and before I ran into the subway, the man smiled lightly, shrugged and then walked away as if he’d made a mistake about knowing me. But he knew my Russian name.
He saw that I had heard him, that he was right, that it was my name, and then he ducked into a car waiting at the curb. I felt I was going crazy, but it’s what happens to you in Russia, and after that, I saw a horse.
“It really was a horse,” said a hooker standing in the doorway of McDonald’s. “You aren’t crazy,” she added, munching her Big Mac. “Every night, they bring horses in from the country. People come out of bars and clubs late and they ride across the city. The gypsies bring them, and people ride, and sometimes girls wait until their men are drunk enough to buy them diamonds at all-night shopping malls, and then they put the boyfriends on the horses and watch them ride away.” She looked at me and burst out laughing. “You think I’m telling you the truth?” she said. “You want to come someplace with me?”
I shook my head, and she was gone. All that was left of her was the wrapper from the burger tossed into the gutter.
I looked at my watch. It was pushing eleven. I found a cab. Heading back to the apartment, I realized where I had seen the man in the blue and white jacket who called out my name. I had seen him at the bus station when I arrrived from the airport. He had been waiting for one of the children on the airport bus. I didn’t understand. I didn’t have time for it, either.
At the apartment, I climbed the stairs, changed my sweat-soaked clothes, and took the rest of Larry Sverdloff’s cash out of my bag. Then I packed. I put Grisha Curtis’ files and my clothes in the suitcase. While I was checking my phones, messages, texts, e-mails, I heard somebody pounding at the door.
When I opened the door, I saw Igor, the caretaker, with a package in his arms.
“Yes?”
He hesitated as if working out what to say to me.
“Look.”
