“Sverdloff is most important, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Take a shower. I made soup. There’s a clinic we could try, I made some phone calls while you were sleeping. We have to go fast, people are asking about you,” he said, and sent me into what passed for his bathroom where I took a shower under a tepid drizzle of water, and borrowed a clean t-shirt from him.
He made me eat the whole bowl of borscht and some bread and cheese, and then he drove us in his second- hand blue VW to a fancy clinic near the river.
All the way, he played Indian music. It drove me out of my skull, but I kept quiet. Viktor knew what he was doing.
The clinic was all glass and steel. Gorgeous women in starched white dresses and little caps on their hair were the nurses, though they looked more like Playboy models. In a sunroom with a huge flatscreen TV on the wall, patients looked well fed. The doctor, wearing Zegna from head to toe, was impatient.
“Look again,” said Viktor, showing him Tolya’s picture.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes, what?”
“I think he was here. I’m not sure,” said the doctor, who was eager to get away.
“What did he have?”
The doctor called out to one of the costumed nurses and handed her the picture, told her to look up the records, made a gesture that indicated she was not to tell us too much. Said he was busy, gave us an engraved business card, mentioned we could make an appointment. He shook our hands, looked at his Rolex, and disappeared with that self-important stride only doctors and lawyers have, the kind that lets you know they are busier than you can imagine, and important and have great big balls.
After the nurse pretended to look through some files on her new Mac, she took Tolya’s picture in her hand.
“I don’t have anything on him,” she said. “I remember him. He told jokes, but he was very ill. I have a feeling it was his heart. He didn’t stay long enough.” She inspected a calendar. “Monday night. The 14th. I told him he must stay in the hospital, but he just wanted pills. He said he would come back. He never came.”
“You gave him the pills?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll wait until the doctor is free again?”
“Sverdloff didn’t leave an address, a contact?”
“Nothing.”
“Ravi Shankar. A genius,” said Viktor, nodding at his iPod that was plugged into the car. “I love the sitar.”
“I have to find Sverdloff.”
“Listen to me, you have to pay attention, you have to be careful, you think like an American, but this place is not normal anymore, this is a police state, this is only one guy who is running things, and you have to pay attention.” Viktor said it so quietly I could hardly hear him.
“Why do you tell me all this?”
“My cousin Bobo tells me I should say these things to you. I should help you. You help him, you help the family.”
“I want the boy,” I said. “I want Grisha. I think Tolya Sverdloff came here to look for him. I think maybe Tolya already found him. He followed me to the place I was staying, maybe to the club, on the street, and then he went away.”
“You think Mr Grisha has gone to be with Marx as we used to say? You don’t think he’s already dead?”
“Who do you really work for?”
“This one, that one. I was a soldier, I told you. For a while I was a detective also, like Bobo. I’m freelance. Some of the time I help with joint terrorist things, even your friend from Wyoming. Bodyguard, too, for money. This and that. I keep telling you. You have some idea, yes?”
“Roy Pettus?”
“He’s okay,” said Viktor.
“Yeah.”
“What’s your idea?”
“I need to go somewhere by myself. One hour. Look, there are some bodies I heard about, dumped out by a place you don’t need to see. One might be Grisha Curtis. I have a friend who’s a homicide cop.”
“One hour.”
“I’ll take you to my place. You can wait there. Don’t go back to your apartment. Don’t go out. Please, this is serious, you’ll get in trouble, you’ll get me in trouble, you’ll get people killed if you don’t listen. I’ll get your stuff from the apartment, if you want.”
“You know where I’m staying?”
“Sure.”
“You knew as soon as I got here?”
“Stay here,” he said as he pulled up in front of his building. “Pray one of our bodies is Curtis. You have contacts with anyone here?”
“Who would I have contacts with?”
“Cops? Journalists other than Fetushova? Friends? Old friends?”
“Not anymore,” I said.
“Family?”
“Dead.”
“Friends of family?”
“Also dead. What the fuck are you asking for?”
“Children of friends of family, parents?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Okay, so think.”
“Just fucking tell me what you want to know.”
“FSB,” he said in a low voice.
“I don’t know these bastards.”
“KGB.”
I said I knew what the fucking FSB was, and that it used to be the KGB, and how the fuck would I know anybody in it?
“Your father.”
“He’s been dead a long time.”
“They like the families, the children, you have heritage, they’ll talk to you. Sooner or later somebody will remember your father and say, what about him, what about the son, he’s one of us.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“In this country, even according to my pious Christian friends, Christ is dead,” said Viktor, picking up his car keys.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
I didn’t wait for Viktor Leven. I had an idea I had to get going. Maybe I was already too late.
At Moffat’s place, I looked for Igor the caretaker. He was out. I went into his hutch and then into the half-built apartment. Upstairs I looked for the bones. They were gone. So were Willie Moffat’s golf clubs. Maybe Igor had gone to sell them both.
I had come back to the apartment to get a few of my things, and lock the place up so Moffat didn’t come home and find everything gone. As soon as I got inside I knew somebody had been there, looking for me, searching through my stuff, papers, a notebook, but nothing else. Everything else was in place: TV, desktop computer, espresso machine. It wasn’t a thief. It wasn’t Igor.
I locked up, left a note for Moffat, pushed the keys under the door, went out to look for a taxi. I could have
