the same time.
'Borodin said he wanted privacy, and then he gets the ward in an uproar with his 'God is shit' routine. That's all I need, trouble with the church.'
'Did Borodin get drunk often?'
'Who said he was drunk?'
'He admitted himself?'
'It's like any club. There are special arrangements for regulars.'
When Victor was brought in, a courtesy call went to Arkady to come fish him from the tank. It was an arrangement some might call collusion. More and more Arkady found he was deviating from the straight and narrow.
'So Sergei Borodin came to be alone.'
'Who said he came alone?'
Arkady was befuddled. 'Why would a sober man bring anyone to a drunk tank?'
The medic inhaled hard enough to make his cigarette spark. 'Sometimes I think the sexual revolution completely passed you by. If you think about it, it's an intimate situation, isn't it? The nudity. The dark. The beds.'
It took forever for the coin to drop.
'Here?' Arkady had never considered the drunk tank right for an erotic rendezvous.
'It's ideal for rough trade, for a customer who likes a touch of squalor and a little risk.'
'Who with?'
Swan went back through the log. Every other week or so, the names of Sergei Borodin and Roman Spiridon arrived and left together. The one time Borodin came alone was the night Spiridon stayed home, slipped into the bath and opened a vein.
Swan said, 'I noticed old scars on Borodin's wrist. He'd tried to harm himself before. It's really a call for help, you know.'
'You mean Spiridon's wrist.'
'No, look in the log. Spiridon came here alone, got half the drunks here shouting they were God and went his merry way.'
That was at the same time Roman Spiridon was slipping into his bathtub, Arkady thought. Two Spiridons, two separate places. It worked for electrons but not for any larger entity.
Arkady showed the medic the photograph he had taken from Madame Spiridona. 'Who is this?'
'Borodin. Sergei Borodin.'
Arkady took it back. Maybe there were two Borodins.
'How well do you know him?'
'Just from here. To be honest, I sometimes have trouble telling them apart.'
'You never talked to him?'
'The usual. He was kind of sad and shy. A suicide is a suicide.'
No, Arkady thought. In the proper hands, suicide was murder.
31
A male voice answered the phone.
'Hello. Who is this?'
'Anya's neighbor.'
'Anya who?'
'The dead Anya, who else. Think about it. I'll call back in a minute. Talk to Mother.'
Arkady hung up.
He took a bottle of vodka out of the refrigerator and poured it into a glass. When people used to propose a toast to world peace, his father would say, 'I'm sick of toasting world peace. What about world war?' To the old son of a bitch.
Arkady drained the short glass in one go and let its warmth spread through him like water down a chandelier. He stood the bottle and glass on a counter.
He took ten minutes and called again.
This time the voice said, 'Renko, what do you think you have?'
'A witness.'
'Impossible.'
'Why?' When there was no reply, Arkady said, 'See? You can't deny it without admitting you were there.'
'Where would that be?'
'Where 'God is shit.''
A thoughtful pause. 'Something can be arranged. Where are you?'
'I told you, I'm in the apartment across from hers. This will cost a hundred thousand dollars.'
There was a whispered consultation at the other end. Sergei came back on the line and said, 'I don't know what you're talking about. Stay there. I'll come by in three hours with at least a hundred thousand.'
'Here in one hour.' Arkady rang off.
It had sounded like Sergei was calling on a mobile phone. He was already on his way.
Arkady stood at the kitchen window. The sun lingered, a wan spectator to twilight. The road workers on his street had filled the pothole, again. They loaded their tar pot and compactor onto a truck and left the repair guarded by pylons with reflective stripes and a sign with the international symbol of a man digging, although on this detail all the crew were women. The crew supervisor was a man who seemed unfamiliar with a shovel. For his part, Arkady had taped one voice-activated recorder on the underside of the kitchen table and another recorder in the small of his back. At the end of the block, a black Hummer parked and took up the space of two ordinary cars. Sergei Borodin got out swinging a briefcase as if he hadn't a care in the world.
Arkady cracked the door. He heard footsteps climb the stairs until they reached the landing below.
'Renko?'
'Yes?'
'No emotions. We're all grown-ups. Just business, right?'
'Just business,' Arkady agreed.
Out of his Petrouchka costume, Borodin looked like an average athlete in designer sweats, but Arkady recalled being impressed by Sergei's daring as he flew on wires in the Club Nijinsky. Physical courage Sergei had. What murderers usually lacked was empathy. He recalled Sergei sitting on a catwalk and dropping lit matches on the dancers below.
And what did Sergei see in Arkady besides a former investigator, bitter, cashiered and out of shape?
Arkady said, 'Do you mind if we talk in the kitchen? At parties, people always end up in the kitchen.' He kept Sergei in the corner of his eye as he led the way. 'I want you to set the briefcase on the table. If there's a gun inside, and you don't tell me right now, I'll kill you.'
'That's a joke?'
'No.'
Sergei put the briefcase on the table and drew his hands back. 'There's a gun inside.'
'Thank you. I'm glad you told me. Push it over.'
Sergei slid the case with his fingertips.
Arkady opened it and tucked the gun, a Makarov, under his belt. There was a newspaper for ballast. Nothing else. 'You know, this is disappointing.'
'Banks are closed. You gave me an hour. My money's tied up.'
'In what?'
'What do you mean?'
'In what fields have you invested?'
