Moscow Noir

to shoot me. My Phuket’s fucked. Can you imagine?”

“Oh, and about that card of his,” Baba Agafia chimed in, barely listening to her. “It fell out of his passport, but he didn’t notice. After I locked you in I found it in the snow, and when I got home I couldn’t believe it. Why go to a hotel, I thought, if you have a residency permit, and then, if you’ve already paid for the hotel, come all the way out here? Well, I’m no fool, so I went and turned on the television. And there—saints alive!—I saw his photograph and his name. And a number to call.” Baba Agafia sneezed loudly, with a chesty wheeze. “I nearly died.”

“And nice Farid, when he came over”—Lana spouted laughter—“after I called you I gave him a buzz right away and figured out about Sharfik’s debt … He was in the bathroom then … so I let that little fool Farid know”— she whispered wickedly—“and an hour and a half later he and Sharfik shoot it out.”

“You could have done it earlier, dummy,” Baba Agafia said reproachfully. “He and those downtown characters nearly fell into each others arms out there. Where are your brains?”

“Well, you shouldn’t have told such a massive lie then,” Lana snarled.

“Well, who knew they’d show up so fast, and in this blizzard?”

“Well, you just shouldn’t have. This guy wasn’t going anywhere.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he fell for me, that’s how. I don’t know why. But I can always sense what these lechers are up to. More than likely—it’s not all that complicated—it was my latest sew-up. Even I didn’t expect that this time. There was even a little blood.” Lana paused. “Yeah, by the way, what did you tell them, the ones who came in the Mercedes?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Baba Agafia sniffed. “They didn’t just not have three hundred thousand, they didn’t have a kopek. I said I wouldn’t let them in. Over my dead body. Well, I could see they realized they were barking up the wrong tree. They walked away, whispered their secrets, and drove off. And now, just before you, they called again. They said they’d be right over. With the money. What about yours?”

“Who?”

“Oh, little Farid’s mujahideen.”

“That’s why I’m calling. This guy fixed everything, looks like, finished them off. Amazing.”

“How do you know?”

“None of their cells answer.”

“That means you’re free. And you have the money. You got away from me and little Farid.” Baba Agafia cackled, tickled. “Where are you hightailing it to?”

“Thailand, like I told you. Tomorrow there’ll be last-minute tickets on sale at this office I know. We think we can pull it off. Hey, dead man,” Lana said away from the phone, “what do you think, are we going to get those tickets?” Baba Agafia could hear a muffled male voice. “The dead man says we are.”

“All right, then,” Baba Agafia sighed. “You and I have talked too long. They might still call and the phone will be busy. Are you sure you locked that guy in?”

“You want me to go over and check to see if he’s already broken out?”

“Oh, I’m just afraid of him, the murderer. That look of his … makes my skin crawl.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Lana chuckled. “He’s the one whose soul is hanging by a thread. If he has one, of course.”

“Listen”—Baba Agafia’s voice dropped to a whisper—“what if he’s listening on the extension right now? Ugh, I didn’t think of that.”

“Not likely.” Lana chuckled again. “That’s the least of his problems. And even if he is listening … Hello,” she said in lower voice. “Hell on the line. I’ve got your number. God will call when—”

“Curse that tongue of yours, fool!” Baba Agafia shot back. “Fear God, you shameless girl!” There was a staccato chattering, after which short beeps started leaping in the ether.

As if expecting to hear something more, Veltsev held the receiver to his ear for a while longer, and then, sitting up straight, he lowered it carefully on the hook.

Rattling the chair, which he pushed in front of him like a walker, he headed over to the still smoking bed, took his passport out of his pocket, leafed through it, shook it out upside down, and tossed it aside. The rug seemed to be tilting to the left with the whole bed. It’s going to break where it’s weak, he thought, remembering how yesterday at the registration desk he’d slipped his hotel card between the pages of his passport and how today he’d searched for it in his wallet without knowing what he was looking for. A hot sea seemed to be overflowing its shores inside him. Smiling distractedly, like someone dangling his last cigarette in his fingers, he pictured Lana’s tear-stained face as she sat in front of him, and wondered at this image, at how it already existed on its own, as if it were something outside of him, which meant that the laughing voice he’d just heard in the ether no longer belonged to him. The cuckoo clock on the wall shuddered. A moment later, its chilled steel struck half past 12. The bird’s door didn’t open, it just shook; however, behind the toy mechanism Veltsev heard heavenly thunder. Someone was fiddling with the lock in the front door very carefully. Without looking he picked up his gun, cocked the trigger, and chuckled at the little man on the string: no one had called.

PART II

DEAD SOULS

FIELD OF A THOUSAND CORPSES

BY ALEXANDER ANUCHKIN

Elk Island

Translated by Marian Schwartz

Bogorodskoe Municipality,

Eastern Administrative District, 1996

When Nikolai Petrovich Voronov is sitting there like that and looking like that, expect trouble. Actually, if he’s looking some other way, you should still expect it. Nikolai Petrovich and trouble are twin brothers. Behind his back they call him Banderas, after the Spanish actor who conquered the world with his incredible muscularity and crazy machismo. When you look at the Hollywood Banderas, you can’t believe he actually exists. No one’s really like that. At least, that’s what they say. Me, I haven’t been to the movies for a long time. It’s expensive and pointless. Especially since a real homegrown Banderas is directly in front of me right now and I’m sitting here looking at him.

I realize that meeting a man like this on one’s life journey is tremendous good fortune. Don’t think I’ve got some alternative orientation or I don’t like women. God forbid. It’s just that Nikolai Petrovich is truly magnificent.

He’s forty or so, his hair’s the color of a crow’s wing (as they write in books), he combs it with a side part, but it’s too long. He’s been on duty for more than twenty-four hours but he’s wearing a snow-white shirt without a single wrinkle in it, and his collar, my god, his collar.

He has piercing eyes. Right now, as I write this, I can come up with only one comparison: a movie about sin city. The movies again, damnit, but that’s how it goes. Agent Voronov is top dog in the district of sin, the region of sin, the administrative division of sin. Strictly speaking, he’s sin and its nemesis all rolled into one.

He also has a mustache that droops down to the middle of his chin, deep wrinkles from his temples to the middle of his cheeks, and few teeth. Just the front ones, and those are smoked out, boozed out, brown. When he smiles—no more questions. A cop but an alcoholic. An alcoholic but he can stop. Can but won’t. He’ll kill. Without a second thought.

He lights up his third cigarette—he chain-smokes—in ten minutes, and through the poisonous haze of his Java