Hard Currency

“And?”

“And,” Paulinin said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his nose, “he is right-handed. He is tall, as tall as you are. He is strong. He is not old but not very young, perhaps forty. He was carrying a briefcase or suitcase. Bits of imitation leather where he dropped it on the ground while he did his work. Had you not brought the grass in … who knows?”

Karpo had seen a slight indentation in the grass near the body.

“The victim?”

“Ah, the victim,” said Paulinin, putting his glasses back on. “At least five years older than she looks. She had a baby within the last year. Pelvic expansion. And she has two tattoos, one of a small yellow angel on her left buttock and one of a gun on the sole of her left foot. I’ve seen that gun tattoo in the same place on four young people in the past two years.”

“Capones,” said Karpo. “A gang. Any more?”

“Much more,” said Paulinin. “But it will take more time. Is it past lunch?”

“It is night,” said Karpo.

“I have a tin of fish and some canned bread. Join me.”

“The Yellow Angel’s dead. Georgi says it was Tahpor.”

Anatoli Xeromen already knew this much.

“How?” he asked.

The gangly young man with the pockmarked face and red Mohawk haircut answered, “Knife. Georgi said he stabbed her twenty times. Something like that. Then …”

“Then …?” Anatoli prodded without looking up.

“He … Georgi says he fucked her, tore out her eye and something in her stomach, and ate …”

Anatoli Xeromen nodded to stop the report and sat upright in his high-backed wooden chair.

The two young men were alone in the Capones’ war room in the Gray Blocks. The red-haired messenger had no choice but to stand patiently and watch as his boss’s eyes moved back and forth as if he were reading an invisible message. The chair in which Anatoli sat was not particularly comfortable, but it was a throne from which Anatoli ruled. His throne room was a muted scream of stolen goods that Anatoli had decided to keep as furnishings. Mismatched, expensive rugs, some Persian and Turkish, several thick pastels from Sweden, and one from the United States, a Disney covered with scenes from Peter Pan.

The walls, painted bright yellow, were covered with perfectly aligned political posters extolling and attacking communism, Lenin, Stalin, and Gorbachev; movie posters of Marilyn Monroe, Harrison, Ford, and Gene Tierney; posters of Renoir people in parks and cafés; posters of Moscow Circus performances. The furniture was every bit as eclectic: an eighteenth-century brocaded pink-and-purple sofa, plush leather armchairs, beanbag chairs in Crayola colors, heavy wooden tables with claw feet, tables with white marble tops, and tables with thick glass tops mounted on gilded legs.

The room, which had once been a Communist party meeting room for tenants, was on the main floor of one of six fat ten-story buildings in the town of Cherboltnik, fifteen miles west of Moscow. The clutch of buildings had begun to crumble and crack within a year after they had been completed in 1951. These six buildings were known officially as Moscow River Gardens, though they were outside of Moscow, nowhere near the river, and boasted only a garden of useless furniture, abandoned rusty car bodies, and debris that not even the resourceful residents could turn into anything useful. There was not a resident of the Moscow River Gardens who called the complex anything other than Gray Blocks.

Several hundred yards away, six identical buildings faced the Moscow River Gardens. These buildings, officially named the Gagarin Communal Residence, were known to everyone as Black Blocks.

Gray Blocks and Black Blocks had long been enemy kingdoms for the young who lived in them. Each kingdom had its own army of the nearly illiterate, who battled each other, stole from each other, and even, on rare occasions, maimed and murdered each other. There was more fulfillment in that than there was in the world beyond the Outer Ring Highway.

Then, five years ago, a leader emerged from Gray Blocks, an unlikely leader, Anatoli Xeromen, who lived with his mother in one of the dark boxes within the concrete block. Anatoli was short and thin, his nose sharp and Romanian, his hair straight and of no distinct color, a situation he had remedied by dyeing it purple. Anatoli feared nothing and no one. Anatoli did not care whether he lived or died. And Anatoli was smart.

He had risen to leadership in Gray Blocks by his fearlessness and the fear of others, who wanted no block of concrete to fall on them when they least expected it. He had then united the two crumbling, dirty kingdoms with promises of revenge against the city of Moscow, promises of plunder and power.

The Capones had ridden into Moscow to terrorize Metro passengers, pedestrians, and storekeepers. Their numbers increased, and Anatoli became a force in stolen goods and intimidation throughout the city. He had his own car, his own bodyguards, and the respect of petty criminals who wanted nothing to do with the Capones and their crazed leader who insisted that every member have a weapon of his or her choice tattooed on the sole of his or her foot. Betrayal of Anatoli or the Capones by any member was punishable by forfeiture of the leg on which the tattoo appeared.

Anatoli’s mother, a firm believer in God, told all who would listen that she had been blessed with a son whom God had anointed for greatness. No one dared to contradict her.

Anatoli and the Capones did not hide. Visibility and fear were their commodities. Everyone knew the mark of the Capones, their punk English look, their hair. But now there was one who did not respect the Capones- Tahpor, the Ax, who had mutilated Yellow Angel and now spread fear among them. Anatoli already sensed a threat to his dynasty-that there might be an individual even more daring and dangerous than Anatoli Xeromen.

And then, too, he had liked Yellow Angel.

“You and Gino,” he said to the young man with the red Mohawk, “go to the police. Ask for her. Say we want the body.”

“What if they …?” the young man said.

“They know she was one of us,” said Anatoli. “The tattoo. Unless Tahpor … just do it. Ask for the one they call the Washtub.”

The young man with the red hair could think of many reasons why he should not go to the police, but he voiced none of them. Anatoli had given him the name Speechkee, “Matches.” His real name was Lev Zelinsky. He was seventeen years old and a Jew. Anatoli cared nothing about the backgrounds of the Capones. All he asked was loyalty, and in return for this he shared what they all extorted, bartered, and stole.

So instead of coming up with a reason to stay away from the police, Speechkee said, “In the morning.”

Anatoli nodded and the young man with the red Mohawk hurried away.

Anatoli rose and looked at the poster of Gene Tierney. The poster was black-and-white, a reprint. He was sure that the eyes must really be gray. He was fascinated by this woman with the hint of a knowing smile. She must surely be dead by now, as dead as Yellow Angel. Gene Tierney smiled at him and kept her secret.

Tomorrow Anatoli would tell the Capones that they would have to find and punish Tahpor. There was no choice. Unless they found the killer of Yellow Angel, Anatoli’s power over the gang would be undermined. Besides, he truly wanted to kill whoever had done this to Yellow Angel. He wanted to batter the killer’s face with the heel of his boots.

Anatoli looked once more at Gene Tierney. It was late, and he had promised his mother he would come up to the apartment by midnight and have a hot chocolate with her. Anatoli left the war room.

Sasha Tkach carefully opened the door to his apartment. Since there were two locks now, entering quietly had become a feat that defied success, but he tried his best.

Sasha, shoes in hand, had a series of hopes. He hoped his wife and children were asleep in the bedroom. He hoped his mother was asleep in the living room, which he had to cross to get to the kitchen alcove where there might be something he could eat without waking anyone. Then, if he got that far, he hoped he could undress, put on clean shorts and an undershirt, and watch something on the little television in the corner, preferably a soccer match since he would not be able to turn on the sound.

These, he believed, were not unreasonable hopes for a policeman who had just put in a fourteen-hour shift dealing with murder and bureaucracy. Murder had been far easier to cope with.