want?”
“I saw you at the hotel with those people. They’re surrounded by bodyguards and have a whole floor to themselves.” The butcher became confidential. “Who are they?”
“Businessmen.”
“International business or they wouldn’t need an interpreter, right? Without you, everything comes to a halt. The machinery stops, doesn’t it? The big wheel is stopped by the little wheel, isn’t that so?”
Joseph was uneasy. This was Kaliningrad, after all. The pig glowed, happy to go to the abattoir. Joseph contemplated running from this madman. Even if he didn’t get shot, he would have to abandon his bike; the sand was too deep and soft for the tires. The entire scene was demeaning.
“I just interpret,” Joseph said. “I’m not responsible for content.”
“And take notes of secret meetings.”
“Totally legal. The notes simply aid my memory.”
“Secret meetings or you wouldn’t be in Kaliningrad; you’d be living it up in Paris.”
“It’s sensitive,” Joseph conceded.
“I bet it is. You have a real skill. People run at the mouth and you translate it word for word. How do you remember it all?”
“That’s where the notes come in.”
“I’d like to see those.”
“You wouldn’t understand them.”
“I can read.”
Joseph was quick to say, “I wasn’t suggesting that you couldn’t, only that the material is highly technical. And they’re confidential. We’d be breaking the law.”
“Show me.”
“I honestly can’t.” Joseph looked around and saw nothing but gulls patrolling the beach in case food appeared. No one had told the gulls that the season was over.
“You don’t get it. I don’t need to know the ins and outs. I’m a pirate like those Africans who hijack tankers. They don’t know a dog’s turd about oil. They’re just a few black bastards with machine guns, but when they hijack a tanker they hold all the cards. Companies pay millions to get their ships back. The hijackers aren’t going to war; they’re just fucking up the system. Tankers are their targets of opportunity and that’s what you are, my target of opportunity. All I’m asking is ten thousand dollars for a notebook. I’m not greedy.”
“If you’re just an errand boy that changes everything.” Immediately, Joseph understood that it was the wrong thing to say and the wrong way to have said it. It was like poking a cobra. “Let me. . show. .” Joseph reached around and wrestled with the pockets of his jersey, spilling a water bottle and energy bars until he found a notebook and pencils.
“Is this it?” the butcher asked.
“Yes, only it’s not what you expect.”
The butcher opened the notebook to the first page. Flipped to the second page, the third and fourth. Finally, he raced to the end.
“What the fuck is this? Pictures of cats? Doodles?”
“That’s how I take notes.” Joseph couldn’t help a hint of pride.
“How do I know these are the notes?”
“I’ll read them to you.”
“You could say anything you fucking please. What am I supposed to show them?”
“Who is
“Who do you think? These people, you fuck with them, they fuck with you.”
His employers? If he could just explain.
“My notes-”
“Are a joke? I’ll show you a joke.” The butcher dragged Joseph to the back of the van and opened the rear door. Out of the interpreter’s many languages, the only word that came to mind was
Joseph couldn’t find more to say. He couldn’t even find the air.
“Let the birds read it.” The butcher cast the notebook into the wind, then tossed Joseph into the back of the van and climbed in after.
From everywhere gulls materialized. They descended as a succession of thieves, each robbing the other. Every scrap from Joseph’s pockets was snatched and inspected. A tug-of-war developed over a half-eaten energy bar. The birds were momentarily startled by a shot and a winner flew off, trailed by other gulls and screams of outrage. The rest settled into a sullen peace facing the wind. As the haze retreated, a horizon appeared and waves rolled in with the sound of beads spilled on a marble floor.
1
Time did not stand still at Vagankovo Cemetery, but it slowed. Leaves drifting from poplars and ash spread a sense of relief, informality and disrepair. Many sites were modest, a stone and bench in a wrought iron enclosure going to rust. A jar of flowers or a pack of cigarettes was evidence of care for ghosts that were at last allowed to indulge.
It could be said that Grisha Grigorenko had always indulged. He had lived in a grand manner and was going out the same way. For days, Senior Investigator Arkady Renko and Detective Sergeant Victor Orlov had trailed the dead man around Moscow. They started with an eviscerated Grisha at the morgue, followed by an herbal rinse and makeup at a spa. Finally, dressed and aromatic, the body was rolled out for view in a gold-plated coffin on a bed of roses in the basilica of the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer. Everyone agreed that Grisha looked, considering the hole in the back of his head, pretty good.
For a senior investigator like Renko and a detective sergeant like Orlov, surveillance of this nature was fairly demeaning, a task that a ticket taker at a movie theater could have performed. The prosecutor had directed them to “note and photograph. Stay at a distance from the funeral cortege to watch only. Use discretion and make no contact.”
They made a pair. Arkady was a thin man with lank dark hair who looked incomplete without a cigarette. Victor was a bloodshot wreck who substituted Fanta for vodka. Or tried. Because of his drinking no one dared work with him but Arkady. As long as he was working a case, he was sober and a good detective. He was like a hoop that stayed upright as long as it was moving, and fell when it stopped.
“ ‘Make no contact,’ ” Victor said. “It’s a funeral. What does he expect, arm wrestling? Hey, that’s the weather girl from television.” A blonde in black unfolded from a Maserati.
“If you wave, I’ll shoot you.”
“See, it’s even getting to you. ‘Use discretion.’ For Grisha? He might have been a billionaire but he was still a glorified leg breaker.”
There were two Grishas. There was the public benefactor, patron of charities and the arts, and a leading member of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce. Then there was the Grisha who had his thumb in drugs, arms and prostitution.
The funeral party was similarly mixed. Arkady spotted billionaires who had their arms around the nation’s timber and natural gas, lawmakers who were sucking the state treasury dry, boxers who had become thugs, priests as round as beetles, models hobbling on stiletto heels and actors who only played assassins rubbing shoulders with the real thing. A green carpet of artificial grass was unrolled along the front row, where heads of the Moscow underworld surfaced in all their variety, from the old boys like Ape Beledon, a gnome in a coat and cap of Persian lamb, and his two burly sons; to Isaac and Valentina Shagelman, experts in insolvent banks; and Abdul, who had evolved from Chechen rebel to automobile smuggler and, in a dramatic career move, hip-hop artist. When Victor raised a camera, one of Beledon’s sons blocked his view.
“This is fucked.” It was Victor’s favorite expression. This football game was fucked, this card game was fucked, this salad was fucked. He was constantly fucked. “You know what gets me?”
