Tatiana

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. You’re doing it now. That’s why we call you the Chess Creep.”

Zhenya stood, his face burning. Even so, the Stanford boy loomed over him and said, “Relax, I’m not picking on you. I just want to know, are you the Chess Creep? From your lips. No?” Mr. Stanford turned toward the redhead. “Lotte, is this the Creep or not?”

She said, “The word I used was-”

At that moment a swan came out of the water, hissing, wings spread, neck stretched like a snake, to chase the same brat who had bedeviled him before. As the architecture students bolted, the chessboard was knocked off the bench, scattering pieces in all directions.

Zhenya found himself alone, searching the path and grass and fallen leaves for kings and queens. He found all the pieces except a black pawn that bobbed in the pond out of reach.

Creep rang in Zhenya’s head.

He stuffed everything into his backpack, pushing aside the notebook he had taken from Arkady’s desk. It was a puzzle without a clue but it served a purpose if it forced Arkady to sign the forms for early enlistment in the army. Zhenya had been truant so long he was off the books and going nowhere. How long could he survive by cadging games with weary travelers? Most young people coming through the stations were connected to iPhones. Some didn’t even know basic openings in chess, the most Russian of intellectual tests. Without a diploma, Zhenya would be vying with Tajiks and Uzbeks to push a broom. His other options were the army or the police. He certainly wouldn’t do the latter. The solution rate for professional murders was 4 percent. How could they even call themselves police?

14

A pathologist was no respecter of men. To him, heroes, tyrants, holy men were all meat on a slab. Alive, they may have been draped in military decorations or a professor’s robes. Dead, their secrets poured out as cheesy rolls of fat, blackened liver, the tender brain exposed in its bowl. Nothing more.

That Willy Polenko was still alive was a relief to the other pathologists, because nobody wanted to carve up a colleague. He had done his part, lost a hundred pounds, huffed and puffed around the dim halls of the morgue for exercise, a half-deflated balloon moving in slow motion. Tatiana’s body had been found-not only found, but burned, and her ashes resided in a cardboard box labeled “Unknown Female #13312.”

Willy told Arkady, “You can upgrade to an urn of ceramic or wood. Most people choose the wood.”

“I told you there was to be no cremation.”

“I know, I know, it happened when I wasn’t here. Half the assistants are Tajiks. If you give them orders and they nod their heads, it means they haven’t understood a word you said. On the other hand, they don’t drink the disinfectant. Anyway, with this and that, she was two weeks unclaimed and you know how it is, the lowest fruit is picked first.”

“But cremated?”

Willy consulted a folder. “She was identified by her sister, her only sibling. She made the request.”

“Her sister was here in Moscow?”

“No. She wasn’t well enough to travel from Kaliningrad, so she performed the identification by phone from her home.”

“On a cell phone? We’re in a tunnel here and the reception is impossible.”

“We took the picture here and went up to the street and transmitted it.”

“Who took the picture?”

“Someone.”

“Was it saved?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Teeth?”

“You might find some pulverized in the bottom of the box.”

“Enough for DNA?”

“Not after cremation. What can I tell you, I’m surrounded by incompetents.”

“Did they, at least, get any corroborating identification?”

“By a Detective Lieutenant Stasov of the Kaliningrad police.” Willy patted the folder. “It’s all in here.”

“One last question. If this is Tatiana Petrovna, why is the box labeled ‘Unknown Female’?”

“It could mean we’re running out of boxes. Do you want it? Her sister said we should dispose of it any way we want.”

“You’re not serious.”

“It’s you or the trash bin.”

“Have you tried her magazine or her friends?”

“I can’t dash around scattering ashes like salt and pepper. You know these people.”

“And the folder?”

“All yours.” He handed everything over and gave Arkady a critical opinion. “I really think you should go with wood.”

• • •

In his car, Arkady tried calling Ludmila Petrovna again, and got no answer. The same with Detective Stasov. The operator at Now said that Obolensky had not come in. The dead were dead. The living marched on.

Arkady visited the computer repair shop where Zhenya sometimes worked. The technicians said that he had been in earlier to borrow a laptop.

As Arkady drove away, he kept an eye out for the boy’s skulking figure. Zhenya had not picked up any of Arkady’s calls, in itself a form of negotiation.

Victor had called and left a message to meet at the cemetery where Grisha Grigorenko was buried. Two men had been shot execution-style and dumped like offerings at Grisha’s headstone. The War of Succession had begun.

• • •

Detectives Slovo and Blok had partnered so long they had come to look like each other, with similar steel glasses and jowls of white stubble. They had plans to retire together and live in a dacha and garden in Sochi, and they were not about to be dragged into a shooting war. They had produced the outer semblance of an investigation-the immediate site was cordoned off-but the forensic van had not arrived.

Victor led Arkady through the cemetery gate. “Blok and Slovo are old-school. As far as they’re concerned, if two gangs want to fight it out, fuck ’em, let them kill each other. Two dead is a good start.”

“Welcome, gentlemen,” Slovo said. “Do you know how much I’m going to miss your two ugly mugs? Zero. We’re having a good-bye party. You’re not invited. And neither are these two.”

The victims had bloody hair and a Nordic pallor. Arkady recognized them from the Den as Alexi’s men; they had swaggered then, released from a murder charge for lack of evidence. Arkady wanted to see if they were armed but didn’t dare move the bodies before the forensic van arrived. Slovo and Blok were happy to do nothing. Their attention had moved on to their next life. Blok’s clipboard carried an article on “planning a subtropical garden.” “Did you know that there are two hundred sixty-four days of sunshine annually in Sochi?” he asked Victor.

“Amazing.”

Slovo indicated a grave digger who stood at attention with a shovel. “Here’s the man who found them.”

It was one of the grave diggers that Arkady had talked to two weeks before, on the night of the demonstration. It occurred to Arkady that there was no one else in sight.

“Where is everybody?”

Slovo said, “The workers are celebrating Sanitary Internment Day.”

“What does that mean? ‘Sanitize’ what? It’s a cemetery.”

“It means they’re taking the day off,” Victor said. “That’s why it took so long for the bodies to be