were skates. A second man chased him and then all the rest joined in, clowning on one leg, executing spins. The lot rang with their laughs, for their own impromptu performance, until one went down. Silent again, the others shuffled around, helped him to the car and drove off.
Victor said, “I’m no prude.”
“I never took you for one.”
“We’re underpaid and no one knows better than me what a person has to do to live. There’s a break-in and the detective steals what the robber missed. A traffic cop milks drivers for bribes. Murder, though, that’s over the line.” Victor paused to reflect. “Shostakovich was like us.”
“In what conceivable way?”
“Shostakovich, when he was young and hard up for money, played the piano for silent movies. That’s you and me. Two great mentalities wasted on shit. I’ve wasted my life. No wife, no kids, no money. Nothing but a liver you could wring the vodka from. It’s depressing. I envy you. You have something to fight for, a family.”
Arkady took a deep breath. “Of sorts.”
“Do you think we should warn the husband, the guy with the tattoo?”
“Not yet. Unless he’s a good actor, he’d tip her off.” Arkady got out of the car and immediately began stamping his feet to stay warm. Through the open door he asked, “Have you let anyone else in on this? The station commander? Internal Affairs?”
“And paint a target on my head? Just you.”
“So now we’re both targets.”
Victor shrugged. “Misery likes company.”
Arkady’s headlights concentrated on a hypnotic reel of tire tracks in the snow. He was so exhausted he was merely coasting. He didn’t mind; he could have circled Moscow forever, like a cosmonaut.
He thought of the conversations men in space had with their loved ones at home and called the apartment on his cell phone.
“Zhenya? Zhenya, are you there? If you are, pick up.”
Which was useless. Zhenya was twelve years old but had the skills of a veteran runaway and could be gone for days. There were no messages either, except something angry and garbled from the prosecutor.
Instead, Arkady called Eva at the clinic.
“Yes?”
“Zhenya is still not back. At least he didn’t answer the phone or leave a message.”
“Some people hate the phone,” she said. She sounded equally exhausted, four hours left on a sixteen-hour shift. “Working in an emergency clinic has made me a firm believer that no news is good news.”
“It’s been four days. He left with his chess set. I thought he was going to a match. This is the longest he’s been gone.”
“That’s right and every minute has infinite possibilities. You can’t control them all, Arkasha. Zhenya likes to take chances. He likes to hang out with homeless boys at Three Stations. You are not responsible. Sometimes I think your urge to do good is a form of narcissism.”
“A strange accusation coming from a doctor.”
He pictured her in her lab coat sitting in the dark of a clinic office, feet resting on a coffee table, watching the snow. At the apartment she could sit for hours, a sphinx with cigarettes. Or wander out with a small tape recorder and a pocketful of cassettes and interview invisible people, as she called them, people who only came out at night. She didn’t watch television.
“Zurin called,” she said. “He wants you to call him. Don’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because he hates you. He would only call you if he could do you harm.”
“Zurin is the prosecutor. I am his investigator. I can’t totally ignore him.”
“Yes, you can.”
This was an argument they had had before. Arkady knew his lines by heart, and to repeat them by phone struck him as unnecessary misery. Besides, she was right. He could quit the prosecutor’s office and join a private security firm. Or-he had a law degree from Moscow University, after all-become a lawyer with a leather briefcase and business card. Or wear a paper hat and serve hamburgers at McDonald’s. There weren’t a great many other careers open to a senior investigator, although they were all better than being a dead investigator, Arkady supposed. He didn’t believe Zurin would stab him in the back, although the prosecutor might show someone else where the knife drawer was. Anyway, the conversation had not gone as planned.
Arkady heard a rustle, as if she were rising from a chair. He said, “Maybe he’s stuck somewhere until the Metro starts running. I’ll try the chess club and Three Stations.”
“Maybe I’m stuck somewhere. Arkady, why did I come to Moscow?”
“Because I asked you to.”
“Oh. I’m losing my memory. Snow has wiped out so much. It’s like amnesia. Maybe Moscow will be buried completely.”
“Like Atlantis?”
“Exactly like Atlantis. And people will not be able to believe that such a place ever existed.”
There was a long pause. The phone crackled.
Arkady said, “Was Zhenya with homeless boys? Did he sound excited? Scared?”
“Arkady, maybe you haven’t noticed. We’re all scared.”
“Of what?”
This might be a good time to bring up Isakov, he thought. With the distance of a telephone cord. He didn’t want to sound like an accuser, he just needed to know. He didn’t even need to know, as long as it was over.
There was a silence. No, not silence. She had hung up.
As the M-1 became Lenin Prospect it entered a realm of empty, half-lit shopping malls, auto showrooms and the sulfurous blaze of all-night casinos: Sportsman’s Paradise, Golden Khan, Sinbad’s. Arkady played with the name Cupid, which on the lips of Zoya had sounded more hard-core than cherubic. All the time he looked right and left, slowing to scan each shadowy figure walking by the road.
The cell phone rang, but it wasn’t Eva. It was Zurin.
“Renko, where the devil have you been?”
“Out for a drive.”
“What sort of idiot goes out on a night like this?”
“It appears we are both out, Leonid Petrovich.”
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“Say that again.”
“Did you get…Never mind. Where are you now?”
“Going home. I’m not on duty.”
Zurin said, “An investigator is always on duty. Where are you?”
“On the M- 1.” Actually, at this point, Arkady was well into town.
“I’m at the Chistye Prudy Metro station. Get here as fast as you can.”
“Stalin again?”
“Just get here.”
Even if Arkady had wanted to race to Zurin’s side his way was slowed when traffic was narrowed to a single lane in front of the Supreme Court. Trucks and portable generators were drawn up in disorder on the curb and street. Four white tents glowed on the sidewalk. Round-the-clock construction was not unusual in the ambitious new Moscow; however, this project looked especially haphazard. Traffic police vigorously waved cars through, but Arkady tucked his car between trucks. A uniformed militia colonel seemed belligerently in charge. He dispatched an officer to chase Arkady, but the man proved to be a veteran sergeant named Gleb whom Arkady knew.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re not to tell.”
“That sounds interesting,” Arkady said. He liked Gleb because the sergeant could whistle like a nightingale and
