“Do you have a son?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know what it’s like to lose one.” The words caught in his throat he washed down with vodka. No bread. Deep breaths. He had outpaced Arkady with the vodka and was starting to look sandblasted. “Forgive me, that was inexcusable. What were you talking about? What else?”
“The candidate is protecting his official history, cleaning up loose ends, eliminating anyone who knows what happened at the bridge, including his own men. Kuznetsov and his wife are dead. Borodin and Ginsberg are dead.”
“I’ve taken precautions.”
Arkady had noticed the gun under Agronsky’s sweater, the double-barreled rifle at the door, trees recently felled for a clear field of fire and the comfort of meth lab security on either side. The situation was strangely snug and highly delusional. The major could build a bunker and not keep out Isakov and Urman.
“Ginsberg’s photographs of Sunzha Bridge would be a great help,” Arkady said.
Agronsky said, “I wish they still existed.”
“Maybe if you looked again you’d find them.”
“Sorry, they’re gone.”
Arkady let it drop. After a last round, Arkady made his good-bye and went out and sat on the Ural. Agronsky’s neighbors, a young couple in sheepskin coats, walked by with the soft steps of the truly stoned. To the north a scrim of clouds promised a light dusting of snow. Contradict. Contradicted. Such a small difference, but Arkady had done a thousand interrogations or more. Sometimes he just knew. He killed the engine and returned to Agronsky’s door.
“My friend Renko, another…?” The major lifted an imaginary glass.
“I’m trying to stop two murderers. Ginsberg’s photographs will help.”
“So?”
“You said that Ginsberg’s pictures of the firefight zone ‘contradict’ Isakov. You should have said ‘contradicted.’ Past tense, the photographs are gone. Present tense, they still exist and you have them.”
Agronsky blinked.
“What are you, a schoolteacher? ‘Contradict.’ ‘Contradicted.’ So what? Does that give you the right to come to my house, eat my food, drink my vodka and call me a liar?”
Arkady gave Agronsky a card. “This is my address and cell phone number. Call before you come.”
“I’ll go to hell first.” Agronsky threw the card back and slammed the door.
Returning to the bike, Arkady did not feel completely sober. He had handled the major badly. He should have been tougher or more sympathetic or, if necessary, enlisted the dead son in the argument. Whatever, a golden opportunity had presented itself and he had let it slip through his fingers.
Zhenya was excited. “They’re launching a new expedition at Lake Brosno to find the monster. A casino is the sponsor.”
“Well, that sounds perfectly logical.” Didn’t the children’s shelter have any rules about late calls? Arkady wondered.
“If they find the monster they’ll capture it alive and put it in a giant tank in the casino. Is that fantastic?”
“That qualifies.”
“If we could be on the team that would be so neat. Have you been to the lake yet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have one or two things to do here first.” He was at the apartment changing out of Rudi’s camos and into a jacket.
“What are you doing now?”
“I’m going to Tahiti.”
“Where’s that?”
“It turns out it’s in Tver.”
“Okay.” Zhenya’s interest returned to minimal.
Arkady asked, “Have they decided how to catch the monster?”
“I think they want to stun it.”
“With what, a torpedo?”
“Something, and then the monster will float to the surface.”
“What if he sinks?”
“I don’t know. How can anyone tell?”
“It’s a matter of buoyancy. The more fat the more buoyancy and mammals are fat and gassy animals. We float.”
“On the water.”
“Or under.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there is a theory that in really deep lakes a body will sink only to a certain zone, at which point water pressure, temperature, weight and buoyancy balance out and the body hangs in the water.”
“There could be dozens of them down there just hanging around. The police could go there in a submarine and solve all sorts of crimes. That is so amazing. What do you call that zone?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a theory,” Arkady said, although he did have a name for it: Memory.
21
The mural in the bar of the Tahiti Club covered Gauguin’s Polynesian period, faithfully copying the artist’s paintings of phallic idols and natives in sarongs. Everyone wore knockoff Armani and shouted into cell phones, while on a wide television screen two heavyweights pounded each other like bell ringers.
Arkady followed a disco beat up the stairs, past the scrutiny of body builders in black tie and entered a cabaret where the speakers were so loud that the hovering layers of cigarette smoke seemed to shudder with the beat. He caught a glimpse of two pole dancers on stage before a waitress sized him up.
“You want a stool? A ringside stool down where the action is. The action, you know.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for much action.”
“A table?”
“A booth. I’m expecting friends.”
He ordered a beer and asked whether Zelensky or Petya were around. Isakov and Urman were probably at a Russian Patriot event, but word would get back to them that he hadn’t left Tver. He couldn’t provoke Isakov and Urman if all he did was hide.
The waitress asked, “You know Vlad Zelensky? Are you a film producer?”
“A critic,” Arkady said.
Spotlights made the dancers bright and blurry. They strutted up and down the stage in platform shoes and thongs, keeping in constant motion like fish in a tank while an audience of men hung in suspended animation. When a dancer paused and sprawled on the runway, ringside aficionados tucked money in the thong. Otherwise, as a sign said, No Touching.
Arkady settled into a leather booth the color of arterial blood. The table had two menus. A food menu featured tropical cocktails, egg rolls, and sushi. A “Crazy” menu offered a lap dance in the Sportsman’s Lounge, a personal chat with a naked woman, “an intimate hour with a lovely companion in the VIP Jacuzzi or an entire evening with an anything-goes beauty (or beauties!!!) in the luxurious Peter the Great Bedroom.” The price of a royal romp was a thousand euros, cut-rate compared to Moscow clubs.
The waitress brought his Baltika. “It really ought to be the Catherine the Great Bedroom. She built the palace here and she did a lot more fucking than Peter ever did. Food?”
“Just some black bread and cheese.”
