Wolves Eat Dogs

'I might.'

Arkady turned on the chair's light for her to write directions in. She did it studiously, pressing hard, and, as soon as she was done, turned off the light.

'I think I'll stay here by myself for a while. What's your name again?'

'Renko.'

'No, I mean your name.'

'Arkady.'

She repeated it, seeming to try it out and find it acceptable. As he rose to go, she brushed his hand with hers. 'Arkady, I take it back. You do remind me of Pasha a tiny bit.'

'Thank you,' said Arkady. He didn't ask whether she was referring to the brilliant, gregarious Pasha or the Pasha facedown on the street.

Arkady and Victor had a late dinner at a car-wash cafe on the highway. Arkady liked the place because it looked like a space station of chrome and glass, with headlights flying by like comets. The food was fast, the beer was German and something worthwhile was being attempted: Victor's car was being washed. Victor drove a forty-year-old Lada with loose wiring underfoot and a radio wired to the dash, but he could repair it himself with spare parts available in any junkyard, and no self-respecting person would steal it. There was something smug and miserly about Victor when he drove, as if he had figured out one bare-bones sexual position. Among the ranks of Mercedeses, Porsches and BMWs being hosed and buffed, Victor's Lada was singular.

Victor drank Armenian brandy to maintain his blood sugar. He liked the cafe because it was popular with the different Mafias. They were Victor's acquaintances, if not his friends, and he liked to keep track of their comings and goings. 'I've arrested three generations of the same family. Grandfather, father, son. I feel like Uncle Victor.'

Two identical black Pathfinders showed up and disgorged similar sets of beefy passengers in jogging suits. They glared at each other long enough to maintain dignity before sauntering into the cafe.

Victor said, 'It's neutral ground because nobody wants his car scratched. That's their mentality. Your mentality, on the other hand, is even more warped. Making work out of an open-and-shut suicide? I don't know. Investigators are supposed to just sit on their ass and leave real work to their detectives. They last longer, too.'

'I've lasted too long.'

'Apparently. Well, cheer up, I have a little gift for you, something I found under Ivanov's bed.' Victor placed a mobile phone, a Japanese clamshell model, on the table.

'Why were you under the bed?'

'You have to think like a detective. People place things on the edge of the bed all the time. They drop, and people kick them under the bed and never notice, especially if they're in a hurry or in a sweat.'

'How did Ozhogin's crew miss this?'

'Because everything they wanted was in the office.'

Arkady suspected that Victor just liked to look under beds. 'Thank you. Have you looked at it yet?'

'I took a peek. Go ahead, open it up.' Victor sat back as if he'd brought bonbons.

The mobile phone's introductory chime drew no attention from other tables; in a space-age cafe, a mobile phone was as normal as a knife or fork. Arkady went through the call history to Saturday evenings outgoing calls to Rina and Bobby Hoffman; the incoming calls were from Hoffman, Rina and Timofeyev.

A little phone, and yet so much information: a wireless message concerning an Ivanov tanker foundering off Spain, and a calendar of meetings, most recently with Prosecutor Zurin, of all people. In the directory were phone numbers not only for Rina, Hoffman, Timofeyev and different NoviRus heads, but also for well-known journalists and theater people, for millionaires whose names Arkady recognized from other investigations, and, most interesting, for Zurin, the mayor, senators and ministers, and the Kremlin itself. Such a phone was a plug into a power grid.

Victor copied the names into a notepad. 'What a world these people live in. Here's a number that gives you the weather in Saint-Tropez. Very nice.' It took two brandies for Victor to finish the list. He looked up and nodded to a truculent circle of people at the next table. In a low voice, he said, 'The Medvedev brothers. I've arrested their father and mother. But I have to admit, I feel comfortable with them. They're ordinary thugs, not businessmen with investment funds.'

Arkady punched 'Messages.'

There was one at 9:33 p.m. from a Moscow number, and the message did not sound like a businessman's: 'You don't know who this is, but I'm trying to do you a favor. I'll call you again. All I'll say now is, if you stick your dick in someone else's soup, sooner or later it's going to get cut off.'

'A man of few words. Familiar?' Arkady handed the phone to Victor.

The detective listened and shook his head. 'A tough guy. From the South, you can hear the soft O's. But I can't hear well enough. All the people talking here. Glasses tinkling.'

'If anyone can do it…'

Victor listened again, the mobile phone pressed tight to his ear, until he smiled like a man who had identified one wine from a million. 'Anton. Anton Obodovsky.'

Arkady knew Anton. He could imagine Anton throwing someone out a window.

The tension was too great for Victor. 'Got to pee.'

Arkady sat alone, nursing his beer. Another crew in jogging suits pushed into the cafe, as if the roads were full of surly sportsmen. Arkady's gaze kept returning to the mobile phone. It would be interesting to know whether the phone Anton had called from was within fifteen minutes of Ivanov's apartment. It was a landline number. He knew he should wait for Victor, but the detective could take half an hour just to avoid the bill.

Arkady picked up the mobile phone and pushed 'Reply to Message.'

Ten rings.

'Guards room.'

Arkady sat up. 'Guards' room? Where?'

'Butyrka. Who is this?'

By the time Victor returned, Arkady was outside in the Lada, which proved unredeemed by soap. A wind bent the advertising banners along the highway and snapped the canvas. Each car that buzzed past rocked the Lada.

Victor got behind the wheel. 'I'll drive you back to your car. You paid the whole thing? What a friend!'

'You know, with the money you've saved eating with me, you could buy a new car.'

'Come on, I'm worth it, getting the mobile phone and sharing my repository of knowledge. My head is a veritable Lenin Library.'

Mice and all, Arkady thought. As Victor pulled onto the highway, Arkady told him about the return call to Anton, which amused the detective immensely.

'Butyrka! Now, there's an alibi.'

4

The address on Butyrka Street was a five-story building of aluminum windows, busted shades and dead geraniums, ordinary in every way except for the line that snaked along the sidewalk: Gypsies in brilliant scarves, Chechens in black and Russians in thin leather jackets, mutually hostile as groups but alike in their forlorn bearing and the parcels that, one by one, they dutifully submitted at a steel door for the thousands of souls hidden on the other side.

Arkady showed his ID at the door and passed through a barred gate to the underbelly of the building, a tunnel where guards in military fatigues lounged with their dogs, Alsatians that constantly referred to their handlers for orders. Let this one pass. Take this one down. The far end opened onto the morning light and-totally hidden from the street-a fairy-tale fortress with red walls and towers surrounded by a whitewashed courtyard; all that was missing was a moat. Not quite a fairy tale, more a nightmare. Butyrka Prison