Wolves Eat Dogs

oil tanks. He has balls, I'll give him that. Ozhogin pointed him out on the street once. Obodovsky made the colonel nervous. I liked that.'

When Zhenya finally emerged from the fun house, they started home. Hoffman and Zhenya played chess without a board, calling out their moves, the boy piping 'e4' from the backseat, followed quickly by Hoffman's confident 'c5' up front. Arkady could follow through the first ten moves, and then it was like listening to a conversation between robots, so he concentrated more on his own diminishing prospects.

It was virtually impossible to be dismissed for incompetence. Incompetence had become the norm under the old law, when prosecutors faced no courtroom challenges from upstart lawyers, and convenient evidence and confessions were always close at hand. Drinking was indulged: a drunken investigator who curled up in the back of a car was treated as gently as an ailing grandmother. Corruption, however, was tricky. While corruption was the lubrication of Russian life, an investigator accused of corruption always drew public outrage. There was a painting called The Sleigh Ride, of a troika driver throwing a horrified girl to a pursuing wolf pack. Zurin was like that driver. He compiled files on his own investigators, and whenever the press got close to him, he tossed them a victim. Arkady had no reason to be horrified or surprised.

He asked Hoffman, 'Does Timofeyev have a cold or a bloody nose?'

'He says he has a cold.'

'There were spots on his shirt that looked like dried blood.'

'Which could have come from blowing his nose.'

'Did Pasha have a bloody nose?'

'Sometimes,' Hoffman said. He was still engaged in the chess game.

'Did he have a cold?'

'No.'

'An allergy?'

'No. Rook takes b3.'

Zhenya said, 'Queen to d8, check.'

'Did he see a doctor?' Arkady asked.

'He wouldn't go.'

'He was paranoid?'

'I don't know. I never looked at it that way. It wasn't that obvious, because he was still on top of the business end. King to h7.'

'Queen to e7,' said Zhenya.

'Queen to d5.'

'Checkmate.'

Hoffman threw his hands up as if upsetting a board. 'Fuck!'

'He's good,' Arkady said.

'Who knows, with these distractions?'

Zhenya won two more games before they got to the children's shelter. Arkady walked him to the door, and Zhenya marched through without a backward look, which was both more and less than disdain. Hoffman was closing his mobile phone when Arkady returned to the car.

'He's Jewish,' Hoffman said.

'His last name is Lysenko. That's not Jewish.'

'I just played chess with him. He's Jewish. Can you let me off at the Mayakovsky metro station? Thanks.'

'You like Mayakovsky?'

'The poet? Sure. 'Look at me, world, and envy me. I have a Soviet passport!' Then he blew his brains out. What's not to like?'

As Arkady drove, he glanced at Hoffman, who was not the sobbing wreck he had been the day before. That Hoffman could not have played chess with anyone. This Hoffman went from poetry to boasting lightly, without incriminating detail, about a variety of business scams-front companies and secret auctions-that he and Ivanov had perpetrated together.

'How are you feeling?' Arkady asked.

'Pretty disappointed.'

'You've been humiliated and fired. You should be furious.'

'I am.'

'And you lost the disk.'

'That was the ace up my sleeve.'

'You're bearing up well, considering.'

'I can't get over that kid. You probably don't appreciate it, Renko, but that was chess at a really high level.'

'It certainly sounded like it. Keeping the disk, hiding the disk, using me and my pitiful investigation to make the disk seem important, and finally letting Ozhogin find it at your gym, of all places. What did you put on it? What's going to happen at NoviRus when that disk goes to work?'

'I have no idea what you're talking about.'

'You're a computer expert. The disk is poison.'

The sky darkened behind illuminated billboards that used to declaim: The Party Is the Vanguard of the Workers! and now advertised cognac aged in the barrel, as if a madman raving on a corner had been smoothly replaced by a salesman. Neon coins rolled across the marquee of a casino and lit a rank of Mercedeses and SUVs.

'How would you know?' Hoffman twisted in his seat. 'I'm getting out. Right here is good.'

'We're not at the station.'

'Hey, asshole, I said this corner was good.'

Arkady pulled over, and Bobby heaved himself out of the car. Arkady leaned across the seat and rolled down the window. 'Is that your good-bye?'

'Renko, will you fuck off? You wouldn't understand.'

'I understand that you made a mess for me.'

'You don't get it.'

Drivers trapped behind Arkady shouted for him to move. Horns were rarely used when threats would do. A wind chased bits of paper around the street.

'What don't I get?' Arkady asked.

'They killed Pasha.'

'Who?'

'I don't know.'

'They pushed him?'

'I don't know. What does it matter? You were going to quit.'

'There's nothing to quit. There's no investigation.'

'Know what Pasha said? 'Everything is buried, but nothing is buried long enough.' '

'Meaning what?'

'Meaning here's the hot news. Rina is a whore, I'm a shit and you're a loser. That's as much chance as we had. This whole place is fucked. I used you, so what? Everybody uses everybody. That's what Pasha called a chain reaction. What do you expect from me?'

'Help.'

'Like you're still on the case?' Bobby looked up at the heavy sky, at the gold coins of the casino, at the split toes of his shoes. 'They killed Pasha, that's all I know.'

'Who did?'

Bobby whispered, 'Keep your fucking country.'

'How-' Arkady began, but the lead Mercedes in line slid forward and popped open its rear door. Bobby Hoffman ducked in and shut it, closing himself off behind steel and tinted glass, although not before Arkady saw a suitcase on the seat. So the car hadn't been idly sitting by, it had been arranged. At once the sedan eased away, while Arkady followed in the Zhiguli. In tandem, the two cars passed Mayakovsky Station and continued on Leningrad Prospect, headed north. What was worth heading to? It was too dark for a sunlit stroll on the beach at