31

A male voice answered the phone.

"Hello. Who is this?"

"Anya's neighbor."

"Anya who?"

"The dead Anya, who else. Think about it. I'll call back in a minute. Talk to Mother."

Arkady hung up.

He took a bottle of vodka out of the refrigerator and poured it into a glass. When people used to propose a toast to world peace, his father would say, "I'm sick of toasting world peace. What about world war?" To the old son of a bitch.

Arkady drained the short glass in one go and let its warmth spread through him like water down a chandelier. He stood the bottle and glass on a counter.

He took ten minutes and called again.

This time the voice said, "Renko, what do you think you have?"

"A witness."

"Impossible."

"Why?" When there was no reply, Arkady said, "See? You can't deny it without admitting you were there."

"Where would that be?"

"Where 'God is shit.'"

A thoughtful pause. "Something can be arranged. Where are you?"

"I told you, I'm in the apartment across from hers. This will cost a hundred thousand dollars."

There was a whispered consultation at the other end. Sergei came back on the line and said, "I don't know what you're talking about. Stay there. I'll come by in three hours with at least a hundred thousand."

"Here in one hour." Arkady rang off.

It had sounded like Sergei was calling on a mobile phone. He was already on his way.

Arkady stood at the kitchen window. The sun lingered, a wan spectator to twilight. The road workers on his street had filled the pothole, again. They loaded their tar pot and compactor onto a truck and left the repair guarded by pylons with reflective stripes and a sign with the international symbol of a man digging, although on this detail all the crew were women. The crew supervisor was a man who seemed unfamiliar with a shovel. For his part, Arkady had taped one voice-activated recorder on the underside of the kitchen table and another recorder in the small of his back. At the end of the block, a black Hummer parked and took up the space of two ordinary cars. Sergei Borodin got out swinging a briefcase as if he hadn't a care in the world.

Arkady cracked the door. He heard footsteps climb the stairs until they reached the landing below.

"Renko?"

"Yes?"

"No emotions. We're all grown-ups. Just business, right?"

"Just business," Arkady agreed.

Out of his Petrouchka costume, Borodin looked like an average athlete in designer sweats, but Arkady recalled being impressed by Sergei's daring as he flew on wires in the Club Nijinsky. Physical courage Sergei had. What murderers usually lacked was empathy. He recalled Sergei sitting on a catwalk and dropping lit matches on the dancers below.

And what did Sergei see in Arkady besides a former investigator, bitter, cashiered and out of shape?

Arkady said, "Do you mind if we talk in the kitchen? At parties, people always end up in the kitchen." He kept Sergei in the corner of his eye as he led the way. "I want you to set the briefcase on the table. If there's a gun inside, and you don't tell me right now, I'll kill you."

"That's a joke?"

"No."

Sergei put the briefcase on the table and drew his hands back. "There's a gun inside."

"Thank you. I'm glad you told me. Push it over."

Sergei slid the case with his fingertips.

Arkady opened it and tucked the gun, a Makarov, under his belt. There was a newspaper for ballast. Nothing else. "You know, this is disappointing."

"Banks are closed. You gave me an hour. My money's tied up."

"In what?"

"What do you mean?"

"In what fields have you invested?"

"What do you care?"

"I have a stake in this too. When I was dismissed I was penalized half of my pension. Now you're my pension."

"Okay. People want me to do a martial arts film. East meets West, violence meets meditation and tons of 'wire fu.'"

"I remember. You're very good at flying on the wire, but you've killed at least one woman that I know of, probably more. What makes you think you'll be making movies?"

"You said that, not me. Besides, you're no hero yourself. They dismissed you."

"That's true."

Arkady turned his back on Sergei to pour two glasses of vodka. In the cabinet's reflection, he saw Sergei steal a look toward the door. Arkady filled a third glass and said, "Go ahead, ask her in. We don't want to leave Mother out."

"I came alone."

"Or I'll shoot you in the foot."

"Wait!"

There was no greater threat to a dancer.

Madame Borodina glided into the apartment, imperious and tanned, with little difference between her leather pants and jacket and her skin. Arkady thought she would have made a great pharaoh, the kind that demanded pyramids. He remembered two people had left Anya's apartment the night she was attacked. Madame Borodina he wouldn't turn his back on.

"Do you mind?" He spilled the contents of her evening bag onto the kitchen table: house and car keys, lady's compact, tissue, small bills, bank card, Metro pass and a.22-caliber pistol. He was uneasy. The Borodins might be amateurs, but they were not idiots. They followed orders but they weren't cowed.

Madame Borodina said, "Sergei, keep in mind that everything you say here is undoubtedly being recorded and that former investigator Renko is a desperate man ready to twist anything you say."

"Cheers," Arkady said.

They each drained their glass. Arkady felt warm. He didn't necessarily want the Borodins drunk. Loose and boastful would do. A little terror wouldn't hurt.

Madame Borodina said, "Now that you're not an investigator anymore, you will have to obey the law."

"Actually, you have it backward," Arkady said. "Now I don't."

"So who is this so-called witness?"

But Arkady slapped his forehead. "Sergei, I just realized what your film will be about. Not martial arts. Nijinsky! You will dance. You will play Nijinsky."

"I am Nijinsky."

Arkady raised his glass. "I'll drink to that."

Everyone had to drink to that. Arkady thought the tea party was going well. "So, if you play Nijinsky, who will play your mother? She was so dedicated. She picked his lovers, male or female, on the basis of whether they could promote his career. A lot of mothers wouldn't do that. Do you have anyone in mind?"

"You're funny," Sergei said.

"We're getting off the subject," Madame Borodina said. "I want to see this so-called witness."

Arkady said, "The subject is that Sergei didn't come with the money, he came with a gun. We have to work together." He refilled the glasses and, without explanation, added a fourth. "You were saying about Nijinsky's mother…"

Sergei laughed. "She was a controlling bitch."

"Sergei, don't play his game." Madame Borodina was not amused.

"So if you play Nijinsky, who will play the other women in your life? They must be difficult to cast."

"Very difficult," Sergei said.

"How many have you tried out?"

"Five." Sergei and his mother exchanged glances.

"Does she have to be a dancer?"

"Not if she has the right quality."

"They all fell short? Did they all turn out to be whores? What do you do to whores?"

"I don't understand."

"Did you expose them?" Arkady asked.

Madame Borodina told Sergei, "There is no witness. It's a hoax. Renko wants to extort money from innocent people."

Arkady had left it up to Anya when to make her appearance. Everything stopped as she entered the kitchen. She was paler than usual, which made the shadows under her eyes appear darker than ever, and she had taken care to dress in the cotton nightgown Sergei had seen her in last.

Sergei looked ready to burst from his skin. Arkady wondered if the family of Lazarus hadn't reacted with the same horror when he rose from the dead.