“What on earth are you doing here?”
It was Anya Rudikova, Arkady’s neighbor from the apartment across the hall. A leather satchel hung off her shoulder and a camera around her neck.
To Arkady she was the sort of self-dramatizing journalist who was almost as famous as the people she wrote about. Arkady had seen her on television flushing out a covey of the rich and politically connected. She attacked them and wooed them in equal measure.
“Browsing,” Arkady said.
“Do you see anything here that you like?”
“Something that fits my budget. I’m leaning to the Bugatti. One thousand horsepower. Of course, at top speed, you run out of gas in twelve minutes and in fifteen minutes the tires catch fire. That could be exciting.”
She pointed toward the mezzanine. “I’ve been watching you from up there. You have ‘police’ written all over you.”
“And what are you doing here? I thought you were a serious journalist.”
“I’m a writer. A writer covers all sorts of stories and this is the social event of the year.”
“If you say so.” At least the enforcers of Security were backing off. It also explained why Anya was in a black pantsuit and carried a notebook and pen. She should have brought stilts; she was a head shorter than anyone else.
She studied him in turn. “You don’t care much for high fashion, do you?”
“I don’t know enough about fashion to have an opinion. That’s like asking a dog about flying.”
“But everyone has a style. A man answers the door wearing little more than a gun? That’s a definite fashion statement.”
As Arkady remembered, he had been merely shirtless, maybe barefoot when he answered her knock. The odd thing was that he rarely carried a gun. He didn’t know why he had picked it up that time, except that he must have heard a scuffle in the hall. Anya had not been frightened then and wasn’t now; she seemed to be a small person who enjoyed keeping larger people off balance. “You didn’t say how you feel about the rich.”
“How rich?” Arkady asked.
“Millionaires. I don’t mean small-time millionaires. I mean at least two hundred or three hundred million or more. Or billionaires.”
“There are actual billionaires here tonight? That makes me feel less like a dog and more like a speck on the windshield.”
“How did you get in?”
“By invitation,” Arkady said.
“Invited by whom?”
“I don’t know. That’s the question.”
Something was happening onstage. Anya stood on tiptoe.
“I can’t see a thing. Come on.” She started up the stairs.
The mezzanine was done up as the diamond mine of the dwarfs in Disney’s Snow White, which had been huge in Russia, except that here the gems were bottle glass and there was only one dwarf and he was drunk, still wearing a rubber mask and passed out on the floor. Dopey.
Anya motioned Arkady to sit and they joined a man on a cell phone at a front table. A steely bodyguard sat behind and scanned the crowd. Since when did Russians mousse their hair? Arkady felt increasingly inept and unkempt.
“Vaksberg,” the man at the table identified himself, and immediately turned his attention back to an argument on the phone. He seemed patient and soft-spoken. He had an expensive tan and a black goatee and was known to the public more fully as Alexander “Sasha” Vaksberg, the Prince of Darkness.
He snapped his phone shut.
“A year ago we had over a hundred billionaires in Moscow. Today there are less than thirty. So it’s the best of times, the worst of times and sometimes it’s just the shits. It turns out we don’t know how to run capitalism. That’s to be expected. As it happens, nobody knows how to run capitalism. That was a bad surprise. Cigarette?”
Vaksberg pushed across the table a slim pack that said Dunhill Personal Blend for Alexander Vaksberg.
“Vanity cigarettes. I never saw that before.” Arkady lit one. “Excellent.”
Anya said, “Don’t be rude. Sasha arranged this event for homeless children out of his own pocket. Have something to eat. I hear the charlotte russe is delicious.”
“After you.”
“She wishes,” Sasha Vaksberg said. “Our Anyushka is allergic to dairy. Milk is the killer. Show him.”
Anya allowed Arkady a glimpse of an emergency wristband on her left arm. What struck Arkady was that Sasha Vaksberg, one of the country’s wealthiest men and the evening’s host, was being virtually ignored by his peers. Instead he was with a journalist and a policeman, which was a bit of a comedown.
She said, “The scraps will go, of course, to homeless millionaires.”
Vaksberg said, “Perhaps so. Someone has to point out to the blockheads in the Kremlin that we have an angry mob; only this mob is made up of the rich. Peasants are hard to rouse, but the rich have expectations.”
“Are you talking about violence in the streets?”
“No, no. Violence in the boardroom.”
“You two should get along. Investigator Renko always expects the worst,” Anya said. “He sleeps with a gun.”
“Do you really?” asked Vaksberg.
“No, I’d probably shoot myself.”
“But you carry one when you’re on duty?”
“On special occasions. There’s almost always another way out.”
“So you’re a negotiator, not a shooter. That’s kind of Russian roulette, isn’t it? Have you ever guessed wrong?”
“Once or twice.”
“You and Anya are a pair. She writes for a fashion journal of mine. Last week the editor asked for a diet piece and she did an article called ‘How to Cook Supermodels.’”
“How did the models like it?”
“They loved it. It was about them.”
The tennis player returned to the stage and hit a gong. The fair was over. The party was about to begin.
First the floor had to be cleared, which could have been awkward without a curtain to hide the pushing and pulling of display cases. Few guests noticed, however, because a spotlight directed their attention to a dancer in a loose harlequin costume and pointed cap sitting high on a ceiling catwalk, arms and legs dangling, like a puppet placed on a shelf. He moved jerkily, pantomimed a mad passion and, after sobbing from a broken heart, jumped to his fate. Instead of plunging, however, he soared on a single, nearly invisible wire. He seemed to be a creature of the air. It was part illusion. His every move was choreographed with an eye to angles, acceleration and centrifugal force. Shadowy figures on the floor were counterweights, operating in concert to keep the ropes taut so that the flier could freely swing like a pendulum or turn a somersault or fly straight up into a grand jeté.
Mainly it was the flier’s daring as he was drawn like a moth from light to light, ending in a series of prodigious leaps à la Nijinsky. The spotlight died on him, and when the houselights went up, the fair had been replaced by a dance floor and tier after tier of tables and booths in rococo white and gold.
A black DJ in a bulging Africa knit cap pulled on headphones, set records on two turntables and made mysterious adjustments on his control panel while he nodded to a beat only he heard. He grinned, just joking, and fed the speakers. Everyone had been so black tie and bloody noble for charity’s sake but now the ties were loosened and champagne poured, and in a minute the floor was so crowded that all the dancers could do was writhe in place.
Anya explained that the highest tiers were the most expensive. They were the refuge of older men who, after a shuffle or two, left the floor with honor intact, assured that while the world might be shit, at least the Club Nijinsky was the top of the heap.
Vaksberg said, “This is neutral ground. We have dogs to sniff out bombs and fifty security men to enforce a ‘No Guns, No Cameras’ policy. We don’t want our guests from the Middle East to worry about photos of them with a drink in one hand and a dancer in the other.”
“What about Dopey?” Anya asked.
Stil
l in costume, the dwarf had curled up underneath a table and was snoring.
Vaksberg said, “He’s breathing and he looks comfortable. Let him be.”
Arkady sat back as waiters in white gloves laid a tablecloth and served a chilled bowl of Beluga caviar, warm toast and spoons of mother-of-pearl.
“Young people call Ecstasy a huggy drug because it seems to reduce aggression. They’re happy to dance their little heads off in two square centimeters all night long. I can’t say enough for it. What do you do for pleasure, Renko?”
“In the winter I ski at Chamonix. In the summertime I sail in Monte Carlo.”
“Seriously.”
“I read.”
“Well, the people at the fair entertain themselves by giving money to charity. In this case to homeless children who are cheated of their childhood and drawn into prostitution, boys and girls. You disapprove?”
“A handout from a billionaire to a starving child? What can be wrong with that?”
Anya said, “Please, the Nijinsky is not a charity. The Nijinsky is a social club for super-rich, middle-aged boys. They only come to table-hop. Their women are supposed to be beautiful, laugh at the men’s crude remarks, drink to every toast, endure the clumsy attempts at seduction by their husband’s best friends and at the end of the evening be sober enough to undress the old fart and put him to bed.”
“And they call me a cynic?” Vaksberg said. “We will continue this conversation but an intermission is coming and I have to go onstage and remind our friends to be generous.” He poured champagne for Anya and Arkady. “Five minutes.”
Arkady did not understand why Alexander Vaksberg spent even a minute with such an ill-mannered guest. He watched Vaksberg’s progress on the dance floor. A billionaire. How much was that? A thousand million dollars. No wonder mere millionaires stepped aside as if an elephant were coming through.
Anya said, “So, you’re here to find the person who invited you?”
“Not me. Not exactly.”
“This is intriguing.”
“We’ll see.”
He laid on the table a postcard-size photograph of Olga looking straight up from a filthy mattress.
Anya recoiled. “Who is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s dead.”
Not all the beauty in the world could mask the fact that no light shone in her eyes, no breath stirred at her lips and she had no objection to the fly examining her ear.
“Why are you showing this picture to me?”
“Because she had a VIP pass to the fair.”
“It’s possible she’s a house dancer. I don’t remember her name. They have new dancers here all the time. She’s young. Dima, have you seen her?”
The bodyguard peered over Anya’s shoulder.
“No. They pay me to watch for troublemakers, not girls.”
“And if you find troublemakers?” Arkady was curious.
Dima opened his jacket enough to afford Arkady a glimpse of a matte-black pistol. “A Glock. German engineering never fails.”
“I thought no guns were allowed in the club.”
Anya said, “Only Sasha and the boys. It’s his club. He can write the rules any way he wants.”
During an intermission Vaksberg gave a surprisingly heartfelt speech about homeless children. Five to forty thousand lived on the streets of Moscow; there was no accurate count, he said. Most of them were runaways, boys and girls as young as five who preferred life on the street to a household ruined by alcohol, brutality and abuse. Freezing to death in the wintertime. Squatting in abandoned buildings and surviving on petty theft and restaurant scraps. Vaksberg pointed out volunteers with collection baskets. “Remember, one hundred percent of your donations go to Moscow’s invisible children.”
Then the records began spinning again and the relentless beat resumed.
“They didn’t hear a word,” Vaksberg said on his return. “They only know when to clap. I could have been talking to trained seals.”
Anya bestowed a kiss on Vaksberg’s cheek. “That’s why I love you, because you’re honest.”
“Only around you, Anya. Otherwise, I lie and fabricate as badly as Investigator Renko thinks. I’d be dead if I didn’t.”
Arkady asked, “What is the problem?”
“Sasha has been receiving threats. I mean more than usual.”
“Perhaps he should keep his head down instead of hosting a party with a thousand guests.”
Arkady was not about to feel sorry for a billionaire, even one who looked as exhausted as Vaksberg did. He seemed more and more in shadow, his shoulders weary, his smile forced. He was head of the Vaksberg Group, an international chain of casinos and resorts. It seemed to Arkady that Sasha Vaksberg should have been backed by an army of lawyers, accountants, croupiers and chefs rather than a female journalist, an investigator half out the door, a single bodyguard and a drunken dwarf. This was an historical fall. Vaksberg was one of the last of the first oligarchs. He still had a fortune and connections but every day that his operations were shut down his situation deteriorated. It was written on his face.
The houselights dimmed, and when they returned, the Club Nijinsky dancers were on the runway in braids, denim skirts, bare midriffs, short skirts and long socks. Their eyes were outlined with mascara, freckles and rouge applied almost clownishly to their cheeks. In other words, as child prostitutes.
“Ready?” The tennis star had been asked to do the honors with a simpler script in hand.
The dancers straightened up. They might not have been from the Bolshoi but they knew the basic positions of ballet.
“First position!” the tennis player said.
The first girl stood with her feet set heel to heel and her hands on her waist.
Anya said, “I remember this. Every little girl goes through a ballet phase. Then ice skating and then sex.”
“Second position!”
The next girl widened her legs and held her arms out at shoulder level.
“Third position!”
The third girl brought her legs together, her right heel ahead of her left. Left arm as before. Right arm lifted in gentle curve overhead.
“Fifth position!”
Legs crossed, left foot touching right instep. Both arms lifted.
Anya asked Vaksberg, “What happened to the fourth position?”
Some in the crowd assumed the tennis player had made a mistake and yelled, “We want the fourth position!”
The call was picked up by the crowd; playfully, but also as a taunt, they stomped their feet and shouted in unison, “We want the fourth! We want the fourth!”
The tennis player burst into tears.
Vaksberg sighed. “It’s Wimbledon all over again. I have to deal with this.”
A spotlight followed Vaksberg to the stage. On the way Arkady watched the transformation from a defeated man to an energized, take-charge Sasha Vaksberg who bounded up the stairs to the stage and took the microphone. The man had stage presence, Arkady thought. The crowd chanted and he faced them down. He smiled them down.
“Do you want to see the fourth?”
“Yes!”
He shook off his jacket and handed it to the tennis player.
“I can’t hear you. Do you really want to see the fourth?”
“Yes!”
“What a feeble choir. You are a disgrace to the city of Moscow. For the last time, do you want to see the fourth position?”
“YES!”
Vaksberg did it deadpan. Right foot pointed out, left foot tucked behind, left hand on the waist and the right arm raised in triumph or grace.
The reaction was shock and delight. Sasha Vaksberg clowning? Hijacking the joke and turning it around until applause started first from the old lions in the upper tiers and then the young crowd on the floor. “Bravo”s and “Encore”s broke out.
Arkady said, “He’s a comedian too?”
“He still has a few surprises. When the guests leave the fair
tonight, they might talk about a Bugatti for him and a Bulgari for her, but you can be sure that they’ll talk about an unworried Sasha Vaksberg.”
“He was lucky he knew what to do.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it.”
That took Arkady a second to decipher.
“You mean it was staged? The entire routine? The tennis player crying? How could he even come up with the idea like that?”
“Because he’s Sasha Vaksberg. Let me see the photo again.”
Vaksberg took bows. Anya studied the head shot. Smeared mascara and rouge couldn’t hide how beautiful the dead girl was and how unblinking, as if she were watching clouds.
“It’s Vera,” Anya said in a rush. “It’s the missing dancer.”
“Vera what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re a reporter. Maybe it’s in your notepad.”
“Of course.” Anya flipped through the pad. “Here it is, a list of Nijinsky dancers, starting with Vera Antonova.” She gave Arkady a second assessment. “Suddenly you sound like an investigator.”
12
Zhenya and Maya shared a bag of chips at the all-night café in Yaroslavl Station while he taught her how to use her new cell phone. She tended to shout because there was no wire.
“I can’t believe you never used a mobile phone before. Never texted? Videoed?”
“No.”
“Where are you from, anyway?”
“You wouldn’t know it.”
“Try me.”
“There’s no point.”
“Why not?”
“There’s no point. So now that I have a telephone, what do I do? I don’t know anyone to call.”
“You can call me. I put my name at the top of your speed dial.”
“Can you take it off?”
“You don’t want my number?”
“I don’t want anyone’s name or number. Can you take it off?”
“Of course. I’ll delete it. No problem.”