Moscow Noir

Unbuttoning his coat and wearily propping his elbows on his legs, he stared vacantly at the floor. In principle, it probably wasn’t such a bad thing that he was locked in. He hadn’t been able to take the loneliness in the first hours and days after completing his other contracts, and after resting up, he’d probably have headed out to find himself some excitement. Especially since yesterday’s bloodbath on Tverskaya hadn’t even been a contract but—no getting around it—an act of extreme violence by him, Arkasha Veltsev, his own idea, his own justice, and his own insanity: six corpses, two of whom were—if you don’t get bogged down in details about how the scene of the crime was a nightclub closed to mere mortals—“innocent bystanders.”

“This is a mouse trap. And I’m the cheese.”

Mechanically, Veltsev reached for the gun in his underarm holster and turned to face the voice. In a partition behind the door, her legs gathered up into a shabby armchair, sat a girl of eighteen or twenty wearing a flowered Uzbek robe and a skullcap tilted over one ear. Her thickly painted mouth and eyebrows made her look older. She was trying to hide her smile, tickled she’d been able to hide her presence so simply all this time, and she rolled an unlit cigarette in her fingers. Veltsev dropped his arm and straightened his coat hem.

“Who are you?”

Lighting up, the girl released a stream of smoke upward.

“Lana,” she answered in a tone that said she was surprised someone might not know. “I’m telling you—a free offer.”

Veltsev pulled off his cap and scratched his head. “That’s why the old woman locked the door. I didn’t say that—”

“Remember the tale of Buratino?” the girl interrupted him. “The one with the cauldron? The cauldron’s over there. Freedom’s here.”

“What cauldron’s that?”

“What do you picture when you feel like a vacation?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not true. You picture something.” Squinting dreamily, Lana pushed her skullcap forward and threw her head back with a jutting chin. “Palm trees. The ocean. Cocktails down the hatch. Slut city. Happy now?” She nodded at the window. “We’re not doing so well with sluts, of course. It’s potluck, as they say. But freedom—up the wazoo. What’s your name?”

“Listen,” Veltsev sighed, “I just needed a place to crash.”

“Ah-hah,” Lana answered vaguely. “Just crashing.” Tapping her ash into the saucer under her chair, she played with the cigarette as if she were finishing telling herself something.

“A place to sleep,” Veltsev corrected himself.

“Yesterday”—she smiled—“this old guy, you know what he asked me to do?”

“What?”

“Piss on his privates.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I sprayed his balls and that was it. To each his own, as they say.”

Veltsev glanced at his watch. “What else do they ask for?”

Lana scratched her sweet knee, which was poking out from under her robe, with her elbow. “Marriage!” She aimed her cigarette at him. “Haven’t you heard that prostitutes make the most faithful wives?”

Veltsev lay down. The little man hanging from the chandelier bobbed in front of his face.

“I heard something else.”

“What?”

“That wives are faithful prostitutes.”

Lana burst out laughing. “Are you married or something?”

“No.”

“A virgin?”

He ran the back of his head over the brush-stiff pile of rug. “Listen, lay off.”

Lana lowered her voice: “But I am.”

“What?”

“Well, a virgin.”

Veltsev sighed. “Naturally.”

“No, honestly!” The chair creaked under Lana. “Don’t believe me? Last month I got sewn back up. I got engaged to an Uzbek, a cotton trader, while he was waiting for the train with his shipment. He fell in love, he said, over the moon. He promised me a car. Only according to our custom, he says, you have to get the bed bloody the first night. To be blunt, he gave me a hundred bucks for plastic surgery.”

“So you mean you want to get back at it?” Veltsev picked at the rug with his finger.

“No, why?” Lana seemed genuinely surprised.

“What do you mean, why?” Veltsev didn’t understand.

Lana didn’t say anything.

“Sorry.”

“Basically, my Sharfik didn’t wait around for his train. My nice new fiancé got iced. They fished him out over there, from the Yauza, past the cemetery.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.” She took a long drag. “Everyone’s got their own craziness. Sharfik wanted to move his loot here because he got into some shit. But that’s like jumping from a train after flies. Can you imagine? You throw away everything you have—every last thing—and get out at the first stop.”

“And?” Veltsev propped himself up on one elbow.

“And, well, that’s it, all done.” Lana crushed her cigarette butt in the saucer, lowered her legs from the chair, went out into the front hall, and came back with a photograph, which she tossed down next to him on the bed.