Moscow Noir

Veltsev pulled his sleeve back over his watch. “In that case, calm down. They didn’t come for the money today.”

Lana dropped her arms. “What did they come for?”

“You.”

“Why?”

“He was going to have himself a horror flick. Do you have somewhere to go?”

“No.”

“I can put you up in a hotel for a little while.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have my passport.”

“Why not?”

“Baba Agafia has it.”

“So?”

“So she won’t give it back.”

Veltsev wiped his face, which was still wet from snow. “Damn. I can’t stay here long.”

Lana sniffed her swollen nose. “I’m not keeping you.”

Grinning, he gave her a close, appraising look. “That’s not likely to win you a star for heroism.”

Hugging her knees, Lana looked blindly ahead and fiddled with her toes. “Fine with me. We’ve got a whole cemetery full of heroes right here.”

Veltsev took the magazine out of the gun, brought it up to his eyes like a thermometer, and jammed the weapon back in the holster. “I’m asking you for the last time. Will you come with me?”

She didn’t answer, in fact she seemed to have stopped hearing him altogether. Veltsev took his wet cap off the shelf in the front hall, replaced it with three thousand-ruble bills, took one more look at Lana, and pushed the door open with his fist.

It was snowing a little less, but the wind had picked up. In the courtyard the wind beat only at the treetops, but as soon as Veltsev came out in the open it took his breath away. He was walking back to the subway, heading toward Menzhinsky Street, following the same route he’d taken an hour and ten minutes before—down the shoulder of the road between river and cemetery. “Pigheaded fool,” he said aloud through clenched teeth, squinting at the cutting snow. He raged less at Lana than at himself for imagining god knows what about her. Waiting for the Uzbek’s buddies to show up was sure suicide, and Veltsev had no idea where to get ahold of more rounds now. He’d cut off access to his home arsenal yesterday, and there was too much risk involved in going to his old suppliers. There was still one other Mityai gunman left, of course, Kirila the Kalmyk. Veltsev had beaten off a band of skinheads for him the year before last and ever since had been practically a second father to him. After what happened yesterday, however, when Kirila was left completely out of the loop, even his filial feelings might have changed; furthermore, contacting him now presented a purely technical problem. Veltsev had smashed the SIM card from his own telephone and thrown it out the day before as he left the club, and a call from Lana’s apartment could easily be traced. After taking a few shaky steps, Veltsev stood up and brushed the snow from his eyelashes. The thought of the phone in the Uzbek’s Land Cruiser came to him the second before he noticed the SUV there in front of him, right where he’d abandoned it.

Kirila the Kalmyk answered the moment the call went through.

“Yeah.”

“Got the number?” Veltsev said instead of a greeting.

“Yeah,” Kirila replied after a slight hesitation.

“Call back from a pay phone. Only not from your building or wherever you are.” Veltsev hung up, started the engine, adjusted the rearview mirror with a finger, and examined himself carefully. Weirdo psycho.

A transparent sticker with Arabic lettering bubbled up in the corner of the mirror. Veltsev was about to scratch it off when the phone rang. He picked up.

“Hello.”

The acute, spacious silence of the ether pulsed in the receiver. Veltsev called the incoming number—they were calling from a cell phone. Calling the Uzbek, that is.

“Hell on the line,” Veltsev said and he waited a little, ended the call, and looked in the mirror again. “Warm already.”

When Kirila called, his voice was cracking from strain. “Everyone got blown away. What were you thinking? The committee’s mopping up both the crooks and the cops. You know who Mityai was working for. They’ve got three mil on you.”

“Already know how you’ll spend it?” Veltsev asked.

Kirila said nothing, breathing loudly through his nose.

“Sorry,” Veltsev sighed. “Here’s what’s up. I need a couple of clips for my Beretta—bad. Forty minutes tops. Bring them?”

“Where?”

“Babushkinskaya. When you turn off Menzhinsky onto Olonetsky, there’s this business center. Right behind the cemetery. Can you make it?”

“I’ll try.”

Veltsev tossed the phone on the seat, turned the wheel from side to side, and, without putting the vehicle in gear, hit the pedal a few times, so abruptly and hard that the heavy vehicle rocked.

Half an hour later, Kirila’s Cayenne, plastered with snow, rolled into the vacant parking lot in front of the business center fence. Veltsev, who had left the Land Cruiser in back of the apartment building, was waiting behind the trees between the road and the river. Once he was convinced that Kirila had come alone and hadn’t brought a tail, he got in the car with him. The smell of alcohol struck him immediately.