Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [24]
“I remember a Mercedes,” Jaak said.
“They were already gone.”
“They?” Arkady asked. “Who was they?”
“A driver. I know the other one was a woman.”
“Can you draw her?”
Gary drew a stick figure with a big bust, high heels and curly hair. “Maybe blond. I know she was built.”
“A real careful observer,” Jaak said.
“So you saw her out of the car, too,” Arkady said.
“Yeah, coming from Rudy’s.”
Arkady held the paper a couple of ways. “Good drawing.”
Gary nodded.
Arkady thought so, too. With his blue body and busted face, Gary looked just like the stick figure on the page, rendered more human by his picture.
The South Port car market was bounded by Proletariat Prospect and a loop of the Moscow River. New cars were ordered in a hall of white marble. No one went inside; there were no new cars. Outside, gamblers laid cardboard on the ground to play three-card monte. Construction fences were papered with offers (“Have tires in medium condition for 1985 Zhigulis”) and pleas (“Looking for fan belt for ’64 Peugeot”). Jaak wrote down the number for the tires, just in case.
At the end of the fence was a dirt lane of used Zhigulis and Zaporozhets, two-cylinder German Trabants and Italian Fiats as rusty as ancient swords. Buyers moved with eyes that scrutinized tire tread, odometer, upholstery, dropping to one knee with a flashlight to see whether the engine was actively leaking oil on the spot. Everyone was an expert. Even Arkady knew that a Moskvitch built in far-off Izhevsk was superior to a Moskvitch built in Moscow, and that the only clue was the insignia on the grille. Around the cars were Chechens in warm-up outfits. They were dark, bulky men with low brows and long stares.
Everyone cheated. Car sellers went to the market clerk’s wooden shack to learn—depending on model, year and condition—what price they could demand (and on which they would pay tax), which bore no resemblance to the money that actually passed between seller and buyer. Everyone—seller, buyer and clerk—understood that the real price would be three times higher.
Chechens cheated in the most devious way. Once a Chechen had title in hand, he paid only the official price, and there was as much chance of a seller getting the rest of his money as taking a bone from the jaws of a wolf. Of course the Chechen turned around and sold the car for full price. The tribe amassed fortunes at the South Port market. Not off every sale—that would destroy the incentive that brought fresh cars—but off an intelligent percentage. Chechens culled the market as if it were a flock of sheep that was all their own.
Jaak and Arkady stopped halfway down the line and the detective nodded toward a car parked by itself at the end of the lane. It was an old, black, once-official Chaika sedan with a scalloped chrome grille rubbed to a mirror finish. Curtains were drawn across the side windows of the backseat.
“Fucking Arabs,” Jaak said.
“They’re no more Arab than you are,” Arkady said. “I thought you were free of prejudice. Makhmud is an old man.”
“I hope he’s got the strength to show you his collection of skulls.”
Arkady went on alone. The last car for sale was a Lada so dented that it looked as if it had been rolled to the market end over end. Two young Chechens with tennis bags stopped him to ask where he was headed. When Arkady mentioned Makhmud’s name, they escorted him to the Lada, pushed him into the back, felt his arms, legs and torso for a gun or a wire and told him to wait. One went to the Chaika; the other got in front, opened his bag and turned to slide a gun between the two front seats so that the muzzle nestled in Arkady’s lap.
The gun was a new single-barrel “Bear” carbine cut to half-length and retooled for shot. The visors of the car were fringed with beads, the dash