Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [42]
“Rudy was a sports enthusiast—that’s why you asked me to come? You had a trophy for him?”
Antonov asked, “He’s really dead?”
“Absolutely dead.”
“Follow up, follow up!” Antonov shouted up at the ring. To Arkady he said, “Forget the trophy.”
“Forget the trophy?” Antonov had called the office twice a day about the trophy.
“What’s Rudy going to do with a trophy now?”
“That’s what I wondered,” Arkady said.
“I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I had a question. Say, in a cooperative, the person who signs the checks dies. Does that mean the other partner in the cooperative gets whatever money is left in the account?”
“You were partners with Rudy?”
Antonov sneered as if the question were ridiculous. “Not me personally, no. The club. Excuse me. Don’t switch leads! If you’re right-handed, stay right-handed!”
Arkady started to wake up. “The club and Rudy?”
“Local Komsomols are allowed to be in cooperatives. It’s only fair, and sometimes it helps to have an official partner involved when you want to bring in certain stuff.”
“Slot machines?” Arkady took the happiest guess.
Antonov remembered his watch and whacked the mallet on a pail. The fighters reeled away from each other, neither able to raise a glove.
“It’s perfectly legal,” Antonov said and lowered his voice. “TransKom Services, with a capital K.”
TransKom. The Young Communist League plus Rudy equaled the Intourist slots. Seen in the light of Rudy’s talent, this dingy little Komsomol club was dross turned to gold. For Arkady it was a minor victory, admittedly inconsequential compared to finding Kim.
Antonov said, “You’ll see, the club’s on the cooperative papers. There were the names of the partners, statement of services, bank accounts, everything.”
“You have the papers?”
“Rudy had all the papers,” Antonov said.
“Well, I think Rudy took them with him.”
The dead were perverse.
In the morgue they were patient. Gurneys lined the hall, the bodies under soiled sheets waiting their turn on the table with a final, supine lack of urgency. No matter to them if they rotted for lack of formaldehyde. There was no offense taken if an investigator lit an expensive American cigarette to mask the stench. Rudy was in a drawer, internal organs in a plastic bag between his legs. Polina, however, was gone.
Arkady found her midway in a line of a thousand people queuing for beets in the small park next to Petrovka. Rain fell in a steady, insinuating drizzle that sparkled around lamplights. Some umbrellas were up, though not many, because people needed both hands free for bags. At the head of the line soldiers piled sacks in the mud. With her raincoat buttoned to her chin, drops beaded on her dark hair, Polina looked as if she were being borne forward by a centipede of pinched eyes and mouths. There were other lines for eggs and bread, and a line that wound around a kiosk for cigarettes. Food vigilantes patrolled the lines to make sure no one switched. Arkady didn’t have his coupons, so all this plenty was wasted on him.
Polina said, “I came here after the dock to finish up Rudy. I told you there was too much blood. He’s all yours now.”
Arkady doubted there could ever be too much blood for Polina, but he maintained an attitude of appreciation. Obviously she had worked all night.
“Polina, I’m sorry about the dock. I’m terrible about forensic medicine and pathology. You have more nerve than I do.”
Behind Polina, a woman with a gray shawl, gray brows and mustache leaned toward him to demand, “Are you trying to cut in?”
“No.”
The woman said, “They should shoot people who cut in.”
“Watch him,” advised the man behind her. He was a short, bureaucratic type with an impressive briefcase, the kind that could hold a lot of beets. All the way down the queue, Arkady saw faces regarding him with suppressed fury. They moved one lockstep forward, crowding to make a wall he couldn’t breach.
“How long have you been in line?” Arkady asked Polina.
“Just an hour. I’ll