An Image of Death (16 page)

“No way to tell without more canvassing.”

“So we’re basically back where we started?”

She sipped her beer.

“Which means I nearly got my head blown off for nothing.”

She looked down.

“You know, there’s something I don’t get. If everything is so vague, if we really don’t have any solid information, why did the guy pull a gun on me?”

“You really are from a different world, aren’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She stared into her glass.

“What are you saying?” I repeated. “That they’re Russian mafia or something?”

“I don’t know why people dignify them with a name. It’s like giving them an—an honor, a respect they don’t deserve. They’re scumbags.”

“I don’t know. From what I read, the Russians make the Italians look like nursery school kids.”

“They’re all assholes,” she said. “But the—the Eastern Europeans, the Russians, have an edge. They’d sooner waste you than reason with you. You look at them wrong, it’s over.”

I shivered, thinking how close I’d come to being one of the wasted.

“We were lucky.” Davis nodded, as if she knew what I was thinking. “Why do you think the women didn’t tell us shit? They knew what would happen to them if they did.”

I recalled Sofiya’s smile, toothy but empty. “All those stories about white slavery, women being forced into prostitution. Is that what we saw tonight?”

“It’s what they do. They lure girls out of villages and spin all sorts of stories about the life they’re gonna have in the west. They tell ’em they’ll start out as maids or nannies, but then, who knows? Models, movie stars, rich husbands. The girls, all dirt poor and naive, eat it up. They can’t wait. Then they get here, or Germany, or wherever they’re going, and find they’ve been turned into whores.” She sniffed. “They weed out the pretty ones and send them to the strip joint.”

I thought back to the women who cleaned my neighbor’s house. Their lined faces and rounded shoulders. None of them were young. Or pretty. “So why don’t you bust them—the girls, I mean? Wouldn’t that get them away from these creeps?”

“As soon as they’re out, they’d go back. Most of ’em are on drugs, anyway. And the ones who aren’t don’t have any money. Or clothes. The pimps even take their passports.” Davis shook her head. “These are men who throw women out of third-story windows. With other people watching.”

“Oh, come on.”

“True story.” She swilled down more beer. “Guess it does make the Outfit look warm and fuzzy, huh?”

“So why don’t the police go after the pimps? Or are they too busy going to Dunkin’—” I stopped short. I’d almost forgotten who I was talking to.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, ignoring my crack, “the pimps’d like nothing better. They love our jails. They get fed, they get clothes, they even get a fucking lawyer. Compared to their country, it’s heaven.”

I reached for another mushroom, took a bite, and folded what was left into my napkin. “Do you think the woman on the tape was one of them? A prostitute?”

“And got killed because she said something to the wrong people?”

I nodded.

“Beats me.”

Two men with red cheeks came into the tavern, shaking snow off their jackets and boots. They gave us a once-over, then sat at the bar. Their conversation, louder than it had to be, was filled with bravado about four-wheel drives and antilock brakes.

Davis drained her glass. She was throwing them down pretty fast. I wondered if she was as looped as I was. Then she set her glass down, leaned back, and squinted at me, as if she’d just noticed I was there. “You don’t like cops much, do you?”

I thumped my glass on the table.

“I bet you were one of those protestor types, weren’t you? The ones who called cops pigs. What…did someone beat up on you during a protest march?”

I shook my head.

Her eyebrows shot up.

It was cold and late, and I was too drunk to prevaricate. “I was caught shoplifting once.” I launched into the story. Even though it was five years ago, the disgrace, the humiliation, rolled over me like it was yesterday.

She listened. Then, “Scared straight, huh?”

“I guess.” I looked at the floor. You could see how uneven it was. How it sloped down from the middle of the room.

“Man, I wish there were more like you. The streets would be a whole lot safer.”

I looked up. She was grinning. I swirled the last of the beer in my glass. “Yeah. That’s me. Citizen of the year.”

She laughed.

“What about you? Why’d you become a cop?”

Her smile faded. After a long moment, she said, “You ever see the movie
Monster’s Ball?”

“The one where Halle Berry has an affair with Billy Bob Thornton?” I paused. “I saw it. But he’s a prison guard, not a cop.”

“Not that.” She waved her hand. “There’s this one scene, in a bar, I think, or maybe a really small grocery store, and there’s this sign in the window that says: ‘Georgia is peachy.’ You remember that?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah? Well, I always thought that’s where I came from.”

“I don’t understand. You thought you were from Georgia?”

“When I was a baby, my mom always used to sing that Ray Charles song, you know, ‘Georgia on My Mind’? Then, afterward, after she split, I thought I’d…well, maybe she went back there, and I’d try to.…” Her voice trailed off. “Hell, what did I know?” She lapsed into silence. Her eyes had a haunted look.

I kept my mouth shut. She hadn’t answered the question. Then again, maybe she had.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

They knew it was coming. There was plenty of warning; the Berlin wall in ’89, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, a more violent one in Romania. Still, no one thought it would spread to the republics. They were intrinsic parts of the whole, not appendages that could be lopped off at will.

But when the Baltic States started to make noise about independence, a subtle tension came over everything. Arin could feel it on the streets of Tbilisi. Perhaps not a tension, she corrected herself, but a stirring. A subdued energy. She saw it on faces; no longer listless and stoic, but expectant. Even hopeful. As if they were about to cast off a burden.

At the Vaziani base, though, soldiers still went out on maneuvers, officers ran through drills. Her father-in-law, the major general, kept going to international conferences, bringing back words of reform, not revolution. Everything would settle down, he claimed, when the economy improved. And there were many, he said, Westerners included, who wanted to help with that improvement.

Arin wasn’t reassured. She heard the hushed talk over bottles of vodka late at night. Saw the uncertainty during the day. She felt as if they were all dangling over a cliff, like those American cartoons where you saw someone’s legs spinning in the air before they fell.

Then, after a turbulent year during which the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time, there was no more denial. The unthinkable had happened. The Soviet Union had collapsed.

That first winter, the streets were full of passion and hope and infinite promise. By spring, that sense of possibility spread to the base, when it was announced the Russian army would replace the Soviets. For the Russian officers already in the military, it was an emotional moment. The Red Army, once a proud symbol of Russia’s might, would once again assume its rightful place among the great militaries of the world. What’s more, the new president of Georgia had close ties to Russia, and the two countries had signed a treaty allowing Russia to maintain its bases in Georgia. The future looked bright.

For Arin life went on in much the same way. She spent her days largely unconcerned about geopolitics and world events. She was still the wife of an important young army officer, with all the attendant privileges. Indeed, she had other matters to occupy her mind. She’d skipped her period twice now, and she was beginning to have nausea in the mornings. A trip to the midwife with Mika confirmed it. Arin was pregnant.

Deliriously happy when she broke the news to Sacha, only later did she realize that he didn’t seem quite as thrilled. Oh, he kissed her and held her and touched her, but, in retrospect, she realized his response was muted. She didn’t dwell on it, though, and threw herself into ordering furniture from Turkey, linens from Armenia, baby clothes from the West.

As time passed, though, money began to be a problem. The rubles that flowed in from Moscow to support the troops slowed to a trickle, then stopped. Her father-in-law said it was temporary; once the transition was complete, all would be well. But, as months passed with no money for salaries, equipment, or supplies, conditions on the base deteriorated. Soldiers, many of whom had not been paid in months, grew desperate. Some scrambled for odd jobs to support their families. Others left the base.

By July there wasn’t enough money to pay the rent on their apartment, and Arin and Sacha moved in with his parents. Arin was bitterly disappointed. She and Sacha and the baby would share a cramped room; plans for the nursery would have to wait. Still, she tried to keep her spirits high. She was six months pregnant, glowingly healthy, and the baby kicked all the time. This was only a temporary setback. Once the money rolled in from Moscow—and hadn’t the major general said it would?—life would return to the way it was.

But the money never came, and the number of soldiers abandoning the army swelled. The day that Vlad left, with Mika tearfully following him, was one of the worst in Arin’s life. They were moving into town, Vlad said. They needed money to survive. Arin made Mika promise to stay in touch, but as days, and then weeks, passed without a word, Arin worried. Was Mika all right? Or was she angry at her, jealous, perhaps, that Arin was still on the base?

It wasn’t long afterward that the stories surfaced: stories about supplies and materials disappearing from the base. In the beginning it was mostly uniforms and equipment, goods that could be quickly fenced. Soon, though, the rumors included small arms, grenades, and other munitions.

Everyone knew former soldiers were ransacking the armory, but the major general said it was an insignificant problem. A little of that was to be expected in any military organization. Though unfortunate, it was something that had been condoned for ages. Especially in hard times.

So Arin didn’t dwell on it—until Sacha started spending long periods of time off base, not coming home until late at night. When she asked where he’d been, he’d say he was visiting Vlad. But he never seemed to have any news about Mika, and he never told Arin what Vlad was doing.

As his absences grew more frequent, Arin tried to convince herself Sacha wasn’t involved in the thefts. He was an officer, the son of the major general. He never wanted an army career in the first place. He wanted to be a musician. Perhaps that was what he was doing off base. Trying to find work in a band. Musicians kept late hours, didn’t they? Arin buoyed herself with the thought that any day now he would surprise her by becoming lead guitar in a band.

When Sacha began staying out until dawn, though, Arin knew something was terribly wrong. His sour breath and bloodshot eyes were bad enough. But now, for the first time since their marriage, he turned away from her in bed. Arin knew some men were afraid to make love to a pregnant woman, but Sacha had never seemed uncomfortable before.

She wondered if there was another woman—he was exhibiting the classic signs—but she was afraid to confront him. In the meantime, she vowed to get her figure back after the baby was born. She would not let herself wear the shapeless dresses and babushkas her mother-in-law did. Arin would stay young and beautiful and vital. Sacha would not need other women.

Tomas was born during a gentle morning rain the last week of October. Sacha wasn’t home for Arin’s labor and didn’t see his son until a day later. Arin’s mother-in-law attended the birth, all the while telling her about the pain she’d endured in childbirth.

But Tomas was robust and healthy, and he took to the breast right away. Her mother-in-law claimed babies didn’t smile until they were six weeks old, but Arin knew better. Tomas smiled at eight days and stole Arin’s heart. Over the next few weeks, as she regained her strength, Tomas became her only focus. Feeding him, bathing, rocking, walking. And if Sacha didn’t seem very interested in his son—or her—Arin didn’t mind. Tomas depended on her completely.

It was during their walks in a borrowed stroller that Arin noticed how ragged the base had become. Part of it was the frigid winter, but there was something else, too. No one was trying to keep up pretenses any more. Even her father-in-law, a fastidious man with a crisply pressed uniform and well-shined medals, was looking disheveled.

A snowstorm swept in during the night Sacha didn’t come home, and they couldn’t search for him until the next afternoon. When they did, they found his body at the end of an alley in Old Town. No one knew how he died, or if they did, they weren’t saying. He’d been beaten, the police admitted, but they couldn’t determine if that had caused his death. One of the officers tried to shift the blame back to the army, claiming Sacha died from
dyedovschina
, the fierce hazing of new recruits. But Sacha had been an officer for years. Another officer tried to say it was suicide—a growing problem in the military—until he was apprised of Sacha’s bruises and blows.

Arin knew it was all a cover. She’d heard the rumors, whispered on the wind, about soldiers forced to borrow money from “commercial interests.” When they were unable to pay it back, it was said, these commercial interests thought nothing of taking the soldier’s life in exchange. In the wake of the government’s collapse and the ensuing chaos, they had become powerful forces.