Londongrad (32 page)

Up here were the antiques, the porcelain figures, the Soviet army gear, the bad oil paintings, the rugs, and a man selling posters.

I stopped for a minute. Piles of old posters were on his stall, posters depicting Soviet space, Soviet agriculture, politics, heroic figures. I moved on, I looked into the faces of guys sitting by their stalls playing chess. I searched for somebody who might sell me a gun.

Then I saw the postcards, and the period photographs; jumbled on one stall were pictures of men and women in high-collared blouses and turn-of-the-century suits—sepia photographs from the beginning of the twentieth century. Something drew me to one picture. I picked it up. It looked familiar, this family photograph, and I saw the resemblance. It was a picture of my father’s grandfather, who had fought in the revolution. Next to him was a young man with a baby, a little boy, my father. I would never get away from this place, this country. I bought the picture.

I went back down. I went to the edge of the market where there were people selling canned food and old shoes. A guy in rap pants saw me, and sidled up to me, and offered me meds, a handful of pills he probably swiped from a hospital. I told him in Russian to fuck off. Another had some weed, and I blew him off, and turned my back. But they had made me for a guy who wanted something and if it wasn’t drugs, it was probably weapons.

The gun I got was a .22, like a toy pistol. It wasn’t new. It looked like something for shooting rabbits. The guy sold me a box of ammo to go with it.

It was a piece of crap, and after I paid him cash, and put it in my pocket, I felt like a fool. What good was it except to give me some kind of solace, I thought as I left the market.

I got the subway. I looked at my notebook for the address I wanted. Changed trains. Got lost. I was looking for the shelter where Valentina had worked, the shelter she supported.

When I emerged from the subway someplace near the center of town, I realized I’d made a mistake again. I stopped to ask directions. A plump woman in a hot pink dress smiled and told me how to go. And then I saw him.

If I hadn’t screwed up, if I hadn’t lost my way, maybe I would never have seen him on that corner. But, of course, he would have found me, one way or the other, this guy in a Brooks Brothers jacket, blue and white seersucker, who stood on the opposite side of the street, staring at me. He removed his Ray-Bans and peered hard. He looked like an American tourist— the jacket, the khakis, the dark blue polo shirt, the Timberlands.

Head cocked, stare quizzical—it was like a performance, a man asking himself: do I recognize that guy in jeans?

Once more he looked, raised a hand as if in greeting, got his cellphone out.

Who was he? Was he somebody from home I didn’t remember? How else would he know me? The intensity of his interest bothered me. He didn’t call out. He didn’t approach me, and I backed off into the subway station.

I wasn’t officially on the job in Moscow. I wasn’t a cop here. As a Russian kid, I had never thought about being a policeman. All I ever wanted was to listen to jazz and find an easy life. If we’d stayed, I would have ended up teaching English. I would have been just another cog in the system, an unhappy guy who drank too much and secretly listened to music at home late at night.

Tolya Sverdloff thought I had a moral code, that I became a cop to help people. He didn’t understand. I’d become a cop because it seemed the best way to fit into New York, to belong.

It was for the sense of belonging that I loved being on the job, because of the other guys, the noises in the station house, the late-night drinking sessions, the weddings and funerals, people like my friend, Hank Provone over on Staten Island who had made me part of his family. No matter how brutal things got, no matter what shit I saw or stepped into—and this included the criminals and the cops—I wanted in.

The subway train shunted into the station I was looking for, I got out and found my way to Valentina’s shelter, her orphanage. When I saw it, saw the little cross that had been hung on the wall in the vestibule, something in my gut told me this was where it had all started.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

“She was like a saint,” said the tiny woman at the shelter when I asked about Valentina. “She gave us money, clothes, food, diapers for the babies. She found jobs for the young women we rescued from train stations, and the girls whose parents pimped them out for small change, girls of twelve and thirteen, would you like some coffee, please?” added the woman who introduced herself as Elisabetta Anton.

Her small smooth face was surrounded by fine white hair. Her age was hard to tell. Her English was exquisite. On her office desk was an iPod with small speakers. From it came the Beatles. “Norwegian Wood” was on, turned very low.

“A present from Valentina,” she said. “She knew when I was a girl, long ago, the Beatles meant everything to me and they were banned for so long. I’m sorry, I was thinking about her. I like to think about her. The news was so devastating it was hard to believe, but I was not surprised.”

Orphanage Number Six, as it had been in Soviet times, was a free-standing building with a ramshackle playground next to it. The concrete walls outside were stained with water. It still served children, Elisabetta told me, but some rooms had been converted to house older girls who needed shelter. In them, she showed me the desks, a pair of beds with blue spreads, posters of pop stars.

The building had been scrubbed endlessly, there were colorful pictures on the walls done by the kids, but there was a dank sour smell was there, as if it literally came out of the walls.

In Elisabetta’s office was a framed photograph of a little girl. It was Luda, the child Val had tried once to adopt.

Elisabetta offered coffee again and I refused, and sat down opposite her at her pine desk. She put a pack of Russian cigarettes on the desk followed by a small box of chocolates.

“Please,” she said.

“Not surprised, you said?”

“When I heard, I thought to myself, he did this to her. They did this.”

“Who?”

“One moment,” said Elisabetta. She closed the door and lowered her voice. “I know what happened,” she said. “I know. I said to her, my darling girl, please be careful, please go slowly. But Valentina was an innocent, you see. She didn’t understand about greed. Or money. She simply didn’t get it,” Elisabetta added. “We had begun taking in girls of ten, eleven, twelve, who were working in the train stations as prostitutes, there is a lot of money in Moscow now, and while the girls used to go to Western Europe and America, there is more money here. It had become big business and there are big, how would you say it? Big players. In business. In the government. I said to her, Valentina, you must not talk about certain people. But she didn’t hear me. She was, after all, an American girl. Is somebody there?” she called out, and half rose from her seat. Nobody answered.

“Who were you expecting?”

She turned up the volume. “Eleanor Rigby” played.

“I don’t know,” Elisabetta said. “Since Valentina’s death, there have been people dropping by for no reason in particular, you see. She took everyone on. She criticized everyone and everything she didn’t like, she picked up the phone and called government officials. Worst, she spoke to journalists. This can get you killed. She made friends with a woman who wrote about the abuse of children and girls, and the money and the connections with the government. Let me show you some of the girls, her girls,” said Elisabetta, taking a binder and opening it, turning the pages, showing me the pictures.

I stopped her. From my pocket, I took the picture of Masha Panchuk.

“Yes,” said Elisabetta, “she was one of ours. Her name was Maria. She was a Ukrainian girl who ran away from home and was found by her uncle who put her to work. Valentina got her out of the country and to London. I don’t think she was sixteen years old.” Turning pages in the binder, Elisabetta found the girl’s picture, a sad beautiful girl, photographed by Val.

“What did they call Maria?”

“We called her Masha.”

It had started here. In this shelter, on a crummy backstreet in Moscow.

“Masha’s last name, it was Panchuk?”

“Not then. Only after she married a fellow named Zim Panchuk. You knew her?”

I told Elisabetta about Masha’s death.

“My God,” she said.

“I think she was killed in Val’s place, she had a purse Val had given her with her name in it, and when they realized it was the wrong girl, they went after Valentina.”

Elisabetta put her small chin on one hand and smoked with the other.

“Who did it?”

“You knew her father?”

“Of course. Anatoly Anatolyevich, he gave us money. He came here a few times, he was so jolly with the little children, and he sang for them, and brought them presents, usually food so exotic they had never seen it. They thought he was Father Christmas,” she said. “He did whatever Valentina asked. In the last few months, I believe, she spent most of her time working on our behalf. I felt she had become obsessed.”

“You said she made friends with a journalist?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Please, tell me.”

“It’s dangerous,” she said. “They kill journalists.”

“They killed Valentina,” I said. “I need help.”

“I’ll see,” she said. “But now there are babies who need feeding. I must go.”

“I’m a policeman. In the United States. Valentina’s father is my best friend, she was my friend.” I leaned over the desk.

From a drawer, Elisabetta took a photograph and sat gazing at it. “She was such a special girl,” she said. “She was pure.”

“Valentina?”

“Yes, her soul was pure,” she said, and handed it to me. In the picture were Val and Grisha, his arm around her.

“You knew him?”

She nodded.

“What did you think?”

“I met him quite a while ago, not long after Val started helping us. She wanted everybody to love him, the way it always is when you first fall in love. Recently she had stopped talking about him. I didn’t pry. Once, she said just that he didn’t believe in the things she believed in anymore.”

“I see,” I said. I had heard it before. Valentina had fallen hard for Grisha at first. Later, she backed away, then broke it off. For this, I thought, most of all for this, he killed her.

Elisabetta got up to leave.

“Have you seen him?” I said.

She turned from the door.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“He came in a few days ago,” said Elisabetta. “He asked about Mr Sverdloff. My assistant talked to him, he wanted Valentina’s files, she said there were none, that she had taken them to America with her.”

“How was he?”

“Angry,” she said.

“Enough to kill?”

“My assistant was frightened, it’s all I know.”

Elisabetta went to the back of the building where I could hear the babble of babies, and returned with a short fat woman. “This is Marina,” she said, introducing the woman. “She is a journalist, but she helps us here at the shelter. I have to go.”

“Marina Fetushova,” said the woman, and lit up a stinky Russian cigarette.

I introduced myself to Fetushova. She didn’t move, just kept smoking.

“You help out here?” I said in Russian.

“None of your business.”

“I need information.”

“We can’t talk here,” she said, and without another word, she walked through the front door, blowing smoke into the open air. I followed her.

We were at the edge of a playground where a gang of eight-year-olds were climbing a jungle gym and skipping rope. Fetushova watched them.

Head set between beefy shoulders, she wore a sloppy green sweater and a gray skirt. In spite of the booming voice, and the fact that she swore like crazy, she had a cultivated accent.

“You’re a cop?” she said.

“Yes. From New York.”

“What is it you need?”

Her tone was brusque, almost hostile.

“I want to find somebody.”

“Who’s that?”

“Grigory Curtis.”

Fetushova swore, calling Curtis a prick and much worse, and then turned away.

I grabbed her arm.

“Don’t do that,” she said, shaking loose. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t talk to you here,” she said.

“What’s wrong with here?”

“Don’t be an ass.”

The sun beat down on the playground. The kids kept playing.

“So somebody knew about Val’s involvement here?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“People watch this place?”

“My God, you’re naive. What do you think?”

Leaning forward, as close to her as I could without her slugging me, I said, without thinking about it, “I’m desperate.”

Her expression changed slightly, a mixture of sarcasm and sympathy.

“You don’t sound like a fucking pig cop,” she said.

“I’m a friend.”

“You’re from where?”

“Here.”

“Moscow?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“You’re interested?”

“I’m only talking to you while I finish my smoke,” she said.

“Give me one.”

She offered me the pack, and her lighter. I told her the street where I grew up, the street where we moved after my father lost his job, the school I went to.

“Yeah, me too, same time,” she said.

There was a flash of recognition. Now she understood, it seemed to say, she knew all about me. But I looked at her and saw an old Russian woman, not somebody my age. Maybe that was what her work had done to her.

“You remember the music teacher?” I said. “At our school?”

“Okay, forget the fucking small talk,” said Fetushova, drawing back, throwing her cigarette on the sidewalk, crushing it with her foot, walking closer to the playground.

“What happened here?”

“Fuck you,” she said. “I don’t talk about it,” she added, but she didn’t leave, just stood and watched as women came and went, bringing packages to the shelter. The kids played. The older girls watched them. In this shabby district, everybody was poor, shabbily dressed. But you could hear the traffic, the rumble, the scream of it.

In the middle of town, you saw a Moscow afloat on Russia’s supplies of oil and natural gas, heard the world bellowing for fuel, prices skyrocketing. In the center of the city, you could feel it, as if the resources, oil and gas, aluminum, nickel, diamonds, gold, and the revenues poured down a chute into the city from the Far East and the former republics. Money, money, money.