The Domino Game (48 page)

When the main street came to a sudden stop she swung left towards the ocean. She was getting nearer to the wheel now, she could see it clearly in the distance, scooping in a circle through the charcoal sky. She turned right again, running past a park and a huge building with a massive sign saying it was an aquarium, then past a vacant lot beneath the rail track that seemed to go on forever, the chain-wire fence that lined it sliding behind her in a blur.

The lights ahead were growing brighter and she could hear music now. Organ music, curious and happy like a fairground. Like Gorky Park.

Coming up on her right was a building that looked like a railway station. She felt safer here. She began to slow down, falling to a gradual stop, bending forward and propping her hands against her knees, heaving for breath.

From this point on the void beneath the railway tracks had been closed in to form a long row of sheds, converted to shops and market stalls selling flowers and second-hand furniture and cheap watches and comic books and everything between. Larisa walked past them her chest heaving. She could have been in Moscow… at Kievskaya or Leningrad Station or anywhere like that. The same stalls. The same goods. The same
babushkas
sitting on their stools, waiting patiently for their next customer to come along, while all around them crazy, wild-eyed young hustlers, too impatient to wait, darted from one passer-by to the next, desperately working the crowds.

A signpost fixed to the brickwork between two stalls told her she was on a street named Surf Avenue. She walked on a little, her shoulders still heaving, then made her way to the curb. Waited for a break in the traffic then crossed over to the other side, slipping into one of the brightly lit laneways that ran down to the beach.

She was in a crazy world now. Bright lights and blaring music and laughter and howls of delighted terror trailing from the roller-coasters that swept past at either side. Banners and colored hoardings. Pink and yellow and blue and green with strange paintings and funny lettering. No Russian here; only English. Or was it American. Her head scrolled from one side to the other, her eyes trailing across the signs.

Quik Dogs! Cold Beer! Cotton
Candy.

Sideshows by the Seashore. Freaks, Wonders & Human Curiosities… They’re real. They’re here! They’re
alive!

To the right, on a platform in front of a red curtain, a skinny man in a light blue suit and a straw hat was calling into a microphone, a tiny, near naked man half Larisa’s height strutting around beside him, glaring and flexing his enormous muscles at the crowd. The amplified words traced past her in a blur as she turned. On the stand opposite, two pale, thin girls in short black dresses, with nose studs and bleached blonde hair, were cradling a huge yellow snake of some kind, letting it slither across their shoulders and around their necks.

Larisa shuddered and picked up her pace, clutching the bag to her side, starting to run again, forward towards the place where the huge wheel stood still, towering above the boardwalk, its brightly painted carriages swaying in the air.

“Here!” Nikolai shouted. “This is it! Turn right.”

Kelly swung the Jaguar beneath the elevated rail line, winding it around a cluster of startled pedestrians, straightening up and pushing it across the intersection. To her right Nikolai was leaning forward, peering through the windshield, his eyes sweeping the street. He stabbed his finger towards a building on the left.

“There!”

Kelly slewed the car into a vacant space at the curb, leaving the tail hanging out into the street. Beside her his hand was already reaching for the door. He swung back to her as his fingers locked around the chrome catch.

“You stay here!”

She pulled the handbrake and hit the gearshift into park, throwing him a sharp look.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

He hesitated a moment then his face locked in a grimace of capitulation. He threw the door aside and leapt out, leaving it hanging open behind him. Kelly followed, struggling her seat belt aside, slamming her own door and taking off after him across the pavement and into the building. By the time they reached the fourth level she was gasping as if she had just finished the New York marathon and Nikolai was already almost a flight ahead. She clutched the balustrade and pulled a breath, put her head down and pushed herself forward again, catching up at the sixth level. He had stopped a pace away from the top of the stairs and was holding back his hand, signaling for her to stay behind. She watched, catching her breath as he traced along the corridor, coming to a stop beside the door at the end. For a moment he stood listening at the panel, his only movement the rise and fall of his chest, then his fingers fell to the handle and twisted it carefully, his wrist running to a stop against the lock. He spun the metal knob back through his fingers and twisted it again, urgently now, a second time then a third, no longer concerned about alerting anyone inside. Then before Kelly realized what was happening he was stepping back and lashing out at the door with his heel, breaking it in, kicking again and again until the timber around the lock splintered apart and the panel swung back violently on its hinges. It hit something and bounced back towards him again and he kicked it aside, pushing past it into the room.

Other doors were coming open now, partly clad figures falling out into the hall, staring at one another, at the splintered doorframe, at her. Kelly’s eyes trailed down across her torn, filthy shirt, her grime-smeared slacks, the red blistered streaks on her bare arm. She spun around, her gaze tracing the startled, questioning faces. He had told her to wait, just as Alex had told her to wait, but she couldn’t… Couldn’t wait! She was part of this now! Thrusting herself away from the staircase she stumbled forward, following Nikolai through the door.

She burst through the hallway into the apartment, her eyes sweeping across the room. On the far side, near the window a thin, dark-haired girl was drawn back behind a table, her green eyes flashing with fear. Their gaze met for a second before Kelly swung away.

The corridor was drenched with the smell of cordite. Nikolai stepped through it, his jaw set hard, the blood pulsing behind his eyes, a tight hard knot swelling inside his gut. The door to the room he and Larisa shared was hanging open, the light inside turned on. He edged towards it, his shoulders heaving with his breath, bracing himself against the horror of what he expected to find, closing his eyes and stepping forward, only half conscious of the other figure coming up behind.

When Kelly reached him Nikolai was standing in the doorway, his hands clutching the frame at either side. She stared at him and stepped in closer, her gaze tracking across his shoulder, running past him to the crumpled mess on the floor. The top cover had been stripped from the mattress on the right, exposing a jumbled mess of clothing and a pillow studded with ragged holes strewn across the sheet beneath. She watched Nikolai as he stared down at the bullet-riddled pillow, his body heaving with anxiety and the exertion of his breath. His eyes scanned the room as if he were looking for something then suddenly he froze. Pushed himself away from the door frame and stumbled forward. There was a stuffed toy of some kind resting on the second mattress. A dog-eared old teddy bear wearing a faded red vest. Nikolai scooped it up, his eyes on fire. Then he saw the handwritten note that had been lying on the bed beside it, snatched it up and scanned the lines. He drew a breath, crushed the paper in his palm, spun aside and stumbled back through the doorway, thrusting the ragged toy into Kelly’s hand as he passed, pushing her out of his way, striding back along the corridor to the main room, crossing it and taking the girl’s shoulders in his hands. Kelly followed, falling to a stop at the end of the corridor, watching.

The girl was tossing her head wildly, crying as his fingers tightened their grasp.

Nikolai’s voice seethed with fury. “Where is Sergei?
Where is
he
?”

“I didn’t know,” the girl whimpered. “I promise you I didn’t know they would try to hurt her.”

Nikolai’s hands closed tighter, the pain of his grip reflected in her terrified face. His teeth were gritted with determination. “
Where is he
?”

She stared at him, her eyes tracking wildly between his. “He went after her.”

Nikolai’s hands moved to her throat. “How long?”

She grimaced as his fingers closed tighter still. Tossed her head. “Not long. Maybe five minutes.” The tears were welling in her eyes as she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

He pushed her away and she hit the wall, buckling against it, the stain of his thumbprints burning on the skin of her throat. Her words fell out in a fractured trail. “I told him! I told him he should leave you alone. I told him what I saw.” But Nikolai wasn’t listening. He was already at the door.

A crowd had begun to gather outside in the hall. Nikolai waded past the craning figures thrusting them aside. Kelly followed him, falling in behind, moving through his wake, her voice strained and insistent at his shoulder.

“Nikolai! For Christ’s sake. Tell me what’s happening.”

He swung into the staircase, moving so fast she had difficulty keeping up.

“They thought I was dead so they were going to kill Larisa as well.”

Kelly’s face twisted in a frown of disbelief. “Your daughter? They were going to kill her?” He swung into another flight, his silence providing the answer. She took off after him again, still clutching the red-vested toy bear. “Why?”

He cast a glance across his shoulder. “Because then the whole affair would be wrapped up and buried forever.”

Kelly tossed her head. “But what harm could she have possibly done.”

They reached the lobby and Nikolai pulled to a stop, turning to stare at her. “They didn’t know,” he said. “So they didn’t want to take the risk.” He blinked and drew a breath. Thrust the crumpled note into Kelly’s free hand. Her eyes scanned the words: the scrawled letters of a child.

Daddy, I’m at the big wheel. I love you. Larisa.

Her eyes rose to his. They were calm, now. Even and cool and determined. He drew a breath. “So, are you still driving?”

He sat beside her quietly, staring through the windshield as she wound the car through the maze of one way streets.

“Who is
he?

Nikolai turned aside and she swung her eyes from the road to meet his glance.

“The girl in the apartment. She said,
“He went after her.”
Who is
he?”

He shrugged. “Her husband. One of them.”

Kelly’s brow furrowed. “And he was the one who tried to kill her?”

He shrugged again. Matter of fact. “I doubt it. He wouldn’t have the guts. They would know that. But they would hold him responsible so now he has to find her.”

She drove in silence for a minute, wondering how it was possible that he could seem so detached. At least he was talking. She tried again, pushing further.

“There was something else she said.
I told him what I saw.
What did she mean?”

He studied her again a moment, his face traced by the light of the dials. Turned back to his window, watching the street.

“You don’t want to know about that. You wouldn’t understand.”

This was what it must be like on the top of the world.

Larisa leaned forward and clutched the rail, her fear swept away with pure awe as the carriage swung beneath her.

She had waited beside the ticket box at the fence that separated the huge wheel from its surrounding apron for what she thought must have been almost an hour, searching the faces in the surging crowds, then she had seen the man who looked like Sergei and turned away quickly, stepping into the line, thrusting her hand into the zippered pocket of her father’s bag, searching for the money, handing over the first American money she found to the black man behind the window. He stared at it for a moment then looked at her and made a screwed up face, speaking down to her in a twisting high pitched voice.

“A thousan’ bucks! Hey, sweet thing. Ain’t you got somethin’ smaller?”

Maybe she did have; maybe she didn’t. She didn’t know. When she shook her head he rolled his white eyes, set the note aside and began counting out others into a pile beside it then pushed them across the counter and called across her shoulder.

“Next!”

She scooped the money into her hand and shoveled it into the bag, taking her ticket and moving forward, pressing in close to the couple holding hands in front.

It had been Sergei she had seen.

As she stood in line she’d seen him again, pushing through the crowd, his head craning from left to right, searching.

She had only been on a ride like this once in her life and it wasn’t really like this. It was only a quarter the size at most. This was gigantic. Unbelievably tall. Towering above her into the sky.

The second man had taken her ticket and winked at her, helped her up to the pink and yellow carriage, locked the bar down in place and then it was moving. Slowly to begin with. Stopping and swaying each time another carriage emptied out and filled up again below, until the process ended and the huge wheel had begun turning, picking up speed, and the carriage she was sitting in had glided higher and higher until the fun park spread out below was just a blur of sweeping, dazzling color and light.

For the first few turns she clung tight to the steel bar hardly aware of anything, then gradually, as she started to become familiar with the height and the motion, she began to relax and take it all in.

To her left she could look out to the ocean. Close in the sea glowed green in the wash of the floodlights from the boardwalk, then where the light ran out it turned to black and as the wheel swept lower she could hear the surge of the waves and see them rolling forward, their edges creased by lips of white foam. But that was the least of it. At the other side the world went on forever. A glittering, twinkling, magic carpet of lights that spread wide across the landscape for as far as she could see, rising in sparkling ladders where tall buildings climbed everywhere from the ground and, below them, endless red and white trails crawling and snaking through the streets, and then ahead, and over to the right, across the black expanse of the bay, the astonishing sight of what must have been the heart of the city, towers and spires soaring into the night sky, massive even at this distance, the clouds above them drenched in their glow.