Four men gathered at a round table: Senior Investigator Renko, District Prosecutor Zurin, Assistant Deputy Prosecutor General Gendler and a ministry elder called Father Iosif, who was as silent and motionless as a stuffed owl. He had long since passed the mandatory retirement age of sixty and, presumably, rolled on with year-to-year contracts. No one knew exactly what Father Iosif's status was. No one ever heard him speak.
Zurin had never looked better; fit and eager for the fray. Under Yeltsin, he had been round and apoplectic; in Putin's regime, Zurin ate sensibly, exercised and lost weight. A stack of dossiers tied with self-important red ribbons stood by him.
Gendler had placed Arkady's ID and pistol, a nine-millimeter Makarov, in the middle of the table and noted what an ideal setting for Russian roulette it was.
"Except, you need a revolver," Arkady said. "A cylinder to spin. Otherwise you've pretty much eliminated the element of chance."
"Who needs chance?" Gendler placed a tape recorder on the table. He pressed Record and identified site, date, time and persons present for a hearing on dismissal.
It took Arkady a moment to realize what was transpiring. "Wait, this is a hearing on suspension."
"No, this is a hearing on dismissal."
"I received the letter for suspension late last night. I have it." He passed the letter to the assistant deputy, who laid it aside without reading it.
"Duly noted, a typographical error. However, this is the second hearing. For whatever reason, you did not attend the first."
"I'd like to change the date."
"Out of the question. The panel is assembled. We have a quorum and we have the supporting dossiers and material that Prosecutor Zurin has brought. We can't ask him to cart those back and forth at your convenience."
"I need time to prepare materials."
"It's your second letter. The first letter went out a month ago. Your time for preparation ran out yesterday."
"I received no first letter."
"I received mine," said Zurin.
"Then I would have been suspended."
"You were."
Which explained the lack of caseload coming from the prosecutor. Nothing could hide the triumph in Zurin's face. He had played his part perfectly and so, in his ignorance, had Arkady.
"I was in the office every day."
"Preparing for this dismissal hearing, I assumed," Zurin said. "I didn't get in your way."
Gendler said, "Renko, you brought nothing else to substantiate your defense?"
"No."
"But you have been active. According to Prosecutor Zurin, two nights ago you were seen leaving a sobriety station. Yesterday you altered autopsy reports in an effort to fake a murder."
"The autopsy was not faked. I was assisting on a murder case. We may have a serial killer."
"Today you claim to have discovered a serial killer. Every detective's wet dream. I'm sorry, but in a contest of claim and counterclaim, I have to go with hard evidence, and you don't have any."
Arkady said, "I suggest that we go over the prosecutor's evidence to see how hard it really is."
"We don't have time. We're overwhelmed. So, do you expect to contest your dismissal or not? I should warn you-"
"No."
"You are not contesting your dismissal?"
"I am not."
"He's folding," Gendler told Zurin, half in surprise.
"I heard. So he won't be needing these." Zurin gathered Arkady's ID and gun from the table.
"Not the gun." Arkady clamped Zurin's wrist.
"It's property of the state."
"Please, gentlemen." The assistant deputy tried to separate them.
Arkady bent Zurin's fingers back. The prosecutor let go and said, "See, he's crazy. He attacked me right in front of witnesses."
"Read it." Arkady passed the gun to Gendler.
"Read what?"
"On the slide."
The engraving on the gun was as fine as calligraphy.
"'This firearm and a lifetime license are awarded to Honored Investigator A. K. Renko in gratitude from the Russian people.'"
"It's mine," Arkady said.
"I'll take that under consideration." Gendler kept the pistol.
"Renko," Father Iosif said. "Now there was a son of a bitch."
Everyone froze. Gendler was dumbfounded. No one had ever heard Father Iosif utter a word before.
"He keeps the gun," Father Iosif said, and the decision was made. Each desk in the squad room was a stage with a different drama. A murderer handcuffed to his chair. A profusely sweating tourist who kept feeling his pockets in case his passport materialized. An old lady whose cat was missing. She had brought pictures. Besides mug shots of professional criminals, a bulletin board carried photos of soldiers gone AWOL, a new handful every day. A goldfish nibbled on a companion.
Arkady arrived with a bag of cold sodas. Day three was the day the snakes of alcohol usually came out, but Victor was bright as a robin.
"You got here without incident? You didn't roll the car? None of the doors blew off?"
"It's in mint condition."
"How did the meeting go?"
"It was for dismissal, not suspension."
Victor sat up. "You're not serious."
"They seemed to be. They have no sense of humor."
"You're out?"
"A mere citizen."
"That's as 'mere' as it gets. Do you want me to kill Zurin? I will. I'd be happy to."
"No, but I appreciate the offer."
"You can't win in this fucking world. Let's get drunk tonight. Let's get drunk until our eyes swim. What do you say?"
Arkady sat at Victor's computer. On its screen a beautiful model with voluminous blond hair and Nordic-blue eyes was wrapped in a wolf jacket and matching cap. In the background the onion domes of St. Basil's glowed in golden sunlight.
"You're making progress," Arkady said.
"Suspended, dismissed, you don't let go."
"Not yet."
A label on the photograph said, Oksana Petrovna is represented by Venus International.
At the tap of a key the scene changed to a studio apartment. Oksana Petrovna lay on her back in the middle of the floor with her head resting in a pool of blood, hands on her hips. Her leather trousers and underpants were pulled down to her ankles. Possibly the first position of ballet. Hard to say. The date of the photo was two years ago. According to the notes, a homeless man confessed and then recanted.
Arkady said, "It looks like she was hit from behind."
"Yeah, then they beat some poor bastard until he would confess to buggering the czar. After that, the case went cold."
Arkady punched up the next screen. Inna Ustinova looked younger than her thirty-two years. A yoga instructor, she had been married twice, once to an American who had promised her Malibu, California, and delivered Columbus, Ohio. According to her entry in Facebook, she had resolved to date only Russians. Her ambition? To dance at the Club Nijinsky. Her body was discovered six months before in a culvert at a dog show in Ismailova Park. She was naked from the waist down, with no signs of violence, an apparent overdose. Her feet were apart and her arms stretched like wings, as in the second position.
"That's it?" Arkady asked.
"That's it."
"No third position?"
"Yeah. It's called pissing into the wind."
"Venus International. Is that a well-known modeling agency?"
"I called a friend. She says it's so-so."
"The name is not quite right," Arkady said.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it's not quite right, is it? 'Venus' suggests a little more."
"You mean…"
"Exactly."
"More…"
"Yes."
"Well, they used to present what they called 'private modeling' of lingerie and the like but they've been on the up-and-up for years."
"Was Venus at any time also a matchmaking agency? Beautiful Russian brides for lonely American men?"
"When Venus started out, it tried to be any number of things. I know what you're after. Did the paths of these two women ever cross?"
"Did they?"
"Ustinova was in Facebook. She had a million 'friends' but Oksana Petrovna was not one of them. These women lived in Moscow but in two different worlds."
"Did they club?"
"Yes. A pretty girl can always get in a club. Models like Ustinova are regulars at the Nijinsky and at a dozen other clubs. Now, if Petrovna had been a Nijinsky dancer like Vera, there might be a tidy little connection, only she wasn't. So that's that."
"Did she try?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did Petrovna audition to be a dancer at the Club Nijinsky?"
"Where are you going with this?"
"Someone said yes or no. There's always a gatekeeper."
"That's it?" Victor took on the gravity of a physician delivering a grim prognosis. "You're fucked."
"Maybe you'd like to elaborate on that."
"You can't go on pretending that you're an investigator."
"I've been doing it for years."
"Did they leave your gun?"
"Yes."
"You're being set up."
"Possibly."
"You are so fucked. You have no authority and no protection, just enemies. What are you looking for? Blood on the sidewalk and a round of applause?"
Arkady didn't know, although he thought a little clarity might do. "The door is open," Arkady heard, and ventured in.
Wrapped in a silk robe, Madame Isa Spiridona, choreographer of the Club Nijinsky, reclined on a chaise longue with one arm free to reach her opium and brandy. Her apartment overlooked the Moscow River but it could have overlooked the Seine, with excellent copies of French antiques in tulipwood veneer and velvet-covered chairs. A dash of silk flowers. Inscribed photos of Colette, Coco and Marlene on a table. Photos of a young Spiridona dancing with Rudy and Baryshnikov on a grand piano. Photos covering the walls as if she were a person with no faith in her memory.
"Please forgive me if I don't rise. They say that dancers live a short time en pointe and a long time in pain. It was a brutal system, but it worked, didn't it? We had beauty and dancers. I suppose that's why you're here. To ask about Vera?"
"Yes."
"More questions about the Club Nijinsky."
"One more." He sat because one question always led to another. Stand and you're halfway out the door. "Who runs the auditions for the Nijinsky dancers?"
"I do. I am the choreographer."
"And there are many talented dancers who would like to be Nijinsky dancers?"
"Yes."
"And want nothing more than to audition for you?"
"Yes."
"Then why settle for a not very good dancer like Vera?"
"She had other qualities."
"Such as?"
"She was a charming individual. It came through in her dancing. It's something you can't teach."
"Do you mind if I turn up the lights?" He was at the switch before she could object, then returned and placed a snapshot before Spiridona.
"Do you remember Inna Ustinova? She was a yoga instructor. She wanted to be a Nijinsky dancer."
"Of course I remember her. She was too old. She would hang around the club, looking for a shoulder to cry on."
"Did she find any?"
"No. People here are professionals. I told her to go back to her yoga mats. I felt terrible when she was killed. Found by a dog. How horrible, how awful that must have been."
Arkady wasn't listening. What he had not noticed when the lights were low was a framed, dramatically dark poster of a young dancer with golden hair, the same boy that Arkady had seen drained of blood on a table in the morgue. On a salver was a stack of programs for different ballets.
She followed his eye. "My son, Roman."
"He dances too?"
"He did until he injured himself. Last week Roman called to say that he and his friend Sergei were going on a trip. Yesterday, Sergei called to say that Roman had gone on alone."
This was more than Arkady had bargained for. He had not come as a messenger to tell this woman that her son was dead. Dead and burned under another name, yet.
"Where to?"
"I don't know. I try not to get in Roman's way. He suffers from depression but the doctors say I should let him hit bottom. What does that mean, 'hit bottom'?"
Roman Spiridon had certainly done that. Hit bottom and continued to the center of the earth. Not even as himself, but under another man's name.
Arkady remembered Madame Borodina's voice, as dry as kindling.
"Burn him."
Although the church condemned cremation, the state provided the option. Rolled him into a furnace with flames hot enough to melt gold, pulverized his ashes and bones and delivered them in a screw-top canister to the hands of Borodina. Where to then? There was a choice of parks-Siloviki, Gorky or Ismailova-where ashes could be dumped. Or lobbed into a trash bin or poured like flour into the river.
"Sergei who?"
"Borodin."
"Sergei Borodin called instead of your son? To reassure you, but not tell you where they were going?"
"Sergei said he had to come back to pick up his book."
"What book would that be?"
"There on the desk. I'm waiting for him to pick it up."
On a Louis XIV desk was a well-worn paperback entitled The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, which sounded pretty innocent to Arkady. He flipped through the pages to see whether anything fell out.
"Do you mind if I borrow this?"
"Sergei is coming for it."
"Then he can come to me."
She didn't have the willpower to refuse him. Her attention gravitated to the opium layout, a lacquered tray inlaid with silver dragons and mother-of-pearl. A resinous "pill" nested in the bowl of a slender ivory pipe.
"Sometimes God's gifts were given to the wrong person."
"If Borodin is such a great dancer, why is he swinging on a wire at the Club Nijinsky instead of dancing with the Bolshoi?"
Spiridona asked, "How do I put this? Dancing is an intimate affair. The women don't like the way Sergei handled them."
"Too soft? Too hard?"
"Like chickens in a butcher shop."