Three Stations ar-7 Page 9

  "I left half an hour ago. You didn't look anywhere?"

  "Just let me finish this."

  "Can we go now?" Maya asked.

  "I need five minutes."

  "That's what you said before."

  "Five more minutes is all." Zhenya could save the game. He saw escape and beyond, a combination that was all green lights.

  Maya swept the pieces off the board. Plastic pieces bounced and rolled under tables and along the buffet counter. The eyes of the cafe turned to Maya.

  "Can we go now?"

  "After he pays up," said Henry.

  Zhenya grimly picked pieces off the floor. Losing money didn't bother him as much as being publicly humiliated at what was essentially his place of business. He had been a prodigy; now he was pathetic. Also he was confused. He was the one with every right to be upset; yet it was Maya who radiated fury and contempt.

  On their way to the Peter the Great, Zhenya again and again considered sending her away with, "Good luck. You're on your own." However, he didn't actually voice the words, not even when she demanded the combination to the touch pad at the casino's rear door.

  "So we don't get in each other's way," she said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean you don't have to help me anymore."

  "I don't mind." Which was both true and a lie.

  "No, you play your games and I'll do what I came for."

  Zhenya remembered that before he admitted Maya into his life, everything was smooth sailing. He was a winner. He hustled with single-minded focus, was a respected member of the Three Stations community and had a luxurious casino all to himself. He was the acknowledged Genius. Everything had been turned upside down. Now he was a loser about to lose possession of the one place he considered his own. At the back door of the casino he gave her what she wanted. She punched in the code herself to be sure.

  "You don't trust me?" Zhenya said.

  "Maybe you'll lie to me, maybe you won't."

  "Thank you. What are you so angry about?"

  "My baby is missing and you play chess."

  "To get money for us."

  "For us? You mean for you-so you can play more games. I'm better off on my own. All you know is money. You're just a hustler."

  "And you're nothing but a bitch."

  That made her flinch. The word felt like a good weapon, one that a man could use over and over.

  13

  Maya had been the youngest prostitute at the club. She was special, off the menu, for trusted members only.

  Her room was pink and on the shelves were rows of dolls with stitched smiles and button eyes, the way they would be in a girl's bedroom when Daddy came to say, "One last kiss."

  She loathed dolls.

  One good thing about her room was that it looked out on a two-lane road with a bus shelter and streetlamp. The shelter was strangely reassuring and at night the lamp cast a glow like embers.

  The club was set back and shared a wide parking lot with a garage and a motel, a skid mark in the middle of nowhere, yet there was never a lack of customers. Some as rough and unshaven as wild boars. The old arrived like pilgrims at Lourdes, on legs wrapped in varicose veins, carrying swollen bellies, suffering from high blood pressure and limp dicks and hoping for a cure from her, a child prostitute. Often the ones who played daddy ended up in tears. They were the best tippers, but in the end they all squeezed the breath out of her. At school she was half asleep, which teachers ascribed to anemia, probably due to her first period. She made no friends, no one whose home she might visit or who would expect to visit her own. On doctor's orders she didn't engage in sports or after-school activities. A car delivered her at the first bell in the morning and picked her up as soon as school let out, which gave Maya four hours to eat dinner and finish her homework before the first customers arrived.

  Otherwise, she was an average girl. The club manager, Matti, fancied himself a Tom Jones look-alike, down to ruffled shirts and sentimental songs. As a proud Finn, he upheld his country's prejudices: Russians were incompetent drunks while Finns were competent drunks. This declaration invariably led to drinking bouts with friends in the militia when they came for their protection money. If he lost, Matti offered a free lay with any girl except Maya. His voice would drop reverently and he would say, "Delicate goods."

  When Maya tried to slit her wrist in the tub, Matti asked, "What is the matter with you? Why do you hurt yourself? Don't you know how good you have it here, like a princess? Don't you know people love you? Don't tell the other girls but you're making more money than anyone else. It's like the Mona Lisa. This famous museum in Paris has a thousand works of art but all anyone wants to see is one painting. You can't even get in that room it's so crowded. The same with you. And you've got all that money piling up in safekeeping."

  "How much?"

  "I can't say offhand. I haven't counted it lately. A lot."

  "Why don't you take the money and let me go?"

  "That's up to your parents because you're underage. They're always looking out for your best interest. I'll call them."

  "Can I talk to them?"

  "If they want. They're the ones running the show. I'm just the guy catching the shit. In the meantime I want you to wear these." Matti tied red ribbons around her wrists. "And stop smoking. Good girls don't smoke."

  She crossed the road to look at the bus shelter. It had been built during a period of optimism, and although the paint had faded and holes had been mysteriously punched through the wall, Maya could still make out the faint outline of a rocket ship lifting off the ground, aspiring to more.

  The bus route had been closed for years. The shelter was mainly used now as a pissoir and message center: GO FUCK YOURSELF, I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER, HEIL HITLER, OLEG SUCKS COCK. The walls were still solid enough to collect rays of the sun on cool days and stay cool on warm. Maya sat on the bench and fantasized that it was a warm lap.

  No one worried that she was going anywhere. The road was straight and what little traffic there was blew by like a jet stream. Once in a while an army truck stopped at the club, but Matti never let the soldiers in because they were too loud and too poor.

  There was nothing else.

  They could have been on Mars. Despite her small size, Maya didn't show that she was pregnant until her fourth month.

  "You knew," Matti said. "You knew when you missed your periods. You knew then and now we're fucked. Well, we'll just have to get rid of it."

  "If the baby goes, I go."

  She started slicing her wrist.

  Matti said, "Okay, okay. But when this baby comes into the world, you have to give it up. Find someone suitable. No one comes to a brothel to hear a baby crying."

  "Very cute, very cute, very cute," Matti said when the baby came. "Did you find someone suitable?"

  "No," Maya said.

  "Did you ask?"

  "No. Her name is Katya."

  "I don't want to know. She can't stay."

  "She'll be quiet."

  The baby was swaddled and asleep in a basket next to Maya's bed. Blankets, nappies, cans of talcum powder and jars of petroleum jelly filled a second basket.

  "So you've got a system, fucking with one hand and nursing with the other? You know what I've been told to do." Matti opened his pocketknife. "It will just take a second and it will be just like popping a balloon."

  "Then you'll have to kill me too. You'll have two bodies, not one."

  "You don't even know who the father is. Someone you rode bareback with. It's probably got AIDS and a dozen other diseases."

  "Don't touch my baby. Close the knife."

  "You were going to give it up. You agreed."

  "Close the knife."

  "You're making this very hard. You don't know these people."

  "Who?"

  "These people. They don't make bargains with little girls. They don't make bargains with anyone."

  "Then I'll leave. You're holding my money. It's 'a lot,' you said."


  "That was before you got yourself pregnant. That's lost revenue, plus room and board. Then medical bills, clothes, taxes, various expenses. After subtracting the money I was keeping for you, you owe the club eighty-one thousand four hundred and fifty dollars."

  "Eighty-one thousand four hundred and fifty?"

  "I can show it to you itemized."

  "Did you talk to my parents?"

  "Your mother says you made your bed, you lie in it. You'll have to work it off."

  She followed Matti's eyes. "Have I been sold?"

  He slapped her and left a hot imprint of his hand on her cheek.

  "You're a bright girl. You know better than to ask that sort of question. Don't ever ask that question again." Maya retreated to the bus shelter. The figure $81,450 kept racing through her mind but the shelter calmed her. Sunday business was slow and she and Katya sat in the shelter for hours. All a three-week-old baby did was sleep and all Maya did was watch her sleep. It amazed Maya that out of her had come anyone so perfect, so completely formed and translucent that she glowed. Maya saw Matti watching from a club window. The sky, the road, the lamp, the girl, the baby. Everything was the same, day after day, except that the baby was growing.

  Matti got Maya alone in the club lounge, a den of red velvet settees and erotic statues. It was eleven in the morning and he looked and smelled as if he had spent the night in a bottle of vodka.

  He asked, "Do you know the difference between a Russian and a Finn?"

  "A competent drunk and an incompetent drunk. You told me before."

  "No, princess, it's thoroughness. See, you don't know who you're dealing with. These people don't do things by halves. They have clubs like this around the world. And girls like you around the world. Girls who get ideas about leaving before they work off their debt." He showed her a photograph. "Can you imagine this was a pretty girl?" He showed her another photo. "Can you call that a face? Go ahead, study them. Maybe you'll learn something."

  Maya rushed to the bar sink and threw up.

  "So you know." Matti swayed on his feet. "To these people you're no one special. To them you're just a bitch who talks too much."

  They came the next day, two men in coveralls and boots in an ancient Volvo station wagon. Maya immediately labeled them "the Catchers." She was ready, with Katya in one basket and nappies in another, as if they were setting off on a day trip. The men would have thrown her and the baby in the rear of the wagon at once if their car hadn't rattled and limped for the last kilometer with a flat tire and a hole in the muffler. When the mechanic at the garage said that he could replace both the tire and muffler in half an hour, the Catchers decided to have lunch in the air-conditioned comfort of the lounge.

  The question was what to do with Maya. They couldn't keep her in the car while it was on the lift and they didn't want her mixing with her coworkers; in fact, the Catchers didn't want her back in the club at all. It was Matti who suggested the bus shelter, where Maya would be in plain sight and serve as an object lesson. The men looked up and down the road and at the waist-high grass around the shelter and returned to their cabbage and sour cream.

  Maya herself was relieved to be in the bus shelter. It was her special place. The rest of the world had receded and left her with only Katya and the trilling of a million insects. She had never really listened to them before. She had never prayed before.

  "Good news and bad news," the mechanic reported to the men in the lounge. "The new tire is on but we are having a small problem with the muffler. The bolts were rusted for good. I used a lubricant, ratchet and wrenches. Next I'll use a hacksaw. I might need another twenty minutes."

  "You might need a gun stuck up your ass."

  Maya decided that she would keep the baby alive as long as possible but that, if need be, she would kill it herself rather than let it be tortured.

  "Cheers!" Matti raised a glass of vodka. The Catchers ignored their glasses although he had filled them to the brim. "No? What if you take turns? A single Finn versus two Russians? Those are fair odds."

  "Fuck you," said the Catchers, and they lifted their vodkas.

  The sound of an engine overlapped insect song and a bus emerged from the heat waves of the highway.

  "Just a tiny one." Matti poured the next vodka only to the brim.

  It was an army bus of recruits, all Sir Galahads when they saw a girl sitting at the shelter.

  The Catchers bolted from the lounge. "You said there was no bus service. Now here's a bus and our car is up on a fucking lift."

  "There is no bus service," Matti said. "There is an army camp nearby. Sometimes a bus or truck of theirs rolls through."

  The bus doors opened and Maya boarded tentatively, as if the bus and soldiers might dissolve at her touch.

  The Catchers ran across the parking lot. One drew a gun but the other told him to put it away.

  Matti motioned, go, go. At the start Maya endured a hundred questions. After a while the soldiers relaxed in the glow of a good deed and she rode to town unharried.

  An outdoor market surrounded the train station. Maya's money was in her room at the club, but her tips from the night before were more than enough to buy two canvas bags, blue jeans, a secondhand leather jacket and a dye job at a station salon while the women on the staff admired Katya. Only then, transformed, did Maya approach the ticket counter and purchase an overnight ticket to Moscow. Hard class. She had never been to Moscow but she believed it was a good place to hide.

  "Miracles are happening. Our luck has changed," she told the baby as the train pulled out. Maya laughed from exhilaration. She had been entrusted with the most precious item in the world and she had successfully protected it. From this point on everything was going to be different.

  Katya stirred. Before she started crying, Maya went out to the vestibule at the end of the car and put the baby to her breast. Once the baby's first urgent scrambling settled down, Maya allowed herself a cigarette. She would not have minded if the moment went on forever, watching fields shine in the moonlight, smuggling her baby into the world.

  Maya didn't hear a drunken soldier join her until the door clicked shut behind him.

  That was ages ago, Maya thought. Two days at least. Well, bitches were as bitches did. She closed her eyes until Zhenya was asleep, then she took the last money in his day pack and left the casino.

  14

  Arkady called Victor from the dancers' dressing room and told him that the murder victim they called Olga had been identified as Vera Antonova, age nineteen, a student at Moscow State University, and suggested that since this was the detective's case, he might want to come by the Club Nijinsky and take part in the investigation.

  "I can't leave. I'm getting a tattoo."

  "Now? At this hour?"

  "No problem. The parlor is open all night."

  Arkady didn't know what to say. He paced back and forth in the narrow, brightly lit comma of space that was afforded dancers. A makeup counter was littered with used tissues, jars of foundation, powder and rouge, cold cream, lipstick and mascara. It was hard to imagine six women squeezing into the room, let alone changing from one costume to another.

  Victor said, "I'm sober, if that's what you're wondering."

  Arkady still didn't know what to say. He noticed snapshots of boyfriends and family wedged into mirrors; none seemed to have any connection to Vera Antonova.

  "Who identified her?" Victor asked.

  "A journalist who writes about the club scene, then several other people. It seems that besides being a student, she was a dancer at the Nijinsky."

  "Too bad."

  "But why are you getting a tattoo?"

  "You can't hang out in tattoo parlors without getting something. By the way, Zurin called looking for you about a letter of resignation that he expected. He said that as far as the prosecutor's office is concerned, you have been suspended. You are no longer an active investigator. Any pretense otherwise and he will have you detained."

  "Arrested?"

>   "Decapitated, if he had a choice."

  "When can you get over here? You're the one who always says the detective leads and the investigator follows." As he talked Arkady rapidly opened and shut drawers. He saw Ecstasy in the form of candies, clear capsules and green peas, yes. Clonidine or ether, no. With so many mirrors reflecting each other, he seemed to share the room with multiple desperate men with lank hair and eyes deep as drains, the sort of figure who might wander the streets on a rainy night and cause people to roll up their car windows and jump the traffic light.

  Victor was saying, "You can't rush an artist. I'll call you in the morning."

  "Does the tattoo hurt?"

  "It stings a little."

  "Good."

  Isa Spiridona was graceful and gray. Arkady remembered her from the Bolshoi, briefly as a prima ballerina before she was injured. He would have thought she might continue as a ballet mistress, teaching young dancers to elevate their leg or their elbow thus and so. Instead she was a choreographer at the Club Nijinsky with a desk crammed between a rack of costumes and stacks of CDs and DVDs arranged around a balsa-wood model of the club interior that showed runways, dance floor and ministages. Arkady poked it with his finger.

  "Where are we in this model?"

  "I don't discuss any of the club's operations. Please don't touch."

  "I've always loved models." He stooped for a better view. "Does the service elevator go up and down?"

  "No, it's not a dollhouse. Don't touch, please."

  "Where did you say we are?"

  "Here." She pointed to the third level; there were five levels altogether. "Have you shown this picture to any of the dancers?"

  "Yes."

  "Without coming to me first? Dancers are children. I don't want them sobbing before the audience is out the door. Stay away from the girls. If you have questions, call me tomorrow and I'll make some time for you."

  Tomorrow had arrived hours ago, Arkady thought. As for time, he only had until Zurin caught up with him.

  Spiridona's phone rang and she sat to take the call.

  "No, I'm not alone. There's an investigator here, but he's leaving… totally useless and scaring the girls… Wait a second. He's not bright enough to take a hint." She gave Arkady a wave of dismissal. "Can't you see I'm working?"