June 26, 1993
Saturday
4:45 PM
At a quarter to five we took our table. I set to studying the menu, the left-hand columns. Timofei rustled his bag, adjusted it, something clinked, shifted it to the next chair over, and went still. Zhorik studied his watch, silently at first, then with commentary:
— Right, sixteen fifty. Not good.
Things got lousy at sixteen fifty-five and downright wretched at seventeen hundred sharp.
At seventeen-oh-five Zhorik shot up and vanished. Timofei and I traded glances. Clearly Zhora was on edge waiting for the buyers. I wasn’t feeling great myself. And Timofei, I’d guess, was suffering too.
I wanted something to ease the ordeal without hitting my wallet. On the menu, that meant beer.
I caught the bartender’s eye. He nodded toward the beer taps. I pointed a finger at the Heineken.
Two frothy mugs arrived.
Timofei, without breaking his watchful pose, declined. I shifted in my seat and got started.
It went down well. The second mug would go to the temporarily absent Zhorik, whom I’d forgotten about for a couple of minutes.
And there he was, bursting into the hall at a flying stride. His whole bearing had changed: sharp, determined, focused, like Tsar Peter in the poem about Poltava — eyes ablaze, face terrible, movements swift. The very image of God’s own thunderstorm.
Hm. Instead of Menshikov or Sheremetev, trailing Zhorik in came a wiry, middle-aged man who looked vaguely familiar. The two of them shot straight to the corner table by the window and, bang, sat down facing each other, perched like a pair of fighters gearing up for a proper brawl. Zhorik went straight for the mark:
— So what’s up? I don’t get it.
— I don’t get it either. What’s the deal?
A pause that stretched on forever plunged me into a state of unbearable tension, and Timofei into… into… hard to say — the searcher flickered at the edge of my vision, trying to vanish into each of the restaurant’s four dimensions at once.
— Nothing yet. What comes next is up to you, Chicha… — Zhorik didn’t so much as glance at Timofei or me. He half-rose, leaned in, hovered over the table like he was about to headbutt something… added something inaudible under his breath… and settled back down.
— Who the hell are you to talk to me like that? — the stranger named Chicha exploded, looking ready to tear Zhorka apart with his bare hands.
Zhora answered lazily:
— What’s it to you? Don’t get worked up. We’ll rewind, and everyone’ll answer for their own suit.
Chicha seemed to sag, his face drawn, and he fell silent on the verge of thought: fussing over his shirt sleeve, plucking at it like John Entwistle at his strings. Signaling that he’d handle the small problem first, then move on to the big one…
Timofei began to fidget. Half-rose, sat back down, yanked at the bag, shoved it under the chair beside him, jumped up, darted off, vanished, reappeared, and blurted out: «Th-th-this. H-h-here. I’ll s-s-step away f-for f-five m-minutes. L-leave the b-bag h-h-here. If anything, I’ll g-g-g-get the m-money through A-a-andryukha…» and on the second attempt, vanished for good.
I nodded.
Chicha’s power of speech returned. Over the corner table churned a quiet, barely audible but forceful stream of talk — about the camp and freedom, about the warden and the wandering thieves, about hardship and promises, about the articles and enormous sentences Chicha had done time on, the long prisoner transports, the vicious central prisons, and all the other collisions, unbearable, brutal, and endlessly remote from me, all of it bound up directly with criminal life.
Well, there you go!
All that was missing for complete bliss was a pistol in a black bag under the chair and a grim, jittery career criminal five feet away.
Half an hour passed.
Zhora was laying out the rules and terms to his companion. Chicha’s replies were barely audible.
I had the idea to shift closer to the two of them talking. Made it look like I was just moving over to Zhorik’s mug of beer, turned halfway around, took a token sip for cover, and pricked up my ears… now I could hear everything being discussed at the corner table.
Chicha stood firm that his freedom had to come without any snitches involved. Nothing else mattered to him. Zhora bulldozed forward, insisting his wish would come true on one condition: at least half-listen to the right advice. Chicha kept shaking his head, repeating that there’d be plenty of profiteers left for him to work, he wouldn’t be left gasping for air, and everything else was Zhora’s problem. Tempers flared, the talk grew louder and sharper.
— Understand, — Zhorik pressed. — Five years have passed*. Everything’s changed. Completely. I guarantee you, nobody’s getting taken on sheer nerve anymore. The profiteers are long gone, they turned into businessmen with protection now. You can’t just rob one blind anymore. That’s not a paragraph in the criminal code these days, that’s a straight-up move against your own. Because every businessman’s under somebody’s roof now. And it won’t be the cops sorting things out with you, it’ll be serious people. Guys just like you will come down on you for skimming their cash.
— I’m a righteous thief, I keep to the code! And I’ve never been a rat!
— So why are you digging in, if you’re righteous? Now’s exactly your time. Time for the righteous ones. I’ll tell you what to do. How to build a proper roof, and…
— I’ll handle it myself, — Chicha cut him off.
Zhorik fell silent, gulped at the air, cleared his throat, ruffled the top of his head, and laid down his final argument:
— Keep digging in, and you’ll never see Rikulya.
— The redhead?!! No! You promised… No, you can’t do that. I refuse.
— Read the contract. Article forty-two, footnote five. Haven’t read it? Then let me lay it out. Wishes concerning other people are only fulfilled if the terms of a supplementary agreement are met. The carriage, the house, all that — guaranteed. But anything not about you personally is spelled out in the fine print. If you refuse, we’ll spin your little wishes right around the Ferris wheel at Gorky Park! The broad decides for herself who gets what and how. We’re not the ones in charge of that.
Zhorik pulled a stack of A4 sheets out from under the table. At those familiar words I nearly fell off my chair.
How could I have forgotten, how could it not click sooner! This criminal, Chicha — it was him, no question! — the one who drove his car around the giant globe hunting for the redhead with no panties, otherwise known as Veronika Sergeyevna.
Well, would you look at that!
Chicha, just like me, had signed a contract, and now he was hashing out with Zhorik exactly how his wishes and whims would be fulfilled. I pricked up my ears as sharp as I could, but couldn’t make out a word more. A chair crashed to the floor nearby. I flinched, jumping like a half-trained sapper, then relaxed when I saw it was just Timofei sitting back down.
The searcher jabbed a finger toward the corner table — how’s it going over there? I gave a vague shrug. Timofei drummed out «Smoke on the Water» on the tabletop with his fingers and signaled the bartender: «Pour!»
Two more beers arrived. Downing what had been Zhorik’s mug in one go, I started on my third of the evening.
A little wind whistled through my head, rustlings rustled, shadows stirred. The music playing overhead dissolved into the pulse of blood washing through my skull. I tilted sideways. Glanced sidelong, head bowed low, leaned my elbow on the table. Registered the state of being drunk and made my excuses to myself — breakfast was ages ago, lunch was an ice cream, and I wasn’t eating anything to go with the beer now… got tipsy… got wobbly… happens…
