August 3, 1993
Tuesday
The second week kicked off in disgrace. On Monday we served ten people, on Tuesday, seven. I was tearing myself apart, with no idea how to buy out the factory or where to find money for dividends.
I shared my torment with Zhora, pressing the point that I wanted to earn money by the book. He calmed me down. Everything’s going according to plan, it’ll be great, just gotta wait, that’s all! By the book, all you can do is go bankrupt — profit gets built up through cunning back roads. There are plenty of roads still untrodden. Once the ad runs in the national press, a whole different tune will start playing!
Hard to believe. And Zhora keeps dragging me back into the gray zone between legality and crime.
I headed into the trading hall and ran into Robert.
The playboy who’d rented us the apartment had traded his imported image for a Russian one. He no longer resembled a matinee idol, more like a shifty-eyed sidekick from some crime picture. A stooped, pathetic figure with darting eyes. All he was missing was an eight-panel cap.
Wants to become a shareholder?
Unlikely.
And there was Zhorik, arms wide open: «Robka! Hey!!! Long time no see! Where’ve you been hiding? What happened? Good to see you!» Dragged him into the hallway, nodded at me: don’t fall behind.
Strange — Zhorik led Robert not to his own office, but into the meeting room. That was usually where he took bankers and important depositors. What business did he have with our landlord?
Simple business.
Robert asked us to pay three and a half years’ rent up front, he needed the money. Twenty thousand dollars. Zhorik smirked:
– Why so much? Planning to bolt for America? Won’t be enough.
– No, no, – Robert winced. – Yesterday I hit a Nissan. Was pulling off Kutuzovsky onto Minskoye, didn’t see it in time. Damage was next to nothing — scraped a fender and the trunk door. But there were gangsters in the Nissan. Long story short, they took my passport, my car papers, and drove off in my jeep. Tossed me the keys to the Nissan. Said fix it up in three days, then they’d give back the papers and the jeep. Didn’t leave a number to reach them. Said they’d find me themselves.
Zhorik had doubts:
– Twenty thousand to fix a fender and a trunk?
– No, not that. While I was hunting for a payphone to call around and sort things out, some scumbags stripped the wheels off the Nissan. By the time I got back and forth, the Nissan was picked completely clean, just the shell left. The car’s not drivable, it’s scrap. Cheaper to buy an identical one. Checked the classifieds — for twenty thousand you can find one with zero miles. That’s why it’s three years’ rent.
Zhorik smirked:
– Rent won’t work. We can give you twenty thousand, but not against the rent — flat out, as a loan.
– Why?
– Learn to count. Right now I pull twenty thousand out of circulation, and in forty months I start paying six hundred a month for the apartment again. Right?
– Yeah.
– Now try this version. I leave the twenty grand in circulation. At ten percent profit a month — and that’s the bare minimum at our shop — in three years I’ll have half a million. For that kind of money I can buy five apartments like yours. What’s the sense in your proposal?
– What am I supposed to do? My folks will wire the cash in a month.
– I can suggest you forget about the «Cherokee» and wait a month for the cash. You’ll buy yourself a new jalopy.
Robert shriveled up, went gray, mumbled that without a car he was useless, couldn’t get to the institute, there was no way he could take the commuter train to MGIMO. Zhorik smirked:
– Well, I could lend you the twenty grand. If you can vouch that your folks will settle the debt, I can extend you a month’s credit. Reasonable interest — fifteen.
– You said ten.
– Doesn’t matter what I said. I need to get something out of this too. I’m spending time and nerves on this loan. I’m taking a risk — what if you don’t pay it back?
– Where would I even go?
– Who knows, who knows. Wander off somewhere you shouldn’t, snow lands on your head. Fifteen percent a month, full stop. You won’t find better terms in two days flat. If you agree, write up a promissory note. As is proper, secured against something of value. What do you have that’s worth something?
– The apartment you’re living in.
– Lovely. Got your passport on you? Let’s go to the notary, he’s on the third floor. You’ll get the cash right now.
Zhorik pulled two stacks of hundred-dollar bills out of the safe and handed them to Robert.
The stacks looked familiar. Just that morning Vadim had come by with a fantastical offer to sell a million superdollars at a quarter of face value.
After some detailed questioning, it turned out that the husband of Vadim’s sister’s brother was friendly with some Chechens printing near-genuine American money in the foothills of the Caucasus. Zhorik smirked: he wasn’t going to deal with mountain bandits directly, but he might try it through some straw man, some homeless guy as a front. He’d taken fifty thousand as a sample, on condition he’d return whatever fake bills went unsold by Wednesday.
Now he was fobbing off the pseudo-dollars on Robert. Robert, not noticing anything off, tore open the stacks, laid the bills out in piles on the table, counted them, recounted them, and headed off to the notary to formalize the loan.
That evening Zhora reported: Robik had gotten a tire iron to the skull from the seller of the zero-mileage Nissan and was left with nothing — no money, no car, no papers. Of all the legitimate paperwork the state would recognize, all that remained was a promissory note for twenty thousand dollars, secured against the apartment I live in.
Notarized. The real thing.
