June 22, 1993
Tuesday
9:45 AM
Zhorik walked off from the bus stop toward the traffic light. Half a minute later — would you look at that!.. a tender sky-blue BMW rolled up to the stop line.
Sun glare skittered across the glossy paint. The predatory hood hugged the road. Mighty tires bulged out of the wheel arches. Ah! What a magnificent car, gleaming and unattainable!
I started waiting for the moment when the driver would pull up to the stop and, with a wide Fernandel grin, wave us into the car. Contrary to my expectations, the exact opposite happened.
The moment the light switched from red to green, the coveted car roared its engine and, tires scraping the asphalt, lurched forward. In that same instant Zhora threw himself onto the hood of the car like a fearless Alexander Matrosov. The foreign car screeched its brakes. An attempted suicide?
A cunning plan!
Out of the BMW, roaring, «You corpse, where the hell do you think you’re —!!!», a giant leapt out and charged at Zhorik with a speed unimaginable for someone built like a bull. A wet spot was all that would’ve been left of my freshly minted friend, had he turned out to be a pushover.
But no! No pushover.
Zhorik dodged his attacker’s fist and immediately headbutted the stunned giant’s jaw with either his forehead or the crown of his skull. He couldn’t reach any higher, but that turned out to be enough. The hulking brute, a Mont Blanc of muscle, grabbed at his dislocated jaw with both hands... and went down, felled by blows too fast to see. Zhorik’s fists and knees signed off on every pressure point of that massive body, like a fifty-page handover-and-acceptance report.
— No way!.. — I breathed out.
With effort, but fast — experience, probably — Zhorik shoved the car’s owner into the back seat, jumped behind the wheel, pulled up to the stop, and hollered through the open passenger window:
— Who ordered a taxi to Dubrovka?
— What are you — no way, — I stammered. — Nooo...
— Get in, let’s go. People are watching. Now! — Zhorik barked, switching his cheerful mask to a ferocious one in an instant.
Casting a wary glance at the beaten giant, I climbed into the front seat.
— Is he going to be okay? — I asked.
— He’s fine.
— When will he come to?
— Not for another hour, at least. Worrying thought, though.
We drove through the intersection and, about a kilometer later, stopped by a stretch of waste ground near Kolomenskoye. Zhorik dragged the body out of the car and hauled it to a ditch.
— What are you— — the question, ready to be voiced, stuck in my gut. I realized that arguing with Zhorik amounted to self-mutilation. I needed to observe. Silently.
Observation revealed: Zhorik transferred the contents of the giant’s pockets into his own, tipped the body into the ditch, and went back to the car. No, he didn’t get behind the wheel. He opened the trunk, rummaged around in there, banged and clattered things... and burst into a tirade against athletes raised for the joy of the working class and the ruin of speculators, who’d ended up losing their instincts, their honor, their conscience, and their sense of self-preservation, all at once.
Zhorik walked up to the driver’s door carrying a baseball bat. He held it as if getting ready to swing at a ball about to come flying in: measuring, sighting, waiting...
— Eh-eh! — With a loud exhale, Zhora sent the imaginary ball flying toward the Moskva River, shoved the bat under the driver’s seat, and dropped into it. — Man, what a moron. Who keeps a bat in the trunk? If he’d had it on hand, he wouldn’t be stinking up that ditch right now. Why the long face? Dig around in the glove box. Any guns in there? Maybe he’s not just a batter, he’s a trap shooter too.
I obeyed. Aside from three Polish Playboys and a pack of condoms, the glove box held nothing.
— Sweet, — Zhorik grinned. — You know we just took down a batter?
— Some kind of thug.
— Exactly. Won’t be pretty if our paths cross again down the road. We’ll keep an eye out, but that’s small stuff... I scored some real dough, — Zhorik waved a thick stack of American cash, started the car, and, tires spinning, headed for the center. I turned away and started studying the views of Zamoskvorechye sliding past...
I studied them through a long story about some criminal acquaintance of Zhorik’s, a guy who passed himself off as a biathlete — had a certificate and everything — and, to keep up the act, carried a real pair of «Mariy El» skis in his car trunk alongside his sniper rifle. It was the skis that gave him away — the size gave the guy up. Turned out they were kid-sized skis, since no other size would fit in the trunk...
