13

Lisa Malyshko had made up her mind. Her new life was going to be beautiful. She would go to Sochi in the nicest train available. But first, she would dress herself up in the best boutiques. Money she would have aplenty. But, to actually get her hands on it, she would have to remain in Moscow a day or two longer.

Lisa returned to the computers at the station. It was stuffy here, in the corner under the low ceiling. Lisa pulled off her hat and unbuttoned her jacket. The guy in charge of the Internet kiosks smiled upon seeing the bright-red lips plastered across the girl’s sweater. The girl instinctively turned in profile and opened her mouth a little. She knew this posture embellished her sexiness.

But, damn! This wasn’t one of her clients. It was about time she started dropping this stupid habit.

Both her reflexive reaction to the guy’s wolfish look as well as the sweater that triggered it – which she had often shared with her now-dead friend – all reminded her of her former occupation. Both girls had been brunettes. Both had similar bodies. Even their past lives resembled each other.

Katya Grebenkina had been born in the small town of Grayvoron. Her mother had conceived her as a result of a fling with an officer stationed at a nearby base. She had given the girl her father’s last name in the hopes of collecting alimony. Half a year later, the officer was transferred to Transbaikal. He vanished without a trace. Katya thought her mother unlucky. She cursed her provincial little town and dreamed of becoming a famous model. Her mother never missed a chance to rebuke her and blamed her daughter for her inability to find a new husband.

Having barely graduated, Katya went to Moscow and applied at a modeling agency. The agency’s handsome manager, who later turned out to be a pimp, filled her head with a bunch of nonsense. He seduced the ignorant and provincial girl and convinced her that without a portfolio, makeup, a first-rate hairstylist, brand-name clothes and shoes, no one would take her on as a model. Of course there was only one way to earn the money she needed and, luckily, it wasn’t even very tedious work – one could say, it was even pleasant. That was how seventeen-year-old Katya became a prostitute.

Meanwhile, back home, Katya’s mother met a foreign gentleman on the Internet and eloped to Greece. From her first letter, Katya figured out that her mom had traded the backwoods of Russia for the backwoods of Greece, where she was forced to dote over a Greek retiree and beg him for money to go see a dentist. Katya did not write back.

Lisa Malyshko had been born in Voronezh Region – in a village beside the Don federal highway. The entire life of the village revolved around serving truckers at the motel, the café and the sauna. Lisa never knew her father. Her mother would concoct a different story about him every day. Most likely, she had become pregnant by a random driver, whom she could no longer recall. The good-looking woman liked to have a drink and had a mischievous laugh. The neighbors would quietly remark that she “put her balls before her brains.” She was constantly hanging around the roadside café where little Lisa was allowed to take whatever she liked from the kitchen.

Lisa’s mother died between the wheels of a truck when she tried to cross the highway drunk one night. Lisa was sixteen at the time. The café’s owner seized his opportunity at the wake: He plied the girl with alcohol and then raped her.

“Now you’re going to serve me instead of your mom,” he told the shattered Lisa the next morning. “What, you thought I was going to feed you out of the good of my heart?”

Lisa endured the rape for two weeks, until the owner of the cafe decided to let one of his relatives have a go. The relative – who had just been released from prison and who, besides being starved for women, turned out to be somewhat of a sadist – did quite a number on the girl. After that, Lisa made her decision. She cleaned out the café’s register and hitched a ride to Moscow. She had no illusions about who she was going to be. It was better to work as a prostitute and get paid for it than endure being raped over a bowl of soup for the rest of her life.

Lisa Malyshko was certain that if she had had a father, he would have defended her and her life would have turned out otherwise. However, finding her mythical father seemed impossible. Katya Grebenkina’s situation was not even worth comparing: At least she knew the exact age of officer Igor Vasilevich Grebenkin – and where he worked.

“What if he’s a general by now?” Lisa would goad her friend. But Katya would simply wave her off. Finally, Lisa took the initiative herself and located Igor Grebenkin on the web.

This was how the newly-uncovered father came to Moscow to see his daughter. Their long-expected reunion, however, had turned into a horrific tragedy.

Recalling these things, Lisa also remembered that it was forty days since the death of Stella, with the funny last name of Sosuksu. Stella had only been eighteen and never laughed at anything. The first time Lisa saw Stella smile was when – having told Birdless Boris and his preoccupied clients to go to hell one evening – all three girls had gone to Sparrow Hills to see a grandiose fireworks show.

A crowd had gathered. In the sky overhead, bright flashes burst and broke into thousands of shimmering fires. Katya and Lisa were warming themselves with gulps of brandy and yelling, “Because we feel like it and not because it’s what the client wants.” They kept prickling Stella, trying to get their impassive friend to loosen up. Stella tripped, flailed her arms and struck a skinny young man, knocking off his glasses. Mumbling an apology, she replaced the broken glasses onto his flummoxed face and could not contain her smile. The young man replied in kind.

His name was Oleg Deryabin. He was a PhD student – a botanist – who was doing his research right there in Moscow State University’s Botanical Garden in Sparrow Hills. He was the kind of guy who got mocked in school, but Stella fell for him. After that, she would take any opportunity she could to run off and spend time with Oleg.

One day in the fall, Stella showed her girlfriends their humble little lovers’ retreat in the botanical garden – a derelict conservatory nestled among ancient apple trees. The girls munched on apples they found on the ground and fantasized about all kind of impossible nonsense that only happens in romantic comedies. The naïve rustic girl from sunny Moldova was the most vocal of the three. She went on in detail about her future plans for her future happy life.

And yet dreams come true much more often in the movies than in real life. Birdless Boris located Oleg Deryabin and showed him photos of Stella participating in orgies. “Professionals don’t spread their legs pro bono,” the pimp told the botanist – mostly to scare him. “You owe me, fellah.” The young man, who hailed from an intellectual family, could not forgive his girlfriend’s betrayal. When he saw her again, he called her words that Birdless himself would use in times of anger.

Overcome with grief, Stella stepped off the roof.

Lisa forced herself to forget her friends’ deaths and typed yet another query into Yandex. She had goals and she wasn’t about to abandon the path she’d settled on. Yandex returned the addresses of three specialized stores. Lisa chose the first one and wrote it down.

Her hand checked the envelope in her pocket. It was almost empty, and yet even these dregs would more than suffice for her immediate plans. Tomorrow she would be rich, but for now she needed to find a place to sleep. It would be too dangerous to go back to her apartment and the train station was patrolled by pushy cops who had a sixth sense when it came to prostitutes – they would find something to make a problem out of and then try to get a free ride.

Then it came to her. Not for nothing had Lisa recalled the pavilion in the botanical garden in Sparrow Hills.

“Thanks, Stella. Now I know where I can spend the night.”

14

Feeling fooled and seething with rage, Alex Bayukin stormed through the emergency exit and out of Wild Kitties.

Wait till I get my hands on you, Birdless.

The narrow parking lot and sidewalk were filled with cars. A solitary taxi stood waiting at the club’s entrance.

Damn it! If the pimp has a car, he’s long gone.

Alex tucked his gun behind his belt and ran up to the taxi.

“Did you see a guy with long hair? He’s a friend of mine. Did he get into a taxi?”

“I’ve been here ten minutes. There haven’t been any other taxis.” The taxi driver was smoking, flicking the ash out of his open window.

“Did you see any car leave at all?”

“All I know is I haven’t had to move for anyone,” the taxi driver shrugged. “You need a ride or what?”

Alex understood what the driver was getting at. The taxi was blocking the only way out of the strip club’s parking lot. All of a sudden, one of the cars standing off to the side honked and abruptly fell quiet.

“I’ll get a ride from my friend,” Bayukin muttered, turning in the direction of the sound.

Looking carefully, he saw a white Honda with someone inside. Alex crept up to the car from behind and squatted. Two men were conversing in raised voices. Judging by the rocker’s mane, Birdless Boris was behind the wheel. A tense man in a hat of reddish fur was sitting right behind him.

“Touch the wheel again and I’ll strangle you,” the man threatened.

The pimp, his head pressed to the headrest, was babbling excuses.

“I don’t know anything! I saw her this morning and that’s it. I took my cut and left.”

“That’s a lie. Katya could not have jumped on her own.”

“She’s not the first. Who knows how a whore’s mind works?”

“You piece of shit!” The man in the hat tightened the garrote over the pimp’s throat.

“Let me go…” Birdless’s voice grew hoarse and faint as he tried to break free.

After a short struggle, the passenger eased the tension. The pimp began to cough.

“Look, you’re right,” Boris agreed after regaining his breath. “The whole thing doesn’t seem like Katya. She wasn’t the type to start drama like that. If anything, she was more liable to off me first – and then maybe do herself in too. But be that as it may, I have no idea what happened back at the apartment. Like I told you, I wasn’t there!”

“What are you hiding from then?”

“Who likes talking to the cops?”

“Far as I’m concerned, you’re guilty either way. You turned my daughter into a prostitute. I was going to kill you either way.”

“For what? She agreed of her own – ”

The pimp’s frightened explanation was cut off by more croaking and the sound of a body thrashing.

This crazed pops is going to end him, Alex began fretting. Then I won’t find out anything about the envelope at all.

He rose, tore the rear door open and struck the passenger on the temple with the butt of his gun. The blow didn’t land perfectly flush, but it was enough to tear the skin and knock the man unconscious. Grebenkin’s hands relaxed, loosening the garrote.

Alex pushed him to the other side, sat down in his former place and shut the door. The pimp was sputtering and rubbing his throat. His teary, agitated eyes were trying to make out his unexpected savior in the rearview mirror.

“Don’t get your hope up, creep. It’s me again,” explained Alex and stuck the gun’s barrel into Birdless’s back. “Where’s the envelope?”

The pimp began thrashing hysterically.

“What’s is with you people?” he screamed. “Leave me alone!”

“The envelope, you goon.”

“The envelope! The envelope! What is your fixation with the envelope?”

“Looks like I shoulda let this other guy finish his job. Are you going to give me the envelope or not?”

“You’re all crazy!”

“You’re not going to trick me this time. Do you have the envelope on you or not?”

Boris’s hand unwittingly touched the shirt pocket under his vest. Alex noticed this gesture and broke into a crooked grin.

“Don’t bother. I’ll just help myself.”

Alex’s right hand pressed the barrel to the pimp’s temple, while with his left he reached over Boris’s shoulder. Alex had been so focused on his interrogation that he had failed to notice Grebenkin open his eyes. Realizing the delicacy of the situation, Grebenkin decided that he too must act. Surreptitiously, he drew a nonlethal pistol that had been modified to shoot live rounds, pointed it at Alex and pulled the trigger.

Two gunshots sounded mere hundredths of a second apart. The bullet from the nonlethal gun struck Alex in his shoulder, causing his trigger finger to slip – and nine grams of lead propelled Boris Manuylov’s brains out of his head. Dirty blood splattered the window pane, greasily rimming the hole the bullet had left.

Grebenkin pulled the door handle, tumbled out of the car and took off running. In his haste, he failed to notice that he had lost his ushanka hat.

Finding himself wounded, Alex Bayukin also realized that it was time to flee. He got out of the car and felt the wound. The bullet had glanced his shoulder, tearing off a clump of skin. The shock drowned out his pain.

The envelope! The scorching thought pulsed through Alex’s mind. I came here for the envelope.

He opened the driver’s side door and, restraining his disgust, reached toward the dead pimp. His hand fished out a clean envelope with something flat in it from the dead man’s pocket. Alex stuck his prize in his pants’ rear pocket and hurried away down the dark street.

The road led him to the subway station. The pain, awaking in his shoulder, almost paralyzed his right arm. Alex sat down on the edge of a ventilation hatch and gritted his teeth. He needed to think. He was without his jacket, which he had left in the club, and his shirt arm was soaked with blood. Someone would definitely notice a passenger like him on the subway. It was dangerous to take a taxi too, since taxi drivers were a naturally observant lot. Plus, he needed medical attention and it was unlikely that his general-father would be willing to risk his dodgy reputation to ask around for a surgeon.

Alex got out his phone. His left thumb poked at the buttons and found a number in the brief address book. Luckily, Alex had a friend in Moscow who would come to his aid under any and all circumstances.

He pressed the call button and waited for the familiar voice to answer.

“It’s me.” Alex confessed relieved. “I’m wounded and can’t call an ambulance.”

For a moment, the phone was silent.

“Where are you?” came the curt question at last. “I’m on my way.”