Londongrad

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

“Artemy Maximovich Ostalsky? Artie Cohen?”

That night, I saw the man in the blue and white jacket again. Near Pushkinskaya, he suddenly appeared. He said my name, I turned.

Compact man, medium build, with short elegantly cut white hair and light brown eyes like milk chocolate, he wore a pair of pressed khakis, a white Oxford shirt, the sleeves neatly rolled to his forearms, which were tan.

Only the loose skin around his neck and the deep lines in his face made me think he could be seventy or even more. On his feet were the Timberlands, he had the blue and white seersucker jacket over one arm-it was a hot, heavy night-and he could have passed for a well-heeled tourist strolling Moscow’s main street in the early evening.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know him, or want to, and before I ran into the subway, the man smiled lightly, shrugged and then walked away as if he’d made a mistake about knowing me. But he knew my Russian name.

He saw that I had heard him, that he was right, that it was my name, and then he ducked into a car waiting at the curb. I felt I was going crazy, but it’s what happens to you in Russia, and after that, I saw a horse.

*

“It really was a horse,” said a hooker standing in the doorway of McDonald’s. “You aren’t crazy,” she added, munching her Big Mac. “Every night, they bring horses in from the country. People come out of bars and clubs late and they ride across the city. The gypsies bring them, and people ride, and sometimes girls wait until their men are drunk enough to buy them diamonds at all-night shopping malls, and then they put the boyfriends on the horses and watch them ride away.” She looked at me and burst out laughing. “You think I’m telling you the truth?” she said. “You want to come someplace with me?”

I shook my head, and she was gone. All that was left of her was the wrapper from the burger tossed into the gutter.

I looked at my watch. It was pushing eleven. I found a cab. Heading back to the apartment, I realized where I had seen the man in the blue and white jacket who called out my name. I had seen him at the bus station when I arrrived from the airport. He had been waiting for one of the children on the airport bus. I didn’t understand. I didn’t have time for it, either.

At the apartment, I climbed the stairs, changed my sweat-soaked clothes, and took the rest of Larry Sverdloff’s cash out of my bag. Then I packed. I put Grisha Curtis’ files and my clothes in the suitcase. While I was checking my phones, messages, texts, e-mails, I heard somebody pounding at the door.

When I opened the door, I saw Igor, the caretaker, with a package in his arms.

“Yes?”

He hesitated as if working out what to say to me.

“Look.”

I took the package and peeled back some of the newspaper. It was a tangle of old bones.

Taking my arm, Igor made me follow him down the stairs into the ground-floor apartment. Half of the walls were covered with marble slabs, the rest was empty and unfinished. Empty cups stained with tea littered the floor.

In the bathroom floor was a hole. It had been covered up with linoleum, and worn, turd-colored Soviet carpet, both now pushed aside in a heap. Igor pointed to the hole in the ground.

“Somebody died here,” he said. “This is interesting for a historian like yourself?”

“Travel writer,” I said, and turned to go back up to the apartment. But Igor wasn’t finished and he followed me doggedly. He pointed to the bones.

Maybe it was the tension that made me start to laugh. I couldn’t stop. Sitting on a toilet floor in Moscow beside a Russian named Igor who had produced some old bones like an offering. What else could I do except laugh? He looked at me like I was crazy.

“You think this is funny, the bones of the dead?” and crossed himself three or four times, and I pretended not to understand.

“No, not funny, never mind. What do you want?” I knew this Igor had an agenda.

Did he want some money? Did he think the bones valuable? Did he plan to call the cops and accuse me of – what? Tell somebody a weird American was occupying the top floor flat? He told me he was afraid of the bones; he said that old bones could bring terrible curses on people who did not bury them properly and asked if I would wrap them up again and find suitable burial ground.

I pushed some bills into his hand because I wanted to get rid of him. He smiled a lot now and offered me a smoke. He didn’t leave though.

“Right, what else?” I said, and gave him more money.

“Somebody comes to see you!” he said. “Young guy, black hair, you know this guy?”

“What was his name?”

Igor was silent, but I knew it was Grisha Curtis. I told Igor to get lost, and he went back down the stairs. The bones, which I saw were from a butcher shop, I put in a closet. It didn’t mean anything. It was just Igor wanting money, wanting to stall and bargain before he told me about Grisha coming by.

Grisha Curtis had been here. He knew the apartment where I was staying. I started figuring how to bait Grisha Curtis, how to get him to visit me again.

He knew I was in Moscow. He knew where I was living.

Had it been a set-up? Was it the manager at Tolya’s club? Willie Moffat?

I didn’t care. I wanted Grisha here. I wanted him at the door. I wanted him to hunt me down in Moscow, in a bar, a restaurant, on the street. No more disguises, I thought. I’d show myself everywhere, I wanted him to see me, find me, get in my face.

When I saw Curtis, when I looked at him, I’d know if he had killed Valentina.

I couldn’t wait. I figured the best way was to show myself around, try to flush him out, draw attention, get him to come for me. Come on, I thought. Come get me!

I put on my best clean shirt and the expensive shoes from London. Gun in my pocket, I went over again to Pravda222, this time as Artie Cohen.

Come on, I thought again. I’m waiting.