Scorpion Winter

Chapter Thirteen

Andriyivsky Uzviz

Kyiv, Ukraine

A sign with the silhouette of a black cat hung above the door of the Chorna Kishka Theatre Cafe on Andriyivsky Uzviz, a cobblestone pedestrian street winding steeply up the hill from Kontraktova Square. A poster in the cafe window advertised a play with a cubistlike drawing of a clown’s face dripping blood, as if it had been drawn by an untalented Picasso. There were few people out. It was very cold; the wind blowing traces of snow across the cobblestones, the sky steel-gray and promising more snow. Scorpion hunched inside his overcoat and went inside.

The cafe was nearly empty. Half the space was taken up by rows of folding chairs fronting a small stage. There were photos with the names of the actors in the play on the wall next to the bar. On one side of the stage hung an odd-looking puppet. It looked like a fairy-tale woodsman holding an ax. A young man sat at the bar, reading a paperback and nursing a beer, ignoring the nearly silent TV on the wall. A waitress in jeans came over. She was young, thin, her short reddish hair streaked with blue, metal studs in her nose and upper lip. Her photo was one of those hung by the bar.

“Yestli u vas menyu?” Scorpion said, asking in Russian for a menu.

“We got borscht,” she said in a thickly accented English.

“What else?”

“Borscht is good,” she said.

“I’ll have the borscht and an Obolon,” Scorpion said.

A few minutes later she brought him a steaming bowl of soup with a dollop of sour cream, some garlicky pampushkamy rolls, and a bottle of Obolon beer.

“Kak vas zavut?” he asked her in Russian as he started to eat. What’s your name?

“Ekaterina,” she said, turning back toward him, one hand on a bony hip.

“Are you an actress?” indicating the photos on the wall.

“Why? You want to put me on the televidenie?” she smirked. “I’ve heard this story before, krasivyi. ”

“I’m looking for Alyona Kushnir,” he said. “I’m told she’s an actress in the play.”

The young man sitting at the bar stopped reading his paperback and turned to look at him. “What you want with Alyona?” he asked in clumsy English, putting down the book.

“She’s missing. I’m working with Iryna Mikhailivna Shevchenko. She asked me to help,” Scorpion said, watching them.

“That sooka suna! I knew something would happen!” the woman said, looking at the young man.

“Zatknysya!” Don’t say anything, the young man said, coming over. “Kto vy?” he asked Scorpion. Who are you? “Are you politsiy?”

“I’m a journalist. I was doing a story on the election. I need to talk to Alyona, only she didn’t show up at work and no one’s seen her. Iryna is worried. Do you know anything?” Scorpion said in English.

“Me? I not know nothing,” the young man said.

“She didn’t come for play last night,” the waitress said.

“Are you her drooha?” Scorpion asked, meaning her friend.

Ekaterina shrugged. “We are actresses both. Last night she is supposed to come for play. He call her cell, her flat,” jerking her head toward the young man. “No answer. Nichego. ” Nothing.

“You didn’t seem surprised when I told you she hasn’t come in,” Scorpion said, gesturing for her to sit. “Why not?”

She hesitated a moment, then glancing at the young man, sat down at the table. Scorpion watched both of them. He could see something in the young man’s eyes warning her not to say anything.

“ Nichego. It is nothing. Sometimes I exaggerate. I am actress,” she said, trying a smile, but her eyes weren’t smiling. She looked scared, Scorpion thought.

“When you said sooka suna- son of a bitch-who were you talking about?”

“Why you want to speak with Alyona?” the young man asked.

“She’s missing,” Scorpion said. “She may be in danger. That’s all I can tell you.”

“This is politika? Is this opasno… you understand, dangerous?” the young man said.

“ Ochen opasno, ” Scorpion said. “It is very dangerous. Who is the sooka suna?”

“I knew this would happen!” Ekaterina said. “I warn her, but she is afraid!”

“Be quiet! Say nothing!” the young man hissed. “We don’t know him,” indicating Scorpion.

The waitress said something fast in Russian that Scorpion didn’t catch, though he thought he heard the word pamagat, help. He held up his cell phone.

“ Zdyes, here. Talk to Iryna Shevchenko yourself. I think Alyona is in danger. I think you already know that. Who’s the sooka suna?”

The young man looked at the phone. “Is her droog, her boyfriend,” he said finally, coming over and joining them. He lit a cigarette, his fingers yellowed by nicotine. The girl nodded.

“Is this her fiance?”

Ekaterina nodded again. “His name is Sirhiy. Sirhiy Pyatov. He is electrician. At first when she knows him, she is happy. But he gets drunk, beats her. She tries to leave, he puts knife to her throat, here,” touching her neck, “telling her if she leaves he will kill her. I tell her you should not stay, but she says afterward, he is so sweet, like little boy. He kisses her, tells her he didn’t mean it. One day she comes to do play, her face is like balloon, blue, here,” touching the left side of her face. “I put heavy makeup on so everyone doesn’t see. She wants to do play, she says.”

“He is Syndikat guy,” the young man said. “Mafia, you understand? He tells me like is good thing, thing to be proud of. Three weeks ago he comes to cafe, buys Nemiroff horilka for everyone. Happy, yes? He tells me he has big deal going, but is secret. Shhhh! He does not come back after that.”

“And Alyona, she says nothing,” Ekaterina added. “But she is worried.”

“Scared?”

She nodded. “Yes. Sirhiy is big guy. Scary guy.”

“Is politika. Is Syndikat. Is best to be scared,” the young man said, glancing over his shoulder at the TV, which was showing a riot in the streets. There were scenes of Cherkesov supporters with signs reading HET ZLODIY KOZHANOVSKIY! Down with the Thief Kozhanovskiy, attacking students with clubs. The bloody face of an unconscious young man filled the screen. The camera pulled back to show his lifeless body, head dangling as he was carried away by friends.

“Turn up the TV,” Scorpion said.

The young man went over and turned it up. The announcer rattled in rapid Ukrainian over images of riots and groups of men, workers and students on both sides shouting and waving banners and clubs.

“What’s he saying?” Scorpion asked.

“He say Cherkesov is making groups to ensure voting is fair,” Ekaterina said, her eyes wide. “He say they will be at every voting place. Kozhanovskiy say Cherkesov is try to intimidate voters. Students is also forming groups for Kozhanovskiy. There is fighting in Kyiv, in Kharkov, Donetsk, Odessa, all over.”

“It’s bad,” Scorpion said.

She and the young man nodded. “I never see this,” she said, and shivered. The announcer’s voice stopped and the TV went to a commercial. The young man took the remote and turned the volume down.

“When was the last time you saw Alyona?” Scorpion asked.

“This morning, about eleven,” Ekaterina said. “She came to the cafe. She says she cannot be in play anymore. She is crying, shaking like a leaf. I ask her, is it Sirhiy?” She looked at Scorpion. “But she says, is more than Sirhiy. ‘He has put me in the middle,’ she says. I ask her what is happening, but she says not tell to anyone. She must run, hide. I ask where she will go. She does not answer. I ask if she has place to go. She says something I do not forget. She says, ‘I try, but I think is too late.’ I try to stop her, but she run away.”

Eleven o’clock, Scorpion thought with a pang. Less than an hour after he had spoken with Gabrilov at the Russian embassy and Gabrilov had called Alyona’s cell. While he was talking with Iryna, Alyona was making a run for it.

“Do you have her address?” he asked.

She nodded, then wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave it to him.

“Do either of you want to come with me? It would help,” he said.

She started to say yes, standing up, then looked at the young man.

“We should stay out of this,” he said. She looked down at her feet and nodded.

“Is her picture up there?” Scorpion asked, pointing at the photos on the wall.

Ekaterina went over to the wall and pointed.

“This is Alyona,” indicating a pouty blonde, a Slavic Marilyn Monroe type.

“Can I have it?” Scorpion asked.

She took the frame down and handed it to the young man, who took the photo out of the frame and handed it to Scorpion.

“What you do?” the young man asked.

“Try to find her. See if I can help,” Scorpion said, taking a last taste of the borscht and a swig of beer. He tossed some money on the table, pulled his overcoat on and got up.

“Alyona is good girl,” the young man said, reaching for the half-finished beer. “Don’t take too long.”

A lyona’s apartment building was in a working-class neighborhood on a hill near the Central Station. Boots and galoshes had tracked a path through the snow by the entrance. Trash lay half buried in piles of snow on the curb, and as Scorpion got closer, he spotted what could have been droplets of blood. Although it was early afternoon, it was already growing dark. The wind had come up. Except for the occasional passing car, the street was deserted, locked in winter. He studied the building. Its windows were frosted over, the shades drawn, silent. He wasn’t looking forward to what he might find.

It only took a second with a credit card to open the building’s front door lock. The door was frozen shut and he had to lean his shoulder into it to crack the ice and open it. The hallway was dim, with fading floral wallpaper that looked like it had come from another era. From one of the ground floor apartments came the indistinct sounds of what could have been a TV game show. He checked the names on the mailboxes. Alyona’s last name was Kushnir. He saw it with a hand-lettered Пыатов for Pyatov scrawled over it, nearly obliterating KUSHNIR. It was like a metaphor for how Pyatov had taken over her life, Scorpion thought, heading up the stairs.

He waited, listening at the apartment door. No sound came from inside. Just to be sure, he listened at the doors of the apartments on either side. In one of them he could hear a television and smelled borscht cooking. He would have to be quiet. He studied the lock for a second, then took out the Glock and the Peterson key. He unlocked the door and opened it, snapping into the apartment in shooting position.

The studio apartment was empty. Whoever had left was in a hurry. There were drawers open and clothes on the floor. He searched the lone closet. If there had been any luggage, it was gone. The bed hadn’t been made. Scorpion examined the bed, the frayed sheet and blanket, and under the thin mattress. There were rust-colored stains on the sheet and mattress. It looked like dried blood, not very long ago. The hairs stood up at the back of his neck.

The girl was doomed and she knew it, he thought. But it didn’t fit. If Pyatov had done something to Alyona, there were two problems. The walls were thin. He could hear the television from the next apartment. How come no one heard anything? And if Pyatov had killed her, how could he have disposed of the body in broad daylight?

Scorpion got his answer to the second question in the bathroom. The tiny curtainless shower stall had dark stains around the drain. He studied them, ran the water and using a folded piece of rough toilet paper rubbed at one of the stains. It ran red on the paper and down the drain. At the moment, he would have given a lot for access to a police lab, but he had no lab and not a lot of time either. Assumption: Pyatov killed the girl silently, perhaps by cutting her throat in the bed, then cut her up in the shower and carried the pieces out in a suitcase. Tough but possible. The alternative was that she wasn’t dead. But if not, where was she and why the bloodstains in the shower?

What would he have used to cut her up? he wondered, looking in the small cupboard over the kitchen sink. In the counter under the sink he found a stained butcher knife and a rusted hacksaw frame minus the blade. It also had traces of blood. A torn sticker on the frame indicated it belonged to Filostro Elektrychni, Ltd. on Dymytrova Street. After taking one last look around and making sure to wipe off anything he might’ve touched, he left the apartment, locking the door behind him with the Peterson key.

He knocked on the door of the apartment next door; the one with the television on. A jowly middle-aged woman in a housedress opened the door.

“ Dobry dyen. I am friend of Pani Kushnir,” Scorpion said in his best Russian.

“Shcho vy khochete?” What do you want? she said in Ukrainian, peering nearsightedly at him.

“ Pazhalusta, your neighbor, Pani Kushnir, is missing,” indicating next door, “Vy videli yee?” he asked in Russian. Have you seen her?

“Kto vy?” Who are you? she answered in Russian, her face hardening. “You’re a foreigner.”

“Ya zhurnalist,” I’m a journalist, “iz Kanady,” from Canada. “It is very important.”

“ Slushaite, you make them stop making so much noise with the television next door. Around noon there is shouting and screams and suddenly the televidenie is so loud I cannot hear my own,” she said, shaking her finger in Scorpion’s face.

“Have you seen her today?” he asked.

The woman shook her head.

“What about her drooh?” Her boyfriend.

“That batjar,” she said, her eyes hardening. “A few weeks ago I thought he was going to hit me! I knocked on the door. It sounded like he was going to kill her in there.”

“What about today?”

“I heard him leave a couple of hours ago, the pig,” her mouth wrinkling like she wanted to spit. “They finally turned the televidenie off. You find her, you tell her I am calling the pomishchyk. ” The landlord. “All this business-and now you, a foreigner! Plah! Where does it end?”

“Was she with him?” Scorpion asked.

“Ni.” She shook her head. “He was leaving. For good I hope.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw through the peephole.”

At first Scorpion didn’t understand. He shrugged, holding his hands up. She pointed at the door peephole. “Glazok,” she said, repeating the word, annoyed. “He had a big suitcase on wheels. It looked heavy.”

Jesus, Scorpion thought. Just like that. “And you haven’t seen her?”

“ Ni- I don’t want to be involved and I don’t talk to foreigners,” she said, closing the door firmly in Scorpion’s face.

That left him on the Metro to Respublikansky, the station near the football stadium. According to the Kyiv map, it was the closest station to Dymytrova Street, the address on the hacksaw frame where Pyatov, an electrician, presumably worked. He had thought of calling, then decided it was best if he just showed up in case Pyatov was there.

The subway car was crowded with people. It had that Eastern European winter smell of sour bodies, wet wool, and cigarettes. A train headed in the opposite direction passed theirs with a roar, lighted windows speeding by. One of the passengers in the other train, a shaved-headed type in a cheap leather jacket who had blatnoi thug written all over him, happened to look up at Scorpion. He was gone in an instant, but it hit Scorpion like an electric shock. It was a reminder. Mogilenko undoubtedly had informants scouring the city looking for him.

He also realized he’d been avoiding thinking about Alyona, the pouty blonde, so young and wannabe sexy in the photo and yet who already knew she was doomed. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, but after being in the apartment and hearing what the neighbor woman had said, there was no escaping it.

The probability was that his visit to Gabrilov had triggered her death.

He was getting in very deep, very fast, feeling the drag as the train slowed, pulling into the Metro station, all modern lighting and arched white ceilings.

He came up the long escalator to street level. The Kyiv Metro was one of the deepest subways in the world. The sky outside had turned dark and threatening. Billboards and shop windows were already lit and power lines over the street swayed in the wind. Scorpion walked on a sidewalk trail in the snow, his collar pulled up against the wind. He spelled out the Cyrillic letters of FILOSTRO ELEKTRYCHNI, LTD. in the electric sign on top of a long brick building and went inside.

A young blond woman in a thick sweater looked up from behind a glass window.

“Dobry den,” she said, opening a small window in the glass.

“ Zdrastvuitye. I’m looking for the shef,” he said in Russian. The manager.

She picked up the phone, and a few minutes a paunchy balding man in a sagging shirt and tie came to the front and said something in Ukrainian that Scorpion didn’t understand.

“Ya ishchu kogo-to,” Scorpion said in Russian. I’m looking for someone. “An employee. Sirhiy Pyatov.”

“What you want with Pyatov?” the manager said in a broken English Scorpion was becoming accustomed to.

“He works here?”

“Not no more. I fire three weeks ago. I not see him in month, the sooka suna. You friend of him?”

Scorpion shook his head.

“ Kharasho. Otherwise get out or I call militsiyu police,” the manager said.

“Do you have an address for him?”

“What? He owe you money? Na vse dobre! ” Good luck. The manager smirked.

“Can I get his address?”

The manager said something to the girl. She looked it up on her computer, scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Scorpion.

“ Spasiba,” Scorpion said. Thanks.

“You see Pyatov, you tell him no come back. He don’t work here no more,” the manager said.

No, Scorpion thought. When I see him, I’ll kill him.

His latest prepaid cell phone vibrated in his pocket. It was a text from Iryna. Urgent we meet. Hurry! she wrote, and specified an address in the Podil district.

When he stepped outside, it was snowing.