At seven that same morning Leonid Dovnik, who had slept soundly for five hours, stood in front of the door of an apartment on the fifth floor of a gray building on Vavilov Street.
He had started early with two apartments near Moscow State University not far from where he had beaten Grisha Zalinsky to death the day before. Leonid had started early because he wanted to be sure to catch people before they left for work or school. It had taken him less than three minutes in the first apartment to discover that the Arab girl had visited there in the past but had not been seen for some time and had never slept there. Leonid was sure that he had been told the truth because he was a very persuasive man with a very direct manner, which let it be known that unless he received honest answers, violence would follow. He was aided by the belief of the people in both apartments that he was with the police.
He had checked the name off in the address book he had taken from Grisha Zalinsky’s apartment and added two more names and addresses given to him by the frightened girl in the first apartment he had entered. It was slow, tedious work, but he did not mind.
Near the university metro stop he bought a newspaper from a formerly state-run kiosk that was now a shining example of private enterprise, which meant high prices and few papers for sale, since paper was scarce. In general Leonid supported the new capitalism. After all, he told himself, he was an entrepreneur. Chaos and change tended to mean an increased need for his services. Yuri Pepp and his money changers had found too many new competitors around the big hotels dealing with American dollars. Leonid persuaded most of them to find new fields of interest. Sophia and Kolodny Seveyuskin had a pipeline for stealing emergency food supplies coming in from the United Nations. A bureaucrat in the Office of Consumer Supplies wanted to become a partner. Leonid convinced the man to ask for a transfer to a Siberian regional office. People with ambition often found other people in their way and needed someone who could maim or even destroy for a reasonable fee. Leonid did not consider himself particularly intelligent, but he knew he was relentless, honest, and without any moral sense.
Six months ago Leonid had bought a waffle filled with whipped cream in one of the cooperatives along the street, but there were neither waffles nor whipped cream now, and all the cooperatives were closed. He had money, plenty of it, French money, American dollars, but there was nothing to buy on the street. It almost put him in a bad mood.
If he did not find the Arab girl at the next apartment on his list, he would go to the Cherymushinsky farm market and pick up something sweet, maybe even a cup of caramel, though the last cup had given him a toothache.
Leonid got off of the metro and walked along the torn-up tram tracks, the piles of gravel. A bus coughed dark smoke from its exhaust and forced Leonid Dovnik against the wall of an apartment building, which turned out to be the one he was seeking.
There was a sense of urgency to his search, which he did not wish to fully acknowledge. He was not one to panic. The sense of urgency came not from the knowledge that the Syrians and the police were also looking for the girl. It was from the sight he had witnessed when he had returned to the Nikolai last night to report on his lack of success.
He had heard the noise from the office behind the stage where he had just reported to Tatyana. He had heard the shouts, the scrambling of bodies, the curses, and the running feet. When he stepped through the beaded curtains, he had seen a man who looked like a refrigerator hurl another man of some bulk through the air into the bar. The Nikolai had been nearly empty at that moment. Tatyana had been leaning over the bar, held there by the same policewoman he had seen in front of the Nikolai that morning. Beside them stood the young policeman. He had been beaten, not as well as Leonid would have done it, but he had been beaten.
Leonid had considered stepping across the floor and smashing the big man, who took a limping step toward him. There was no fear in the man’s eyes, nor was there any eagerness for battle. If anything, there was a look of curiosity, and Leonid had the sense that this man might well be capable of prying secrets from him.
So Leonid had turned and left, certain that Tatyana could take care of herself, as she always had. Even if she could not, he was confident that he could survive without her, especially if he could find the Arab girl.
He found the apartment and knocked at the door. No answer. He knocked again and then stood listening. He listened patiently for a long time, five or six minutes. A woman wearing a thin coat and carrying an empty shopping bag walked past. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor in front of her except to steal a glimpse of Leonid. Then she hurried away.
He was certain now that no one was hiding inside the apartment. He would have heard some sound. Leonid tried the door. He knew there were several locks; he could feel their resistance.
To keep any listening neighbors at bay, he did what he had done many times in the past. He shouted, “Police, open the door.”
He paused for a second, then kicked the door. It flew open and came off at the top right hinge. He stepped into the apartment, propped the door back in the doorway, and looked around.
The place was large and messy, which displeased Leonid Dovnik, who was a neat man. “If one is forced to live in a pigsty, one must keep his own corner of it clean or he is no better than the pig and deserves to be eaten”; that is what Leonid Dovnik’s mother had taught him. It was the way she had kept her home while Leonid’s father tried to turn it into filthy hell. Leonid’s own room was almost as clean as a surgery, a surgery where he sometimes imagined carving his father’s carcass and showing it to his approving mother.
Now, this sty. Leonid despised whoever lived here. The name in the notebook for this address was Chesney. That sounded American or English to Leonid. Americans and English could be filthy pigs, but so could Russians. Besides, there were many Russians with odd names.
He thrashed through the rooms, not worrying about making noise. The living room was overcrowded with soft furniture covered with a pink-and-yellow-flowered fabric. The dark drapes that covered the windows kept out the morning light, and the smell of something sweet reminded him of burning sugar. His tooth ached at the smell.
He searched and quickly found what he had hoped to find. In the single bedroom was a bed, whose twisted sheets smelled of sex and sweat. Leonid found the odor slightly repulsive. In the closet were the clothes of a man and a woman. He thought he recognized a dress as the one the Arab girl had been wearing the one time Tatyana had introduced him to her. This memory was confirmed by the photograph he found on the dresser. He had to move a pair of stained male undershorts to find the photograph, but there it was, and in it was the girl. The photo had been taken along the Moscow River. Leonid knew the place, right across from the old monastery.
The girl in the picture stood next to a man much taller and much older than she. He had his arm around her possessively, and there was a smile of triumph on his thin lips. The girl was smiling, too, but there was a faint hint of fear in that smile. The man was tall, with lots of white hair and a smile of white teeth. He wore a white shirt and white trousers. Leonid Dovnik did not like this man.
He tore the photograph from the frame, folded it, and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he began to search the apartment for a clue as to where they might have gone. He could simply have sat down and waited till they returned, but it might be hours, all day, late into the night. That did not bother him, but he knew that others were looking and that he had only the advantage of Grisha Zalinsky’s address book.
He found nothing that could help him, so he left the apartment and replaced the door in its frame. He listened for a moment and then moved to the door across the hall. Someone was inside. He could hear a radio or television and voices. He knocked.