“Where?” Iosef repeated.
“A shed on the roof of the hotel,” the young man finally said.
“He-the body-is badly burned.”
“I think,” said Iosef to Yulia, “you had better get dressed. Do not leave the apartment. Inspector Zelach and I will come back shortly to continue our chat. There will be a uniformed officer outside your door.”
“For my protection?” she said with a smile.
“Of course,” said Iosef.
Zelach quickly finished his Pepsi-Cola and placed the glass on the table as he rose.
Perhaps a second after the door to the apartment had closed and the two policemen had departed, the bedroom door opened and a very sober Yevgeny Pleshkov said, “I heard.”
“So,” she said, moving past him toward the bedroom and touching his bristly cheek on her way, “you are the brilliant politician, the hope for Russia. What do we do now?”
Pleshkov had no idea.
“We had better think quickly,” she said, putting out her cigarette and taking off her pink pajamas.
Yevgeny Pleshkov headed for the cart containing the liquor bottles.
“Well,” Yulia said with a sigh. “Let us try what has always worked in the past.”
“Which is?” asked Pleshkov.
“Yevgeny,” she said, “you may be a brilliant politician, but you lack common sense. Go in the bathroom. Shave quickly. I’ll get you out of here.” Standing naked and looking quite beautiful to Yevgeny, Yulia began to laugh.
“What is funny?” he asked.
“I am an uneducated high-priced prostitute,” she said, “and I am giving orders to the man who may soon rule all of Russia.”
“You are very beautiful,” Yevgeny said, pouring himself a drink.
“Let us hope the policeman outside the door agrees.”
The lobby of the hotel was relatively empty as Elena Timofeyeva headed toward the elevator. Sasha Tkach, she was sure, was still asleep. The night before they had seen a lot and drunk more than a human being should be expected to. They had been guided by Illya and Boris to a lobster dinner at the Anchor in the Palace Hotel-Sasha had never had lobster before and had to watch Elena proceed before he began. Elena had eaten lobster more than once when she had been a student in the United States.
Both Illya and Boris were accompanied by young women, very young women, professionally made up and wearing dresses that were definitely French designed. The two women had spoken fewer than five or six words each. They smiled politely at jokes and were serious at proper moments. After the dinner, which was liberally accompanied by mixed drinks, the group moved on to three casinos-drinking, gambling, laughing. Elena hadn’t liked it, nor had she liked Boris checking his watch and saying, “It’s time.”
“For what?” Sasha had said drunkenly.
“The dogfight,” said Illya. “Now, tonight. Let’s go get your dog.”
“I thought that was tomorrow,” Elena said.
Boris leaned toward her, his breath strong and unpleasant, and said, “The fight between your Tchaikovsky and our Bronson is tomorrow night, if they are both in shape. Tonight is just to get the bettors interested. Promotion, hype, like the Americans with boxers.”
It was Sasha’s call, and Elena hoped that he was sober enough to make the right one. She thought of saying something like, “We haven’t prepared our dog for anything tonight,” or “Dmitri wouldn’t risk his prime animal before a big fight.” But she couldn’t speak. She was a woman. Sasha was supposedly the scheming, fear-less, and ruthless man.
“Fine,” said Sasha with a smile, wiping his face with a napkin and tearing the tail off of a shrimp from the huge chilled pile on the table.
“We had better go now,” said Illya. “After we finish our final drinks. A toast.” He raised his glass. “Mir i Druzhbah, peace and friendship.”
When his last round of drinks was finished, everyone at the table rose, Sasha reaching for one last shrimp. Neither Boris nor Illya appeared to pay the bill. When the group was out on the street, all six of them climbed into the black limo that appeared at the curb. The failure of the threatened rain to begin falling was beginning to bother Elena. When it finally rained, it might be an omen that something bad was going to happen. It was a thought worthy of Zelach’s mother. Elena shook off the idea. Touches of superstition that were also the legacy of her mother back in Odessa. Anna and her sister, Elena’s mother, had the same general build, the same voice, and almost the same face, but they were nothing alike in background and thought. Elena’s mother was a fish sorter on the docks. She was uneducated and surrounded by demons. Elena had escaped from her mother and her family in Odessa the day she turned eighteen.
And now Elena was surrounded by demons.
The three couples were driven to the hastily built kennel in the garage behind a pair of stores on the Arbat. The three men and Elena had gone single file down a narrow passageway between two buildings. The two young women, fearful of ruining their clothes, had remained behind in the car.
Sasha used his key, went in ahead of them, and turned on the lights.
Elena and Sasha were not sure of what they would see. The space had been prepared during the day by a quartet of carpenters who were accustomed to doing such jobs for people on both sides of the law, though one of them had commented as they had worked that it was more and more difficult to see the difference.
Traffic back and forth between the good guys and the bad had almost erased the line.
The carpenter who had expressed these beliefs was a set designer and builder for television shows and movies. He took each job without questioning, without asking for reasons.
Both the criminals and the law considered him a genius, and when Elena looked around the room, which could easily have held three huge twelve-wheel trucks, she found it difficult to keep from examining the brilliant set. After all, she was supposed to have been here at least several times before.
Along the wall across from the garage doors were a series of large metal cages. In each was a dog. In all there were six dogs. The dogs were silent, which impressed Boris and Illya.
“Well trained,” said Boris.
“I have a clever dog trainer from England,” Sasha improvised.
“And don’t bother to try to find out who he is. He is my prized possession, more important than the animals. The animals, except for Tchaikovsky, are expendable.”
A training ring, basically the ring of a small circus, with a red wooden wall circling it, stood in front of the wall at the end of the line of cages. Directly in the center of the garage was an oval exercise area complete with Astroturf. Two doors of the garage were blocked by shelves of items for the care of fighting dogs.
“No dog food?” said Boris, looking at the shelf.
“We feed them only fresh raw meat and water with vitamin supplements and injections,” said Sasha, who had no idea what he was talking about.
Elena had to admit that he was doing a remarkably good job. Alcohol may have blurred his memory but it loosened his imagination.
“They use the exercise pen,” Sasha said, nodding at the Astroturf-covered ring. “But one at a time. We wouldn’t want valuable dogs killing each other without an audience and the chance to place some bets.”
Illya nodded in understanding and said, “Let’s go. They’ll be waiting.”
There were two large wooden free-standing walk-in storage rooms next to the shelves. Elena knew Sasha was trying to figure out which one might hold transport cages for the animals. Perhaps they both did. Perhaps neither. He walked slowly and a bit un-steadily on his feet to the storage room on his right. He opened the padlocked door with his key and stepped in. Elena was right behind him, as were Illya and Boris.
There were no cages. The small space held an old but still-humming refrigerator and cleaning instruments to take care of the dog refuse. The tools looked used. Sasha went to the refrigerator, opened it, and marveled that his lie about raw meat was supported by the evidence inside the cold, lighted box. There were dozens of half-gallon-sized plastic containers through the sides of which raw, red meat could be clearly seen.