"Smith, Martin Cruz - Red Square" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Martin Cruz)

'Midnight?'

'Unless the library comes down on top of me.'

'Let me just check the phone number.'

'Feldman. F-e-1-d-m-a-n. Professor Feldman.' He recited the number and hung up.

Arkady set the receiver down. 'Terrific machine.'

Minin had a bitter laugh for one so young. 'The forensic bastards will strip this place and we could use a fax.'

'No, we leave everything, especially the fax.'

'Food and alcohol, too?'

'Everything.'

The second sweeper's eyes grew larger. The magnetic force of guilt made her stare at pearls of vanilla ice cream that traced a trail in the oriental carpet to the refrigerator and back.

Minin whipped open the freezer door. 'She ate the ice cream while our backs were turned. And the chocolate's gone.'

'Olga Semyonovna!' The first sweeper was also shocked.

The accused lifted her hand from a pocket and seemed to sink at the knees as if the weight of the incriminating chocolate bar were too much. Tears coursed down the folds of her cheeks and dropped from her trembling chin as if she had stolen a silver cup off an altar. Terrific, Arkady thought, we've made an old woman cry over chocolate. How could she not succumb? Chocolate was an exotic myth, a whiff of history, like the Aztecs.

'Well, what do you think?' Arkady asked Minin. 'Should we arrest her, not arrest her but beat her, or just let her go? It would be more serious if she had taken the sour cream, too. But I want to know your opinion.' Arkady really was curious to learn how zealous his assistant was.

'I suppose,' Minin said finally, 'we can let her go this time.'

'If you think so.' Arkady turned to the women and said, 'Citizens, that means you both will have to help the organs of the law a little more.'

Soviet garages were mysteries because steel siding was not legally for sale to private citizens, yet garages constructed of such siding continued to appear magically in courtyards and multiply in rows down backstreets. Rudy Rosen's second key opened the mystery in the courtyard. The hanging bulb Arkady left untouched. In the sunlight he could see a tool kit, cases of motor oil, windscreen wipers, rearview mirrors and blankets kept to cover the car in winter. Under the blankets there was nothing more unusual than tyres. Later Minin and the technicians could dust the bulb and tap the floor. The sweepers had stood timidly in the open door the entire time; the old dears hadn't tried to make off with even a lug wrench.

Why wasn't he tired or hungry? He was like a man with a fever but no diagnosed disease. When he caught up with Jaak at the Intourist Hotel lobby, the detective was swallowing caffeine tablets to stay awake.

'Gary's full of shit,' Jaak said. 'I don't see Kim killing Rudy. He was his bodyguard. You know, I'm so sleepy that if I find Kim, he's going to shoot me and I won't even notice. He's not here.'

Arkady looked around the lobby. To the far left was a revolving door to the street and the outdoor Pepsi stand that had become a landmark for Moscow prostitutes. Inside stood a line of security men who scrupulously let in only prostitutes who paid. Camped within the grotto darkness of the lobby, tourists waited for a bus; they had been waiting for some time and had the stillness of abandoned luggage. The information stands were not only empty but seemed to express the eternal mystery of Stonehenge: why were they built? The only action was to the right, where a semi-Spanish courtyard under a skylight invited attention to the tables of a bar and the stainless-steel glitter of slot machines.

Rudy's lobby shop was the size of a large armoire. A case displayed postcards with views of Moscow, monasteries, the fur-trimmed crowns of dead princes. On the back wall hung ropes of amber nuggets and the bunting of peasant shawls. On the side shelves, wooden, hand-painted dolls of ascending sizes crowded around plaques for Visa, MasterCard, American Express.

Jaak unlocked and opened the glass door. 'One price for credit cards,' he said, 'half price for hard currency, which, when you consider that Rudy bought the dolls from idiots for rubles, still gave him a profit of a thousand per cent.'

'Nobody killed Rudy over dolls,' Arkady said. Handkerchief on his hand, he opened the counter drawer and flipped through a ledger. All figures, no notes. Minin and forensics would have to come here, too.

Jaak cleared his throat and said, 'I have a date. See you in the bar.'

Arkady locked the shop and wandered across the courtyard to the slot machines. They displayed draw poker or revealed plums, bells and lemons on wheels of chance under instructions in English, Spanish, German, Russian and Finnish. All the players were Arabs who circulated joylessly, setting down cans of orange 'Si Si' soda to stack tokens. In the middle of the machines an attendant poured a silvery stream of tokens into a mechanical counter, a metal box with a crank that he kept in furious motion. He jumped when Arkady asked him for a light. Arkady caught his own reflection on the side of a machine: a pale man with lank, dark hair in desperate need of sunshine and a shave, but not frightening enough to account for the way the attendant wrestled with his lighter.