Three Stations: An Arkady Renko Novel Page 0,2

dried and dressed Victor, trying to keep him from unraveling.

“He’s not registered, right?” Arkady just wanted to check.

“He was never here.”

Arkady laid fifty dollars on the desk and maneuvered Victor toward the door.

“I am God!” said the voice from the bed.

God is drunk, Arkady thought.

Arkady drove Victor’s Lada because his own Zhiguli was in the shop awaiting a new gearbox and Victor had lost his license for drunk driving. It didn’t matter that Victor had been washed and wore a change of clothes, the smell of vodka came off him like heat from a stove and Arkady cranked a window open for fresh air. The short nights of summer had begun, nothing like the white nights of St. Petersburg but enough to make sleep difficult and aggravate relationships. The police radio maintained a constant squawk.

Arkady handed Victor the walkie-talkie. “Call in. Let Petrovka know that you’re on duty.” Petrovka was shorthand for militia headquarters on Petrovka Street.

“Who cares? I’m fucked.”

But Victor pulled himself together to call the dispatcher. Miraculously no one in his district had been murdered, raped or assaulted all evening.

“Bunch of fairies. Do I have my gun?”

“Yes. We’d hate to see that fall into the wrong hands.”

Arkady thought Victor was nodding off but the detective muttered, “Life would be wonderful without vodka, but since the world is not wonderful, people need vodka. Vodka is in our DNA. That’s a fact. The thing is, Russians are perfectionists. That’s our curse. It makes for great chess players and ballerinas and turns the rest of us into jealous inebriates. The question is not why don’t I drink less, it’s why don’t you drink more?”

“You’re welcome.”

“That’s what I meant. Thank you.”

Other cars, beefed-up foreign monsters, roared up behind them but didn’t tailgate for long. The Lada’s exhaust pipe and muffler hung low and occasionally dragged a rooster tail of sparks, fair warning to keep a safe distance.

If the Lada was a wreck, so were the men in it, Arkady thought. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. Who was this graying stranger who rose from his bed, usurped his clothes and occupied his chair at the prosecutor’s office?

Victor said, “I read in the paper about two dolphins trying to drown a man in Greece or someplace. You always hear about noble dolphins saving someone from drowning. Not this time; they were pushing him out to sea. I asked myself what was different about this poor bastard. It turned out he was Russian, naturally, and maybe a little drunk. Why does the reverse of the normal always happen to us? Maybe the dolphins had rescued him a dozen times before. Enough was enough. What do you think?”

“Maybe we should make it official,” Arkady said.

“Make what official?”

“Russia is upside down.”

Arkady was neither up nor down. He was an investigator who investigated nothing. The prosecutor made sure Arkady followed orders by giving him none to defy. No investigations meant no runaway investigations. Arkady was ignored, welcome to spend his time reading novels or arranging flowers.

Although he had time he hadn’t spent it with Zhenya. At fifteen the boy was at the peak of sullen adolescence. Was Zhenya absent from school? Arkady had no say. His status with the boy was not official. All he could offer Zhenya was a clean place to spend the night. Arkady might not see him for a week and then by chance spot Zhenya in his other, secretive life trudging along in a hooded sweatshirt with a street gang. If Arkady approached, Zhenya froze him with a look.

The director of the children’s shelter that Zhenya originally came from claimed that the boy and Arkady had a special relationship. Zhenya’s father had shot Arkady. If that wasn’t special, what was?

The day before, friends brought champagne and cake to celebrate Arkady’s birthday, and then gave such rueful, eloquent speeches about the cost of integrity that the women cried. Some of the drunker men too, and Arkady had to go from person to person and reassure them that he was not dead.

He had written a letter of resignation.

As of noon today I resign my position in the Prosecution Service of the Russian Republic. Arkady Kyrilovich Renko, Senior Investigator of Important Cases.

But to afford Zurin so much satisfaction was unbearable. Arkady had burned the letter in an ashtray.

And the days marched on.

Arkady had a new neighbor across the hall, a young woman who was out all hours and sometimes needed help finding her latchkey in her voluminous bag. A journalist young