Osborne pointed to the sliding doors of a closet. ‘Open the door on the right.’
Arkady slid the door open. Hanging from a rack were a dozen new jackets and slacks. Despite the faint light, he saw duplicates of the jacket and trousers he was wearing. ‘There was no point in not getting extras,’ Osborne said.
Arkady slid the other door open. It was full of dresses, gowns, bathrobes and two fur coats, and its floor was covered by a woman’s shoes and boots.
‘You’re moving in,’ Osborne said, ‘you and Irina. You will be my employee and I will pay you well – better than well. The apartment is in my name, but the first year’s mortgage and maintenance is already paid. Any New Yorker would gladly trade places with you. You’ll have a new life.’
This conversation wasn’t possible, Arkady thought; it had taken some supernaturally wrong turn.
‘Do you want Irina to live?’ Osborne asked. ‘That’s the trade; the sables in exchange for Irina and you. Irina because I want her, and you because she won’t come without you.’
‘I’m not going to share Irina with you.’
‘You’re already sharing Irina with me,’ Osborne said. ‘You shared her with me in Moscow, and you’ve been sharing her with me ever since you arrived here. I was in her bed that morning in Moscow when you talked to her outside her apartment. She slept with you last night, and she slept with me this afternoon.’
‘Here?’ Arkady stared at the rumpled sheets luminous in their disarray.
‘You don’t believe me,’ Osborne said. ‘Come now, you’re too good an investigator to be so surprised. How would I ever have met James Kirwill without Irina? Or Valerya or Kostia? And didn’t it seem strange to you that Iamskoy and I didn’t find the two of you when you were hiding her in your apartment? We didn’t have to look; she called me from your apartment. How did you think I found her when you took your trip to the Finnish border? She came right to me. You didn’t ask yourself these questions? Because you already had your answers. I’ve confessed – now it’s your turn. But you don’t like that. At the end of an investigation you only want to find a monster and the neatly assorted dead. God forbid that you should discover yourself. You’ll learn to live with yourself, I promise. The Russians will just throw you and Irina on their Jewish quota; they do that with a lot of problems they want to get rid of.’
Osborne laid the gun on the night table. ‘I didn’t want you, but Irina wouldn’t stay without you. It was maddening. All she ever wanted was to be here, and then she threatened to go back. Now, I’m glad you’re here; it makes everything complete.’ He opened the night table and brought out a bottle of Stolichnaya and two glasses. ‘I find the situation seductive. What two men can know each other as well as a killer and his investigator? It’s your very duty to define the crime; you give definition to the criminal. I take shape in your imagination before we even meet, and as I run from you, you obsess me in return. We have always been partners in crime.’
He poured vodka to the brim, so that the liquid swelled softly at the top, and gave one glass to Arkady.
‘And what killer and investigator can be closer than two men who share the same woman? We are partners in passion as well.’ Osborne lifted his glass. ‘To Irina.’
‘Why did you kill the people in Gorky Park?’
‘You know why; you solved it.’ Osborne’s glass was still raised.
‘I know how you did, but why?’
‘For the sables, as you know.’
‘Why did you want your own sables?’
‘To make money. You know all this.’
‘You already have so much money.’
‘To have more.’
‘Just more?’ Arkady asked. He poured his glass onto the bedroom carpet, drawing a spiral with the vodka. ‘Then you’re not a man of great passion, Mr Osborne; you’re only a homicidal businessman. You’re a fool, Mr Osborne. Irina sells herself to you and gives herself to me. A businessman should only expect the skin, yes? You should know about taking the skin. We’ll live here at your expense and laugh in your face. And who knows when we’ll disappear? Then you’ll have no sables, no Irina, nothing.’
‘Then you accept my offer of help,’ Osborne said. ‘Today is Wednesday. On Friday the Soviets and I will trade – you and Irina for the sables. You will allow me to save you?’
‘Yes,’ Arkady said. What choice was there? Only Osborne could save Irina. Once they were safe they could run away. If Osborne tried to stop them, Arkady would kill him.
‘Then I drink to you,’ Osborne said. ‘It took me a year in Leningrad to discover what humans will do to survive. You are here only two days and you’re already a different man. In two more days you’ll be an American.’ He drank his glass in one swallow. ‘I look forward to the coming years,’ he said. ‘It will be good to have a friend.’
Alone in the elevator, Arkady sagged under the weight of the truth. Irina was a whore. She had slept with Osborne and God knew who else to earn her passage from Russia. Spread her legs as if they were wings. Lied to Arkady – lied with accusations and kisses – called him an idiot and then made him one. Worse, he had known. Known from the beginning, known from moment to moment, known more as he loved her more. Now they were both whores. Him in his new clothes, no longer chief investigator, no longer criminal – then what? The three bodies in Gorky Park. ‘What about them?’ Osborne had asked. And what about Pasha? He was staggered at all the frauds he had committed. The first fraud of the investigation so that he could force Pribluda to take over. The second one so that he could have Irina, the final one so that Osborne could have her.
The elevator door opened and he walked through the lobby. I’m Osborne’s partner, he answered himself. As soon as he reached the sidewalk, the limousine rolled in front of him. Blindly he got in and the car moved south, toward the hotel.
Yet he still loved her. He would turn his back on the bodies in Gorky Park. She had whored her way to America, and he would whore to help her stay. The Barcelona Hotel had been well chosen for such a pair. He let his head loll against the seat. Snowflakes trembled on the moving shadows of the window. No questions, she had begged, so he’d asked no questions and made his mind a blank. How many closets of clothes did she own? How long had she been in New York?
His mind moved back. He’d never broken, he’d never talked. But the KGB and the FBI and everyone else knew about Irina and Osborne. Who was there to tell them besides Irina? And further back. How many years had she slept with Osborne? No, there wouldn’t have been other men. Osborne was too proud for that.
On Broadway they passed the ape grins of movie marquees. Pornography theaters displayed cardboard blow-ups of smudged bodies. ‘Live acts!’ said a sign. A doorway embraced a black woman in a blond wig, a white woman in a red wig and a young man in a cowboy hat. In Times Square there was a nervous pair of police on every corner. Billboards exploded with color and smoke. Snow flew like ash over the crowds. A jogger dodged between prostitutes.
Yet Irina loved him. She would return to Russia or stay in America, depending on what he did. He remembered her at Mosfilm, her Afghan jacket and split boot. So she’d slept with Osborne in Moscow, but she wouldn’t take any gifts. Not even money and she was hungry half the time. The only present she’d accept was America. What had Arkady given her, a scarf with Easter eggs? Only Osborne could give her America, only Osborne would give him the truth. Osborne had the power of gifts.
America, Russia, Russia, America. America was the best of all illusions. It defied expectations. Even here in its lights, close enough to crush dollars in your hands, it remained an illusion. He wouldn’t have come if he’d known about Irina and Osborne, he told himself. But he’d always known about Irina and Osborne, he answered himself. Who was he to talk about illusions?
She’d go back if Arkady said so; even Osborne agreed.
What were Irina and Osborne like in bed?
Irina, Osborne, Osborne, Irina. He could see them in bed, the two of them a serpentine. The th
ree of them.
He came out of his reverie when the limousine pulled to the curb. He noticed they were far south of Twenty-ninth Street. Both rear doors swung open; on each side a young black man leaned into the car aiming a revolver at Arkady’s head with one hand and holding a detective’s shield with the other. The glass panel between the back seat and the limousine driver slid down to show Kirwill behind the wheel.
‘What happened to the chauffeur?’ Arkady asked.
‘Some bad man hit him on the head and stole his car.’ Kirwill grinned. ‘Welcome to New York.’
Kirwill consumed hot beef sandwiches and shots of whiskey with beer chasers. The two black detectives, Billy and Rodney, drank rum-and-Cokes in the opposite booth. Arkady sat across from Kirwill, his glass empty. He wasn’t in the bar, he wasn’t free, his eyes still saw the sheets sprawled on the apartment bed. He sat with Kirwill the way a man might sit indifferently in front of a fire.
‘Osborne could say “I killed them”,’ Kirwill explained. ‘He could say, “I shot them in Gorky Park at three p.m. on February first. I did it and I’m glad.” He wouldn’t be extradited. With any decent American lawyer the case would drag on for five years. It takes twenty years to get a Nazi war criminal out of here. Say, five years for the first trial, another five years for an appeal. In the end he could still go to the federal appeals and buy a mistrial. Win or lose, that’s fifteen years. Sables fuck; they don’t fuck like minks but they fuck, and in fifteen years the Russian sable monopoly will be ancient history. That’s fifty million dollars in foreign exchange. So forget extradition. The other two choices are killing Osborne and stealing the sables back, or else dealing. The bureau is protecting Osborne, and the Russians don’t know where the sables are, so they’ll deal. Look, give the man credit. Osborne pissed on the KGB, he pissed on them and then he shook it. The man’s a fucking American hero. What are you, some fucking Russian subversive? But I’m going to help you, Renko.’
Kirwill and his two black detectives looked like exotic thieves, certainly nothing like Moscow militia. The stolen limousine was only a few blocks away.
‘You should have helped me in Moscow,’ Arkady said. ‘I could have stopped Osborne then. You can’t help me now.’
‘I can save you.’
‘Save me?’ The humor roused Arkady. Yesterday he might even have believed Kirwill. ‘You can’t save me without the sables. Do you have the sables?’
‘No.’
‘You’re going to save me, but you can’t save me. This is not very hopeful.’
‘Leave the girl – let the KGB take it out on her.’
Arkady rubbed his eyes. Him in America and Irina in Russia? What an absurd conclusion that would be.
‘No.’
‘That’s what I figured.’
‘Well, thank you for your kind thought.’ Arkady started to rise. ‘Maybe you should take me back to the hotel now.’
‘Wait a second.’ Kirwill pulled him down. ‘Have one drink for old times’ sake.’ He filled the shot glass in front of Arkady, searched in his pockets and came up with some cellophane bags of peanuts that he shoved across the table. Billy and Rodney watched Arkady with great curiosity, as if he might drink with his nose. They were tall and jet-black, and wore bright shirts and necklaces. ‘If the bureau can lend you to an admitted murderer, it can lend you to the New York Police Department for another five minutes,’ Kirwill said.
Arkady shrugged and drank the whiskey in one swallow. ‘Why is the glass so small?’ he asked.
‘It’s a form of torture designed by priests,’ Kirwill said. He looked at the other detectives. ‘Hey, at least let’s have a bowl for the nuts. Can one of you get off his ass?’ As Billy went to the bar, Kirwill turned back to Arkady and said, ‘Wonderful spade.’
‘Spade?’ Arkady asked.
‘Spade, nigger, blood, dude, coconut. Hey, now, Rodney,’ Kirwill said when the other black detective laughed and shook his head, ‘if he ever becomes an American the man will have to get his terms straight.’
‘Why don’t you like the FBI?’ Arkady asked.
The manic power that was Kirwill made a slight revolution. The grin twisted. ‘Well, for a lot of reasons. Professionally, because the FBI doesn’t conduct investigations, they pay informers. Doesn’t matter what kind of case – spies, civil rights, Mafia – all they know is informers. Most Americans are touchy about informing, so the bureau specializes. Their informers are mental cases and hit men. Where the bureau touches the real world, suddenly you get all these freaks who know how to kill people with piano wire. Say a freak got caught, and now he’s willing to fry his friends. He tells the bureau what it wants to hear and makes up what he doesn’t know. See, that’s the basic difference. A cop goes out on the street and digs up information for himself. He’s willing to get dirty because his ambition in life is to be a detective. But a bureau agent is really a lawyer or an accountant; he wants to work in an office and dress nice, maybe go into politics. That son of a bitch will buy a freak a day.’
‘Not everyone who informs is a freak,’ Arkady muttered. He saw Misha standing in the church, took another drink and pushed the image aside.
‘When their freaks are finished testifying, they move them and give them new names. If the freak kills someone else, the bureau moves him again. There are psychopaths who’ve been moved four, five times – totally immune. I can’t arrest them; they’ve got better pardons than Nixon. That’s what happens when you don’t do the job yourself, when you use freaks.’
The detective returned from the bar with a wood-grained plastic bowl. Kirwill opened the peanuts into it. ‘While you’re up, Billy,’ he said, ‘why don’t you call the pens and find out if they’ve released our friend Rats yet.’
‘Shee-it!’ Billy said, but went to the phone booth.
‘What’s “shee-it”?’ Arkady asked.
‘Two scoops of shit,’ Rodney said.
‘Osborne says he is an informer for the FBI,’ Arkady said.
‘Yeah, I know.’ Kirwill looked up as if his eyes were on the moon. ‘You can just imagine the day when John Osborne walked into the bureau. They probably stepped on their cocks they stood so fast. Someone like him – been to the Kremlin, been to the White House, high society – won’t take a penny, could buy and sell any man in the bureau. Hobnobs with all sorts of pinkos here and Reds there. He’s your dream freak come true.’
‘Why didn’t he go to the CIA?’
‘Because he’s smart. The CIA has thousands of sources of Russian information, a hundred men going in and out of Russia. The FBI was forced to shut its Moscow office. All it had was Osborne.’
‘All he could give them was gossip.’
‘That’s all they wanted. They just wanted to get on some congressman’s lap and put their hot lips to his ear and whisper that they’d heard from their own special source that Brezhnev had syph. Same as they whispered about the Kennedy boys and King. That’s what congressmen are willing to pay for, that’s what federal budgets are all about. Only, now the bureau has to pay; Osborne is calling in his notes. He wants the bureau to protect him, and he’s not going to change his name and hide. He’s got the bureau by its delicate pearl-sized balls and he’s just started to squeeze.’
Arkady had finished the nuts while Kirwill talked. He poured himself another drink. ‘But he stole the sables and has to give them back.’
‘Really? Would the Soviet Union give them back if the KGB stole them? He’s a hero.’
‘He’s a murderer.’
‘Says you.’
‘I’m not KGB.’
‘Says me. In this particular world we’re the odd men out.’
‘They didn’t let him go.’ Billy returned from the phone. ‘Now they want to hold him for drunk-and-disorderly. They’ll charge him in an hour.’
Billy’s voice reminded Arkady of a saxophone. ‘Your two men’ – he studied Billy and Rodney – ‘aren’t they painting an office across the street from my hotel?’
‘See,’ Kirwill told them, ‘I said he was good.’
When they left the bar, Billy and Rodney drove off in a red convertible. Kirwill and Arkady walked through a series of streets connected at odd angles through a part of the city Kirwill called the Village. There was just enough snow to make streetlamps stand out and the night air taste better. On Barrow Street they stopped in front of a three-story brick house with marble steps and vines wedged between nearly identical houses. Arkady knew without being told that it was Kirwill’s house.
‘In the summer that wisteria gets out of hand, a regular purple hell,’ Kirwill said. ‘Big Jim and Edna had a Russian who lived here with us whose English wasn’t too good. When his friends visited he told them to look for a house “covered with hysteria”. Close enough.’
The house looked slightly suspended in the dark.
‘We had a lot of Russians. The babushka who took care of me used to do the five little piggies on my toes. She’d say, “This little Rockefeller went to market, this little Mellon stayed home, this little Stanford had roast beef . . .”
‘The bureau used to have two guys sitting in a car here all day and all night. They tapped the phone, they put bugs in our walls from the other houses, they questioned anyone who came to the door. The anarchists made bombs on the roof. There was a kind of suspense about the whole place you don’t find in a lot of homes. Jimmy took over the top floor later. Very Nearer My God to Thee. He put an altar up there – crucifixes, ikons. Christ was Jimmy’s bomb. Big Jim and Edna exploded, Jimmy exploded, and me, I’m down to one Russian.’
‘And you still live here?’
‘In a fucking haunted house. This whole country’s a fucking haunted house. Come on, there’s someone we have to get.’
Kirwill’s car was blue, old, fastidiously clean. He drove south on Varick, waving casually to a police squad car they passed. It struck Arkady that by now Wesley must know he was missing and there had to be some panic at the Barcelona Hotel. Was there a bulletin out to police cars? Would they suspect Kirwill?