Martin Smith - Wolves Eat Dogs

"No."

Zurin hung up. The prosecutor might have shown a little more edge than usual, but, everything considered, the conversation had been as pleasant as Arkady could have wished.

Bobby Hoffman let Arkady and Victor into the Ivanov apartment, moved to the sofa and dropped into the deep impression already there. Despite air-conditioning, the room had the funk of an all-night vigil. Hoffman's hair was matted, his eyes a blur, and tear tracks ran into the reddish bristle on his jowls. His clothes looked twisted around him, although the jacket given to him by Pasha was folded on the coffee table beside a snifter and two empty bottles of brandy. He said, "I don't have the code to the keypad, so I stayed."

"Why?" Arkady asked.

"Just to get things straight."

"Straighten us out, please."

Hoffman tilted his head and smiled. "Renko, as far as your investigation goes, I want you to know that you wouldn't have touched Pasha or me in a thousand years. The American Securities and Exchange Commission never hung anything on me."

"You fled the country."

"You know what I always tell complainers? 'Read the fine print, asshole!' "

"The fine print is the important print?"

"That's why it's fine."

"As in 'You can be the wealthiest man in the world and live in a palace with a beautiful woman, but one day you will fall out a tenth-floor window'?" Arkady said. "As fine as that?"

"Yeah." The air went out of Hoffman, and it occurred to Arkady that for all the American's bravado, without the protection of Pasha Ivanov, Bobby Hoffman was a mollusk without its shell, a tender American morsel on the Russian ocean floor.

"Why don't you just leave Moscow?" Arkady asked Hoffman. "Take a million dollars from the company and go. Set up in Cyprus or Monaco."

"That's what Timofeyev suggested, except his number was ten million."

"That's a lot."

"Look, the bank accounts Pasha and I opened offshore add up to about a hundred million. Not all our money, of course, but that's a lot."

A hundred million? Arkady tried to add the zeroes. "I stand corrected."

Victor took a chair and set down his briefcase. He gave the apartment the cold glance of a Bolshevik in the Winter Palace. From his briefcase he fished a personal ashtray fashioned from an empty soda can, although his sweater had holes that suggested he put out his cigarettes another way. He also had put, in a light-fingered way, drinking glasses from the evening before in plastic bags labeled "Zurin," "Timofeyev" and "Rina Shevchenko," just in case.

Hoffman contemplated the empty bottles. "Staying here is like watching a movie, running every possible scenario. Pasha jumping out the window, being dragged and thrown out, over and over. Renko, you're the expert: was Pasha killed?"

"I have no idea."

"Thanks a lot, that's helpful. Last night you sounded like you had suspicions."

"I thought the scene deserved more investigation."

"Because as soon as you started to poke around, you found a closet full of fucking salt. What is that about?"

"I was hoping you could tell me. You never noticed that with Ivanov before, a fixation on salt?"

"No. All I know is, everything wasn't as simple as the prosecutor and Timofeyev said. You were right about Pasha changing. He locked us out of here. He'd wear clothes once and throw them away. It wasn't like giving the jacket to me. He threw out the clothes in garbage bags. Driving around, suddenly he'd change his route, like he was on the run."

"Like you," Victor said.

"Only he didn't run far," Arkady said. "He stayed in Moscow."

Hoffman said, "How could he go? Pasha always said, 'Business is personal. You show fear and you're dead.' Anyway, you wanted more time to investigate. Okay, I bought you some."

"How did you do that?"

"Call me Bobby."

"How did you do that, Bobby?"

"NoviRus has foreign partners. I told Timofeyev that unless you were on the case, I'd tell them that the cause of Pasha's death wasn't totally resolved. Foreign partners are nervous about Russian violence. I always tell them it's exaggerated."

"Of course."

"Nothing can stop a major project-the Last Judgment wouldn't stop an oil deal-but I can stall for a day or two until the company gets a clean bill of health."

"The detective and I will be the doctors who decide this billion-dollar state of health? I'm flattered."

"I'd start you off with a bonus of a thousand dollars."

"No, thanks."

"You don't like money? What are you, communists?" Hoffman's smile stalled halfway between insult and ingratiation.

"The problem is that I don't believe you. Americans won't take the word of either a criminal like you or an investigator like me. NoviRus has its own security force, including former detectives. Have them investigate. They're already paid."

"Paid to protect the company," Hoffman said. "Yesterday that meant protecting Pasha, today it's protecting Timofeyev. Anyway, Colonel Ozhogin is in charge, and he hates me."

"If Ozhogin dislikes you, then I advise you to get on the next plane. I'm sure Russian violence is exaggerated, but it serves no one's purpose for you to be in Moscow." Ozhogins displeasure was a cue for any man to travel to foreign climes, Arkady thought.

"After you ask some questions. You hounded Pasha and me for months. Now you can hound someone else."

"It's not that simple, as you say."

"A few fucking questions is all I'm asking for."

Arkady gave way to Victor, who opened a ledger from his briefcase and said, "May I call you Bobby?" He rolled the name like hard candy. "Bobby, there would be more than one or two questions. We'd have to talk to everyone who saw Pasha Ivanov last night, his driver and bodyguards, the building staff. Also, we'd have to review the security tapes."

"Ozhogin won't like that."

Arkady shrugged. "If Ivanov didn't commit suicide, there was a breach in security."

Victor said, "To do a complete job, we should also talk to his friends."

"They weren't here."

"They knew Ivanov. His friends and the women he was involved with, like the one who was here last night."

"Rina is a great kid. Very artistic."

Victor gave Arkady a meaningful glance. The detective had once invented a theory called 'Fuck the Widow', for determining a probable killer on the basis of who lined up first to console a grieving spouse. "Also, enemies."

"Everyone has enemies. George Washington had enemies."

"Not as many as Pasha," said Arkady. "There were earlier attempts on Pasha's life. We'd have to check who was involved and where they are. It's not just a matter of one more day and a few more questions."

Victor dropped a butt in the soda can. "What the investigator wants to know is, if we make progress, are you going to run and leave us with our pants down and the moon out?"

"If so, the detective recommends you begin running now," Arkady said. "Before we start."

Bobby hung on to the sofa. "I'm staying right here."

"If we do start, this is a possible crime scene, and the very first thing is to get you out of here."

"We have to talk," Victor told Arkady.

The two men retreated to the white runway of the hall. Victor lit a cigarette and sucked on it like oxygen. "I'm dying. I have heart problems, lung problems, liver problems. The trouble is, I'm dying too slowly. Once my pension meant something. Now I have to work until they push me into the grave. I ran the other day. I thought I heard church bells. It was my chest. They're raising the price of vodka and tobacco. I don't bother eating anymore. Fifteen brands of Italian pasta, but who can afford it? So do I really want to spend my final days playing bodyguard to a dog turd like Bobby Hoffman? Because that's all he wants us for, bodyguards. And he'll disappear, he'll disappear as soon as he shakes more money out of Timofeyev. He'll run when we need him most."